Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Biblical names of stars


 * 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 merge to Biblical astronomy. There is a clear consensus to move/rename/merge this to/to/with Biblical astronomy (which in itself appears to be a redirect. I invited participating voters to make sure that this finds the proper spot. With thanks to all participants, including the nominator. Drmies (talk) 21:39, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Biblical names of stars

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

OK. this is an odd one. I deleted this article as a pretty much straight copy of this web page which has a copyright notice on it, but it was then pointed out to me that the web page itself is a transcript of the "Astronomy in the Bible" entry from The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1907, and is thus out of copyright. My issue is - is this a viable Wikipedia article? Is it a notable topic? And more of an issue, although it's from an encyclopedia, it reads like original research. The original only has a couple of citations (see the web page mentioned above), and the ones added to this article only serve to inform single sentences about a couple of stars, not the subject as a whole. Further, of course, it contains no research done on the subject since 1907, and is therefore over a century out of date. Thoughts? Black Kite (talk) 13:34, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete This is not really definite information, more like speculation of various people.  A more promising possibility would be an article on Astronomy in the Bible, if good sources could be found. I expect they could be. Borock (talk) 14:02, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
 * "Astronomy in the Bible" now redirects to Biblical cosmology. I say change this and start a new article since they are not the same thing. Borock (talk) 14:05, 26 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep Astronomers have written entire books about this such as Maunder's Astronomy of the Bible or Schiaparelli's Astronomy in the Old Testament.  See the The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia for an extensive encyclopedic treatment. Andrew D. (talk) 15:26, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, absolutely; I'm not saying that the concept is non-notable. There's probably a good article to be written on Biblical astronomy.  However, does an article 99.5% copied from a 108-year-old text with practically no evidence to back it up (in other words, original research) make a viable article?  My view is that it does not, and we'd be better off starting from scratch. Black Kite (talk) 20:46, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:46, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Bible-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:46, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists- related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 18:46, 28 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Rename (over rdirect) to Biblical astronomy -- In the early days of Wikipedia a lot of articles were taken from out-of-copyright encyclopedias; indeed that was encouraged. That is not a case of WP:OR, it is a transcript of a WP:RS, though an old one.  If there has been more recent research on the subject, that should of course be added.  If we started again there would be a lot of work to do.  BY all measn tag it for improvement, but do not delete it.  We have an article on Biblical cosmology, but that is about concepts such as heaven and earth.  Biblical astronomy redirects to that, but this AFD article is much more about that subject, and we should rename this article to that title (overwriting the redirect).  There is already a "see also" hat-link to the cosmology article in the AFD article.  "kosmos" and "astron" are both Greek works.  The latter measn "star" the former "order", whence world or universe (probably becauae it was thought to be ordered).  Peterkingiron (talk) 16:58, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Rename as Peterkingiron suggests. Snowsuit Wearer (talk&#124;contribs) 19:27, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep, and subsequently rename to Biblical astronomy. It is an interesting topic which certainly deserves coverage on Wikipedia. Merging to Biblical cosmology would not be proper, however, since cosmology is technically separate from astronomy. Therefore, Biblical astronomy should have an article of its own, and this one is a good start, but the title is somewhat inaccurate, as the article discusses not only stars but planets as well. There is also plenty of space for expansion, since, as mentioned by Andrew above me, there have been full books written about the topic of Biblical astronomy. (Rather conveniently, both of the books he listed appear to be in the public domain, so if someone could look over the books and use them to expand the article...) -- Biblio worm   19:56, 30 July 2015 (UTC)


 * 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.