Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Matthew 1:5

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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 of the debate was NO CONSENSUS. If I lump merge/deletes with deletes, I suppose there's numerical consensus to merge+redirect, but I'm not happy doing so under such circumstances in a well-populated debate. If there were a rough consensus, it should be fairly easy to spot with this much participation. Alternatively, I could lump the merges with keeps and look at it that way; then it becomes an editorial decision not a deletion one. -Splashtalk 01:09, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Matthew 1:5

Biblecruft. There is nothing specifically notable about this verse. It comes part of the way through a large genealogy, which is notable as a whole but not in fractions. The division of the bible into chapters and verses is a somewhat mediaeval invention and so there is nothing significant, religiously, about this verse in particular.

The only content of the article is two translations of the verse, a few sentences repeating who is listed in it (as if you couldn't tell from either of the preceeding two translations), and a brief comment that Rahab is spelt as Rachab, and is in an odd position - a comment that would much better fit in an article on the genealogy as a whole.

This is all it is ever likely to contain. --User talk:FDuffy 14:12, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

P.s. This article was apparantly put up for AFD before. The result was 18 Merge, 12 Keep, 7 Delete, 2 Keep or Merge, 1 Transwiki, 2 votes by new users, and 1 anonymous vote. This was declared to be without consensus.

  • Delete (as above) --User talk:FDuffy 14:12, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom. As interesting as it may be, it does not merit its own article. If there's any better place to merge this to, I may change my vote. - Kuzaar 14:16, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete as unencyclopaedic. This appears to be a commentary or concordance. Is the creator proposing to create a similar article for every passage in the Bible? It's a large project, and very vulnerable to both POV and OR. And it doesn't belong in an encyclopaedia as such, either. Is there another Wiki which is right for this? Just zis  Guy, you know? [T]/[C] AfD? 14:26, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Did anyone notice that several consecutive verses of Matthew have been covered in articles? I recommend that all of the articles from this section of Matthew 1 be merged into an article called Genealogy of Jesus. Logophile 14:32, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Comment. I just noticed that in the Genealogy of Jesus article, there is a list of links to each verse. My recommendation stands. Logophile 14:37, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Speedy keep this is part of a large ongoing project, there have so far been seven separate VfDs on this issue, six ended as keep and one that ended with no consensus:
There have also been two lengthy centralized discussions, one at Wikipedia:Merge/Bible verses and one at Wikipedia:Bible verses. Rather than VfDing individual verses in isolation, any discussion should be brought to those pages. - SimonP 14:40, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Why? This verse is clearly not notable. And if they didn't end in consensus it appears the reason was because too many were discussed at once.
And notability is not a reason to delete articles, see Wikipedia:Notability. Wikipedia also does not delete stus, which seems to be the reason you are nominating these. - SimonP 14:52, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
This is just a red herring. Those votes ended without consensus. They discussed too many articles at once. You appear to be the creator of those articles, so I can see why you think they should stay. Can you justify why this particular article constitutes a noteworthy encyclopedic entry? --User talk:FDuffy 14:53, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
This may be a stub, but there is still considerable room for expansion. The article contains no discussion on the various translations of this verse, and the arguments between translators. The Rachab issue is only given brief mention, while volumes have been written on the subject. There is also no discussion of the apocryphal traditions that have developed around the figures known only from their place in the genealogy. It is also useful since we have every other of the first 200 verses in the Gospel of Matthew, and it would be confusing and off-putting to readers if we only had the first 190 articles, and had unexplained gaps every once and a while in the middle. - SimonP 15:02, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Are you trying to say that we should have the article just because it is part of the first 200 verses of the Gospel of Matthew? That is NOT a reason for an article to be encyclopedic. --User talk:FDuffy 15:04, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes it is. As seven previous AfDs have shown Bible verses are permissible topics for encyclopedia articles. - SimonP 15:07, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep unless a policy-level decisoion is made to remove all articles which relate to a single verse or paragraph of any religious text. Equalhandedness.--SockpuppetSamuelson 15:35, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  • This "some cruft exists, therefore no cruft may be deleted" argument has never seemed particularly persuasive to me. Please explain what it is that makes the verse Salmon became the father of Boaz by Rahab. Boaz became the father of Obed by Ruth. Obed became the father of Jesse. anything other than trivia? For example, it almost certainly does not appear in the list of set Gospel readings under Anglican Church, since I have never heard it read out. Are any hymns based on this, as is the case with Ps.23? Is it well known to a lay audience, like John 8:1-11? Is it liturgically important like 1 Corinthians 11:23-26? This is a single verse in what appears to be one of the least important sections of Matthew's gospel, and it seems to me there really is nothing encyclopaedic to say about it! - Just zis  Guy, you know? [T]/[C] AfD? 15:40, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete