Talk:Israelites

"History" is extremely sub-standard

• The entire History chapter closely follows the Bible and then Josephus as if they were the ultimate historical source until today.
• There had been several cases of war between the northern and southern kingdoms long before the Assyrian conquest of Israel and the ethnogenesis of the Samaritans.
• Samaritans were ethnically NOT identical to the Israelites of the northern kingdom.

As it is now, the History chapter is worse than basic. Arminden (talk) 14:33, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Semitic

please change ((Semitic)) to ((Semitic languages|Semitic))

 Not done: That WikiLink would not be precisely placed. The Semitic languages include Arabic, Tigrinya, Hebrew, Aramaic, Tigre, Maltese and Amharic -- where this section is referring to Aramaic (e.g., "the Chaldeans were a group of people who spoke Semitic language related to Aramic [sic?].")  Spintendo  16:12, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Broad Claim

I removed the phrase ¨Modern archaeology has largely discarded the historicity of the religious narrative, with it being reframed as constituting an inspiring national myth narrative.¨ because it was an extremely broad claim that only cited one source, and could potentially mislead a lot of wikipedians. Hyrcanus776 (talk) 15:18, 8 May 2019 (UTC)Hyrcanus776

You actually removed much more than that, e.g. the whole citation to the Dever article. Your removal is a very bold edit and should be reverted immediately pending the forthcoming discussion here. The Dever reference should definitely be kept, and there are other more modern citations that can be added to the historical view which does not see the Biblical narrative as real history in the modern Western sense. warshy ^(¥¥) 16:38, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Warshy. There is not much connection between Jewish mythology about their legendary ancestors, and the actual history of the Levant. Dimadick (talk) 20:05, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

Jews and Israelites

@Debresser: regarding your reinstallation of Jews as category - what is your motive? In my opinion the hierarchy is very clear - Israelites>Jews>Jewish sub-groups. Not all Israelites are Jews, with groups such as Samaritans clearly not Jewish. Since this article is not categorized under Samaritans, i don't think it should be categorized as Jews. The best category is category:Israelites, which has category:Jews and category:Samaritans as subcats.GreyShark (dibra) 10:45, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

As I explained in the edit summary. See Wikipedia:Categorization#Category_tree_organization that there are two types of categories: organized by topic or as a set. If I view these categories as sets, then I agree with you that "Jews" is in "Israelites" but not the other way around. I viewed this as a topic category, and then "Jews" is a topic that is related to "Israelites".

If more editors here think that is confusing, I am fine with my edit being undone. Debresser (talk) 20:45, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

I understand Greyshark's explanation as it is, without any further clarifications, and it seems logical to me and I agree with it. As for the other explanation, it does not make sense to me, so I'll leave it alone for now. Thanks, warshy ^(¥¥) 20:51, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

@Debresser: you seem to be a minority, so please remove category:Jews per good faith. category:Ancient Jewish history here is enough.GreyShark (dibra) 19:59, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

I see only one other editor here, who admits that he doesn't understand my argument, so no, can't do that on such a flimsy basis. Debresser (talk) 23:19, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

"largely shown"; "impossible"

I stumbled across this article today. The lead has the sentence

Modern archaeology has largely shown that determining the historicity of the religious narrative is impossible.

Consider rephrasing, as something which merely "largely shows" cannot imply impossibility. If, according to the relevant citations, modern archaeology does in fact demonstrate said impossibility, then remove the word largely from the sentence. If, on the other hand, we are in an unsure state, then opt for replacing impossible with a representation of the difficulty of the exercise. For example,

Modern archaeology has demonstrated difficulty in determining the historicity of the religious narrative.

I am not watching this article or talk page. — TheJJJunk ^{(say hello)} 17:40, 5 January 2020 (UTC)