Talk:Israelites

This history is severely flawed. It needs to be reviewed by historians. It is propaganda to suggest Jews did not originate in Israel. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:8C3:8601:EAA0:C84E:3134:C166:59F7 (talk) 14:31, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Missing: term for Israelites + Jews, together

In Jewish religion as well as several strands of historiography, the assumption of continuity or even identity is made between Israelites and Jews. Terms like "Nation/People of Israel" (caps not always a must) can't currently be linked to any Wik. article, because neither Israelites, Jews, or Israelis covers more than part of the intended meaning. Arminden (talk) 09:09, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

"israelites" means jews and samaritans, today. there are forces intentionally being erasive of our existence in academia etc. get loud 67.83.36.42 (talk) 02:47, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

MOST Jews and Samaritans of today are descendants of ancient priestly class? Or wrong edit?

A 2004 study (by Shen et al.) comparing Samaritans to several Jewish populations (including Ashkenazi Jews, Iraqi Jews, Libyan Jews, Moroccan Jews, and Yemenite Jews) found that "the principal components analysis suggested a common ancestry of Samaritan and Jewish patrilineages. Most of the former may be traced back to a common ancestor in what is today identified as the paternally inherited Israelite high priesthood (Cohanim), with a common ancestor projected to the time of the Assyrian conquest of the kingdom of Israel." (With 1 ref, see below.)

That looks like a major probable misunderstanding of the study results.

This sentence now says that MOST Samaritans of today are descendants of the ancient priestly class. I'm quite sure that it meant to say that only Samaritan priestly families share that heritage - and are paternally related to Jewish families called Cohen. However, if the current meaning is indeed the correct interpretation of the study, that would be beyond sensational and would require ample elaboration.

If most Samaritans can be "traced back to a common ancestor [among] the paternally inherited Israelite high priesthood" and "the principal components analysis suggested a common ancestry of [all] Samaritan and [all] Jewish patrilineages", that places most Samaritans and Jews (and not just Sam. priests & Jewish Cohen families) in the same group of patrilinear descendants from ancient Cohanim.

The ref:

• cite web |title=Reconstruction of Patrilineages and Matrilineages of Samaritans and Other Israeli Populations From Y-Chromosome and Mitochondrial DNA Sequence Variation |url=http://evolutsioon.ut.ee/publications/Shen2004.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130508024921/http://evolutsioon.ut.ee/publications/Shen2004.pdf |archive-date=8 May 2013 |access-date=10 May 2010}} (855 KB), Hum Mutat 24:248–260, 2004.

Arminden (talk) 09:46, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm reading the "most" as referring exclusively to the aforementioned common patrilineal ancestries, not to the populations of either group at large. Assuming that is what the source says, there's no real obstacle to changing the article's wording to make this clearer. Sinclairian (talk) 16:11, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I insist this is nonsense. I read it again before the late night hours when my concentration goes down the drain. Here it is again, in slightly abbrev. form:

A 2004 study comparing Samaritans to several Jewish populations, found that "the principal components analysis suggested a common ancestry of Samaritan and Jewish patrilineages. Most of the former may be traced back to a common ancestor in what is today identified as the paternally inherited Israelite high priesthood (Cohanim), with a common ancestor projected to the time of the Assyrian conquest of the kingdom of Israel."

This means that Jews and Samaritans, going back endlessly on their fathers' side, have common forefathers. OK. But: it also means that "most" of the currently 750 remaining Samaritans are descendants of ONE SINGLE FOREFATHER, an 8th- or maybe 7th-century priest shlepped along by the Assyrians. That's sensational. It either means that only descendants of that one priest survived and/or didn't ever convert (how likely is it that only his descendants were both lucky and steadfast?), or that theoretically all Samaritans in history (they were well over a million in Byzantine times, so about a millennium later), were his great-great-greatchildren. That would beat Genghis Khan.

