Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Bible/Archive 2

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Since this WikiProject's #Goals, /General, /Strategy, and /Strategy talk pages have deprecated, I'm archiving them here as a way to start revamping this WikiProject. --J. J. 20:36, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Contents

Goals

  1. Unify the presentations of the biblical canon (Cf. Apocrypha, Biblical canon, Books of the Bible, Bible and Tanakh, Septuagint, Old Testament, New Testament). I like the table in "Biblical Canon", but it may not be the best way to present the information.
  2. Unify presentation of the individual books of the Bible.
  3. Sidebars in the various books of the Tanakh use nifty Tanakh templates, but this assumes the Jewish ordering of the books and "hides" the deuterocanonicals. Is a solution possible without creating a monster?
Before going too far too fast with these goals, I think it is important to point out that the participants in a parallel wikipedia project have taken the exact opposite approach. Please read:

Not everyone agrees with your stated goal that unification of articles is a positive thing at all. On the contrary, the space and pluralism of Wikipedia make it possible to develope topical encyclopedias (along the lines of "Encyclopedia Judaica" and/or "The Catholic Encyclopedia"). Let's try not to run into a conflict between two overlapping projects. Dovi 17:52, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

Dovi, even assuming we want two copies of some articles, this is not the case! This project wouldn't have been created if all we had was "Tanakh" for the Jewish view and "Old Testament" for the Christian view. The fact of the matter is that Tanakh contains an awful lot of comparsions with the Chrisitian views, "Old Testament" contains an awful lot of comparisons with the Jewish views, and there is the Bible page, and at least 3 pages dedicated to the comparison alone! That's having the same information in 7 pages! Gadykozma 18:11, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)
We don't want to step on each other's feet, but we need to make the information available to the people who need it. A parallel series of Bible articles is probably the best thing for a fervant Jew or a fervant Christian, but maybe not for "the man on the street" who wants an overview -- he might end up reading two largely overlapping pages just to get the few nuggets of difference (in certain cases)....
Maybe each article should have a general section (of what we can agree on) and sections for Jewish interpretation and Christian (when necessary Cath, Prot, Orth) interpretation. We could theoretically put a Jewish infobox in the Jewish section and a Christian one in the Christian section, so that those readers can browse the Bible in order.
In any case, the canon article have got to be fixed somehow... -- Mpolo 18:49, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)
I agree with Dovi; it may be extremely difficult to reconcile the two projects. The Jewish view and understanding of the Tanakh diverges widely from the Christian view of the Old Testament, not to mention all the other issues such as which books actually belong in the Bible. Jayjg 19:46, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I see the need for Tanakh and Old Testament. They each need to link to one another, etc., but it makes things clearer to separate them. However, realistically, how much difference would there be between Book of Ruth (Tanakh) and Book of Ruth (Old Testament) to make it worth having a disambiguation page at Book of Ruth to point to the two? If the Jewish community really feels that these two articles would be different enough to merit separation, then maybe the "Goals" need to be revised above. (They were off the top of my head anyway.)
I think that Goal #1 has to be addressed though. We have way too many pages saying the same thing and then linking to each other. They probably wouldn't collapse into only one page, in any case. I made some musings on this on the /General page, which might be a better spot for discussion anyway (or on the Talk page). -- Mpolo 19:51, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)
For the record, I also think it is useful to have both Tanakh and Old Testament — I just think that both pages should be trimmed of the comparisons, and just give a link to Bible and Tanakh or somesuch. Gadykozma 23:54, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Alternative goals

Let's see if we can get some consensus about what needs to be done...

Here's my take:

  1. Unify the presentations of the biblical canon (Cf. Apocrypha, Biblical canon, Books of the Bible, Bible and Tanakh, Septuagint, Old Testament, New Testament). I like the table in "Biblical Canon", but it may not be the best way to present the information. It may be necessary to keep some repetition, but the current situation is not ideal.
  2. Work with the Wikipedia:WikiProject Judaism to determine the best way to present the individual Biblical books.
    1. For most books, there is a large portion of the information that completely overlaps between Jews, Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox. Having that information repeated on 4 pages seems counterproductive.
    2. Each tradition mentioned above has specific insights into the books, with the three main Christian strands very often coinciding, though not always, though can probably be more easily combined into one presentation than the Jewish interpretation.
    3. The Jewish interpretation should be available to those reading the Christian interpretation, and vice versa. Suggestions for how to do this in /Strategy.
  3. Sidebars in the various books of the Tanakh use nifty Tanakh templates, but this assumes the Jewish ordering of the books and "hides" the deuterocanonicals. Perhaps the ideal is to relegate these to the Jewish sections or pages. Mpolo 09:13, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

