Talk:Samaritans/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Assyrians

Unless I missed something, the alleged genetic connection to the Assyrians is cited only to Shen et al (2004). However, that paper presents it only as speculation ("we speculate that..."). It isn't ok to turn a speculation into something stronger and even put it in the infobox as a fact. Zero^talk 01:44, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. I hadn't had time to read Shen yesterday though, as above, the assertion sounded very odd in terms of genetics. As it stood it is another egregious example of genetic paper speculation that merely reflects a standard nodding towards the clichés and misdirections you get in so many standard, bible-mirroring historical narratives. I'll read it today.Nishidani (talk) 08:01, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Template conflict will be resolved

The note 87? that has still the full citation to Magen but is linked to a page range Beyond that artiucle i.e. p.75 refers to an article by Lipshitz which doesn't support the text. Someone screwed up. I will used to link to try and find the appropriate page for such a reference. Nishidani (talk) 17:15, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Controversy over historical origins of the Samaritans.

I suggest that rather than just present various viewpoints of the origin of the Samaritans, we should have a short section before that to make it clear that this a controversial issue, and why it is controversial. Pngeditor (talk) 13:58, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Both the Talmud and Josephus called them "Cutheans" (in today's Iraq), while the Bible states: "The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Kuthah, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim and settled them in the towns of Samaria to replace the Israelites. They took over Samaria and lived in its towns." This seems to be confirmed by the Book of Nehemiah when the returning Judeans had problems with them when rebuilding the temple and walls of Jerusalem (see Sanballat the Horonite). I know, Samaritans only believe in the five books of Moses and maybe the book of Joshua, since all the other biblical books contradict their narrative, but all contemporaneous sources coincide in this issue. Samaritans don't seem to be native to the Levant originally, but rather imported from Mesopotamia. This was in line with Assyrian policy of expelling native populations while replacing them with foreigners to avoid possible rebellions. We can't state as a fact that Samaritans are descendants of the ten tribes of Israel just because they say so. Modern historians don't support this claim either, as far as I'm aware.--Scottir mackay (talk) 15:26, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

I am not intending to state anything as a fact. The fact that there is a section titled controversy would be designed to make this clear. The section would be something like. The exact historical origins of the Samaritans are controversial among historians, biblical scholars, and orthodox Jewish sects. S. Talmon, Biblical Traditions in Samaritan History [Hebrew] in E. Stern and ב¸¤. Eshel (eds.), Sefer Ha-Shomronim, Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, (2002) pg. 25-27 [Hebrew])</ref> This would then serve as an introduction to the sections below which cover the various beliefs. Regards Pngeditor (talk) 17:47 15 August 2022 (UTC)

That genetic paper from 2013 states that it:-

, revealed that the Samaritans were closely related to Cohanim. This result supports the position of the Samaritans that they are descendants from the tribes of Israel dating to before the Assyrian exile in 722-720 BCE. In concordance with previously published single-nucleotide polymorphism haplotypes, each Samaritan family, with the exception of the Samaritan Cohen lineage, was observed to carry a distinctive Y-chromosome short tandem repeat haplotype that was not more than one mutation removed from the six-marker Cohen modal haplotype.

The exact historical origins of the Jews and Samaritans are controversial, so much so that Simon Schama in vol.1 of his projected 3 volume History of the Jews doesn't start with the Bible stories about events ca.1100-700 BCE. He starts with the Elephantine community. The assumptions implicit in the Rabbinic tradition are that Samaritans are not 'authentic' because they descend from populations imported into Israel/Palestine. That assumption defines identity in terms of purity of racial descent (as advocated by Ezra and Nehemiah, who protested that the am ha-aretz they found on their own return failed to have the purity of the traditions of Jewishness developed by the diaspora priesthood in exile in Babylon, and which they brought with them on their return. The whole passage suggested above is totally inadequate, undue in its harping on Jewish religious diffidence about another people's identity, and use of Biblical concepts like the 10 tribes that have no external historical corroboration etc.Nishidani (talk) 19:12, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

The Rabbinic tradition is replete with notions that disparage the Samaritan community in various ways, since to accept that the Samaritan community remained in place and true to Hebrew tradition throughout the exilic period would have been to acknowledge an entirely valid alternative to their own tradition. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:08, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Merge

Samaritanism to here? Selfstudier (talk) 11:43, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

It's a shoddy article that does its subject no justice, but the Samaritan faith, with its distinctive history, should have its own page. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:16, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

I share your sentiments (cf Judaism), I just wondered, that's all. Selfstudier (talk) 13:26, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Origins of the Samaritans

Reference this edit. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Samaritans&diff=1104457410&oldid=1104343304 This is justified on the grounds that (Per Biblical, Talmudic and historic sources (including Josephus for example), all of them contradict the claim that Samaritans are descendants of the ten tribes.) This argument is a good one for disputing the Samaritan belief that they descend from ancient Israelite tribes. It is not however a good argument for adding yet another use of the repeated word 'claim' as a qualifier to such a statement. I suggest that the continued use of the term 'claim' is a breach of the wikipedia policy of maintaining https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:NEUTRAL&redirect=no Rather than simply saying what Samaritans 'claim', wikipedia should say that Samaritans 'state' or 'affirm' or have a tradition of their descent, etc. That should be followed by general references to the various sources which reinforce the Samaritan view, and those that say that it is not correct. The sources should be evaluated accordingly. A contradiction of the Samaritan belief does not make it a 'claim', it makes it a statement that is to be examined on the evidence. The term I would propose is the general use of 'according to Samaritan tradition' which is much mor [NPOV]Pngeditor (talk) 13:44, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Of the ancient peoples of Palestine, Jews and Samaritans have enjoyed an historical continuity down to modern times. In the article on Jews we have

(Jews are a people) originating from the Israelites[13][14][15] and Hebrews[16][

I don't believe sources have ever proven that, as opposed to repeating the refrain. It is considered a truism in the mainstream Jewish narratives. Touch it, and you are reverted for challenging a 'fact'. There is no genetic proof, for example, that Jews are descended from Israelites, or a distinctive population rooted in Palestine.

Notwithstanding the established historical fact that Samaritans are attested for the same period of antiquity, many editors do not wish their narrative to have the same status of descent as Jews.

• The basis of this scepticism is grounded in Jewish narratives about their Samaritan rivals, which insinuate that they are Cushite newbies, not Israelites. This is a religious belief, grounded in an ideological rejection of the rival creed developed in Samaria from the same core tradition that gave rise to Judaism. So the 'claim' reflects orthodox dismissals of Samaritanism by an adversary.
• Since the word 'claim' insinuates a POV tinged with scepticism which comes from an historical adversary of Samaritanism, per NPOV, it cannot be permitted. It is a long but late tradition supported by an adversary. We should use some phrasing like, 'according to Samaritan tradition they descend from the Israelites'/'Samaritans state that they descend from Israelites', as suggested above. With that phrasing we are not camouflaging a belief with language that asserts that the belief is a fact, as we do with the article on Jews.Nishidani (talk) 19:00, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

“Land of Israel” was removed from the lead with an edit description claiming that “Land of Israel” is an “anachronism”, and “Palestine” is the standard term. That is not correct. The term used by the Samaritans for themselves is Israel. I haven’t seen a single source of Samaritans writing their own history name the land as Palestine, nor would one expect to find that. Specifically, they write that their land borders Palestine. They also use the term “Land of Israel” in English. Drsmoo (talk) 11:33, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

You don't appear to grasp that the article is not written from a Samaritan perspective, but rather reflects the scholarship on them. In Wikipedia's neutral voice (endlessly and tiresomely abused in this area by the way) we strive to adopt neutral descriptive terms, esp. geographic.

I haven’t seen a single source of Samaritans writing their own history name the land as Palestine, nor would one expect to find that.

Have you read all the 60+ sources so far cited to document this article? For example (sfn|Kartveit|2009|p=21) here The above is an assertion of personal experience, and not a valid argument.

When writing on antiquity in this area, the default term of scholarship is 'Palestine', not eretz Israel. Jews and Samaritans may use it, but one would need a good source to state what the Samaritan use of 'eretz Israel' refers to, since the biblical term is extremely vague. For all I know, it may refer to the Northern Kingdom in their understanding. Since Jewish and Samaritans differ in their biblical readings on crucial events, care is required to use the neutral terminology preferred by scholarship, and not drag in pointy language that opens up the usual sectarian quibbles and quarrels.Nishidani (talk) 11:50, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

The default term of scholarship for this time period is not Palestine, nor is that the neutral term. Israel is widely used. For example, ancient Israel is dramatically more used than ancient Palestine. Southern Levant is used as a neutral term for people who don't want to use a term that has any relation to modern boundaries. You could also just write "Samaria", as is done elsewhere in the article. In the Samaritan view, all of the holy land was contained within the region of Samaria. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Samaritans/o_VgEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA41&printsec=frontcover "From antiquity to the present, Samaritans and Jews have lived as close neighbors in the Land of Israel and in nearby diaspora communities." https://www.google.com/books/edition/Jews_and_Samaritans/YAgZUPT6CusC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA97&printsec=frontcover "We have seen that in Chronicles northern Israel retained its fundamental social fabric following the Assyrian conquests and deportations. Judah and Israel continued to be structured according to similar social configurations, such as tribal organization, a group assembly, large kinship groups known as ancestral houses and Yahwistic prophets." Your claim that usage of the word Israel is an "anachronism" is ludicrous and demonstrably false. Drsmoo (talk) 13:20, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Nonsense. The default term is Palestine (See the dHistory of Judaism) and two cherry-picked examples of use don't constitute evidence. What you propose is that, analogically, in writing wiki articles on early Christianity, we should use the term Holy Land because that is widely used in confessional literature and even scholarship. We don't do that here, neither should we use Israel which is (a) a biblical conceit referring to two kingdoms or (b) to a people (c) even to Christians as in 'people of Israel' in Christian liturgies (d) is geographically indefinite over ancient history depending on what era you are dealing with, which is why the stable geographic term is Palestine and (e) of course, present day Israel. Ancient history, whatever Israeli school texts books assert, should not be written with loaded terminology. When Tzedaka had James H. Charlesworth write an intro. to his edition of the Samaritan Penateuch, he didn't get upset and call for some textual adjustment to 'Land of Israel' when the scholar wrote:'How should the Samaritans be categorized? One might ask:”What is a Jew?” If three groups are assumed to characterize ancient Palestine, then the answer is clear. Samaritans are not Judeans nor Galileans: they are Samaritans.' Charlesworth was, recognizably, using the neutral non-confessional and far more precise toponym, with no polemical intent or implication. Nishidani (talk) 13:49, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

