Talk:Yahweh/Archive 6

Archive 1

←

Archive 4

Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

Archive 8

→

Archive 10

YHWH vs Yahweh

I suggest that Yahweh should be replaced with YHWH in the article as Yahweh is just a theorized pronounciation. Morducai (talk) 17:17, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

However, 'Yahweh' is understood by more people and used by many of the sources in the article. Dougweller (talk) 18:43, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Jehova would be understood by even more people, to write it out as Yahweh can be seen as an undisputed pronunciation of YHWH, as such it's an unscientific and more political choice over the more in common usage of Jehova in English. Even though Yahweh is probably more correct it would be better to use the tetragrammaton in respect to different pronunciation traditions as well as religious and theological camps to at least give an appearance of neutrality within the article.Morducai (talk) 21:06, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

This is an article about a god, not about a word. PiCo (talk) 03:30, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Mordecai, Welcome to WP :) please see WP:COMMONNAME. In ictu oculi (talk) 11:56, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Big chops

Salve PiCo vecchio mio. I see swoosh! you've been hacking at the foliage. I'm not going to revert but not sure this speed of chopping is the kind of incremental change needed for what (I think?) is a WP major article for God in Judaism and God in Christianity. Just a suggestion but you might want to pause and notify relevant project pages for consensus... Ciao. In ictu oculi (talk) 11:56, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm far more likely to find something else to occupy my time and so drop it :) But thanks for the kindly words. PiCo (talk) 08:09, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Why is "god" rendered as "God" in the lede?

Why is "god" rendered as "God" in the lede?

"Yahweh is the name of God in the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jews and Christians."

This reflects a specific theological perspective, and does not seem to me to be neutral, encyclopedic language.

Here are some equivalent Wikipedia page ledes concerning Hindu and Aztec gods:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahma

"Brahma (Sanskrit: ब्रह्मा; IAST:Brahma) is the Hindu god (deva) of creation and one of the Trimurti, the others being Vishnu and Shiva."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva

"Shiva (play /ˈʃɪvə/; Sanskrit: शिव Śiva, meaning "auspicious one") is a major Hindu deity, and is the destroyer god or transformer among the Trimurti, the Hindu Trinity of the primary aspects of the divine."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vishnu

"Vishnu (Sanskrit विष्णु Viṣṇu) is the Supreme god in the Vaishnavite tradition of Hinduism."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatl

"Quetzalcoatl (Classical Nahuatl: Quetzalcohuātl [ketsaɬˈko.aːtɬ]) is a Mesoamerican deity whose name comes from the Nahuatl language and has the meaning of "feathered serpent"."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huitzilopochtli

"In Aztec religion, Huitzilopochtli, also spelled Uitzilopochtli (Classical Nahuatl: Huitzilopōchtli [hwitsiloˈpoːtʃtɬi] "Hummingbird on the Left", or "Left-Handed Hummingbird", huitzilin being Nahuatl for hummingbird), was a god of war, a sun god, and the patron of the city of Tenochtitlan. He was also the national god of the Mexicas of Tenochtitlan."

Raised in a Christian community, I was instructed in no uncertain terms that Yahweh got the capital "G", and the others small "g", because he (traditionally "He") was the one true god (traditionally "the One True God"). I am sure that many religious texts in Hinduism would render "god", "deity", and "the divine" as "God", "Deity", and "the Divine", as well. Wikipedia, however, is not a work of theology, and it seems to me that this usage here is definitely non-neutral and therefor inappropriate for Wikipedia.

Heavenlyblue (talk) 21:52, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

The article is about a deity whose title is "God". In the same way as "a president" would be indicated lower case, whilst "the President", or "Mr President", in the context of a specific incumbent, the context of the lead is that of the title of the particular deity. Therefore, in this instance, it is NPOV to use the title with a capitalised initial JohnArmagh (talk) 22:02, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

"Yahweh is the name of God in the Bible" uses "God" as a title. However, "the God of Abraham" is not a title, but a description. Unfortunately, consensus on WP has been that the Judeo-Christian god is capitalized even when the word is not used as a title, but other gods are not. — kwami (talk) 13:08, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, kwami! That is exactly the sort of non-neutral, uneven treatment I was referring to. Heavenlyblue (talk) 08:32, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't think this is the place to discuss it. As long as the WP:MOS section on caps say that the word 'god' must be capitalized when it refers to the JC god, you're not going to get anywhere on individual articles. The MOS needs to be changed. That's going to be a hard case to make, because most English-language sources capitalize whether they mean 'God' or 'god'. The case can be made that most English sources are biased in this case, but it will be a huge argument. — kwami (talk) 09:08, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually, WP:MOS clearly indicates that "god" must NOT be capitalised when used as a common noun (e.g. "the god Woden"), as opposed to a proper noun or a title (e.g. "the name of God in the Bible"):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:MOS#Religions.2C_deities.2C_philosophies.2C_doctrines

"Honorifics for deities, including proper nouns and titles, start with a capital letter (God, Allah, the Lord, the Supreme Being, the Great Spirit, the Horned One, Bhagavan). ... Common nouns for deities and religious figures are not capitalized (many gods; the god Woden).

Pronouns for figures of veneration are not capitalized, even if capitalized in a religion's scriptures."

So "The Bible describes Yahweh as the God who delivered Israel...." is incorrect and must be changed to "The Bible describes Yahweh as the god who delivered Israel....".

Heavenlyblue (talk) 08:43, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

I've had this argument already, on the MOS page, and was told that the MOS clearly says that the word "god" must be capitalized when it refers to the god of the Bible. To me it makes no more sense than capitalizing "Him", as it is purely honorific rather than the normal capitalization of a title, so I'll back you if you want to re-open the discussion. — kwami (talk) 10:45, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, kwami, but I don't see that any discussion is needed! I have shown very clearly (above) that WP:MOS policy is that "god" must NOT be capitalised when used as a common noun. Anyone advocating an off-the-record, unofficial policy of religious favouritism is clearly advocating a deliberate, direct violation of this policy. Heavenlyblue (talk) 21:58, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

"God of Israel" is arguably a title, and therefore an exception, I would think. — kwami (talk) 07:25, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Tough call. That one might be marginal. May be context-dependent.... But it's definitely a slippery-slope situation. If you allow that, then what about "God of Abraham"? Because so many people in the West are trained to write and to think of Yahweh as "capital G God", so to speak, there is always going to be this push toward exceptionalism. Problem is, this is most certainly non-neutral usage, and therefor in violation of Wikipedia policy. I say, Yahweh gets treated exactly the same as Quetzalcoatl, Shiva, Odin, and all the other gods within Wikipedia. This is official policy, and there is absolutely no reason to deviate from it. Heavenlyblue (talk) 02:15, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

In all of those, "God of X" as a title would be capitalized, though maybe you wouldn't normally hail Dionysus with, O! God of Wine!. Yes, it is a judgement call, but more often than not 'God of Israel' is intended as a title. It's relatively uncommon to say things like 'the primary god of Israel'.[1]

"God of Abraham" should be the same, but I agree that it might be difficult to distinguish "Yahweh, God of Abraham" as a title from "Yahweh, god of Abraham" as a description.

