Talk:Development of the Jewish Bible canon

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[edit] Discussion at WT:JUDAISM

This article has been the subject of discussions at WT:JUDAISM#Jewish_canon_or_Bible_Canon. Discussions are currently ongoing. Jheald 15:00, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge of Development of the Jewish Bible canon into Tanakh

Proposing a merger of these articles. Development of the Jewish Bible canon appears to be an orphaned copy from the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia with limited updates. Suggest combining articles to facilitate development. Best, --Shirahadasha 04:50, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Oppose, for the following reasons:

• Development of the Jewish Bible canon is currently 26k long. Inclusion of all that in Tanakh would totally unbalance that article. IMO, this is a perfect situation for WP:SUMMARY. The Tanakh article is here to cover many other aspects of the Tanakh too. I've recently (9 November) edited it to include (I hope) a decent summary of key points from here. IMO that is now about the appropriate amount of material to have on the subject there, for the good balance of that article. On the other hand, the article here can explore the material in much more detail, which it does as a parallel article to Development of the Old Testament canon and Development of the New Testament canon.
• Also, (1) this article is not "orphaned". As well as the link from Tanakh, it is also linked from Canon, Hebrew Bible, Early Christianity, Biblical canon, Development of the Old Testament canon. The link from Biblical canon is especially relevant, because it was from there that this article was first spun out per WP:SUMMARY.
• (2) The words "Copy from the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia with limited updates" appears to be almost wholly incorrect. In actual fact, the overwhelming majority of the article is not from the 1906 JE, but was developed at Biblical canon, and represents contemporary scholarship, not 1906 scholarship.

Shira, I'd ask you to withdraw your proposal. But if further discussion is necessary, can I suggest the most appropriate venue for it would appear to be here, rather than at Talk:Tanakh. Jheald 09:39, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Other people have responded at Talk:Tanakh, suggest commenting there. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 06:23, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Influential scholars

I've added an {{expand}} tag. The 1st (1934) edition of Eissfeldt's book does seem to be seen as having made a major intellectual contribution; and the 3rd (1964) edition is still written of as a standard secular/liberal scholarly introduction.

But if this section is meant to briefly survey how intellectual discussion has developed, before the article enters into a more detailed survey of the evidence, then rather more is needed here. It needs to

• Identify where the question is discussed in the rabbinical tradition
• Namecheck who else wrote on the subject before Eissfeldt
• Identify what the nature of Eissfeldt's contribution was
• Discuss who has written/published since, and what questions they have been asking.

It shouldn't expand to much more than a couple of new paragraphs, but what's there at the moment needs to be placed in a rather braoder context. Jheald 14:58, 13 November 2007 (UTC)