Difference between revisions of "Talk:Bible"

Revision as of 20:09, March 16, 2007

Article is too brief!

This is The Bible! Don't you think the Word of God deserves a greater article, one with more detail on the subject and its history? I think so! In fact, I think I will start out by doing just that, and here's the proposed layout:

• Intro
• Brief listing of the books within, divided of course into Old/New Testaments.
• History of the Bible...as in who wrote it.
• Why the world accepts/rejects it.
• Current status
• Include pics and charts and links.

What say you? Karajou 00:28, 11 March 2007 (EST)

Why describe it when we can transcribe it?

Sounds good to me. But why not PUT the whole Bible on here? It gets quoted often enough.

Well, the Bible is rather large. I think that the Bible as a whole work can be treated the right way here, with possibly separate articles covering each book, where greater detail is needed.

I also uploaded a lead-in photograph, but am having trouble with it for the article. Can you help? Karajou 00:43, 11 March 2007 (EST)

The links I mentioned can be two-fold: a link to online Bible sites where complete versions have been transcribed and posted; and links to Bible software which can be downloaded and run off computers. I happen to have E-Sword, which is very good [www.e-sword.net]. Karajou 00:46, 11 March 2007 (EST)

What happened so far

I took the layout to the next step, which is subsections on both Testaments. The Old Testament has been written with emphasis on its Hebrew origins (Torah, Tanakh, etc), which I feel is a good description anyway, and does not detract from the Christian Bible with the exception of the actual arrangement of the books. I would like to see the Hebrew titles of these books in its own written language, but that may take a bit of editing the actual structure of Conservapedia to accept it.

The Apocrypha, if necessary, can have it's own subheading, but after the others as listed.

The History subsection can be written as either a history of the whole Bible, or divided into separate periods, as in history of the Torah; the Septuagint; the early Gospels, etc.

Since this is an article about the Bible, it should be restricted specifically to the Bible as a whole and its history. Other topics related to it, such as persecutions of Bible believers, divine creation as in Genesis, individual books, etc, should have their own articles. Karajou 03:46, 11 March 2007 (EDT)

Is Conservapedia just a redacted Wikipedia?

Somewhere around 80% of this article is a straight reproduction of the Wikipedia Bible article [1] with many of the less conservative points omitted. It seems that either a citation or a rewrite is in order. --Timothyo 21:13, 11 March 2007 (EDT)

Rewrite, definately...what is there should suffice as a structure guide temporarily. Karajou 23:15, 11 March 2007 (EDT)

Two things that bug me about this. First and foremost, Wikipedia has a rule on it which states articles there fall under the GPFL thing, and they state specifically that all articles are free from copyright, to use, edit, misuse, whatever. So, if any content here is from Wikipedia, one can say "oh well" and leave it at that.

Not quite... see my remarks below. Dpbsmith 13:44, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

But that led to some thinking here, and I wanted to see if the original writer(s) of this article had violated copyrights when they posted the material for the first time. I have here at home a book titled "Unger's Bible Dictionary" copyright 1966 by the Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, and the article within titled "Bible" has a number of elements that simply dovetail with the Wikipedia article. Which means there will be a re-write here so that there is no question. Karajou 12:53, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

Also, list the omitted conservative points you mentioned. Karajou 12:55, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

The GDFL allows reuse only if the original authors are credited, and the article in which the material is reused is itself released under the GDFL, IIRC. So reuse of Wikipedia content is definitely not allowed here. Tsumetai 12:58, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

When I posted that very question, it was never answered until now. Tolerate the material in question here for no more than a week, and only then for it's use as a template for something better. Karajou 13:11, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

1) Aschafly has been pretty clear that he, at least, wants Conservapedia articles to be original, and not copies of anything, redacted or not.

2) Wikipedia is perfectly happy with the idea of building a "Wikipedia fork," that is a modified copy of Wikipedia. But. There are serious complications with this, due to the GFDL license (which is not easy for anyone to understand, apparently including Wikipedia).

3) The big GFDL issue, and the one that I sense Conservapedia will not agree to, is that if you copy and modify a Wikipedia article, you have to make the copy available under GFDL, too. This means a significant loss of control. For example, following the GFDL rules, if Conservapedia took a bunch of Wikipedia articles and rewrote them, and if a liberal cherrypicked the rewritten articles for the funniest examples of ludicrous over-the-top spin... including, of course, vandal edits... and published it in book form as "The Conservapedia Jokebook," I don't think Conservapedia could stop it. (Disclaimer 1: I'm not a lawyer. Disclaimer 2: I don't think ordinary lawyers understand intellectual property law. Disclaimer 3: I'm not so sure intellectual property lawyers understand intellectual property law.).