Anyway, I've gone over several of the name-of-God articles, and most of them use lower case appropriately, and when I corrected the oversights, no-one reverted me. So perhaps the POV problem we had a year ago is past. — kwami (talk) 02:46, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

"Yahweh... is the god of Israel." In this formulation it is clearly not a title but a description, and so must not be capitalised. Heavenlyblue (talk) 09:14, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

God of Israel should not redirect to Yahweh

God of Israel refers to the deity of the Hebrew Bible. This is described in the text as the tetragrammaton. Yahweh is a modern scholarly interpretation of way to pronounce or vocalize the tetragrammaton. Because "God of Israel" refers to the tetragammaton it should either redirect to it or God in Judaism (since it is the God of the Hebrew Bible, a Jewish religious text).

To have it redirect to Yahweh is to impose on it a foreign modern interpretation which is neither original to the Hebrew Bible or the religion that holds it sacred. --Daniel E Romero (talk) 08:09, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

I think this change is unfortunate. This article should review what the Bible has to say about the "God of Israel" (as discussed often enough in the archives). Indeed it used to, but the text was so poor that it got deleted; and the promises made of a new properly-researched replacement based on the discussion of the topic by authoritative sources have never been made concrete. In my view this article should have such a section, and then it would again be an appropriate target for the redirect.

The new redirect to tetragrammaton isn't particularly helpful, as that article is (appropriately) entirely on the 4 letters, and has nothing on the actions or nature of the God of Israel as presented in the Bible, which it makes the most sense to review in this context, here. Jheald (talk) 10:09, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

You're right. Maybe a disambiguation page is in order. --Daniel E Romero (talk) 23:22, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Yahweh article as being an odd mix of two different subjects of inquiry or approaches

In the context of other articles referring to the God of Israel (Tetragrammaton, God in Judaism, etc.) this article reads as explanatory of two aspects of the term Yahweh, 1) its use as a pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton 2) modern scholarship that has adopted the term Yahweh and its attempt to understand the God of Israel from a socio-historical lens while separating it from other terms used in the Hebrew Bible for the deity of the ancient Israelites, (perhaps, treating Yahweh as a deity different than Elohim or El Shaddai).

This creates a few problems. 1. The part about Yahweh as pronunciation ends right about before it starts talking about the history of "Yahweh worship" and the later part almost reads as a separate article. 2. The second part of the article about this worship, reflects a scholarship that speaks only about one strand of the descriptions of the deity in the Hebrew Bible (the Tetragrammaton) (as opposed to say Elohim or El Shaddai, etc.), and follows that term as a means of understand what historical data might gives us a wider understanding of that term as describing a deity in ancient Israel and Canaan. This is different from the traditional treatment of the deity in Judaism, Christianity or Islam, and also different than the general idea of the deity of ancient Israelites (since they used various names for the deity, not just the Tetragrammaton).

This suggests to me that this article maybe should be split into two, or edited carefully to be a two-part article where it clearly points out that this is one approach to the pronunciation and another part that describes the scholarship that has followed from treating the tetragrammaton as pronounced Yahweh as a deity by itself and then seeing what history has to tell us about that deity. --Daniel E Romero (talk) 01:24, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

I largely partially undid your changes to the lead; the hatnote especially was verbose. But I agree that the article as it stands is a bit schizophrenic: it's an amalgam of Yahweh-the-god and Yahweh-the-name. A split might be a good idea; ideally the name Yahweh would be covered together with Jehovah, but I don't know what we'd call it, unless it were further merged with tetragrammaton. But as an article on the god, we'd still have a duplicate with God of Israel, which you just created; those those should be merged, perhaps under the latter name.

I think the idea of this article might have been a description of the scholarly conception of the deity, but that's not particularly clear from the way it's presented. — kwami (talk) 01:32, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Daniel, many WP articles include an etymology section, usually as the first section after the lede. Where this one differs is in the huge dispute/debate over the origin, etymology, meaning of the name, and — more unique for this topic — how it is actually pronounced (with the importance that some people put on it). Not too long ago, this article was in a worse state than it is now; half to more than half was devoted to nothing but the etymology & pronunciation. Most of it was removed and merged into the Tetragrammaton article, but some mention of it is still needed here. However, the Name section probably could be reduced a bit more.

• The very first thing that probably should be adjusted is moving the first paragraph in this section to be the first paragraph of the History of (where it would far more make sense with the text that follows).

• Of the last sentence of the Vocalization subsection, I would probably add "despite its uncertainty" which would help alleviate some worries by those who see it as a little POV.

• The first sentence of the Etymology subsection I have a bit of an issue with: "[...] made up of Y, meaning "he", plus a form of HWY [...]" could be argued as being linguistically inaccurate as "Y" does not mean "he", but rather this is a verbal conjugation which is in a third person singular form. Conceptually, it isn't too far off, but anyone with a basic knowledge of grammar would cringe at this.

• The next paragraph (which speaks of Exodus 3) could probably drop the two block quoted lines and the remaining initial sentence be appended to the end of the first paragraph of the subsection.

• The last sentence of the penultimate paragraph of that subsection (the sentence that begins "This also helps explain Yahweh's attributes [...]") I think can be removed (although, the references should remain and be moved up to the end of the remaining sentences of the para).

• The very last paragraph/sentence I'm not sure on. The section probably would be just fine without it (perhaps this sentence could be moved into the Tetra article?).

These would be my suggestions. I'll probably move the very first paragraph of the Name section to the History of section now, as well as append the "despite its uncertainty" that I mentioned above. What are the thoughts on my other suggestions?