New comment at /General. (I think more people watch this page than that.) Mpolo 09:38, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

One of the reasons that I would suggest having both a However, realistically, how much difference would there be between Book of Ruth (Tanakh) and Book of Ruth (Old Testament) because Jewish theologians generally cite other Jewish theologians and vice versa... Luther's ideas on the Book of Ruth would be little influenced by the Jewish thinkers of his day. Also most Protestant Christians rely on versions of the bible that have been translated from Hebrew to Greek to English (or other)and thus words like "virgin"/young girl, messiah, Son of Man etc change the reading of the individual books interly. If they read the same, there wouldn't be so much fuss. Virtualalphamale 014:50, Dec 14, 2005 (UTC)

/General

I'm ultimately pretty neutral about how we end up doing this, but it affects so many people's work that it can't be done without some sort of consensus. Some random thoughts:

  1. All discussion of what canon is in Biblical Canon
  2. List of books accounting for as many mainstream possibilities at Books of the Bible. Individual pages or notes (where appropriate) about other canons (LDS, Ethiopian Oriental Orthodox, etc.)
  3. NPoV the infobox somehow. This may be impossible without making it unwieldy. I'm not offended by the Ketuvim, etc., boxes, but they "hide" information that I would consider related -- no link to Book of Tobit with the rest of the (what I call) historical books, etc. -- Mpolo 13:35, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

Well, there hasn't been a lot of movement (read none) on this, probably due to the Jewish interested parties having Rosh Hashanah and Sukkoth... If there is no major objection, I plan to do the following in the next day or two:

  1. Rework Biblical canon. The discussion of the Tanakh canon is already in Tanakh, so I would propose making that a summary section, moving any extra detail to the Tanakh article. Once that article is ready, Tanakh will need a bit of modification to point to "Biblical canon" for the details on the Christian POV.
  2. Rework Apocrypha, checking data, etc.
  3. Designate Books of the Bible as the place for comparative tables, removing them from the other articles (that is, Tanakh keeps its list, since that is only for the Tanakh, but the table in Apocrypha, and perhaps a couple of others, would get removed and replaced by a link to this one. Would there be a better name for that page?
  4. Wait for a while on "what to do about individual books of the Bible/Tanakh"

Is that O.K. by everyone? -- Mpolo 09:36, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

Seems reasonable so far. Jayjg 17:29, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Any plans to do anything with the Deuterocanon article? Wesley 17:11, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Argh! Another one. Yeah, that one needs to be worked out alongside Apocrypha. It's probably worth having the two articles, but will have to see how they best work together... It'll probably be Thursday before I do anything drastic, though. Mpolo 19:04, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

I have done #1. I left the discussion of the Tanakh canon in Biblical canon and put a link to that discussion in Tanakh, rather than the other way around, as I had proposed above. Mpolo 10:14, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

/Strategy

Possible strategies for individual Bible/Tanakh books

(Please add at will in the appropriate sections. This is after "sleeping on it" a night, but is still mostly "gut feeligns". Unattributed lines were added by Mpolo 09:30, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC))

Wholly separate pages

The Judaism project seems to tend to favor complete separation, with links to the parallel pages. A naming strategy has not been put forward, but would probably be something like Book of Ruth (Tanakh) and Book of Ruth (Old Testament) (or Jewish and Christian, or...)

Advantages

  1. There is no stepping on toes, which often occurs when trying to present the "other person's" viewpoint.
  2. The writers are partially freed from NPOV concerns. The pages shouldn't turn into proselytism, but they can safely avoid saying "in contrast to the Christian theory that...." and the like.
  3. Jewish and Christian sidebars can be created for the respective pages, respecting the various traditions.
  4. Useful for specifically Jewish and Christian users, who are more interested in the opinions of their own traditions.

