Talk:History of ancient Israel and Judah

Congratulations

Having been away from the article for some time, I would like to congratulate all those who have contributed to its rewriting. It is now beginning to resemble an accurate history rather than a rehashing of the Biblical account.John D. Croft (talk) 15:04, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Implications of the newly discovered ostracon

Under the section entitled #Non-Biblical confirmation there is a discussion of minimalism and the following sentence:

"For example, Philip Davies shows how the canonical biblical account can only have been composed for a people with a long literate tradition such as found only in Late Persian or early Hellenistic times, and argues that accounts of earlier periods are largely reconstructions based mainly upon oral and other traditions.[7]"

If it is true, as I added a bit further up, that: "Recently, however, (November 2008), archaeologists from Hebrew University have discovered a 3000 year old ostracon with five lines of Hebrew text written in Proto-Canaanite script at the Elah Fortress at Khirbet Qeiyafa. Carbon-14 dating puts this ostracon at the time of King David and the United Kingdom, and the location is in the area where, according to the Bible, David slew Goliath." [5][6] [1] [2] wouldn't Davies argument be thrown out of the window in respect to the Bible? If the ostracon is 3000 years old, it would demonstrate that the Biblical Jews did not have to rely on oral traditions but in fact were writing from 1000BC on.... --Tundrabuggy (talk) 00:50, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

The ostracon certainly weakens the theory that ancient Judah had no literate class until the 7th century, but... . Davies is actually referring to, and attacking, the thesis that the J document of the bible was composed in Judah in the time of Solomon, as a result (or product) of a hypothetical Solomonic Golden Age. I can't recall offhand who put this idea forward, but it was popular around the middle of the 20th century. Then in the 1970s scholars pointed out that there was no actual evidence of this Golden Age. Davies is saying that there's not even evidence of literacy - a pretty standard line, and well within the archaeological evidence - it's a fact that there's no evidence of literacy for Judah in the 10th century or for a few hundred years thereafter. The ostracon is therefore in the position of a single swallow in relation to summer (as in "one swallow does not make a summer") - it's intriguing, but won't be enough to establish that literacy was widespread or that the Solomonic Golden Age was a reality. PiCo (talk) 14:20, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

PiCo, thanks for your thoughtful reply. It strikes me though, that one can no longer say as you do "it's a fact there's no evidence of literacy for Judah in the 10th century..." when the ostracon is from that time and place & contains 5 lines of text including the roots of the words "judge", "slave" and "king"? It doesn't really matter if literacy was widespread or not, since the issue is whether the history was written or orally handed down. Often in the past it was only the elite who were literate. However, it does speak to whether there was possibly a written record upon which the Bible is based or an oral tradition only, as a written record is much less likely to morph. If you will pardon the pun, the swallow analogy doesn't fly for a couple of reasons. First, the birds were clearly there from the start ...ie the ostracon was found in place... & second, one bird is all that is necessary for proof. Literacy is rather like pregnancy. Either you are or you ain't. ;) Tundrabuggy (talk) 04:09, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the evidence is slowly accumulating that there was a literate society in the southern Judean hill country in the 10th century, and possibly a little earlier (I think the Tel Zayit stone or whatever it's called qualifies). If someone wrote that ostracon, then someone else was intended to read it (a difference from the Tel Zayit inscription, which may never have been intended for reading). Still, I'd like to see some considered analysis by the experts, and I don't expect that in the immediate future. Lots of digging and studying still to do :). PiCo (talk) 06:52, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I will have plenty to say on this article in the near future, as a cursory read reveals a mess of minimalist POV-pushing. Quite frankly this article has made me extremely angry (more details to follow). I just wanted to add this point: how the hell can anyone claim a lack of literature in this region around the 10th C when just up the road in Ebla they find thousands of tablets dated to half a millenia before?--FimusTauri (talk) 13:33, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

It may someday be an important find but it's too early to tell. The newspaper article says no translation yet and nothing about any specific words. The second reference is no longer active so I can't tell what it says. At this time a pot shard proves nothing much about a literate society. Nitpyck (talk) 07:06, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry that you have such difficulty Nitpyck. Regarding the loss of literacy, you may be aware that during the Bronze Age crisis there was a general retreat of standards of literacy across the entire middle East. Anatolia lost its literacy, as did Greece, and when literacy was restored centuries later it was not based on Hittite cuneiform or Linear B which had disappeared. In the late Bronze Age literacy was largely through Canaanite cuneiform (as the Amarna tablets show). When literacy recovered in was in the alphabetic script developed by the Phoenicians out of the earlier Sinaitic inscriptions. Hope this helps. John D. Croft (talk) 16:52, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Was that ostrocon for sure Hebrew? Phoenician and Hebrew are incredibly similar as far as known.

The Hebrew group is known for taking the opposite position of Finkelstein. --Periergeia (talk) 00:00, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Merge Pre Roman into this article

The Pre-Roman history of ancient Israel and Judah article should be merged into this one since this one already includes the pre-Roman history, and there is not reason to have a separate article about a pre-Roman period since—by defition—Israel and Judah are pre-Roman. John Hyams (talk) 20:58, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

• Merge

Support merge of the other into this one. Your explanation seems to outline reason enough. — al-Shimoni (talk) 22:56, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Support merge. They overlap. Nitpyck (talk) 02:03, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Support merge, for all the reasons already given. Drchrisheard (talk) 07:28, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

PiCo's edits

Pico could you explain the reason for your last edits to this page. You seem to have deleted facts that have been confirmed out of a particular POV. John D. Croft (talk) 16:43, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Apologies to you for not getting back sooner - I haven't been internet-accessible. What facts exactly are you bothered about?PiCo (talk) 09:45, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Merging with article Pre-Roman history of ancient Israel and Judah

The article "Pre-Roman history of ancient Israel and Judah" has been more or less dormant for a long time, largely because it covers the same ground as this one. There's been a suggestion there that the two articles be merged, but with the small number of editors looking at the page nothing has been done. So I'm taking the initiative and doing the merge. I've copy-pasted the contents of the article, and puttiong the entire contents of the Talk page here. Anyone who disagrees can, of course, undo the merge. PiCo (talk) 07:41, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

• Title change - "Pre-Roman history of ancient Israel and Judah"? FT2 (Talk | email) 10:51, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge this article

• • This article should be merged with History of ancient Israel and Judah since that article already includes the pre-Roman history of the same reagion, and there is not reason to have a separate article about a pre-Roman era. John Hyams (talk) 19:26, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

• • • Or alternatively, this article may be simply renamed to Political history of ancient Israel and Judah. John Hyams (talk) 21:24, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

• Historical Data

• • This article is a biblical view of the history of ancient Israel and Judah. The bible, Jesus and other religious books are cited more often than historian and archaeologist sources. The bible is not a legit historical source! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.56.153.99 (talk) 23:18, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

The emergence of Israel

I've reverted recent edits by John J. Bulten because, to put it unkindly, they're sloppy. I don't have time to go through every one of the changes, but there's this example:

Israel, identified as a people, tribe, coalition, or territory, was located in the northern part of the central highlands by Gösta Ahlström, and alternatively in their western border by Niels Lemche.Niels Peter Lemche, "The Israelites in History and Tradition" (Westminster John Knox, 1998) pp. 37–8.

Now, what's wrong with that? Just that when we check the referenced book, we find that Lemche says explicitly that Ahlstrom's suggestion has not been taken up. So it's not mainstream scholarship. We try to represent what's mainstream, not what anyone and everyone might say. And then he misinterprets Lemche's own ideas about where this Israel was: not the western border of the highlands, as John would haveit, but the highlands themselves. (Lemche is saying, in the para that runs over pp.37-38, that the list of places on the Merneptah Stele points to the Egyptian expedition terminating at the western edge of the central highlands - he does not say that Israel was somehow squeezed into this linear border). The entire set of edits is faulty like this, so I'm reverting to the better text. PiCo (talk) 06:32, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I first learned this "misinterpretation" from your own uncritical edit. You have Lemche as source for the line, "This Israel, identified as a people, were probably located in the northern part of the central highlands." And now you've just discovered it's a nonmainstream view, one which he repudiates? And you're acting like I'm the one late to the party?

Fact is, I documented several flaws in the text you reverted to in the edit history of Joshua. OTOH, I am seeing that when you claim generic flaws you revert, and when you claim specific flaws you list and wait for the other party to guess what you want, and here you do both. Since your text has all the flaws I documented, and since I've kept my text adjusted whenever you've claimed a flaw (which will include this latest claim), I think we'll go with the corrected text rather than the one you've neglected to correct.

BTW, for the record, I will repeat some specific flaws in your text that a mostly-reversion will correct:

Ann Killebrew pp. 10-6 does not say Israelites were indigenous (and Ann was misspelled);

"Recent research on the emergence of Israel points unequivocally to the conclusion that biblical Israel's roots lie in the final century of Bronze Age Canaan." (Killebrew, p.149)

Like most of your quotes, this one simply further demonstrates the truth of my assertion and the gap between the sources and the synthesis that formerly appeared in this article. JJB 00:10, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Thompson p. 413 does not say Canaanite dialects are an indicator of the indigenousness of Israelites;

"The various dialects of Canaanite...West Canaanite (Phoenician, two or more dialects of Israelite and Judean)...Core Canaanite (Israelite and Phoenician) can be distinguished from Fringe Canaanite ((Judean, Amonite, Moabite and Edomite) (Thompson, p.413)

Smith p. 27 does not say it is "impossible" (a strong word) to distinguish the subject inscriptions;

Can someone please check what the page says?

Golden pp. 155-60 does not say Phoenicians continued uninterrupted from the Bronze Age;

He does - the Phoenicians in fact continued uninterrupted right down to Roman times

But pp. 155-60 are not about the Bronze Age but Iron I, and have only one graf on Phoenicia! JJB 00:10, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Stager p. 91 does not speak of the first record but the first non-Biblical record;

The first non-biblical record IS the first record: see McNutt, p.41, and also p.46: "The most recent models of Israel's origins tend either to subordinate the biblical material to archaeological evidence or to exclude it almost completely from consideration." This article follows "most recent models"

McNutt pp. 69-70 does not say the highlands were unpopulated before Iron I but refers to older settlements;

She does. She refers to 300 new settlements in the highlands in Iron I, "some of (which) had been occupied in previous periods" - but which, obviously, were not occupied at this period (McNutt, p.69)

Killebrew p. 176 does not say it is "impossible" to distinguish Israelite from Canaanite except for pig bones (and, in fact, you just jumped on me for perpetuating the notion, inserted and reinserted by yourself, that Killebrew was talking about distinguishing Israelite ethnicity at all), but rather p. 176 as well as p. 13 give ethnic distinctions;

Not quite. Read the section "Diet: Animal Bones" again, but carefully - she says that the reasons for the l;ack of pigs is open to various interpretations, which is what our article says (Killebrew, pp.13,176)

Killebrew p. 176 does not mention a Canaanite god El;

Try a little higher up - a few pages back

Would you mind doing the edit and citing the exact page number please? JJB 00:10, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Miller pp. 97-104 does not say writing was known but uncommon (he says writing was available even in small sites); and so on.

