On Wikipedia, the God of the Bible Is the Head of a Pantheon

My God is called, in the Bible, Yahweh. That is, Yahweh is a speculative transliteration of the Hebrew name we know only by the vowel-less “tetragrammaton,” YHWH, or יְהוָה, which in generations past was rendered instead Jehovah. In your Bible, the name is translated, rather than transliterated, with the stylized the LORD. This is the creator of the universe, who in Christian theology is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

This is all just to give background so you can understand the following.

The Wikipedia article titled “Yahweh” is egregiously biased. Why do I say so? Look at how it opens:

Yahweh was an ancient Semitic deity of weather and war in the ancient Levant, the national god of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and the head of the pantheon of the polytheistic Israelite religion. Although there is no clear consensus regarding the geographical origins of the deity, scholars generally hold that Yahweh was associated with Seir, Edom, Paran, and Teman, and later with Canaan. The worship of the deity reaches back to at least the early Iron Age, and likely to the late Bronze Age, if not somewhat earlier.

Yahweh was? A deity of weather and war? The head of a pantheon? The Israelites had a polytheistic religion?

So secular scholars have been saying for decades. The speculative ideas (this is all purely speculation on their part) go back many decades, but this theory became au courant in religious studies departments around the 1990s. And because those are the only scholars whose views Wikipedia will condescend to document in this article, these scholars’ views on Yahweh are what Wikipedia tells the world about Yahweh. And Wikipedia says this in its own voice; it does not say this is a common secular, skeptical view about Yahweh, but simply that this is what is true about Yahweh, period. To hell with anyone who happens to disagree, for any reason.

I laid out this problem in Essay 2 of my “Nine Theses on Wikipedia.” I wrote:

The claim that Yahweh was a tribal war god is not a neutral, historical fact, but a modern theory, rejected by many of the most deeply erudite Bible scholars around the world, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim.⁵ But to Wikipedia, the claim is treated as “neutral.” The page’s chief maintainers do not tolerate⧉ internal debate on the matter. But the article’s stance certainly is not neutral, precisely because it deliberately ignores the majority view on the topic named by the title, a view taken by the billions worldwide who worship Yahweh.⁶ Even the views of serious scholars critical of the supposed secular “consensus” are omitted and treated with scorn.

On the talk page, one gatekeeper writes, “This article is neither about Judaism, nor Christianity. It is an article about Ancient history.” And later, “The Bible isn’t a valid source for evidence of authenticating history. See WP:RSPSCRIPTURE.⧉ … There is no Biblical perspective upon Yahwism [i.e., the religion of the ancient Israelites of the First Temple period].” This is convenient for those who like the article in its present state; it means Wikipedians who want to add the Jewish or Christian perspectives about Yahweh are simply not welcome to work on this article, despite the fact that it is indeed the name of their God. They are instructed to proceed to articles titled “God in Judaism”⧉ and “God in Christianity.”⧉ In the latter, the name “Yahweh” does not appear until some 1,400 words into the article. Hence, the view about the topic described as “Yahweh,” according to the largest religious grouping of people whose God is Yahweh—the Christians—is systematically marginalized by a comparatively tiny minority of gatekeepers.

I posted the Nine Theses to Wikipedia’s virtual door last September 29, and, within a few days, this short section had become one of the most hotly disputed in the whole essay collection. The last-quoted paragraph was removed from the essay, despite the fact that it is a user essay, in my own user space. I restored it (there is no good reason to remove it, even according to Wikipedia’s own policy), and it was removed again as “harassment.” Read the above: is that harassment?

Let me go ahead, then, and respond to the various responses. I am responding here on my blog, so that my text remains entirely intact.

The opening shot by tgeorgescu:

You have the guts to tell us that religious dogma should censor historical fact.

I responded:

“Religious dogma should censor historical fact”? I am not suggesting anyone censor anything on Yahweh. I am saying that the article should represent the broad spectrum of informed opinion on the subject, including views from many different traditions. To do so just is to take a neutral approach to the subject.

