Talk:Alcohol in the Bible/GA1

GA Reassessment

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I will do the GA Reassessment on this article as part of the GA Sweeps project. H1nkles (talk) 17:08, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

This reassessment is going to look at how the article matches up against the current GA Criteria. Since the article was passed before the current criteria was established, the GA Sweeps project is going through each article to determine if it still meets the new and more stringent criteria. Given the fact that this is a controversial subject I refrain from making judgments on its content but instead focus my review on prose, MOS compliance, and adherence to the GA Criteria. I note at first glance that there are several maintenance tags, this is a concern, I will evaluate the validity of these tags as I read through the article.

Lead

• I'm confused by this sentence, "The inhabitants of ancient Palestine also drank beer and wines made from fruits other than grapes, and some references to these appear in the scriptures, too.The inhabitants of ancient Palestine also drank beer and wines made from fruits other than grapes, and some references to these appear in the scriptures, too." Poorly written with a hanging participle. Beer is obviously not made from grapes and as far as I know has never been made from grapes, so that part of the statement is stating the obvious. Seems like it could be removed altogether without impacting the content much.
• Per WP:LEAD the lead is to be a summary of the entire article, covering all the subjects in a few paragraphs (up to four depending on the article's length). At a quick glance the lead does not appear to adequately summarize all the issues raised in the article.

Biblical literature

• I'm not sure what this section is serving. I understand the need to establish what is meant in the article by the term "Bible" but this section is so ambiguous about what "Bible" means that it really doesn't do what (I think) the editors are trying to accomplish.
• I'd also question this assertion, "Christianity's centerpiece of scripture" in reference to the Gospels. There is no citation and this appears to be the author's opinion.
• This sentence, "The Hebrew Bible and the apocryphal/deuterocanonical books contain the background assumed by the New Testament and particularly by the Gospels, Christianity's centerpiece of scripture, and the New Testament teaching on and exemplary use of alcoholic beverages reflects the attitudes and ideas found in earlier biblical literature." is poorly written and should be reviewed.

Lexigraphy

• There are no in-line citations in the first paragraph of this section.
• "While some apocryphal/deuterocanonical books may have been originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, some were written in Greek, and they are all best known in the Greek version found in the Septuagint." Since no reference is included in this sentence I am left assume that it is the author's opinion that they are best known in the Greek Septuagint. Please reference.
• "The Hebrew Bible was largely written in Hebrew with portions in Aramaic;" repetitive sentence see above.
• At this point I have a stylistic comment, I note that the tables in this section have what appears to be about 100+ links to scripture references. I would assume that this is nearly an exhaustive list of every use of each term in the Bible. This approach is duplicated throughout the remainder of the article and I believe is what is prompting the clean-up/maintenance tags. In a nutshell this is too much information. The reader needs one or perhaps at most two in-line citations referencing a verse that they can look at if they so desire. To list 25 verses that contain yayin is cumbersome and unnecessary. Trim it down to one or two and that will do a lot to help clean up the article. H1nkles (talk) 17:47, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
• In the Alcoholic Content section we have another example of extensive referencing. This time it appears to be quotes from authors on the subject. I feel that this is another example of overkill on referencing. I know that seems odd, to claim too much referencing, but in this case I feel it breaks up the flow of the article. It also puts the onus on the editors to be consistent. This causes readers to question sections where there is little or no referencing. For MOS guidelines on references see WP:CITE. This will give some input and subarticles on the subject.

Biblical references

• I'm not sure what the subsection on Winemaking has to do with Biblical references.
• In the Drunkness subsection there is a reference to the NIV, which many Evangelicals will know to mean the New International Version of the Bible, but for people of other faiths they will not understand this even if it is linked, I recommend spelling out the abbreviation.
• A couple of verses would be fine to establish the point. Perhaps two from the Old and two from the New Testament. Twelve is too many.
• In the Sacrifice and feasts subsection this sentence, "Jews also customarily partook of bread and wine at burials for the dead." is tagged on the end as its own paragraph. I recommend combining with the previous paragraph to avoid a stub.
• There are more translation abbreviations in the "Bringer of joy" subsection that should be expanded.
• "In the New Testament, Jesus uses wine at the Last Supper to signify the "New Covenant in [Jesus'] blood,"[302] but Christians differ over precisely how symbolic the wine is in the continuing ritual of the Eucharist (see Eucharistic theologies contrasted)." This is an example of a stub paragraph, one-sentence paragraphs should be avoided. There are a few of them throughout this article.

