Talk:Jewish revolt against Heraclius

Comments

The article concludes that nothing serious happened to the christian population, only the jews were decimated and scattered as a result. I do not believe this. It is yet another example of how official modern historiography dominated by freemasonry and jews tries to vilify christianity and show jews as innocent victims. The article mentions historical sources that clearly say about decimation of the christian population but later it is said that they are 'exaggerated' and verified by later archeological discoveries. I believe this later 'verification' has been done by either freemasons or jews (or both). Thus I would like to report the abovementioned sections of the article as biased. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.0.125.171 (talk) 21:15, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Euphemism?

I am not a native English speaker. Do the phrase "to run the city" mean in the context that the Jews governed the city peacefully or that they slaughtered 60000 Christians at the beginning? (e.g. http://www.jewishgates.com/file.asp?File_ID=81).

According to Armenian historian Sebeos writing in the 690s, the Persians originally negotiated a peaceful takeover of the city of Jerusalem and appointed a Persian governor. It has been suggested that this governor was the son of a Jewish Exilarch, called Nehemiah ben Hushiel. Sebeos relates that after only 3 months, the Persian governor was lynched by a Christian mob and all the foreigners were expelled from the city. Persian troops who were in the middle of the conquest of Palestine, turned their attention to the city and laid siege for 19 days. After tunneling under the walls of the city, Persian troops broke into the city: "ten days after Easter, the Iranian forces took Jerusalem and putting their swords to work for three days they destroyed [almost] all the people in the city. Stationing themselves inside the city, they burned the place down. The troops were then ordered to count the corpses. The figure reached 57,000." http://rbedrosian.com/seb7.htm

It is not clear how inflated this number is (as with many other numbers in his history) or how many fell on either side. But what is noticeably absent from this description is the claim that the Jews purchased slaves from the Persians for the purpose of slaughtering them in cold blood. A claim that was often repeated in Byzantine circles. A claim that has been used repeatedly as justification for many retaliations agains the Jews. Historian2 18:41, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. Now I think it may be good if somebody with good knowledge about the events expand the first paragraph. It is clear that Jerusalem was handed to the Jews twice, not once, and the sequence of the battle in Jerusalem and the siege should be made more clear. And probably there was some massacre of the population during the first months. If it was used repeatedly by Byzantine propaganda against Jews, it should be explained with details, not omitted. Reading only this Wikipedia article I had an impression the rebellion was quite peaceful (I came here to verify some informations about history of Jerusalem), but after reading the references cited it is clear it was not without blood. After all, it is Sesebos who write about 57000 killed http://rbedrosian.com/seb8.htm. This number may be inflated, of course, but "tens of thousands" that escaped from Palestine to Egypt, may be inflated, too (what is the source?) and the only massacre mentioned is the massacre of Jews in 629. The other thing: I think the sentence "Reports indicate that at the time 150,000 Jews were living in 43 settlements throughout Palestine." should be either cancelled or expanded. The reason of the information is not clear, and it makes the article like written from the point of view of Jews living in the Palestine. What was the number of Christians in Palestine? How big was Jerusalem (is the 57000 figure possible at all)? Were there any non-Jewish settlements? Who were the foreigners mentioned by Sebeos: Persians, Jews, Bizantynians? Wider context would be better and more neutral. It is also not clearly explained, why at all did the Jews made an agreement with Persians, who mercilessly persecuted them in the near past. Was the rebel risky initiative of Jews or a proposal of Persians? 84.10.114.122 10:52, 18 December 2006 (UTC), a casual visitor, Poland.

It was anything but peaceful. The final wars between Byzantium and Persia were some of the most brutal in history until that time. Soldiers were chained in columns to prevent their desertion, whole towns were raised and their populations slaughtered. The conquest of Jerusalem and the revolt against Heraculius, were small parts within the context of a very bloody war. There are many sources here, although I think the article is biased. too.http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/journals/jss/jss4-2.html If I get some time I will write more. You are welcome to add information to wikipedia.

This would be a difficult history to write, as there is little objective information and many conflicting version of events. --Historian2 12:51, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

The definitive scholar on the Crusades and the circumstances that initiated them comes from Historian Steven Runciman. He states that, "With their churches and houses in flames around them, the Christians were indiscriminately massacred, some by the Persian soldiery and many more by the Jews." - A History of the Crusades, Volume 1. I need to add that to the article but I'm too lazy to do it today. Jtpaladin 21:11, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Jewish rule in Jerusalem from 610 to 620

According to most Jewish sources, the Jews controlled Jerusalem during this period and animal sacrifice was resumed on the Temple mount, which is why it was turned into a garbage dump after the Byzantine reconquest. For religious, as well as modern political reasons, aknowledging the existance of a Jewish state after 70 CE is an anathma.Ericl (talk) 21:57, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

This whole article is bogus

Also, I forgot to add...Heraclaius didn't become emperor until his predecessor Phocas lost the entire Middle East to the Sassanid Persians in 610. there was no revolt against Heraclius.Ericl (talk) 22:09, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

BOGUS source

The main source is "David Consultants - Jewish History" - obvious Zionist sock-puppet, but now a dead link. The usual Wikipedia standard of excellence. Fourtildas (talk) 04:27, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Dates?