Read the chapter again, more carefully.

I would prefer a quote and/or exact page number please. JJB 00:10, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

These are all "your" sources, in that you cut and pasted them; I merely, ahem, read them. If I have simply missed a reference to whatever the original Wikipedians meant, whom you were cribbing (i.e., cutting and pasting), it's not for lack of looking for it. Now then, can we stop the wholesale reversions to unvetted text? JJB 07:18, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

John, you obviously come from a very conservative Christian background and hold the Bible to be true as a historical record. This is where you come from and you can't help that. However, current scholarship holds views very different from yours. I think you need to relax your prejudices and read more deeply into the sources. All the books you see above are reliable sources. I suggest you go into them in some depth - don't skim, and don't read with the intention of scoring points against perceived enemies of the faith. Read to learn. And above all: there's no kudos for being right on the Internet.PiCo (talk) 23:43, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

It is not necessary for you to speculate about my background or intentions. Where I come from on WP is accurate reporting of reliable secondary sources. So far I have treated all your sources as reliable and merely reported what your page references indicate that they say, which the above still demonstrates is vastly different from what we said they say. Very basic WP:V duty. OTOH, your sentiments about all of us reading to learn can be applauded. If we agree on the fundamentals of WP process, the kudos arise independently from a job well done. JJB 00:10, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

If we can't agree (and I still hold that the article is supported by the sources it quotes), then we have to go to ANI and ask for an outside party to vet it for us. (Just those two subsections, or the ask is too big). Agreed? PiCo (talk)

If you're actually saying that what the sources don't say (in lightface) is what you say they say (in bold), then we would go to the cultural conflict noticeboard instead. This is a simple question of which phrasing makes for better source conformity, with allowances for article context and flow. Since you and Dylan have not proposed any specific flaws in my text, and since your text still contains this whole list of flaws above, with no indication that you see any need to change or that you see any difference between the text and the source, then after I refix the flawed text as I stated I would below, it would be fine for you to file a report at CCN. I trust mediation will be NPOV of course. JJB 18:14, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

What cultures are in conflict here please? Dougweller (talk) 05:20, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

That underused board also accommodates religious content; ANI is certainly wrong for content. But this should be straightforward reading of sources and reporting what they say, and as you can see above PiCo is supplying the source quotes and they still don't say what I say they don't say. JJB 05:39, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

It's for " ethnic, national, and cultural editing conflict" but you'd have to be specific, you'd still have to say what religious beliefs are in conflict here and I can't see where you'd be able to do that.. Dougweller (talk) 05:43, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, I'm not planning on filing the report, I just didn't want him to clog up ANI. Maybe the basic content noticeboard would be best. That word "religious" just caught my eye for some reason .... JJB 05:51, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

He's not going to ANI. I've suggested an RfC. Dougweller (talk) 06:40, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Dylan

Dylan Flaherty has just reverted to the version that contains all these flaws listed in this previous talk section, while nuking a version that contains no flaw mentioned in recent talk. He may not recognize that, as he asked, I did seek consensus before editing: I negotiated a several-days stable text with PiCo and had stated that I would bring it to this article when it was stable. Now I agree that each article stands on its own merits, so I will hold off on Dylan's reversion for a day or two under WP:BRD; but if discussion and cited flaws in my version do not materialize, then I must remove the egregious violations of source conformity, in that WP:CON is not really the issue if one does not want to discuss it. JJB 17:33, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

If you sought consensus and obtained it, then I would not have had to revert. In fact, you did it all over again, which suggests that you did not understand in the first place. I strongly recommend that you make only a few changes at a time, justifying each one in advance. Dylan Flaherty (talk) 02:45, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Of course I did it again, that's how BRD works. I bolded, you reverted, PiCo discussed, you had a chance to discuss. Since I had addressed all PiCo's concerns that could be addressed from the sources, I bolded again, you reverted again. (Due to WP:SYN, I am not able to address it when PiCo sees something in a source that isn't on the page referenced.) Since your reversion text is so demonstrably flawed, I have now (rather than reverting back) deleted the flawed passages and left a minimum baseline from which we can build. (I hope you won't insist on retaining text that fails WP:V on several counts.) Now are you going to tell me all the obvious "bad" points about my text, just as I did about the text you reverted to twice, which contains several misspellings and about a dozen source misrepresentation errors? You can even use the section above if you sign your comments in place. JJB 04:19, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Merneptah Stele

Maybe we need to take these one at a time. I agree that Stager says first non-biblical, the issue really is whether it is the first written record to mention Israel, and that does seem to be the case and we can source it [3] and which mentions a several century gap between the stele and the first written biblical sources etc. Dougweller (talk) 10:38, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Fine, good approach. Yes, the Merneptah stele is the earliest written recod the date of which is verifiable and uncontested. (The date of the earliest bible-books by narrative, namely the series from Genesis to Deuteronomy or Joshua, is highl;y debated, and I can provide good sources saying the generally accepted dates are 7th-6th century BCE). PiCo (talk) 10:59, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd tend to agree, but if we're taking them one at a time we should start from the cut-back baseline rather than either of "our" "preferred" texts. Accordingly, I'll write the next "bold" on those sources. JJB 20:45, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

The usual practice is to stick with the existing version until proposed changes can be vetted and accepted. We'll do as Doug suggests and go through line by line. PiCo (talk) 21:21, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I support this. If we take it a bit at a time, we can make judgments on a factual basis. When there are sweeping changes, the best we can do is sweep them back. Dylan Flaherty (talk) 23:55, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Ok, it seems we're at least agreed to take JJB's points one at a time - but based on the article as it existed before he started making sweeping changes. So, the Merneptah stele: Doug points out that Stager does say first non-biblical, not just first. In fact the point of that sentence was simply to establish a reference point for the stele saying that Israel was (a) a people); (b) located in the northern highlands; and (c) dated at c.1200 BCE. In other words the idea of first ever mention or first biblical mention wasn't one that struck me as important when I wrote it. However, and as Doug again points out, the Merneptah stele is in fact earlier than the biblical mentions of Israel by several centuries. Ironically, Joshua/Judges and the Torah books aren't the oldest in the bible - some of the prophets are older, and that's where you find the oldest mentions of Israel. I can find a decent source for this (maybe Eerdmans) and put in an extra sentence or half-sentence. PiCo (talk) 07:42, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

I've made the edit, JJB, if you don't like it, please discuss it here, although I can't see anything wrong with it. Dougweller (talk) 08:27, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Much as I'm uncomfortable with the process, the fact is that if we are all on the same page that's better than the 13 times I've gotten cold-reverted on these three articles when I'm not cold-reverting myself. Now we've finally, after all that time, gotten to one clause that, we agree, does say what its source says (basic WP:V), so we can now move on to WP:NPOV. Here I must advocate for both Stager's POV, which differs from McDermott's on three points, as well as of course the literalist POV, which is still held by wide swaths of people. Fact is, no matter how monolithic the "scientific" POV, if an article on a religiously-related history omits the traditional POV, it is saying that that POV merits no discussion whatsoever as if that POV's population is slighted (see WP:RNPOV); and, of course, the POV should be discussed with the weight of its adherents. Any statement whatsoever about the scientific POV being "better" should be based solely on (a) a neutral reliable source saying so, or (b) the majority of sources. I've heard several statements as if there is only one POV here, or only one worth discussing ("the generally accepted dates", "wasn't one that struck me as important", "the prophets are older"), but that's not how WP works. So now that we've gotten admissions on WP:V on this sentence, NPOV would be satisfied by something like:

The first record of the name Israel occurs in the Merneptah stele, erected by or for Egyptian Pharaoh Merneptah c. 1200 BCE (possibly 1209), "Israel is laid waste and his seed is not" (also called the first non-Biblical reference in that longstanding tradition assigns Biblical texts to the eras they depict). This identifies ...

Again, this is very similar to the paradigm sentence at WP:RNPOV, and giving no mention to the traditional POV at significant junctures would be a pretty egregious failure of WP standards. JJB 18:54, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Is your objection that the current formulation implies that the biblical stories are later than c. 1200 BCE? Martijn Meijering (talk) 18:59, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

What it implies is that that is the only POV when sources show it isn't. JJB 19:20, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

What sources are you referring to? Stager doesn't seem to be saying there are earlier biblical references unless I've missed that, are you simply referring to literalist sources? Sure, any YEC, or any literalist, will say that's wrong, do you want 'but those who take the Bible literally disagree' here? I'm off now. Dougweller (talk) 20:55, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

At least a brief mention of the literalist biblical view would be good. On the Book of Joshua page I have argued for a more extensive discussion of religious views, but Joshua is a religious text so an extensive discussion is more appropriate there than is the case here. As an agnostic I wouldn't think of such a discussion as a source of information about the events depicted in the book of Joshua, but as a source about the points of view of various religious groups. Literalists can choose to read the same discussion in another light and there is no need for Wikipedia to take sides. Seems like an elegant solution to me. As long as we avoid quoting covert apologetics as a notable historical minority view. Martijn Meijering (talk) 21:10, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Martijn Meijering, as you rightly say, this isn't an article about religion, but about history. It's therefore not appropriate to mention views that are held on purely religious grounds - i.e., the view that the bible texts were written at the time of the events. There are a very, very few literalists who do try to argue this, but their numbers are miniscule. On the grounds of due weight, we can't include them. We have a good academic source, [4] and which says the earliest biblical books come from several centuries after 1200 BC. I'm happy with Doug's version. I think everyone except JJB is happy with it too. PiCo (talk) 23:36, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Don't forget your mediation with RomanHistorian in which he says he is too tired of getting reverted, from which I infer that I am speaking for him as well. JJB 16:07, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I was thinking of something as simple as a sentence or two and/or a link to a page describing the various religious views. On reflection, the Hebrew Bible is on topic for this article, which deals with a very long period of time. By comparison, can a page on Roman history be considered complete without mention of the works of Tacitus, Suetonius etc? Martijn Meijering (talk) 00:02, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

