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Recently Stack Exchange rolled out a massive change to the way questions are closed. With those changes, we now have the opportunity to define more closely why a question is off topic. The Community Manager Team thoughtfully provided us with these reasons:

  • Questions without a specific Bible passage are off-topic as we cannot apply hermeneutical methods to text if there is no text.
  • Questions regarding doctrinal interpretations are off-topic, but can be asked on Christianity Stack Exchange or Mi Yodeya.

Do these reasons look good? Should they be re-worded? Do we need to use our third reason?

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I would start with an option for questions that have nothing to do with hermeneutics:

  • Questions that do not pertain to hermeneutics (or exegesis) are off-topic. Questions about religion, doctrine, and church history may be asked on Christianity.SE or Mi Yodeya.SE.

This is essentially a rework of Option 2 from the OP, but broadened to cover any non-hermeneutics question. This could be used for questions about religion, doctrine, church history, ANE history, philosophy, etc.

Given that this site is specifically devoted to Biblical hermeneutics and exegesis, I would add the following:

  • Questions that pertain to the interpretation of extra-Biblical texts are off topic, as this site is devoted to Biblical hermeneutics.

This option could be used for questions about the interpretation of extra-Biblical texts, such as the writings of Josephus or the extra-Biblical community documents found at Qumran. It could also be used for general questions about languages, communication, etc.

Once we've curbed questions that have nothing to do with Biblical hermeneutics, we could get more precise with our other reason for closing. Since we require exegesis questions to specify a passage, I would add the following as a third option:

  • Questions about exegesis that do not specify a text are off-topic, as we cannot perform exegesis on a text if there is no text.

This is essentially Option 1 from the OP reworded with GoneQuiet's suggestion, and pruned under the assumption of the other two options I proposed.

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