Talk:Ten Commandments/Archive 2

message: The articles states that the Ten Statements are divided into two halves, the first five dealing with the relationship between God and humanity, and the second dealing with relationships between people, but why is the fifth statement "Honor your father and your mother..."  That doesn't seem to deal with God at all.  Can someone please clarify this?
Lue3378 06:12, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See below at commandment five (under Jewish Interpretation). It explains this. jnothman talk 11:42, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two Halves 

message: Is this really a good article?
The criteria are:
* be well written
* be factually accurate
* use a neutral point of view
* be stable
* be referenced, and
* wherever possible, contain images to illustrate it
I couldn't argue any but the last are fulfilled... The references in the article are broad and certainly most of the article was written without any. For style, the article could see a lot of improvement in consistency.
Can we at least make this article a good article, then? Now that it's listed as one?
jnothman talk 18:19, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Good article]] 

message: I noticed the following sentence under the section "Public monuments and controversy in the USA": As seen above, any attempt to post the Decalogue on a public building necessarily takes a sectarian stance; Protestants and Roman Catholics number the commandments differently.
Could you maybe link me to a website that verifies that or explains how that's true?
Thanks,
EChronicle 00:34, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand that our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers number the commandments a bit differently (as do the Lutherans, I think, but am not sure), but I don't know precisely how that works.  You may want to contact Essjay, who is a scholar of Roman Catholic theology and one of Wikipedia's best editors/administrators/bureaucrats.  KHM03 (γραφ) 20:08, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sectarian Stance? 

message: I have not been able to locate the reference to δεκάλογος in the Septuagint. Doc 07:20, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Decalogue" 

message: All,
I've twice added a link that reffered to the contraversy on weither the 10 commandments should be displayed publicly, and which are "The" Ten commandments.  Both subjects I feel are relivent and touched on in this article. J Wolff has twice deleted the link.  I don't think that simply having a link that expresses a minority opinion counts as "undue weight", and I think suppressing such data violates NPOV.  I'm sure J Wolff has his own opinion, what do others think.  J Wolff, what is your reasoning?Steve kap 15:38, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is just a restatement of the heated views in the debate as to whether the 10C should be displayed publicly. You could use it as a reference for the section in question. That would make it relivent. I'm allergic to POV views being hidden away in the external links section. JFW | T@lk 12:10, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Which Ten Commandment

message: These
four
diffs
are the same anon (71.201.215.177), adding the same text, which appears to be original research.  I've warned them to refrain from edit warring without discussion, and just thought I'd post here too.  If they stop, super; if not, they get a block; if they jump IPs we may have to consider semi-protection.  Just a heads-up. -GTBacchus(talk) 18:53, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Between them and the Gods-Ten-Commandments.com folks, I've often considered bringing up the option of protecting this page. [Sorry, that was me.] MessengerAtLWU (talk | contribs) 23:31, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Persistent anon 

message: The "Jewish interpretation" section has become bloated with peripheral material. I have now redone this to reflect Rashi, universally accepted as the most important post-Talmudic commentator who anthologises Talmudic and Midrashic material in his Torah commentary. Some additional views may be notable (e.g. Maimonides on the 10th commandment, on which Rashi is silent). Please offer your views. JFW | T@lk 20:07, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tidied up the Jewish interpretation 

message: The NIV translates the same Hebrew word as murder for the one instance, but kill in the other instances. The KJV translates the word as kill. I'll cite that large rock we have on display as the reason I made the change. --Elephanthunter 23:57, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fixed Translation 

message: I have removed this rather speculative piece of work, for which no source seems to be available:
Origins of the law<BR>
Some historians  have argued that the Ten Commandments originated from ancient Egyptian religion, and postulate that the Biblical Jews borrowed the concept after their Exodus from Egypt. Chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead (the Papyrus of Ani) includes a list of things to which a man must swear in order to enter the afterlife. These sworn statements bear a remarkable resemblance to the Ten Commandments in their nature and their phrasing. These statements include "not have I defiled the wife of man," "not have I committed murder," "not have I committed theft," "not have I lied," "not have I cursed god," "not have I borne false witness," and "not have I abandoned my parents." The Book of the Dead has additional requirements, and, of course, does not require worship of YHWH.
Who are these historians? JFW | T@lk 13:37, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Section removed

message: With lines such as "Typical Protestant view" and entire sections solely based on interpretations, this article feels bias and seems to be very much under-representing a large part of the religious community. Most of it looks like original research to me.
Not too long ago I saw an administrator, Humus, reverse an edit of one of these interpretations. He left a note in the user's talk page (81.96.165.178, but we'll call him Mark) with a monotonous, unspecific warning:
::Your edit in Ten Commandments was found unhelpful and it has been reverted or removed. Please use the sandbox for any other tests you want to do. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. Thank you for your understanding.
Now, the actual edit spanned one line. The user simply modified the Jewish interpretation from "Killing an innocent human being is a capital sin" to "Killing a human being is a capital sin."
From a third person view, this edit did not look like vandalism. Humus might stop and think that perhaps there are some folks who actually believe Mark's interpretation. One example would be myself, and I am not alone. I'm not really trying to be judgemental of Humus. I am just bringing this up to point out what a bias article this is, and how one's personal beliefs will get in the way of an NPOV representation.
Need more evidence? Look through the history and in this talk page!
--Elephanthunter 07:58, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Serious POV Problems 

message: I removed several lines of text under the "Lutheran and Catholic Understandings" of the first commandment because it did not explain anything about Lutheran and Catholic understandings of the 1st commandment.  All it did was give a Catholic apologetic for iconophilia and hagiophilia.  A discussion of the first commandment is not the place for that.
--Almondwine 16:59, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  More POV Problems 

message: A recent edit changed the spelling of several English words from the American form to the British form (as mentioned above by Lincher).  It was suggested that a poll be taken to determine which form to use, but does Wikipedia have a guide as to how to decide which form to use?  I would think this issue would come up pretty often. Kylef81 03:49, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I found a page that talks about this issue, Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English. My take on that page is that this article probably should not have been changed, since it was already written using the American form.  I think the only reason that would justify the change would be if this topic was specific to a particular country.  I think we can agree that that's not the case.  So, I'm going to go ahead and change it back to how it was originally written.  (Hoping not to offend.) Kylef81 17:45, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: After making the changes, I realized that the previous edit that changed American spelling to British was probably an effort to make the article consistent, since there were already some British spellings in the document.  I went back and looked at some of the earlier versions of the document and found that most of them used American spelling.  So, I think the change back to American spelling is still justified. I'm new here, so hopefully I'm not stepping on anyone's toes. Kylef81 18:10, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: American/British English