I'm not the sharpest pencil in the box, nor did I study genetics and statistics, but I am sure this this must be clarified before it's dropped on the unsuspecting Wiki user. Arminden (talk) 18:00, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Sinclairian, I did partially misread that passage and reacted a bit angrily which made me go logically astray, but no, we did not discuss it, and the passage is absolutely hard to swallow in a logical manner. So I don't agree to leave it as is. It makes little sense, rationally speaking. Arminden (talk) 18:06, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

​I'm aware that "most" doesn't mean "all", but my argument stands. Either MOST of today's 750 Samaritans are descendants of one Israelite priest through particular survival luck & religious steadfastness of that one family as opposed to the majority of their coreligionists, OR, to avoid that probabilistic miracle, that MOST of the entire million-plus Samaritans of the nation's golden era were descendants of that one man. If you find that logical - I don't. It would take some kind of selective divine intervention, AND/OR a superhuman procreative performance. Arminden (talk) 18:14, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Hate to break it to you, but MOST of today's 750 Samaritans are descendants of one Israelite priest through particular survival luck & religious steadfastness of that one family as opposed to the majority of their coreligionists. This is pretty clearly clarified by the source, as well as... well, the past 200 years worth of academia surrounding the Samaritan community. Not trying to be rude, but... have you actually read (or even researched) anything about this topic prior to doing any of this? There are only four remaining distinct Samaritan families, and they've all been stuck in a corner of Nablus marrying their cousins for tens of generations.

You also realize that it wasn't that long ago that having something like 10 kids was still the norm pretty much everywhere in the world, right? Especially in the Middle East? You're really saying it's implausible that a sedentary, otherwise secluded, strictly endogenous ethnic group of less than 800 people has significant common ancestry? Sinclairian (talk) 18:51, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

I asked for elaboration, right? What we have in the article is not logical as it is now. This now looks like a start.

I am aware that the known bottleneck was around 1900 when there were 100 or 150 left. Maybe there had been more bottlenecks before that.

How does it work statistically? "Most" of 4 is three. So 3 presumed clans are actually just one, in patrilineal terms. Only the direct descendants of one single priest who lived some 2700 years ago, wrongly split among 3 of the 4 presumed clans, who genetically are actually only 2 (his + another), is all that remains.

No, I'm not aware of oral history saying that much, or of any genealogical studies. Either I missed them, or I didn't search enough, which is perfectly possible. So please help out.

The 10 children were a desperate attempt at seeing 1, 2, maybe 3 or 4 of them survive for longer than their parents and taking over the inheritance. In bad times that didn't work out and the population decreased, even among the majority group, and even among the better-off, let alone among a powerless dhimmi group. So that argument doesn't hold water in pre-modern times. But the bottleneck(s) may.

There is one current priestly family I'm aware of. This must be one of the 3. That this one was more steadfast may be understandable, although not necessarily (lots of Jewish Cohen families and all kinds of rabbis have converted); it would be interesting to know about the other 2 of the 3. However, this would prove that the descendants of all those million-plus Samaritans of the Byzantine period were converted or killed, with the exception of the DIRECT descendants of ONE ASSYRIAN-PERIOD PRIEST (3/4 of the remaining ones) plus 1 more family. And among that man's "seed" there was no extinguished stem or main branch, so no side branch, diverting into yet more side branches, in 2700 years. No nephews ever inheriting the name & priestly attributes for lack of surviving sons in almost 3 millennia. One straight line, the only one, coming down to us (plus that 1 more family). Of how many dynasties of such age have you ever heard in history, unless we take the Ethiopian royal claims seriously? I'm asking about dynasties because nobody ever bothered with the genealogy of lesser families over millennia. Utterly unique, by several degrees of magnitude. And hard to wrap one's head around it, and so much easier to disbelieve. Arminden (talk) 20:20, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Unelaborated tag

Modern archaeology suggests that the Israelites branched out from the Canaanites through the development of Yahwism, a distinct monolatristic—and later monotheistic—religion centred on the national god Yahweh.[7][8][9][10][11][improper synthesis?]