Anyone who knows even a little about biblical scholarship knows that there are no undisputed “facts,” as you imply, on the subject. All conclusions, drawn by anyone on any side of an issue of theology and biblical scholarship (both of which are important to the topic named by “Yahweh”) are driven by methodological assumptions. Not even the people the article cites would deny this.

tgeorgescu goes on to assert that “fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals who deny the ground rules of historiography,” stating that Wikipedia, per WP:GEVAL, “cannot be ‘neutral’ between the two sides,” because “Wikipedia isn’t supposed to play neutral between mainstream history and pseudohistory.” Immediately, the views of actual Christians and Torah-believing Jews—represented by serious scholars at their seminaries and yeshivas—are simply dismissed as “pseudohistory.” Such scholars are “ignoramuses and cult apologists,” who write “cult pseudohistory,” rejecting evidence “in the name of sectarian theology.” tgeorgescu sniffs that “The narrative that the Israelites were monotheistic starting with Abraham…contains so many factual impossibilities that it does not bear any resemblance to verifiable history,” and concludes that “the archaeology of the Holy Land delivered a mortal blow to their theology.” Yet he adds—risibly—that “Christians are not excluded for [sic: from] this article. On the contrary, this is the stuff that gets taught in many divinity schools.” I suppose those would be “divinity schools” where future pastors learn that the Bible contains “factual impossibilities” and where their theology is dealt a “mortal blow. Of course, this would not be what pastors and priests learn at some of the best American seminaries, such as Trinity Theological Seminary, Westminster Theological Seminary, and Dallas Theological Seminary for Protestants, as well as institutions like Catholic University of America, Pontifical Biblical Institute, Jewish Theological Seminary, and Yeshiva University. Among the distinguished scholars who would disagree with the article’s basic line would be Gleason Archer, John Sailhamer, Bruce Waltke, Pope Benedict XVI, John Bergsma, Umberto Cassuto, and Michael Wyschogrod—this list would ultimately be thousands of names long. But they’re all persona non grata on Wikipedia. Even Popes, apparently.

This, of course, does not need any substantive response; it is not serious. To any sane, ordinary person, res ipsa loquitur. tgeorgescu has laid bare his bigotry with the supreme confidence of unassailable certainty. He does not argue that the article is neutral. He argues that one side in the dispute between a confessional understanding of Scripture and the “scholars” who obey “the ground rules of historiography” has won, they have won with absolute finality, and that religious views need not even be documented in the article, because they are only so much “pseudohistory.” Any requirement of neutrality here counts as “false balance”—because one side is obviously correct and the other is obviously incorrect.

Another commentator puts it this way:

I think Wikipedia should pursue truth. Why should Wikipedia give extra credence to a belief because it is popular or deeply held?

You claim that the Yahweh “page’s chief maintainers do not tolerate internal debate” on this topic. But you link a talk page full of open debates where these claims are freely debated. If the “erudite Bible scholars” that reject Israelite polytheism have been unjustly silenced here, I did not see it.

Can you please point to a specific user or incident of debate suppression or unjustified content removal?

I too think Wikipedia should pursue truth, and I think I am more strongly committed to it than these Wikipedians, whose confidence in their own views is so poor that they cannot permit other views to be documented—not asserted—as part of the human experience. That, after all, is how free, truth-seeking individuals can decide matters for themselves. And while they might permit debate on the scope of the argument, it is quickly shut down. More to the point, what apparently cannot be debated (anymore) are the secularist ground rules—the “S” in “GASP”—or the merits of the excluded views, except to dismiss them.

In all this discussion, what no one has done is to defend the idea that Wikipedia has no obligation, under its neutrality policy, to treat religious views fairly and neutrally. I would have thought that, of all the things about which we might want neutrality in a radically open, global project, religion would be the first. And so it was, for its first ten years at least (see the article from 2012). But not anymore.

If this article is representative, we may conclude that Wikipedia is not just a secular website, it is an anti-religious website. It is also increasingly clear that Wikipedians are comfortable with the suggestion that they are not, in fact, committed to neutrality in any useful sense at all.