— al-Shimoni (talk) 02:56, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

(Aside for Imriki al-Shimoni: I was responsible for the dumbed-down grammar for YHWH. The reason is tied up with my conception of what Wikipedia is all about: it draws on scholarly sources, but its readership isn't scholars, it's the general public. I was trying to explain the way the the Y of YHWH relates to the HWH in terms that anyone could understand. Maybe AnonMoose could help here - he's very good at this. PiCo (talk) 23:20, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

PiCo, I'm not sure I agree with the removal of that paragraph in the lede. Yes, this article isn't about the pronunciation, but we should still at least make mention of the origin of this pronunciation as used in this article. A brief mention in the lede making known the highly contentious issue seems like a good place for that, and it keeps calm those who have a fit that the clarification isn't made (it seemed to do a good job of that the last year (2 years? I lost track)). — al-Shimoni (talk) 07:57, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Sorry Imeriki, I on;ly just saw this comment. I don't mind if you put it back :)PiCo (talk) 09:38, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

capitalization

Per WP:MOSCAPS, "God" is only capitalized when used as a title. So, "the Lord God" would be capitalized, because it's a title, but "Yahweh is the god who delivered Israel from Egypt" would not be capitalized, because it's not a title, merely a description. We don't capitalize it just because it's capitalized in a particular source, unless quoting – same with "His", "Him", etc. This is all part of WP:WORLDVIEW and not promoting one religion above another, even in articles dealing with that religion. — kwami (talk) 17:51, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

"Proper nouns and titles referencing deities are capitalized: God, Allah, Freyja, the Lord, the Supreme Being, the Messiah. The same is true when referring to important religious figures, such as Muhammad, by terms such as the Prophet. Common nouns should not be capitalized: the Norse gods, personal god. In a biblical context, God is capitalized only when it refers to the Judeo-Christian deity, and prophet is generally not capitalized." So God (a title - the god called God) is capitalised, and god of Israel (a common noun - there are many gods, of whom this god is one) is not. PiCo (talk) 23:07, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Except when the latter is a title: Yahweh, God of Israel. — kwami (talk) 00:49, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

In that case we have to have Thor, Thunder God of the Vikings :) PiCo (talk) 05:45, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, if it's being used as a title rather than as a description. "God of Israel" is frequently used almost as a name, though it might be OR to try to decide that is some cases. — kwami (talk) 06:00, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I think that phrases like "Yahweh, God of Israel" would be capitalised, while "Yahweh the god of Israel" would not. Possibly the source we are following should be the guide. (Assuming people are using sources). "Mighty Thor the Thunder God", vs "Thor the thunder god". PiCo (talk) 09:32, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

The problem with following sources is that many of them capitalize anything to do with Jehovah, which is not appropriate for an international encyclopedia. The majority of sources on Mohammed place "Peace be upon him" after his name, but we don't do that either. — kwami (talk) 18:59, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Sources seem to be inconsistent anyway, even within a single book: Patrick D Miller (book in the bibliography) has both "El the transcendant creator God" and "Yahweh...the warrior God" in the middle of generally lower-case gods even when referring to El and Yahweh. I think we just need to have our own rule and be consistent. PiCo (talk) 02:05, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Revising first section, "Name"

I've revised the first para of the Name section: i deleted two sources, one, Parke-Taylor, because it's a minor book which was criticised quite heavily by other scholars, and the other Bartelby.com, because it's a website that gives no direct linbk top the point being made (although that point was no doubt valid - it concerned the development of the modern consensus on Yahweh as the vocalisation of YHWH). I've replaced this with material taken from Patrick D. Miller, a very mainstream source, and I think quite infpormative for our readers. PiCo (talk) 03:09, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Pronunciation

Most Hebrew speakers at least since the Persian diaspora have pronounced it Vav not Waw, including Arabic Jews. This has to count for something and is not original or anecdotal research, my grandfather an Iraqi Jew pronounced it vav never waw in prayer. The scholars left out the actual living Hebrews in their research, and then got scholarly Jews to lie with them later. Why would the largest Hebrew speaking population be censored from the pronunciation of their only God? That is called bullying not scholarship. Go to the Syrian Synagaugues of Brooklyn and Boston (the ones unaffiliated with universities, there are dozens if not over 100), they pronounce it vav not waw, i know i prayed with them. Are they changing their prayers for zionism? is this some secret petty rule of zionism their family lines who have never been to Israel has secretly agreed to? I know it is not, but liars will lie. The Syrian Jews are not proud of their heritage? Most Syrian Jews see themselves as at least as Jewish as European Jews, yet pronounce it with the vav. Shouldn't you at least mention that Syrian, Palestinian, Lebanese and Iraqi Jews pronounced it 'vav' in their authentic undisturbed (prior to being 'taught' by scholars) environment. In fact it is outside of Israel where activists have not gotten to them where they still pronounce it with the correct vav, like the quiet 'SY' (as north American Syrian Jews refer to themselves) communities of the US and Canada, it is in Israel due to political/security concerns and arrogance concerns where they are most likely to have changed their pronunciation, and even there when no one is looking still pronounce it vav 'accidentally' when singing psalms. Persian Jews pronounce it vav, no reason to assume they ever hadn't. You have to understand which you do not!!! that scholars who created the Yahweh pronunciation considered Jews "the despicable race" the userers the 'murderers of god' the 'cursed race' to which all bad things apply, who must be lying as most people did, and therefore did not count their input. Now we are through wishful thinking making the false Arabian pronunciation of a Hebrew word correct, though it is not.24.47.182.229 (talk) 15:30, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

The Kenite Hypothesis

This paragraph fails to mention that using the same Biblical narrative Isaac and Jacob (AKA Israel) had settled in Canaan prior to entering Egypt. Abraham also purchases a land area including a jewish sacred tomb to paraphrase Gen.23 vs. 7 Abraham then requested that Ephron the Hittite, the son of Zohar, give him the cave of Machpelah, in the end of his field, "for as much money as it is worth". (verse 9) After Ephron confirmed that he would give the cave, in verse 11, Abraham further requested that he give him the surrounding field for more money, in verse 13. Ephron agreed and named a price in front of a merchant witness. So though not all or even the majority of Canaan, according to the narrative, they were at least partially returning. The oral history claims Hittites (now recognized as Anatolians) who at that time had colonized parts of what would later be called Judea sold Abraham land there which Hittites had conquered from the Canaanites,according to the Biblical narrative in Genesis.

FYI, if you check the word translated Heth in English, in Hebrew equals hitti חיטי phonetically plural חיטים or Hittites. 24.47.182.229 (talk) 15:30, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Vowels

Y, W, H (in Hebrew: י, ה, ו) are letters which may act either like vowels or consonants. י as a vowel sounds like I and as a consonant it sound like Y. ה as a vowel sounds like A and as a consonant it sounds like H. ו as a vowel sounds either like O or U and as a consonant it sounds like W (in modern Hebrew it is mostly pronounced like V). In Hebrew many times vowels don't appear at all, and therefore pronouncing it as YaHWeH or Yehova (in English: Jehova) are good guesses of how the word was originally pronounced. They particularize two-letter sub roots into related roots, and extend roots into related words. They are said to be invented first by God. Vowels are manifest by the breathe and the vocal chords which is a symbol of messhiach/Adam Kadmon being both spirit and flesh. The letter aleph and his name YHWH have the same meaning. The aleph represents the firmament between two waters, or the division and reconciliation of his self-revelation as Holiness and Grace. Y is the point of creation. W- en expressed idea and W the division and reconciliation. The W is between two ideas. So YHWH is the division of two ideas at the moment of creation. (The full meaning is much deeper) see inner.org for the Kabbalistic meanings and for to see that they are called vowels. inner.org summarizes the teaching of the three primary sources of Kabbalah (note: Kabbalah is the mystics of Judaism and has not been accepted by all of the streams) 50.8.77.133 (talk) 13:02, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Since inner.org is used as an authoritative source in other articles, I guess we could use it to move this info to the article after it is cleaned up.50.8.77.133 (talk) 13:06, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 8 July 2012