The default term is not "Palestine", the common term used is Israel/Northern Israel/Land of Israel, and your removing it and replacing it with Palestine was, contrary to your assertion, pointy sticks. Further, your claim that usage of Israel is an anachronism is ludicrous and demonstrably false. As is your assertion that usage of Israel was "cherry picked". It's also curious to see lines like "harping on Jewish religious diffidence about another people's identity", when you then completely ignore the terms the Samaritans use themselves. The Samaritans call themselves Israelites,, call their land Israel, and most of the scholarship does the same. Removing longstanding usage to replace it with Palestine is pointy, and clashes with common use in scholarship. There are almost twice as many references for Samaritan Israel as there are for Samaritan Palestine, and describing the ancient land as Israel is very much common place. Drsmoo (talk) 13:58, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Don't repeat yourself or persist in making off-the-cuff personal assertions of what you believe to be the case. You didn't reply to anything of what I wrote. I replied above. I am obliged to read some 100+ pages of 65 texts per diem, to actually contribute to this Wikipedia article, not frig around haranguing the p's and q's of a politically correct word and its actual equivocal meanings. I'm committed to Wikipedia in terms of the best available scholarship, which means I don't waste my or other people's time with personal 'takes' to get, it strikes me, political leverage out of a single word. Try reading for the core period (deportation under Assyria), i.e.The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 3,Parte 2 Cambridge University Press, 1992, noting its mention of Judah is Judah in Palestine (p.17)or ', In Palestine, they deported of the inhabitants of Samaria and later reduced Judah and its neighbor kingdom to the status of tribute' (p28) or on Sennacherib's invasion of, yes, Palestine. pp.109ff. It is the default term there, so please drop the denialist crap. Nishidani (talk) 14:36, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

"The default term is Palestine (See the Cambridge History of Judaism) and two cherry-picked examples of use don't constitute evidence." Do you not see the irony here? You have not provided evidence that the default term is Palestine aside from two sources. You removed longstanding usage based on your personal assertion that the term is anachronistic. That assertion is demonstrably false. Drsmoo (talk) 15:12, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

'Long-standing usage'? This page has been an eyesore for more than a decade, marked by egregious incompetence, repetitiousness, abuse of primary sources, most with incorrect chapter and verse errata (Josephus) and lack of careful editorial scrutiny. I've had to remove a mother-lode of false citations, page errors in links, and junky material. That includes your 'long-standing' meme. As for the rest, to underline your cherrypicking:-

Do you understand elementary logic and the principle of non-contradiction? I claimed it was the default term. You denied it. So you came up with two sources that supported your claim. I examined one of the major histories of the period in question (the Assyro-Babylonian period in which the contested edit is embedded, about returning to Palestine or to 'the land (of Israel)'I give several of dozens of examples where there the term is the default word. What is your reply? That I oinly supplied two sources (exactly like yourself). The difference is

You quote from Stephen Fine’s edited vol The Samaritans: A Biblical People, (taking no effort to identify the volume, i.e. The Samaritans: A Biblical People BRILL, isbn 978-9-004-46691-3 2022. Once asgain I have to clean up and walk the extra miles because editors apparently can’t be bothered to spend serious time on source control, as opposed to nipping midget edits for tone) ignoring the fact that the book in question used Palestine 43 times, including lines like

• ‘the sanctuary is also found in Jewish midrashim from late antique Palestine p.46; ‘indeed different Jewish groups in Graeco-Roman Palestine fought’ (p.54);
• ‘this is a profession well-known in Roman Palestine,’ (p.73);
• ‘(Diocletian) did, in fact, visit Palestine (p.75);
• ’Should you give them permission to rebuild the city they will rebel against you, and no more tribe will come from the (Jordan) River, nor from with (from Jewish Palestine).”; (p.79)
• ‘this was a custom which was common In the land of Palestine,( p.84);
• Benjamin (of Tudela)’s interest in noting what Rabbanite Jews share with Samaritans even as he clearly explores the important distinctions between them, corresponds with how he describes the lives of the Israelite communities in Palestine’, (p.112);
• ‘This move to Palestine allowed him (Nachmanides) to incorporate new ideas about the geography and archeology of the Land of Israel into his works of Talmudic and biblical exegesis’ (p.114);
• ‘In Zionist travelogues of Eretz Israel, which were often intended to inspire European and American Jewish youth to immigrate to Palestine,’ (p.152);

Nota bene, that the last two passages clearly disti nguish the generic name of the land over history, and in historiography with the preferred partisan term ‘Land of Israel’.

Again, without details you link to one page in Gary N. Knoppers’ Jews and Samaritans: The Origins and History of Their Early Relations, OUP USA, 2013 978-0-195-32954-4, for your fav idea, without actually consulting the book, which is you did, you would see that its narrative frequently uses Palestine as in:

• ’during the neo-Babylonian (538-332 BCE) and early Hellenistic (322-164 BCE) eras, there were probably, as we shall see, more Samarians than Judeans residing in Palestine. The area of ancient Samaria suffered during the Assyrian invasions during the 8th century BCE., but gradually recovered afterward. Unlike the area of Judah, the area of Samaria doe3s not seem to have experienced massive destructions at major sites during the Babylonian conquests of 598 and 586 BCE. During the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods, the Samarians were a force to be reckoned with in the southern Levant, even though Samaria and Judah were both under foreign domination. The province of Samaria was larger, more populous, and wealthier than its neighbour to the immediate south’ (p.2);
• ‘Samaria had a substantially larger and more well-to-do population than Yehud did during the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods. Some leading Archaeologists estimate that the city of Samaria was one of the largest in Palestine during the Persian period. In other words, the province of Samaria was not an insignificant backdrop to Judah during the historical era under review.’ (p.11) ;
• ‘Samaria became one of the most important urban areas in all of Palestine during the Achaemenid era. Zertail (2003:380) goes further in claiming that Samaria became the largest and most important city of Palestine.’ (p.107);

This page was dominated by repetitive bible-based narratives written by scholars in Judah that only had pejorative things to say about Samaritans, which dictated the terms of our understanding for millenia. Modern scholarship disowns these religious (and now political) assumptions and biases, Start reading some of it rather than googling snippets and stop wasting my time with modern politicking about terminology. All you are doing is chucking a cliché at ancient history. Nishidani (talk) 16:56, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

You did not provide "dozens of examples", you provided two. The "default term" is not Palestine, nor is that the accurate term, nor is it the common term. And it's certainly not the neutral term either. Knoppers uses "Southern Levant", a notably neutral term, twice as frequently as Palestine, and uses Israel even more frequently. So it's not clear what your point is? Fine uses Israel twice as frequently as Palestine, how does that indicate that Israel is an anachronism? You made a change stating that Palestine was the default term, and have provided nothing to substantiate that assertion. Drsmoo (talk) 17:30, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Are you reading this exchange? I have systematically addressed every issue you raised. In your responses you ignore the detail, and repeat yourself. I stated that Palestine is the default term (in ancient historiography). You claimed this is not true, and provided sources, which I examined, showing that for the period, it is widely attested in authoritative texts, precisely those you cite selectively . Knoppers used South Levant, you say. He also uses Palestine. So again, cherrypicking. You expect me to address your opinions, but at the same time, feel under no obligation to address the evidence I, as opposed to you, have adduced. Well done. You've made me waste 2 hours better spent improving the article, all because of this concern about 'Israel'. Nishidani (talk) 19:29, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

You made a claim that Palestine was the default term, and have not provided any evidence for that at all. You gave examples of lesser usage of Palestine than the term you removed, which weakens, rather than bolsters your claim. You have not responded to the fact that Samaritan + Israel returns twice as many scholarly results as Samaritan + Palestine, so it's not clear which discussion you believe you're engaging with, but it has no relation to what is actually being discussed or presented. If you're going to make a claim that a more commonly used term is an "anachronism", and that another is the default, you must provide evidence. Drsmoo (talk) 19:40, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Look, the evidence is obvious. You don't read what you quote, and have no familiarity with the scholarship. You quote Fine as author when he is an editor; you say Israel is used more often than Palestine in that work. No, the method is disingenuous. Most of the uses of Israel you allude to are to the modern country, to 'Israel' (qua 'the people of Israel' a theological concept). Don't make me laugh with the request I provide evidence. So far from you, we have zilch. It is pointless arguoing with people who don't listen, except perhaps to themselves as they repeatr unbendingly their original position in the face of numerous examples that contradict their assertions and assumptions. So, I won0't be replying, since you don't reply to any evidence I have given, amply.Nishidani (talk) 19:52, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

"The evidence is obvious" is not a meaningful argument, and indicates, that you don't have one. You are getting lost in the weeds regarding "identifying volumes", and ignoring the central point. You removed longstanding content with a demonstrably false assertion. You have not provided any evidence to back up your assertion, and you are making personal attacks. Elsewhere, you claimed that the term "Land of Israel" is not used by Samaritans, which is demonstrably false as well. Drsmoo (talk) 20:05, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Land of Israel or Palestine (region)

Our article Land of Israel defines it as the traditional Jewish name for an area of the Southern Levant. That is, the article is on the concept, beliefs, and name, and not on the place. The article that we have on the place from the time of antiquity to the modern era is Palestine (region). This is a straightforward issue with directing our readers to the correct topic. So I am reverting the edit that pointed readers to a religious topic when it is discussing a location. nableezy - 19:02, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Or, I would have, had it not been already done. nableezy - 19:02, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

As you told me many many times, Wikipedia is not a reliable source. And if Nishidani and you were right, books like Seeking out the Land: Land of Israel Traditions in Ancient Jewish, Christian and Samaritan Literature wouldn't exist. Tombah (talk) 19:19, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

So, like Drsmoo, you google for a title or some snippet and make deductions favourable to your POV.

Zeʾev Safrai wrote a book called the Economy of Roman Palestine 1994, and another, The Missing Century, Palestine in the fifth century;Growth and Decline in 1998. In this one with the eye-catching title (translated from Hebrew, see the Acknowledgements, which uses this term as a synonym for Palestine) he uses Palestine and Land of Israel interchangeably. When dealing not with Jewish religious texts but ancient writers like Josephus he has no problem with Palestine as the proper descriptive term.

• Moreover, the entire coast from Dora northward was no included in Palestine and certainly not in the administrative unit of Judea p.46
• Josephus added details that were meant to complement and update the description of Palestine p50
• The Dead Sea was always considered quite exotic. Almost every non-Jewish writer who discusses Palestine describes the Dead Sea, whether briefly or at length.p53
• For example, the descriptions of Vespasian’s campaigns in Palestine seems to be exact and based on correct information p.58
• It is likely that the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine were not very interested in the Roman administrative system p.59
• ‘Syria’ is not a description of the province of Judea-Palestine but is an halakhic region that is considered outside the Land for purposes of purity’ p113
• The halakhic borders are based more or less on the administrative borders of the Roman province of ::Syria-Palestine p.126
• The rural road system in Palestine p.138
• Constantine began to build a large number of churches in Palestine p.257
• Palestine as a whole, beyond and in addition to the description of the biblical land, is depicted in the mosaic pavements from Madaba p.480

The problem in this discussion is that few are actually reading the topic, as opposed to googling, and not reading what they google, for ‘stuff’ to give an impression this is an appropriate term for the deportation of peoples from Mesopotamia to Samaria in the late 8th century BCE Assyrians didn’t, in historical narratives, deport Koutheioi back to a place they called ‘The Land of Israel’ from Dan to Beersheba, a theological concept developed centuries later as extensive rabbinical glosses grossed out their understanding of the biblical term. Waste of time of course. This will not be read, but sidestepped as the usual rhetorical refrain is repeated.Nishidani (talk) 21:19, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

@Nishidani:, that is a 1RR violation. Drsmoo (talk) 19:41, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

I don't think so. This article is about Samaritan history, culture and people. I checked the talk page header, and there is no mention of an ARBPIA warning, and rightly so. The rule that applies is 3R, which is not an invitation to edit war. The rule is to discuss on the talk page the new edit, since before Tombah barged in without nary a glance at the talk page, you and I disagree, and your points have been exhaustively answered.Nishidani (talk) 19:57, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Ok, I will take this to ARBCOM later then. I don't see a response to any of my points. Since you feel you already addressed them, could you copy/paste here? Your response "the evidence is obvious", is not meaningful. Please back up your assertion that the "default name" is Palestine, that "Land of Israel" is an anachronism, and that Samaritans don't have a concept of "Land of Israel". Drsmoo (talk) 20:27, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Please back up your assertion .. that Samaritans don't have a concept of "Land of Israel".

