Main Page/About
From BibleWiki
The Bible Wiki is an on-going project to build a user-created free scholarly commentary to the entire text of the Christian Bible.
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User Created
This site is a wiki - meaning that anyone can create an account and edit almost any page. If you see an error on a page, you can correct it instantly. Or if you want to add new content, you don't need to ask for permission first - you just go ahead and create it.
Free
The commentary is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, sometimes known as copyleft. That is to say, it may be copied, modified, and redistributed freely, so long as the new version grants the same freedoms to others and acknowledges the Bible Wiki authors (a direct link back to the article satisfies our author credit requirement). The Wiki Bible will therefore remain free forever and can be used by anybody subject to certain restrictions, most of which serve to ensure that freedom.
Scholarly
The Bible Wiki aims to avoid disputes over religious doctrine. The goal is for all commentary to be restricted to exegesis of the text, limited to an examination of the text and context. Eisegesis (reading into), or exhortation based on the text, is to be avoided.
There are, of course, many differences of opinion within exegesis, and no-one can approach any religious document without bringing a range of personal opinion to bear on their examination. The Bible Wiki does not aim to portray a correct commentary, or adhere to any particular religious viewpoint: the general Wikipedia principle of Neutral point of view applies here. Opposing viewpoints should each be accurately represented and cited.
Commentary
The primary focus of this site is to produce a commentary on the Biblical text, not an encyclopedia of Biblical people, places, or doctrines. However, to avoid the significant redundancy involved in discussing people and places each time they are mentioned, it is also necessary to build articles on these topics that can be referred to in the body of the commentary.
Although the verse divisions with the Bible are a relatively modern invention, and often quite arbitrary, we have chosen to make the verse the basic 'unit of commentary'. As such each verse has its own page on this site. Ideally this page will include a standard Hebrew or Greek rendition of the text, the LXX greek where appropriate, and the text of several English translations. There should be a section on textual variants, a section on translation, and general notes on the verse. Where the passage is also included in another Book, notes will usually be made on any differences between these.
