Talk:Josephus

Image removed

There used to be an image of Josephus, why was it removed?

If it was removed because it is not contemporary/because we don't want to use an image for him, then why Maimonides article has a picture, from the 19th century? Mark. PaloAlto (talk) 18:41, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Are you talking about the Roman bust purported to be of Josephus? If so, the answer is given here: Talk:Josephus/Archive_1#Roman_bust_purported_to_be_of_Josephus. Generalrelative (talk) 18:45, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

User:GeneralrelativeThanks for the discussion link

I actually had in mind the more modern engraving

https://www.worldhistory.org/Flavius_Josephus/ Mark. PaloAlto (talk) 18:51, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Aha, got it. I'm not sure why that one was removed. Generalrelative (talk) 21:28, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Same here. If the community has nothing against it I would restore it. Mark. PaloAlto (talk) 21:45, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Alternate names for Josephus

Not sure why this was deleted, but I reinserted the alternate names, which are well-supported by the cited sources. Anythingyouwant (talk) 18:04, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Josephus never had any alternate names, adding a patronym and a reconstructed modern translation doesn't create a new name. Academic sources overwhelmingly refer to him as simply Josephus, and your general topic sources obviously don't qualify. See also MOS:LEADCLUTTER. Avilich (talk) 18:16, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

The lead of this article begins with “Flavius Josephus”. But he did not take the name Flavius until A.D. 69. Before then he was called something else beyond merely Josephus, because “Josephus” would have been inadequate to identify him and distinguish him from the many many other people in his community named Josephus. I have just reduced clutter in the lead per your suggestion.[1] Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:02, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

His name was always simply Josephus, and what he used to distinguish himself is irrelevant: lots of ancient cultures used patronymics, but these should not feature in the lede unless they are used commonly and non-trivially in English sources. Reliable sources like the Oxford Classical Dictionary and Brill's Pauly call him simply Josephus, not "Yosef" or "Ben Matityahu". General topic sources like Making History: The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past written by non-specialists are not generally reliable and should be avoided. Avilich (talk) 19:32, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

I don’t understand why you’re not objecting to the first word of the lead: Flavius. If we include Flavius in the lead, then it seems obvious we should also include Matityahu, because the former supplanted the latter. The title of this article makes clear that the predominant name is simply Josephus, but it’s very typical for a lead to give fuller names. Many Wikipedia BLP leads begin with a full name including middle name, even though almost no one knows the middle name, and that’s fine, we want the lead to include a fuller name if there is a fuller name than the article title. Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:50, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Once again, he never "supplanted" any name and was never called "Matityahu". Your basis for assuming this is unsupported by reliable sources. There is nothing more to add aside from the "Flavius Josephus" that was already in place before your edits. Avilich (talk) 20:14, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Consider this book: Goodman, Martin. Josephus's The Jewish War: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2019). It clearly says his name was Yosef ben Mattityahu. Clearly, Martin Goodman (historian) is a very reliable source. Anythingyouwant (talk) 20:27, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

He also calls him "Josephus (the) son of Matthias", but each of those terms is used no more than 3 times throughout the entire book, and nowhere does the author say that those are anything more than patronymics. On a much wider scale the use of "Yosef ben Matityahu" in English sources is basically zero when compared with the alternative. Avilich (talk) 21:51, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Look at the opening sentence in the lead of Cher. Did you know her last name was Sarkisian? Almost no one knows that. But that was her name before she got famous. Same with Josephus. As Goodman says, before Josephus got famous, he was “the young Judean priest Yosef ben Matityahu”. Of course the patronymic had to be used or else no one would have known which Yosef was being referred to. I’m not highly invested in whether we mention the full name Yosef ben Matityahu but it does seem very well-sourced, accurate, and typical for Wikipedia articles. Anythingyouwant (talk) 22:27, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Goodman says nothing of the sort, your quote is out of context, and your example is anachronistic. We should give WP:DUE weight to what the totality of published reliable sources say, and the weight given to your preferred name is basically zero (and Goodman himself uses the term no more than 3 times), so I'm removing it. Avilich (talk) 23:03, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Should his full Jewish name Yosef ben Matityahu be mentioned in lead sentence?

In the lead sentence, his Roman name (Flavius Josephus) is recited, which he adopted in A.D. 69. Before then he had a Jewish name, which I think also ought to be given in the lead sentence, so that the lead sentence would read as follows:

“ Flavius Josephus (/dʒoʊˈsiːfəs/; Greek: Ἰώσηπος, Iṓsēpos; c. AD 37 – c. 100), earlier known as Yosef ben Matityahu, was a 1st-century Roman–Jewish historian and military leader.

References

”

The full Jewish name is not as well known as the Roman Josephus (or Flavius Josephus), but it is standard practice for Wikipedia to include birth name in lead sentence, see e.g. Cher. This matter was discussed in the preceding talk page section, but that section started before the proposed version was developed (i.e. before the Goodman source was added, and before another version of Josephus’s name was removed). Anythingyouwant (talk) 23:26, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Per MOS:BIOFIRSTSENTENCE, “The name of a person is presented in full if known, including any given names that were abbreviated or omitted in the article's title. For example, the article on Calvin Coolidge gives his name as John Calvin Coolidge Jr. If a person changed their full name at some point after birth, the birth name may be given as well, if relevant.” It is relevant because he was a Jew who became a Roman so both the Jewish and Roman names are correct and provide a fuller picture of the subject. Anythingyouwant (talk) 23:31, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

• He never changed his name of birth aside from adding a Latin name. Patronymics were common at the time, but virtually no Wikipedia article includes them in the lede unless it's part of an official naming convention. It should not be added in the present article either. The proposed addition is not his "full Jewish name", and is only mentioned by a statistically meaningless number of English sources. Avilich (talk) 00:05, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

So, in your opinion, we should make sure the lead paragraph never mentions the Jewish name “Yosef” that he was born with, but only the Roman name he used later in life? Should we also delete the following footnote from the article?

“ Ben-Ari, Nitsa (2003). "The double conversion of Ben-Hur: a case of manipulative translation" (PDF). Target. 14 (2): 263–301. doi:10.1075/target.14.2.05ben. Retrieved 28 November 2011. The converts themselves were banned from society as outcasts and so was their historiographic work or, in the more popular historical novels, their literary counterparts. Josephus Flavius, formerly Yosef Ben Matityahu (34–95), had been shunned, then banned as a traitor. ”

Anythingyouwant (talk) 02:34, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I would put ‘Jewish traitor” in the lead. Agree? Riskit 4 a biskit (talk) 08:08, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

An IP added the full Jewish name with patronymic in the lead,[2] so I restored just the Jewish name without the patronymic,[3] because the patronymic seems to be the point of contention. Anythingyouwant (talk) 22:30, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

This needs an honest clean up.

The Josephus references to "Jesus" etc. are known later edited forgery. Sparky (talk) 02:14, 30 March 2024 (UTC)