Dates are inconsistent throughout the article: did the revolt end with the execution of the leaders in 625, 628 or 629? Did Heraclius enter Jerusalem in 628, 629 or 630? These dates need to corrected or the discrepancies explained. DavisGL (talk) 08:22, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

This article

This article, to put it rudely, is a complete pile of crap. Initially it was written by the now-thankfully-permablocked liar Amoruso on the basis of a propaganda text of Shmuel Katz. Then someone copied in a large amount of material from this source, which is not a reliable source until proven otherwise. (Abrahamson is a rabbi who works for a rabbinical court in Jerusalem, and Katz is some sort of independent consultant. Reliability needs to be proved.) It is not allowed to copy-paste citations and footnotes from an intermediate source, as well as it being a copyright violation. Beyond all that, the idea of the article is broken. It is known that some Jews supported the Persians in their invasion, but it is very hard to find any source that calls this a "Jewish revolt against Heraclius". Actually the only serious incident that could be described in this way (though, if it happened at all, it would be against local Christians rather than the Byzantines in general) is suppressed here: "According to Antiochus Strategos, tens of thousands of Christians were massacred during the conquest of the city." (Strategos claimed that it was the Jews who massacred the Christians.) Zero^talk 09:22, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

The paragraph "‎Massacres of the Jews (629)" is a paraphrase of "A History of the Jewish people" by Abraham Malamat; Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson; et al Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1976. The citations are apparently from there.

What does "apparently from there" mean? You can't put in citations that you didn't check yourself. See WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT. You also can't copy text verbatim from [another source] unless you can produce proof of copyright permission. Also books need page number references. Zero^talk 11:20, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

I said apparently because I don't know anything the history of this wiki page. I did check them myself. I'll post the page number. --Historian2 (talk) 10:32, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

This section was poorly written to begin with, but adding WP:POV doesn't help. I have marked it WP:POV until a more mainstream and balanced section is written without recourse to revisionist history like "Reckless rites". --Historian2 (talk) 13:40, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Despite its 1170 pages, the book of Malamat et al has only 1-2 pages on the time period of this article and none of the citations copied from Abrahamson and Katz. Zero^talk 08:51, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Reckless Rites

Reckless Rites does not reflect mainstream historical opinion. It is not cited as a source in historical literature for this time period. It's own review says "Reckless Rites reassesses the historical interpretation of Jewish violence... A book that calls for major changes in the way that Jewish history is written and conceptualized." --Historian2 (talk) 12:08, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

If we eliminated sources on the basis of one weak review, there would be little left. But you didn't even do that much. The first words you quote come from the review by Edward Kessler, Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations, Cambridge, who wrote (Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations, Vol 2, Iss 2, 2007, R23-4) "Reckless Rites courageously reassesses the historical interpretation of Jewish violence...It is essential reading for scholars and students of Jewish-Christian relations." (and lots of other positive things). Also, a measure of the poor state of this article is that what Nishidani wrote, and cited to Reckless Rites, is just what Strategos reported in his chronicle. It is at least honest, compared to the misleading whitewash you reverted to. Nevertheless, an honest report of what Strategos claimed should be accompanied by a few sentences noting the continuing controversy about his account. Horowitz kindly summarised it for us in his 21-page extensively documented paper on this subject in Jewish Social Studies. 1998. Vol. 4, Iss. 2, pp. 1–21. Zero^talk 12:43, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

I reverted to your version not "the previous crap". Why are you so aggressive? Why the language? I will check the sources before I add. Should we request discussion if Reckless Rites is neutral? --Historian2 (talk) 12:58, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

I've done a further edit, and had a EC with historian2 who posted a POV tag. I don't think it's necessary now. Though personal beliefs don't count, I don't trust medieval or ancient sources when they talk of numbers killed, carried away etc. They should be registered but with the due cautions from the scholarly literature. Uncannily, the figures are always "round". So you get the massively inflated figures from Josephus frequently repeated on wikipedia (Siege of Jerusalem, First Jewish–Roman War etc. without noting that modern scholarship regards the figure of 1,100,000 (and 97,000 captives) as a gross exaggeration, almost doubling the figure given by Tacitus, which itself is probably way too high. Nishidani (talk) 13:59, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

I claim that Reckless Rites is revisionist, as the book introduction itself claims, and as such should either be identified as such or removed --Historian2 (talk) 14:08, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

The book "Blood Libel" p 114. by Hannah R. Johnson lists "Reckless Rites" as a historical revisionism.