We're getting a little away from the Merneptah stele here, but I do agree that the bible as a source-book needs to be discussed, and I think it needs to be discussed in depth. I've been thinking about the shape of the article, and I'm coming to the view that the "history" part - most of it - needs to be drastically shortened, and more sections added on other topics, including one on the bible. But I don't think this section, which is on archaeology, is the place for it. PiCo (talk) 00:19, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Martijn Meijering (talk) 00:21, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

As for the literalist view, there is no reason to mention it every time it is in conflict with other evidence, although we could put it in the lead perhaps in some fashion and elsewhere where clearly appropriate - the stele is not an example where it needs to be used however, in my opinion. The problem with the Tacitus etc comparison is that we know for sure that they were contemporary with many of the events they describe and when they wrote (although we don't know how often they told the truth, as everyone writes for an audience, & certainly with Tacitus some of his statements are contradicted by the archaeological evidence). Dougweller (talk) 06:08, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Most adherents of the literalist view also believe it is never in conflict with evidence, just like adherents of most all views in fact. Evidence is facts, interpretations are POVs and opinion. So, again encouraging you to be sure you've read WP:RNPOV closely, I would hold there is a reason to mention a significant POV every time it is in conflict with another POV. That's basic NPOV! It is fine to provide secondary-source statistics as to how many adherents of each POV there are, as to how this translates into the different world of academia in past and present, and as to tertiary-source overviews of whether certain secondary-source POVs are to be preferred; but we are not to go on our own suppositions about these matters, as I've seen done.

To cut through the stele problem, I think it would be better to go back to the original source of Stager in that the deliberate use of the word "nonbiblical" is already accommodating of other POVs and does not need additional source balance, rather than use the brasher statement of McDermott's popular overview, which would require us to perform that accommodation ourselves. Again, Stager also gives an exact date (not challenged by others) of 1209, and states it was built for, not by, Merneptah. If he is (per Doug) not saying there are necessarily earlier Biblical sources, but leaving it open, then WP can use his words without saying that either. Can someone proceed with the edit or should I? JJB 16:07, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

The fact is that there is no dated mention of Israel before the stele - or do you disagree with that? Stager ducks that by saying non-Biblical, and readers might not understand the difference. I'll leave the exact date and 'for' (which is literally of course the case, he didn't build it himself) right now as trivial, but I don't read NPOV as saying we can't actually say that the stele is the earliest known dated mention. I'm happy somehow to make it clear that literalists don't agree with archeologists and historians on this and many other related aspects of the history of the area, but just saying non-biblical is not actually reflecting the pov of anyone who doesn't think there are biblical physical texts earlier than the stele. & I am off to bed. Dougweller (talk) 21:21, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks, done, unless someone else objects. JJB 22:18, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Offhand I can't think of any mainstream source that thinks there are biblical sources from before 1200 BCE. If you want to be really accurate, the oldest biblical texts are the Dead Sea Scrolls, from about 200 BCE at the earliest. Older than that are a very brief Ketef Hinnom scrolls, but even they are from around 600 BCE. So the Merneptah stele is far older. As for when the biblical stories were written, the common view these days is that the Pentateuch dates from the Persian period, Joshua from the Babylonian or later monarchy. PiCo (talk) 22:52, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand why PiCo continues to revert. PiCo is the only one arguing that the traditionalist POV should not be represented. That is, PiCo is against a consensus that stems from NPOV. Would someone else please enfold my concern before this subhead gets too long, as PiCo undid my attempt? JJB 10:20, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I revert because you're trying to imp[ose a very fringe pov (biblical literalism) on nthe article. More precisely, you're trying to inject the view that the books of exodus and Joshua are reliable historical records. This is so far outside the contemporary academic mainstream as to constitute a fringe view, and therefore excludable under the criteria of undue weight. More: Martijn Meijering and Doug Weller are saying that the traditional viewpoint on the reliability of Exodus/Joshua should be included because of its intrinsic historical value - but they aren't saying it should be included because it has contemporary value. In fact I agree - we do need a discussion of the historical value of the biblical record. I want to add it, and I will - possibly at the top of the article, in a new section called Sources (as in "Sources for the History of Ancient Judah and Israel). I'll get to it. But let's not pretend that genuine historians/biblical scholars/archaeologists think you can take the Pentateuch at face value. PiCo (talk) 11:29, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Then you can add your section for review. JJB 16:00, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

How to present the biblical literalist view

It appears that there is an issue about how we present the view of those who take the Bible literally. I've suggested just above that this might be mentioned in the lead. What we don't need is a series of 'historians/archaeologists say X but this is denied by biblical literalist'. I'd also note that the biblical literalist approach already is well represented in many articles where it dominates the article, and that shouldn't, in my opinion, happen here. Dougweller (talk) 11:07, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually WP:RNPOV says we do need more of that kind of interaction. And WP:LEAD implies the purpose of mentioning controversies in the lead is because they summarize the expanded description of the controversy in the article. This is a situation with many "traditional" and "modern" POVs. Further, the best-practice historians and scientists in most eras except our own are also dismissed as traditional because they often agree with the literalists, even though they are no different from today's historians in most respects. One solution is to present the POVs in different sections: a literalist narrative, a minimalist narrative, any in-betweeners as appropriate, and non-POV evidence sections that remain very factual and noninterpretative. Any controversy that comes up on the evidence sections gets separated and moved to the POV sections. I don't know if that's best for this article eventually but it's worked on others.

In practice, however, that much work might not be needed. I wouldn't mind going through the disputed sentences one by one (if discussion stalls I'll just delete another disputed sentence to restart it), although this is much slower than bold editing and I may use bold if it seems warranted. The literalist POV need only be put in contradistinction when there is insistence on maintaining a source that does not accommodate it. As pointed out, Stager is preferred because he accommodates via the ambiguous qualifier "non-Biblical". McDermott, writing a popular overview, is not thinking about accommodating that POV, so if he is the first source, he needs a balance source. JJB 16:07, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

One of the articles I pay attention to is Homeopathy. Recently, it was argued that it should be considered scientific (as opposed to a pseudo-science), because it was -- by the standards of its day -- scientific. The response was that it is pseudo-scientific precisely because it only meets the standards of its day and not modern standards.

Now, history is at best a soft, social science, and at worst a branch of literature, but I think the point applies. Archaic sources did not have access to modern methods and techniques, nor the accumulated evidence and analysis since their time, particularly from archeology. Therefore, while their views may well be correct, and are almost certainly notable, there is good reason to lump them in with the traditionalists, apologists and fideists.

My feeling is that we need to represent the traditional view, whether we agree with it, because of its inherent notability, but when we represent the modern view, we have to highlight the most mainstream ideas and either omit or downgrade the fringe ones. As for bold editing, it seems to have a history of leading to edit wars here, so I cannot recommend it. Dylan Flaherty (talk) 16:52, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Another reason to include the biblical view is that it was widely held during (some part of) the period in question. It would be a notable view even if no one held it today, just as it is interesting to know how the Romans viewed their own history. In that case too modern historians know that much of that view was legendary, but it helps understand the thinking of the Romans. Martijn Meijering (talk) 17:01, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

We certainly need to represent the traditional view somewhere. We need to take into account that this article is already long at 90kb, "This page is 90 kilobytes long. It may be appropriate to split this article into smaller, more specific articles. SeeWikipedia:Article size." This is one reason why we can't have a large amount of 'interaction' if that increases the article size. I'm not sure how we can deal with this but deal with it we must. I guess for each period we could have a short summary of the biblical story with pointers to appropriate articles, and then an 'ordinary' historical section (which as it would be more detailed, including archaeological information, etc, would be longer). If we do that we need a very short section in the dispute over when the relevant biblical literature was written. We can state the claims that the composition was actually earlier (which is what JJB is, I presume, getting at over the stele, as I don't think anyone is claiming the existence of actual earlier texts unless I've missed something-- JJB?), along with any counterclaims, but that all has to be short as it's tangential to the article. Dougweller (talk) 17:57, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

These are good points and I can't disagree. It does seem that we have enough material to split the article, although I'm not entirely sure where to draw the lines. The alternative is to treat this as an overview article which avoids going into any more detail than is absolutely necessary to get a general understanding across and relegates the meat to the article for that particular book. I think this makes sense because, really, each book is a thing in itself, with its own complex history, opposing interpretations and interrelations. Rather than try to combine all of these articles into one huge listing, we can do something that none of the articles in isolation can: show the big picture. That's my suggestion. Dylan Flaherty (talk) 18:21, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for agreeing on enfolding the POV, but let's keep a different question separate. I'm talking about correcting a few sentences that failed either V or NPOV or both and was told to go slow. If we are now talking about restructuring the whole article, well, there are quite a few articles on this topic with some overlap and not much hierarchy. This article itself is a subsection of History of Israel. Without discussing Jewish history, History of the Jews in the Land of Israel, or History of the Southern Levant, it would be very appropriate to first consult WP:SUMMARY and then merge the later sections of this article (leaving either summaries or nothing), into Babylonian captivity, Yehud Medinata, Hellenistic Judaism, and Hasmonean. Simply deleting most duplications would solve the whole problem, not to mention you could drop another 5K just by using short references, and another 5K by deleting insignificant uncited books. (Or create an article "Bibliography of the history of Israel"!)

