User talk:GenoV84/2023/January

Revert in Ayesha Age.

Hello. You reverted an necessary content in Criticism of Muhammad citing non-academic, unreliable original research. Can you describe what was wrong with the sources, and how can I improve them? Izan Mehdi. (talk) 14:45, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

@Izan Mehdi.: I explained it in the edit summary of the revert; the claims and sources that you provided were neither academic nor reliable. GenoV84 (talk) 17:22, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

The source I provided is International Journal of Islamic Thought which is a respected academic journal. The next source I provided is a study based on the researches of recognised Islamic scholar Maulana Muhammad Farooq Khan. And, after that other scholars Habibur Rahman Kandhalvi and Ayatullah Muhammad Husayni al-Qazwini as well as two authors including Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood who is mentioned on Wikipedia. These all sources in the very least give mention of what Muslims believe because out there its like an open fact that the Subject's age was 18 or 19. One can himself calculate her age to be 19 with respect to contemporary aged Asma bint Abi Bakr and certain events during Aisha's time.

Its deserves a mention. Izan Mehdi. (talk) 12:14, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

@Izan Mehdi.: International Journal of Islamic Thought is not an academic reference, otherwise other editors would have used it before you. It's actually a religious publication published by an Islamic institution, and the Islamic scholars that you mentioned are clergymen, not academics or historians of Islam. I'm sorry to tell you this, but all the sources that you provided are decidedly biased and unreliable, therefore they cannot be used on Wikipedia.

The same WP policies apply to Islamic websites as well, such as the notoriously biased and unreliable IslamQA.info owned by the Islamic scholar Muhammad Al-Munajid. Please follow the WP policies and provide reliable references for your claims about the alleged girl's age. GenoV84 (talk) 18:43, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Yaldabaoth

Sorry for the revert, but as the etymology section explains the early twentieth century consensus was based on the supposedly attested בהותא, a misreading of כהותא and is hence incorrect. Bari' bin Farangi (talk) 12:03, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Same issue applies to the earlier theory with the supposed plural form of bohu as it too has no attestation Bari' bin Farangi (talk) 12:06, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

@Bari' bin Farangi: Several academics and religion scholars between the 19th and 20th centuries have proposed different etymologies for the name Yaldabaoth, as the content that you and me have added demonstrates. Wikipedia is not a forum and we are definitely not here to state what is right or what is wrong, we just have to provide informations supported by reliable references. That's all. GenoV84 (talk) 12:13, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

I would tend to agree regarding npov here but Matter cites an unattested plural of a word he doesn't even correctly identify as a non-Hebrew loanword, his suggestion is really more valuable to show the historical development of views. The only modern former supporter I cited had this to say: "Gershom Scholem, the third genius in this field, more specifically the genius of precision, has taught us that some of us were wrong when they believed that Jaldabaoth means "son of chaos", because the Aramaic word bahutha in the sense of chaos only existed in the imagination of the author of a well-known dictionary. This is a pity because this name would suit the demiurge risen from chaos to a nicety. And perhaps the author of the "Untitled Document" did not know Aramaic and also supposed as we did once, that baoth had something to do with tohuwabohu, one of the few Hebrew words that everybody knows." I thought the reference to it being unattested was enough to make clear it's not a viable theory but I will qualify that Quispel and all other modern scholars withdrew their support for this theory following Scholem's analysis thereof. Bari' bin Farangi (talk) 12:37, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

I really don't want this to turn into an edit war but the form is genuinely unattested and in terms of linguistic analysis as close to disproven as you can come to proving a negative (based on no sources and argued based erroneous beliefs about the word in question) can you please reply so we can figure out how we can amicably solve this dispute? Bari' bin Farangi (talk) 12:48, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

@Bari' bin Farangi: The solution is quite simple:

1. avoid deleting sourced content provided by other editors, as you previously did on that article, because that behavior qualifies as disruptive editing;
2. avoid disparaging scholars because you personally disagree with them, as you previously did on that article, because Wikipedia is not a forum;
3. Use a more neutral style of writing when editing articles. GenoV84 (talk) 12:56, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   1. I'm sorry, Matter was already cited with this exact wording by Scholem and the reaction to the theory described by Black. I thought it would be overcite to have the exact same wording in the citations twice
   2. I personally don't have much of a horse in this race, I thought if Black and Quispel joke about the theory in published papers post Scholem's publication and no modern scholar voices support, npov would be reflecting that it isn't considered be of great importance in the current majority view and leaving out that it's laughed about
   3. I only wasn't neutral when writing on the talk page by calling it "wrong" not in the article. I realise I offended you and discouraged your research and I genuinely didn't mean to but "unattested" in the article was a scientific description of there being no sources which attest this word ever being used, it wasn't meant to convey any personal value judgement.

   Bari' bin Farangi (talk) 13:07, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

I have no reason to feel offended. Scholars praise and deride each other all the time, in any field of research, that's not a big deal. The content and academic sources that you provided are fine, but it would be best to leave academic disputes between scholars among themselves unless those disputes are historically relevant regarding the discussion of certain topics (for example, the many quests for the existence of Jesus as a historical person); in that case, those disputes and the scholars' different viewpoints about a particular topic should to be included in the article as well, without taking sides about who is "right" and who is "wrong". The only recommendation that I was trying to give you is to be careful when presenting different theories of several scholars about a certain topic, in this case the etymology of a name or term; that's something that should be done from a neutral stance. GenoV84 (talk) 16:55, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

I get that, but in this case the difficulty lies with wp:fringe I think. From a linguistic viewpoint the early etymologies aren't accepted today and offer little actual insight into the possible origins of the name, but as Quispel alludes to, the Matter-Hilgenfeld etymology has had an outsized impact on scholarship and especially on the popular reception of scholarship in this regard.

So my basic intent was to evaluate these etymologies not based on their linguistic merit alone, but to treat them like folk etymologies in essence. While most folk etymologies would not be all that relevant to an encyclopaedia, in this case touching on religious or vaguely spiritual topics here, there is from what I can gather a number of NRMs who incorporate this folk etymology into their teachings (I've assembled a few below), and so does analytical psychology (because of Jung's reception of this scholarship). So to me it's reckless to exclude the information, because it clearly has some relevance from a religious studies perspective on these communities, but it would also be reckless to misrepresent the scientific consensus just to avoid making truth statements about religious beliefs. I realise I struck a bad balance in the beginning but I hope as it stands right now the section gives due historical weight to certain theories, while sort of illustrating the current scientific consensus.

NRM reception

https://www.gnosticwarrior.com/yaldabaoth.html

https://thegnosticdread.com/yahweh-god-of-chaos-god-of-war/

Jung reception

https://books.google.at/books?id=_84eAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA228&dq=carl+jung+jaldabaoth&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjN6dmRmdT8AhUOsKQKHQQ_BNkQ6AF6BAgJEAI#v=onepage&q=carl%20jung%20jaldabaoth&f=false

https://books.google.at/books?id=7AI6CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA181&dq=carl+jung+jaldabaoth&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjN6dmRmdT8AhUOsKQKHQQ_BNkQ6AF6BAgEEAI#v=onepage&q=%20jaldabaoth&f=false Bari' bin Farangi (talk) 18:01, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the extensive clarification. I find the current revision of the etymology section and its wording in the article to be much more accurate and encyclopedic; thank you so much for your efforts to provide sourced content and improve the article. I'm not very knowledgeable about the role of Yaldabaoth in Jungian psychology and new religious movements, I learned of him exclusively from academic works focused on the history of early Christianity and Gnosticism. GenoV84 (talk) 20:53, 19 January 2023 (UTC)