Wikipedia:Bible verses/2010

This is a spin off of a recent Noticeboard discussion on how to handle verses in the Bible, and other holy books. There are two essential issues:

Does the content of pages like Matthew 7:15 or Matthew 4:1 belong in Wikipedia?
If it does, how is it best organized? How do we decided which, if any, verses deserve their own article?

Background

Five years ago I started work creating some articles on individual verses in the New Testament. The first created was John 20:16. From the beginning there was debate over whether such pages should be in Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John 20:16 resulted in a reasonably strong keep vote, so I began writing more of them.

A few months later, another set of deletion nominations were made:

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Matthew 2:16 - keep
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John 20 - keep
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John 20:16 (again) - keep
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Matthew 1:verses - no consensus
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Genesis 1:1 - keep
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Matthew 1 - keep

There were also centralized discussion at

Wikipedia:Merge/Bible verses, articles on some verses are encyclopedic
Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/200 verses of Matthew, content should be merged
Wikipedia:Bible verses, articles on a limited set of articles are encyclopedic

Also an arbitration case at

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/KJV, in which I was censured for violating consensus

After several months debating the issue I got sick of it, and essentially gave up and went back to working in areas that generated less aggravation. The result of this was that all the verse articles were redirected to more centralized pages, such as Matthew 1:18 going to Nativity of Jesus.

- SimonP (talk) 01:23, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Issues

Does this content belong at Wikipedia?

I emphatically say yes. There is a wealth of reliable, scholarly, and respected works on every aspect of the Bible, with debates on many verses that go back two millennia. Everything else within the realm of academic study is to be found on Wikipedia, and I can think of no argument for why Biblical studies should be treated differently. If you can find a series of respected books and journal articles that discuss a topic and use that to create a well referenced content, there is no reason to exclude it from Wikipedia. - SimonP (talk) 01:23, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, obviously. -- J A Latimer 03:39, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Bare (non-copyrighted) religious texts belong at Wikisource, encyclopedic discussion of such texts using RS'es belongs at Wikipedia Jclemens (talk) 16:35, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes providing it meets WP:N, it that the topic (verse) has been written about in a significant way by others. Those that no one has written about individually can be a redirect. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:27, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
For the most part, no. I think this is an important issue, and wish I had more time to go into depth about it. I'll be able to participate more in a few days. The synoptic gospels especially suffer from verbatim and close word congruence in many locations. Because of this, I feel strongly that we should not have 3 identical articles on the exact same phrasing, based solely on a traditional (yet fairly arbitrary) chapter and verse notation, which are not original to the texts themselves. I think what is a much better solution (and one clearly favored from the previous discussion 5 years ago) was to have articles on say Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen (a parable found in 3 canonical gopsels and a non-canonical gospel), or to have an article on an individual pericope, like Anointing of Jesus, and thus break up the content of the gospels based on narrative and topic (see for example Gospel_harmony) instead of based on the arbitrary numbering system, which would leave open much redundancy. Furthermore, I feel going by verse by verse is too detailed and meticulous for an encyclopedia (surely there are some very very notable verses or single words that deserve articles, but does every single verse warrant an encyclopedia article?) What I feel SimonP has done with these articles is akin to the Bhagavad-Gītā As It Is (if you are familiar with that massive text). These "articles" are basically bible commentaries, and thus I feel are outside of our scope as an encyclopedia. There may be good content in there, and it may be "sourced", but that is not enough to make a good encyclopedia. Perhaps instead they could be compiled into a WikiBook or part of Wikiversity? I don't want SimonP's work to be entirely lost (I just want it lost on Wikipedia ;) -Andrew c ^[talk] 23:16, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- You raise a number of points, but in this section I'll stick to the ones related to whether the content should be in Wikipedia. Walk into any university library and you will find a whole section on Biblical Studies, with at least a couple shelves dedicated analysis of the Gospel of Matthew. Is there any other realm of academia that is this extensive excluded from Wikipedia? Are there any chemical compounds, asteroids, or species of beetle where the content would be deleted for being "too detailed and meticulous." Detailed and meticulous is exactly what Wikipedia is. What reason is there for treating Biblical studies differently than any other discipline? - SimonP (talk) 13:00, 27 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - I don't believe any of your comparisons are apt. I am not saying we shouldn't discuss the gospel of Matthew on Wikipedia by any means. I am saying that there are better methods of organization, this content is basically redundant, and the verse by verse format lends itself to being cruft. IMO, a more apt comparison would be, instead of an article about an asteroid, we make individual articles on the exact same asteroid based on what telescope gave us information, and what date that information was gained. So we'd have a Hubble June 26, 1996 Asteroid X56 article, and a Hubble March 15, 2002 Asteroid X56, and a Gran Telescopio Canarias December 5, 1997 Asteroid X56 article, etc. I strongly disagree with the verse by verse presentation of this information (not to say that some individual verses would be notable), and feel strongly that such content would do better at another wikiproject. It isn't encyclopedic, it's cruft. We delete TV show and anime and action figure and music (etc) cruft all the time. -Andrew c ^[talk] 14:34, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    - What standard do you use to measure 'cruft'? Secondary sources? Cultural influence? Google hits? Page views? Major Bible verses would exceed any asteroid (and a large percent of other Wikipedia articles) by all those measures. - SimonP (talk) 17:16, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      - Major Bible verses? So every article you created is a major bible verse? Every verse from Matt 1:1 to Matt 7:24 (minus the ~11 you combined)? This very well may just be an organizational issue, in that presenting the content of the bible in this format isn't the best way to do it, due to the limited scope, obvious possibility of redundancy, and the WP:INDISCRIMINATE nature of such a presentation. I read now on WP:CRUFT that the term can have a pejorative meaning, which I guess I didn't intend. Perhaps we should focus more on scope, organization, and redundancy, than my use of "cruft" because there is no clear guideline or policy defining or forbidding "cruft", such discussion doesn't seem the best angle to attack this problem. -Andrew c ^[talk] 17:57, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        The first seven chapters of Matthew in quick succession cover the nativity, baptism, temptation, calling of the disciples, and Sermon on the Mount. All of this in only 200 verses. It's thus not surprising that there is something substantial to say about almost all of them. - SimonP (talk) 19:20, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How should it be organized?

