Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 17:46, 4 October 2005

Just to let everyone know - I know the list of Kings is not completely tabulated yet - I thought I would wait to see how the dispute over the Kingdom of Israel list panned out before I continued with it.

--JohnArmagh 10:02, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

141 BCE–63 BCE: The Hasmonean State in "Palestine" established by the Maccabees

The area was not known as Palestine at this time. The area only became known as Palestine after the Roman destruction which was well after the Maccabee revolt.

I do not believe this is the case. Our own article Palestine (region) says: The term "Syria Palaestina" is first recorded by the 5th century B.C. Greek historian Herodotus, who wrote of the "district of Syria called Palaistinêi", and later Ptolemy and Pliny (who alludes to a region of Syria that was "formerly called Palaestina"), to refer to the eastern coast of the Mediterranean; it is generally accepted that the region they referred to extended further inland than the domain of the Philistines. At any rate, if we do not use Palestine, I am uncertain what the proper term would be. Judæa seems clearly inappropriate to refer to the whole region, since the Hasmonaean state consisted of not only Judæa, but also Samaria, Galilee, Idumæa, and so forth. Palestine seems like the best general term to mean "the southern part of the Levant" once we get past the period when we can use "Canaan." john k 02:21, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Synchronisms with other kingdoms?

Is it possible to make a better chronology by looking for synchronisms with other kingdoms? For example, Kings dates the raid of Shoshenq I ("Shishak") to the reign of Rehoboam, and Shoshenq died in 924 BC. Yet we still have a kinglist that dates Rehoboam's first year to 922 BC. Why?

BCE/CE again

Until 20:47, 29 September 2005 this article used both styles. User:Humus sapiens made it consistent to use BCE/CE . User:Jguk then changed date styles (in the now consistent article) , followed by various other reverts. As a compromise I suggest undoing User:Jguk's other date style change to this article , and going back to the inconsistent state. Anyone (other than User:Jguk) object? Sortan 15:56, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I think the best way to deal with the issue is just too let sleeping dogs lie and leave it as it was. So no, I don't object. john k 17:11, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Sortan's main contributions to Misplaced Pages appear to be aggressively edit-warring to add BCE notation to a small number of articles. I'd be grateful if someone else would look at his contributions and remind him that WP is an encyclopaedia, not somewhere to make what are effectively trolling edits, jguk 17:28, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Jguk's main contribution to Misplaced Pages seem to be aggressively edit-warring to change BCE/CE to BC/AD, changing American English to British English, and various other style disputes. I'd be grateful if someone would look at his contributions over the past year and remind him of what constitutes consensus, and that WP is not his personal fiefdom. Sortan 20:13, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Please, let's not get into ad hom attacks. The articles Kingdom of Judah & Kingdom of Israel are integral parts of Jewish history, and this is a good enough reason to use denominationally neutral and encyclopedic BCE/CE instead of chauvinist Before Christ/Anno Domini notation. Besides, I don't see why the changes clandestinely made by some anon crusader should stick. I promise not to change notation in Jesus and Paul of Tarsus but having a neutral option, what is the reason to use potentially offensive notation here? ←Humus sapiens←ну? 02:32, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

There has never been any consensus on wikipedia that "BC/AD" is "chauvinist". As I've noted previously, BCE/CE is not any more "denominationally neutral" than BC/AD - it is just a euphemism and represents the same Christ-centric calendar. Furthermore, the basic fact is, that while BC/AD might have a literally religious meaning, in practice, it is an example of something analogous to ceremonial deism - it is acceptable because, through repeated usage, the theoretical religious meaning is essentially gone. john k 04:28, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

It may be added that if you are going to play the "Jewish subjects shouldn't use Christian dates" card, the history of the divided kingdoms is also a subject of some interest to Christian history, and that the vast majority of those who have read about this period of history in the Books of Kings, and who have studied its archaeological basis, have been Christians. I don't think this is particularly relevant in either instance, but it seems to me that in issues like that it is essentially a deadlock. john k 04:31, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