Notes and References

• Ref [227] is a dead link that needs to be repaired.
• When placing an in-line citation referencing a book then the format in the notes section should include the author's last name, publishing date, and page number(s). The full book reference would then be found in the references section as you have put it. In this article I see that early on in the Notes section this format is followed but as the article continues portions of this format are left out. Examples include citation #'s 63, 76, 99, and 100 where the author's last name and publishing year are present but no page number. Citation #'s 98, 113, 118, 121 have last name and page number but no publishing date. And citation #'s 107, and 237 there is just the author's last name. These are examples and not meant to be an exhaustive list.
• Some of your books have publishers listed and others don't. H1nkles (talk) 18:44, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Overarching comments

Generally I am concerned about this article. I feel it does not meet several of the GA Crieria. The article is certainly comprehensive covering all of the Biblical traditions from OT, Apocrapha and NT. It is a controversial subject but it does appear to be stable. The images are solid and the writing is fairly neutral, not giving weight to one side or the other. The following is a list of my concerns as they match up against the GA Criteria:

1a I feel that the writing is burdensome, with lots of qualifiers and parentheses. Tighten up the prose. Examples can be provided upon request.

1b There are several issues with MOS compliance. The extensive lists of citations. Listing in-line citations should be done after a punctuation, preferrably at the end of the sentence, rather than in the middle of a sentence. Abbreviations should be spelled out. The Lead could do a better job of summarizing all the aspects of the article.

2a&b Verifiability is an issue. Use of Biblical texts to support assertions can be considered a primary source, which is to be avoided in Wikipedia. See WP:PSTS for thoughts on this. There are sections that are not referenced and others that have a hundred+ references. Consistency in the reference formatting is also an issue that is discussed above.

At this point I will put the article on hold for a week and notify the concerned projects and editors. If you have questions or concerns you can list them here and/or contact me on my talk page. I am more than happy to civilly discuss any of my criticisms and reverse my opinion should I be presented with a convincing and cogent argument. This is a collaborative process and I do hope that we can work together to make this article better. If no work is done within a week and no extension of time is requested then I will likely delist the article from its GA standing. H1nkles (talk) 19:09, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Response to GAR

Ok, I've done as much as I'm willing to, for the time being, to fix up this article. I've addressed most but not all of the issues you've raised. I worked on the prose, but didn't make big changes; it seems fine to me. I added a short paragraph to the lead which refers to the different sections of the article. There are still some problematic one-sentence paragraphs, as I'm unwilling to expand them, and I can't tack them on to other paragraphs, but nor am I willing to delete them. carl bunderson (talk) (contributions) 20:00, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Another response to GAR

I saw your review of Alcohol in the Bible. Thanks for putting in the time and effort. I haven't had time to do a lot of editing lately, but I'd like to improve the article along the lines of the comments you made. One problem I've had, which I'd like your advice on, is how to handle the controversial nature of the subject material.

First, there is a small but ardent minority of Christians, who view alcohol as sinful and argue that "wine" in the Bible means "juice" wherever it is positively used and "alcohol" when negatively used (see some such complaints above; more are implicit in the edit history). Several persons of such a persuasion have added material and/or requested the many citations I've given at places, and others I put in as a pre-emptive strike of sorts. I've tried to represent their viewpoint fairly, but it is clearly not the view of the vast majority of Christian, Judaic, or other scholars. How should I reference the article to satisfy the Wikipedia guidelines on neutrality and undue weight while at the same time satisfying these "squeaky wheels"? This has been a real problem for me. (I'm getting flashes of past edit wars, particularly on Christianity and alcohol, from which this article spun off.)

Second, how should I cite the Bible? Some say it is too disputed to use as a primary source - and in many articles, I agree - but in this case, I tried merely to give instances of alcohol appearing in the Bible. Given the broadly accepted meaning of the terms "wine" and "beer" as alcoholic beverages, few of these references should be controversial, and where they are controversial, I included commentators' differening views (e.g., on Proverbs 31:4–7 under the Drunkenness section). As the article stands now, nearly all of the footnotes with Bible verses have been stripped out, but see this revision where I have many footnotes to verses. As a case study, we might look at this semi-randomly selected paragraph from that older revision:

The Naziritic vow excluded as part of its ascetic regimen not only wine, but also vinegar, grapes, and raisins,^[143] though when Nazirites completed the term of their vow, they were required to present wine as part of their sacrificial offerings and could drink of it.^[144] While John the Baptist adopted such a regimen,^[145] Jesus evidently did not during his three years of ministry depicted in the Gospels.^[146][147]

143. Nu 6:2–4; compare Jg 13:4–5; Am 2:11f

144.Nu 6:13–20

145. Compare Lk 1:15.

146. 146. Mt 11:18f; Lk 7:33f; compare Mk 14:25; Lk 22:17f

147. Raymond p. 81: "Not only did Jesus Christ Himself use and sanction the use of wine but also ... He saw nothing intrinsically evil in wine.[footnote citing Mt 15:11]"

Does this meet WP:PSTS? To prohibitionists, it is non-neutral and blasphemous, but to anyone outside that small circle, I fully expect it would not be at all controversial. In its present form, the paragraph is unchanged except that all but the last footnote are omitted, and to my mind, that is significant a loss. Standard reference works on a topic like this include many direct references, cf. [1] (again picking semi-randomly).