I think that everyone agrees that some verses deserve their own article. No one is going to delete Genesis 1:1 or redirect John 3:16 to a merged article on the Conversation with Nicodemus. It is also clear that many verses could not sustain their own article. It would be hard to write an article on Matthew 21:17 that contains more than a Simpsons reference.

How do we decide which verses deserve their own page? I propose we do it the exact same way we do with anything else in Wikipedia. If there is enough referenced content out there to sustain an independent article, then one should exist. If an article is forever going to be stub because there is nothing much you can write about it, then it should be merged somewhere else. - SimonP (talk) 01:23, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"I propose we do it the exact same way we do with anything else in Wikipedia." Exactly! -- J A Latimer 03:39, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, a case-by-case decision. Some versus qualify as notable, others don't. And sometimes we cover more than one notable subject in a single article, if that presents the information better. The bible is perhaps a special case because of indexing issues. Not all religious (or other) works are so frequently referred to in that way. It may help to write a guideline (or start with an essay and see where it goes) regarding when sub-parts of a text should have their own articles. Not everything that can be properly referenced has its own article here... I would guess that the total content of Wikipedia is a tiny fraction of what is potentially includable. There's a broader question, do we really need 200 articles about biblical versus? That's not a rhetorical question... maybe. It's really about educating the reader. - Wikidemon (talk) 07:40, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Make it like musical albums or seasons of TV shows A larger unit (e.g. a chapter or other aggregate unit of any particular religious text) is presumed to be notable, and should be construed as a list class article, listing the sub-units (verses), which are bluelinked if individually notable. We have workable precedents and analogues for this now, where we didn't necessarily in 2006. Jclemens (talk) 16:34, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If each verse in a chapter or book gets an article, then there can be a template that ties them all together at the bottom. Those that are redirects only can be non linked. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:30, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
For reference, here are some links to studies of Matthew that one can preview on Google Books, all going to the section on Matthew 4:1: R.T. France, Daniel Harrington, Rudolf Schnackenburg, St. Jerome, Ulrich Luz. As you can see, going verse by verse is the academic standard, and a tradition that goes as far back as figures like Jerome. - SimonP (talk) 13:34, 27 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Redundancy

Andrew has raised the issue of whether verse articles are an overly redundant way of covering the Bible. The three synoptic Bibles do share content, but those works are only a minority of the New Testament. There are about 8000 verses in the entire New Testament, and about 1500 of those are shared between different works. Of those 1500 only a tiny number are completely identical. There are usually small, and sometimes major, differences in writing and content between the books. These differences have generated a great deal of study, as by picking apart how the individual authors interpreted a verse gives insight into who it it was that wrote the piece. For instance the addition of the word porneia to Matthew 5:32 completely alters the verse compared to its parallels in Luke and Mark. There is usually plenty that is unique and interesting to say about each version.