In short, all this restructure talk is fine, but right now the verification failures need addressing, and not by a consensus that nothing need be done until I convince everyone else one sentence at a time. Addressing these errors will not balloon the article even into 100K. I am just here to address a problem I observed at another article that arose from here. It appeared to me to be a simple source conformity fix. When that problem is addressed I can help you with other problems that are lower on the WP priority scale (rearrangement of content is usually trumped by correction of content). Can we agree, under this subhead, that taking concerns one sentence at a time will also address the concern that tradition might (gasp) become an overweighted POV in this article? Thanks. JJB 18:54, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Fine, someone then needs to start a new section with another sentence with a verification failure. I can tomorrow, not now. Dougweller (talk) 19:08, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Doug, are you saying I can use my long sentence on the stele, or that we can revert to the short Stager-only sentence, or are you saying you think the stele sentence is settled and my concerns have been addressed, or something else? Hint: One option would be a case of not getting it. JJB 20:57, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

We're talking about completely restructuring the article, so what's the point of worrying about particular sentences that may well not survive these changes? It would be like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Dylan Flaherty (talk) 19:55, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Dylan, because you guys reverted a version that had only undisputed summary text and no verification flaws, in favor of restoring the verification flaws. If this is your argument, can I at least try removing the flaws again? JJB 21:04, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

You can do anything you want. However, so can I. If I'm unhappy with your "verified" changes, I can reject them. And, really, this has nothing to do with being "verified". We're trying to figure out what belongs in the article at all. Only what remains needs sourcing, and we'll make sure not to let anything remain that cannot be sourced. Dylan Flaherty (talk) 22:57, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

And why should the biblical literalist view be represented at all? They aren't regarded as reliable in academic circles, so why should they be given room here?PiCo (talk) 23:47, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Because of the reasons everyone but you have raised. Please stop reverting. JJB 10:22, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Since there is basic consensus on including the literalist POV and a silence in discussion, and since it hasn't been done yet to my knowledge, I am inserting one (1) clause based on a sentence PiCo accepted at Joshua. If this sentence were to be reverted without accounting for the consensus above, I would take it as being against consensus. JJB 12:10, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

I haven't reverted it but I have changed the wording to say texts referring to the first half of the first millennium, which thus doesn't make any claims as to when they were written. I'm a bit concerned about the 'first half' 'second half' bit I can't find it in the source. Dougweller (talk) 12:23, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, that edit is fine because it wasn't my language. I'll take your edit as accepting mine, and add your concern to my source verification failure list. I trust this is all you meant by not seeing a consensus for "my" wording. JJB 13:24, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Canaanite language

Next failed verification for discussion:

the Israelites are just as clearly indigenous to Canaan: to take language as just one indicator, Canaanite dialects of the 1st millennium divide into a core group made up of Phoenician and Israelite and a "fringe" group of Ammonite, Moabite and Edomite and Judaean, and it is impossible to distinguish between Hebrew and Canaanite inscriptions down to the 10th century.

Here's my most recent attempt to quote the sources and supply a balance source:

while Israelite sites are distinguished from Canaanite via number and distribution of ceramics and by more agrarian settlement plans. The dialects of first-millennium Canaanite, a sister language to Hebrew, include a core group of Phoenician and a Canaanite dialect of Israelite, and a fringe group of Ammonite, Moabite, Edomite and a Canaanite dialect of Judaean; the languages of the inscriptional evidence are of limited help due to not distinguishing between Israelite and Canaanite culture down to the tenth century.

This has the drawback of some choppiness, in that the sources chosen didn't actually fit together without some synthesis, and I don't know why we're talking about first-mill dialects in the Bronze Age section. But I will let others have first go at analyzing this section. JJB 22:17, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

It has the drawback of being misleading. The sources say, for example, that Israelite and Canaanite were dialects of a single language, not "sister languages" (a phrase that doesn't appear); your sentence "the languages of the inscriptional evidence are of limited help due to not distinguishing between Israelite and Canaanite culture down to the tenth century", apart from being just about unreadable, obscures the important point the source is making, which is that Hebrew and Canaanite are so close to identical that the inscriptions can't be used to distinguish them (in fact, although it's not mentioned, "Hebrew" inscriptions for this period are distinguished from Canaanite ones purely on the basis of where they're found); Israelite sites are not distinguished from Canaanite ones "via number and distribution of ceramics and by more agrarian settlement plans", and the source doesn't say they are (and what on Earth is a "more agrarian" settlement plan?)" So I think we better drop your proposal for the sake of accuracy. See next section. PiCo (talk) 23:44, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

It's confused - what Thompson means by 'Israelite' is the dialect of Canaanite referred to above as Hebrew, so we are calling the same language by two different names and describing that language in two different ways. Dougweller (talk) 05:10, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I understand Thompson to be referring to epigrahy - the inscriptions. Thus he speaks of "Judahite" (inscriptions from Judah) and "Israelite" (inscriptions from Israel). These are to be opposed to "Hebrew", which is the language of the bible (which exists only in the manuscripts of the masoretes).PiCo (talk) 09:56, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

That's what I understood also. Dougweller (talk) 11:22, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Canaanite language II

I've got a better idea, let's look at the passage as it stands:

• "...the Israelites are ... clearly indigenous to Canaan: to take language as just one indicator, Canaanite dialects of the 1st millennium divide into a core group made up of Phoenician and Israelite and a "fringe" group of Ammonite, Moabite and Edomite and Judaean, and it is impossible to distinguish between Hebrew and Canaanite inscriptions down to the 10th century. The process, (of the collapse of Canaanite culture) nevertheless, was spread out over more than a century, and extended well into the following Iron Age period."

This gives us four points to check:

• 1) "The Israelites are clearly indigenous to Canaan"

Killebrew, Anne, "Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, and Early Israel, 1300-1100 BCE" (Society of Biblical Literature, 2005) pp.10-16

• 2) "Canaanite dialects of the 1st millennium divide into a core group made up of Phoenician and Israelite and a "fringe" group of Ammonite, Moabite and Edomite and Judaean." (Note that Canaanite and Israelite are described as dialects of the same language)

Thompson, Thomas L., "Early History of the Israelite People" (Brill, 1992) p.413: The various dialects of Canaanite ... display some interesting distinctions and variations. "West Canaanite" (Phoenician, two or more dialects of Israelite and Judean) distinguishes itself from "East Canaanite" (Ammonite, Moabite and Edomite). Even more clearly, a "Core Canaanite" (Israelite and Phoenician) can be distinguished from "Fringe Canaanite" ((Judean, Ammonite, Moabite and Edomite)."

• 3) "It is impossible to distinguish between Hebrew and Canaanite inscriptions down to the 10th century."

Smith, Mark S., "The Early History of God" (HarpurSanFrancisco, 2002) p.27

• 4) "The process (of the collapse of Canaanite culture), nevertheless, was spread out over more than a century, and extended well into the following Iron Age period."

Golden, Jonathan Michael, "Ancient Canaan and Israel: new perspectives"(ABC-CLIO, 2004) p.62 "The transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age began in the late 13th century BCE (i.e., around 1200 - ed.) though much of the first part of the Iron Age ... can be regarded as a transitional period. The collapse of Late Bronze Age Canaanite culture was a gradual process..."

Since JJB seems to distrust me, I'll leave it to others to fill in the remaining gaps. PiCo (talk) 23:38, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

While I would be glad to help, I don't feel qualified. Perhaps it would be best if you did this, regardless of how JJB might feel. Dylan Flaherty (talk) 01:39, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I can't - googlebooks says I've exceeded my quota of views for those books. Someone else? PiCo (talk) 09:53, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Combining these two talk subheads split unnecessarily:

1. PiCo claims not to understand the meaning of "more agrarian" (i.e., having greater comparative agricultural focus), as if this is a sticking point. PiCo does not observe that the source says (how many times must I look at the same page?), "These population groups formed the ethnogenesis of what was later to become the people identified as Israel. These small sites are distinguished by the limited number of ceramic forms and their relative percentages, as well as the agrarian nature of their settlement plans." Killebrew pp. 10-16 does not say Israel was indigenous, it only uses that word to distinguish some pottery from other (Aegean-style) pottery.
2. The POV that Hebrew is a sister of Canaanite, not a daughter, appears in the source I added, which PiCo is not acknowledging seeing when it was there. Since PiCo's source refers to Canaanite dialects of Israelite and Judean, not to Israelite and Judean as separate daughter languages of Canaanite, there is no reason to equate these with Biblical Hebrew or its predecessor. Rather, it is implied there are non-Canaanite dialects of Israelite and Judean. (Besides, which of the two would be the presumed predecessor of Hebrew?)
3. PiCo's source does not say inscriptions "can't" be used to distinguish languages, it says they are of limited help distinguishing cultures, recognizing that there are distinguishable purely linguistic differences. "Inscriptional evidence is likewise of limited help in this regard, since down to the tenth century the languages and scripts of the epigraphic sources do not provide distinctions between the two cultures."
4. I did not challenge this sentence in point 4 above, but PiCo threw it in anyway for some reason.

PiCo is also unable to view the sources but is still holding that my statements about the sentences failing source verification can be fully doubted. This after not responding above, at "The emergence of Israel", to this exact same charge of source failure. Now, since the clause I deleted is not found in its sources and is not NPOV, what should we replace it with? So far I keep getting reverted no matter what process I use. JJB 10:59, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

What exactly does Mansoor say? I can find several sources mentioning Aramaic as a sister language to Hebrew, none mentioning Canaanite, and if we can't find any other sources, and our articles on those languages don't mention this, I don't think we should be using such a description. I tried to search Mansoor using [5] but that didn't find anything. Dougweller (talk) 11:27, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Here is what Mark Smith writes, note pages 20 and 21:

Both linear and cuneiform alphabetic scripts are attested in inscriptions in the highlands as well as in the valleys and on the coast during both the Late Bronze (ca. 1550-1200) and Iron I (ca. 1200-1000) periods. This continuity is visible also in language. Though Hebrew and Canaanite are the linguistic labels applied to the languages of the two periods in this region, they cannot be easily distinguished in the Iron I period. For example, most scholars argue that the Gezer Calendar was written in Hebrew, but E. Y. Kutscher labels its language Canaanite. Canaanite and Hebrew so closely overlap that the ability to distinguish them is premised more on historical information than linguistic criteria.7 The ancient awareness of the close linguistic relationship, if not identity, between Canaanite and Hebrew is reflected in the postexilic oracle of Isaiah 19:18, which includes Hebrew in the designation "the language of Canaan" {iipat kena'an; cf. yihudit, "Judcan," in 2 Kings 18:26, 28; Isa. 36:11, 13; 2 Chron. 32:18; Neh. 13:24).8 Similarly, Canaanite and Israelite material culture cannot be distinguished by specific features in the Judges period.

