Category talk:Historical religious sanctuaries

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I would like to register some concerns regarding this new category.

• Firstly, it appears to include, in its present shape, some prehistoric sites (Peak sanctuaries and Karfi), which is in direct contradiction to its title. Prehistoric means "before the historical periods", i.e. not historical.
• More importantly, the category, if filled consequently, is doomed to be useless. It would have to include every Greek or Roman temple, every Christian Church mentioned on wikipedia, every synagogue, every mosque, every Buddhist shrine, every known site of shamanic worship, and so on and on (please don't be offended if I have omitted your particular religion). There already are categories for all or most of such groups, so the only useful thing (if at all) would be to class those categories in a group together. Which already exists. It's called Category:Religious places.

athinaios 01:19, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Regarding your first point, I didn't see a need for an extra Category:Pre-historical religious sanctuaries, so "historical" was meant to capture anything "from the past". No, it's not entirely accurate, I agree.

Your second point is certainly more interesting. Let me preface my statement by saying I'm neither historian nor scholar of religious studies. (Aside: I assume you are equally concerned with the parent Category:Religious sanctuaries). It appears that the term sanctuary applies to a consecrated area of a religious place, whereas I was under the impression that not all religious places had sanctuaries. I suppose most do, so your point is quite valid. (I was also trying to populate Category:Sanctuaries, and this seemed like a logical construct to include.) I still think we need to capture some of these older sites, which are currently excluded from the various religion categories. (Category:Historical religious places and Category:Pre-historical religious places ?)

Perhaps these issues should be raised at Wikipedia:WikiProject Religion, which would certainly have an interest in this. I'll defer to the project how to handle those issues, and what to do with this category and its parent. Perhaps redirecting to a current category within Category:Religious places may be useful. Mindmatrix 16:04, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I started a discussion on the project talk page. Mindmatrix 16:08, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

I think I see what you are trying to do. Regarding the historical versus prehistoric, I am pedantic on that because I am a prehistorian, and I would insist that studying and discussing prehistoric versus historic material is a very very different game, because the sources are, and therefore are the avenues of analysis and interpretation... As for the other (more important) point, I'll have to sit back and think about this. We may be dealing with issues of definition here. For example, the innermost part of a Greek temple can be seen as "the sanctuary", but so can the structure itself, and possibly a large swathe of its surroundings (say, at Delphi, or on the Athenian Acropolis). I am not sure whether scholarship in general has developed fully clear sets of terms (say "inner sanctum" versus "shrine" versus "sanctuary area", and so on). Your hypothetical question expresses this well. "Do all religious places have sanctuaries?", as it could be countered or complemented by "Aren't all religious places sanctuaries?"... athinaios 16:31, 1 December 2007 (UTC)