Diff please.Nishidani (talk) 21:31, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Samaria&diff=1105341952&oldid=1105064275&diffmode=source

Yes, Wikipedia is not a reliable source. That doesnt mean using a wikilink to a target that is not about the topic intended is correct. You're saying it was in such and such a place and then directing people to a topic on a concept not a place. Do you really not see the problem with that? I dont even really give a shit if you pipe Palestine (region) to Land of Israel, this isnt about POV in the terms (I mean I might give a shit, Id have to see the sources to see which is better supported). It is about directing people to the correct target. nableezy - 20:44, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Drsmoo, do you disagree that the target article is about a place and not a theological concept? What is our article on that place? nableezy - 20:47, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Would you object to using "Samaria"? There is also History of Israel Drsmoo (talk) 23:00, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

No, I think that would be fine under WP:WESTBANK. Nish? nableezy - 00:29, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

As far as 1RR, Id say its on the edge of applying and Id tell people to follow the 1RR regardless, but there is no sanctions notice and no edit-notice here so I dont think you can actually take this to AE. You are welcome to add such notices if you feel they apply. nableezy - 20:46, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Despite the best efforts of people to make this huge fuss about the word 'Israel', this article is about the Samaritan people, not 'Israel' in any of the dozen meanings that word has. The objecting editors have made nothing but trivial tweaks (Tombah 15) all of them missing the awesome amount of flawed text that, until this POV disturbance, I was endeavouring to fix. The text as it stood in all of its mess caught no one's eyes, even with egregious errors.Nishidani (talk) 21:35, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

And the Samaritan people describe themselves as...? Drsmoo (talk) 23:00, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

"Today Samaritans consider themselves, and are considered by others, as members of an independent religion, albeit one that is closely akin to

Judaism in its beliefs, sacred writings, and practices." Samaritanism – A Jewish Sect or an Independent Form of Yahwism? by Reinhard Pummer in Samaritans – Past and Present (de Gruyter 2010 ISBN 978-3-11-021283-9) Eds Menachem Mor, Friedrich V.Reiterer Selfstudier (talk) 11:05, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

What is the term they use to refer to their homeland? Tombah (talk) 11:08, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

I'm not a librarian, the above is the same Pummer already cited in the article "Since they attach great importance to their identity as the true Israelites, they added a note that their self-identification is not “Samaritans,” but “Israelites whose center of life is Mt. Gerizim.” Generally, they call themselves “Israelite Samaritans.” (I have not yet looked at that) Selfstudier (talk) 11:13, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

The 2016 Pummer, the snip already in the article is from the introduction. There then follows (Ch 1) The Identity of the Samaritans divided in three sections, The Samaritan View, The Traditional Jewish View and Modern Scholarly Views so probably need to examine those for a proper understanding. Selfstudier (talk) 11:32, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

The term they use is "Land of Israel". https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Samaritans/5RVACwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA181&printsec=frontcover

"It is worth noting here that for several years the Samaritan bi-weekly paper A.B. - The Samaritan News has printed in every issue a list of the four marks of identification of a Samaritan, the first being "settlement within the Land of Israel, without leaving its historical borders or establishing residence outside it."" author = Reinhard Pummer

Drsmoo (talk)

Here is the primary source, which appears to also be called the Samaritan Update https://shomron0.tripod.com/update2.14.2002.html

"The Samaritan Israelites are the remnant of an ancient people, descended from the ancient Kingdom of Israel (the Jews being the branch of Israel). In the fourth and fifth centuries CE, they numbers about 1,200,000 persons dwelling in many cities and villages in the Land of Israel, from south Syria to northern Egypt... The meaning of the term Samaritan Israelite encompasses the following four signs of identification: 1. Settlement within the Land of Israel without leaving its historical borders or establishing residence outside it. 2. Participating in the Passover sacrifice on Mount Gerizim. 3. Keeping the Sabbath as it is written in the Torah. 4. Scrupulous observance of all the laws of purity and impurity as they are written in the Torah. Anyone who does not observe any or all of these signs of identification cannot continue living within the framework of the Community."

— The Samaritan Update

Drsmoo (talk) 13:31, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

The same 2016 Pummer I just referred to but instead of the logical Identity chapter instead the chapter on Geographical Distribution and Geography sub section Diaspora :) (right) I'll just add the missing bit "settlement within the Land of Israel, without leaving its historical borders or establishing residence outside it. Obviously, this is written with the present situation in mind." Selfstudier (talk) 13:37, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

What is your grievance with what I linked to ? Drsmoo (talk) 13:40, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Im really not trying to make this a POV issue. Drsmoo, you seemingly implied agreement that the target article should be about a place and not a concept, right? Can we get back to that? Im fine with Samaria, I assume you are as well as it was your suggestion. Nishidani? nableezy - 13:43, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

I have no issue with Samaria, I was addressing the question Tombah asked. The Samaritans refer to their land as "The Land of Israel". Nishidani elsewhere alleged that Samaritans have "don't have a concept" of "Land of Israel", which is very much incorrect. Drsmoo (talk) 13:47, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Still harping on this, Drsmoo? Cite me one historical text in Samaritan literature of the pre-modern period where the term ‘eretz israel’ is glossed, explained and given a geographical elaboration, i.e. the concept. Do some work instead of asking others to do it for you.

Perhaps you have forgotten that in writing articles, esp. historical ones where spin comes from the writings of all parties covered, one is obliged to use the detached, eestablished language of historical scholarship for wikipedia’s neutral voice. We don't write the Christian Holy Land, nor the Israeli-Jewish Land of Israel or the post-1948 Samaritan nod towards the Jewish term or the Arabic/Islamic Filasṭīn, we emply a term independent of partisan spin or echoes. You have consistently ignored this principle as you press to reframe the narrative singularly to get the word ‘Israel’ in there. Pure POV pushing. Before I get back to doing something actually productive, like continuing to read through the enormous literature on this topic to edit the article, I should reply to your nugatory quibble above because it’s generating further goalpost shifting blather. I’ll do so by summarizing the gist of what was stated and documented above, ignoring the sand-in-the- eyes stuff.

• [The Land of Israel is a Jewish theological concept inappropriate here, since Samaria was historically the home of Samaritans, who do not share that concept]

That seems to me a fair statement. No one doubts that ‘Land of Israel’ is a Jewish religion concept.

• (a) Palestine is the default term for the area for the last 2 millennia, and in modern scholarship. (Nur Masalha, The Concept of Palestine: The Conception Of Palestine from the Late Bronze Age to the Modern Period,’ Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies 2016 15(2):143-202.
• (b) ‘eretz-Israel’ is a partisan, term embodying a Jewish ‘theology of territory’, of indefinite meaning in antiquity which took on a political value, (David Frankel , The Land of Canaan and the Destiny of Israel: Theologies of Territory,’ in the Hebrew Bible, Eisenbrauns, 2011 ISBN 978-1-575-06627-1) and in rabbinic commentaries, and therefore inappropriate to wiki’s neutral voice. As such it is wholly inappropriate esp. for an article on Samaritans, a rival sect or religion, described frequently (but not always) in pejorative terms in that religion.

• To use it in wiki’s voice is to endorse contemporary Israeli claims to be the real owners of Samaria, for the Land of Israel in Jewish discourse means that God gave perpetual title (as Ben-Gurion put it) to the only Jews over the Samaritans historic homeland.

• (c) The term eretz yisrael is not in the canonical Pentateuch of the Samaritans, who have never recognized the rest of the Tanakh, where, eretz yisrael is an hapax legomenon, occurring just once at 1 Samuel 13:19, whose authority is not recignized by Samaritans, who also do not recognize the authority of the Talmud and later rabbinical writings where huge discussions on the term occur.
• (d) Since the question specifically here is the vox propria to use in referring to the deportation of peoples to and from Mesopotamia.

In Palestine, they deported the inhabitants of Samaria and later reduced Judah and its neighbour kingdoms to the status of tribute-paying vassels.’ (J. A. Brinkman, ‘ Babylonia in the Shadow of Assyria,’ in John Boardman, I. E. S. Edwards, E. Sollberger, N. G. L. Hammond (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 3,Part2 1992 ISBN 978-0-521-22717-9 pp.1-70 p.26)

Palestine is the default term in this work, used over 77 times (As it is in the Cambridge History of Judaism, whose first volume opens with Denis Baly’s 'The Geography of Palestine and the Levant in Relation to its History,' pp.1-20. Eretz-yisrael in that work is used only one is the narrative in the context of a rabbinical text, (as opposed to bibliography citing Israeli sources), 90+ times for Palestine). But we have a text written by a patron of Samaritans, an historian and future president of Israel, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, who had no problem in describing this moment by referring to it as what happened in Palestine.

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(2:Jewish POV): ’In accordance with biblical sources, the Samaritans are the descendants of settlers transplanted by the Assyrian kings of Palestine to settle on the territories formerly occupied by the ten tribes who were exiled to Assyria. The settlers included people from Kuth or Kut ah (Cuthah) after which name the Samaritans were called ‘Kuthim’ in Jewish sources. The Samaritan regard this appellation as degrading to themselves, in Rabbinical literature, however, this is the usual on e. The Bible further narrates that t5he King of Assyria settled in Samaria people from Babylon, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim’

(2b:Samaritan POV):’According to the Sargon inscriptions, the number of those whom that king led into captivity was 27,000. On the other hand, in accordance with biblical data, the number of (Israelitish) land owners alone (at the time of the Assyrian conquest) may be estimated at 60,000. We may therefore conclude that the King of Assyria exiled only a small part of the Israelite population of the country and that the majority remained behind in their lands and exercised some influence on the settlers, both racially6 and culturally.’Ben-Zvi 1933 p.86

I expect you will ignore this and harp on something else, as you have throughout this thread. Good luck. I'm busy, however, and ensuring the article's quality is more important than either of us.Nishidani (talk) 14:42, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Nishidani, your tendentiousness and ceaseless personal attacks have no place on Wikipedia. The neutral term in modern scholarship is "Southern Levant". And there is no shortage of reliable sources that attest to this. Palestine is not a neutral term, nor is it the common term and it is not the term used by Samaritans, as has been established. You claimed they have no concept of the term, which is factually incorrect, as has been shown via both primary and secondary sources. The other irony is that you're linking to a wiki article for Palestine region which explicitly describes an indefinite piece of land that has no clear geographical boundary, while, seemingly, rejecting Samaria. Even your insults don't make sense, as I first edited in "the land" (aka Eretz), which is the term Samaritans were using in the source and then proposed "Samaria", not "Israel". Perhaps if you spent time engaging, rather than insulting, you would have noticed what you were reverting. Drsmoo (talk) 15:13, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Guys, youre both intelligent people who can access and summarize a shit ton of sources to support your position. I dont think either of you is actually engaging with the other's argument all that well, but that also does not matter that much. Nishidani, do you support or oppose using "Samaria" as the default term for the place in this article? Yes, I know Samaria currently shares the issue of linking to the concept of Land of Israel and not a geographical region (which we can discuss there), but here, do you object to using "Samaria" for the historical location? And, per WP:WESTBANK, when discussing the modern location that would need to be clarified as northern West Bank, but for a sentence on where they were in antiquity do you have any issue with "Samaria"? nableezy - 15:19, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