Disadvantages

  1. The casual reader seeking a book goes through extra clicks. (Finds Book of Ruth, which for neutrality has to be a disambiguation for the two versions.)
  2. Large overlap in material (Wikipedia is not paper, so not necessarily a problem, but for the casual reader could be a source of frustration in having to read largely the same material 2-4 times to get an overview of all positions.)

One page per book

Others seem to favor combining any pair of pages that cover more or less the same material. Here there would be an introductory section describing the contents of the book and the conclusions of Bible criticism, with subsections for each of the major viewpoints on the "meaning" of the book.

Advantages

  1. The casual reader finds all information on one page.
  2. Comparison and contrast of the points of view is facilitated.
  3. Less information repetition

Disadvantages

  1. Consensus on the page will be harder to achieve
  2. Danger of edit wars as persons try to present opinions they don't agree with, but think that they understand
  3. May encourage less development of the sections

Mixed approach

The other possibility I see is very similar. At Book of Ruth, for example, we would have the common information -- summary of the contents, dating, critical scholarship. This would be followed by links to the tradition-specific pages at Book of Ruth (Tanakh) and Book of Ruth (Old Testament) (or similar), perhaps including a short summary on the main page.

Advantages

  1. The casual reader find the most important information on one page.
  2. Links to the contrasting points of view are available.
  3. Less information repetition

Disadvantages

  1. Specifically Jewish and Christian readers are forced to read two articles to get their tradition's full say on the book.
  2. Danger of lots of "red links" if one group is less diligent than the other
  3. Comparison and contrast require multiple tabs or browser instances

/Strategy talk

Mixed approach "the common information -- summary of the contents, dating, critical scholarship"

Do you really think that the two viewpoints hold these things in common? For example, about Song of Songs/Song of Solomon (on which they can't even agree on a name)? Jayjg 14:32, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well, the books themselves have got the same content (with minor exceptions) and presumably, all will have a range of theories on dating and critical scholarship, which are probably going to overlap considerably. Naming is difficult in a few cases. With Song of Songs/Song of Solomon/Canticle of Canticles (to add the trad. Catholic name), I'd have to honestly say that I don't know which name is traditionally Jewish, traditionally Protestant, etc. It appears from the article that Song of Solomon is Protestant, and that the Hebrew title is Song of Songs, yet the Ketuvim list has Song of Solomon, so that I have no idea what name is preferred by Jewish Bibles. The standard Catholic Bible for the Liturgy in the U.S. has Song of Songs. I would have thought that redirects would be sufficient for naming, since the alternative names would be in the introduction. Maybe I'm just idealistic here.
Obviously, there are differences between the viewpoints. But this doesn't change the fact that there are even more common points, due to the fact that the same material is being discussed. A Christian discussion of the allegorical aspects of Genesis would be out of place in a general treatment of the book. Saying that the book covers creation, the Fall, and the Patriarchs must still be common to everyone. Saying that there exist various theories about the writing (from authorship by Moses and Joshua to indirect authorship by Moses to the four documentary tradition theory) is still pretty neutral, because we are reporting the studies of various scientists, and unless I'm sorely mistaken (which has been known to happen), there are both Christian and Jewish supporters of all these possibilities.
If there can be no common ground whatsoever on the Bible (which I would find rather depressing), we still have to resolve the question of nomenclature so that the "factions" can split apart and get on with producing an encyclopedia that is useful for all.
And what can we do to resolve the canon problem? Seven competing pages offering sometimes contradictory or confusing information seems counterproductive. Maybe a possibility is having Biblical Canon with an overview of the books contained in each canon, and links to separate discussions of Biblical Canon (Tanakh), Biblical Canon (Old Testament) to explain the "why" for each group. There was also a suggestion to strip Tanakh and Old Testament of much of their descriptions of each other, relegating that discussion to Bible and Tanakh or similar. How do you feel about that? -- Mpolo 15:23, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

I'm in favor of the unified approach for those sections which merit individual attention (see talk on main page). It allows someone without existing knowledge to avoid getting POV through omission. The disadvantage "Consensus on the page will be harder to achieve" is a poor reason to (effectivly) fork. - brenneman(t)(c) 00:25, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

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