Hi CycoMa1. It is not enough to drop such a tag w/o explaining within the tag or on the talk-page what you mean. It's too much to expect from fellow editors to go through 5 (!) different sources to figure out what you might be protesting against, or at least doubting. So please elaborate, or else the tag must go. Thank you. Arminden (talk) 09:21, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Yahvism passage: doubtful

Hi CycoMa1. Now that I've went into it myself, I think I know what you meant.

The passage copied one topic above, claiming that there's a consensus about "Israelites branching out from the Canaanites through the development of Yahwism", doesn't convince me at all. It's indeed a very doubtful synthesis (OR). What came first, what cultural aspect, is most likely A) not at all clear, and B) not a matter of consensus, let alone such a categorical one. Unless one goes with some form of biblical literalism, I see no reason to believe that a new pantheon has preceded other transformations. I also cannot see how the religious primacy could be proven based on what we have.

The oversourced passage is actually undersourced, as the quoted passages don't even touch on the branching-off of Israelite religion from Canaanite religion.

It's probably a classical chicken-and-egg dilemma. Unless quotes from RS specifically about this are presented, the passage is beyond dubious. I'll put your tag back in, with a short explanation. Cheers, Arminden (talk) 23:40, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi ​ Bliss. Thank you for dealing with that. But now the religious aspect of the Israelite differentiation process is fully gone from the lead, and for instance the lack of pig bones I believe starts right from the beginning, where those isolated villages in the mhill country appear, which seems to be at least a specialised interpretation or rearrangement of existing religious dietary rules, if not fully new ones. Religion or cultic rites played a big part back then. Arminden (talk) 21:39, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Pig bones (and differentiation based on religion in general) are not seen as relevant factors in contemporary scholarship.

“From the above, it is clear that pigs cannot serve as an ethnic marker in the Late Bronze and Iron Ages of the southern Levant, and that the attitude towards pigs should be combined with other data in order to understand the emergence of early identity and "ethnos."

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331600375_Food_Pork_Consumption_and_Identity_in_Ancient_Israel IncandescentBliss (talk) 21:54, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

I know that much. "Combined" is the key word. Pig bones, 4-room-house, pithoi of a certain kind - none by itself, but taken together, definitely. Arminden (talk) 22:04, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Pithoi and 4 room house have nothing to do with differentiation of religious identity.

See Omer Sergi’s The Two Houses of Israel IncandescentBliss (talk) 08:52, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

That's ridiculous, did I strike you as being a complete idiot? I said: in combination, those elements are used as ethnic markers. Nothing other than inscriptions can be absolute proof of anything, archaeology isn't much of an exact science, but by the common standards applied, which constantly evolve, the right combination of factors are a reasonable base for such diagnostics. Without them, we'd only catalogue the number of stones & sherds found and wait for a future Copernicus. Arminden (talk) 09:25, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

The pig bones are the only element among those factors which can be construed as connecting to religion; eventually they certainly did become part of it, that much is certain. The plan of houses has no connection to that, not beyond its possible use in temples, and ceramic forms... etc. (use in ablution). We don't need to go there. Arminden (talk) 09:31, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Physical appearance

Hi Sinclairian. I had never read the section on physical appearance. Who would it be supposed to discuss in the first place, and based on what? The earliest desert tribes? The probably Aegean Danaites? The later mix, which had lots of admixtures through contacts with a myriad types of people?

Were those - what? 4 or 5? - sources all relating to David and the beauty/-ies from the Song of Songs, really? Gosh.

Merneptah is tricky, but the Lachish relief is not. It offers a lot in terms of clothing and hairstyle. There are more Mesop. reliefs with kings bringing tribute and paying their respect to the suzerain. Arminden (talk) 16:01, 6 June 2024 (UTC)