Talk:Book of Joshua (Samaritan)

[Untitled]

The article claims that the Samaratin Book of Joshua was based on the Hebrew text of the same name with portions changed to better suit the views of it's author. The belief that this text was an alteration and corruption of pre-existing Jewish text is not universally held and is directly opposed to the precepts of the Samaratin religion. This biased view is not commensurate with wikipedia's neutral point of view (NPOV) quality standards. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.89.38.41 (talk) 05:13, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Much of the article was copied from a 1906 version of the Jewish Encyclopedia, which was written in an extremely polemical and exclusivist manner that is not at all suitable for an encyclopedia. Ie, not simply treating the Samaritan and Jewish versions as different traditions, but just blatantly operating under the assumption that those lying Samaritans just cribbed from the MT and inserted their own alterations. Especially egregious was that polemics from this NPOV article were for some reason given false citations towards more modern, academic, and neutral sources. Upon reading the actual sources that were cited it quickly became apparent that many of them had nothing to do with the statement that was being attributed to them, in some cases the text outright contradicted the claim that was being made.

There was also this lengthy summary that I found was entirely copied and pasted from the 1906 article, which had intense NPOV issues - for instance, every single difference in the Samaritan version was described in terms of some direct editorial alteration of the Masoretic Text, ie the Samaritan version "adds to" the MT, it "imitates" the MT. Which is not at all a fruitful way to do a good faith analysis of the differences between two texts representing different traditions. Also referring to the translator as the "author" (just dismissing outright the claim to have had access to a Hebrew original, it is completely out of the realm of imagination apparently that the Samaritans would have ever at any point possessed such a record), and repeatedly implying that differences in the two accounts were just fanciful original creations on the part of the "author" at time of composition more or less, who apparently was not in any sense recording some pre-extant tradition of his people but just had a hobby of laboriously copying by hand from Jewish scriptures and adding in some original fiction entirely of his own creation just because he enjoyed telling lies. This is so bad faith I'm kind of speechless. Like for comparison, we *know* pretty much that the Zohar was created by Moses de Leon, and yet I would *never* speak of that work in this tone.

I *assume* that much of what de Leon is describing is ultimately a codification in some form of Jewish traditions passed down from Rabbi to Rabbi, which have no real author, which he chose to package and present in pseudonymous form. It would be an incredible disrespect to summarize the Zohar and just present all of it as a creative fiction exercise on the part of de Leon with no real weight or origin in Jewish culture and tradition. But that is what is done here, apparently the Samaritan viewpoint and their traditions are of no interest or value whatsoever, the Jewish tradition is just 100% correct and the Samaritan version is just evil lies they invent out of spite towards the Jewish people, because their evil heretics and such. The hyperbolic seething upon encountering the Samaritan tradition is literally just a manifestation of the narcissism of small differences.

I originally attempted to edit the language so that it adhered better to NPOV, but after I discovered it was just copied and pasted from this article, I decided I would just have to throw the entire thing out. Any attempt to correct for the problematic aspects of the summary would be an alteration of a direct quotation.

Honestly I'm kind of shocked that this article has been left in such a bad state for such a long time. It is downright contemptuous and bigoted towards the Samaritan perspective and not at all encyclopedic. Several editors though seem to have had time on their hands somehow to take a look at the bigoted statements from the 1906 article and go out and find random pages from actually scholarly work on the subject to misattribute these statements to. Literally their sole contribution was just to add in some fraud, nobody bothered to double check that for a little over a decade.2601:140:9500:7F00:3C28:5832:FD0B:F5DC (talk) 09:21, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Hebrew original

In this article in the ZDMG the author states that the original is Hebrew. He bought two scrolls of it copied for him by two different Samaritan in Nablus. http://www.archive.org/stream/zeitschrift62deutuoft/zeitschrift62deutuoft_djvu.txt

Why is it not mentioned? Has it been discredited? --188.106.113.177 (talk) 22:49, 16 November 2010 (UTC)