User:FyzixFighter/sandbox/Biblical canon RFC
Should the scope of the "Biblical canon" article be:
- biblical canon/canon of scripture - a set of texts (or "books") which a particular Jewish or Christian religious community regards as authoritative scripture
- Biblical canon - a set of texts (or "books") which a particular Jewish or Christian religious community regards as part of the Bible
And how best to define this in the first sentence of the lede?
Summary of arguments
[edit]Proposition 1
[edit]Summary of the arguments in favour of proposition 2 ("a set of texts (or "books") which a particular Jewish or Christian religious community regards as authoritative scripture"):
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Proposition 2
[edit]Summary of the arguments in favour of proposition 2 ("a set of texts (or "books") which a particular Jewish or Christian religious community regards as part of the Bible"):
- it is the most widely accepted meaning of the term in academic and mainstream sources (see the compilation at Talk:Biblical canon#Definitions).
- proposition 1 - which is the definition currently used - expands the scope of the article too much; the scope of proposition 1 should include all other scriptures held as authoritative by any notable Christian or Jewish denomination which are not considered by them as part of the bible. Those books include, but are not limited to: the Standard works and other LDS scriptures (see table here), the Divine Principle, William Marrion Branham's prophecies, Vissarion's Last Testament (yes it is considered as sacred scripture according to the WP ru article), the Book of the Secret Supper, The Book of the Two Principles, the Zohar, the Talmud, the Midrash, and possibly the The Urantia Book. Therefore, the article needs to be limited to the Bible, both for the reader who expects to see information related to the Bible and nothing else with an article whose title is "Biblical canon", and for the sake of readability as the article would be too long otherwise.
- "Bible" is used to refer both to the Christian Bible and the Jewish Bible; the Wikipedia article on the Tanakh (Jewish sacred scriptures) is even titled "Hebrew Bible".
- The alleged vagueness of the word "Bible" is irrelevant to the question, and the definition of "Bible" is to be debated at Bible and not at Biblical canon.
- It is not tautological to define "biblical canon" as "what is or is not in the Bible", because sometimes to be clear one needs to use words which are similar (e.g. Federal government of the United States: "The federal government of the United States [U.S. federal government or U.S. government] is the national government of the United States").