On page 28: From the evidence that is available, one may conclude that although largely Canaanite according to currently available cultural data, Israel expressed a distinct sense of origins and deity and possessed largely distinct geographical holdings in the hill country by the end of the Iron 1 period. The Canaanite character of Israelite culture largely shaped the many ways ancient Israelites communicated their religious understanding of Yahweh. This point may be extended; the people of the highlands who came to be known as Israel comprised numerous groups, including Canaanites, whose heritage marked every aspect of Israelite society. In sum, Iron i Israel was largely Canaanite in character. Dougweller (talk) 10:55, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Fine, and thanks, but those are not the pages PiCo cited, and they do not use words like "impossible", or "can't" without qualification. So what edit would you make? JJB 11:03, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Your rushing things, not a good idea, and I haven't finished. Dougweller (talk) 11:08, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Anne Killibrew: Attempts to identify early Israel in the twelfth- and eleventh-century archaeological record are highly contested. In chapter 4 I propose that we consider the settlement and development of the central hill country region during the twelfth and eleventh centuries b.c.e. as representing a "mixed population" or "multitude" resulting from the upheavals at the end of the Late Bronze and early Iron Ages. These population groups formed the ethnogenesis of what was later to become the people identified as Israel. There seems to be a deliberate isolation and separation of the inhabitants of the large Iron I settlements and the smaller village sites, which are characterized by their size, limited ceramic repertoire, and, to a certain degree, cultic practices, all of which demonstrate Canaanite roots but also ideologically distinguish the highland village settlements from their neighbors. I propose that we are dealing with a mixed population whose ethnogenesis was forged by primordial, circumstantial, and ideological ties and whose origins lie in Canaan. Dougweller (talk) 11:08, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. The overall impression I get is that Killibrew says Israel emerged from a Canaanite background ("origins lie in Canaan") during upheavals at the Late Bronze/Early Iron transition. We possibly should re-write the intro to the article to make this clearer. I'd also like to add a prior section on the sources for this period of Israelite/Palestinian history - archaeology and the bible, and how both should be used. PiCo (talk) 11:35, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Mansoor p. 7 has "Chart Of The Semitic Languages (Main Distribution)" in which "Northwest Group" is divided by a tree into the branches Ugaritic, Canaanite-Phoenician (dialects), Hebrew, Aramaic (the word "sister" is standard for such a tree structure). Then pp. 8-9: "Hebrew–the original language of the Semitic settlers in the land of ancient Canaan (Palestine). Hebrew is closely related to (1) Canaanite ... (2) Moabite ... (3) Phoenician ... (4) Ugaritic .... Hebrew was a living language, used for speech and writing by the Israelites, until the Babylonian exile in 586 B.C. .... There are four main phases of the Hebrew language: 1. Biblical Hebrew, known as Classical Hebrew. 2. Rabbinical, or Late, Hebrew [Mishna]. 3. Medieval, or Rabbinic, Hebrew .... 4. Modern Hebrew .... It is very probable that the Bible does not contain all the vocabulary in actual use in biblical times, as indicated by archaeological texts uncovered since the beginning of this century." Note that this refers to Classical Hebrew as found at least in the DSS prior to the Mishna and Gemara, and not just found in the MT. JJB 16:23, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I've seen Hebrew and Aramaic referred to as sister languages, but not Hebrew and Canaanite, and evidently Mansoor doesn't refer to them specifically as sister languages either. If linguists commonly refer to them as sister languages you should have no problems finding another source, and if not, then I don't think we should even mention it, especially as he doesn't say that specifically. And what he refers to as Hebrew before the exile is what some others refer to as Israelite. Dougweller (talk) 18:01, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Whatever word one would use for being a separate branch in a tree diagram is fine. Thompson doesn't say Israelite came from Canaanite or is wholly part of Canaanite, he said dialects of Israelite and Judean are classed as Canaanite, without saying whether these dialects are lingua francas from distinct languages that branched apart earlier from proto-Semitic, or whether these dialects branched out from Canaanite. So we simply don't have the sources to say Israelite is flatly a Canaanite dialect without alternate POVs.

Now let me make a general statement. I haven't gone to great lengths source-searching because I don't trust Google Books very much. The sources already in this article generally admit of the traditional or literalist view by using certain disclaimer words such as "nonbiblical" and "dialect". IMHO, WP can follow suit by tacitly admitting the POV using similar disclaimer words, without getting into the rigmarole of explicitly stating the significant POV or arguing about which is "fringe" or "scientific" or "professional". It was my impression that sticking close to the sources would be an agreeable approach and that removing SYN that does not appear in the sources would be an obvious improvement. If the consensus is that source conformity is good and POV exclusion is bad, then we should simply proceed with what the sources say. This would naturally exclude arguing from what we think we read somewhere else without telling the group what (no particular reference is intended here of course). JJB 18:22, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think you are reading Thompson correctly. He clearly says that Israelite is part of the Canaanite language family - ""Bearing in mind the caveat that the present stage of scholarship in historical linguistics is insufficiently independent of arguments from related disciplines, Knaufs differentiation of the "Canaanite" language family into "West Canaanite." (Phoenician, Israelite, and Judaean) and "East Canaanite." (Amnionic Moabite, and Edomite) has much to offer.87 When Knaufs further distinctions between these languages and the literary language of biblical Hebrew, as well as that between a core CCanaanite (represented by Phoenician and the dialects of Israelite) and "Fringe Canaanite." (Judaean, Ammorite, Moabite, and Edomite),89 are maintained, the potential for using epigraphic materials (in support of conclusions drawn independently from historical, economic and geographical arguments) for understanding the development of proto-ethnic groups in Palestine of the Assyrian period is substantially enhanced." Dougweller (talk) 21:07, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

"Mansoor" is presumably Menahem Mansoor, who wrote a popular beginner's guide for learners of Hebrew. He was professor of Hebrew at some American university. He was also a rather old-fashioned man who believed to his dying day that Abraham was a real person and that the Israelites were from Mesopotamia (Ur of the Chaldees). He was a linguist but not a philologist. Mansoor isn't regarded as an authority on these matters (he knew Hebrew, but not the history of Hebrew). Here are some books by scholars who know this field:

• Garr, "Dialect Geography of Syria-Palestine, p.229 ff. You'll find a table there setting out the "chain" of dialects: each link in the chain was mutually intelligible for the dialects on either side, and Hebrew falls between Edomite and Moabite. Hebrew falls about the middle; Phoenician is at one end; but even so, over 80 of the vocab of Phoenician and Hebrew was common to them both, and the only major grammatical difference was that Hebrew had lost its case endings.
• Angel Sáenz-Badillos, "A history of the Hebrew language" - try pp.29ff on Northwest Semitic, and pp.45 ff on dialectic development.

PiCo (talk) 23:55, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Which is further confirmation that we shouldn't be using Mansoor. We need to show significant POVs, not all POVs. If several sources made this claim, that would make it more likely we could use the claim, but until those show up... Dougweller (talk) 05:36, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Excuse me

This section (ADD: reorganized by PiCo to previous section) is generating heat and not light, such as with PiCo's unsourced bio of Mansoor's beliefs; Garr and Saenz basically agree with Mansoor on the key point (Hebrew being Northwest Semitic). But my edit was about three challenges, not four, nor one. On points 1 and 3, no objection has been raised to my charge of source failure, so I will proceed with edits that have been accepted previously (even enfolded by PiCo) at other articles. Thus my edits to these clauses can be taken as silent consensus that the verification failures needed correction.

On point 2 (language tree), I trust we can start by cutting the synthesis clause "to take language as just one indicator", as no source uses the tree as proof of indigenousness. As to what the tree actually says, there is a necessary disambiguation between the "Canaanite" language (essentially [Old] Phoenician) and the "Canaanite" group (essentially Northwest Semitic), so I propose we use the latter unambiguous names, following Saenz and Mansoor. It is true that the second Thompson gloss (it's p. 338, since Doug didn't say) is not ambiguous like I noted the first was, so 338 would work better. However, Thompson says the view of linear polar continuum found in Garr is "insouciance", "mechanical and naive" (337), so there are two opposing POVs among "your" sources. (Further, Garr doesn't say each language on the continuum was mutually intelligible with the next, and Garr and Saenz both list many grammatical differences (not just one) between Hebrew and the other tongues, so PiCo's summary is mistaken, again.)

If we take Thompson p. 338 as the main support (reading "Ammorite" as "Ammonite" rather than "Amorite"–who scanned that?), augmented by Saenz, this should address the prior source failure as an acceptable compromise, in that it arises from consensus sources.

Finally, in dealing with the many additional verification failures, I would appreciate it if editors worked from a perspective of accommodating and enfolding my policy concerns. This section has instead been a good illustration of failure to propose changes that would deal with the source misrepresentation. Thank you. JJB 13:19, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

JJB, I know you mean well, but you consistently misunderstand and misrepresent books. First, you haven't demonstrated a single source failure, so please don't make any changes. Second, absolutely everyone agrees that Hebrew belongs to Northwest Semitic - it's a language family. Third, every one of those books - Garr, Saenz and Thompson - is saying that Hebrew is a dialect of Canaanite, which is the language of the indigenous peoples of Canaan. Fourth, I suggest we ignore Mansoor - he's not an expert on languages, just on Hebrew. Fifth, while Thompson faults Garr for using a linear graph, he doesn't disagree with the underlying idea that is a dialect of Canaanite. Finally, while your contributions are of course welcome, you need to read with far more attention to detail - to repeat, not one of your so-called "authentication failures" has been found to be a failure. PiCo (talk) 03:36, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

PiCo, your making sweeping changes to other sections while asking me to go one sentence at a time and reverting my text without addressing my reasonable concerns (plus your habit of arguing illogically, which has already been evidenced and ignored, and need not be harped on) is turning me off on the concept that responding to your rhetoric is useful to you; however, while I may or may not hold that thought in abeyance, I will continue to respond when necessary for the sake of others not misunderstanding. Your claim, that I have not demonstrated failures, does not make itself so. Right now the list above Talk:History of ancient Israel and Judah#The emergence of Israel is still mostly unaddressed, although we've agreed so far on removing the language not in Killebrew that Israel was indigenous, and the language not in Thompson that dialect indicates indigenousness. However, you've undone Doug's phrasing that admits Biblical sourcing (Doug, I habitually capitalize that due to AP style) to address the assumption not in Stager that Bible can be ignored, and you've reinserted the word "impossible" not in Smith, saying "bring this back to what the source says", when at that prior section you admit not knowing what the source says. You also have at least five cases in that section where I demonstrate source failure, you baldly assert without proof that the source does say what you think, and then act as if I have the WP:BURDEN of proving a negative. I say eight pages in Miller do not say writing was uncommon, and you say, "Read the chapter again, more carefully"? Looking for evidence for your unsupported thoughts is not my job. And all this is not to deal with what might be massive additional failures in several articles (based on your past history), this is only an attempt to deal with a few unbalanced, unsupported sentences you inserted from here into another article, and it's been dragging out for a long time, although progress is being made. I am reverting these two changes under WP:BRD as against the consensus demonstrated above and as infractions of WP:NPOV and WP:V, and creating new sections below. JJB 11:44, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Bible in lead