Nonsense. 'Revisionist' either means a negationist world view, challenging an accepted mainstream truth,' or a cliché misused to describe an absolutely normal process in any field of research, i.e. the revision or interpretation of evidence whose results challenge or supercede an established paradigm. This is exactly what is required of any Phd work in the humanities. In the latter sense, like 90% of good scholarship, what we read there is an example of Historical revisionism, which means it a fresh look at any old argument, and that is a different kettle of fish from negationism. Nishidani (talk) 15:22, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a place for challenges to mainstream view to be presented as mainstream views. Wiki is specifically FOR the established paradigm, unless otherwise noted. --Historian2 (talk) 15:50, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

If it is mainstream you should not have trouble replacing it with another source. --Historian2 (talk) 15:51, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Read some policy, instead of inventing theories about wikipedia, and stop inventing silly excuses for justifying a WP:IDONTLIKEIT approach. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nishidani (talk • contribs)

Strategos is the main primary source for the events of 614, more contemporary and more detailed than any others. Most historians over the years have accepted the essentials of the story he told (not necessarily the numbers or other details). In recent decades, basically since historians started writing from a Zionist view of history, it became commonplace to deny any validity to Strategos' account or (even more commonly) to simply ignore it. Horowitz's approach consists of declining to ignore it and declining to dismiss it out of hand. It isn't revisionism but well within the normal bounds of scholarly debate. There is in fact no excuse whatever, not in Wikipedia policy or even in common sense, for us to suppress from our article an account of what the main primary source wrote. However, like I said, we should also summarize modern scholarly treatment of it. One good example from each "side" might well be sufficient. Find someone eminent to counterbalance Horowitz. Zero^talk 23:02, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

When was Nehemiah ben Hushiel killed

The Sefer Zerubbabel says that Nehemiah ben Hushiel was killed in the fifth year which would be 619 during the month of Av (July - August). The Sefer Zerubbabel says that Nehemiah ben Hushiel thoroughly crushed corpse will be thrown down before the gates of Jerusalem. And 16 of the sixteen righteous shall be killed with him. Šērōy the king of Persia will attack and stab Nehemiah ben Hushiel and Israel. Problem is Kavadh II was king only during 628. He did make peace with Heraclius. Armilus then attacks. Armilus is thought to be a cryptogram for Heraclius.

http://clas-pages.uncc.edu/john-reeves/research-projects/trajectories-in-near-eastern-apocalyptic/sefer-zerubbabel/

http://books.google.com/books?id=5eB8rzNfcRwC&pg=PA108&lpg=PA108&dq=Armilus+Heraclius&source=bl&ots=_eQaJpQ-9f&sig=yewH9pFsX_vyob-BCUbbSzNvw40&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6bDQUtf6G4TIkAeev4AY&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Armilus%20Heraclius&f=false%7C title = Jewish Martyrs in the Pagan and Christian Worlds| year = 2006| accessdate = 2014-01-10 | publisher = Cambridge university press. Cambridge , New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo}}

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A History of the Jewish People which is currently not used says three years or 617. Also says that in the spring of 622 CE. Heraclius started a campaign against Persia

http://books.google.com/books?id=2kSovzudhFUC&pg=PA362&lpg=PA362&dq=nehemiah+ben+hushiel&source=bl&ots=0cBuk-7EKf&sig=OSgCfQ9u-V8Z86FhQ3y616Jfg4M&hl=en&sa=X&ei=AT7WUtLJGIOhkQeO2ICgBQ&sqi=2&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=nehemiah%20ben%20hushiel&f=false

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The Persian conquest of Jerusalem in 614 compared with Islamic conquest of 638 says several months. It cites Sebeos' History chapter 24

This is what Sebeos' History chapter 24 say that the Iranian kings Governor was killed and the Jews had to flee and jump from the walls after a Christian’s rebellion and that it took 19 day to retake the city. The battle date is given as 27th day of the month of Marg the 11th month of the Armenian calandar, corresponding to June in the 25th year of the reign of Xosrov Apruez 615.

After which Jerusalem was put to the sword 57,000 killed 35,000 taking into captivity. The Jews where then driven from the city and an archpriest named Modestos was put in charge.

http://rbedrosian.com/seb8.htm

Here is what I can online about Modestos. http://full-of-grace-and-truth.blogspot.com/2012/05/st-modestos-patriarch-of-jerusalem.htmlfind

So

1: When was Nehemiah ben Hushiel killed 615, 617 or 619

2: When was Jerusalem given back to the Christians 615, 617 or 619. All seem to coincide with Nehemiah ben Hushiel's death.