Heaven help the poor soul that tries to locate the book cited in footnote 38 in the 'Yahweh' article, "Only One God?" The editor's name is Bob BECKING (NOT Bob BeckERing), and the article author is Dijkstra (not 'Djikstra'). You have no idea how many catalogs won't help you if you make an error like this. Could the spellings be corrected? (signed: H8this, ----

H8this (talk) 15:30, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Done thank you for being specific about what needed to be done here. Elizium23 (talk) 17:03, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

LORD / Lord / lord

In the beginning of this article "Yahweh ..., often rendered Jehovah /dʒɨˈhoʊvə/ or the LORD (in small capitals)" but it's not in small capitals. I'm not really sure what that means. It's not clear. It says it's supposed to be written in small capitals so why not do that? Did someone from another faith disagree? Anyway, to an outsider like me, it looks like there has been some kind of religious influence in how to write it on Wikipedia. I hope someone with the right knowledge can make things a bit more clear in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.242.117.214 (talk) 10:29, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

I think it's your browser. It's formatted as small caps, and displays that way on mine. — kwami (talk) 10:36, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

It uses {{LORD}} to display the small caps. If you are using a non-CSS or mobile browser, it will show it in all caps. See more at Template:LORD/doc#Technical. —HueSatLum 15:51, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Scriptural View of Asherah

This article is written as if Yahweh condoned the worship of Asherah, when it's the complete opposite in the actual text.

A few examples:

• 1 Kings 14:15 (NIV)

And the LORD will strike Israel, so that it will be like a reed swaying in the water. He will uproot Israel from this good land that he gave to their forefathers and scatter them beyond the River, because they provoked the LORD to anger by making Asherah poles.

• Exodus 34:13-14 (NIV)

Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and cut down their Asherah poles. Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.

• Deuteronomy 16:21-22 (NIV)

21 Do not set up any wooden Asherah pole beside the altar you build to the Lord your God, 22 and do not erect a sacred stone, for these the Lord your God hates. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nsno (talk • contribs) 17:16, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

• Deuteronomy 12:3 (NIV)

Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and burn their Asherah poles in the fire; cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places.

Some versions, like the KJV, translated "אשׁרה" as "groves" instead of "Asherah"; but, looking at Strong's Concordance, it is clear that the hebrew word being used here (Strong's #H842 "אֲשֵׁרָה") refers to Asherah and Asherah worship.

If we take their second commandment into account (Exodus 20:4), Yahweh forbade them from making "figurines" of any kind, so any such artifacts that we discover honoring or speaking highly of Asherah will not be representative of the true worshippers of Yahweh, only representative of the idolatrous/unfaithful ones. In that light, I think it would be disrespectful to claim that Asherah was Yahweh's wife, when he actually called for "her" /its destruction. The Hebrew Scriptures imply Yahweh wanted it (and all other idols) wiped out because they were considered useless man-made objects incapable of accomplishing anything.

• Jeremiah 10:3-5 (NIV) 3 For the practices of the peoples are worthless; they cut a tree out of the forest, and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel. 4 They adorn it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so it will not totter. 5 Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field, their idols cannot speak; they must be carried because they cannot walk. Do not fear them; they can do no harm nor can they do any good.”

• Psalm 135:15-21 (NIV) 15 The idols of the nations are silver and gold, made by the hands of men. 16 They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but they cannot see; 17 they have ears, but cannot hear, nor is there breath in their mouths. 18 Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them. 19 O house of Israel, praise the Lord; O house of Aaron, praise the Lord; 20 O house of Levi, praise the Lord; you who fear him, praise the Lord. 21 Praise be to the Lord from Zion, to him who dwells in Jerusalem. Praise the Lord.

Nsno (talk) 17:09, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

New stuff goes at the bottom. Wikipedia does not use primary sources, we only summarize what secondary sources by trained professionals peer-reviewed by reliably academic institutions. Archaeological evidence suggests that that the interpretation of the Bible you have presented was not historical. This does not mean that the Bible was wrong, only that that interpretation of it does not match historical evidence. Also, the Bible was written mostly by the priestly classes, and did not necessarily represent the actions of the common Israelite. Ian.thomson (talk) 18:53, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

That's precisely the problem: "the common Israelite" was not loyal to the commandments and the archaeological evidence will speak of them, not the people who truthfully had Yahweh as their god. If we are to believe the scriptures left behind by these priests, very few actually worshiped him truthfully, opting instead to worship him in pagan ways. I didn't present an interpretation, just what it says (Yahweh didn't like this, but the people did it anyway and they were punished for it).

We will find archaeological evidence of Asherah being associated with Yahweh, just like the scriptures says happened. Whatever archaeological evidence we find of that kind (carved figurines, clay statues, etc...) however, will reflect the beliefs of the compromisers who didn't follow the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob loyally. If they truly had Yahweh as their god, they wouldn't have protrayed images of Yahweh (first, they are forbidden from doing this and secondly, only Moses had come face-to-face with Yahweh at this point and even then Moses didn't actually see his face) and they wouldn't have made images of another deity, period (once again, true worshipers wouldn't have done this, but the idolatrous ones would). I guess nothing can really be done though if that's how Wikipedia wants to do it. However, the libation article on here quotes bible verses as sources of information so, what gives? All in all, I just had to mention this for the sake of keeping a clear conscience. Do what you want with it. Nsno (talk) 20:34, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

Please see WP:No original research. The libation article only repeats a couple of instances that the Bible mentions libation, and no editor put their own spin on it. Also, Wikipedia does not take sides, we are not a pulpit to say that what happened was right or wrong, just to report what mainstream academia has found. Do you have any secondary sources, preferably a scholarly journal or a book by a university press? Ian.thomson (talk) 20:41, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

If you were to add Deuteronomy 12:3 & 16:21-22 only, without putting any "spin" on it, you wouldn't need secondary sources then? Those couple of verses in specific state Yahweh hated Asherah and commanded its destruction. Whether it was morally right or wrong to worship Asherah isn't even the issue I'm bringing up really. The article, as it stands now, doesn't even touch on the glaringly obvious stance in Scripture that Yahweh hated "Asherah" and saw it as an idol, not as a wife. It is very misleading. Nsno (talk) 00:06, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Actually, because that's making a doctrinal statement, you would need a secondary source. The libation article only demonstrates that libation is mentioned in the Bible. Why can't you bother with what this site defines as reliable sources (such as secondary sources from scholarly journals or university presses) instead of original research and interpretation of a primary source? That's the standard for what gets included in this site, not what is "true." Wikipedia does not care what any individual user thinks is "true," only summarizing reliable secondary sources. Ian.thomson (talk) 00:41, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Certainly no Christian thinks of their deity as anything other than God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit. Even non-Christians understand that "The goddess Asherah may have been Yahweh's consort in the earliest period." is a false statement. Clearly this must be removed. It is so against common acceptance that I have to wonder what the motive is in propagating such false doctrine that has no basis in history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.10.150.238 (talk) 21:32, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, the Jehovah's Witnesses think God's just the Father, and Mormons have a whole other deal going. And wow, you do realize that the Jews use the Bible, too, and don't believe in the Trinity at all, right? The "motive" is just presenting what trained historians have found, instead of dogmatic indoctrination.

