Talk:Isa 43:6-10

All,

The edits on the commentary page and the corresponding discussion on User talk:Rameumptom bring up some interesting questions for this community. (We are small, but we are a community.)

1. To what degree is this site a place for academic debate?
2. How and to what degree is information gleaned from academic sources appropriate to this site?

I think it is good to hear various points-of-view on this topic so let me start by laying out my own.

1.) To answer the first question I want to draw a distinction between two words: "academic" and "scholar." I'm not sure how conventional my use of these words is so if you don't like the way I am using them feel free to just think of them as "A" and "B". Let's define a scholar of the scriptures (A) as someone who earnestly seeks to understand the scriptures better, a close reader, a ponderer, and someone who engages others in discussion in order to understand the scriptures better. According to this view, we can all be and should all be scholars of the scriptures. Now, let's define an academician of scriptural texts (B) much more narrowly. These are people whose writings on the scriptural texts are worthy of publication in peer-reviewed journals respected by the university crowd. These academics typically work for universities.

Academics and non-academics alike are invited to join us here for discussion and learning--but let each approach the site as someone striving to be a scholar. If we go down the academic route we leave out too many--myself included. If you are coming to this site, I suspect that you, like me have a slant toward a non-exclusive approach. What would be the point of opening up the site to be written and edited by all, if only a handful of people in this whole world are qualified to do the writing/editing? There is already a good process in place for hashing out academic interest. So let's leave the academic arguments to the academic journals and conferences and focus on being scholars of the scriptures.

2.) Information gleaned from academic sources can give us insights into the scriptures. To prevent this from taking on too much of an academic slant I propose that academic sources only be used on this site in the following circumstances:

• The information provided must give insight directly into the relevant scripture.
• The source of the information must be given. Any academic information that is not commonly known to Feast upon the Word readers must be cited. Others should feel free to remove information until a source is provided.
• The information posted must be appropriately qualified. For example it would not be appropriate to cite an academic with a minority position in their field without qualifying it with something like "though most biblical scholars disagree, xxxxx recently argued that ..."
• A short statement about the view should be sufficient. If more information is needed it should be posted on a user sub-page or an external site.

So what do others think? If we all agree on these I will work them into our policies.

--Matthew Faulconer 08:10, 7 Aug 2005 (CEST)

Looks good, works for me... Rob Fergus 15:19, 8 Aug 2005 (CEST)

It looks good. The one thing I might add is the need to mention academic or religious affiliations when necessary. This would play the same role as the disclaimer here with anti-mormon sources. I think scholars write to different audiences and undertake different research based on their personal religious affiliation and university affiliations. MJ 15:27, 8 Aug 2005 (CEST)

Sounds good to me. I did find the original commentary interesting but was put off a bit by its not referring to some sources of information, so what's there now is an improvement. Eric 16:18, 9 Aug 2005 (CEST)