Talk:Ophir

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Johngregoria - Thanks for your contributions, but without providing sources it looks like original research - which isn't allowed in articles. You can find out more about original research and citing sources here...

Wikipedia:No_original_research

If you can provide reliable sources for your information, please feel free to add it back into the article.

-- Purple Wyrm (talk) 04:13, 23 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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Insight on the News

A quote a magazine

Insight on the News (From the magazine Awake! on 1976) Solomon’s Mines Found?

● In the days of King David and King Solomon of ancient Israel, a place called “Ophir” was the source of fabulous amounts of gold. Much of the known gold supply of the ancient world is thought to have originated there. In the Bible book of First Chronicles, chapter 29, verse 4, King David is spoken of as donating 3,000 talents of gold from Ophir to the temple at Jerusalem, an amount valued at hundreds of millions of dollars today. Solomon’s trading fleets regularly brought back large amounts of gold from Ophir. (1 Ki. 9:26-28) There was so much gold then that silver was spoken of as being of relatively little value.—1 Ki. 10:21.

Now geologists say that they may have found “King Solomon’s Mine” in Saudi Arabia. Between Mecca and Medina is an area, located in a mountainous region, known as the “Cradle of Gold.” There geologists found a vast abandoned gold mine. Among their finds are huge quantities of waste rock, an estimated million tons, left by the ancient miners, still containing traces of gold. Thousands of stone hammers and grindstones used to extract the gold from the ore litter the mine slopes. Said geologist Robert W. Luce: “Our investigations have now confirmed that the old mine could have been as rich as described in biblical accounts.”--Standforder (talk) 22:41, 4 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Great Zimbabwe??

What's with this claim? Great Zimbabwe is a site out of medieval times (11th century and later). This article should not refer to speculations that are now known to be baseless. Cush (talk) 18:15, 8 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If this was a claim first made by some modern-day author only last year through a web publisher, I might agree. But the identification of Ophir with Zimbabwe dates to Vasco de Gama. This is historiography, and thus encyclopedic. That is to say, we are about the history of what people used to think, not just what people think today - just as long as we accurately note the difference. 141.152.53.5 (talk) 19:07, 8 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but Vasco da Gama is no authority on dating African cultures that Europeans of his day were not exactly familiar with. This wrong assumption by da Gama may be interesting for anecdotal history but not in connection with really identifying biblical Ophir. Solomon (or on whomever the biblical tale is based) cannot have had links to a culture that existed over 1900 years after him. Cush (talk) 21:09, 8 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is interesting and encyclopedic; but of course the article isn't suggesting that da Gama was at all correct. But most attempts to identify people/places from Genesis 10 were made over the course of long centuries, so their articles always include what the various authorities have ever speculated in connection with the relevant topic (Ophir in this case), even if it is no longer held by anyone. Notice we similarly report what John Milton, Max Muller, Flavius Josephus, and Alvaro Mendana have speculated about the possible identity of Ophir, even if nobody holds their views today. By your argument, we would have to erase all of that, and leave only "David Hatcher Childress" as a currently held opinion. 141.152.53.5 (talk) 22:30, 8 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Baseless speculation by whomever is not encyclopedic. If one comes to this article one wants to know what possible locations there are for Ophir. And Great Zimbabwe is not ancient and subsequently not a possible location. Period. Cush (talk) 05:10, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You're wrong, and you might want to read up on our policies like NPOV. We do what every single comparable article does, and that is report whatever historiographical ideas are relevant to the topic - whether they are considered "baseless" today or not. It is suppressing of this historiographic information that is not encyclopedic, and must be resisted. Encyclopedias tell people the history of what people used to think. By contrast, the system described in Orwell's 1984 tells people only what they are supposed to think today - and it is forbidden even to mention what they used to think and aren't "supposed to" be thinking anymore. If wikipedia followed such a mentality, we wouldn't even make article histories available - only the current revision. 141.152.52.159 (talk) 12:01, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]