First, let's not mix up calendar systems and notations. If someone advocated using exclusively Jewish calendar in article Jesus, some complaints would be understandable. The issue here is, BC/AD stomps religious feelings of a minority in an article describing their history, while the BCE/CE notation is denominationally neutral and is increasingly commonly acceptable . The BCE/CE notation is already being used in many articles; since WP does not have a standard notation, if & when we get to voting for it, I am sure we will have our chance to express our POV. As for Christians reading about Jewish history, that would be exactly the place to promote religious tolerance, don't you think? ←Humus sapiens←ну? 05:54, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Per the MoS either notation is fine: "Both the BCE/CE era names and the BC/AD era names are acceptable, but be consistent within an article." I'd like to politely suggest that you all have valuable contributions to make to Misplaced Pages, and prolonging this dispute is not one of them. Keithlard 07:35, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I most certainly wasn't suggesting anything about the Jewish calendar. BC/AD and BCE/CE are the same calendar, and that calendar is a calendar based on a date derived for the birth of Jesus. As to whether BC/AD is somehow "stomping on the religious feelings of a minority" (which seems completely absurd to me as an agnostic Jew), or that using it has anything to do with religious tolerance, I'm just going to point again towards the idea of ceremonial deism - that is, all religious meaning of BC/AD has crept out due to common usage. Personally, I find the idea of BCE/CE to be much more obnoxious than BC/AD. BC/AD acknowledges that what we are discussing is a calendar based on a date derived for the birth of Jesus. BCE/CE uses that same date, but pretends it's the beginning of something called the "common era" - as though some date derived for the birth of Jesus is an ecumenical date. At least BC/AD doesn't pretend to be ecumenical. john k 16:56, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Let's examine humus sapiens strawman argument. BC/AD notation quite simply does not carry with it any religious connotations anymore. Whether they ever did, I do not know, but let's not go down all that false etymology route. Nowadays it is just a way of denoting dates, nothing more. It is also the only notation generally understood by the general public worldwide - and since we should aim to make the article accessible to as many people as possible, that is the form we should use - simple as that.

The religious tolerance argument humus sapiens makes is also a strawman argument. As noted above, their is no longer any religious meaning in BC/AD notation (note that where relevant the Church expands AD to Anno Domini or In the Year of Our Lord, it does not rely on the abbreviations to denote this). In a secular society such as the one I live in, history has given us many terms, dresses, customs, foods, etc. from many different religions. I can't think of anything less tolerant than to pick any one out against a particular religion and seek to eliminate it.

On articles solely about Jewish history (and I agree with John Kenney here that this article is not solely about Jewish history), it may be useful to some readers to give dates in the Jewish calendar. In which case - let's give the dates in the Jewish calendar, but in brackets after we have given dates in the Gregorian/Julian calendar (as appropriate).