While I prefer using the term Palestine for the region (as I have since my childhood), I doubt that we can avoid the use of the term Land of Israel in traditional Jewish accounts. It ceased being a purely religious term when it was evoked in the Israeli Declaration of Independence. It is probably a key concept in Israeli nationalism for the last 75 years. Dimadick (talk) 15:53, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

I think I answered that earlier. Samaritan history is not Jewish or Israeli history. 'Land of Israel' as Ben-Gurion introduced it, was God's gift to the Jewish people, a theological gift with executive title. We don't use terms current in Israeli nationalism to rewrite ancient history.Nishidani (talk) 16:28, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Nableezy. This has nothing to do with intelligence. It has everything to do with being familiar with historical usage and texts, rather than getting one's information from reading other wiki pages, which is the besetting illness of this place. Editors have been badgering the idea that Palestine is not a neutral term for ancient history. All of the evidence contradicts this. Note I provide substantial evidence, whereas Drsmoo has none, and just flings a silly term like 'tendentiousness' around in the back of an absurd assertion, in the face of multivolume works like The Cambridge Histories or Toynbee's A Study of History, not to speak of a zillion monographs that when speaking of the area we should adopt 'Southern Levant'. People who cannot look at the word 'Palestine' without imagining the PLO shouldn't be editing articles on history. To hold the term hostage is to distort the equanimity of the historical imagination by politics.Nishidani (talk) 16:03, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Arguing "Palestine is not a neutral term", thereby dispensing with the multiplicity of sources making use of it, is a rather ridiculous position to hold. Selfstudier (talk) 16:50, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

One could say the same for "Israel" or "Land of Israel", or "Southern Levant", which all have a multiplicity of sources as well. The original term here was "Land of Israel". Nishidani removed it and replaced it with Palestine. I added in "the land". Nishidani removed that too. Now Nishidani appears to be rejecting "Samaria" as well. He appears to be dead set on using Palestine, despite multiple neutral alternatives, while Samaritan sources explicitly write that the Israelite (their) territory ENDS at Palestine. Which again brings up the irony of claiming that Palestine Region is in some way geographical and precise when it is just as variable as Land of Israel. That's why I advocated for "the land" or "Samaria". Drsmoo (talk) 17:21, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

sources explicitly write that the Israelite (their) territory ENDS at Palestine

Congratulations that means that where Samaria ends, Palestine begins, which is meaningless. Dumbfounded I thought of another source, which unlike those you are citing, are not religious.

‘since the beginning of the last century, no small number of monographs have been written on the nations surrounding Eretz-Israel (e-g. the Nabataeans, the Ituraeans, the Idumaeans, and the Samaritans.’ Aryeh Kasher, Jews and Hellenistic Cities in Eretz-Israel: Relations of the Jews in Eretz-Israel with the Hellenistic Cities During the Second Temple Period (332 BCE - 70 CE), Mohr Siebeck, 1990 ISBN 978-3-161-45241-3 p.vii

I hope I don't have to construe what 'surround' means here. It implies that eretz Israel is 'Judea'.Nishidani (talk) 22:06, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

If you look at page 229 of Pummer he says "In various publications and on websites, the Samaritans enumerate the four principles which identify someone as a member of their community" and lists the first as "1. To live forever in the Holy Land". I could live with Holy Land, it means more or less the same thing without the IsPal association. Selfstudier (talk) 18:15, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

No intention of joining the discussion, but will there be a possibility to maneuver between Palestine, Land of Israel and other terms? Surely, Palestine is the English-European name for Land of Israel/Holy Land. Surely, Land of Israel is a name with an ethnonational/religious context, while Palestine has a more secular-historical context, surely Palestine and Israel have political connotations regarding the barely century-old modern nations. Surely these names are often used in ambigues manner by reliable sources and may represent a certain view. Can this be resolved using as much as possible neutral names within the article such as "Samarian hills/Samaria" or "Samarian territory"? For biblical period, maybe "former territory of the Kingdom of Israel"? "Levant" and "Levantine populations" may be carefully used for genetic references. Just throwing thoughts.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 18:19, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks B. I expect your archaeological expertise will be very important in the future given the intensive work on Samaritan remains done in Israel these last decades.Best Nishidani (talk) 21:08, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

I am completely the rewriting of this article, and have changed numerous phrases, even eliding the word ‘Christian’ as a pleonasm before New Testament. Let's review this in an orderly manner.

• My change of ‘longstanding’ text, Land of Israel, is just one of 200 alterations. No one appeared to mind the revision’s hundreds of edits, since no one objected to anything, until
• Tombah reverted my edit stating Land of Israel was ‘the correct term.’
• Drsmoo seconded that absurd assertion of (political) 'correctness'. Evidently, no one cares about the general text. All eyebrows are raised if an edit regarding 'Israel' is modified.

So you both consider the term Land of Israel is the perfectly appropriate term for wiki’s neutral narrative voice.

On the talk page substantial evidence from scholarship was provided that (a) the term was not neutral (b) that Palestine is the default term in writing of this area in scholarship on ancient history (c) that the term is anachronistic (d) that it derives from a single instance of usage in the Bible in a book whose authority the Samaritans don’t recognize (e) that several sources, indeed, the Cambridge Ancient History, both use the term Palestine as the default word in their discussion of this precise episode and (f) strong sources describe the deportation as occurring in Palestine.

There was no response to my marshalled details. What Drsmoo did and does is use generic assertions (the Southern Levant is the default term etc.,) without any attempt to prove his claims.

Der Teufel steckt im Detail should be pinned by every Wikipedia editor's computer screen. Nableezy suggests a compromise. Let’s not use Palestine, the default term, but ‘Samaria’. Sounds reasonable -because the Bible uses it - unless you actually know something about the wider literature of that period. At the period in question (720) Samaria was united under the Assyrians with Dor on the coast, and the overall area was known as the province of Samarina connecting Dor with Samaria at the time, and thus not just the Biblical Samaria for the Assyrians. For all we know, the Syrian (many of them Aramaeans/ Canaanites, like the Israelitic Samarians as we know from the strongly Samaritan settlement at Elephantine, though you'd never learn than from our pathetic article on that site) et al., deportees may have been settled more widely than our biblical Samaria, since the Assyrians had a different division of the land and the Bible on this, like much else, is a theological spin on selective facts for any period, polemical over Samaritans, and rarely accurate.

If this niggling subsists and allows me to proceed, then I will note such details, which, for that matter, may be connected with a tradition that had Samaritans sometime later developing substantial communities outside of Samaria and along the Mediterranean seaboard.

I am more than willing to listen to people who can discuss the period with some familiarity with the many scholarly sources. I am reluctant to make compromises between what the historical record states, and what editors who disagree with it, or ignore it, would prefer to have written. Let’s admit it, 90% of wiki articles on this area in antiquity are driven by the dominance of citations from the Bible. Well here, at least, I am applying the principle that the Bible is not a reliable source, that using it as the starting point skews our attention towards a religious worldview as a guding point of departure, and that neither are rabbinical commentaries, unless their narratives are carefully leached through the best contemporary scholarship on these texts, which admits complexity and is not driven by religious assumptions or nationalism, paleo or otherwise.Nishidani (talk) 21:08, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Nishidani, I appreciate your edits, and the amount of time you've put in to improving this article, but your timeline is incorrect.

1. 1. You replaced "Land of Israel" with "Palestine", claiming Land of Israel to be anachronism, which is false, and claiming that it is not a Samaritan concept which is false, as it is regularly used by Samaritans.
2. 2. I replaced "Palestine" with "the Land", using the term found in the Samaritan chronicles
3. 3. You replaced "the Land" with "Palestine"
4. 4. Tombah restored "Land of Israel"
5. 5. You reverted that as well

Additionally, Nableezy didn't "suggest a compromise", Samaria was my suggestion. And it's not a "compromise" either, as my original preference was "the land". Your argument against "Samaria" is that the term had a different meaning in 720 BCE, but so did Palestine, so I don't see how that argument is internally consistent.

I also never said Southern Levant was the default term. I wrote "The neutral term in modern scholarship is "Southern Levant". Here are some sources:

• “He advocated for more neutral terms instead, some of which, such as “archaeology of the southern Levant,” have caught on and are in use today.” - Hallote, describing Dever
• “The term 'southern Levant' has been used in general to designate the area presently occupied by the modern countries of Israel and Jordan. This term has been used to avoid confusion with the 'Israel' of the Old Testament and because of the political sensitivity in the area.“ - Whiting
• “We will refer to this region by the generic term Southern Levant” - Flannery
• “In that case the area should really be referred to by a broader and more neutral term such as the ‘southern Levant’” - Fischer
• “If 'Palestine' is to be avoided for related reasons, 'South Levant' or some other neutral terms should be used” - Cobbing
• "The Southern Levant, a politically correct term to indicate the complex of Jordan-Palestine-Israel, with the addition of Lebanon” - Liverani
• “(Note here, too, my use of the politically neutral appellation ‘southern Levant’)” - Joffe
• "In this thesis the term 'southern Levant' will be used to refer to the modern states of Israel and Jordan, the Occupied Territories, and the Sinai peninsula. To subdivide this region the term ' Transjordan' will be used to refer to the area east of the Dead Sea Fault (delineated by the Hulah Valley, the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea and the Wadi Araba), while the term 'Cisjordan will be used to refer to the area west of this line. These terms are used as they are the most politically neutral terms available." - Rutter Drsmoo (talk) 00:59, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

I'll be looking at Renaissance architecture and paintings all day so can't respond at the moment.Apropos denying Samaritans have a concept of eretz israel, a word or phrase is one thing, a 'concept' in this case is its conceptual elaboration, as we have in rabbinical literature. I thought this common distinction was self-evident There is no evidence for this so far. And now to roam Rome.Nishidani (talk) 06:50, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

'Land of Israel' is an unhelpful concept for designating a geographical area, because, without further clarification or context, it can never be clear which version of the 'land of Israel' it refers to. There is a veritable plethora of historic definitions for this term, iron age/modern, greater/lesser, one or two kingdoms - with the latter question of whether it is referring just to the northernmost portion of the southern Levant region or not being of particular relevance in the context of the Samaritans, given the heightened relevance of the Samaritan northern kingdom to their sense of history. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:05, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

