From: nelson@paradyne.com (Bill Nelson)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: RFD: soc.religion.biblestudy moderated
Date: 7 Jan 93 07:12:28 GMT
Organization: AT&T Paradyne, Largo, Florida

Proposal:
---------
The creation of a new newsgroup to be called:

                     "soc.religion.biblestudy"

Overview:
---------
This would be an excellent place for Christians, Bible Scholars, 
or people just interested in reading the Bible to come together 
from all over the world and share *their* interpretations of God's 
word.  (It should prove quite fascinating to see how people from 
other countries view the Bible.)

This would NOT be a topical discussion group used to pulverize 
each other with senseless flame wars.  Instead, it would be place 
where people could come together and discuss the Bible, itself.  
Acknowledging the existence of multiple versions of the Bible in 
print, this group would discuss the similarities/differences 
between the versions and provide references to other external 
writings/archeological findings which add further information 
to the content of the discussion.

This would be a group where the subject of the validity of the 
Bible, Jesus Christ, God, and the Holy Spirit will NOT be under 
question and topics such as abortion, creationism, etc will NOT 
be discussed in depth - since these already exist in the 
"talk.religion.misc" and "soc.religion.christian" newsgroups.  
If such discussions do begin to take place, it will be up to the 
group's moderator to "politely" :-) refer those participants to 
the pertinant newsgroups.

Moderation:
-----------
I propose that this group would be moderated to avoid any senseless
flaming and non pertinant discussions that would most surely arise.

Approach:
---------
A Bible study is normally a book-by-book or topical study of 
various portions of the Bible.  I would like to propose that the 
members of the group decide upon what they would like to discuss 
(say the book of "Job" for example), go off on their own and read 
the portion(s) to be discussed, and bring their findings /
interpretations back to the discussion.  Since particular "studies" 
would inevitably go into extra innings, I would propose a time 
limit on the discussion to be, say, one week.  At that time if 
further discussion is desired, the group can either decide to 
continue the discussion or take it to email.

For those who do not have access to Bibles, they can either be 
directed to an ftp site where they can access electronic copies, 
portions of the Bible can be broadcasted on the last day of the 
prevous discussion period (as long as permission is granted first 
- to avoid copyright infringement) or arrangements can be made to 
provide hard bound bibles (if desired) to those who would like them
(there are several agencies out there that could aid in this effort).



Reasoning:
----------
Because there is 'wisdom in a multitude of council'.


Comments:
---------
Please provide yours.......
-- 
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
& Bill Nelson   & Alice: Cheshire Puss, Would you tell me, please, which &
&               &        way I ought to go from here?                    &
& AT&T Paradyne & Cat:   That depends a great deal on where you want to  &


[NB: Discussions about forming newsgroups are conducted on news.groups.
This is a copy of an announcement made there.  If you want to
follow the discussion, please take a look at that group.  If the 
discussion results in a vote, I will also post copies of the 
official calls for votes and announcements of results (assuming
that Bill also sends them here.  --clh]