Talk:Mary the Jewess

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 August 2020 and 20 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Mikrovolnofka.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 03:33, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Untitled

Is there a reference for placing her in the third century? Most of the internet sources I've found (researching women in science) place her in first or second. Espresso Addict 04:22, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

• The third century AD claim is from Greenberg 2000. When it says Several sources equate etc. some internet sources are ment. V8rik 19:06, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Moses must have lived for much longer than I thought

Somebody please get over here and cite that whole "sister of Moses" thing, or I'm going to delete it. I can think of no evidence to support that someone in the 3rd (or even the 1st) century A.D. could be anything like a sister to (the prophet, Biblical) Moses. I know nothing about this woman and am reluctant to nuke stuff myself, so I'd rather someone fiddle who's more knowledgable/invested. But I'll do it if I have to! Sugarbat (talk) 05:06, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Miriam the sister of Moses is the name Zosimos used in his book(see note 3)to give her greater antiquity the gnostics call her Mary Magdalen also to up her creditability J8079s (talk) 17:40, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Pliny

I added a ref for this. I will look for a better one.J8079s (talk) 19:17, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Except for the cite listed I find no support for Pliny young or old mentioning her. J8079s (talk) 01:10, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Book Claim

I removed the claim that she is considered the first non-fictional alchemist, as the source was merely one book which doesn't hold any authority. For all I know, Maria might have not even existed, just like Hermes or Isis, both of whom were mentioned by Zosimos of Panopolis as other divine alchemical inspirations (hence the legends that she was the sister of Moses). Pseudo-Democritus lived before this Mary anyway so he would be the "first alchemist", even though alchemy was clearly practiced by the ancient Greeks through the Hermes-alchemy cult that had been developing from BC in Ptolemaic Egypt. This is manifested by the Hermes-cult texts about alchemy from Ptolemaic Egypt that predate the supposed writings of Mary. (<-unsigned... 69.89.105.69)

Hi there. What's the source for giving Pseudo-Democritus before Mary? It'd be great to iron that out for sure. I know no academic source that verifies a Hermes-alchemy cult, BC. As for the source, Patai is a good one... better than the brittanica article. I'm going to restore deleted points. Maybe we can put citation needed marks against the points called into question and work from there? Car Henkel (talk) 14:00, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Mary or Maria in title?

I've just reverted some changes in the article to Maria as the title and article should match, but I've no objections to a change in the title but WP:COMMONNAME must be followed for any change. Dougweller (talk) 07:05, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

• I thought about suggesting a change of the title but decided against it, as it would probably just add to confusion about the nomenclature. I used Maria instead of Mary because "Mary" is generally associated with St. Mary. Wahrmund (talk) 15:36, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Several time incongruencies

Currently [December 2021] the article states that;

George Syncellus, a Byzantine chronicler of the 8th century, presented Mary as a teacher of Democritus, whom she had met in Memphis, Egypt, during the time of Pericles.

This is an interesting factoid but it makes no sense. If Mary the Jewess lived between the first and third centuries A.D., as stated, then how she could have met Democritus which lived between the 460 B.C and the 370 B.C. there's around half a millenia separating them. It could be said that he was referring to another Democritus but making it the Periclean Democritus it is obvius this is wrong. If George Syncellus mistook all those dates and people it would be nice to explain this in the article since we really know Mary the Jewess could have never been the teacher of Democritus. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.0.7.30 (talk) 13:22, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Proposed edit: use neutral dates

In order to preserve the neutrality of wikipedia, i am going to change the dating system from the current religion-based system (the Catholic B.C. & A.D.) to the more general and secular terms C.E. and B.C.E. in one week. Please respond if you have a reason not to do this. 135.180.161.254 (talk) 03:05, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

I personally prefer BCE/CE to BC/AD, but please do note that per MOS:ERA you need to put forward a convincing argument to change them for this article ('neutrality' won't cut it, since many reliable sources still do use BC/AD) and that you need wp:consensus to implement the change before you make it. Finally, note that per the same MOS:ERA, BCE/CE should be "written in upper case, unspaced, without a full stop (period)". Thanks for taking this into consideration, ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 14:13, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Why do you feel that neutrality is not a viable reason for an edit? Many sources also use BCE and it is a completely acceptable alternative to BC. I believe that moving away from the status quo, when the status quo is firmly entrenched in a religious philosophy not shared by many, is a positive move. In fact you yourself said that you prefer BCE, so it seems like we already have consensus on this. There are two people in this conversation, and we both agree that we prefer BCE. So ... we have consensus

But the biggest reason to make this edit is: this is an article about Mary the JEWESS. Given that the subject of the article is about a Jew, it is offensive to insist that we place her life in the context of a religious majority that she did not share or believe in. Indeed, her people were subsequently oppressed and frequently murdered in the name of Christ. So let's speak about Mary the JEWESS without forcing her to exist within of a religious construct that wasn't hers.

I look forward to your thoughts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 135.180.161.254 (talk) 17:55, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

The 'neutral' in our neutrality policy does not mean what you think it means. A good essay explaining this is Wikipedia:NPOV means neutral editing, not neutral content. I personally prefer CE/BCE, but I'm being Wikipedia-neutral precisely by doing what the sources do, not by doing what I personally believe to be 'neutral' in the non-Wikipedia sense. Many reliable sources use AD/BC, and since we're neutral towards what reliable sources do, if it's okay by them it's okay by us –whatever we as editors think about it. Personal preference matter very little here.

The argument in your second paragraph is more like what we at Wikipedia would consider in choosing between the two styles. Still, changing era styles can be disruptive and should only be done when there is a pressing need. I don't see that need for this particular article, as opposed to for all articles involving non-Christian subjects. Why change it in this article but not in others? We would need to be consistent with this, so if your argument about the subject being non-Christian is to hold water, we should change it for all articles. In that sense, it would be better to propose a change to the MOS:ERA guideline itself.

Perhaps you should ask at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers, where editors will doubtlessly have discussed this question many times before. You can also search the archives there. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 18:39, 18 February 2023 (UTC

I agree with the change. If this article was originally written with BCE then it would stay that way and nobody would care. It has BC now because that represents the bias of the initial creator and not because it's better that way but just because the person who first wrote this was biased (or just maybe ignorant of the context) that doesn't mean that the we need to be stuck with that choice forever. This is more than just a stylistic choice, it shows a fundamental lack of awareness for the meaning of BC and how that reads. Make the change!!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexjandromasgrande (talk • contribs) 16:34, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

The argument above by the Californian IP and the second-edit-ever-account Alexjandromasgrande that using AD/BC rather than CE/BCE as era-style is 'biased' is not convincing, and not in line with Wikipedia policy on neutrality. The strange thing, however, is that the article as it now stands does not even contain any era markers such as AD/BC or CE/BCE. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 15:43, 23 February 2023 (UTC)