For verses that are near identical, and where there isn't much different to say between the different texts, we could always have merged articles. Treat it like we do James I of England and James IV of Scotland. Two different titles held by the same person and covered in one article. An article could be part of both the Matthew series and the Luke series, just as James is in both the English and Scottish monarch series.

Overall I think the redundancy problem is a pretty minor one, and one that seems to have been no issue for the standard reference works in this area like the Anchor Bible Series. - SimonP (talk) 17:33, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For the synoptics, I can see redirecting appropriate verses to the pericope which includes them, using Gospel Parallels organization, and redirecting common alternatives to the main topics. For everything else, though, I don't see a good way to deal with overlapping passages (e.g., Abraham/Isaac's giveaway of Sarah/Rebecca). Jclemens (talk) 19:57, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What I'm thinking is just having merged articles. E.g. have a page called 2 Kings 18:13/Isaiah 36:1. - SimonP (talk) 21:01, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Verses Inclusion

I believe that if there is consensus there all Bible verses should be added ONLY if all Torah verses (Hebrew and English), Qu'ran verses, and the texts of the Hindu and Buddhist religions (and any others I am missing) are included as well. We should include them all, not just one religion. Again, I think this should be done ONLY if consensus is there. If it isn't for inclusion on en.Wiki, I believe we should move all of them to a new WMF based Wiki called "WikiReligion". - NeutralHomer • Talk • 01:38, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In my view, we ought to have articles on the topics we can write decent, well-sourced articles about. SimonP has shown that that is possible for Bible verses; anyone else should feel free to try the same with verses from other religious scriptures (or, for that matter, from the Iliad or the Aeneid). But the amount of scholarship, and therefore material for articles, is likely less than for biblical verses. Ucucha 07:24, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. As much, or maybe even more, has been written about the Torah and the Koran and we should have coverage of important verses in those works. I'm just not the person to write them, as I'm far from an expert in those areas. There is the added barrier that for the Koran all the best commentaries are in Arabic. We might have to wait for the Arabic Wikipedia to start such a project and then translate it from there.

I'm less certain about other works. There is a vast literature on Hamlet, perhaps enough to have something to say about all 4,000 lines in the play. But there is little academic tradition of studying Shakespeare line by line. If you look through a list of scholarly papers on Hamlet, you never see any any titled "a Study of Hamlet Act I, Scene II, Line 4." By contrast, if you do a similar search for articles on Luke, you'll find many with titles like "Luther's Translation of Luke 22:15", "A Note on Luke II 49", and "The Second-First Sabbath (Luke 6:1)."

Going verse by verse through a work like Hamlet is an original synthesis and arguably original research. In my view we should only do individual verse articles for works like the Bible or Koran where doing so is the scholarly standard. - SimonP (talk) 13:16, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Support the inclusion of any notable religious text or fragment thereof that has independent, RS'ed commentary. Obviously, the entire Torah, Koran, and the holy text of every other major world religion would qualify. Bare repetition of non-copyrighted religious works belongs in Wikisource, Encyclopedic discussion of those texts belongs in Wikipedia. Jclemens (talk) 16:32, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support .... basically everything JClemens writes above in several sections. If an individual unit has enough commentary to get a separate article it gets a separate article. If it doesn't, we write about the larger unit. And the size of the smaller unit can vary enormously - heck, we've got a pretty sized article about a single biblical word. This isn't an issue about being somehow "fair" to other verses or other religions. We are not a bureaucracy, we don't have to make one rule to fit all and follow it blindly. --GRuban (talk) 17:02, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Neutralhomer's suggestion that inclusion of articles on individual Bible verses is contingent on us also writing about verses from other religious texts is surreal. Systemic bias is dealt with by writing about as much as possible and directing efforts to neglected areas, not by refusing to write about anything until everything is written about. That's cutting your nose off to spite your face. If enough sources exist to write a proper article about an individual verse, then write an article about it. If not, redirect it to an article about the chapter or book. Fences&Windows