I have no objection to Southern Levant for articles covering ancient history/archaeology in what is currently P/I/J provided that if the preponderance of independent reliable sourcing in relation to some topic uses a particular designation, then that is what should normally be used. On WP, "neutral" does not usually mean "causes no offense to anyone" it refers to the balance of sourcing. If the sourcing is using the different terms indiscriminately then sure, we can use Southern Levant as a catch all but only if it is as described. I'm not really cool with LoI because it seems a matter of Jewish religious tradition more than anything else, fine if the topic is Jewish history or something of that sort but seems out of place otherwise. The Shlomo Sand school is me, I guess. My 2 cents. Selfstudier (talk) 13:51, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Okay. Thanks for that material Drsmoo. Unfortunately, I think that the 8 quotes, singled out thus, when read embedded in their rewspective contexts (books and doctorates) actually provide strong evidence for the opposite conclusion: that Southern Levant cannot be a neutral term to replace Palestine. By the way, I don't think it is obvious that our discussion here has wider ramificationjs. For essentially, we are being asked to set a profound precedent for wikipedia articles, by consensus, where the historic term Palestine, if judged not neutral or dated, would be open up to editors wanting to replace it everywhere by 'Southern Levant', even when the former term is in numerous sources. Since one of your links seems 'dead', and the other givees a page hundreds of pages off the text cited, I'll have to reformat your data, and then I will analyse it to show why this evidence militates against the term 'Southewrn Levant'. Bear with me an hour or so. Nishidani (talk) 08:05, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Most of the sources provided also say that 'Southern Levant' also encompasses Jordan, which means it overlaps with but is not directly synonymous with the typical conceptions of the Holy Land/Palestine. Southern Levant is too broad and vague here. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:21, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Southern Lebanon, Israel, Cisjordan, Jordan and the Sinai, actually. But let me show what those sources state in detail, once I've got my weekend shopping done. Back in an hour.Nishidani (talk) 08:32, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Drsmoo. Unlike yourself with 'Palestine' I never questioned that 'Southern Levant' is one of the current terms for the area. But your 8 elements of evidence selectively snippeted to underline an opinion that the former is partisan, and the other 'neutral' does not bear examination (aside from several errors made in links etc.) So I will reformat your argument and dissect it.

• (1) Rachel Hallote, ‘Review of review of William G. Dever The Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel: Where Archaeology and the Bible Intersect,’ in Hebrew Studies , 2014, Vol. 55 2014, pp. 445-448

“He advocated for more neutral terms instead, some of which, such as “archaeology of the southern Levant,” have caught on and are in use today

The obscure ‘he’ here refers to William Dever. She iidentifies the emergence of ‘Southern Levant’ which he proposed as more neutral than Palestine. She did not note that the book she is reviewing by Dever describes ‘the Southern Levant’ in its title a s ‘Israel’. For the moment, Dever, like the Copenhagen school of biblical minimalists believes that the Bible/Tanakh narratives are ‘stories’ ,’often ‘fictional’ and almost always propagandistic.’ But Dever and that school are at odds, as we shall see.

• (2) Charlotte Whiting ‘Complexity and diversity in the late iron age southern Levant: the investigation of 'Edomite' archaeology and scholarly discourse,’ Durham University e-thesis 2002.

Before continuing, it is necessary to clarify some of the geographical terms that will be used in the following chapters. The term 'southern Levant' has been used in general to designate the area presently occupied by the modern countries of Israel and Jordan. This term has been used to avoid confusion with the 'Israel' of the Old Testament and because of the political sensitivity in the area. The term Palestine has however been used in some instances in reference to the area under the British Mandate until 1948, when the state of Israel was founded. Due to traditional structures of argumentation, the analysis of data in Chapters 7, 8, and 9 is based on a comparison of groups of material from sites in southern Jordan and Israel. In these chapters the terms 'southern Israel' and 'southern Jordan' are therefore used to distinguish between the material excavated from sites in these two areas.’p.6

(a)Like Dever Whiting prefers Southern Levant to exclude the traditional ‘Palestine’. She contradicts her own linguistic premiseby defining the the Ophel in East Jerusalem as part of ‘southern Israel’. p.196, when it is in East Jerusalem, and not part of Israel. The result is, Whiting ‘s deference to Dever’s term, in her otherwise admirable monograph, retains Israel and erases Palestine (b) The snippet from p.5 ends a long introductory section pp.1.4 which describes in close detail the history of the misuse by scholars, Christian and Israel, of the Bible to validate their respective theologies/ideologies. Which is precisely the point being made here. The thrust of that is ignored.

• (3) Kent Flannery, The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire, Harvard University Press , 2012 ISBN 978-0-674-06497-3

We will refer to this region by the generic term Southern Levant

What iis missing is the complete context of this passage:

The fo reign species included wheat, ba rley, flax, sheep, and goats, all of which were native to the Near East. These foreign species probably reached Egypt from the region occupied today by Jordanians, Israelis, and Palestinians. We will refer to this region by the generic term Southern Levan t.’ p.395

Elsewhere he glosses that congeries as Canaan (p.597)

• (4) Moshe L. Fischer, review of Pau Figueras, The Pagan Image of Gereco.Roman Palestine and Surrounding Lands,’ ; Archaeopress, Oxford 2013 in Journal of Roman Archaeology , Volume 27 , 2014 pp. 867–870

(Regarding the geographical area to be studied, the Palestine of the title later becomes the Land of Israel, while the gazetteer implies that the focus is a much larger area, including parts of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria). In that case the area should really be referred to by a broader and more neutral term such as the “southern Levant”;p.869

As the words left out by Drsmoo show, for Fischer ‘Southern Levant’ embraces ‘part of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, as well as Palestine/Israel.

• (5) Felicity Cobbing, Review: Lapis Lazuli: In Pursuit of a Celestial Stone , ‘ Palestine Exploration Quarterly Volume 146, 2014 - Issue 1 pp.77-78 11 Mar 2014

“If 'Palestine' is to be avoided for related reasons, 'South Levant' or some other neutral terms should be used” - Cobbing

Well, that phrasing is not in Cobbing, but in the review by Emanuel Pfoh of the translation of Avraham Faust’s The Archaeology of Israelite Society in Iron Age II, following it pp.78-80 whose author has no problems using also Palestine for that period,i.e.

In a similar vein, Chapter 8 (“Pots and Peoples: Ethnic Groups in the Kingdom of Israel”; pp. 230-254) discusses the question of correlating material culture with ethnic identity and argues that studying the rural sector in the archaeology of Iron Age Palestine enables the possibility of identifying ethnic groups (Canaanite-Phoenicians and Israelites), at least for the kingdom of Israel—the material remains from the kingdom of Judah does not allow for a distinct identification. . . . Second, the idea of a common ethnicity in Israel and Judah is also clearly prompted by a biblical concept. Hence Faust refers constantly to “Israelite society” when addressing the inhabitants of either Israel or Judah, or both. But ‘Israel’ is attested outside the Bible only for the kingdom of Israel. If Judah is also ‘Israelite’, this must be explained and demonstrated. Third, throughout the book, the regular use of ‘land of Israel’ instead of ‘Palestine’ is very problematic. It may well translate the Hebrew eretz israel, but in English this term is far from innocent and implies an intrinsic association between the land and a particular people, regardless of historical occupancy, and thus also serves a clear contemporary political agenda. If ‘Palestine’ is to be avoided for related reasons, ‘South Levant’ or some other neutral terms should be used.

Note that Pfoh the reviewer has no issue with Palestine, that he takes exception to the ‘Land of Israel’ terminology used by Faust and endorsed by Drsmoo and Tombah as ‘neutral’. Pfoh recognizes that the term has a ‘clear contemporary political agenda’; that all sorts of conceptual problem arising from the deployment of Biblical terminology to the land arise, the constant slippage between Israel as (hypothetical) northern Kingdom of the Israelites, and Judah, the southern Israelite stronghold. His statement is prefaced by an ‘if’ clause.

• (6) Mario Liverani, Imagining Babylon: The Modern Story of an Ancient City, Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG , 2016 ISBN 978-1-614-51958-4

Unfortunately also here your link is wrong, giving a page that does not contain that text which is found in that book rather on p.81 which reads

‘The western world was most widely aware of archaeological interest in the ‘Holy Land’, because of the obvious Biblical and Christian links- just as excavations in Mesopotamia or Egypt were more interesting when they could be linked to the events of the Old and New Testaments. When archaeological activities in the Near East began to take off in the mid-nineteenth century, many countrioes established foundations dedicated to the promotion of the historical and and archaeological knowledge of Palestine (this word was then used correctly as a geographical term, without the implications which later developed which make it ‘politically correct’ today to speak of the ‘Southern Levant), and generally with a seat of operations in Jerusalem.’ pp80-81

Liverani doesn’t suffer from this inhibition since he uses the word Palestine in his main text (The duration of the mandated regimes varied from case to case, but was relatively short from 1922 until 1932 for Iraq, to 1943 for Lebanon, to 1949 for Syria and Transajordan, and to 1948 for Palestine and Israel p.107 (2) And, I might add, in his Oltre la Bibbia: storia antica di Israele, Laterza, 2003,’Palestina’ is the default narrative term used of ancient Israel used far too often to be eenumerated here; (3) To Mortimer Wheeler, who lamented that Palestine was the region where ‘more sins have probably been committed in the name of archaeology than on any other commensurate portion of the earth’s surface,’ Kent Flannery replied that Wheeler clearly did not have in his mind the sins committed by certain Meso-American archaeologists p.37). So all we get from this is that Palestine was the correct geographical term traditionally, but questioned by a post-Israel 1967 vogue for challenging it in favour of the phrase ‘Southern Levant’, which Liverani feels unde rno obligation to use since he sees this as a nod to political correctness , con textually, deference to Israeli sensibilities, which he doesn’t care to follow. More importantly the cite from Wheeler emphasizes the idea that the area of Palestine is one of the most egregious exsamples of the abuse of archaeology on record.

• (7). Your link led me nowhere ‘Page not found’

The link that works is Alex Joffe , How to Chase a White Whale,’ A Response to “Biblical Archaeology: The Hydra of Palestine’s History: The Bible and Interpretation,’ By the way Joffe is Rachel Hallote’s husband, the reviewer cited above (1). What Drsmoo does is cited Joffe’s opinion in what is a vigorous epistolary exchange between him and Arthur B. Knapp, and the biblical scholar Thomas Thompson over the last-named’s use of the word ‘Palestine’, Thompson replied

My use of the term Palestine in the title of my article has a political purpose, which aims to return to the neutral use of the term “Palestine” as referring to the region covered by our history. Some few of our readers might remember that this term was once used in the name for the “Palestine Exploration Society”, which is today the Israel Exploration Society.

Knapp ends his note by referring to what he thinks I believe; namely, “The Jews have no greater claim to Israel than do the Palestinian Arabs.” I do not know whether he is using “Israel” to signify the same geographical meaning as Palestine, or whether he sees it as referring to the territory controlled by the State of Israel (with or without including the West Bank and Gaza), or is he referring to ancient Israel, also known as Bit Humri. If it is this last, then I think that a “greater” claim might possibly be argued on behalf of the Samaritans, but he seems locked into a Jew-Palestinian dichotomy, whereas historically, of course, many ancient Jews were in all likelihood ancestors of those we call Palestinians today and many Ashkenazi find their ancestry among European converts. The modern claims Knapp wishes to address about the “equality” of historical claims to the heritage of this region are, of course, claims that have largely a rhetorical

• (8) Graham Piers Rutter, ” Basaltic-rock procurement systems in the southern levant: case studies from the chalcolithic-early bronze I and the late bronze-iron ages, ” Durham University e-thesis 2003 p.15

In this thesis the term ‘southern Levant’ will be used to refer to the modern states of Israel and Jordan, the Occupied Territories, and the Sinai peninsula. To subdivide this region the term ‘Transjordan’ will be used to refer to the area east of the Dead Sea Fault (delineated by the Hulah Valley, the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea and the Wadi Araba), whilst the term ‘Cisjordan’ will be used to refer to the area west of this line. These terms are used as they are the most politically neutral terms available.’

