Talk:Pillar of fire (theophany)

Pillar of Cloud[edit]

There has to be acknowledgement that the manifestation of God is a pillar of fire at night 'but' a pillar of cloud by day. mathwhiz 29 19:04, 26 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Undid revision 968747857, which removed the comment that several scholars have suggested the "pillar of fire" imagery may have indicated that the ancient Hebrews worshipped a volcano. The removal was accompanied by the justification that such a comment was "unsupported by the Bible" and that "volcanoes don't move." While true, this is not relevant to the section at hand: the imagery was in fact used by scholars to speculate about this and such speculation has been published in respected sources (including a book that won the Pulitzer Prize).

Merger[edit]

This article and Pillar of cloud refer to inextricably paired subjects, and the articles are largely duplicative of each other. The "fire" aspect seems better known, so it would make more sense to consolidate them under this title. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 18:11, 4 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree about the merger, but not sure about the title. Perhaps something more like "Pillars of fire and cloud" or "Pillar of fire and pillar cloud" (with redirects). (Part of the reason that Pillar of fire might come up so much more in Google may be that some use the term "pillar of smoke" instead of "Pillar of cloud").Yaakovaryeh (talk) 07:15, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Support the merge, as the articles are almost identical. As for the title, that's a little trickier. I think it should refer to both aspects, the fire and the cloud, but are these actually two separate pillars? Exodus 14:24 calls it "the pillar of fire and cloud" (singular), and Exodus 40:38 says "fire was in the cloud by night". I think, however, the two aspects are generally regarded as distinct manifestations, so I'd be fine with "pillars of fire and cloud" as a title (or "pillars of cloud and fire", which sounds a little smoother to my ear). DanFromAnotherPlace (talk) 11:10, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose the merge. Although similar, the two topics are stand-alone aspects and phenomena of the biblical Exodus including the crossing of the Red Sea. Duplicate language is fine, as that is enough to tie the subjects together, but they are two different commonly known long-term events. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:53, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Significant overlap is generally seen as a good reason to merge, even if the concepts are technically distinct. In this case, I think it's more than just an overlap – I actually can't think of anything we might want to include in one article but not the other. (Even the list of Bible verses is going to be the same, because the cloud and the fire are always mentioned together in the Bible.) I think this is a problem; it leads to duplication of labour and wastes editors' time. And I don't see any benefit for the reader in keeping the articles separate. DanFromAnotherPlace (talk) 18:35, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Substantial duplication of text kinda is a problem, because both versions won't stay in synch: someone will fix a typo, clarify some phrasing, or add a better citation to one article, but the other article doesn't get updated. Then a reader looking at both articles notices a difference and wonders if there's a reason why one article says one thing, but the other says something else. I went back and forth trying to figure out if there was some area of not-overlap that I wasn't aware of... which was a waste of my time and annoyed me to the point of proposing that we fix it. If two topics are inextricably linked, it makes more sense to cover them together. For example, Sid and Marty Krofft are two distinct people, but we cover them in a single article because most of the noteworthy things that can be said about one can be said about the other. Same with the Coen Brothers; Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; or Sodom and Gomorrah. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 22:43, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The comments present a good case for merging, mainly that even after DanFromAnotherPlace's extensive edits on the cloud page he says that there is still nothing there that couldn't be used on the second page. If merged, and hopefully merged well, then shouldn't the title be Pillar of fire and Pillar of cloud, with 'Pillar' upper cased in both? If the second 'pillar' is lower-cased it seems to lose some of its historic importance, and upper-cased it would present the two states of the pillar as equal. And is it certain that the name itself isn't a proper name (i.e. Piller of Fire, the biblical narrative seems to present this as a distinctly named temporary phenomena)? Randy Kryn (talk) 00:09, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Capitalizing both "Pillars" that way seems reasonable to me. I think the more succinct "Pillars of fire and cloud" would be good also. (We can have redirects from any plausible variations, so they'd all end up in the right place.) -Jason A. Quest (talk) 00:19, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, I don't think we can capitalise "pillar" in the title unless we do it all the way through the article as well. My preference is "Pillars of fire and cloud" (or vice versa). DanFromAnotherPlace (talk) 16:24, 5 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note that I'm going to be working on the "pillar of cloud" article, but I'm not going to bother copying the changes into "pillar of fire" until we know if we're merging or not. So the articles are no longer identical, but I still hold that anything included in one article could also be included in the other. DanFromAnotherPlace (talk) 09:24, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Done I've gone ahead with the merge, since no-one else has got involved in the discussion, and it looks like the only thing we disagree on is the title anyway. I've gone with "Pillars of fire and cloud" for now; there can be another discussion about that later if need be. I'll create redirects from all the plausible titles I can think of. Hope this is satisfactory to everyone. DanFromAnotherPlace (talk) 21:03, 12 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]