Third, I got some complaints on the use of the term "Bible" (see #Christian_bias above), which is why I added the section on the meaning of the term. Do you think the criticism was unwarranted? How should I have handled it?

Again, many thanks for your time and efforts! --Flex (talk/contribs) 15:08, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Reply

First off thank you for fighting the battles you have evidently fought. It is unfortunate that articles must be burdened with copious amounts of references in order to satisfy a small, but vocal, minority. I have seen this issue played out in many articles on a vast array of subjects. Unfortunately in my experience there are no easy answers. I'll try to give my impressions, but they are truly opinions based on my interpretations of the MOS as it applies to this article.

• Regarding the issue of citations in response to the ardent objections of a group of editors. My initial concerns regarding the referencing was that it appeared as though you had given every possible verse that has any mention of what you are trying to convey. In the current version of the article it appears as though many of these verses have been stripped out. In my first read-through though I found in the Hebrew sub-section of the Lexography section that yayin had 25 verses, which obviously was an attempt to show the reader just about every instance of that Hebrew word for wine in Scripture. To me this is overkill and if it is done to silence a minority then I would strongly recommend listing this page at WP:RFAR and having an arbitrator help address the issues. I honestly don't feel as though the article was out of balance from a neutrality stand point. It addressed all the points of view fairly, so from that stand point I think you're fine. I'm not sure if that completely addresses your initial question.
• To your second question about citing the Bible. Having attended an Evangelical Christian university, and minoring in Biblical studies, professors routinely accepted highly academic papers supported by myriads of Bible verses. Wikipedia is not a university setting, though, and while primary sources are critical for master's theses, they are frowned upon when used in an encyclopedia because they imply a certain degree of interpretation. Since WP seems to be more about being unbiased (giving credence to all points of view) than about pure truth and facts, secondary and tertiary sources are weighed more heavily because they have interpreted the primary sources and are viewed as more "neutral".

That said the title of the article is Alcohol in the Bible, to strip out all mention of the Bible seems counterintuitive. I would keep Biblical verses in as references as long as they are supporting the claims made within the article. What I mean by that is when there is a direct reference to an event within the Bible it is perfectly acceptable to use the Bible as the reference. For example, "Saint Paul later chides the Corinthians for becoming drunk on wine served at their celebrations of the Lord's Supper." This statement is referenced by 1 Cor. 11:20–22. That is an event within the Bible that is supported by the Bible, I see no problem there. Most of the Biblical references currently in the article are in the Lexigraphy section and support the various Greek and Hebrew words used to refer to alcohol in the Bible. I see no problem here for the same reason as above. Where we run afoul of WP:PSTS (in my opinion) is when the Bible is used to support opinions and interpretations or when the Bible is the sole support for controversial facts. So in your example above regarding the Nazarites there is the claim, "While John the Baptist adopted such a regimen,^[145] Jesus evidently did not during his three years of ministry depicted in the Gospels.^[146][147] The Bible is used to support the interpretation that Jesus drank wine and goes further in [147] to say that He sanctioned the drinking of wine. I can't help but make a side comment here, I don't see how Mt. 15:11 can be used here to support the idea that Jesus sanctioned the drinking of wine. That's a bit of an interpretive stretch. Anyway, back to my point, the Bible is the sole reference used to support the idea that Jesus drank alcohol (obviously a controversial subject) and it is an interpretation using one version of Scripture, which is a weakness when using the Bible as a source. In your example you would be well served to use some Biblical verses but also have secondary sources to augment the primary source. The one secondary source quoted (Raymond p. 81) serves only to inflame the argument rather than support what is said in the sentence. In other words, Raymond's quote doesn't really support the statement that Jesus didn't share in the Nazaritic vow. What is ironic is that it is only Raymond's quote that remains the current version of the article. Am I clear in this? Does it make sense to you? If not I can try and clarify.

