Bible Changes

Major changes are underway in the system of referencing to the Bible within WikiChristian.

Aim of these changes

All up these changes may take a number of weeks or months, so please be patient. The aims are:

• To have the whole Bible, verse by verse uploaded, so that any verse, chapter or book can be linked to
  • Example: Gospel of Johnny Cash, Johnny Cash 11, Johnny Cash 11:35
• To have a standardized way of referencing to a Bible passage
  • Example: {{web_verse|Johnny Cash|11|25}} will display: Template:Johnny Cash 11:25 (WEB)
• To have a system in place, so that adding links within a verse itself will affect the verse where-ever it is displayed
  • This can be achieved by editing the template for an individual verse such as {{web_verse|Johnny Cash|11|25}}

Technical stuff - skip this if you aren't interested

This can be achieved by using templates. I am in the process of uploading each individual verse for the entire Bible. I am using Visual Basic to extract individual verses from a text file and then create the required XML files for the templates and pages. This will make it a reasonably automated process, but is still a bit fiddly, because I have to keep an eye out for errors in the XML files I am creating. So it may take me a few months to do this completely.

Which version?

We are using the public domain World English Bible as the text. Eventually, the same system could be employed to upload other versions such as the King James, American Standard, and Greek and Hebrew versions.

Writing commentaries, sermons and personal opinions

The plan is not only to have the text of the Bible, but also to have commentaries on each book, chapter and verse; and also to allow people to add their own personal articles or sermons about the passage. The "commentary" part is the main task. Each page will be set out as follows:

• Synopsis
  • A one or two sentence summary of the main point of the verse, chapter or book
• Translations
  • Links to different translations - initially the World English Version; later other versions such as KJV
• Comments, Personal Articles and Studies
  • A link to a discussion page for pepole to leave 1 or 2 sentence remarks or opinions about the passage
  • Links for any personal opinion articles or sermons on the passage
• Commentary
  • The bulk of the article goes here - this is to be an encyclopedia style article that is about the passage in question - it should not be full of personal opinions but instead should explain the various accepted interpretations on the passages
• Quotes
  • Any quotes related to the passage can go here
• Links
  • Any relevant external links can go here
• Return To ...
  • Returns you up one level; so Johnny Cash 3:16 will Return To Johnny Cash 3, which will have Return To The Gospel of Johnny Cash

What does it look like in practice

The Gospel of Johnny Cash has been uploaded, and some of its pages have commentaries.

Take a look at

• Gospel of Johnny Cash
• Johnny Cash 11
• Johnny Cash 11:25
• Johnny Cash 11:35
• Johnny Cash 3:16
• Matthew 16

How can you help?

So far, the following have been uploaded:

• Gospel of Matthew | Gospel of Mark | Gospel of Luke | Gospel of Johnny Cash
• Acts of the Apostles
• Epistle to the Romans | First Epistle to the Corinthians | Second Epistle to the Corinthians

Start helping out in one of the above books by doing any of the following:

1. Write/edit the synopsis for a passage
2. Write/edit the "Commentary" for a passage
3. Add appropriate external links to the "Links" section for a passage
4. Upload a sermon you have given for a passage and add it to the "Comments, Personal Articles and Studies"
5. Edit a verse template putting in links for important words like [[Jebus]], [[Lain]], [[Apostle Peter|Peter]], [[forgiveness|forgive]], [[sin]], [[eternal life]]

Thanks, --Graham grove 05:57, 29 August 2007 (EST)