PiCo deleted, and I reverted, the phrasing Doug enfolded, "and its mention in biblical texts", from the lead, despite agreement by everyone else, already noted, that Biblical texts are worthy of mention as sources for beliefs in themselves (thus, leadworthy), and that in fact source analysis needs its own section as well. Obviously an ancient people's origin traditions are an important part of their article, especially given that these particular traditions have a worldwide following. Sources for this article make constant mention of the history present in Biblical texts. Please provide below any reasons that mention of the Bible should not appear in the lead. (I might add, this article is about an "and" relationship, but not until I inserted the word "related" was there any apparent mention that Israel was in some relation to Judah, and a tremendous source indicating such a relationship is the Bible.) JJB 11:44, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

You seem to be seriously confused. What we were talking about was a section weighing the e3xtent to which the bible can be used to reconstruct the history of ancient Judah/Israel - this is something I agree with and I'll get around to a draft in the not to distant future. Or you can start it yourself if you wish - there's plenty of sources down in the Bibliography section. But the idea that the bible is simply a collection of "origin traditions" is seriously flawed - you need to ask questions, such as when these texts originated, who wrote them, what audience they wrote for, and more. I'd be inclined to put in the lead a sentence to the effect that the biblical history can't be taken at face value and needs to be treated with caution. Would you agree to that? PiCo (talk) 22:14, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Impossible to distinguish inscriptions

PiCo changed "the languages of the inscriptional evidence are of limited help due to not distinguishing between Israelite and Canaanite culture" to "it is impossible to distinguish between Israelite and Canaanite inscriptions", against at least a silent consensus of not objecting when I pointed out this source failure and Doug's acceptance of this edit while making other changes. I reverted since this is a continuing WP:V violation, and since PiCo claims both to know and not to know what this source says. Source (once again) says, "Inscriptional evidence is likewise of limited help in this regard, since down to the tenth century the languages and scripts of the epigraphic sources do not provide distinctions between the two cultures." It is clearly possible to distinguish some inscriptions, because they are "of limited help", but the source adds that cultures are not distinguished; PiCo's other sources, already alluded to, provide many markers that distinguish Hebrew from Canaanite languages. The word "impossible" is impermissibly strong and does not account for the source nuances. Please provide below any evidence that Smith p. 27 says distinguishing inscriptions is impossible. JJB 11:44, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

The quote you give us is saying that it's impossible to distinguish Canaanite from Hebrew inscriptions down through the 10th century.("Down to the tenth century the languages and scripts of the epigraphic sources do not provide distinctions between the two cultures" - i.e., you can't tell Hebrew and Canaanite apart from the language and the script). Wjhile we're on the subject, the sources are all saying that Canaanite is a language, and that Hebrew, Phoenician etc are dialects of it - and Northwest Semitic is not a language, it's a language family (to put that in perspective, Indo-European is a language family, English and Bengali are languages within it, and Lellans and Standard English are dialects of it). It's all in the sources. PiCo (talk) 21:33, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Linguists distinguish languages from dialects by the following criterion: a language is a dialect with an army and a navy... Martijn Meijering (talk) 21:57, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah yes :). Though in their more serious moments I think they have other definitions. PiCo (talk) 22:08, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

The formulation is humorous, but as I understand it they are very serious about it. There is no technical criterion for distinguishing between dialects and languages, although in a specific geographical location at a specific period in time one dialect may have more status than another and may be considered a separate language. But it isn't even always a matter of status. The various Ancient Greek dialects originally had no difference in status, all were considered Greek and all were considered dialects. The Greek language consisted of a series of dialects with no unique standard form of the language. Various literary genres used various dialects. Only later did Attic Greek rise to preeminence among the other dialects. Martijn Meijering (talk) 22:17, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I understand the basic criterion is mutual intelligibility - if X and Y-speakers can understand each other, they're dialects. I also remember reading that someone very diligently mapped dialects at village level and discovered that there's a chain of mutual intelligibility from France across the border into Italy - but not at national level, of course. Anyway, what you say seems to support what our sources say, which is that Phoenician, Edomite, Hebrew et al are properly regarded as dialects of a language called Canaanite. PiCo (talk) 22:39, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

": As per Doug's request, deleting next sentence for consideration, see talk."

I did not ask JJB to delete anything and I object to edit summaries that put words in my mouth that I didn't say. Nor did I suggest the change in the Merneptah. Nor, although I used the word known, did I say 'known record'. And I was not the only person in the discussion, and it might have been thought a good idea to let others have a say. Dougweller (talk) 04:58, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I apologize, I did not find a request to move on to the next point under your name as I thought I had seen. You did permit the correction to "1209" and "for" Merneptah, and you did acknowledge the need to admit a POV that is (still) notably lacking, if not totally absent, from this article. And I did listen to the others' say. But a significant problem here is that my V and NPOV concerns do not get addressed through a variety of rationales, none of which actually deals with these core policies. Now, if you can accept my apology, I trust we can get around to fixing these core complaints. Thank you. JJB 11:10, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

1209

The Merneptah stele was inscribed in the fifth year of Merneptah, and despite the dates in our article on him, there is uncertainty surrounding those dates. We could have c. 1209 and that wouldn't be wrong. There is a slow effort in our AE articles to make the uncertainty a bit more obvious, but its slow. Dougweller (talk) 15:27, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

"C. 1209" (with the space, which others have omitted) would be fine if you just source the uncertainty. JJB 16:31, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

"c. 1209", see MOS:DATES. Dougweller (talk) 16:56, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Hellenistic period

I've shortened the section on the Hellenistic period considerably, because it's far too long - longer than any other of the history sections. However, it covered some valid subjects, such as the rise of Jewish sectarianism and the codification of Jewish literature. These will be put back in to new sections. PiCo (talk) 22:53, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Serious problem

I've never seen this done before, but PiCo not only reverted the previous week of consensus-building by restoring (PiCo's own) edit of 10:04, 29 September 2010 (or its twin of 21:22, 29 September 2010), but also made a tremendous number of changes and deletions after restoring that edit. This is a serious no-no for the obvious reason that PiCo's presumable improvements are not enfolded with the improvements made during (what is now) the consensus fork. That latter set of improvements includes many bot improvements to PiCo's poorly coded reference style; consensus on the first two of about nine verification failures that PiCo believes will not be failures if only the obviousness of their nonfailure is repeated often enough; consensus on some lead improvements (such as why the article has "and" in the title, and exact dates, at least one of which PiCo put in (6 CE)); many fixes of disambiguation and broken links; and (once again) correcting spelling of Ann Killebrew. Not only does PiCo reinstate the misspellings, the broken and ambiguous links, the KB-wasting reference style, the failure to explain in the lead that Israel "and" Judah have some relationship, and of course the consensus to which PiCo alone takes exception; PiCo also rewrites thoroughly the uncorrected text (and this is the serious and unprecedented part) so that it is impossible to enfold even the noncontroversial (e.g., bot) changes without close analysis of the history and/or trial reversions for the sake of comparison. This is the classic definition of content forking (and/or edit warring): the inability to understand the edit history as one organically growing improvement, but only as a competition between alternating growing versions. (PiCo's straight-faced claim of undoing departures from source conformity, made while reinstituting misspellings and what are agreed to be failed glosses, and PiCo's claim that too many changes are happening, made immediately before instituting wholesale abbreviations of longstanding text, can be judged on their own merits.)

My first analysis reveals that (after the restoration of what PiCo calls the consensus version despite the changing consensus evidenced above) all PiCo's changes were limited to the sections on the Persian empire and following. Since I haven't reviewed these in detail, I am not taking sides on them as yet. IMHO, the best way to enfold PiCo's nonpareil boldness is to restore the actual consensus version (Doug's edit of 14:59, 7 Oct) up to but not including the Persian empire, and to stick with PiCo's version thereafter, except for redoing a few dab links and recorrecting the spelling, and letting the bot refix the reference problems at its convenience. The number of diffs I needed to review to reach this conclusion is not worth reporting. I am also reporting this event and its history to the edit war board. It would be appropriate if someone else could confirm the new version as reflecting what I have read as "consensus other than PiCo". As for my own disputes with the text, two of them had been resolved and the remainder can continue going the long one-by-one process, so I will accept this consensus if it includes an ongoing discussion of the list I already provided. However, an editor that undoes this process is not IMHO improving the article. JJB 02:47, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

JBB, you seem hell-bent on ramming your changes through. I repeat, you haven't shown any "verification failures", and you've consistently misrepresented the sources. (Probably not intentionally). To take an example, all the linguists we source say that Hebrew is a dialect of Canaanite, yet you persist in putting in this unsourced thing about a non-existent Northwest Semitic "language" (it's a language family). Anyway, I've been very patient with you and shall continue to be. I've now reverted to the more accurate version, and, as a concession and because I think the article is too long in any case, I've cut some relatively unimportant material. See if you can accept this in the spirit of compromise. PiCo (talk) 03:21, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

(Edit conflict with a comment that reads to me as if the last two weeks of discussion haven't happened:) In the above paragraph, PiCo succeeds in, first, misspelling my name; then, making an unfounded accusation of my seeming hell-bent on ramming when I have proceeded gradually for two weeks toward achieving consensus; confirming my prior characterization that PiCo talks as if verification failures will go away if only they are denied often enough; projecting (somebody else's?) source misrepresentation onto me when any diffs will show my text accurately represents sources; representing all sourced linguists as saying Hebrew is a dialect of Canaanite when none of them have been shown to make such an unequivocal statement; accused me of inventing "Northwest Semitic 'language'" when I have said nothing of the kind (WP:PROVEIT) and correctly distinguished it from being a language above (at "Excuse me"; although PiCo does use the word "language" incorrectly in this sense, 23:44, 1 Oct, by saying "Israelite and Canaanite were dialects of a single language", unless PiCo means Canaanite was a dialect of Canaanite I suppose); claiming that the "CFanaanite" [sic] version is more accurate when the version says Canaanite dialects divide into Israelite, Judaean, etc., even though no source says so and one source disagrees; patting self on the back for patience; making yet another unilateral judgment as to version accuracy without support; and treating, as if a concession, the deletion of a sentence I didn't challenge, and one of my own clauses, when we previously agreed that the deletion of a sentence would serve only as a baseline for starting discussion.

