Violoncello10104

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Hello, Violoncello10104, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Unfortunately, your edit to Genesis creation narrative does not conform to Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy (NPOV). Wikipedia articles should refer only to facts and interpretations that have been stated in print or on reputable websites or other forms of media.

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you have any questions, check out Wikipedia:Questions or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome!  tgeorgescu (talk) 19:33, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Hello and thank you for your message. May I ask, were my edits reviewed by a bot? The edit summary of Bishonen does not make sense. For example I added 'According to mainstream scholars...', but Bishonen removed this on the grounds that it was an 'unsourced POV addition'. But what I added is precisely the opposite of a POV addition but a clarification that the following statement is held by a portion of scholars, and not the POV of the article itself. Thus it was my edit which was NPOV. This applies to all my edits on that page. Thanks again. Violoncello10104 (talk) 19:39, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

See WP:NOTNEUTRAL and WP:GEVAL. tgeorgescu (talk) 19:41, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, however the views I gave equal validity to are hardly fringe in the vein of 'the Earth is flat' but held by most conservative, evangelical, traditional etc. scholars. Also, Bishonen undid things like British English spelling even though that is the explicit policy in the Talk page. They also removed sub-headings which I added and legitimate information from a Biblical commentator who is not 'fringe'. I'm sorry but this appears to have been done recklessly and without regard for the content I wrote, so I believe someone should go through and provide a reason for each deletion / undo. Violoncello10104 (talk) 19:48, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't understand the point about British English. British English: The preferred spelling is "organise". However, the "-ize" suffix has been used in British English for a long time, and this is known as "Oxford spelling". Thus either is appropriate. Doug Weller talk 08:01, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Precisely as you said, the preferred spelling is 'organise', therefore I changed the spelling to that. Violoncello10104 (talk) 21:35, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

And that's wrong. Either is ok, there is no rule we must use the preferred one. Doug Weller talk 08:08, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll keep it in mind Violoncello10104 (talk) 10:04, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Christine Hayes stated "And it was explicitly referred to as biblical archaeology — an interesting name, because it suggests that the archaeologists were out there searching for evidence that would verify the details of the biblical text. We're doing biblical archaeology; archeology in support of the biblical text. [...] Increasingly, practitioners of what was now being termed Palestinian archaeology, or Ancient Near Eastern archaeology, or archaeology of the Levant, rather than biblical archaeology — some of these archaeologists grew disinterested in pointing out the correlations between the archaeological data and the biblical stories or in trying to explain away any discrepancies in order to keep the biblical text intact. ... People who equate truth with historical fact will certainly end up viewing the Bible dismissively, as a naïve and unsophisticated web of lies, since it is replete with elements that cannot be literally true. But to view it this way is to make a genre mistake. Shakespeare's Hamlet, while set in Denmark, an actual place, is not historical fact."

Modern Bible scholarship/scholars (MBS) assumes that: • The Bible is a collection of books like any others: created and put together by normal (i.e. fallible) human beings; • The Bible is often inconsistent because it derives from sources (written and oral) that do not always agree; individual biblical books grow over time, are multilayered; • The Bible is to be interpreted in its context: ✦ Individual biblical books take shape in historical contexts; the Bible is a document of its time; ✦ Biblical verses are to be interpreted in context; ✦ The "original" or contextual meaning is to be prized above all others; • The Bible is an ideologically-driven text (collection of texts). It is not "objective" or neutral about any of the topics that it treats. Its historical books are not "historical" in our sense. ✦ "hermeneutics of suspicion"; ✦ Consequently MBS often reject the alleged "facts" of the Bible (e.g. was Abraham a real person? Did the Israelites leave Egypt in a mighty Exodus? Was Solomon the king of a mighty empire?); ✦ MBS do not assess its moral or theological truth claims, and if they do, they do so from a humanist perspective; ★ The Bible contains many ideas/laws that we moderns find offensive; • The authority of the Bible is for MBS a historical artifact; it does derive from any ontological status as the revealed word of God;

— Beardsley Ruml, Shaye J.D. Cohen's Lecture Notes: INTRO TO THE HEBREW BIBLE @ Harvard (BAS website) (78 pages)

Quoted by tgeorgescu (talk) 10:34, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the quotes. Obviously, not all biblical scholars would accept Cohen's dot points (the last of which denies that the Bible is the Word of God), e.g., any traditional or evangelical Christian. Here is the view of Bart Ehrman, who is known for his biblical scholarship and debates against traditional Christian scholars, on the question of what views you can attribute to 'most scholars', from his blog post (https://ehrmanblog.org/how-do-we-know-what-most-scholars-think/)

'Then what does it mean to say that “most” scholars hold one view or another? It always depends. If you mean “most scholars total” then you would have to include fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals. And I frankly don’t know the proportion of evangelical to non-evangelical scholars in the country. That’s why I do not say (or at least try not to say) that “most” scholars think x, y, or z, unless I’m sure that even evangelicals agree on the point (for example, whether the woman taken in adultery was originally in the Gospel of John). What I do say is what most “critical” scholars think, and when I say that, I’m usually pretty sure what I’m talking about.'

So Ehrman is actually even more charitable to evangelicals here than my edits were, in that he adds the term 'critical' to 'most scholars' so as not to imply there are more non-evangelical to evangelical scholars, and reserves 'most scholars' for statements to which evangelicals will agree. I would be happy to make this addition as it would also clarify for people that views such as the Documentary hypothesis originated from critical scholarship and not just scholarship in general. Violoncello10104 (talk) 22:06, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

@Tgeorgescu Have you seen the latest changes to Genesis creation narrative? Doug Weller talk 08:09, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

May I ask why you undid my changes to this article? I provided arguments for my addition in the reply to tgeorgescu and also in my edit summary (not only is the addition of 'most critical scholars believe...' accurate and informative for readers, but is the practice of Ehrman). However, no one has addressed these points. I do think it's reasonable to remove mention of the documentary hypothesis, however if terms such as 'Jahwist/Elohist sources' are going to be used, people should know that they originate in critical scholarship. Violoncello10104 (talk) 13:54, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I also used edit summaries. But this belongs on the article talk page. I'm not the only one to revert at least some of what you added. Doug Weller talk 14:55, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate the ongoing discussion about how to best represent different scholarly perspectives though it's happening on this talk page. I believe we share the common goal of providing readers with accurate, well-rounded information. I'd like to propose a few ideas for improving any article covering a religious topic with balance and clarity:

We could clearly delineate mainstream academic consensus vs. other viewpoints using phrases like "According to the majority of biblical scholars..." or "In mainstream academic circles..." to contextualize certain interpretations. That is what Violoncello10104 attempted to do...

We could also acknowledge diversity of thought; where appropriate, we could note that there are differing opinions among scholars, for example "While most critical scholars believe X, some conservative or evangelical scholars argue Y." I think people deserve to know where information is coming from in order to properly weight each piece of information.

This would allow us to present a more comprehensive view of the topic while still adhering to Wikipedia's NPOV policy. This approach allows readers to understand the full spectrum of scholarly thought and form their own opinion about the topic. ViolanteMD 17:16, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Again, article talk page please. Discussion like this should be transparent/public. Doug Weller talk 17:20, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

They sure should. ViolanteMD 17:27, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Of course, please take your time to recover from chemo. If you do feel up for it, I would be very interested to hear your opinion as the other two people we are discussing with seem to not be interested in responding to our arguments or the evidence I provided from Ehrman. Violoncello10104 (talk) 10:20, 6 September 2024 (UTC)