Drsmoo, what you are therefore suggesting as a ‘politically neutral term’ , and you have just a handful of snippets to defend that idea, is ‘Southern Levant’. In your examples it emerges that this term refers to an area covered by southern Lebanon, western Syria, Galilee, the Phoenician coastal area, Samaria, Judea, the Negev, Jordan, and the Sinai peninsula. Whiting, Ritter and Flannery all affirm the the Southern Levan t because they are talking strictly of geophysical terrain, and archaeological sites, avoiding the problem of what writing about an historical period thick with actual people involves, The specific issue we are discussing is the deportation of people from areas of Syria and Mesopotamia westward in 720 BCE into a narrow band of land, from Samaria/Samerina (which includes the area to the coast east of Samaria) in, well yes, ancient Palestine. Therefore using a term that vaguely covers a much vaster area would destroy the concrete geographical designation by suggesting the Assyrians shifted a hodgepodge of peoples into anywhere from S.Lebanon, to Jordan, Palestrina /biblical Israel to the Negev and Sinai peninsula. We can’t use Land of Israel because, as your own sources state, it is contaminated by ambiguity. We cannot use Israel, meaning the northern ‘kingdom’ in Samaria, because, as many of your sources recognize if read fully, strong doubts subsist as to the existence of a northern and southern kingdom as they are represented in the Bible. Dever promoted the term as neutral but in his 2014 book he uses Israel as a synonym for the word Palestine most of his predecessors employed. Whiting adopted the idea in her Phd to avoid politics and then lapsed by calling an east Jerusalamite site like the Ophel, part of the ‘Southern Levant’. So all we get from the above is an affirmatin of personal choice for a toponymic generality that is hugely vague in its extension, and pointless for a specific historical narrative that deals with a specific incident and area within that massive landscape. The sum effect of such an option would be to once more elide an historic term, Palestine, while leaving untouched in our articles the term ‘Israel’, which can mean a modern nation state, a people distinct from Judeans, any people who identify as ‘children of Israel’ and subscribing to the monotheism of YHWH, an hypothetical northern state in the 9th-8th centuries B.C.E., etc. Nope.Nishidani (talk) 13:02, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

If Southern Levant is too broad, then so is "Palestine (Region)". As I've stated before, and what you seem to not be aware of (?). Is that I'm not actually advocating for Land of Israel, or Southern Levant. I'm advocating for an accurate and neutral term. I was simply correcting your claim that Palestine is the neutral term. Samaritans don't call their land Palestine, they call it, in contemporary sources, Eretz Yisrael, and in older sources, "the land". I've changed the text to "their land", which I don't see how it could be problematic for anyone. Note, I have no objection to use of Palestine later in the lead re Benjamin of Tudela, as that was the name of the region at that time. And were this 1931, it would also make sense to use Palestine, as that was the contemporary name for the region. Drsmoo (talk) 14:46, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

(a) what you seem to not be aware of (?). Is that I'm not actually advocating for Land of IsraelNishidani (talk) 15:46, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

That's called denialism.

You pushed for Land of Israel as neutral, actually citing many sources which nearly always brand that phrase as deeply politically biased.

Only when far too many sources proved that it was a brandname in Israeli nationalism, did you come up with 'Southern Levant', which in some quarters is considered a 'politically correct' term to avoid Palestine, as shown.

I justified my edit way back citing:-

(b) In Palestine, they deported of the inhabitants of Samaria and later reduced Judah and its neighbor kingdom to the status of tribute.'J. A. Brinkman, ‘Babylonia in the shadow of Assyria (747-626),’ in John Boardman, I. E. S. Edwards, E. Sollberger, N. G. L. Hammond (eds.) The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 3,Part 2, Cambridge University Press 2nd ed. 978-0-521-22717-9 1992 pp.1-70, p.26

That is a neutral source.

(c) Finally, I have repeatedly told you that in ancient history on wiki, we are not supposed to adopt partisan terms for wiki's neutral narrative voice, such as the Holy Land, Filistin, Eretz Israel. You consistently walk right past this point by saying that the Samaritan community today(like Israeli nationalist scholars and the public) use 'Eretz Israel'. That is immaterial. We are talking of academic history and its modes of describing the past where Palestine has for centuries been the default term (as your own source Mario Liverani stated in the bit you ignored and did not quote). Now please let me get on with the revision which requires arduous work. Since this outcry over the word 'Israel', the article has deteriorated in a revert battle over a single word that is pointless, and revision, desperately needed, is stuck given the huge waste of time required to underline the obvious, which is not apparently clear to people whio don't read history much.Nishidani (talk) 16:21, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Nishidani, I'm saying this with all due respect. I appreciate your commitment to editing but you are repeatedly ascribing simplistic and binary strawmen to me and then angrily arguing against those. If you don't wish to argue about the details of Land of Israel vs Palestine (region), then you should avoid making provocative edit summaries describing anachronisms and neutral terms. That is what I was responding to, but the terms I suggested were "the land" and "Samaria". I'm opposed to Palestine (Region) because it was not the contemporary name of the place, and it is not clear to me that it's the current default name of the region. I feel like this conversation is causing you undue consternation and stress. We have both stated our opinions, so let's leave it at that, and leave room for others to possibly give their opinions. Drsmoo (talk) 19:08, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

No need to worry.My medical records state that I have an extremely high stress threshold, meaning I don't experience that, as opposed to annoyance. I love writing articles because research is a learning experience, even in fields one knows quite intimately. If an objection arises, I will always put in as much effort as providing detailed, diffed and therefore verifiable, facts or views from the best available reliable sources (i.e. scholarship). What is annoying is, after two or three hours of close examination of an argument, not being punctually, point by point, answered with a similar level of evidential counter-argumentation but with words like 'strawman' (clichés). I don't think you listen, if I may say so. And your position reflects uncannily memes that are part of a national narrative, not scholarship. One more example, just to show you how I read:

Note, I have no objection to use of Palestine later in the lead re Benjamin of Tudela, as that was the name of the region at that time. .I'm opposed to Palestine (Region) because it was not the contemporary name of the place, . .

'Oh no,' I thought to myself. Drsmoo thinks that Palestine is valid only from medieval times down to 1948. The meme is that Palestine was a toponym introduced by Romans after they expelled Jews, ca 70-135. It's untrue of course. Palestine as an exonym for the region goes back at least to Sargon 11, who was quite probably responsible, rather than say Shalmaneser V, for the said deportation and who placed a Palestine between Moab and Judah at precisely this time, and was current in Greek from the 5th century BCE, before the single biblical mention of eretz israel.'Do I have to really waste an hour citing sources that show that?'. In short, the implication of your position is that wiki articles on antiquity down I presume to 70CE for this area may use any number of terms like Israel, as used in the Tanakh, but not Palestine, as used in Assyrian or Greek sources. That would have enormous cleansing repercussions were we to set a precedent here along the lines you suggest, and for that reason is unacceptableNishidani (talk) 19:57, 27 August 2022 (UTC).

Interesting regarding not experiencing stress. Again, you're building and tearing down a strawman that does not reflect my views. "Palestine" is the historically most common name for the area, certainly. But it was not the common name for the area by most of the people who lived there in the ancient times we are discussing. You can say that doesn't matter, and certainly it wouldn't in something like a Yucatan scenario, where that's an overwhelming common name (as Palestine once was). But that is not the case in the present day. Regarding the present day, it is not my impression that Palestine is the contemporary default term (or that there is a default term for that matter), and I haven't seen any sources that attest to it being so. There is no shortage of sources that use Levant, Israel, Land of Israel, etc. Just as an example, this is not quite scientific, but on Google Scholar, Israel+Sargon gets 17,500 results, Palestine+Sargon gets 13,500, Levant+Sargon gets 7,840. Israel+assyrian gets 63,000 results, Palestine + assyrian gets 57,100, Levant+Assyrian gets 24,800. A similar trend occurs with all the search terms I've used. Your assertion that Palestine is the "default term" does not seem to bear out. Multiple terms are used by different authors. And while you may feel that the term Land of Israel is "toxically ideological", many scholars disagree. Perhaps your feelings are just for "Land of Israel" specifically and not "Israel". But many scholarly sources use Land of Israel as well. The TLDR version of my argument is that "Palestine"(region) is not the default term, and variations of Israel are not toxic. I've sought a compromise that avoids both terms, which I think is reasonable, and I respect consensus as always, but I don't believe we have consensus here. Drsmoo (talk) 00:30, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Strawman' again. That always flags for me the sense that one's interlocutor hasn't an argument. I don't google phrase combinations. Over the last week I have read on average 150-200 pages a day of recent scholarship on the issues you raise, and then reply to each point. You google. Oh well.

"Palestine" is the historically most common name for the area, certainly. But it was not the common name for the area by most of the people who lived there in the ancient times we are discussing.

I.e. WP:IDIDNOTHEARTHAT. for the fourth time, in wiki's narrative voice we do not use confessional language or local terms to describe countries, but the default terms in the relevant scholarly literature. 'In the ancient times we are discussing',99% of the inhabitants of this area were illiterate, had never been to Jerusalem, knew nothing of the laws of Deuteronomy, of a sacred as opposed to a profane landscape, or the fabulous fictions of origins from Genesis to Joshua worked out in exilic and post-exilic times. Their reference field was their village or town, their authority the regional potentate whose taxpayers visited them annually. For that reason, people like Dever ('By “Palestine” I refer only to ancient Palestine of the Iron Age, without any reference to the modern political situation.’ William G. Dever, The Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel: When Archaeology and the Bible Intersect, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2012ISBN 978-0-802-86701-8 Preface pp.ix-x) and Thomas L. Thompson (at the opposite poles in terms of their approaches (and I have no partisanship for the latter, often absurdly minimalist school), both use Palestine generically for this whole area. Nishidani (talk) 13:40, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry but local usage is fairly irrelevant to academic discussion. Neutrality on Wikipedia means neutrality with respect to the authoritative sources, not local preferences. What ancient locals called the place is further a moot point, because the ancient period of the areas history is largely the preserve of prehistory, so there is little if anything that can reliably be said about the matter. Raw search hits are also worthless. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:17, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

I am just a comment. As for the Google searches made by Drsmoo, a possible reason for the popularity of "Israel" in relation to Assyria or Sargon is due to the simple reason, that Assyria conquered the Kingdom of Israel, which was a polity spread over just one part of the southern Levant/Israel/Palestine.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 14:20, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

It was of course a kingdom without a king, since the last regnant of the House of Omri, Hoshea, was deposed, probably, some years before the deportation, after which Samaria was effectively without a monarch, unlike Judah with Ahaz on the throne. I don't think it is widely grasped how complex the technical issues are here. It's easier just to run with the standard biblical terminology (as most of our articles do, which only leads us into circular reasoning): the crux here is how to describe a deportation into an area Scripture calls Samaria, i.e. the Kingdom of Israel, which our maps have spilling right east over Gilead etc down to the northern frontier of Moab (that makes an obsessive precisian like myself fear that one might imply the several Syrian/Mesopotamia groups repopulating 'Samaria' ended up even in Gilead and elsewhere, as much as in the area west of the Jordan).

