Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Religious texts/Archive 1

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Hardly a religious text

No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith being a contemporary biography of Mormon church founder Joseph Smith hardly constitutes a religious text. __meco 06:38, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I apologize i misunderstood --129.115.102.13 15:55, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Userbox?

Maybe someone could make one for this project, it may help attract more people to help. Fennessy 17:18, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

There is one {{User WPRT2}}
it looks like this

This user is a proud member of WikiProject Religious texts.

Ah OK, great. Thanks for adding it to my user page! Fennessy 19:34, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Please help me the template Template:WPRT2 won't add any b-class articles to the category for b articles--Java7837 13:33, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion for ratings

Top importance will typically be biblical books or very important articles like Bible, Hebrew Bible, New Testament, Ten Commandments

High importance will be the roman catholic apocryphal texts such as the book of tobit, Talmud, quran, Apocrypha article, Authorized King James Version, Dead sea scrolls, very famous apocryphal texts like Book of Enoch, Gospel of Judas and very old manuscripts etc.

Mid will be books such as the hadith article, somewhat popular apocryphal texts such as the book of jubilees, The Alphabet of Ben-Sira (famous for being the earliest known text to refer to Lilith as the 1st wife of Adam)

Low will typically be either lost books quoted in the bible (w/ some exceptions) very rare apocrpyhal texts such as Three Steles of Seth and most Modern pseudepigrapha such as The Urantia Book also any text part of the Pearl of Great Price is low and also all midrashim, Rastafarian texts, Shinto texts, All Muslim religious texts with a few exceptions such as law codes tafsirs also Satanic Bible is low etc.

Does this look good for our rating scale? Java7837 12:58, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd propose we express this sort of thing somewhat more generically, that is, not quite so limited to the Abrahamic religions.

I broadly agree with your general principle. As you note, Muslims accept al Qur'an as authoritative, but differ as to the value of the Haddith, which is analogous to the distinction amoung Christians regarding canonical and deuterocanonical books; and some Jewish traditions have accepted only the Torah, not the whole Tanakh, while others accord Kabbalistic texts an almost canonical status.

But my point is that Hindu texts are generally older than the Abrahamic religious texts. There are Sumerian texts that Abraham may even have heard as a teenager, and Egyptian texts that Moses would certainly have heard as boy in pharaoh's court. I believe some ancient Meso American religious texts have now been deciphered.

Would I be essentially in line with your assesment were I to suggest something like the following?

• top importance: books viewed as canonical (in some sense) by major contemporary religious groups. This should include Mormans, but should it include Scientologists (probably yes). Should it include the deuterocanonical books of the Christian Old Testaments. Should it include Jehovah's Witness Watchtower publications, papal bulls or Adventist writings of Ellen White?
• high importance: books disputed within a tradition but canonical for many. Books of great antiquity in various religions, or wide circulation in contemporary publication. Text critical manuscript articles.
• mid importance: standard commentaries on the books above. Talmud, Mishnah, Targumim, etc. Patristic writings. The Bagavad Gita as it is?

low importance: books like Pilgrim's Progress, the second best selling book of all time in the English language (I think). Similar "cultural icons" in other religious traditions.

Perhaps another line to take here would be to identify sub-projects and classify importance within each of these sub-projects. People are often interested in distinct areas of religious texts — propositional content and world view, original manuscripts and textual transmission, history of interpretation (especially debates), social/ethical/cultural distinctives.

The good news is that a lot of articles already cover a lot of this. I guess the point of the project is organizing easy cross reference for what already exists and identifying what is missing or what needs improvement.

OK that's enough from me. Except I'd like to add that my own area is original manuscripts and cultural issues in the ancient Near East, and I've already contributed a little in several of the areas above where I perceived gaps in Wiki documentation. I'm basically just a hack-work content producer. I'm happy to leave most organizational judgements to others. Alastair Haines 05:20, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

From experience with other wikiprojects, can I suggest using the word priority rather than importance? Telling somebody that their book is less 'important' than another faith's book is a sure way to lose friends and start riots.

