Featured How Bad is Wikipedia on the Bible?

It would have been nice if you had clarified in your statement who or what I was directing contempt at. You did not, leaving readers to think I might be directing contempt at Rippon. Clarity is important in such cases.

 

Um, you do know there are many casual readers on the BB who don't click on the links, right?

 

There are so many more errors in the Wiki on "Textual Criticism" that I won't even try to list all of them, but one caught my attention. Down the page it says, "Many theological organisations, societies, newsletters, and churches also hold to this belief, including "AV Publications", Sword of The LORD Newsletter, The Antioch Bible Society [97] and others."

Really? First of all, "AV Publications" is simply Riplinger's publishing company (using the term lightly). Secondly, the "Sword of the Lord" (not LORD) is not a "newsletter" but a full-fledged newspaper. Thirdly, the so-called "Antioch Bible Society" is only one weird website with broken links, many of them simply going back to the same page, not some actual Bible Society.

How can you trust an article with such basic, easily corrected errors?

 

No, I never said it was intentional. I actually assumed it was not, but simple carelessness.

And then you react with an insult. Whatever.

 

You are wise. I agree it is often a quick good resource for such informal things, but not for any kind of serious research.

 

Interesting article which itself could use peer review. The headline states, "Study: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica," but the article says, "That averages out to 2.92 mistakes per article for Britannica and 3.86 for Wikipedia." That is a big difference, actually proving that Wiki is much less accurate.

The difference between a traditional encyclopedia and Wikipedia is that traditional articles are written by recognized scholars (ISBE is great for this reason), but Wiki articles are written by, well, anyone! :tonofbricks:

 

Thank you for the kind words.

 

In the Wiki article "Textus Receptus," there are are some strange things. The first paragraph says, "Erasmus' edition differed markedly from the classic form of that text, and included some missing parts back translated from the Latin Vulgate.The Cromo."

Now why in the world it says "The Cromo" at the end I'll never know. I assume the writer meant "Vulgate."

Anyway, the statement is misleading as it stands. First of all, the TR does not "differ markedly" all throughout the NT, and that should have been noted. For example, comparing the Scrivener TR to the first ed. of the Byzantine Textform Greek NT in Galatians (I haven't yet compared the 2nd ed.), I found that they were virtually identical in Ch. 1 (the only difference being: '), have slight differences not affecting meaning in Ch. 2 and 3; they are identical in Ch. 4, 5 and 6. On the other hand, there are many differences in the two in the book of Revelation. So, Wikipedia is quite off the mark here.

Again, the sentence in Wiki says "included some missing parts." This is strange, and is a good example of the poor writing often seen on Wikiedia, allowable there since anyone who joins can change the wording. You can't include parts if they are missing, right? What the article should have said is that Erasmus' mss of Revelation were missing a few verses, so he back-translated them from the Latin Vulgate into Greek.

 

In spite of the fact that I did not attack Rippon, but only criticized his source. And you "defend" Rippon by attacking me. Interesting approach.

 

I'll not go through the entire TR article, but I would like to note how sloppy the attestation is in a typical Wiki article. (You see constant notes in Wiki articles saying, "Citation needed.") In this one you have a footnote at the end of the section on the "Textual Criticism of the Textus Receptus" where it says about the Westcott/Hort Greek NT, "The text is based mainly on Codex Vaticanus in the Gospels. All the footnote says is, "Westcott & Hort, The New Testament In The Original Greek (New York 1882).

If this were in a paper from a student of mine I would note, "Not an acceptable citation." In the first place, it does not prove anything about the statement it footnotes. In the second place, the publisher should be noted. In the third place, this is the two volume edition of Westcott and Hort, and that should be noted. (There was a later one volume edition used by many colleges, including Wheaton where my parents went.)

 

Going back to the "Textual Criticism" article, remember that I said that many Wiki articles have notations saying "Citation needed." This is a commendable feature of Wikipedia. However, what often happens is a footnote is then added which proves nothing.

This caused an interesting situation in the first paragraph (which I noted was plagiarized). The Wiki footnotes are where the original numbers were, but with the numbers changed. By the way, you can see the source of the plagiarism here: https://books.google.com/books?id=a...he relationships between manuscripts.&f=false