A modern reader will be mislead by 'Israel'- taking it to imbricate over modern Israel and the territory it controls generally - Samaria for Josephus ended on the coast; the Assyrians named a similar extension in their Samerina, and by the time of deportations there was no effective 'kingdom'. That's why the temptation exists to throw up one's hands and stick to the usual biblical narrative terms. One can only place one's hopes on archaeology, given the confusion in the records, and remain mindful of the fact that the HB is also, in these contexts, a 'spun' history of northern Israel's successor state from a rival Judean theological historical perspective. Much is expected from your generation.Nishidani (talk) 16:06, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

By the way, B. Personal aside, a thought as I was showering now just before going down for my evening beer at the pub. There's a book by Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli which provides one with an excellent sense of the massive discrepancy between official rhetoric and reality. Under fascism, but even earlier, the nation was drowned in the rhetoric of the nation, Italy, the Empire, 'we Italians'. Levi was exiled down south by the government as a dissident. He discovered that his sense of being an Italian, part of a modern world, was totally overturned by discovering that half of the country, the south, regarded by officialdom as a realm of animals, lived in a different universe, almost Neolithic, though the records ascribed to them a status as IItalians and Catholicds. They were indeed illiterate, but had a completely different mentality to that of their governors. They were pagans who attended Church for superstitious reasons where drunken priests harangued them by spouting the ideology of Christianity from the pulpit to no effect; people caught up in redtape which could only be sidestepped by devious manoeuvers and contacts. I thought not least of the Canaanite/Israelite am ha-eretz in Ezra, the people whose lives Dever strives to capture, and many other similar historic parallels. It's a very good metaphor for the empirical archaeologist faced with threshing from the earth matters to reconstruct a world that either escaped the interests of ruling elites, sacerdotal or otherwise, or was idealized as some abstract 'people of God'. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 17:07, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

I'll not replay most of the above, which are out of the scope of discussion. One thing stands out: "A modern reader will be mislead by 'Israel'- taking it to imbricate over modern Israel and the territory it controls generally" - Such claim cannot be made, while ignoring the fact that a modern reader would clearly be mislead by saying "Samaritans of/from Palestine" or whatever, to either think they are from the occupied Palestinian territories, or otherwise part of the Palestinians (generally speaking they are and strictly speaking they are not). In academic literature that is clearly not such a big deal and proud Zionists have no problem using the term "Palestine" in English literature. This website is not an academic source about archaeology but an encyclopedia of everything for everyone. When you use the term "Palestine" or "Israel", it should be used carefully and better avoided as much as possible, especially regarding ancient history. If anyone would go on to start an article about the first three millenniums BCE in the region (EB, IB, MB, LB, IA, etc.) it would be best to call it the Southern Levant. There are plenty of good terms for regional areas such as Samaria, Shela, Coastal Plain, Galilee, whatever. Raphael Greenberg has published the most comprehensive work I've seen on the Bronze Age in the region, and he chose the name "Levant", which in his definition, is "anything not covered by the Syria volume in this series", which just show how unacademic and yet important these endless choices of the label are. I wish Cisjordan was popular in English, but sadly it isn't.

In that case, I would recommend and even request editors to not be bigots about it. (As I said, I am not willing at the moment to join the discussion, but without checking too deeply, I would bet that as it has always been here, those who talk about "Palestine" happen to have more sympathy for fallen Gazans than those who talk about "Israel", who happens to have more sympathy for fallen Israelis, regardless of their impressively articulated logical arguments).--Bolter21 (talk to me) 19:28, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

The 'bigotry' of POV disturbance began with this edit by Tombah. I know that eretz israel, an ideologically contaminated term (numerous metastudies state that), apart from being an anachronism (theological) for that period, is used widely in Israel, even among archaeologists, despite its contemporary use as a euphemism for a Greater Israel. Obviously, Orwell's lessons on the politics of language- profoundly influential in my heyday, haven't sunk in there. I altered it, after several months, to Palestine because several texts including one by Yitzhak Ben-Zvi - a patron of Samaritans and later President of Israel, and one by J.A. Brinkman, writing for the Cambridge Ancient History, used it specifically for the precise event of 721-720 deportation. That attempt to emend a clear intrusion of contemporary politics by using a term William Dever (who is understandably annoyed by the POV pushing of many scholars who confuse their political sympathies for Palestinians with their obligations to objective analysis of the past), and many others, for hundreds of years, have used as the default term for the ancient region, triggered an outburst of anxiety as if the sacrality of 'Israel' had been defamed. I have given exhaustive evidence, and the replies are all opinionizing, with rare gestures to apparent snippets of evidence that turn out not to corroborate the POV pushed by my interlocutors. Your final remark is obscene in its dual insinuation of bad faith, and my putative empathetic preference for deploring Palestinian deaths over Israeli deaths. Nishidani (talk) 20:49, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Never meant to imply anyone's bad faith. It is just how it is always. Tombah's edit could have easily been fixed by changing "Land of Israel" to Samaria or "former land of the Kingdom of Israel", (as earlier in that paragraph) or otherwise "Samaria". "Land of Israel" is irrelevant and "Palestine" can be avoided. Talking about Samaritans living in the late Roman or Byzantine era, would definitely be under "Palestine".--Bolter21 (talk to me) 10:05, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

'Israel' has four meanings each widespread in English, Palestine has one, referring to a natural stable geophysical entity used in literature for over 2,000 years. You can't grasp that, apparently, and, when you say, in this context of the two terms, that preferring the latter to the former for ancient history cannot but reflect a bias for one of the two populations now there (and vice versa), and this bias 'is just how it is always,' what you are signaling to experienced ears is: 'from ancient times to the present day, there's been an ineludible and irreducible antagonism between 'them' and 'us' (i.e. antisemitism). English is not your native language. All we have in this interminable screed is evidence of an inability to discriminate historical usage nicely without rearing up defensively as if one's identity were at stake over what has been the default word in historiography for millennia. Pity. Nishidani (talk) 15:47, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

“Palestine has one, referring to a natural stable geophysical entity” The first sentences of the Palestine(region) article attest to the variations of Palestine. The most common of its typical geophysical dimensions certainly differs from the area being discussed. I agree with Bolter21, Nableezy, and WP:WestBank that Samaria (or some variation thereof) would be the most preferable. Drsmoo (talk) 12:01, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Again, unfamiliarity with historic usage.

The first sentences of the Palestine(region) article attest to the variations of Palestine.

I am disappointed at such a comment. It is self-evident that "Palestine" does not have one meaning,(Bolter below)

D. H. Kallner and E. Rosenau, 'Palestine is a well defined geographical entity. It lies, a narrow, dissected, karstic upland, between the Mediterranean, which it borders with a narrow coastal plain, and the deep rift of the Jordan Valley, to which it declines steeply on the east; to the south is the desert of Sinai, to the north are the mountains of Lebanon.' The Geographical Regions of Palestine Geographical Review , January 1939, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Jan., 1939), pp. 61-80, p.61.

That is how the word was used historically for centuries, until 1967.

But of course in these threads, there is no way evidence can trump collective opinions.Nishidani (talk) 09:52, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

I am disappointed at such a comment. It is self-evident that "Palestine" does not have one meaning, and clearly if you walk around the globe, anyone who knows anything will most certainly think about a Muslim-Arab nation occupied by Israel, and not a "natural stable geophysical entity". Clearly, neither "Palestine" nor "Israel" are "natural stable geophysical entities". The article about History of Palestine, though its lead section speaks about a land, actually centers around Palestinian Arabs from the 19th century. The article about History of Israel, clearly cares only about Jews. Palestine and Israel are more diverse geographically than most of the other geographical entities in the region, especially Transjordan, Sinai, and Lebanon. The land has no clear boundaries (with or without Transjordan? Up to the Litani or excluding the Galilee? With or without the Golan? Is the Negev part of Palestine or an extension of Sinai?) nor natural center (Jerusalem? Tel Aviv? Ramla? Caesarea? Samaria? Megiddo? Gath?). This is why the broader "southern Levant" term was invented, because the southern Levant as well, as a natural stable geophysical entity, with clear borders both naturally and geopolitically.

Samaria on the other hand is clearly, a natural stable geophysical entity - the northern part of the central mountain, with geographical features allowing immediate control of the valleys east, north, and south.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 12:51, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, go by what the sources say and if it is the case that the sources are varied, then use a catch all term like Southern Levant. Selfstudier (talk) 13:07, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

I suspect this rule of thumb is too vague. Cause some sources may use "Land of Israel" and some sources may use "Palestine" and then the paragraph will not reconcile the two.

By the way, this whole thing made me obsessed with Samaritans so I watched some 10 lectures and interviews with Yefet Ben-Asher, the current priest of the Samaritans. In one interview (11:16) he said "...עם ישראל נכנס לארץ הקדושה..." - "Am Yisrael entered the Holy Land". He also say that the Samaritans have decendend from the Levites and Tribe of Joseph, which as a fact, barely mentioned in the article. In another interview (1:36) he says: "...השומרונים הם מממלכת ישראל, 3658 שנים הם גרים בארץ הקדושה" - "The Samaritans are from [the] Kingdom of Israel, 3658 years they live in the Holy Land". The term he use is ארץ הקדושה - "Aretz HaKedosha" - "Holy Land". It is slightly different from the Jewish one "ארץ הקודש" - Eretz HaKodesh - Land of Sanctity (which is sadly, poorly translated to "Holy Land", probably due to the Latin toponym Terra Sancta). Point is, anyone who asked what Samaritans think, this is probably not a reliable source (though I think we can refer to the words of the religious authority and state this is his words), but it teaches something.--Bolter21 (talk to me) 14:42, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Well, let's start counting them up and see who uses what. Selfstudier (talk) 15:07, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Count up the number of uses of a name within each source (many use multiple)? Are those sources within the article or in general? And what happens if the balance of existing sources and their comments shifts? It’s hard to imagine that any name will be used more than Samaria. Drsmoo (talk) 18:49, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

If it turns out that the balance lies with Samaria, then we should go with that. And if it is, why are you and Nishidni arguing about whether it should LoI/Palestine? I already said that if the sources contain multiple usages, then default to a catch all. I was responding to Bolter who said that there were only two (which is easy if true, use both of them with attribution). Anyway, this endless back and forth in the abstract is no use, we should identify the principal independent sourcing (how many can there be?) and see what it actually says. Selfstudier (talk) 18:57, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