Here's how it works: trained historians found evidence that many of the historical Israelites worshiped Asherah alongside Yahweh. Whether that was right or wrong, it happened. That's all this article says. Wikipedia is not saying that the Bible commands Asherah-worship, so do not act like that's what the article says. If your interpretation of the Bible clashes with what archaeology and history shows us, then the problem is in your interpretation.

I'm a Christian. I don't worship Asherah, and I do not advocate worshiping Asherah. When I see that historians are sure many early Israelites worshiped Asherah, do you know what my reaction is? "Huh, some of them made a mistake, but that's what they historically believed. Seeing illiteracy was common, it would make sense that the Bible would be written by a minority and reflect their educated views instead of the common religion of semi-nomadic bronze age folks in the middle of nowhere." I then get on with my life instead of trying to reshape the article to match any sort of fantasies I have about people who have been dead for millenia. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:45, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

a little more neutral view

one portion of this article says the bible speaks of other gods as gods under the title ancient israel and judah. may be you could add a little neutral view into that. like adding a few lines: the bible also is strong in its monotheistic views, for example the following verses: Psalm 86:10, Deuteronomy 32:39, 2 Samuel 7:22, Psalm 83:18, Isaiah 37:16, Isaiah 44:6, Isaiah 44:8. this would make the article more neutral.ddmarasan (talk) 12:45, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

We can't use the Bible to argue a point about the bible, we'd need a [[WP:RS|reliable source stating this. Also see WP:VERIFY. Dougweller (talk) 13:53, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

yet more underhanded attempts to change "god" to "God"

I see that someone has again altered the formulation the god of Israel in the lede to "the God of Israel", this time in quotes and with a link. This has obviously been done (in an unnatural way that distorts the text) in an effort to avoid the original formulation the god of Israel, a formulation which I previously showed with numerous examples to conform to the standard format in articles about gods of other religions. This implied view that Christianity is different from and superior to other religions DOES NOT belong in an encyclopedia. I showed conclusively, with direct reference to Wikipedia guidelines, that there can be no "informal agreement" that Christianity get special treatment and have different rules applied than other religions in Wikipedia articles. I consider this repeated changing of god to God to be part of a rather underhanded campaign by Christian believers to inject their theological rules and agenda into what is supposed to be a neutral, encyclopedic article, and I call upon other Wikipedia authors to be vigilant in this matter. One additional piece of evidence I offer to prove that the repeated changes are not neutral or constructive in purpose: the "God of Israel" link that is obviously being used, in part, to justify the change in formulation does not, in fact, even link to a "God of Israel" page; it links to the National god page, which mentions many other gods besides Yahweh/Jehovah.

Here is a link to the archived discussion, which includes links to the pertinent Wikipedia guidelines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Yahweh/Archive_6#Why_is_.22god.22_rendered_as_.22God.22_in_the_lede.3F

Is Wikipedia going to remain a scientific compendium of human knowledge, or is it to quietly become yet another tool for covert religious proselytization? Let's step up, Wikipedians, to ensure that this grand project remain neutral and encyclopedic in its aims and its tone, giving no special preference to any language, ethnicity, nationality or religion, but paying heed only to fact and reason! Heavenlyblue (talk) 02:53, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't aware that the Israelites were Christians, or that Bahá'í Faith, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Tengrism, or Zoroastrianism were really Christian (all those articles use "God," capital G). Hell, even Wicca capitalizes God, they just put "horned" in front. God with a capital G is used to refer to the transcendent deity of multiple religions throughout this encyclopedia.

The discussion you bring up does not show you "I didn't hear that" and a refusal to accept consensus when it doesn't help you grind your axe. Those problems, combined with you singling out Christianity as if there's some Church conspiracy controlling this site are pretty good evidence that you are the one with the bias here. Ian.thomson (talk) 03:05, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

First of all, Ian, I suggest that you carefully read the entire discussion, including the archived section! {https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Yahweh/Archive_6#Why_is_.22god.22_rendered_as_.22God.22_in_the_lede.3F) It doesn't seem that you have. Secondly, there can be no valid "consensus" that violates the basic neutrality policies of Wikipedia. (Again, see the discussion!) Thirdly, your ad hominem attacks aside, I have very clearly demonstrated that the issue here is that Yahweh/Jehovah is getting special treatment, and that this is a direct violation of Wikipedia policy. In other words, I am trying to remedy inappropriate bias. This is an encyclopedia, and not a work of theology. How people conceive of their own deities, and what they write in their own books of theology, has no bearing whatsoever on this discussion. Articles must be neutral and follow guidelines, with no special treatment given to one's own belief system. Equal treatment for all is not bias, Ian, it is the solution to bias, and it is mandated by Wikipedia policy - in fact, it lies at the heart of it! Heavenlyblue (talk) 00:03, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Ian, surely there's a difference between the god of Israel and the God of Israel? Yahweh was the god of Israel in the sense that Khemosh was the god of Moab and Asshur was the god of Assyria: these were the national gods, charged with looking after the various kingdoms to which they were attached. God, on the other hand (the one with a capital letter), is a pretty recent concept arising from (ultimately) Greek philosophy, which came up with the idea that there could only be one, single, ultimate Being. By the 2nd century AD the Christians had decided that this Being was their God; Jews then adopted the concept, and much later so did Muslims. That is God with a capital. PiCo (talk) 11:38, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Regardless of his approach, i think PiCo is right. God should only be used with a capital G when it is being used as a proper noun or the name of a specific deity. In the phrase "the god of Israel" god is not being used as a name, it is being used as a common noun (just as PiCo demonstrates). The capitalization of God when used as a general noun referring to a monotheistic deity is a convention that is designed to show respect, but in an encyclopedia those conventions are out of place. There are clear wikipedia guidelines on this. Now, if God is the subject of a sentence and that noun is referring to the god of Israel or Christianity (or any other monotheistic deity) then it is appropriate to use capital G God. PiCo, the development of the use of capital G God is contentious and there is hardly a concensus. Many scholars (including secular and liberal Christian scholars) would disagree with you vehemently, but it is irrelevant. Wikipedia should reflect current usage of terms. ReformedArsenal (talk) 12:57, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Those reasons, different from the OP's baseless accusations resulting from his own biases, are acceptable. Ian.thomson (talk) 14:14, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

On the contrary, Ian, my arguments have a very solid basis, in fact and in Wikipedia policy. And a simple look through the article history will show you that there have, indeed, been multiple attempts to violate that policy by inappropriately reverting "small g" to "capital G" forms, even when doing so contorted the text. For whatever personal reasons of your own, you may not like what I'm saying, but in terms of the rules of encyclopedic writing, you are on the wrong side of this argument. Heavenlyblue (talk) 00:20, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

It would be useful if we could find a source that defines Yahweh - any major dictionary of Judaism or religion should do. That would also settle the /g/ or /G/ argument - just do what the source does.

