Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Linguistics and the Book of Mormon (2nd nomination)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. –Juliancolton ^Tropical ^Cyclone 16:30, 28 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Linguistics and the Book of Mormon[edit]

See discussion immediately below, basically trivial subject matter and lack of scientific verifiability Taivo (talk) 00:55, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm looking at this article and it seriously has no place in Wikipedia. The subject matter is utterly trivial. First, there can be no serious linguistic discussion of the BOM because the "original text" (was taken back / never existed), therefore any discussion whatsoever must be entirely based on the English version. That is no discussion at all. 90% of LDS "linguistic studies" consist of discussions of chiasmus (which is not uniquely Hebrew) and different types of sentence connectives which may or may not be reflected in the "original language" and may or may not be an artifact of the deliberate use of Early Modern English "King James" style in Smith's finished work. Second, if we take the "Pro-" position that this is a translation, what is it actually a translation of? It would not be a translation of Biblical Hebrew, it would be a translation of Hebrew as it developed and was spoken in isolation 900 YEARS (550 BCE to 350 CE) after it separated from Biblical Hebrew as a language. In other words, it would not be a translation of any language that we know anything at all about. Living languages do not remain stable over 900 years, they continue to develop and evolve, so that "American Hebrew" would be as different from Pre-Exilic Hebrew as Modern English is from late Old English. Try reading Beowulf in the original language and you will see how much language usually changes over the course of 900 years. Therefore, any comparisons between the English text of the Book of Mormon and Pre-Exilic Hebrew style are completely and totally unreasonable and unscientific. Therefore, I would like to suggest that this article be deleted from Wikipedia. The subject matter is just too narrow and there is no serious linguistic underpinning to it. (Taivo (talk) 00:53, 24 January 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Delete. Major POV fork. The article reads like an essay that has been popularly photocopied and passed around LDS churches for decades, to bolster the claim that the Book of Mormon is genuine ancient scripture written by prophets. No one outside the LDS religion lends this any credibility whatsoever. Reswobslc (talk) 01:13, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect, POV fork, as cited above. Merge anything useful and neutral back into Book of Mormon, and then redirect this article there. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 03:26, 24 January 2009 (UTC).[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Religion-related deletion discussions. —J.Mundo (talk) 04:14, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I'm not sure I entirely understand what's going on here, but to me the nomination above sounds like it's saying "these reliable sources are wrong, so we should delete an article discussing their conclusions". But, from a brief read of the article it appears that the arguments both for and against those conclusions are presented, with references to reliable sources on both sides. Therefore I don't understand why this would be considered a POV-fork. These seem to be notable viewpoints which should be discussed, and as long as the coverage is balanced between both sides of the argument I see no problem here. JulesH (talk) 10:23, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- RE: Comment. That's not the entire issue. There just isn't any such thing as a truly reliable source in this issue. The whole article hinges on assuming that the BOM is a translation from some language about which we know nothing other than it was (perhaps) a descendant of Pre-Exilic Hebrew 900 years later. If we had an Arabic translation from Aristotle, we could discuss the underlying language because we know that language and have other texts in that language. We could discuss the features of that text based on Greek because we know the Greek that Aristotle spoke and we could prove that it was a translation because we could compare Greek with the Arabic text. We cannot do this with the BOM text because we have no idea what the "original language" was (assuming it was a translation). The issue is also a classic WP:Fringe position--only LDS scholars are interested in the issue and even they are divided on how much importance to place upon "linguistic" studies of the BOM. Non-LDS scholars just aren't interested in a topic with no scientific basis and don't spend time publishing on the topic. Thus, a bibliography of the topic includes many LDS references and virtually no non-LDS references. (Note that this comment has nothing to do with the BOM's value as a book of faith.) We don't have articles here on other non-linguistic "linguistics" such as "Hebrew as Adam's language" or "All languages spring from Sanskrit", even though there are surely many publications by partisans espousing these POVs "scientifically". (Taivo (talk) 11:42, 24 January 2009 (UTC))[reply]
Keep The article has problems that require intensive copy editing. However, it is a serious subject that many theologians continue to debate. I don't see a problem in having it remain as a standalone article, as long as someone familiar with the subject is willing to rewrite it. Pastor Theo (talk) 14:19, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep We can't reject all articles that don't have a "truly reliable" source, as the his would essentially eliminate most articles on the origins of the various religions, where a great deal rests on the disputes over the authenticity of the founding documents. We would lose most of our political content too, as there is no absolutely sure conclusion for great many of the questions. We do not mean by RS a source whose conclusions are known with certainty--most religious people would argue that such certainty is a matter of faith at least s much as ordinary knowledge. We mean in these contexts by RS a source that give an accepted presentation of its viewpoint. Saying "truly reliable" makes it a matter of truth, whereas we only want verifiability. It is--fortunately--not our job to determine the truth of religious doctrines, or of anything else. The article's quite evident bias can be fixed, and the material presented. It is not necessary to make a judgment on which side is right; all that is needed for clarity is to give the Mormon or non-Mormon affiliations of the authors discussed. DGG (talk) 17:32, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I'm confused as to how an article that prominently referencs the Tanners can be considered a pro-LDS POV fork. Looks like there are plenty of RS to me. Jclemens (talk) 17:55, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep While the article could make it clearer that this is an academic argument within a religious context, the study of the language used in the Book of Mormon is notable. Are we going to go delete all theology articles now? Squidfryerchef (talk) 22:08, 24 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The wp:Lede should be cleaned up to spell out concisely and clearly what the article is about. WP:Fringe concerns are also clean-up issues and not really an AfD concern. I would ask for guidance on the fringe board if there is some ownership or seemingly insurmountable POV concerns. This does seem to be a notable subject as well as one for which reliable sources are available. -- Banjeboi 09:16, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep The argument here is a well sourced article based on incorrect sources should get deleted. Once an article is well sourced it is notable. Deletion is a not a solution to minor NPOV issues. jbolden1517 ^Talk 18:55, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually the problem is that the article is not well-sourced. Nearly all of the sources would fail WP:RS if that criterion were applied exhaustively. (Taivo (talk) 20:23, 26 January 2009 (UTC))[reply]

It seems to me that most of the sources are acceptable for the purpose they're being used for. There's a couple of self-published sources where I'm dubious of the expertise of the author, but mostly they seem good to me. Large chunks of it are sourced to books published by university presses of well-known universities. I'd suggest you start by removing the content supported by sources that aren't reliable, rather than the entire article. JulesH (talk) 08:52, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.