Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Bible/Archive 1

What an honor! To be the first in a project! OK, here is yet another page containing a variation on the same kind of context: Names for books of Judeo-Christian scripture. I kind of like it, it's nicely organized but DUH, so many repetitions. Presumably due to its long name it was hardly linked to.

Some other bitchings: pages on the bible are overlinked: only link to a given page the first time it is reminded. Wikipedia:Make only links relevant to the context. They are over-bolded. They contain internal repetitions in addition to the repetitions between the many pages. I'm glad this project started. Gadykozma 15:01, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Please don't cuss. Thanks, Nathan Larson 04:35, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I've been through most of the general Bible pages (and took out a lot of links -- maybe not enough...) I don't know what to do with Names for books of Judeo-Christian scripture. As you say, it is nicely organized, but very largely overlaps existing information, and is practically unlinked-to. Any ideas on how we might deal with that? -- Mpolo 18:58, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)

I am becoming less and less of a deletionist as time passes by... let's just let it be. Its harmless. Gadykozma 19:35, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hi folks! Amazingly, I have even just a few moments right now to acknowledge the serious thinking and good will I saw glancing at the continued discussion of this topic. I liked a lot of the ideas, but have no time to reply to them seriously now. Just so people will be aware: For the Jewish participants in this discussion, like me and Jayjg and others, this is a really crazy time. Because of the many holidays, most of us will not be able to participate at all from now until at least Sunday, and even after Sunday there will be numerous interruptions for other holidays. So please be patient! We will get back to you. Dovi 10:42, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

Just dropped by

Just dropped by to let you know that [[Category:Bible stories]] exists. CheeseDreams 01:23, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Not any more. It was listed on WP:CfD and was deleted. E=MC^2 21:41, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hello and an offer of help

It looks like the project is gathering interest: I was pointed here to ask about style and resources.

I'm a Christian willing to contribute to Bible-related articles and express the Christian POV while keeping the overall neutral point of view. I hope I can contribute something useful. My motivation, is to facilitate interest in the Bible and encourage discovery. I'm not a theological academic but I'm a computer science graduate with a thirst for knowledge. — Peter Hitchmough 03:20, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Poll on Talk:Bible closed

The poll started out of controversy on New Testament and Talk:New Testament after some edit-skirmishes to remove 'Christian' right before 'Bible' in the first sentence of the article on New Testament. The poll has been open for over a week. The outcome of the poll is to favor 'Christian Bible' over all other options when referring to the Holy Scriptures of Christianity. Gebruiker:Dedalus 07:58, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Order of Books

Just a suggestion. Perhaps there should be a paragraph on the order of the Books. The 1611 KJAV and its successors have the Apocrypha in a separate section (in obedience to Ezra), which the 1609 Douay integrates these books. --ClemMcGann 10:39, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

List of suggested edits to book of the Bible

Hi, this list was deposited on Wikiproject:Countering Systemic Bias some time ago. I thought that it was probably of more relevance here were there are a number of editors here working on biblical scholarship. Happy editing --nixie 01:29, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Bible topics that suffer from a limited (usually pro-literal-truth) point of view. Many of these articles were imported from 19th century public domain sources like Bible dictionaries, and were patched with some weasel words. A permanent revision needs to be undertaken, taking modern scientific/scholarly views into account.

