Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Table of books of Judeo-Christian Scripture

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. --

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Table of books of Judeo-Christian Scripture

Closer's notes
This debate was evenly divided between people in favour of deleting the list, those in favour of keeping the list, and those in favour of merging and redirecting the list somewhere else. The main argument in favour of keeping the list was that the centralised list was useful. The main argument both for deleting and for merging was that the list largely duplicated content found elsewhere.

While this discussion reached no consensus, it was trending away from keeping the article in its present form. The option now most compatible with this debate would be to discuss a strategy for merging this article. Consideration should be given to the significant minority who find a centralised list useful.

ATTENTION! If you came to this page because a friend asked you to do so, or because you saw a message on an online forum pointing to this page, please note that this is not a vote. This is a discussion among Wikipedia editors and is aimed at reaching a consensus on whether the article is suitable for this encyclopedia. The outcome of AfD nominations are primarily determined by the quality of arguments for or against deletion; the process is immune to ballot-stuffing or Meatpuppetry . You can participate in the discussion and post your opinions here, even if you are new. Deletion is based on Wikipedia policies and guidelines, so please take a look at them if you have not already. For more information, see Wikipedia deletion policy . Please sign your posts on this page by adding ~~~~ at the end. Happy editing!

Content forking by

• Keep, consider Merge This is far more complex than a content fork. Table of books of Judeo-Christian Scripture is a far larger article than Books of the Bible in terms of the headings and the books. We have to keep religion out of the discussion though the topic is to do with religion, and view the article on its merits as an article. I see substantial merit in this article with information that is simply not present in the older one. I would like to see more description in addition to the table, however. Fiddle Faddle 20:51, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge non-overlapping content into
  Books of the Bible then Delete. As it stands it is OR and unsourced. BlueValour 22:11, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Keep obviously - this is a very useful list for writing about Christian and pseudo-Christian documents. I would, however, suggest renaming it to "List of ..." and removing the Mormon books. This isn't for theological reasons - it's just that if we put a column for every new Christian and pseudo-Christian religion and their holy books, it would really be gigantic. BigDT 22:33, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The distinction between Books of the Bible and Table of books of Judeo-Christian Scripture is that the latter includes apocryphal writings. We already have an article on Apocrypha, and sub-articles on all stripes of apocryphal writings, such as Jewish apocrypha, Biblical apocrypha and New Testament apocrypha. I'm not convinced of the need of an extra list duplicating articles that already exist. Dr Zak 23:54, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok ... I have re-examined the list and I accept your reasoning. The only difference between this table and the one in

Books of the Bible is the inclusion of the Mormon books and the inclusion of the apocrypha. Both of those efforts are duplicated elsewhere. As it is, this list is extremely large, apparantly for POV purposes, and the functionality is covered elsewhere. Thus, delete.BigDT 01:21, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply

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• Weak delete Although this might have some use the stuff is already tabulated and listed elsewhere under morespecific categories, per the above. SM247^{My Talk} 00:11, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong keep. The distinction Dr. Zak makes is inaccurate. Not only does the table include apocryphal books; it also includes pseudpigrapha, lost books, oral Torah, and Restorationist books. Books of the Bible covers only a fragment of what this article covers. This much more comprehensive page is the obvious keep. As to removing "Mormon" books (??), use of the term "pseudo-Christian" demonstrates bigotry, not theology. --The Editrix 00:32, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you are reading into what I said that Mormons fall into the "pseudo-Christian" category rather than the "Christian" category, then you're reading something I never said. Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Christian Science, Way International, Swedenborgianism, and plenty of other modern Christian or pseudo-Christian groups have their own scriptures. Listing every single one of them on a table of what different denominations believe would get very big very fast. The list is already big. It's a useful list as I said above, but if the only purpose in having it is so that you can equate modern scriptures with ancient ones, there's a problem somewhere. This isn't a question of theology - it's a question of usefulness. Among ancient scriptures, Mormons use the same books Protestants do as far as I know, so the only possible use in having a separate column would be for POV issues. BigDT 01:09, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: Note talk page spamming [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] Dr Zak 03:57, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • While I try always to assume good faith, I find myself asking why this deletion nomination has now assumed such large proportions that you have looked for this? Is there something that we do not know about here that should be brought to our attention in order that we may be better informed about the page you feel should be deleted? I unerstand completely the wikipedia distaste for internal spamming. Equally I have the strong opinion that it is the article that will survive AfD or will fail to survive, and that great tranches of "delete" vs "keep" tend to alert the closing admin to the fact that there is an underlying issue far wider than an article itself. Fiddle Faddle 07:30, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keepnot a great article, but still worthy of being kept. I believe that this needs sources, but to delete it is not fair. False Prophet 03:13, 2 July 2006 (UTC) I now believe that while there is no reason this deserves to be its own article, there needs to be a decision on what needs to be kept and merged into an approprite article. False Prophet 21:57, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep This article is not exactly aesthetically pleasing, but I think with some revision it could be made more easily read and valuable. shijeru 03:30, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Appears to be useful. User:Dandelion (talk|contribs) 03:39, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the
  talk/email 07:24, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Delete, do not merge. I fail to see why this should be kept. The article repeats information, and where it diverges, fails both
  WP:NOR. It is unfortunate that some have taken this as a personal assault. Em-jay-es 07:57, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Delete as redundant compilation of other articles. I personally do not find the tabular format very useful when most of the table is empty. --DaveG12345 11:07, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect to
  Books of the Bible has a better layout. Redirecting allowing the information to remain in the history which can be retrieved for a merge to take place if anyone cares to. Jon513 14:25, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Merge and restructure The key difference between this table and
  Books of the Bible, or include only the difference, content that is scripture-related but not scriptural, in an appropriately renamed separate article. --Shirahadasha 04:22, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• Comment I would agree to this rationale - for one thing, it would ensure the current article does not constitute a mere POV fork. But, aside from that small concern, and assuming good faith, the tabular form of this article is simply a mess - the section heading "Apocrypha recognized, but not canonized" appears in the middle of the Restorationist column for absolutely no logical reason, also the table appears to show books demarcated as they are used by various churches in its first five columns but, due to the flawed layout, makes no such indication for the contents of the Apocrypha/Pseudepigrapha column. They are simply "there". If the reason for this is "it would be too difficult to squeeze in all the details", then this merely reinforces the need for a separate table for Apocrypha/Pseudepigrapha, ideally as part of the
  Books of the Bible main table, and IMO might then become actually useful. Trying to "do it all" in one table obviously isn't working. --DaveG12345 14:33, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• Keep, useful resource. --
  Guinnog 13:59, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Delete I can't see a compelling reason why this article needs to exist above and beyond
  Books of the Bible. Any apophygraphia & pseudographia could be broken out and moved to a seperate article on non-cannonical writings... and the referenced articles cleaned of their POV and misinformation in the process.--Isotope23 19:09, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]

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.