The most relevant policy guideline is this one: "Honorifics for deities, including proper nouns and titles, start with a capital letter (God, Allah, the Lord, the Supreme Being, the Great Spirit, the Horned One, Bhagavan)... Common nouns for deities and religious figures are not capitalized (many gods; the god Woden)." So "Yahweh" gets a capital (being the equivalent of God, Allah, etc), but "the god of Israel" is a common noun, equivalent to "the god Yahweh", and so no capital. At least that's my reading.PiCo (talk) 04:00, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

I changed it to small-g god and removed quote marks.PiCo (talk) 06:46, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

unambiguous phonemic pronuciation using the IPA

The beginning of the article renders the pronuciation of Yahweh to suffix with "-ay" (ie according to IPA). However, no credible source exists for this pronuciation. It is well-known throughout all Jewish communities that the name ends in an "-ah" (a: according to the IPA) pronunciation, as I myself use it. This was the original intended pronunciation of the suffix "-eh" and "-ay" has been an uknowledgeable accidental from the Christian community, and allowed by the Jewish communities to continue in order to keep the pronunciation among Jews only.

When Middle Eastern words are written with English letters, and they end in “-eh,” the ending sound is the “-ah” sound. Those words can be spelled “-eh” or “-ah.”

almeh http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/almeh?s=t gallabieh http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/galabieh?s=ts kaffiyeh http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/kaffiyeh?s=t mikveh

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mikveh?s=t 

tabbouleh http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/tabbouleh?s=t zaptieh http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/zaptieh?s=t

Yahweh http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Yahweh?s=t

The name of God is a Middle Eastern word. How do you say this word?

Recommendation: add or use /ʹja:hu:a:/ as the primary pronunciation

— Preceding unsigned comment added by YAHUWnathan (talk • contribs) 05:55, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Please see WP:No original research. Ian.thomson (talk) 14:11, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Opening sentence

The opening sentence of an article should give a definition of the subject of the article. The article on Yahweh should define Yahweh: he was a god. More precisely, the god of the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel and Judah. What Yahweh is not, is a word. We have a separate article, YHWH, for discussion of the word. This article should simply say that Yahweh is the god of Israel, as described in the books of the Old Testament. PiCo (talk) 05:48, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Request for edit: english Bibles

I was going to edit the first sentence of section 3.2, where it says "almost all Bibles", then rattles off a list of english Bibles. It'd be nice for it to say what is done in some other languages as well. But, I was going to settle for just adding the word "english" before "Bibles". Unfortunately this page is locked down. --192.75.48.150 (talk) 18:31, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

opening paragraph

Contains the phrase:

"....Yahweh, however, was not a Canaanite god, and modern scholars see him originating in Edom, the region south of Judah.[2][3] The goddess Asherah may have been Yahweh's consort in the earliest period...."

This is a confusion of two separate strands of thinking. There is a separate article on the hypothetical Canaanite Yahu, and the reference to Asherah as a consort belongs there. It has no place in this article, which explicitly distances itself from the Canaanite god hypothesis in the previous sentence. A reader who is interested in this hypothesis can navigate to the relevant "yahweh (canaanite deity)" article and find these details in the correct location there. Left here, it is inaccurate and confusing. Sentence therefore should be removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.78.44.1 (talk) 10:56, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

The material on Asherah is sourced (I think). There seems to be disagreement amongst scholars, some saying Asherah was taken over as the consort of Yahweh when he absorbed El, others that she ceased to be a goddess in the 8th/7th centuries and carried on as a symbolic figure instead (although this leaves the problem of the so-called Asherah figurines, little clay fertility figures found in Judahite sites right down to the Babylonian period, but which disappear abruptly and completely disappear in the Persian period.) PiCo (talk) 00:43, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

It's not Yahweh

I'd just like to make the point that this article is extremly inacurate and frankly rather insulting in saying Yahweh is the g-d of the jewish people. Yud Hay Vuv Hay or the thing translated as YHVH is one one the names of g-d and is an indication to jews to say the word Adonai meaning lord. One isn't to try to say the real name of g-d. It used to be said once a year by the high priests. Yahweh is a mistransliteration of the Hebrew word. Please do not go saying that the god of israel is yahweh in this article because its false and rather insulting to do so. Tansyuduri (talk) 01:58, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

The article states "The original pronunciation was lost many centuries ago, but the available evidence indicates that it was in all likelihood Yahweh," with a reliable academic source cited for this. Do you have a reliable academic source to necessitate changing the article? Ian.thomson (talk) 02:18, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

If it makes you (OP) feel better, the article doesn't say Yahweh is the the god of the Jewsih people, it says he was (past tense) the national god of Israel (an Iron Age community) in the Hebrew bible (a collection of writings). I'd agree with you that Yahweh is not the god of modern Jews. PiCo (talk) 07:22, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

The article is inaccurate and insulting

1) According to Judaism it is forbidden to pronounce this name of g-d. Hence, the use of "Yahweh" in the article is insulting to any religious and many non-religious Jews. "YHWH" should be preferred instead, firstly, because "Yahweh" pronunciation is only a speculation, secondly, because "YHWH" is the direct transliteration of the original Hebrew word (Hebrew language does not have vowels).

2) The sentence "Yahweh (pron.: /ˈjɑːweɪ/ or /ˈjɑːhweɪ/; Hebrew: יהוה), is the name of the national god of Israel in the Hebrew Bible." implies that "YHWH" was a local god for Israelites in TANACH. But this is not true, because according to TANACH there is only one g-d both for Israelites and other peoples. I don't understand why the article treats a name of g-d as a separate god. There are many names for the g-d in Judaism however it's ridiculous to claim that each name represents a separate god.

3) "The second looks for the origins of Yahweh to the southeast of Israel, in Edom and Midian or even further, in South Semitic languages like Arabic. HWY in Arabic is connected with falling or causing to fall, leading to an interpretation of Yahweh as a storm god whose name means "He who causes to fall" (meaning rain, lightning, and his enemies) or "He causes storms"." I would strongly like to see an academic reference to this because on the face of it this is plain nonsense. The first written records of Hebrew date back to 950 BCE while those of Arabic date back to 512 CE. Also Islam draws heavily on the Hebrew Bible not the other way around.

