# Talk:Chapters of 2 Maccabees

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✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 05:55, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Wouldn't "Synopsis of 2 Maccabees" make more sense as a title? I expect an article of this title to be about the chapter divisions of the book and how they came to be (assuming there's anything to say), but in fact this article is about the content of the chapters, i.e., the book. Srnec (talk) 03:19, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi User:Srnec.  The current title is a tad awkward, I agree, and I'm open to suggestions, but I don't think I like that particular suggestion better.  Basically this article is 14 mini-articles that are the equivalent of Daniel 1, Daniel 2, etc. in 2 Maccabees 3, 2 Maccabees 4, and so on (all redirects to this article).  However, calling the overall article something like 2 Maccabees 1-15 looks wrong - nobody would cite the book that way, they'd call it just "2 Maccabees" when talking about everything.  That looks more like a verse range and somebody forgot to include the chapter.  I figured that honoring the category structure would work best to express that this is the equivalent of articles on specific chapters elsewhere - e.g. Category:Gospel of Matthew chapters and descendants of Category:Bible chapters.  (And truth be told, SnowFire, if Emperor of Wikipedia, would probably merge a lot of those other articles on individual chapters into some larger superstructure too, but eh, be the change you want to be in the world.)  I think "Synopsis" would be a little restrictive - the articles on other Bible chapters can include their use in theology, art, history, etc., not merely what's written in the chapter.  The bit on using the book to defend indulgences by the 1500s Catholic Church, for example, was almost certainly in no way whatsoever intended by the Egyptian author and has nothing to do with the events of the Maccabean era, but is actually a pretty relevant thing to talk about anyway as far as later influence.  In the same way, the article tries to talk about the historical context of "what really happened" which isn't always the same thing as a synopsis of what was written down.
There is exactly one thing to say on the chapter divisions, but I can't find anyone talking about it because academics apparently consider it beneath notice and obvious - that whoever did the chapter/verse distinctions obviously screwed up in the chapter 1 & 2 boundary, given that it wasn't until the 1930s (!) that people rediscovered what had been copied the whole time, including a letter boundary within a verse (!).  Sadly I couldn't find anyone saying that directly, just organizing their work ignoring the chapter 1/2 boundary and treating the letters & introduction as 3 separate topics.  SnowFire (talk) 05:35, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
The other chapter articles are clearly sub-articles based on summary style. But that doesn't apply here. How do you see this article as differing from 2 Maccabees? Srnec (talk) 21:09, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
Why wouldn't it apply here?  I see it as the same thing - these are summary style spinoffs on the individual chapter of the work, if appropriately notable enough.  That's the intent, at least, given that I've categorized it the same way and treated it the same way.  SnowFire (talk) 01:37, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
Because there is no difference between "the book" and "all of its chapters". How can you have a summary style spinoff of the whole book? If this article is not restriced in some way in what it says about the chapters, then in what way does it differ from the main article? To me, it seemed like a synopsis, i.e., a rundown of content, which is a legitimate subtopic of the whole. I suppose you would say it avoids questions of manuscripts, authorship, dating, etc., while including reception and interpretation. But what is that called? The current title does not make clear the article's contents. At least not to me. Srnec (talk) 23:25, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
Fair enough, I'm just not sure there's a better name for it.  As said before, I feel "synopsis" suggests an overly restrictive scope.  My baseline assumption is that nobody is going to find this article via typing it in, they'll get there either from links to 2 Maccabees 3 or the like (as I've added to Heliodorus (minister)) or from the "main" hatnote in 2 Maccabees#Contents.  But that's okay sometimes, nobody types in List of generation II Pokémon, they get there from other articles.  Maybe 2 Maccabees, Chapters 1–15?  That would probably be a better model if the various poorly maintained chapter articles on other longer works were merged, e.g. something like Jeremiah, Chapters 21–30, Jeremiah, Chapters 31–40, etc.  It just feels weird in this case because it sounds like it's suggesting there are more chapters than those 15, and I hoped that "Chapters of" would be read with an implicit "all" in front after the reader sees the lede.  As I said before, I'm still open to suggestions on the title, I just want to avoid suggesting the article is a mere "plot summary."  SnowFire (talk) 00:04, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
What about Chapter summary of 2 Maccabees? I understand what you are trying to do, but I still think the current title doesn't make sense. Srnec (talk) 17:14, 18 February 2023 (UTC)