I'm more in favour of a scale closer to that proposed by the first poster. If my examples below are primarily Judaeo-Christian, that's just because those are the books I'm more familiar with. I do think the first poster maybe did underestimate books from other traditions, but on the other hand I think the priority classes should still be quite selective.

"Top priority", I believe, should be limited to books which have made an overwhelming cultural imapact beyond their own faith community, or where it is the central text of a faith community is one of the handful of most significant religions in the world. Bible, Hebrew Bible, Ten Commandments for sure. Qur'an should definitely be in this group; also Torah. It probably shouldn't amount to more than 10-15 articles total. Other candidates might be the Rigveda, Mahābhārata, Tao Te Ching, the four gospels...

"High priority": Key documents of global faiths that have not already been included in "Top priority": Sirah Rasul Allah, Sahih al-Bukhari... Remaining canonical books of the bible. Important umbrella articles like New Testament, Nevi'im, Ketuvim. Books which have themselves been the subject of intense study and commentary through the ages, such as the Talmud and Mishnah. The most culturally important texts Authorized King James Version, Dead sea scrolls, Septuagint. Only the most fundamental articles on textual criticism, eg Documentary Hypothesis, Synoptic problem. Founding documents of global denominations: Book of Mormon, ...

"Mid priority": Foundational documents of sects (eg Jehovah's witnesses), and for faith groups which do not primarily define themselves by identification with a scripture. (Scientology?). Only the most important manuscripts, eg Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus. Gutenberg bible. Only the most important commentaries. Remaining important survey articles.

"Low priority": The overwhelming majority of articles.

And we should remember that these are intended as rough-and-ready priority indicators for the project, not normative statements as to global importance. An important criterion is that there is how much there is to say about a subject - how extensively has it become the basis for analysis, discussion and criticism? And how important is it as a key article for understanding other articles?

The important thing is to tag up some articles, look at the table that produces, and see whether it looks as if it's going to make sense. (Does it give a balanced pyramid or does it have bulges?) Then we have something more real and more concrete to discuss, and to approach the different Wikipedia faith projects to review and to contribute to. Jheald 10:14, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

On second thoughts, on that scale, probably most of the Epistles and most of the Prophets should be "mid priority" rather than "high priority". Jheald 10:20, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I believe tools exist to identify the most accessed articles, and the most linked-to articles. Don't know where, though. Jheald 10:23, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Portal:Religion/Selected scripture has many articles that should be top priority with some exceptions such as #14--Java7837 12:44, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Only the most fundamental articles on textual criticism, eg Documentary Hypothesis, Synoptic problem being classified as high priority--Java7837 12:45, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I notice there seem to be no mentions of any Buddhist texts in the above discussions. Peter jackson 10:46, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Support word priority better than importance.

Support Buddhist text articles as a priority.

Actually I think the Buddhist point is better than all the rest (including mine above). There are interest groups that have already done a lot of work on the most popular texts in the most popular religions. I think we should be more original, we could set our priority to be the books the others leave out!

I volunteer to cover Sumerian, Babylonian, Hittite and Egyptian religious texts and I reckon the rest of you should say Woohoo! Go Alastair, we ain't got none of that yet, that's really old and way out but I guess it is kinda important. Whaddya say?

Anyone want to do Inca, Maya and stuff, I've heard they can translate that now. Man, I want a religious text with some virgin sacrifice in it! (Hmmm, only joking.)

Who's for Shinto? Tibetan texts? Chinese texts? Are there African voodoo texts?

Can anyone figure out a logical classification system for under-reported texts?

Does the parent article Religious text give adequate coverage of all regions and time periods? Alastair Haines 14:52, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

That article doesn't have a clear idea of what is a religious text & what isn't. does anyone? Are the writings of CSLewis religious texts? Peter jackson (talk) 11:34, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Monitoring changes

Is there a way to monitor changes for all articles tagged as belonging to this project? E.g. like a project "watchlist", or a project "related changes"?

I tried "related changes" for Category:WikiProject Religious texts articles:All, but that only shows changes on the talk pages for such articles. Jheald 10:54, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

A watchlist hasn't been made for this project yet so that currently it shows recent changes to all articles on wikipedia--75.63.193.182 12:32, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I created the watchlist for you--Java7837 12:37, 28 September 2007 (UTC)