However, all that aside, it is possible to accept the deletion of my clause as a proposed fix for the verification failure it replaced (the one about distinction being "impossible", a strong word not in source); and to consider it as being proffered in exchange for my being willing to leave the phrase "CFanaanite dialects" or its like in the article. While it cannot be accepted as an exchange on these terms, because it is one-sided as noted and it does not address the WP:V failure to source the idea of "Canaanite dialect", it's possible it can be taken at least as far as a good-faith attempt to keep discussion going and to avoid getting slammed for edit warring, in spite of the behavior noted in the previous paragraph, and the very inappropriate cold-reversion just prior. My response would be that, first, skirting the border of edit warring is not any safer than doing it outright. Second, I'd ask PiCo to consider the fact that "Northwest Semitic" instead of "Canaanite" is a nomenclature every editor and source agrees with, while "Canaanite dialect" is not in any source and controverted by Mansoor quoted above, and his POV can be supplemented at will. The closest you (meaning Doug) have come to source conformity is Thompson p. 338. So, third, if the wiggle room allowed by "Northwest Semitic" is still not acceptable, your other options for completing a level-field compromise would seem to be to cut this sentence too, or to run with a true gloss of Thompson, or to supply another source or page. A gloss might run, "Bearing in mind that historical linguistics is insufficiently independent of related disciplines, differentiation of the Canaanite language family into Phoenician, Israelite, Judaean, Ammonite, Moabite, and Edomite has much to offer." (See the source above if you disagree with the gloss, 21:07, 3 Oct.) Can anyone choose among these four options? Thank you. JJB 05:41, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Let's look at your most recent edits. I'll paste your version here, and explain my changes (this is your version we're looking at): — PiCo — continues after insertion below (& sim.)

I take it this means my last. This assumption may be important later. JJB 06:38, 8 October 2010 (UTC) (& sim.)

• The ancient history of Israel and Judah runs from the first mention of the name Israel in the archaeological record in 1209 BCE and its mention in biblical texts No problem, except for the reference to "mention in biblical texts." What mention? The reference to the Merneptah stele is precise and gives us a date to work from (1200 BCE); the reference to biblical texts is vague and no help in setting the limits of the period we're dealing with.
  • "What mention?" appears rhetorical because the answer is obvious, and the clause is not intended to be precise about biblical dates nor to set limits. The sudden insistence on precision is belied by PiCo's alluding to 1209 as 1200 and by the edit earlier today that removed several precise dates from the lead, including one PiCo edited. The point of including this clause is, naturally, to satisfy WP:LEAD by mentioning biblical texts as a significant part of Israel's history without contradicting any POV from fundamentalists to minimalists: deliberate vagueness. (Of course, the notable POV controversy could be described in detail per WP:LEAD also, but why push?) Any such clause that accomplishes that would be fine (not the clause PiCo proposed earlier about the unreliability of the Bible, of course, since that POV would need balancing). Any reversion to this clause that does not address this concern would be considered for an edit-war report followup.
    • JJB, please put your hostility to me to one side and listen to what I'm saying, because even people you don't like can be sensible sometimes. Now here goes: This sentence stands at the top of the lead, and it's setting the limits of the article: it's saying we're going to talk about these two kingdoms in the time-period 1200 BCE-6 AD, and it explains why: the Merneptah stele sets one limit, the end of Herod's nominal kingdom of Judah sets the other. That's all. We're not trying to make a point about the age of the biblical texts. I know the age of those texts is important to you., but for that we need a new section, one that addresses the biblical literature - at the moment it doesn't exist, but you're welcome to start it.
• In biblical texts referring to the first half of the 1st millennium "Canaan" can mean all of the land west of the Jordan river or, more narrowly, the coastal strip (the Bible narratives are ascribed to the eras they depict by Bava Batra 14b ff. (Talmud) and early Church Fathers). If you can see any connection between a sentence talking about the geographic limits of Canaan and the part in parentheses about the Bava Batra (a text that dates from the early Christian period), please let me know, but I can't.
  • Again, this last clause appears rhetorical, because the identity between biblical texts and Bible narratives is obvious, and the relative dating of the Bible and Talmud is irrelevant. This parenthesis was also formerly accepted by PiCo elsewhere, but any clause that admits the literalist POV, anywhere in the early section, would be fine; it was only inserted here because the texts were mentioned in that sentence. However, reversion that does not address this POV concern would be considered for reporting.
    • John, please: no-one is denying that the Talmud sets traditional dates for the books of the bible. The question is, what's that got to do with the geographical limits of Canaan? This sentence belongs in the section on the Biblical literature, which you might care to start.
      • I will accept the deletion of this clause as an invitation to create the section and allude to it in the head, which will need to happen when sources can be selected that have a reasonable hope of not getting reverted. JJB 07:35, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
• the Israelites are ... clearly indigenous to Canaan Killebrew, Anne, "Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, and Early Israel, 1300-1100 BCE" (Society of Biblical Literature, 2005) pp.10-16 You took this out, although it's sourced - why?
  • I kept the source and replaced the sentence with a proper gloss, to which PiCo even contributed the first word: "Archaeologist Ann Killebrew adds, 'Recent research on the emergence of Israel points unequivocally to the conclusion that biblical Israel's roots lie in the final century of Bronze Age Canaan.'" She does not use the word "indigenous" about Israel in these pages; her actual phrasing, that the roots lie in 13th-century Canaan, leaves wiggle room about how much further the roots go. The word "indigenous" does not. Since PiCo had previously enfolded this sentence by adding a word, there is no need for it to be reverted.
    • Yes, you did keep my refer3ence to Killibrew, and I thank you for it. But if Killibrew says that Israel's roots lie in the final century of Bronze-age Canaan, how does that mean anything other than that the Israelites were indigenous to Canaan?
      • If my roots lie in Phoenix, it's still possible I'm indigenous to Memphis. If you believe the phrases are synonymous, why insist on the unsourced one? JJB 07:35, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
• Canaanite dialects of the 1st millennium divide into a core group made up of Phoenician and Israelite and a "fringe" group of Ammonite, Moabite and Edomite and Judaean Thompson, Thomas L., "Early History of the Israelite People" (Brill, 1992)p.413 You deleted this too, but it's sourced also - why? And you changed "Canaanite dialects" to "Northwest Semitic dialects" - why?
  • I don't know how I deleted this sentence at the same time as retaining it with a word change. The edit I assumed above as the intended edit is the word change and not the deletion/replacement. The answer is given fully above at 05:41 in this section. A repeated potential inference, that I delete without retaining the source and correcting the conformity failure, is false. It's possible two weeks ago that I deleted a source that was so far from verifiably supporting its clause as to be unsalvageable, but whatever I did at that point has not been challenged in any discussion since. The options for this clause are also above at 05:41.
• it is impossible to distinguish between Hebrew and Canaanite inscriptions down to the 10th century.Smith, Mark S., "The Early History of God" (HarpurSanFrancisco, 2002) p.27 This is sourced too, but you took it out - why?
  • For the nth time, the source does not say "impossible". I replaced it with the clause quoted just below, which is almost exactly what Smith says, q.v.
    • See next.
• the languages of the inscriptional evidence are of limited help due to not distinguishing between Israelite and Canaanite culture down to the tenth century.Smith, Mark S., "The Early History of God" (HarpurSanFrancisco, 2002) p.27 This is your own (mis)interpretation of the source - quite wrong, since Smith is saying that the inscriptions themselves can't be distinguished, because the languages and alphabets are identical.
  • Here PiCo's genius is fully demonstrated. Without my requoting the source again, PiCo represents my simple gloss that deletes a few words and preserves Smith's thought as a quite-wrong misinterpretation; and PiCo also baldly says that, using the same source, it is sourced to gloss it as saying "inscriptions" are "impossible [for people] to distinguish", when the source says "cultures" are "not distinguish"ed by inscriptions [as opposed to by people]. PiCo then repeats the juggling of Smith's words and adds a WP:SYN that the languages are identical, which is the foregone conclusion that has not been proven. And, in fact, the two later linguist sources provided said clearly that Israelite language has significant markers that distinguish it from the Canaanite dialects, and, IIRC, Saenz adds that Israelite/Hebrew has more distinguishing markers than any of those dialects.
    • John, again I ask you to put your antipathy aside and just listen: Smith is saying that you can't use the inscriptions to distinguish Canaanite from Hebrew sites, precisely because the language and alphabets are identical. This isn't my synthesis, it's what Smith is saying.
      • The language is not identical per Saenz, and Smith doesn't say it is "identical", nor does he speak of "alphabets" when he acknowledges (plural) scripts. When speaking of inscriptions, he nods at this nonidentity by admitting it is of limited help. Your first clause correctly changes the focus from distinguishing inscriptions to distinguishing sites, but you still say "can't", which is not in source. If you believe the phrases are synonymous, why insist on the unsourced one? JJB 07:35, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
        • John, Thompson is saying, quite clearly, that Hebrew is a dialect of Canaanite. Smith says the same thing, apparently not clearly enough for you to grasp. Same for Saenz. "Canaanite" is a broad term, a language made up of many dialects. I gather you're American (the references to American cities above). In America the variations are so slight that the word "dialect" hardly applies. But in the UK, if you walked into a pub in Glasgow, you wouldn't understand a word that was being said. That's what dialects are like in a country that has the real thing. But what they talk in Glasgow is English, just the same. And what they spoke in Jerusalem was a dialect of Canaanite - the bible actually says so. PiCo (talk) 08:21, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

The overall pattern of your edits gives an impression of either deliberate of, to be charitable, accidental misrepresentation of the sources. In either case it verges on pov-pushing. I think you need to take a step back and consider whether you're really as impartial as you evidently believe. PiCo (talk) 05:22, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I reviewed the above another time to see if this charge of misrepresentation and POV-pushing was accompanied by any demonstration, other than bald assertion, that my glosses are actually faulty. The first two grafs above are not about source misrepresentation; the next three are about removal of PiCo's source failures; there was an earlier reference to "Northwest Semitic 'language'", which is an unsupported charge because not my phrasing and not proveable as such by PiCo; and there is the final claim about Smith. But I don't know how "languages of inscriptions are of limited help" is a "bad" gloss of Smith when those are his words, while "distinguishing inscriptions is impossible because the languages are identical" is a "good" gloss when those aren't his words. But if PiCo cannot gloss my own phrasing accurately, who would expect PiCo to gloss the sources accurately? Sorry.