4) "According to a widely accepted theory (the "Kenite hypothesis"), the Edomite god YHW could have been brought north to the Canaanite hill country and the early Israelites by migratory Edomite desert tribes, of whom the Kenites were one.[10]" In the phrase "the Edomite god YHW could have been brought north to the Canaanite hill" is the author referring to "YHW" as a name of g-d or referring to a local Edomite god with his relevant local Edomite features? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Isppeks (talk • contribs) 20:23, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

A few points. Please read WP:NOTCENSORED. Wikipedia is buit upon what reliable sources say about a subject - see WP:RS and WP:VERIFY. So far as the Edomite god YHW question goes, I read that as referring to a local god, the predecessor of Yahweh. Dougweller (talk) 20:58, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 23 February 2013

This article claims Yahweh to "possibly" be a consort, meaning "spouse" or "partner of" Asherah", assuming His being associated with Sumerian theological representations of reality. This is not only highly offensive, but beyond words in the effect it has on the reader. My request is that the appropriate adjustments be arranged to entirely remove mention of Asherah from Yahweh's page. Sincerely, and beyond all doubt, Kellen Boyd. Lou.asinskiptomy (talk) 09:03, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Why would we do that? This is a significant view held by a number of scholars. Wikipedia articles do not cater to any religious, philosophical or political viewpoints - the relevant policy is at WP:NPOV. Also see WP:NOTCENSORED. Dougweller (talk) 11:28, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. Vacation9 21:54, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Review of lead

I'm going over the third para of the lead, checking what's said against the sources. This is what I've done:

• Removed the first half of the first sentence, which said something like "Contrary to the bible's picture of the Israelites originating in Mesopotamia via slavery in Egypt...", as the source (Gnuse) doesn't say that; and revised the remainder to bring it closer to what Gnuse does say. Note that on this page Gnuse is describing "recent models", so I think it's safe to keep this as representative of scholarly thinking at the time Gnuse was writing (late 1990s). I also added a new passage from Dever regarding Israel's Canaanite origins which serves as a segue into the next sentence.
• Removed Gnuse p.78 as a source for the second sentence, "Yahweh, however, was not a Canaanite god, and modern scholars see him originating in Edom, the region south of Judah", as at that point Gnuse is discussing the theories of Ahlstrom as part of a range of scholarly thinking - we need something generalises about the consensus, not one scholar's ideas.
• I also removed Smith 2002 as a source for the second sentence - the footnote gives no page number, and on a quick search I can't find Smith saying anything about Yahweh not being Canaanite or originating in Edom or the south.
• I deleted Michael Coogan's "Illustrated Guide to World Religions" as a source for the statement in the third/last sentence that Yahweh was originally head of the pantheon and later became sole god of Israel as it's certainly not on page 6 of that book and isn't clearly present anywhere else that I can find.
• I hived off a separate sentence about Asherah as possible consort of Yahweh as the Butz book clearly says this - but other books make the point more clearly (the point being that Asherah was originally the consort of El and later became associated with Yahweh, either as consort or as some form of religiously charged symbol).

So that leaves a rather weakened para about the origins of Yahweh and Yahwism.

This is the paragraph as it now stands, after my review of sources: The archaeological evidence suggests that the Israelites arose peacefully and internally in the highlands of Canaan;[4] in the words of archaeologist William Dever, "most of those who came to call themselves Israelites ... were or had been indigenous Canaanites."[5] Yahweh, however, was not a Canaanite god, and modern scholars see him originating in Edom, the region south of Judah. He was originally the head of the Iron Age pantheons of Israel and Judah, but worship of Yahweh alone (monotheism) became entrenched in Judaism in the exilic and Persian periods. The goddess Asherah may have been his consort in the earliest period.[6]

Up to footnote 5 is pretty solid, in terms of sourcing. Footnote 6 is also solid, but refers only to the last sentence, not to the material about Yahweh not being a Canaanite god etc. I'd like to fix this by replacing everything after footnote 5 with something along these lines: The name of Yahweh is not found in any text or archaeological source earlier than the 12th century BCE; the original god of Israel was the Canaanite god El, as evidenced by the name Israel itself; Yahweh became the god of Israel during the Iron Age, but exactly how is not known; there are two major theories regarding this, the first the Kenite hypothesis (the most widely held), which is that Yahweh came from outside Palestine, the second that Yahweh began as a descriptive phrase applied to El. I can provide sources for all this. PiCo (talk) 06:20, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Progress report

Progress: not much. Finding sources is surprisingly hard. But thanks everyone for your patience. PiCo (talk) 11:57, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

POV issues due to undue weight

As a general rule of thumb, when you read an article that starts it's second paragraph with "despite," you know you're going to be in for a bad read. This article was argumentative and tendentious in the extreme. It seems to have been written by proponents of the most radical theories about the origin of Yahwism, portraying these arguments as having conclusively devastated conservative and religious arguments and positions. I have no special expertise in Late Bronze Age Levantine religion, but at some point someone's going to have to straighten out this article, dealing with the undue weight put on the most skeptical theses. Until that happens, I suggest a POV tag remain up. Thanatosimii (talk) 01:37, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

The subject of this article asked me to point out that He doesn't mind well-sourced Wikipedia articles about Him at all, even if they are critical, but he would prefer if we could merge all the different ones together as it's all a bit messy and fragmented for his liking. 86.30.129.146 (talk) 21:20, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Please pas on our thanks for his thoughtful intervention, but perhaps you need to find a way of suggesting to Him, tactfully of course, that while He is One and perfect, we are many and can't never get our act together. (And even He, so they say, had a spot of bather from a fractious quasi-divinity getting above itself, no?)PiCo (talk) 23:09, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

This is an encyclopedia article, not a chapter in a work of theology. Your comment suggests that you feel that traditional theological perspectives should predominate over evidence-based historical analyses. Now that would be a "POV issue due to undue weight". Remember that in scientific and historical circles, 'skeptical' is not a dirty word. Heavenlyblue (talk) 23:17, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

My comments don't actually suggest anything of the kind, but I can now see how it was that the article came to be so tendentious. This is an encyclopedia article. It's not a chapter in a book with a thesis. This article argues that traditional views are wrong. That's totally acceptable for a journal, but not for Wikipedia. Wikipedia can report that these arguments have been made, but it can't make them. And it's flat out disingenuous to have an article which makes no mention about the arguments that those who hold to traditional views make and then claim the article is somehow balanced. I return to my original objection - you can't possibly be defending an article that starts its second sentence with "despite" and then argues theses the whole way through! Thanatosimii (talk) 05:19, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

What traditional views do you have in mind? PiCo (talk) 05:55, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

That there was an Exodus, that there was a conquest, that Israel worshiped Yahweh prior to either of these events, etc., etc. I'd suggest the following basic outline for describing the history of Yahwistic study:

A) The theological understanding (Antiquity - 1800)

B) The understanding of early to early modern historians (1800-1950)

C) Revolutionary Theses of the recent decades

1) Why they challenge traditionalists

2) Why traditionalists challenge them

There will probably need to be some mention of the Albright School at the end of point B, and the more recent work by James Hoffmeier under C)2). Thanatosimii (talk) 19:04, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

That sounds a bit detailed for this article - more Historicity of the Bible. This is just Yahweh, part of a series about the gods of the Ancient Near East. We do need to describe the historical background, but not beyond the broad consensus among modern scholars (no need to go into the depth you sketch in your outline).