Oppose there should be no co-dependency between the different articles on the holy books. Each potential verse article stands on its own, so the same rules for notability apply to bible verses or Qu'ran verses articles. Linking in this way (giving equal time?) just complicates the issue and leads to deadlocks. If someone want to work on one topic we should let them. But sure this discussion should not preclude articles on other texts. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:20, 26 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Let me clarify why I think we should write about all the books of the religions. If we write about just Christianity, we will more-than-likely hear the claim that Wikipedia is "Christian only", same with any other religion. Hence, if we write about all religions and give them "Equal Time", then we will not hear anything about playing favorites. Everyone will get their own pages, for their own religions, with their own verses, and hopefully, everyone will be happy. I am probably thinking big on this, but I am just going on the "Equal Time" thing. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 18:23, 27 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Well, sure, but if we make a good guideline that applies to every religious text fairly and equitably, and then post it widely, I suspect we'll have plenty of diversity represented in short order. I don't think we need to arbitrarily discriminate on the basis of religion, which is why I've phrased my comments in such a manner, even though I am most familiar with the book/chapter/verse division of the Christian Bible. Jclemens (talk) 20:39, 27 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - If you read that I wanted "arbitrarily discriminate on the basis of religion", that is not what I meant. The way I meant it was that all religions are equally represented or none at all, so there is no favoritism. But I think the guideline is a good idea, that would give that "Equal Time" and get people more involved. I would welcome you to write up the guideline (since it is your idea) on one of the subpages of this section and let everyone have a look-see. A good guideline and some religious diversity would be a good thing. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 00:45, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    - That may have been an inapt choice of words, but what other topic on Wikipedia requires equal representation before getting off the ground? I can think of none--that's simply not how we do things here. We don't restrict a topic because someone is unwilling to write on another topic that's key to balanced encyclopedic coverage. Jclemens (talk) 00:54, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      - I am just being mindful of the future and thinking about every option. I can already see the Fixed News article if we get a quite build up of Christianity pages, while other religions lag behind in pages. This could be "thinking big" but I think we should get a good group of people who know their respective religions and have them write the articles so they are all built up at once. Again, thinking big, but I just don't want this project to be seen playing favorites. If done right, we could have a large group of people writing and updating articles from all religions and it will be neat. If done wrong, it is a religious shitstorm that will be just a mess. We should have a setup to do it right, make it equal for all, make it all inclusive, and make it look good. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 01:05, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        My response to any such criticism, internal or external, would be WP:SOFIXIT. I realize others might legitimately care more than I do, but I'm more inclined to respond to criticism that Wikipedia is actively preventing broadly representative coverage than that is just currently lacks such coverage. Jclemens (talk) 02:26, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        Yeah and this could be me thinking big and wanting everything to be perfect, which like with Politics, it won't be. The two things you don't talk page, Politics and Religion. Well, that and Fight Club. But I think we pretty much agree that if we build the project, people will edit it. I would, again, encourage you to write up that guideline you talked about and put it here or on a subpage for all to give a look-see. A good guideline will go a long way to getting a project started and keep it going into the future. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 02:43, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        I just had a look, and some people are working on Koran verse articles. Right now there are 24 of them, which is actually more than we now have for the New Testament. We also have an article on every Sura in the Koran, but are missing many chapters in the Bible. Given time I think we will have an amazing level of coverage for all holy books. - SimonP (talk) 19:26, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment First, I think the consensus would be over religious works which have a cultural significance. By that, there would not be any objection to a serious discussion of portions of the works Neutralhomer listed above (viz., "Torah verses (Hebrew and English), Qu'ran verses, and the texts of the Hindu and Buddhist religions" -- although I believe "the Torah" does include much of what the Christians call "the Old Testament"), but there would be serious resistance to religious works with no notable cultural importance (e.g., "Joe Bubba's Interpretation of Revelations"). As for the objection that Wikipedia is heavily biassed to a Christian POV... well, Wikipedia is going to be criticized for being biassed by certain elements of the media regardless of what we do. (And as for what Fox says, really WTF cares? They have zero credibility with anyone who matters -- except Jimmy Wales.) My concern is that there are a lot of lines which don't deserve an article -- or would be better discussed as part of a larger unit of text. How do we objectively determine which verses are notable, & which are not? -- llywrch (talk) 06:07, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Um, the way we do everything else: if there are multiple independent (not really hard in most religious cases) reliable sources which deal non-trivially with a verse (or any other unit of religious literature), then it's notable. The GNG is surprisingly effective at handling situations like this. Jclemens (talk) 06:13, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Guess I should change that to "the major religions of the world" and not just "the religions of the world". Then we have to figure out which are the major ones. I think the Bible (Christianity), the Torah (Judaism), the Qur'an (Islam), Bhagavad Gita (Hinduism), the Analects (Confucianism), the Tao Te Ching (Taoism) and the Discourses of the Buddha (Buddhism) would probably be the "major religions" as those are probably the top 7.