4) Another issue with the GFDL is that anything published under the GFDL must "preserve the history," whatever that means. If someone starts a new article at Wikipedia in 2003, and there are a thousand edits to it, and in 2007 you copy it, rework it, and republish it on Conservapedia, there is supposed to be some way for readers of the Conservapedia article to retrace all those steps if they want to. Nobody seems to be completely sure how to do this, or what does and doesn't really comply with the GFDL, which wasn't really designed to cover anything like Wikipedia. (Somewhere Wikipedia makes a qualified suggestion that possibly a simple link to the version of the WIkipedia article that served as the jumping-off point might do). So, Wikipedia encourages re-use, and there are in fact numerous commercial "mirrors" that duplicate Wikipedia content, but Wikipedia does not give any nice clear recipe on exactly how to go about producing a censored or redacted or reworked derivative of Wikipedia. Dpbsmith 13:38, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

It will be as original as possible. Karajou 13:50, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

Instead of waiting...

Did a re-write of the article and removed the content in question. What remains is 1) that which is common to every work about the Bible, whether it's here, or Wikipedia, or Britannica, or many other works; and 2) the references section...Wikipedia most certainly cannot copyright a list of external sources.

But double-check what is there, and let me know what can be changed. Karajou 15:02, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

Remaining subheadings to add

Just added "Name" and "References" subheadings. Need to add an over-all history of the Bible, and add a subheading for the various versions in print...possibly with brief histories of each? Karajou 17:59, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

Separate articles

Clicked on Genesis, and got redirected back to the Bible page. Not right. Every book in the Bible should have its own detailed article page. Karajou 08:35, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

History of the Bible subheading

For this, I have a rough layout:

• From the time it was first written down, under Moses, to the last OT book.
• the style of the writing, i.e. by hand and on what.
• Between the Testaments, as in the Septuagint.
• The New Testament
• the early versions of the Bible until the printing press
• Gutenburg and versions up to the KJV
• very brief listing of versions since, including internet impact.

Any other suggestions would be helpful. Karajou 10:59, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

Pictures

I need two more pics to illustrate this. The first is a pic of a Torah scroll, and what I want to see are people near it with reverence. The second are good copies of New Testament fragments or pages which were hand-written. And of course, they need to be in the public domain, conforming to the rules, etc... Karajou 14:50, 13 March 2007 (EDT)

As it stands now

Although the "History" part of it is not done at this time, the article itself should be written as a straight-up article about the Bible, with none of the allegations, questions, etc. that scholars and historians have made over the years against it. My reasons for it are two:

• Such allegations have been proven wrong time and time again, so why even bother to repeat them here?
• If such allegations need to be written down, then they need a separate article for each where they can be detailed as to points made, reasons why, who postulated them, and all evidence refutting them.

Karajou 10:14, 15 March 2007 (EDT)

Done

This article is done. Karajou 13:49, 16 March 2007 (EDT)

Very very nice work there Karajou!! Kudos! --Cracker^talk 16:09, 16 March 2007 (EDT)

...sources?

Considering how long the article is (I'm certainly impressed!), I find it odd that the entire thing just has five external links inside the article. I'm totally not going to plaster "fact" tags through the entire thing, but I think that an article with so much information could use a few more sources. Doesn't have to be right now, but more as a general remark. --Sid 3050 15:32, 16 March 2007 (EDT)

Well, the order is for originality, which is what is here for the most part...but whether incorporated into the text or not, the article could benefit from additional sources. There are extensive links at the bottom of the article for internet info, but what I want are books from at least 50 years or more ago to include in the reference section. The article itself, which is laid out to be just about the Bible and a brief on its history, should remain the same without any of the controversial stuff others think has to be included...that is a subject for separate articles. Karajou 15:39, 16 March 2007 (EDT)

Mh, yes, agreed. Tangential topics should get their own articles, possibly with "See also" links at the bottom if they're closely connected to this article. :) --Sid 3050 15:51, 16 March 2007 (EDT)

Oh yes...if there's an article about, say Biblical criticism, then there will be a link here. Karajou 15:59, 16 March 2007 (EDT)