Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pseudo-Abdias

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. If anyone feels strongly about any of these being deleted, please re-nominate individually instead of bundling. Mark Arsten (talk) 00:42, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Pseudo-Abdias[edit]

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

I am also nominating the following related pages for the same reason:

Paul Bedson, now banned, created several stubs in Category:Gnostic apocrypha and Category:New Testament apocrypha for texts with names that begin with "Pseudo-". Despite his contention that these somehow constitute "Pseudo-Gnostic Apocrypha" (see also template deletion discussion), it appears that while these are real texts, his categorisation of them is totally wrong - many or all of them are not Gnostic, they are not in any meaningful sense NT apocrypha, etc. I've fixed up Pseudo-Augustine (it's still a very brief stub, but at least is factually accurate now I believe.) The question with the remainder, is whether to fix them up to be accurate stubs about largely obscure texts, or just delete them. Given their obscurity, they may be destined to remain stubs for a long time if not forever. Their content cannot be trusted (their original author has a reputation for unreliability), and no one has come forward willing to expend the effort to check and correct them: therefore, I suggest they be deleted for now, and if anyone reliable ever takes an interest in any of them, they can recreate them. SJK (talk) 10:58, 26 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, ~~but support if no change in 14 days~~ - I understand the reason for AfD. Difficult, the reality is that without the axe of AfD hanging over these stubs the tiny handful of WikiProject Christianity editors have got better things to do and as User:SJK correctly says they'll sit around as unreliable chunks of WP:OR for ever. However it only takes about 5-10 minutes to prune each stub with (a) adding a real source based lead, (b) deleting extra blurb, plus the nonsense Gnostic template and cats. I just did Pseudo-Marcellus. I'll probably do 2 or 3 more and post here which ones. ~~But I don't intend to do all of them, and if editors can't be bothered then hey yes, nuke the others back into redlinks.~~ In ictu oculi (talk) 12:11, 26 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Boy, these are pretty bad. I just did Pseudo-Marcellus, Pseudo-Mark, Pseudo-Melitus, Pseudo-Simon (amazing - consisted of three quotes of 3 different Pseudo-Simons, hatnoted to the Greek Orthodox chronicler Symeon the Metaphrast, left as stub torso the middle Kabbalah Simon and converted to a Judaism / Kabbalah Project stub, deleted the musical manuscript, which wasn't a Pseudo Simon. :( I also trimmed the gnostic template and cats out of the first one on the AfD, and fixed lead. The body still needs an OR tag. In ictu oculi (talk) 12:47, 26 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Did Pseudo-Sophronius and turned Pseudo-Luke into a redirect to Leucius Charinus. That's the bottom 6 on the list done. Anyone want to do the top of the list? In ictu oculi (talk) 13:10, 26 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose deletion of Pseudo-Abdias, Pseudo-Ambrose, Pseudo-John, and Pseudo-Linus, which seem to more clearly relate to documents than the alleged authors, particularly the first, which might be renamed Ambrosiaster after the title of the entry in the Augustine encyclopedia used as a reference.
Neutral regarding the rest. About them, honestly, if there are only individual documents attributed to these authors, articles on those documents, which presumably have titles?, would probably make more sense. John Carter (talk) 15:20, 26 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:33, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:33, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@John Carter: I've been through all of them now, removing the "Gnosticism" templates and tags, reducing the lead to what is actually in sources. They're all notable. Document=author so classifying them is a secondary issue. <Pseudo-Crato remains a problem, one 1870 source goes into a lot of detail, but a bit of looking would dig out the modern name for the text ~~and possibly a duplicate article.~~ In ictu oculi (talk) 08:37, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, done that too. Could be merged to Pseudo Abdias but for the moment leave. Keep Keep Keep In ictu oculi (talk) 14:14, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep or redirect -- I am not an expert and have only checked a sample. These all appear to be New Testament apocrypha items. As such, they should all be notable. If we already have an article on the book (or text), we should redirect to that. Pseudo-Luke would be a redirect, except that the AFD tag disables that. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:18, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Every one of these documents is of great historical significance, and therefore needs an article. There are abundant sources in the printed literature. Since the biographies of the supposed authors are a matter of conjecture, the articles should focus on the documents. DGG ( talk ) 22:25, 6 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, I did recently find a Brill Encyclopedia of Gnosticism and Western Esotericism, and will try to develop some sort of content list on the basis of it in the next few weeks, which should be useful in indicating notability and sources for gnostic works. John Carter (talk) 22:30, 6 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.