Anyway, I find it useful to repeat the editing paradigms I'm using, and particularly so when dealing with an editor that has hardly ever stated recognition of any such paradigm. PiCo's current version of 03:16, 8 Oct, is an acceptable interim consensus version, with the proviso that the word "Canaanite" is disputed and options are laid out above, and with the understanding that about seven other sentences are disputed for seriatim consideration, as soon as the talk page can get to them. These are the same sentences I've been disputing for over two weeks. I take PiCo's present edits as taking the current version as "interim" consensus as well, although PiCo disputes the list of edits just above, which are being discussed. I have already stated my reading of the other editors as not quibbling with earlier incarnations of this version either. The next step would be to nail down the compromise on this set of edits, along with any other editors that have concerns about these clauses, and to proceed with any other disputes within the "normal" editing cycle. Failure to engage in this consensus process will not be taken well. JJB 06:38, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

John, it's a simple fact, and easily verified from many sources, that Hebrew is a dialect of Canaanite. I've tried to explain this to you, but you refuse to understand, instead misrepresenting the meaning of the various scholars. Given this background, I think it might be wise if we dropped this fruitless discussion. I've invited you to start a section on the sources for the history of ancient Israel/Judah, and that invitation still stands - it will let you investigate current scholarly thinking on the bible as a history text. You should also look into the use of archaeology. Do this, and you'll have added something of value to the article. PiCo (talk) 08:10, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Conformity/verification of sources

There is a dispute about conformity/verification of sources in this article after one editor made a number of new edits and another editor raised the issue of verification. This is meant to be a content RfC dealing with verification and conformity with sources and related issues. The talk page above lays out the dispute, and this link [6] shows the difference between the edits up to September 26th, when the dispute began, and today. Dougweller (talk) 19:44, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks Doug, this is a placeholder for a repeat of my and PiCo's lists of issues above, to which I will return soon. JJB 00:09, 9 October 2010 (UTC) Here is a much better diff, in that Doug's diff includes a lot of post-Persian changes that I have not reviewed or disputed. As another minor point, the history is actually that PiCo made significant edits to Joshua that arose from this article and I brought the V issue here from there. I will be treating the current version as the baseline because it appears there is a consensus on the first couple changes aside from PiCo (we had agreed to discuss the sentences one-by-one, and that was working to a degree and can continue to do so, but this list gives the current baseline for either seriatim or parallel discussion). I am also using this list as the baseline for PiCo's current concerns, as they appear to me to be shifting regularly. Much of this rehashes the list above at "The emergence of Israel". From these versions:

1. I would change the lead, "runs from the first mention of the name Israel in the archaeological record in 1209 BCE", by adding "and its mention in biblical texts", as per WP:LEAD mentioning salient points like the Bible. PiCo has permitted me to write a new section on textual sources of this history, which I may begin, but the validity of this point to the lead has appeared accepted to be consensus independent of the section being written. PiCo also asks the rhetorical question "what mention?" and has objected to this placement of the Biblical mention by inferring a chronological assumption that is not there, but has not proposed an alternate placement.
2. In Bronze Age, PiCo would delete the clause "(the Bible narratives are ascribed to the eras they depict by Bava Batra 14b ff. (Talmud) and early Church Fathers)", which PiCo accepted in other articles, but has not proposed an alternative that would even acknowledge the significant literalist POV that disagrees with the main clause of that sentence. I have stated that any alternative that acknowledges this widespread POV would be fine.
3. PiCo would change "Archaeologist Ann Killebrew adds: "Recent research on the emergence of Israel points unequivocally to the conclusion that biblical Israel's roots lie in the final century of Bronze Age Canaan"" (which PiCo enfolded in another article) to "the Israelites are just as clearly indigenous to Canaan", claiming this represents source Killebrew pp. 10-16. I respond that source does not use the word "indigenous" in this sense, which removes the wiggle room, and uses the more ambiguous "roots lie in", and that if PiCo thinks the versions are synonymous there should be no objection to retaining the more exact one.
4. I would change "Canaanite dialects of the first millennium" to "Northwest Semitic dialects" because no source says outright that Israelite or Judaean are dialects of Canaanite; Mansoor's chart specifically says that they are lateral branches of NW Semitic; and the sourceability of the NW Semitic statement is not disputed like the Canaanite statement is. PiCo objects that I have treated NW Semitic as a language rather than a family.
5. PiCo would add "it is impossible to distinguish between Hebrew and Canaanite inscriptions down to the 10th century" after this thought. I said source Smith p. 27 does not say it's impossible to distinguish inscriptions but that inscriptions are of limited help to distinguish cultures, and said that inscription languages have many marker distinctions mentioned in sources. Though this clause is missing now, my gloss of the source had been "the languages of the inscriptional evidence are of limited help due to not distinguishing between Israelite and Canaanite culture down to the tenth century", which is also acceptable to me. PiCo continued to treat the versions as synonymous ("the languages ... are identical", controverted by PiCo's sources), and I again replied that there should then be no objection to retaining the more exact one.
6. In Iron Age, I would change "the Phoenician cities continued from the Bronze into the Iron Age without interruption" to "the Phoenician cities were held by the tenth century; Phoenician kings are also mentioned in Biblical texts" because source Golden pp. 155-160 does not say anything about Phoenicians continuing uninterrupted from the Bronze Age. PiCo said he does, without quoting him. Source mention of Biblical evidence was also brought in at this point to deal with PiCo's unsourced assertion that Phoenicia was not in the pertinent Bible passages.
7. I would change "Israel ... was probably located in the northern part of the central highlands" to "Israel ... was probably located in the central highlands" because source Lemche pp. 37-8 seems to disagree with the "northern part" proposal and present a western- or full-central proposal. PiCo appeared to me to be contradictory on this point and so I would not want to summarize that position.
8. I would delete "At the same time the highlands, previously unpopulated, were beginning to fill with villages" as not found in source McNutt pp. 69-70; McNutt says the villages were previously populated, as per next point. PiCo said she does say the highlands were previously unpopulated, without quoting her.
9. I would change "surveys have identified more than 300 new settlements in the Palestinian highlands during Iron Age I, most of them in the northern regions, and the largest with a population of no more than 300" to "Although only village dwellers left behind sufficient archaeological remains, surveys have identified more than 300 settlements in the regional highlands dating to Iron Age I (more and larger in the north), a minority having been occupied in prior periods, and new settlements in the fringe regions as well" and add "Settlers were estimated at twenty thousand in the twelfth century and double that in the eleventh" or similar phrasing. Source McNutt pp. 69-70 emphasizes the archaeological unknowability of the nonvillage nomadic populations, and that they should not be ignored; the Iron Age region was not primarily called "Palestinian" and was not so in source; source does not say they were new during the era but they were found dating to the era with some prior occupation; source's mention of highland-fringe settlements and population estimates were discounted by omission; and the max pop of 300 is contradicted by another source that says 400, below.
10. I would change "It is impossible to differentiate these "Israelite" villages from Canaanite sites of the same period on the basis of material culture" to (after the pig bones) "Later Israelite sites are also distinguished from Canaanite ones via number and distribution of ceramics and by more agrarian settlement plans" or similar phrasing, as per Killebrew p. 13, in that Killebrew does not use the word "impossible" in this sense. PiCo said "not quite" and asked me to read the source again, without providing a specific additional quote or rationale.
11. I would change "almost the sole marker distinguishing the two is an absence of pig bones, although whether this can be taken as an ethnic marker or is due to other factors remains a matter of dispute" to "Israelite sites are notably absent of pig bones, and some archaeologists (cf. Finkelstein) interpret this as indicating distinct ethnic identity, but it could result from other factors" in that Killebrew p. 176 does not say "sole marker" and provides other markers p. 13, and because the source distinguishes the ethnic marker position as an archaeologist POV and the other position as generic rather than as equally weighted. PiCo's "not quite" and "read again" applied confusingly to this as well.
12. I would delete "There are no temples or shrines, although cult-objects associated with the Canaanite god El have been found" as not anywhere on source Killebrew p. 176. PiCo says to try a few pages back but has not sourced this claim any more specifically. This is a very basic source verification failure that is deleted under WP:V all the time, but all my citations of failure have been lumped together as needing careful individual review.
13. I would change "The population lived by farming" to "Villages had a population up to 400, which lived by farming" as per source Miller p. 98, and to balance out McNutt above. (It could also be "300 or 400", with the McNutt cite added.) I don't think anyone has objected to this other than by blanket reversion.
14. I would change "and were largely self-sufficient in economic terms" to "and was largely self-sufficient" for verb agreement and because Miller does not use the redundant qualifier. No other comments found on this one.
15. I would change "but generated a surplus which was could be traded for goods not locally available; writing was known but was not common" to "Economic interchange was prevalent. Writing was known and available for recording society ethos, even in small sites" as per Miller pp. 99, 105, in that the attempt to summarize him differently on economic interchange is not traceable to a page in the given range 97-104, and his position on writing appears wholly contrary to our text. PiCo said, "Read the chapter again, more carefully", without quoting him.
16. I would delete "The north-central highlands during Iron Age I were divided into five major chiefdoms, with no sign of centralised authority", as not traceable to anything in Miller pp. 97-104 or Killebrew p. 176. No other comments found.
17. Finally, I would invite comment on what I should do when I find this much source conformity failure propagated by one editor (in only one editing spate among several I have witnessed from the same editor), leading to the reasonable suspicion of additional significant OR and SYN findable in that editor's other edits. The fact that it takes this long to cover a few simple points about a source not saying what we say it says makes it hard for me to determine how to gauge the whole remainder of the article, which I have not reviewed. Thank you for your attention. JJB 20:14, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

• • John, I think you should step back at this point and let the RfC process proceed - outsiders can look into the question of the sources that bother you. PiCo (talk) 08:12, 9 October 2010 (UTC)