Talk:Diaspora Revolt

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: rejected by reviewer, closed by Schwede66 talk 18:16, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

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• ... that a festival celebrating the Roman victory over the Jews in the Diaspora Revolt of 115–117 CE was still observed 80 years later in the Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus?

• Source: Pucci Ben Zeev, Miriam (2006). "The Uprisings in the Jewish Diaspora, 116–117". In Katz, Steven T. (ed.). The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period. The Cambridge History of Judaism. Vol. 4th. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-77248-8. pp. 96–98

• ALT1: ... that the Roman suppression of the Diaspora Revolt of 115–117 CE led to the near-total annihilation and displacement of Jewish communities from Cyrenaica, Cyprus, and many parts of Egypt? Source: Kerkeslager, Allen (2006). "The Jews in Egypt and Cyrenaica, 66–c. 235 CE". In Katz, Steven T. (ed.). The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period. The Cambridge History of Judaism. Vol. 4th. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-77248-8. pp. 61–62
• Reviewed:

Created by Mariamnei (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 7 past nominations.

Mariamnei (talk) 12:46, 28 August 2024 (UTC).

• QPQ is required and should be provided at the time of nomination. Schwede66 18:13, 7 September 2024 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Diaspora Revolt/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Mariamnei (talk · contribs) 13:39, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Jens Lallensack (talk · contribs) 22:11, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Looks interesting, comments follow soon. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 22:11, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

• The term "Diaspora Revolt" (115–117 – add "CE" here to the years?

• known as the Trajanic Revolt – the infobox states "or Second Jewish–Roman War". If both names are valid, should they be both mentioned in the lead and box?

• It was possibly during this period that the lesser-known and less-understood Kitos War took place in the province. – Can you mention the parties of his war here? Did it involve Jews, too?

• Generally, no sources are needed in lead since all information in the lead is expected to appear in the body anyways (where they are sourced). (see GA criterion 1b, "it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections", see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section. There may be exceptions for this, of course.

• compounded by the imposition of the Fiscus Judaicus, – give a year? When was it imposed

• Prior to the revolt, incidents of anti-Jewish violence by Greeks occurred in 112 and the summer of 115 CE. – As written, this still refers to the First Jewish Revolt, but apparently it's about the second?

• as "king", a title that has prompted some scholars to speculate on a possible messianic motivation behind the uprising, though evidence supporting this theory remains limited. – This was already mentioned earlier, but without the cautionary note.

• or the Bucoli during their uprising in Egypt – Who are the Bucoli? Anything that can be linked here?

• Gentile, Epigraphical, porticoes, Hecate, Caesareum, Zeus, Hermoupolis – all could do well with wikilinks

• The presence of a deeply incised seven-branched menorah on a road northwest of Balagrae suggests deliberate disruption of the route connecting Cyrene with neighboring regions to the west. – I can't follow here. A menorah seems to be some kind of candle holder? Why does this suggest destruction of the road?

• Eusebius’ Chronicon reports a Jewish rebellion in Mesopotamia, which is not mentioned by Cassius Dio. – I found this confusing. According to the following text, he did report on a rebellion that "might be the same", so to say "not mentioned by Cassius Dio" could be somewhat misleading.

• According to Eusebius, Trajan suspected that the Jews in Mesopotamia "would also attack the inhabitants"; Christian sources all agree that he ordered General Lusius Quietus to suppress them harshly, – Does that mean that the Jews were suppressed proactively, and did not necessarily revolt themselves?

• remove the empty notes section at the end of the article.

• The sources seem to be of high-quality, except for "Derkan, Izzet (2015-12-30). "Jews in Cyprus and Their Aims", which seems to have been published in the International Journal of Research Science and Management, which, according to [1], is a predatory journal which is not considered to be a reliable source in Wikipedia. This source may have to be removed, along with the information it supports.

• Images are appropriate. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 18:11, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your feedback, @Jens Lallensack:!

• I've added CE to the years for clarity.
• I included both terms in the lead and box, along with a note, since "Second Jewish–Roman War" is also often used for the Bar Kokhba revolt.
• The Kitos War took place in Judaea, with indications of a Roman military operation led by Lusius Quietus (the war's namesake) and reports of Jewish unrest. I've added some clarification on that as well.
• Should I take out the links from the lead? I noticed they’re often used in many articles, and I thought they might be helpful.

It's ok, not required for GA. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 13:36, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

• It was imposed after the destruction of the temple in 70 CE. I've added some clarification.
• Those instances of violence took place between the First Jewish Revolt of 66–73 CE, and the beginning of the second in late 115 or 116 CE. To clarify, I've added "In the years leading up to the Diaspora Revolt"
• I changed highlighted in the earlier mention to perhaps suggested to convey the necessary caution in this context.
• The Bucoli (or Boukoloi), were a group of herdsmen active in Egypt's Nile Delta who rebelled against Rome during the latter half of the second century (circa 170 CE). I haven't come across any information about them on Wikipedia, so there aren't any relevant links available at the moment. Perhaps I'll consider writing something about them in the future!

For now, how about adding an explanationary gloss, to give the reader some idea: "or the Bucoli (a group of herdsmen) during their uprising in Egypt in 171 CE."

• Wikilinks added.
• The idea is that the presence of a menorah near the road may indicate Jewish activity in the area, as this symbol was likely incised by Jews residing nearby. This leads the writer to propose that the Jews aimed to disrupt the adjacent road. To clarify, I am revising the text to say: The presence of a deeply incised seven-branched menorah—a symbol indicative of Jewish presence—on a road northwest of Balagrae may suggest that Jews deliberately sought to disrupt the route connecting Cyrene with neighboring regions to the west.