Jonney2000 (talk) 09:17, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

As you can see there is no single opinion on this. We should put them all in the article.GreyShark (dibra) 19:08, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Plans and problems

I have been searching through the literature and there exist significant amount of secondary sources with analysis. I see four problems currently.

1: There is too much overlap currently between the following articles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_revolt_against_Heraclius http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_(614) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasanian-Jewish_commonwealth

2: Ben Abrahamson relies too directly on primary sources. He also adds his own interpretation and is not a historian.

3: The primary sources disagree sometimes even with themselves. The articles rely on a single primary source Antiochus' account while ignoring other primary sources like Sebeos. I plan to add a brief summary of each missing primary source to Siege of Jerusalem 614. Sebeos, Dionysius and the Sefer Zerubbabel including references to secondary sources.

4: The actual analysis I plan to rewrite using secondary sources. I have found several good ones.

This may take a while. The basic chronology and outline are currently correct. Jonney2000 (talk) 22:28, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

I finally got around to re-writing this article like I did for the Jerusalem article. The chronology and events should at least make sense now.Jonney2000 (talk) 06:45, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

I disagree with your undiscussed rename of the article Siege of Jerusalem (614). Your rename to Sasanian conquest and occupation of Jerusalem (614-628) completely changes the scope of this article, overlapping with the main Jewish revolt against Heraclius.GreyShark (dibra) 14:30, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

1: It was not undiscussed see the talk page for that article. The actual name came from another editor

2: The two articles don’t overlap that much. One is focused on what happened in Jerusalem while the other covers the whole territory.

Jonney2000 (talk) 21:14, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Antiochus Strategos' Account of the Sack of Jerusalem in A.D. 614.

per http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/content/XXV/XCIX.toc, the title of the article by Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare is "Antiochus Strategos' Account of the Sack of Jerusalem in A.D. 614" Frietjes (talk) 17:02, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Grammar

This article is full of grammatical errors. Grammar matters; you can't just throw words together in any old order, and then claim they have a meaning. And people who can't or won't deal with grammar should refrain from editing encyclopaedia articles. Pretty please? Really - the standard of english on english WP is definitely getting worse.

SO I deleted this:

"Likewise Michael Avi-Yonah used the figure of Jewish combatants to arrive at an estimate of the total Jewish population. He gives a figure of 200,000 to 150,000 living in 43 Jewish settlements."

On a first glance, it looks as if it means something. But when you try to unpack it it falls apart, as if you were trying to grab handfuls of air.

1. He used the figure of Jewish combatants? What does that mean?

2. He gives a figure of 200,000 to 150,000? Is that a typo, or a mistake, or is the range 150,000 to 200,000? It's eccentric to give a range backwards. Is the combatants figure the same as the figure of 200,000 to 150,000, or are the figures referred to different figures? Are these figures supposed to be numbers? Numbers are not ranges - but nor are figures. If Michael gives a number, which number is it that he gives? We don't know, because there is no citation.

3. How is the "figure of Jewish combatants" used by Michael to arrive at his estimate? Is there someone other than combatants living in these 43 settlements? You would expect so, but it's such a bad sentence that it's not possible to even guess what the person that typed it might have had in their mind.

If it's not possible to work out what is meant by a sentence, then an article is going to be better without that sentence. Of course, if the statement is cited, then (in theory) I can follow the cited link, and work out what the words were originally supposed to mean. But if it's both uingrammatical AND not cited at all, then it's effectively gibberish - it is not susceptible to interpretation, even if effort is applied. In fact the presence of such sentences renders the entire article harder to read - they detract from other sentences, even if those other sentences are well-written, grammatical, meaningful and properly sourced. You have to put in effort to work out what is meant - and then you fail anyway => time and effort were wasted.

I am strongly in favour of deleting nonsense. Like dead code, marketing-speak and ground-elder, ungrammatical sentences make everything around them worse, and they need to be removed.

Long time since I had a good wiki-rant! Do let me know if you share my view that deleting stuff is often a good idea.

MrDemeanour (talk) 13:22, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

1: Jewish combatants 20,000 combatants

2: 200,000 to 150,000 upper and lower limit on the total Jewish population

3:

A: Baron does not say how Avi-Yonah came to this figure just that he based it largely on the number of Jewish combatants.

B: I know James Parkes based his estimates on a percentage.

C: The 43 settlements are for the total Jewish population of 200,000 to 150,000.

D: Avi-Yonah probably had a good idea of where the settlements where located but a poor idea of their demographics.Jonney2000 (talk) 07:41, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Very strange article, containing a lot of unreliable information. One can not rank Sefer Zerubabel, an apocalyptic fantasy, together with the historical accounts of Sebeos and Strategius, who didn't say a word about Jewish autonomy in Jerusalem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.143.213.225 (talk) 13:20, 23 January 2017 (UTC)