Marc Goodacre of New Testament Gateway points out that historians in several disciplines are teaming up to make Wikipedia a better reference tool in their areas of expertise. For details, go here.
Chris Brady announces that in the coming months, the online Newsletter for Targumic and Cognate Studies will include a “searchable bibliographic database, Wiki edited by scholars in the field, and hopefully some images of targumic manuscripts.”
Does that mean that Targumen and Targuwomen are also teaming up to make Wikipedia a better reference tool in their area of expertise? Not necessarily, but here’s hoping.
Why does it matter? It matters because if I google “Targum Onkelos” with a view to reading an up-to-date and concise introduction to it, the two most relevant links that show up on the first page of results are Targum Onkelos and Targum in Wikipedia. Both are sad little entries designed, apparently, to turn someone off to the field of Targum Studies.
To be sure, Targum provides links of high quality. Except for the woefully outdated Jewish Encyclopedia and Catholic Encyclopedia articles, their contents however do not and were not meant to serve as a portal into an exciting field.
It will be interesting to see how long it takes for someone to point out the correct masculine and feminine plurals of targuman in a comment to this post.
Hi John! Sorry to delay in posting a comment here. I confess to be at a loss to offer a female form of Targuman other than Targuwoman. I do look forward to the addition of Mikra, the Targudog.
I have not waded into the murky waters of the Wikidebate but by and large I am a supporter of Wiki. I certainly think that we as scholars should, where time permits, update and contribute to those posts. My goal with the NTCS, however, is to provide a single, reliable online source for such issues surrounding the Targumim and Targumic studies. I believe there is a mechanism for connecting Wiki entries with other online sources (or at least, I know that Answers.com pulls from Wiki) so perhaps that would be one way to maintain the updates. If nothing else, I would hope to continue to update links in Wiki to point to NTCS.
(Which reminds me, I need to do that... Done. I think I got them all.)
Posted by: Chris Brady | August 13, 2007 at 08:45 AM