To be fair to the Chinese faiths, one would have to include all of the Confucian Classics -- both the Four Books and the Five Classics -- & likely the Zhuangzi. (If you look at Chinese classics, you will see that there are a lot of works which one could demand equal billing with the Bible.) As for Buddhist & Hindu religious works, they include a lot more than just the Bhagavad Gita: for example, for the Hindi there are the Rigveda, & the Upanishads (IMHO, the Bhagavad Gita is far less important for the average Hindi than the texts in either of those two collections); for the Buddhists, there are countless texts -- all of which have their adherents who would claim their text is as important as any work in the Bible. Then there is the issue of other Christian texts: for example the Ethiopian Church includes in their canon a number of apocryphal works, such as the Book of Enoch, few of which have any notability even in Ethiopian culture. In other words, I still insist on some kind of "cultural value" test for religious texts before they receive this level of attention. -- llywrch (talk) 22:51, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Problem with Christianity is there are many versions of the Bible. Some people use the King James Version (KJV), ELCA Lutherans use the New Revised Standard Version, some use other versions. Each one has a different take, a different wording on each verse. So which would we use? That is something we need to look at and look into. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 06:20, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Um, not to be offensive, but how familiar are you with the nuances of academic commentary on religious texts? The text in the original languages (at least for Hebrew/Christian scriptures) is generally established a la Nestle-Aland, variances and alternate readings are known, cataloged, and debated at length in various e.g. Biblical Studies circles, and these sorts of things form the core of commentaries such as the Anchor Bible Series. The entire question of "which version do we use?" implies profound ignorance of textual criticism and related disciplines. Jclemens (talk) 06:30, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am a total newbie when it comes to all things religion, I will completely admit. I am a practicing Lutheran and am learning. So, yeah, I probably haven't a clue about some of the more finer points of religion, what book to read, whatever, but I am learning. Religion, tough subject, takes time.

Side note, perhaps we should put a link to this discussion at Portal:Religion? - NeutralHomer • Talk • 06:33, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Splendid idea--I look forward to their contributions. Jclemens (talk) 06:37, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, they will probably be more versed at things then I am. I just want to see everyone happy is all. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 06:44, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Done and Done. I took a look-see around Portal:Religion and they have "Quotes of the Day" from the different religions, so these might be on Wiki somewhere already. Might want to give a look-see. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 06:51, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Include when notable. We can, and should, have articles about notable subunits of all significant books. This is sometimes at a verse level: John 1:1, for example, is notable because it has enormous theological significance for Christians, and there has been a notable debate on how it should be translated. John 3:16 is equally notable. More usually, notable units are larger, such as the Parable of the Prodigal Son: it doesn't make sense to have articles on verses within this parable. The same policy applies to other books and religious texts: "To be, or not to be" is a notable line from Shakespeare, "Papé Satàn, papé Satàn aleppe" is a notable line from the Inferno, the Analogy of the divided line is a notable subunit of Plato, the story of Kisa Gotami is a notable one in Buddhist literature, the Prashna Upanishad is a notable component of Hindu literature (with an article that could logically be subdivided when it becomes large enough), the Surah An-Nahl is a notable subunit of the Qur'an. As to the issue of balance, the structure of the English Wikipedia inevitably mirrors the number of secondary sources available in English. That's why the article on Hamlet is longer than the one on the Dream of the Red Chamber. To some extent this will change as more editors outside the US get involved. In general, though, I think the GNG does a good job of answering the question "what articles should exist?" -- Radagast 3 (talk) 08:59, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If someone wants to write about individual verses in the Koran or Torah, then they are more than welcome to (providing they are based on RS, which I have no doubt would exist). We should not, however, insist that these other articles are created if the ones on bible verses are to be. Wikipedia coverage is not 'fair' - it is based on what contributors want to write about. If people want to correct bias in coverage then the answer is WP:SOFIXIT. Quantpole (talk) 10:11, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly agree. I also hope nobody is going to use a bot to create tens of thousands of stub articles on verses of anything. -- Radagast 3 (talk) 13:07, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