• Now regarding a Christian bias within the article and the Biblical Literature section. I have read the string regarding the Christian bias. Admittedly I read the article with a bit of a blind spot to this as I come from a Christian background. I therefore can't speak to whether or not the article is overly biased. I feel as though weight was given to OT, aprocraphal and NT literature. I note that one of the complaints was the use of the term "Old Testament" rather than "Jewish Scriptures/Old Testament". I agree that using the latter term at every reference of the OT would be onerous and would break up the flow. I feel that one mention of this in the beginning of the article would suffice. For example, "The Hebrew Bible, which this article will refer to as the Old Testament, was largely written in Biblical Hebrew, with portions in Biblical Aramaic. I think that gives a nod to the fact that many view the OT as the Jewish Scriptures while also allowing for some economy of effort and flow of the article. I have found that removing some of the "biased" terminology doesn't detract of the article itself. Could the term "Christian" be removed from some (not all) portions of the article? Would the article still maintain its integrity? I'll leave that to you to decide. I see a value to defining the terms, Alcohol and Bible, but this could be done fairly simply. Bring up the differences between Jewish and Christian views of the Bible and define what the article means when it refers to the "Bible" the "Old Testament", and "Apocrapha", and the "New Testament". You could even preface it by acknowledging that there is controversy surrounding these terms and you are not attempting to clear up the controversy but only to define the terms for the readers so that they will understand what is meant by these terms in the article. Nothing will really make everyone happy, and there may be land mines that I haven't considered as I have not fought a lot of these religious terminology battles, so I don't know all the arguments. For me it would be acceptable to define the terms very simply and move on.

I hope that these comments help address your questions. Please feel free to reply and I will continue the discussion. As an Evangelical Christian I have wanted to engage in articles related to Christianity. While I don't really have an axe to grind on the topic at hand, I do find the debate as to how the article should fit into WP standards and yet also convey the heart of the subject stimulating. I welcome your response. H1nkles (talk) 16:39, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

• After finishing my extended reply without saving I noted that carl bunderson made comments below that resulted in an edit conflict. I take responsibility as I didn't save intermittently enough so the above comments do not reflect a reply to the thoughts below, which I have yet to read. Sorry about that. H1nkles (talk) 16:41, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I'll respond as well, Flex, unsolicited though my opinion may be.

First off, I apologize if my stripping of primary sources was inconsiderate of the work you've put in the article.

I agree with H1knles that the article has a balance on the POV issue.

As for citing bible verses: As a via media, perhaps if you reinstated the verse references which you believe are necessary. But if their interpretation is challenged by anyone, they should be removed. (Allowing, of course, for the interpretation of the verse by RS to be included instead.) I believe this is a practical solution, as it allows for the use of relevant citations from the bible, while at the same time avoiding problems of interpreting primary sources (ie, if everyone agrees on the interpration, there's no problem).

I don't believe the section discussing the bible is necessary. It is rather tangential to the article. We have entire articles on the bible and its different parts (ie OT, Hebrew Bible, NT, deuterocanon), so persons can go to those articles if they want. A wikilink to Bible is all that is needed.

Your instinct in saying, "I don't like the idea of splitting each topical section into a HB/OT, Apoc/Deut-con, and NT subsections because it will separate topics that are related", is right. It seems to me that Jon513's comments were primarily in reference to his perception of too-much Christian pov in the article, rather than desiring a section explaining different views of what constitutes the bible. That (what constitutes the bible) is such a basic topic that it is too tangential here. That is not to say that you didn't handle the complaint well; with no-one else participating in the discussion, it was the prudent thing to do at the time. carl bunderson (talk) (contributions) 16:16, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I support carl bunderson's comments regarding the definition of the Bible. It makes sense that such a foundational book would have farily clear definitions that can be found simply by wikilinking. I'd leave it as such and avoid a lot of linguistic controversy. H1nkles (talk) 16:45, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Please look at my toughts above, that were added after your reply here, regarding the specific example of the Nazritic vow and my concerns about using Biblical sources only to support an interpretive statement. Does this jive with what you're saying or am I off base? H1nkles (talk) 16:48, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I believe it jives. carl bunderson (talk) (contributions) 17:19, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

After a hiatus on my part from reviewing, much discussion and a community reassessment I will delist the article from its GA status. The reason for delisting is that it does not meet the current GA Criteria, in format and adherence to the MOS. If there is disagreement about this determination please discuss it at the GA community reassessment page. H1nkles (talk) 03:30, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks to you both. I've been away for a bit, but I may have some time to address these concerns in the near future. Cheers! --Flex (talk/contribs) 14:15, 10 June 2010 (UTC)