Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Oiketerion

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 no consensus. Sandstein 06:57, 22 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oiketerion[edit]

[Hide this box] New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

A (low quality) dictionary definition, with insufficient potential to be expanded to an article. The claim that this Greek term means "the body as a dwelling place for the spirit" in one specific rather unclear Biblical passage represents an unverifiable religious viewpoint^[1] that is not particularly supported by the actual source text and is not reflected in many translations, which translate it as simply meaning "a home".^{[2][3][4][5][6]} Deprodded without explanation. --Lambiam 16:53, 5 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. Curbon7 (talk) 17:41, 5 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Christianity-related deletion discussions. Curbon7 (talk) 17:41, 5 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Greece-related deletion discussions. Curbon7 (talk) 17:41, 5 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Weak keep. This book describes the concept in exactly those terms. I'm also seeing several non-RS sources with similar material. SpinningSpark 20:59, 5 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In this source it represents a sense ostensibly inspired by the author's religious viewpoint, not one present in the sense in which it is used everywhere else except in this particular Bible verse. So this might be used as original research to establish that some Christian authors read a spiritual sense in an otherwise commonplace Greek word. This might belong in an article with a title like Religious interpretations of the term oiketerion, if we can find secondary sources discussing this. You can find such discussions for many Greek terms in Paul's letters, such as for apostasia,^[7] often in untransliterated form like for the term κατέχων,^[8] but I did not see a similar discussion for oiketerion. --Lambiam 08:39, 6 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Our article 2 Corinthians may seem a plausible place to retain the material content, but even there it is IMO undue. --Lambiam 08:46, 6 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that notability is weak, hence my weak keep. My point was only that this is not an "unverifiable religious viewpoint" as claimed in your nom. It is a viewpoint that can be verified. On the name, ideally there should be a bracketed disambiguator like Oiketerion (biblical concept). The problem there is that WP:QUALIFIER prevents the use of disambiguators on pages that don't need disambiguating. That could be solved by creating a soft redirect to Wiktionary. 2 Corinthians is definitely an UNDUE place to put it for something so weakly supported. The ideal target would be the religous belief system from which this arose, which I'm afraid I can't identify. SpinningSpark 09:19, 6 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The claim that in this context the Greek term represents the body of the resurrected believer – some go as far as to state that it "clearly" does so^[9] – is not verifiable. This unverifiable claim is informed by a religious viewpoint. The sources that state this represent a non-authoritative religious viewpoint. The fact that this viewpoint, abstracting from its validity, exists is obvious. It is less obvious that – apart from the question whether reporting this would give undue weight to it – this can be established without venturing into the realm of original research. How is this observation not an analysis by us of primary-source material? --Lambiam 14:28, 6 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I get what point you are driving at. Of course it's not verifiable in the scientific experimental sense. No religious belief is, but that's not the kind of verifiability Wikipedia needs. And what makes a religious viewpoint authoritative, they all lack any kind of authority as far as I am concerned. If the article was claiming this was the view of the Anglican Church that would be different. An authoritive source for that is conceivable. But the article makes no such claim, only the weasely "...has been interpreted..." SpinningSpark 15:44, 6 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I was not trying to make a point, but merely to clarify what I meant in the nomination by the words "unverifiable religious viewpoint", which referred to a specific claim about the meaning of the Greek term as used in the Bible. That claim was quite explicitly made in an earlier version of the article, the one I originally prodded. None of the three supplied references cited a reliable source (in the Wikipedia sense). Yet this very claim is the only possible argument for notability; if you remove it, nothing of potential encyclopedic interest remains. --Lambiam 17:27, 6 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In that case I don't think we have too much to disagree on. I agree that without the claim on the Biblical meaning the page is not suitable as a Wikipedia article (per NOTDICTIONARY) and that if that claim cannot be cited then it should be deleted. But since I did find a source directly supporting the claim (actually, I found three book sources, but two of them come from self-publishing houses) then I'm still at weak keep. SpinningSpark 18:01, 6 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep See "οἰκητήριον" und verwandte Worte auf christlichen Grabschriften and 2 Corinthians (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament) for examples of scholarship on the topic. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:27, 8 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Weak delete. Right now the article is a pure DICTDEF. Sourcing presented here is very weak (the second source is in German and was presented without any analysis or indication the editor who found it even reads German, and there is no evidence it meets WP:SIGCOV). The third source does not seem to meet SIGCOV either, but there is a possibility of merging and redirecting to Second Epistle to the Corinthians, perhaps? Ping me if better sources are found and I'll revise my vote. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:40, 8 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep -- No objection to renaming to Oiketerion (biblical concept). The classification of several references as "unreliable" is in fact WP:OR by a WP editor. Lenski (who is cited) is a respectable author of commentaries, which I have seen cited. Thayer (quoted verbatim) in biblicalapps (ref 5) was a leading biblical lexicographer (of Cambridge, Mass), originally published in 1835. My own copy is a 1977 edition, printed in 1983; I just checked it. As the word appears in two places in the New testament merging it to either would be inappropriate and would probably unbalance the target article. There is probably scope for expansion, discussing the theological concept involved. I am therefore removing the "unreliable" tags. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:07, 10 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Peterkingiron: — Please note that these references were added after my nomination of the article here. --Lambiam 20:37, 11 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for checking if the sources are unreliable or not, but we still need to show they contain a discussion of the topic that meets SIGCOV. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:56, 11 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. All concepts discussed in the Bible can be assummed to be notable, because they are covered in earlier specialized encyclopedias. DGG ( talk ) 09:56, 11 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The term is used in the Bible, which is not the same as being discussed. The term ταμεῖον (tameion) is used four times in the Bible, for example in Luke 12:24. Can you identify an "earlier specialized encyclopedia" covering this concept? --Lambiam 20:49, 11 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Nothing indicates that this is anything more than a dictionary entry, let alone a "biblical concept" (whatever that means) with inherent notability. Andrew D's first source seems to be more a catalog of that and related words (not just 'oiketerion') in funerary inscriptions than actual scholarship discussing this specific term. The second is a passing mention which amounts to a dictionary definition. The other sources are also basic dictionary entries. Textbook failure of WP:NOTDICTIONARY. wikt:οἰκητήριον is already enough to cover the subject, an encyclopedia article isn't needed. Avilich (talk) 23:17, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Can this be just redirected to Wiktionary for now? There is not enough content here.. - GizzyCatBella🍁 10:37, 13 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete /send to Wikitionary - this is a dictionary definition and nothing more. Not encyclopedic. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:11, 17 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
/Greek wiktionary - if this is just a Greek word with no demonstrable higher significance, be gone! Iskandar323 (talk) 16:13, 17 October 2021 (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.