I don't think we need an article for each individual bible verse. -- MisterHand 15:56, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. Previous AfDs have indeed resulted in either keep or no consensus votes for those verses. Moreso, the discussion on bible verses as a whole achieved a consensus of keep only because, as I read it, it was decided that the nomination was inappropriate for AfD and instead needed to be discussed as a merge at Wikipedia:Merge/Bible_verses. Where there was no clear consensus, but there does seem to be a general idea that while some Bible verses are notable enough to have their own articles, each case needs to be judged separately. In other words, the previous votes say that there is a precedent for keeping Bible verses if they're notable. A list of begats is not notable, not encyclopedic (although valid as part of a more general Biblical genealogical article) and not capable of generating more information than this tiny stub. Confusing Manifestation 16:03, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. The Bible is available on wikisource [1] (among other places). Discussions of the characters and genealogy should be under articles for those characters, if they are noteworthy. This particular verse isn't worthy of a specific article, as Psalm 23 is. --Squiddy | (squirt ink?) 16:46, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong Delete for this and all the other enteries that have been created so far. There are some very sensible points made here by FDuffy and 'Confusing Manifestation'. The points made by SimonP are indeed red herrings. JGF Wilks 17:51, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete or merge anything worthwhile into an encyclopedaic article. Dlyons493 Talk 20:25, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. I work with the New Testament for a (meager) living. As an encyclopedia article, this entry really doesn't belong. However, it looks like this is an ongoing project to create a wiki-commentary on Matthew (and other books?). If so, then that is where this entry would belong. --KJPurscell 20:33, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete per KJPurscell and  Guy - if SimonP's eventual/overall intention is to create a Bible commentary hosted by Wikipedia, then I suggest that the project isn't really encyclopaedic, and belongs elsewhere. Humansdorpie 20:50, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep we have had this debate already-Doc ask? 22:29, 4 January 2006 (UTC) Please see Wikipedia:Bible verses--Doc ask? 23:57, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
At Wikipedia:bible verses it says that no policy decision was made. The votes were generally in favor of not keeping an article on every verse of the Bible but only the notable ones, of which the votes were leaning toward only considering relatively few verses notable. There was a pretty even split on creating a wiki-Bible. Therefore, it seems to me that these questions are still open, that nominating a Bible-verse article for deletion is appropriate, and discussion about trans-wiki-ing it is valid. Logophile 03:11, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. This is simply not the way to treat books of the bible. Talk about subjects like the Genealogy of Jesus, not the verses one by one. The verse structure is a mediaeval construct. Often the books were divided into verses and chapters simply in such a way as to get a nice or significant number of them, like 50 (n.b. one of the gospels, I believe it is Mark, has 666 verses in total), rather than trying to respect the original sentence divisions. The only reason they weren't deleted/merged half a year ago is because the closing admin was biased and chose to count the vote as a keep despite the fact that twice as many people voted to delete and/or merge the articles than did to keep them. --Victim of signature fascism 01:47, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. Excellent references. We need more like this. -- JJay 03:05, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Merge into Matthew, or a similar article, or Delete. Ril has a very good point; discuss the genealogy of Jesus, with proper links to Wikisource. --Golbez 03:24, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. Factually accurate and verifiable. There has already been precedent to keep articles on bible verses. Oldak Quill 03:30, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep – albeit reluctantly. I don't think there's much getting around the fact that we will eventually have all 31,000 odd bible verses placed here. In a way I can understand the idea. I'm not a fan of it, but I'd pick this over pokemon. Hmm, maybe I'll start adding all Nietzsche's aphorisms... :) --Bookandcoffee 03:42, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Merge all of the genealogy in the Book of Matthew into one article, leaving the individual verses as redirects. Crotalus horridus (TALK • CONTRIBS) 04:32, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete as not notable, if not then Transwiki to Wikisource, and create a Centralised Discussion so that the issue can be settled. -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 05:24, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep, great article, no convincing basis presented for deletion. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:17, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. Think really hard. Do the "keepers" really want Wikipedia to eventually contain the entire text of the Bible in many translations and versions with an article-worthy analysis of each and every one. And then what? As Bookandcoffee pointed out, will we end up with every saying of every religious teacher and philosopher in separate articles? How about every line of every Shakespeare play? Is that really what Wikipedia is for? Logophile 06:36, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. Good article on a verse from a major book. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:36, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete/Merge. It is good to have articles on this topic, but the division of the Bible into verses is mostly arbitrary and the most encyclopedic way of treating its content is by articles on passages or chapters. — mark ✎ 07:59, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete biblecruft. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 08:49, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Merge all of the genealogy in the Book of Matthew into one article, leaving the individual verses as redirects. This is per discussion at Wikipedia:Merge/Bible verses and Wikipedia:Bible verses, to the effect that only a minority of verses deserve their own entry (to be decided case by case), and others to be merged into helpful articles as appropriate. Rd232 talk 10:46, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Merge/Delete: Merge per rd232 or delete as a non-notable verse. -- jaredwf 11:01, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Merge/Delete per above. Unless a bible verse is extremely notable then it shouldn't get its own article. Wikipedia is not a seminary. Blackcats 11:52, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete/Merge some selected passages are significant enough for their own article, this isn't one of them. CarbonCopy (talk) 23:07, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong Keep, whoa whoa whoa, guys, I'm not religious at all, but the Bible (and the New Testament as part of the Bible) is the most obsessively studied and interpreted and commented upon book in human history. Every single verse has been subjected to endless hair-splitting and analysis by theologians. There is more than enough material out there for a lengthy, informative article on any bible verse. Are Bible verses less notable than individual characters from video games? I think not. Babajobu 01:24, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
    Two wrongs do not make a right. Wikipedia is by nature inconsistent; we're here debating Matthew 1:5 and nothing else. Moreover, it's not just a question of whether the verse "deserves" an entry, it's what is genuinely useful. Merging verses that aren't particularly notable in themselves into topics creates articles that are more useful to the reader. (Moreover, nothing on Wikipedia is set in stone. If in a few months' time a merged article covering various verses is bulging at the seams, we can consider splitting it then. For now, merging is clearly the most useful step.) Rd232 talk 10:31, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Merge/Delete per nom and per Rd232 two posts above. Wikipedia is easily changed if this article ever provokes any discussion, but we don't need millions of articles on bible verses when there's not much more than the verse itself there. The only bible verse article I would support is John 3:16; no other verse is a widely known. - Pureblade | Θ 18:18, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Merge. Every verse in the Bible doesn't need a whole article on it. Reasoning per Rd232. If in the future the article need a separate verse due to some strange historical discovery, then we can just create/split it off again. Bratschetalk | Esperanza 19:30, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment: We appear to have articles on every verse between Matthew 1-6 and John 20. I don't know if it's too much work to delete them all; deleting some of them piecemeal will leave us with a random collection of red wikilinks in the "next verse" segment of the page. It's too late for me to unravel this. No vote. Stifle 02:59, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep Dsmdgold 20:48, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom --kingboyk 22:45, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. Individual Bible verses are as a default nn. Unless proven otherwise, delete. Batmanand 22:47, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. There has probably been enough commentary on every single verse of the Bible to fill a very long article. Even if merged version are also useful, some people will find these single-verse entries valuable, especially as they are fleshed out further. Can't articles on longer merged sections co-exist with single-verse articles? And if there are people willing to create them all, having an article for every verse has an aesthetic appeal that piecemeal single and merged articles would lack.--ragesoss 23:52, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom --Jaranda wat's sup 02:53, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
  • keep. very educational article!! Kingturtle 05:41, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. It is very disruptive to have an article for matthew 1:4 and not 1:5--God of War 06:45, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete, WP is an encyclopedia. --Angr (tɔk) 12:06, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Merge and Redirect with no prejudice against recreating once there is more content. I don't have a problem with keeping articles on minor individual bible verses once they have been written but while the content is so meager it is best kept in a larger article with a redirect from here. Once the content of the larger article has grown enough to warrant a separate article then it can certainly be created. That seems to me the most useful way of arranging the information we have. I find this problem interesting because I'm often wondering about the best way to split the content of the Eddas and such into Wikipedia articles. We basically already have an article for every verse of the Ynglingatal and we'll eventually probably have an article for every verse of the Völuspá. Maintainability is a worrying problem, though, and maybe deletionism really is the way to Nirvana. There are tough calls to make. - Haukur 15:39, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
    Well, actually, it is arguably large enough already. I would be willing to vote "keep" if some edition of the Greek text was added. - Haukur 19:30, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
    Darn it - keep. Browsing some more I have to admit that this is a lovely series of articles, what with Michelangelo's art and all. But I would really like to see the original Greek there. - Haukur 19:36, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete per arguments stated, passim, above. Eusebeus 18:14, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete, merging any new information into Book of Matthew. SimonP's arguments are not persuasive. -- nae'blis (talk) 19:31, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
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.
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