Finally, we have already voted on it - it was a very divisive vote (and my assessment is that there is little desire to repeat the exercise). The proposal to move to BCE/CE notation wikipedia-wide failed to even garner a majority, let alone the 80%+ consensus that would be needed to change policy. We are left with saying that as this page has predominantly used BC notation, that is where it should remain, with the opposite conclusion being reached on some other articles. Not ideal, but the only real compromise that at present has any chance of working, jguk 07:37, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Jguk - deriving BC/AD from "Before Christ" and "Anno Domini" is not a false etymology. It is a correct etymology. It is just an irrelevant one. The question is "do most people when they use BC/AD intend to imply that Jesus is the Christ and the Lord?" The answer is "obviously not" - people use BC/AD because that is the most common way to mark that we are using the calendar based on Dionysius Exiguus's miscalculation of the birth of Jesus. But it doesn't actually imply anything about Jesus - it is basically irrelevant what the calendar's origins are. Finding "BC" offensive is particularly silly, because plenty of non-Christians refer to "Jesus Christ" without thinking about the fact that "Christ" means messiah - it takes two levels of etymology to get us back to BC being potentially offensive. john k 17:06, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Jguk, this isn't about whether to move to BCE notation Misplaced Pages-wide, but in articles where BC/AD is inappropriate, and it seems to me that this is clearly one of them. BCE is widely used by academics, and I'm surprised for that reason to see John objecting to it. I also want to point out this Guardian article to you, as you've often argued that BCE is an American or Jewish thing, but this is a Roman Catholic writer, former nun, and theologian writing in a British newspaper. SlimVirgin 08:28, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Given that this change has been made and reverted several times in the last 24 hours, can I suggest that simply reverting it again is not going to help (even if you justify it on talk). This is a pretty lame edit war. Constantly changing date formats is not improving the factual content of the article, and in the absence of anyone willing to say that they are actually offended by either format, I would just leave this one to blow itself out. If it continues it may be a case for requesting protection and putting this to a talk page vote for this specific page. Keithlard 09:05, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Slim, we cannot decide what is appropriate without considering who we are writing for. It is what is best for our audience (ie what they are most likely to prefer) which is the important thing - and it's here that the argument that some academics use BCE becomes irrelevant: we are not writing for academics, we are writing for the worldwide general public, and I strongly believe that WP should make itself as accessible as possible to this audience.

This is a very small subset of that. But let's examine the situation. We have one notation that is understood by the worldwide general public, one that has a much smaller range. We have one notation that even on google searches, which in this subject area can be expected to be biased towards American and academic usage, show a 9:1 preference for BC notation. We also have countervailing arguments as to whether offence can be caused by the choice of usage - with outside evidence pointing to many more people taking offence at changing BC notation to BCE notation than in the other direction.

This is why I conclude that, in this instance, given this audience, we should use BC notation. And whilst it is a shame that WP policy does not require that BC notation is used throughout (very much to its detriment) at least here, where there has been a long history of this article using BC notation it does demand its retention.

No doubt there are other changes to this article which would also improve its accessibility, and I'll have a look to see what I can do there too, jguk 09:45, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Jguk, you've elsewhere argued against the first-editor argument, so how this article began is irrelevant, and there is no policy stating it should be either BC or BCE. I agree with your accessibility argument, but that's why I provided the Guardian article. This wasn't written for academics, or Americans, or Jews, or by an academic, American or Jew. If the Guardian house style is BCE, doesn't that indicate that they regard it as equally accessible? SlimVirgin 09:53, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I do think that the first-editor argument is silly - but that's what the current WP approach is and is what we're stuck with.

Where does it say that this is what the current WP approach is. The last time I edited the MoS, it said to go with the first editor if and only if there was nothing about the article that suggested one style over another. But the contents of this article clearly do suggest that BC would be inappropriate. SlimVirgin 10:08, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I would like it to change so that it requires BC/AD notation as that will make our articles as accessible to as many people as possible. (There's also a lot of other work that needs to be done to make our articles more accessible, but this would be a small start.) However, in the current prevailing climate I can't see such a proposal succeeding.

The Guardian house style is to use BC/AD notation as their style manual suggests. However, it is clear that in its comments section where academics or what have you write a column, the Guardian tends not to change their text. I imagine that article you cited would not have been read by the vast majority of the Guardian's readers, jguk 10:03, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Why would you say that the vast majority of Guardian readers wouldn't read Karen Armstrong? She's very popular. SlimVirgin 10:08, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I said they wouldn't read that article. I'm sure no article in the comment section is read by the majority of the Guardian's readers, jguk 10:26, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Let's keep track: first, you tried personal attack against User:Sortan. Then, attempted to accuse me in using strawman argument. Now you are saying that academic community doesn't matter (for a serious encyclopeda!). So far I haven't seen any good reason to use the Christian-centric notation in Jewish history related articles and consider this insistence an instance of religious intolerance. Please elaborate who and why is offended by using BCE/CE here. ←Humus sapiens←ну? 10:05, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Have you seen Sortan's user contributions (including his constant personal attacks on me in his edit summaries)? Also bear in mind that you can't immediately see that he has been wikistalking me from this, but that's what he has been doing. That explains why I do not think Sortan's continued presence on WP is worth keeping.