• Vashti records the literalist view of the Book of Esther but fails to report the view that the book is about babylonian and other gods such as the god Vashti, despite this being mentioned at the Book of Esther article.
• Jericho records the biblical account of Jericho as if it is historic fact, despite that modern archaeologists date its destruction to before the Israelites were ever in Canaan.
• exodus, and particularly Leviticus, ignore and suppress the documentary hypothesis' view of their origin (e.g. leviticus as law code from a rival priesthood faction), despite that this hypothesis is the modern mainstream scientific theory accepted by almost all secular scholars.
• Near sacrifice of Isaac fails to record the fact that early and longstanding Jewish traditions held that there was nothing "near" about it, and in consequence, many modern scholars think that the story records an earlier history including human sacrifice.
• Book of Kings, Book of Samuel fails to record the documentary hypothesis' view of their origin (as part of a larger single work by the same author at the same time including Deuteronomy, 1&2 Kings, 1&2 Samuel, Judges, and Joshua)
• Book of Joshua describes the archaeological evidence of the Amarna letters with the implication that they support the accuracy of the text. However, it never describes why, or what the letters actually say.
• Book of Samuel fails to record that modern scholars view 1 Samuel as invented propaganda only loosely based on events (and why they do so).
• Samson fails to record that modern scholars view the story of Samson as an evolved story of a sun god, possibly copied to some or total extent from Herakles.
• Ehud fails to record the view that the story of Ehud was non-historical propaganda/an invented wisdom-story (in the "The americans spent millions of pounds to develop a pen that would work in space. The russians just used a pencil" mould).
• Book of Jonah totally fails to record any criticism of its historicity, including the victorian discovery that a man in the body of a whale for more than 2 days would have dissolved.
• Book of Chronicles totally fails to record the modern scholars documentary hypothesis opinion, or reasons for it, that it originates as political spin by a rival group of priests to counter the deuteronomistic history (Deuteronomy, 1&2 Kings, 1&2 Samuel, Judges, and Joshua)
• Book of Joel, Book of Amos, and others, fail to take account of modern scholarship as to the date of its origin (after 600BC), and the implications this has for its prophecies (i.e. that they occur after the events they claim to predict)
• Book of Ruth fails to record the modern opinion that it is an early lesbian romance (i.e. a novel).
• Book of Daniel fails to record the opinion of modern scholars that the work is non-historical, partly made up as propaganda, and partly as a collection of originally entirely independant texts relating to entirely seperate people.
• Psalms totally fails to record the opinion of modern scholars that many of the Psalms derive from a wide range of different periods covering the whole of biblical history, some being survivals from early Canaanite religion (e.g. mentioning the Leviathon, and pillars holding up the sky, and El distributing the pantheon of patron gods amongst the nations (assigning Jaweh to Israel)), others from babylonian captivity (and thus clearly post-david/solomon).
• Gideon (Judges) fails to record the modern scholar opinion that some or all of the traditions assigned to Gideon derive from or cause the traditions of Joshua (e.g. the Midianite conquest being the same story as that of Jericho, one being the original, and the other a re-assigned copy).
• Book of Daniel, Book of Samuel, and Book of Ruth, fail to mention the frequently cited allegations of the homosexuality of the protagonists (Daniel, Jonathon & David, Ruth).

Consultant

Excellent idea for a project, and if I was a scripture scholar, I would devote myself to the cause. However, I do want to offer my services as a consultant should there be any issues of a Roman Catholic nature. Feel free to check my professional qualifications on my user page. I hope I can be of some help. Essjay (talk) 07:40, Jun 12, 2005 (UTC)

I do have a research doctorate in Biblical studies, and although I've not got too much time, I'm happy to comment where I can. --Doc (?) 01:00, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

Is there anyone there?

If there is, you might be interested in the survey Wikipedia:Bible source text. ~~~~ 9 July 2005 18:31 (UTC)

Articles For Individual Verses

Raising this in response to a recent VfD several recent VfDs.
(In the event this topic gets its own talk page, can the creator please move my comments there.)
Regardless of the POV/NPOV merit/lack therof of a particular article, the number of articles of a certain type can be indicative of systemic bias. If, for instance, there were seventy Jazz articles and six Folk, a casual reader would could draw incorect conclusions about the relative impact of the genres. This effect is amplified if sixty six of the Jazz articles are of minor notabilty. brenneman^(t)(c) 00:41, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
Oh, and what about LDS? That is an additional 200% which could be argued for inclusion. brenneman^(t)(c)

Citations

I'm new to the workings of Wikipedia and its sister projects and was wondering what mechanisms are available, or could be created, to mark citations as links to Wikisource or even allow inline references. I wouldn't have expected the arguments I've seen over Biblical pages concerning how much should be quoted. That sort of debate is at my level, nowhere close to scholarly or anything. The solution linking to Wikisource I think is pretty simple, but the integration between the projects seems to be much too loose in general, and what's available now is nowhere near as extensive as the BibleGateway, my favorite source. I was also so disappointed at the inconsistent formatting on Wikiquotes that I gave up editing, thinking that it would just fall into disrepair once again.

There should be a systematic effort at making all the books of any version available from within the Wikipedia syntax. First of all this requires uploading the relevant texts. Has anybody contacted BibleGateway concerning their active or passive involvement? I would guess they'd be quite receptive from the robots.txt file, not to mention the Christian attitude toward the proliferation of the Bible in general. It might be best to start with English versions for now because the different language versions of Wikipedia seem to be quite independent, although in reality this approach could have ramifications to not only other languages but other texts. Because of translations, there's no such thing as a text with a single version.

