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It has been suggested in previous posts regarding the exegesis tag that we blacklist the tag. The subject came up again in chat.

Reasoning

It seems that a large majority of our questions are exegetic questions. To be complete, each of these questions seeking exegesis would include this .

Synonyms

Keep in mind, though, that there are some possible synonyms out there. You can vote on those here (if you have the rep):

https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/tags/exegesis/synonyms

Question

So, the question boils down to: Should we blacklist ?

2 Answers 2

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Yes

Specifically, I'd say that nearly every tag related to a book in the Bible implicitly is also an instance of . So if a question is tagged , it will invariably be tagged . The two suggested synonyms ( and ) would be even more applicable. It's hard to know what additional meaning provides if a book is already tagged.

Absent of a book tag, is probably not being used properly and the question is probably about instead.

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  • We discussed this on chat as well. There's also questions regarding books that are non-exegetical. (Factual: When was the book of Job written? Hermeneutical: What hermeneutical approaches should be considered in regards to Revelation?) These categories, along with exegesis, make up the three partitions (if you will) that questions fall into.
    – Richard
    Oct 18, 2011 at 16:08
  • @Richard: I was under the impression the first question was considered off-topic. ;-) Do we have or anticipate many examples of these?
    – Jon 'links in bio' Ericson
    Oct 18, 2011 at 16:12
  • @Richard: And thanks for the edit. That looks much better.
    – Jon 'links in bio' Ericson
    Oct 18, 2011 at 16:13
  • Are source-critical questions on topic? It seems that both of those questions would be on topic. I don't expect that we'll see many here, though.
    – Richard
    Oct 18, 2011 at 16:24
  • @Richard: I could go either way on this assuming someone else will take care of re-tagging questions. ;-)
    – Jon 'links in bio' Ericson
    Oct 18, 2011 at 16:29
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    I actually like the idea of breaking down exegesis into smaller sub-categories in some fashion. As pointed out, it looks like there are problems with this particular delineation, but if we can find some breakdown that works, I'd favor it.
    – Ray
    Oct 18, 2011 at 16:47
  • @Ray: Subcategories of exegesis would be even better and remove my main objection (not enough signal for the noise).
    – Jon 'links in bio' Ericson
    Oct 18, 2011 at 17:30
  • Well, I edited a question that ought to be tagged "hermeneutical-approaches" and "genesis", but not "exegesis". To be consistent, I might need to change my answer here.
    – Jon 'links in bio' Ericson
    Oct 18, 2011 at 21:55
  • Tags are a system of classification and can be as different as the Dewy Decimal system and LoC. If they are to be meaningful, one has to study the system. Otherwise it is like turning children loose in the library to put the books away. The tags become less useful if they are not used consistently. There is a reason that only librarians put books back. So unless there are people really dedicated to classification, then let it be a free-for all because it will be that any way. The last thing I want to do is have discussions on tags. Life is too short.
    – Bob Jones
    Oct 21, 2011 at 2:14
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    Hey Jon can you see Can we get rid of the exegesis tag? I think we're at a point we'd actually like to have this tag in a blacklist.
    – Caleb
    Dec 6, 2014 at 15:25
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    @Caleb: with pleasure.
    – Jon 'links in bio' Ericson
    Dec 7, 2014 at 6:18
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No, keep the tag

Yes, more questions are exegesis than anything else; however, it's not as though we're dealing with all but a few edge cases. There are very distinct groups of questions. The largest is exegesis, but the "hermeneutical-approaches" group is distinct enough that having the exegesis tag avoids confusion in these instances.

The last I checked, exegesis questions accounted for about 2/3 of the questions on the site. Yes, this is the majority, but it's not enough that the other questions are a handful of exceptions.

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  • Out of curiosity, how did you arrive at 2/3? Only 16 questions are tagged exegesis right now.
    – Jon 'links in bio' Ericson
    Oct 18, 2011 at 16:09
  • I had looked through all the questions and came to my own conclusion as to whether each one was an exegesis question or not.
    – Ray
    Oct 18, 2011 at 16:42
  • Well statistical analysis is one potential use of the tags. If this is a useful tag for some (and someone is willing to retag questions as they arrive), I wouldn't be too opposed.
    – Jon 'links in bio' Ericson
    Oct 18, 2011 at 17:28
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    If we keep the tag, should we constantly retag to make sure all questions are tagged appropriately? It seems like that could get tedious if 2/3 of the questions need the tag.
    – jrdioko
    Oct 18, 2011 at 17:44
  • No, we don't need to retag. SE-network wide, tagging has always been fickle. We should try to retag questions when we see them. However, we shouldn't stress over trying to get all the old stuff fixed.
    – Richard
    Oct 20, 2011 at 12:31

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