You are mistaken in saying that BC/AD notation is Christian-centric. It is used by all people of all creeds, and by atheists too! Any religious meaning in the notation has long since disappeared. Have a look at the article on false etymology and you'll see what I mean. It's no more Christian-centric than Wednesday being Norse-religion-centric or June being Roman-religion-centric.

The offence is caused by three things. First, the singling out of something because its etymology is related to Christianity. Why do that? What is especially repugnant about Christianity that something, even obliquely, related to it should be eliminated? Second is a related point: in a secular society, which most of the English-speaking world is, we see symbols, signs, words, terminology, etc. of a plethora of religions. We should accept them all. In my city I walk past churches, mosques and synagogues, I see people in Jewish hasidic, Islamic, African dress. I hear many accents and see people of many cultures. The surest way to cause unrest is to suggest that we should restrict this in any way.

Third reason is that there is no reason to change away from something that everyone already understands. It's the same argument as you'll see against other arguments for "political correctness". I'm sure I needn't elaborate on the extensive and widespread offence political correctness has caused.

A good example of where offence has been caused is in New South Wales, where changing one instance of BC to BCE in one exam paper caused questions to be asked in both chambers of parliament and forced an apology from the Education Minister, jguk 10:24, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

If you were correct about BC/AD notation not being Christian-centric, the denominationally-neutral alternative would not gain popularity and we would not have this talk.

This most certainly does not follow. john k 01:55, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Care to elaborate? ←Humus sapiens←ну? 09:21, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Not only you try to use offensive notation and insist that it is not offensive somehow. In addition you attempt to present it as a lesson of tolerance!

"What is especially repugnant about Christianity that something, even obliquely, related to it should be eliminated?" - this is a classic strawman arg. Who says it "should be eliminated"? Take a look at the title of this article. I do not advocate changing random unrelated articles. Stop waging silly holy wars in articles directly related to Jewish history. This is a sensitive matter and I challenge you to demonstrate sensitivity and tolerance. ←Humus sapiens←ну? 23:28, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Stalking

Jguk followed up on my contribution here by following me to Misplaced Pages:Verifiability, a page he has never edited before, and making several changes, including changing spokespersons to spokesmen, a word he insists is still also used for women. This is really unpleasant behavior, Jguk, and hardly endears anyone to your cause. SlimVirgin 12:29, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I made a number of edits to that page, which I came to as I saw it had a long discussion ongoing on it. There was an instance of "spokesman" clearly referring to a woman closely followed by the word "spokespersons", it made sense to bring them into line. I made a number of other more significant positive changes to that page - all of which are surely better to discuss on that talk page rather than this. Or are you trying to campaign against me more generally? Presumably you were unconcerned for some time that a female spokesman was referred to as a spokesman, but somehow you are concerned when I make things consistent, jguk 12:33, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

LOL!! Don't be ridiculous. Why would I want to campaign against you? SlimVirgin 12:35, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

BCE/BC - reminder of sitewide compromise

First, BC is not Christian-centric (as explained on other pages ad infinitum), and is perfectly neutral in sense - no-one thinks it means anything other than a device to show dates. And besides, this argument has been discussed in great detail elsewhere on Misplaced Pages. The only form of consensus that has been able to retain the peace is to not change articles from BCE to BC or vice versa. No participant in the great Misplaced Pages BC v BCE debate is entirely happy with that compromise, I am sure - but it is all we've got to keep the peace. That means all sides respect it (both those that, for whatever reason, prefer BCE and those who, for whatever reason, prefer BC). In the case of this article the "no change" compromise means that it should stay using "BC". Please respect this in the interests of wikipeace, if nothing else, jguk 06:56, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

