Talk:Censorship of the Bible

Feedback from New Page Review process

I left the following feedback for the creator/future reviewers while reviewing this article: Kindly take a look at the Reference section; there are a lot of errors..

Csgir (talk) 07:33, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Think they are fixed now.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 16:37, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Page Name: censorship? bible?

The page name does not sit well with me: according to the Oxford dictionary, censorship is "the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security."

So I would expect this article to be about banning sentences or phrases. Instead it is about suppression or authorization or destruction of whole publications.

Also, I think the (and this is a wider issue) that "The Bible" is used where sometimes "scriptures" would be better. This is because, especially before the 1600s, (vernacular) scriptures were rarely collected into complete volumes: for example, the Wycliffite scriptures are often just the Gospels, or just the Psalms, or just the Hexeteuch.Rick Jelliffe (talk) 12:45, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

1849 Italian New Testament printed in Rome

Greetings. I would like to ask what the reference is for the information "During the short period of the Roman Republic in 1849, over 3,600 copies of the New Testament translated into in Italian were printed in Rome. After the revival of the Papal States, the government sealed the New Testaments, which were in the possession of the American ambassador. The police checked daily to see if the seals were still intact. After some time, the government purchased the Bibles in order to burn them gradually." Thank you!!Yetzer.C (talk) 12:17, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

I found a mention of this incident here. It is not suitable as a source unfortunately. Apparently a printer changed the word "publicans" to "republicans"!--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 03:05, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Unsourced paragraphs

@Epiphyllumlover: there is numerous unsourced paragraphs. I have added a Citation needed template next to some of them. Could you try to source each unsourced paragraph or remove said unsourced paragraphs? Veverve (talk) 23:06, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Translation#Include_citations stipulates that foreign language citations need not be included in translated articles; possibly you were unaware of this.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 02:48, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

@Epiphyllumlover: I was not aware, but the fact remains that numerous paragraphs are unsourced and should be sourced. Your link says: "All articles must comply with English Wikipedia policies and guidelines, including WP:Verifiability." Veverve (talk) 02:54, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

I should correct myself above; that was only for foreign sources where an English source also exists. Also see the second bullet point here: Wikipedia:These_are_not_original_research#Translation_and_contextualizing; original translations of quotes into English are permissible and not considered original research, possibly you were unaware of this. Additionally, feel free to go into the German article to find any citations I missed and add them into this one.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 02:48, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Referring to “The Bible”

This article does not really address the fact that different versions of the Bible exist and that a good deal of banning was done of those that included material not considered to be legitimate. The term “apocrypha” is not used in the entire article. Some books, even today, purport to be the “Word of God” but have only tenuous connection to accepted scripture. This seems to come under the vague and insufficient term “translations” here. I would encourage someone better versed in the subject than I to make clear that banning a book calling itself a bible when it isn’t has that as the motivation.

An example might be the inclusion of “Lilith” in certain volumes as Adam’s first wife. No mainstream denomination would accept that and likely would not consider such a book to be a real Bible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sychonic (talk • contribs) 12:48, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

In need of RSs for some councils

This source quotes the 1234 concile de Tarracon [sic, Tarragone] and the 1246 concile de Béziers. This more recent source states the interdiction of translating the Bible into vernacular was forbidden by the councils of Toulouse and Tarragona, and the synod of Sens (1528) and the French parliament (1543). Does anyone have recent RSs which directly contain those information, to support those claims? Veverve (talk) 02:33, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Nonsensical sentence

I have removed this sentence, which appears to make no sense: it has no grammatical Subject.

"In the course of a confirmation of the writings in 1215 at Fourth Council of the Lateran's condemnation of the writings of David of Dinant ordered Gregory IX. in 1231, to hand over all the theological books written in Latin to the diocesan bishops."

If anyone can make it a proper sentence with whatever meaning was intended in the source, please go ahead. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 18:55, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Bull

"The Lateran Council confirmed Benedict XIII's bull Unigenitus dei filius."<ref name="bbkl">

I removed this sentence because 1) the last Lateran Council was 400 years earlier not after, and 2) the Ungenitus it adopted was a different document. See the Note on Unigenitus

Rick Jelliffe (talk) 14:59, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Gregory XI

I have removed section "Catholic" which read:

"In 1376, Pope Gregory XI ordered that all literature on the Bible should be ...(put under church control)"

I have been unable to find a reliable source WP:RS for this. This passage is quoted many times on the internet (its unusual phrase "literature on the Bible" is a giveaway.") Unless someone can find a convincing academic non-partisan source (in English), this may well be another sectarian legend or Chinese Whisper (e.g. Gregory XI condemned Wyciffe's teaching, Wycliffe translated the Bible, therefore Gregory XI condemned vernacular scripture?) Rick Jelliffe (talk) 14:06, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Timing

A flaw in the current article is that it mentions starts of censorships, but not when they ended, or how they were implemented, etc. It sometimes does this by implication, by mentioning some other event (e.g. the publication of the Great Bible), but it is not systematic or coherant, I think. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 06:13, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Old wives' tales

The article is pretty shoddy, and full of dodgy material, all skewed one way: overstating the nature and extent of biblical restrictions.

• It gives a quote from the Council of Constance that was given by Arundel 3 years prior. (fixed)
  • And I am dubious about the Arundel quote too...

• It says that Tyndale was executed for bible translation. But that was not a crime nor one of the charges. (see the Tyndale article.) Not fixed at time of writing.

• It speaks of Wycliffe's bible as if there was only one version, and as if Wycliffe translayed himself, for which there is slight evidence, but much repeated.

• It has an interpretation of the burning of heretics law that is not sustained by reading the article.

• It fails to make the connection of heresy and sedition, of state action versus church action: for example, that the laws against Wyciffe-ite texts were banned after violent mob actions that had included murder.

There may be more. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 20:16, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Y I have added a Controversy subsection to the Middle Ages section, and added some initial material (...I will look for more citations). This is because it seems that there is so much dodgy material and partisan inference in the body that it would be a lot of work trying to make it NPOV or accurate to modern research. So it looked like a "Controversy" section to give some balance was the most Wikipedia-esque approach. It is a start rather than a perfectly formed solution. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 14:44, 30 August 2023 (UTC)