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Revision as of 20:05, 26 April 2004

What mainstream historians dispute these facts? None. Only pro-Arab, anti-Israel agitators are unhappy with publicly discussing this material. In point of fact, there are many other Bible conspiracy theories that need to be discussed in this article, many that don't have anything to do with the State of Israel at all. For instance, the conspiracy theories about hidden books of the Bible, or those that relate to Jesus's supposed wife and children, the Freemasons, etc. None of these topics are NPOV violations. I understand that Zero and Martin Harper (MyRedDice) want this material discredited, because they feel that it hurts their pro-Arab, anti-Israeli political agenda. But that is not grounds to discredit facts. I am removing their NPOV dispute tag, because they can't back it up, and they are obviously just trying to prmote their political views. RK 15:51, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)

The topic isn't a NPOV violation (if it is true), but I believe the text can be NPOV-ed somewhat further. I'll try to make a start. Martijn faassen 21:28, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

"Al-Kidwa said: "Most of the Khazars (a Turkish tribe that converted to Judaism in medieval times) are the Ashkenazic Jews who arrived in Palestine. As Allah is my witness, in my blood flows more of the Children of Israel and the ancient Hebrews than in the blood of Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu." This quote does not belong here; it relates not to Biblical conspiracy theories but to the old Khazar theory of the Ashkenazi's origins (first put forward, I believe, by Arthur Koestler), which, although very recently shown by genetic evidence to be largely incorrect, was a perfectly respectable academic theory and was held by some Jews. If an article on that exists, please put this quote there. - Mustafaa 19:43, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

""The Palestinian Authority, and some other Arab governments and universities, teach that Jews never lived in Israel... This is a mainstream Arab view, taught in many schools across the Middle East." False!! Not only does this fail the subjective test - I've talked to many Arabs from all over the place and never heard this crazy theory - it fails the Google test. Do a search اليهود "من اليمن" and you know what you get? Pages and pages about the Yemenite Jews, and nothing (at least not in the first four pages, including many Palestinian government documents) about the Jews coming from Yemen. Let me guess - someone heard a MEMRI quote, and decided that must mean that everyone in the Middle East thought this way, and decided on the basis of his supposed understanding of the Middle East to put this sentence in? Crazy. - Mustafaa 20:29, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

"Numerous Palestinian Authority textbooks for their children teach them that Jews and Chrisitans lie about being connected to the land of Israel. Here is one such example: "The Zionists turn their attention towards Palestine as the national homeland of the Jews, while relying on false historical and religious claims." From Modern Arab History and Contemporary Problems, Part Two, for Tenth Grade p. 50" It is entirely true that the Zionists relied partly on false historical claims - notably the claim of "a land without people for a people without land". As for the religious claims, they are irrelevant to the article. The example given, therefore, does not support the conclusion drawn from it, and has no place here. - Mustafaa 20:40, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The writer of this clearly either had no hesitation about lying, or for whatever reason failed to read more than about two words of this article. In the middle of a long survey of Arab historians's work on Palestine-related issues, one author - Maher Al-Sherif - dedicated one paragraph of one article of Al-Ahram to a summary of this idea that reads as if this theory was an exciting new possibility, rather than rejecting it out of hand. To the author of this article, that translates as: Al-Ahram accepts the theory. But don't take my word for it: take the Wayback Machine's... . - Mustafaa 20:51, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

An even worse lie: without further ado, he claimed that http://jamaat.net/ supports the theory. Do a quick Google search "Yemen site:jamaat.net": nothing. Try "kamal salibi site:jamaat.net" - you get one hit. Look at it , and it turns out to be an argument that Muhammad is predicted in the Bible, which quotes Kamal Salibi once, not to argue that the Jews came from Arabia but to argue that Mount Paran is near Mecca, thus allowing the verse in question to predict Muhammad's coming. I;m starting to doubt even the minor details - is Kamal Salibi really Lebanese? I sure wouldn't take this guy's word for it.... - Mustafaa 20:58, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

So this was you RK? You know, I really thought better of you than that. I'll have to look more carefully at the Al-Aqsa mosque stuff. - Mustafaa 21:09, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

And just for good measure, you know how many hits a Google search on "كمال صليبي" (Kamal Salibi) gets? Just 300, on the whole Internet. And that's including anything about him - most of his works are on Lebanese history, not this weird Bible in Arabia thing. - Mustafaa 21:18, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Requests for comment/RK

Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/RK has been created as structured way to gather support in the Wikipedian community for action to be taken against user:RK for his consistent use of aggressive editing tactics that are counter productive to the development of high quality encyclopedic articles. Now, is your chance to voice your grievances against user:RK. Please take a few minutes of your time to air your comments. Feel free to expand the list of problem areas by adding problems or grievences of your own. -- John Gohde, aka Mr-Natural-Health 03:58, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Does Kamal Salibi belong here?