That sounds quite speculative to me; in this case, I suggest to use author attribution, to make clear that it is an opinion of a single author rather than an established fact. For example, you could start the sentence with "Historian xx suggested that" or similar.

• I've rewritten this section on the events in Mesopotamia. I hope it’s clearer now!

Much better, and very clear.

• Scholars generally agree that Jews did take up arms in revolt against the Romans in Mesopotamia. However, this revolt differed in many respects from the Diaspora Revolt occurring at the same time. Recent scholarship suggests that it was more about joining the broader resistance movements against the Romans in the territories taken from Parthia, rather than representing a distinctly Jewish revolt like those seen in Cyprus, Egypt, and Cyrenaica.
• The notes section isn’t empty anymore, so let's keep it as is.
• I'm removing this source. The text is supported anyway by Pucci Ben Zeev.
• Great! If you need any further clarifications, just let me know. Thanks again! Mariamnei (talk) 13:23, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Some replies above. Excellent work overall. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 13:36, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

@Jens Lallensack. All taken care of. Thanks so much! Mariamnei (talk) 05:47, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Excellent! Consider nominating this at WP:FAC. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 11:03, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Thoughts on a potential FAC run

@Mariamnei and Jens Lallensack: Well done on the article -- it's a lovely piece of work. It might be a good idea to do some sort of pre-FAC polishing session, whether that's at PR or less formally on the Talk page. In general, first-time nominators tend to find a lot of "small stuff" that they didn't know about (such as matters of formatting, Manual of Style compliance, image copyright and so on), and it can be helpful to get those sorted before putting the article in front of people who have to vote on whether to support its promotion to FA status. I would strongly advise approaching a mentor or two for the process.

With the caveat that this isn't specifically my area, it looks to be generally in good shape. I won't give it a full-on nit-pick at this stage, but if considering an FAC run, I would be looking at the following:

• Make sure the article is comprehensible to non-expert readers. There are a lot of technical terms that are important to the sense and not fully explained: see for instance the sentence Similar information is corroborated by CPJ II 441 and a later source, the Ethiopic chronicle by John of Nikiû, which discusses the Babylon Fortress. We also have a lot of discussion of Messianism, but never really discuss in detail what that means. Under MOS:NOFORCELINK, there should be enough information in the article itself for readers to get the point, even if they need to use the link for the finer details.
• In ancient history, it's important that we're clear about our sources: (e.g.) Eusebius, Dio, Orosius and the papyrus record are not simply neutral, interchangeable sources of evidence. Readers need to know what these sources are, roughly when they're from, and have enough context to properly interpret what they are telling us. Eusebius, for instance, wrote almost two centuries later from a strongly Christian perspective, while Orosius's comments about the Jews laying places to waste have some very important religious/ideological context to them. Given that we so frequently refer to the limitations of the sources in the article, I think a section about those sources early on would be helpful.
• Check the small stuff: spelling, grammar, formatting and so on. A couple of recurring examples:
  • Latin needs to be in language templates: {{lang|la|TEXT}}. Transliterated Ancient Greek goes into transl templates: {{transl|grc|TEXT}}. Neither should have quotation marks around it.
  • Roman office titles are generally not used in apposition with names: so "the emperor Trajan" (and simply "Trajan" after first use) is preferred to "Emperor Trajan".
  • "Further reading" sections are for works that are not cited. Works that are cited should be in a "Bibliography" section.
  • BCE and CE are always capitalised (no dots), even in titles.
  • Make sure the formatting of citations is correct and consistent: one, for example, has the volume given (correctly) as "4"; two others have it (incorrectly) as "4th".
  • There needs to be a logical principle as to which sources are included in the bibliography and which are only cited in the notes.

• Just going by eye, as someone who doesn't know the field, the bibliography looks a bit short and the citations are dominated by a single short chapter (Pucci Ben Zeev 2006). The sources also seem to skew a little older: only one is later than the 2000s. Are there other important works that discuss the topic, particularly from the last 20 years or so? An FA needs to be a full representation of the scholarship on a topic: you might want to look at the bibliographies of some of the works you have cited to track down more.

I hope this is helpful. Give me a ping if any of this is unclear. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 07:34, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Hey @UndercoverClassicist, I think I'm pretty much done! I also added some content from other sources covering the topic over the last 20 years. Do you have any other suggestions or things I should tweak? Mariamnei (talk) 13:37, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

The sourcing in the new section on sources worries me a little bit: we have a lot of weight on just a couple of sources, particularly Horbury 2021, which don't seem to be specialist treatments of the historians themselves. There's potential for issues or oversimplification when someone is characterising e.g. Eusebius as a specialist in something other than Eusebius, particularly when the source itself is a comparatively small part of a comparatively small work (a book chapter) that is, again, about something else.

Perhaps as a consequence of this, some of the handling of those sources is not as deft or nuanced as it could be. See for example Orosius ... provides information on the revolt but is not an independent source: what is an independent source, in this context, given that all of these sources draw upon sources and a historiographical tradition that is mostly lost to us? We also focus a lot on the style and language of the writers in question, which perhaps crowds out or replaces a real discussion of how historians actually handle or use these works. I'd suggest starting with some reading of specialist historiographical works about each of these sources. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 20:09, 21 November 2024 (UTC)