What I'm ultimately thinking about is a sort of link, say {{Bible|Matthew 7:13-14}} or {{Bible|Luke 6:24; 13:26-27}} or {{Bible|Mark 15:34|Matthew 27:46}}. These would appear as the standard citations and open to dynamic pages at Wikisource with the requested quote(s), relevant footnotes etc. in the user's default version, or with the option to override the version if the precise wording is important. There would be a global default, probably KJV for most, although books outside the cannon would require an alternate. Regardless there would be a pull-down menu (or more likely just links) for the same text in different versions, or even for comparisons between versions and such. I'm not really sure how mirror sites would handle this, but I'm guessing it could be simplified or flattened fairly easily.

This syntax could be used not only in the Wikipedia itself but in Wikiquotes and even Wikisource when the work is a selection, such as readings.

It would also be quite convenient to allow inline quotations. They would be edited as citations but cache in mirrors with the actual quotation. The main reason I have for this is achieving conformity. People seem to copy and paste from just about anywhere on the web, so not only is the punctuation or capitalization suspect, but if the version is not cited then it's time-consuming to add that tiny bit of information. Formatting in Wikiquotes especially would be much easier, and there would only be one source for errors.

One other potential advantage is that the page could change according to the user's preferences. When I say preferences I don't necessarily mean cookies, although that's a clear option. Additionally or alternately there may be a page default and links to the same page using a different version, especially the more common versions. If this turns out to be a bad idea, it's easy enough to set the default version universally.

What's the feasibility of all of this? Are any approaches more practical, aside from the current labor-intensive? I'd like to start a bit of brainstorming. Thereafter, who would be involved in implementation? What sort of issues need to be worked out, and how? What's the next step? unsigned

R.e. citations - you can use Wikisource:page-on-wikisource, there is also a nice template that does a similar thing as well. ~~~~ 08:14, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Biblical scientific foreknowledge

Can you guys take a look at Biblical scientific foreknowledge and try to make that article NPOV with regard to it expressing the theological opinions of those other than just fundamentalists as it stands now. Thankyou. Dunc|☺ 10:57, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Bible articles clean-up and Vfd

Anyone reading this?

There are a number of Bible passage articles which have recently gone through VfD - all were in dreadful states and in need of cleanup (or simply deleting). I saved two John 15 and recently Leviticus 18 by cleaning up. John 17 is going through right -is is only text with no article and needs killed or actually written. This is a terrible way to clean-up Bible articles - yet folk will keep finding plenty of POV rubbish, rants, and messes to nominate.

I'm wondering whether we need to create a templete/category specifically for 'Bible related articles in need of attention' - so that those with knowledge can go to one place and work on them. Any thoughts? Also IMO articles that are just Biblical text should be 'shot on sight' without VfD as 'contentless' --Doc (?) 21:17, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

• I agree with both points. A template/category (maybe a stub-type as well?) should most definately be created for articles in need of attention. Articles that contain only text - yeah, kill it. If a person wants Bible text, they can always use one of the many free online bibles. And aren't these already on wikisource anyway? --Blu Aardvark | ^{(talk) | (contribs)} 02:25, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

• Regarding stubs, there does exist a stub for articles relating to the Old Testament {{HeBible-stub}}, but none relating to the new. I propose the creation of {{NT Bible-stub}} for New Testament verses, and {{OT Bible-stub}} as a redirect to {{HeBible-stub}}. Or whatever works best and is easier to remember. Once a consensus is reached, someone will need to list the proposal on WP:WSS/P. --Blu Aardvark | ^{(talk) | (contribs)} 02:41, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Genesis 1

The article on Genesis 1 needs a rewrite. up+land 09:45, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Authentic Matthew help wanted

If you are familiar with this debate - you will be groaning now. This article survived a messy VfD with a 'keep no consensus' - partly due to socks, User:-Ril-'s antics, and IMO voters who knew nothing about this subject. A debate in the wake of it agreed on a redirect. But the creator and her supporters are agressively preventing any alteration and reverting any attempts at clean-up. I'm not willing to go one-on-one with this, but it, and links to it inserted into other articles are really messing up our coverage of the gospels. Anyone willing to help out, please drop me a note --Doc (?) 09:54, 20 August 2005 (UTC)