Kamal Salibi's theory does not appear to involve the postulation of any conspiracy; rather, it claims that when the Jews moved, they identified the places in their new home with those of their old one - just as Hindus put "Ayodhya"s all over India and as far afield as Thailand - and that they then forgot that there had ever been a distinction. Mind-blowingly silly, yes; conspiracy, no. Nor does it claim that the Bible was edited to support this theory. So what is it doing in this article? - Mustafaa 22:07, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I agree. I didn't read Salibi's book but I read the (mostly hostile) reviews of it in a few academic journals. He proposed a novel historical theory on the basis of not much evidence and hasn't found much support for it amongst other historians. He does not deny Jews lived in Palestine during the second temple period, but argues that much of the earlier cultural memory derives from the Arabian peninsular. It is an alternative to the biblical version of an Egyptian exile and subsequent conquest of Canaan which also has hardly any archaelogical support. One could reasonably call it an idiosyncratic fringe theory, but not a conspiracy theory. --Zero 00:49, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

But where to put it? I'd be tempted to just move the Kamal Salibi stuff to the page about him - it's not an important enough theory to merit its own page. And the suggestions that the Temple was elsewhere, or that the Old City was never inhabited by Jews, belong in - say - an Israeli-Palestinian Mutual Historic Denial page, full of quotes from Israelis claiming there were no Palestinians in Palestine or some part thereof, and Palestinians claiming there were no Jews in Israel or some part thereof... Can you think of any appropriate article? - Mustafaa 04:44, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks Mustafaa for all the fact checking and NPOV-ing editing. I think this removes most of the polemic and very importantly, specifies that we're discussing two separate things here. One the theory that the pre-exilic jews lived in Yemen. This looks similar to the many theories that exist about the origins of other peoples; sometimes they're placed in rather surprising locations. This happens probably in part due to political/nationalistic reasons and in part due to the difficulty to archeologically trace back movements of peoples. The other statements are convenient statements with usually clear political motivations about specific sites. I'll try editing the article to split those into two sections.

Should this article be called 'conspiracy theory'? This has strong associations which could be seen as implying POV. Perhaps something like 'alternate theories about the bible' or something like that? Martijn faassen 21:43, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I've done more editing. I've done the split as previously mentioned, and while doing this I've also been NPOV-ing some of the point of view analysis inserted by Mustafaa.

The more I look at this page, the more disjoint it looks. One the one hand, we're looking at alternative theories of histories of times that happen to be described, among other places, in the Bible. We're also looking at attempts to use interpretations (mainstream or not) of the history of the land for political reasons.

Then quite separately we're talking about lost books of the bible. There were early Christian texts that were not included with other early Christian texts in the New Testament; that much is commonly accepted and in such there is no conspiracy (unless historically there was an attempt to suppress that this was the case?) Then there are conspiracy theories that attempt to explain why certain texts were not included and certain others were.

Should we split this article up into multiple ones? Are some of these articles mergeable with others that already exist? Martijn faassen 22:01, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with you, Martijn. Looking over the content, I would say that we have two alternative-history theories - which do not posit conspiracies - and a theory, that some books of the bible were suppressed, which is quite reasonable and doesn't have to involve any conspiracy either, as well as two unwritten sections. Why not just move the Kamal Salibi theory to Kamal Salibi, the site denial stuff to something like Israeli-Palestinian Mutual Historic Denial, and the suppression material to Bible or the like, and leave this article as a stub? - Mustafaa 07:09, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I agree too. --Zero 12:01, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The first two are done. The third might need input from somene better-versed in the history. - Mustafaa 20:05, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Lost books of the Bible conspiracy theory

needs work; in particular, it needs to distinguish more carefully between the fact that certain books, held by some sects to be divinely inspired, were rejected when the canon was compiled, and the allegation that these books were suppressed out of sexism or fear rather than an honest belief in their falsehood. - Mustafaa 23:05, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)