Talk:Philippi

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• Article: fr:Philippes
• Corresponding English-language article: Philippi
• Worth doing because: Much more extensive and up to date (by a century!) than English-language article. The French-language article will soon be a featured article. _R_ 20:47, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Originally Requested by: _R_ 20:47, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Status: I've started to work on this. Adam Bishop 02:02, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Other notes: Finished, but other people more competent than me should look it over for style, etc. Adam Bishop 03:46, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  I did the called-for cleanup: not a lot of it needed. Thanks Adam. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:11, Feb 12, 2005 (UTC)

Very nice with the massivly updated page. If you want any more pictures to illustrate with I have a bunch here and a panoramic Peter Nelson 08:58, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The following account of Biblical events appears to presented in the article as historic fact:

• In AD 49 or 50, the city was visited by the apostle Paul who was said to have been guided there by a vision (Acts 16:9-10).
• Accompanied by Silas, Timothy and possibly Luke, the author of the Acts of the Apostles, he preached for the first time on European soil in Philippi (Acts 16:12-40) and baptized Lydia, a purple dye merchant, in a river to the west of the city.
• While in Philippi, his exorcism of a demon from a slave girl caused a great uproar in the city, which led to their (Paul and Silas) arrest and public beating (Acts 16:16-24).
• An earthquake caused their prison to be opened. When the jailer awoke, he prepared to kill himself, thinking all the prisoners had escaped and knowing that he would be severely punished. Paul stopped him, indicating that all the prisoners were in fact still there. The jailer then became one of the first Christians in Europe (Acts 16:25-40).

Is there any independent and contemporaneous evidence of these events? Specifically, is there independent corroborating evidence that an actual demon was exorcised from a slave girl, that an earthquake opened the prison, and that the jailer was preparing to commit suicide up until Paul's intervention? I have no objection to including this information in the article as a Biblical account, but if it is not corroborated by other sources, it could just as well be taken as a mere parable. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:33, 6 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

All the books of the bible were independent volumes at one time. This is like taking the works of Millard Fillmore into one book and then asking if there is any independent verification of the existence of Fillmore. No. They are all (today) in this one book. The process of canonization of each of these books took a long time and were examined by a lot of people.

Some of the material is kind of "self-proving." You don't report stupid things you've done in a totally self-serving volume. But nearly all the books of the bible contain stupidities of their authors or subject. Paul, for example, quarreled with his associate, leading them to part ways. He was beaten, spat-on, castigated, vilified and imprisoned. Not the stuff of super-heroes! :)

I don't know about the earthquake. Not all of these can be independently verified. Having said that, why would they lie about this after all the other stuff? While I would not allow that in a non-biblical account, there seems no reason to disbelieve it here.

While I am unenthused about their reporting of demon-possession, it can been seen as "cured" on television (ugh!) at various times. Believe it or don't. And if there, why not 2000 years ago? Again, so what? This is not the parting of the waters or anything. The "account" is the account. It is biblical history. It was clearly not that important to Philippians or they would have all converted at once. Instead they beat Paul! If I were writing it about my accomplishments, I would say how much the Philippians appreciated me; how they loved me! This seems as close to npov as we can get in a single source document. Student7 (talk) 17:56, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We don't cite the talking donkey in the Bible in Donkey as evidence that some donkeys can speak, and we don't cite ancient Greek accounts as evidence that Zeus actually hurled lightning bolts from Mount Olympus. The biblical account could just be a rumor, or a parable not intended to be taken literally, or something made up to suit the authors. We need an additional source uninfluenced by the biblical account to support the contentions that an exorcism (real or fake) ever occurred, or that such an earthquake ever occurred. An earthquake forceful enough to break open the jail is a significant enough event to have been recorded in some neutral media, had it actually happened. bd2412 T 18:16, 8 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to point out that we have the same problem with Herodotus. He summarizes world history conveniently pointing to Greek emergence onto the world stage. It is essentially a pr thing. It is, nevertheless, the only account we often have of the ancient world. Paul was arguably the most famous person ever to claim to visit Phillipi. There are 2 billion followers today who subscribe, more or less, to this account. While details of the earthquake and casting out devils are unessential to this article, certainly a reference to everything that the Bible claims for whatever perverted reason, should be here. A link or a pointer. "Acts claims he worked a miracle here and escaped from prison after an earthquake." However terse and offhand with all sorts of disclaimers, it should be here. We do no less for Mohammed who, in what unbelievers might term as a vivid dream, went to Jerusalem. See Isra and Mi'raj for example. I'm not looking for that sort of detail. Skipping over it seems like WP:CENSORship IMO.

As far as I know, there are not two witnesses to anything, outside the four Gospels, to much of anything except monumental events, Caesar's assassination, Black Death, to much of anything before 1000 CE. Bede stands alone, for example. We have to parse/mine poems about Beowolf, Theseus, the Iliad, etc to find out much of anything from the ancient world. We would like a "second account" for the Siege of Troy but we are unlikely to get one! Does that mean it is all false? All the academics thought so until Schliemann, a consummate amateur, proved them wrong. While this can't be totally solved through imaginative excavation, I think the major points should not be totally omitted. Student7 (talk) 22:34, 10 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It is in the article. It is just not treated as a neutral record of history. bd2412 T 01:45, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is a very good point. What we know of ancient history is built on rags and tatters. When it comes to more sensitive topics, i.e. religion, it is very easy to become fired up one way or another. Specifically when things recorded include subjects such as miracles, scientific testing cannot be applied in the same way. Hence the miracle part, it cannot be backed up by empirical data. Ultimately, this will come down to ones worldview. Take it or leave it, you decide. For an example, take the passage in Acts 16 about the demon processed slave girl. A Christian will be more likely to see what the Bible says and believe it. In contrast, an Atheist will look at the same passage, and come to drastically different conclusions. For one, if someone doesn't believe in demons, then someone casting out demons is opposing to their belief structure. 67.4.236.82 (talk) 02:34, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

When I see references to accepted historical evidence, I sometimes wonder, "How do we know all these guys weren't quoting some no longer extant crackpot?"  If you use social media, you have probably seen repeated postings of something that "everybody knows" which is actually complete nonsense.  I would say leave it in if it seems important but don’t present it as fact.  伟思礼 (talk) 16:03, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Mentions that it was once called Crenides and has been abandoned.  And states location relative to an island more than fifty kilometers away.  This seems slightly misleading, since the location is actually at the edge of a currently existing city Krinides.  伟思礼 (talk) 16:10, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]