As to the Torah/Old Testament, I would be surprised if a useful article could be written on, for example, Numbers 10:20. By the same token, Acts 21:15 would be a poor subject for an article, in my opinion. -- Radagast 3 (talk) 13:30, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Basically, I agree with everything Radagast3 has said above. Why have articles on the individual verses of a parable, and then have an article on the parable itself? Not every verse is notable outside of its surrounding context.-Andrew c ^[talk] 14:39, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Since I appear to be the only one with the "Equal Time" idea for religions, I will withdraw it. I guess I was just looking to give all religions equal billing in articles and wanting to make sure favoritism wasn't brought up. Was worth a shot. :S - NeutralHomer • Talk • 14:54, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the general notion, in terms of combating systematic bias, but I don't think it should be a requirement. If there are notable verses in other religious texts (which they surely are), then articles on those would be great, if sourced and notable. But due to the volunteer nature of Wikipedia, we shouldn't make the existence of one article contingent on the creation of another. If someone started creating articles for ever line of the Vedas, or for every ayat of the Qur'an (heck, I'm not even fond of the sura articles, like Al-Haaqqa), I'd equally oppose them as I oppose every verse of the Gospel of Matthew. -Andrew c ^[talk] 15:11, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that having an article on every verse for the sake of it is a bad idea. However, the argument is more likely an organisational one, than a notability one (due to the huge amount of biblical research and commentary there is - e.g. Act 21:15 asked about above, seems to be enough to write an article with, certainly more than many of the species stub articles we have). The best manner of organising the articles is a matter of debate, and I can certainly see that some verses would be best merged together into passages. I would also oppose anyone who started up a bot for generating articles on bible verses (or the Koran for that matter) - thoughtless creation of stubs is not to be encouraged. Quantpole (talk) 16:37, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nice link on Acts 21:15, but most of the commentary there actually applies either to the 21:8-18 section or to 21:15-26, not to 21:15 in isolation. -- Radagast 3 (talk) 23:51, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Most of it is yes, but there is a decent chunk in Matthew Henry's full commentary that is specifically about this verse. In the link there is also the lexicon. I guess my point is that I found that very easily online, and it is likely that much more could be found (if you looked in a decent theological library for instance). Again, I am not arguing that we should organise articles all at a verse by verse level, just that we could without falling afoul of wikipedia policies/guidelines. Quantpole (talk) 11:00, 29 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't think I was debating the idea of "equal time" that Neutralhomer was proposing as much as pointing out the possible pitfalls in this approach. And as for the Chinese classics, there is ample reliable sources discussing the various important texts on a very detailed level; all of the important works not only have numerous commentaries, but even subcommentaries -- that is, commentaries on the commentaries. In Chinese, of course. One of my primary concerns is that we do not insist on every verse being notable, because verses of the Bible are often not the primary unit of meaning. Texts based on the lectionary would be one criterion to consider. My point is that before we agree that this is a worthwhile area to enrich Wikipedia, we should first agree that we know what we are biting off. That done, we won't need to invoke ignore all rules to keep out obvious garbage & POV-pushing. -- llywrch (talk) 22:51, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What do you propose as a yardstick to keep out "obvious garbage & POV-pushing"? In my mind, that would be covered by the GNG and the normal editing/consensus process, informed by RS'es. Jclemens (talk) 23:43, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