I'll tell you what Selfstudier, there is absolutely no problem in writing that Samaritans inhabit Palestine, because indeed Palestine is a geographic name. This whole discussion, if I understood correctly, began over this sentence: They believe that Samaritanism is the true religion of the ancient Israelites, preserved by those Israelites who remained in Palestine during the Babylonian captivity. In that case, I understand editors wanted to change it to "Land of Israel", though it is pretty clear such a term wouldn't be the best. This can be traced to Nishidani's diff, which changed it to "Palestine" from "the land" (which was not an improvement and creates even more problems IMO). Nishidani's summery stated "The land is imprecise, as the eretz term itself. In historiography, bar Israeli usage, the standard term for this area is Palestine, and has nothing to do with the IP conflict. It is the normative designation". On that, we can argue for days, but it is clear it was not backed by a source but by a certain POV. He later added a source, from 1933 written by a Zionist scholar for the Government of Palestine (and by the way, I couldn't access it. Maybe it is Vol 1 of the 1931 census and I only have vol 2, though I have no idea). I don't think this is the kind of source we need in 2022. Anyway, the main problem is that the sentence can imply a samaritan minding his business in Holon and telling himself "I am a descendent of Israelites who remained in Palestine", while clearly, Samaritans don't call their land that and don't use European, Israeli or Palestinian labels for themselves. The best I can say right now from watching videos of the Samaritan High Priest, he calls it the "Holy Land".--Bolter21 (talk to me) 13:29, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Nishidani's summery stated "The land is imprecise, as the eretz term itself. t is clear it was not backed by a source but by a certain POV

You failed to remember that when asked I added above:-

In Palestine, they deported the inhabitants of Samaria and later reduced Judah and its neighbour kingdoms to the status of tribute-paying vassels.’ (J. A. Brinkman, ‘Babylonia in the Shadow of Assyria,’ in John Boardman, I. E. S. Edwards, E. Sollberger, N. G. L. Hammond (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 3,Part 1992 ISBN 978-0-521-22717-9 pp.1-70 p.26)

If Drsmoo were actually familiar with one of the googled sources he quoted for 'Southern Levant' over Palestine citing his cherrypicked snippet, he would have read:

(a)’during the neo-Babylonian (538-332 BCE) and early Hellenistic (322-164 BCE) eras, there were probably, as we shall see, more Samarians than Judeans residing in Palestine.' (p.2); '*‘Samaria had a substantially larger and more well-to-do population than Yehud did during the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods. Some leading archaeologists estimate that the city of Samaria was one of the largest in Palestine during the Persian period. In other words, the province of Samaria was not an insignificant backdrop to Judah during the historical era under review.’ (p.11); (3)'Samaria became one of the most important urban areas in all of Palestine during the Achaemenid era. Zertail (2003:380) goes further in claiming that Samaria became the largest and most important city of Palestine.’ (p.107): Gary N. Knoppers, Jews and Samaritans: The Origins and History of Their Early Relations, OUP USA, 2013 ISBN 978-0-195-32954-4

I used part of Knoppers as well above, and editors just sidestepped it with waffle. I.e. even someone who will prefer 'Southern Levant' in practice uses 'Palestine' for the specific area to cover incidents from the neo-Babylonian, and Persian/Achaemenid period through to the Hellenistic periods. But to repeat, such detailed documentation is pointless, because people with an opinion are ready to argue 'for days' talking round it to get a majority view that that you can't use 'Palestine' any time before the 'Roman period' without POV pushing, whereas standard histories use it by default. Evidence has no value here. The more you document, the more you are accused of POV pushing, the more responses waffle on avoiding the evidence, the more they illustrate their 'neutrality'. The technique is to make a thread run on so long that all the evidence is lost, given modern attention spans, and one can just kibitz with one's impressions as if they were more authoritative. Nishidani (talk) 20:10, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Ps. The Zionist source by the Samaritan's modern patron,Yitzhak Ben-Zvi which you cannot access reads:

‘In accordance with biblical sources, the Samaritans are the descendants of settlers transplanted by the Assyrian kings of Palestine to settle on the territories formerly occupied by the ten tribes who were exiled to Assyria.

which I quoted to show that even a modern Zionist had no problem with the language he would have found in almost all of the Western books he read on that period of the country's history. Nishidani (talk) 20:26, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

The real problem here is that for a thousand years, down to the end of the Byzantine era, the Samaritans, Israelite traditionalists, were the majority population in Samaria from highest antiquity (though spreading extensively throughout Palestine in the 2nd century BCE onwards), but the POV of modern popular Israeli history and Zionism is that Samaria and Judea have been 'Jewish' all the time (Samaria/Judea). That is outlandish nonsense, almost universally accepted through ignorance precisely of ancient history and demography. People believe it because it is doctrinal and indoctrinated, to obliterate a distinction that was fundamental historically, but would upset land claims that allow 'repossession' of Samaria as a 'Jewish' homeland. Quite scandalous, but then most serious history is. Nishidani (talk) 20:33, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

I suspect you are missing the point. The problem is not the use of Palestine to describe the land, but the use of Palestine to describe the land Samaritans believe they are from. The sentence says: "They believe that Samaritanism is the true religion of the ancient Israelites, preserved by those Israelites who remained in Palestine...". Surely it is a difficult statement to say "Jews believe they are native to people who ruled Palestine" or "Palestinians believe they are descendants of Israel's natives". I was born in Tel Aviv, am I a native of Al-Mas'udiyya? You can say "Bolter21 lives in the Levant", but you need to be careful saying "Bolter21 believes he lives in the Levant". According to the way you put it, a sentence saying "Benjamin Netanyahu has been elected by the inhabitants of Palestine" is completely fine. Yeah sure, you can make that case saying that that has been the name of the land for thousands of years, but that's at the very least not the best possible way to put it. You are giving a foreign label to a land, claimed to be the homeland of a native people. There is absolutely no problem saying "Samaritans have inhabited central Palestine for two millennia", and this is stated all over the article, uncontended. But the sentence about what they believe shouldn't contain this label. This is the kind of political correctness needed not because it offends Zionist schmocks like me (which it doesn't) but to simply prevent confusion, as while you say "This is not an IP matter", clearly many people know the Samaritans due to the IP topic, and the names Israel and Palestine are politically charged. Yeah for 2000 years Europeans called Palestine "Palestine", but today everyone who hears "Palestine" thinks about bombings in Gaza and not ethnic minorities of the Late Roman period or whatever. Frankly speaking, no one cares about Palestine's history, apart from some Christians and bored folks like us. Not even Jews nor Palestinians care. In my opinion, one of the main reasons is that it is so darn confusing because of the variety of sources that do not share the langauge of popular media. So I am asking to reconcile that where needed.

Would you agree, just in that sentence quoted, to use a different label or no label (such as "homeland" instead)? This will pretty much end this discussion. The rest of the article can remain the same in that manner. For example in the lead: "In the 12th century, the Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela estimated that only around 1,900 Samaritans remained in the regions of Palestine and Syria." is fine. I would probably not have written it that way, but it is not too confusing. We should be careful with our readers but also not treat them as absolute idiots (like what PC culture usually does in the 21st century).--Bolter21 (talk to me) 22:29, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

I suspect you are missing the point. The problem is not the use of Palestine to describe the land, but the use of Palestine to describe the land Samaritans believe they are from

Your suspicion is unfounded, B. To repeat what I wrote several times above (and the point was sidestepped once more). 0ne does not, per WP:Voice, use confessional/sectarian terms (Holy Land/eretz israel) when writing historical articles. Drsmoo invented that argument, I buried it. You disinter it. This is boring. But it's a cultural thing: no one raised within Israel post 1967 can hear that P word without feeling anxiety, I guess, however comfortable for centuries historians have been in writing it.Nishidani (talk) 07:07, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

This is a long and thoughtful conversation, but amid the thoughtfulness above I see a couple of odd suppositions. You talk about modern Israeli elections when no one is suggesting we relabel electoral demographics. You suggest that Palestine is a European contrivance, when the name dates back to the Egyptians and Assyrians. Scholarship merely reflects the weight of history. Furthermore, with sweeping generalization you suppose that "everyone" associates Palestine with bombings in Gaza - that may be true for the pop news-addled denizens of the USA, but it a gross assumption to assume this pattern of ignorance is widespread, let alone universal. You also speak of identity politics as if they are fixed, not fluid, when there are obvious exceptions to the binary worldview of Israeli-Palestinian identity. Take Shimon Tzabar, a Jewish underground member who identifies as a "Hebrew-speaking Palestinian". Such exceptions may be rare, but they are an important reminder that the will to blindly follow polarizing doctrines is not a universal one. At the same time, I would suggest that deployed correctly, yes, "homeland" would be a fairly unobjectionable, neutral term for expressing the sentiments of the Samaritan community when reflecting on their own identity (scholarly perspectives aside). Iskandar323 (talk) 05:42, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Babylonian period

Generally I do not have any issue with the use of the term "Palestine" to reflect the situation on the ground 135CE-1948, nor a future/potential Palestinian state emerging from peace negotiations.
However, one reference in this article that I would query is the following line in the lede: " those Israelites who remained in Palestine during the Babylonian captivity;"
Leaving aside latterday mistranslations of terms for Philistia such as the Hebrew "Fleshet", such a concept was alien to the parties immediately involved and more importantly, anachronistic to the period. (Herodotus's first clearcut use of the term being about a century later). It would be like calling Roman or pre-Roman Gaul "France".
I would suggest some other synonym is substituted in that particular instance. Romomusicfan (talk) 11:44, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Generally I do not have any issue with the use of the term "Palestine" to reflect the situation on the ground 135CE-1948,

Well done.That 135 CE starting point perfectly coincides with the by now trashed Zionist pseudohistorical meme that Hadrian's re-use of the toponym Palaestina coincided with the putative expulsion of Jews from eretz Israel after the defeat of Bar Kochba, and therefore cannot be used, despite Jewish writers like Josephus and Philo of Alexandria, for any period before that date. This is the basso ostinato of the objection to the default term in ancient history, which is precise, and general, as opposed to outsized generic terms like Levant and to regions (subsets) within that landscape like Israel/Judea/Galilee/Philistia etc. All emerging strong states and empires gain their ascendency through (a) military force (b) economic consolidation (c) political power, and, when these are consolidated, (d) ideological power - the reinterpretation of their world in terms of a novel mythistory of legitimation. It's a fourfold formulation, widely used, that fits these processes all over the world. The Bible is just one example, as is, in that region, the Zionist rewriting of the past. It is only when the first three elements secure a sense of stability that generations arise within that state/empire which begin to question the foundational narrative of the fathers, acknowledge the suppressed histories of those allophonic communities conquered or displaced, untroubled that any emergent counternarrative might create political instability in one's homeland. We are only halfway there, as witness this absurd thread. Nishidani (talk) 15:24, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Quite a few assumptions of what I may or may not have meant by those dates there, but never mind. For what it's worth (and it's a side issue in terms of the point I was making) I select 135CE since it was a date when, as you say, Hadrian gave official status to the term Palaestina. I do not necessarily state that 135CE was the first time such Official status (i.e. a ruler proclaiming that to be the name of the land as opposed to mere mentions of the name in texts) had been accorded to the name Palaestina, but I would be curious to see whether any earlier examples can in fact be cited. Romomusicfan (talk) 16:08, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

Again, I don't care what you think. I am interested in editors who can cite scholarship. Palestine is a term you will find all over any book on the area's history from 3,000 BCE to 135 CE, not to speak of later periods. This is verifiable. If you are curious about that fact, then go to google books for a zillion mentions. Nishidani (talk) 17:07, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

I see this has already been picked up below, but would add the above points to that discussion. However, my point here relates not so much to the specific beliefs of Samaritans (as per Bolter21 below) as to the general worldview of all parties involved in the Babylonian conquest.Romomusicfan (talk) 11:46, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

This has now been resolved by various editors.Romomusicfan (talk) 09:09, 8 September 2022 (UTC)