See above. Go wage your holy wars elsewhere, and don't barge in into Jewish history. So much for tolerance. ←Humus sapiens←ну? 07:01, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I have never argued that this has anything to do with religion - if anything, I've argued that it has nothing to do with religion. I am offended by your accusations. All I'm asking now is that you tolerate that others have different views, that we have had a large sitewide discussion that ended inconclusive, and that the only compromise for relative peace on the issue that we have is the "no change" approach that I outline above, jguk 07:06, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Everyone is entitled to their POV. You may deny that BC/AD is Christian-centric, but obviously some see it so. There is no reason for that notation here, since we have denominationally-neutral and commonly accepted alternative and your insistence on stomping religious feelings of a minority in an article directly related to their history is doubly offensive. Your "compromise" is a deception. I am not advocating wholesale changes in random articles: Jewish history is a special case. Again, I challenge you to demonstrate tolerance and sensitivity. If you are unable to respect the subject, go away. ←Humus sapiens←ну? 10:21, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

BCE is not a commonly accepted alternative - certainly not in many places of the world. It is merely political correctness gone wrong. I'll overlook the point that the subject of the Kingdom of Judah is as relevant to Christianity and Islam as it is to Judaism (as it happened before the Abrahamic religions split), but I do take very strong objections to the suggestion that there is something special about Jewish history - and to the suggestion that Jewish history should just be for Jews. It shouldn't be.

Tolerance involves understanding, and that means having articles that are accessible to everyone. Articles written in language that only Jewish scholars will understand are all very well and good in Jewish academic journals - but on Misplaced Pages we have a worldwide audience of all denominations and of none. We should write in a way that every can understand. Whether this promotes tolerance or not, I don't know, but at least it would allow someone not well versed in Judaism and without assumed knowledge that isn't widely known outside Jewish circles, to understand the subject. A decision to segregate Judaism and have WP articles on Judaism to be written with a solely Jewish audience in mind is, regardless of the motives of those writing in that way, only going to promote differences and segregation.

Of course, this is the problem with political correctness all round - it leaves us having very divisive arguments over language that only end up alienating and causing rancour, whilst the real underlying necesssity (whether it is encouraging understanding or doing something like making sure there is real equality of opportunity amongst all sectors of society) fall by the wayside. There's no coincidence in the nation that has tried to embrace political correctness more than any other remaining the most religiously and racially divided in the developed world.

So we should write to promote understanding of the subject at hand. That means adopting the language and style of our audience, which should be everyone. And this goes way, way beyond whether we add a letter E - it goes at the heart of making sure a layman can get as much out of wikipedia as possible. Have a look at some of our science articles, which are equally poor at explaining things to a layman.

Anyway, back to the BCE/BC subject, we have had the debates and the votes and they left us with the "no change" compromise. Incidentally, there was a proposal to separate out articles relating to certain religions, including Judaism, and having a separate rule for those articles - but that proposal was also defeated easily. Even though you disagree with this compromise, I ask you to accept it and abide by it - and bear in mind that it does cut both ways, jguk 11:58, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

First, I am glad you don't bring up that "BC/AD is not Christian-centric" absurdity anymore. Second, take your POV gripes with PC someplace else. The "Jewish history should just be for Jews" is another strawman not worthy of a response. "Tolerance involves understanding" - exactly, that is what I am asking for. Check by yourself: most if not all articles on Jewish history and some other topics (BTW, open to all) use BCE/CE notation and there is a very good reason for this: Christian-centric notation is inappropriate and offensive here. So stop your intimidation and move on. ←Humus sapiens←ну? 17:46, 4 October 2005 (UTC)