To repeat myself, not only religious but cultural importance. The works which have shaped the literatures & ways of thinking of their practitioners. Otherwise, we will find every school of thought within a given religion will want the works of their founder(s) given the same attention. Catholics will have to accept that we won't have separate articles on every chapter of every work St. Augustine wrote, for example. Not to say that a work is not notable when considered as a whole, but its individual parts may not be. (And I'm using St. Augustine as an example because Roman Catholics are a lot more tolerant of criticism, & more likely to consider my criticism, than the religious groups I have in mind who would engage in promoting "obvious garbage & POV-pushing". Do we really want to deal with the problems that would surround individual articles on each paragraph of Hubbard's Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health? I'd rather keep those kinds of edit-wars confined to the Scientology WikiProject, thank you very much.) -- llywrch (talk) 05:03, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

To restate my previous post and apply it to your hypotheticals, are you asserting that "every chapter of every work St. Augustine wrote" would have non-trivial coverage in multiple, independent, reliable sources? How about Dianetics, would it pass that muster? If there's no coverage, there's no problem, it doesn't get its own article. If there is coverage, there's also no problem--it does get its own article. It's when the coverage is marginal or disputed that AfD would come in to play. Jclemens (talk) 05:14, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Independent comment I have read through the discussion and have to ask, are there any grounds under which SimonP would change his mind? I ask because, having read a great many sensible comments by ohters, the answer seems to be clearly to be "no." And if the answer is "no," then there is simply no point to discussion. One can only have a discussion when participants can learn something from it. I am not sure that SimonP has learned much if anyting from his interlocutors, but if he has, surely at this point he - and everyone else participating - has learned all that can be learned. Once this threshold has been crossed, the only possible reason to continue discussion is if someone can be persuaded to change their mind, and again, I think the answer is no. I have to suspect based on the evidence that for SimonP the answer was no from the start. If I am wrong I would gendly suggest that the discussion can be put on a more productive traqck if SimonP could explain what kinds of arguments or information might cause him to change his mind.

Disclosure: my own view - which I must say began with SimonP but changed as soon as I read Andrew C's first comments - is to support Andrew C and pretty much everyone else who seem to be saying that: the wealth of notable commentary on particular verses in the NT can best be served by articles on segments of or themes in the NT. I absolutely believe that Wikipedia needs more articles on the Bible that explain to a general audience the wealth of scholarship on the Bible, which often expresses itself in debates over the meaning of specific verses. It just seems to me that the arguments that these views and the scholarship embodied by them are best presented through articles on sebments or themes are far more persuasive than the argument that there should be distinct articles on specific verses. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:07, 11 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you think SimonP has been arguing alone against consensus here, I'm afraid you may have missed a good part of the conversation. Jclemens (talk) 20:43, 11 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That is certainly possible - it is a complex and wide-ranging discussion. Well, if you are reaching consensus, I am glad. Should I strike out my comment? Slrubenstein | Talk 03:17, 12 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Mark for Closure

With the exception of the two recent edits, the activity on this page has ground to a halt. The ANI thread that started all this has long since been archived and people have moved on. I call for this second and page to be marked closed and be archived. Do I have a second? - Neutralhomer • Talk • 20:46, 11 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We probably need an independent person to summarize consensus. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:10, 11 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds reasonable, but I'm not sure an UNINVOLVED person is strictly necessary. Here's what I've seen so far.

There's support for covering any notable segment of any religious text which itself meets the GNG (has multiple independent reliable sources covering it in a non-trivial manner).

Yes, this seems to be consensus.Biophys (talk) 00:21, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There's support for redirecting non-notable (but searchable) units to larger units which DO themselves meet the GNG--such as to a particular parable, chapter, or the like.

Yes, but what is notable should be decided by discussion on the case to case basis.Biophys (talk) 00:21, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There's no opposition to the idea that the text itself of public domain religious texts belongs in Wikisource, rather than here.

Yes, but it does not mean that texts can not be quoted in the articles.Biophys (talk) 00:21, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm obviously not an unbiased party, though, so if a formal closing statement is desired, it should come from someone else. Jclemens (talk) 04:50, 12 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

All right. I never edited in this area.Biophys (talk) 00:21, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with all the proposed statements here. So what's the procedure for moving forward? It seems clear that at least some portion of the pages that were redirected meet the GNG. Does anyone feel like going through the articles and deciding which should be restored? To avoid controversy, I'd rather not be the person that does this. - SimonP (talk) 14:16, 20 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]