As for what that broad consensus is, I suggest Moore and Kelle's "Biblical History and Israel's Past" - it's very recent, and gives an approachable overview of current thinking. (Hoffmeier is an honest and scrupulous scholar, but his views are definitely not mainstream, as he admits). PiCo (talk) 22:26, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't see detail as a problem per se, and an article on Yahweh is necessarily deficient if it doesn't outline the history of Yahwistic scholarship. The identity and origins of Yahweh necessarily vary drastically in one's theories based on the amount of credence one gives the historical and theological statements of the Penteteuch, and these have been held much higher in the past. As I have objected before, this article is tendentious, but it doesn't even seriously cover the theses which it is arguing against. Indeed, this article seems to entirely overlook the curious place Yahweh has occupied in western scholarship due to his continuing identity as the Judeo-Christian God. Perhaps this could be alleviated if Yahweh were merged into Jehovah (or vice versa). The fact we have two articles on different pronunciations of the same character makes about as much sense to me as having a separate article on Aluminum and Aluminium.

As far as the broad consensus goes, I'll grant you that things are moving in that direction in recent years, but unless we drum out all the Biblical Archeologists and other descendants of the Albright school, we still have a majority-minority split, not a mainstream-fringe split. Beyond which, I'm foundationally uncomfortable about these distinctions working their ways into articles as a form of endorsement. Rather than saying "A says B because of C and D, whereas E denies B because of F," there's a tendency on Wikipedia to try to boil that down to "B is true because of C and D" once a party has been labled as "not mainstream." The former is a more intellectually honest presentation of things, and the latter really should only be done in cases where that party is truly out to lunch. Every ascendant theory invariably claims that it's destroyed its predecessors and that anyone still holding those views is such a fool, but I am not prepared to grant them that. Thanatosimii (talk) 00:29, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

The theories presented in the article are certainly not "minority" or "radical" and attention to them is not "undue weight", quite the opposite. 71.82.49.78 (talk) 02:57, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

For a theory held as valid by less than 100% of the scholarly community to hold 100% of the attention of the article is undue weight. I fear you have misread my use of the word "minority," and as far as "radical" goes, perhaps I belong to the old school on this one, but when I was trained I was told not to make definitive statements on periods that are so poorly attested as the late bronze and early iron in the Levant. Thanatosimii (talk) 06:34, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Wait till I've finished this current revision of the lead, then you can do you own version and we can compare them. PiCo (talk) 06:52, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

The changes I've seen so far seem vast improvements already. Thanatosimii (talk) 07:20, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

This article does not have to "[argue] that traditional views are wrong". It is not an article about traditional theological perspectives, though they certainly belong here... in a neutral context. This is an article about the god called Yahweh - in any and all forms, incarnations, and from any point of view that can be backed up by citations of acceptable quality. To those accustomed to privilege, the lack of it can seem like persecution.

And talk about disingenuous! Throwing around the term "scholarly consensus", as if this is an article about DNA or geological strata! Established churches have spent hundreds to thousands of years (depending on the particular sect) producing documents promulgating their orthodoxies. Any scholar in any way connected with these organisations, including by membership, may be under doctrinal compulsion, or at least under pressure of various sorts, to toe the official theological line. As far as I can see, at least insofar as neutrality is concerned, one hundred papers of that sort are not worth one that arises from neutral scientific investigation in the realms of historical, textual, linguistic, or archaeological analysis.

I can't help but notice, Thanatosimii, that your proposed scheme gives the last word to traditional orthodoxy, even though it also gets the first word in these matters! "C) 1) Why they challenge traditionalists", "C) 2) Why traditionalists challenge them ".... I'm going to propose, then, a section C) 3) "Why neutral scientifically-oriented scholars challenge the traditionalists right back, and with actual evidence". A rigid, unchanging theologically-based viewpoint cannot be given the same weight, in an encyclopedic article, as one based on a neutral, reasoned examination of evidence. But in the proposed 'new and improved' scheme, traditional, orthodox theology would predominate, wiping away newer, non-mythological, reason-based alternatives with brute force and a mound of paperwork.

Let's not forget here, in weighing these matters, the incredible personal, social, and even legal hurdles that many of these researchers into the roots of religious belief have faced in pursuing their inquiries over the last few hundred years. Some have been excommunicated, imprisoned, or even (going back a little further) killed for their rational, scientific approach to what were previously, and still are for many, forbidden subjects. So the notion that since the number of traditionalists overwhelms the number of modern scholars, their viewpoint should make up most of this article (or any other concerning religion), holds no water.

This is an encyclopedia. The traditional mythology should certainly be presented here, but so should all competing points of view that share a modern, rational approach. The subject here is not 'cats'! Religion is a subject like no other, and that fact must be taken into account. A conventional approach here will, counterintuitively, certainly lead to bias in favour of a traditional orthodox theological account. In this context, I can't help but suspect that the whole 'minority POV/scholarly consensus' fixation is simply a red herring, a ploy to squeeze out alternative points of view. It wouldn't be the first time that sort of thing has been tried. Read the talk pages for some of the Christianity and Judaism articles, including the archives for this one, and you will soon note the plea/demand for special treatment for Yahweh and Christianity, in stark contrast to the treatment of other gods in their respective articles, and in clear violation of Wikipedia policy and the spirit of this whole great enterprise. Heavenlyblue (talk) 01:44, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

You're being obtuse, and moreover, flinging mud at entire swaths of the population and questioning their motives and not their argumentation is intellectually dishonest. I could go into this point by point, but since you haven't said anything to address my original complaint, I'll just put that again. Making blanket statements of fact is par for the course in argumentative writing. Argumentative writing is supposed to be tendentious. Neutral writing is not. This article is tendentious because it repeats as facts things which are, strictly speaking, contentions. Therefore it has to change. If A contends B because of C and D, by all means write that. But do not use the authoritative tone every work with a thesis has. For what it's worth, several of the more contentious aspects of the article have already been improved significantly, so I don't think it's unlikely my standards will be met. But I was just rereading Redford's Egypt, Israel, and Canaan the other day on this specific subject, and while he's pretty clear that he thinks his side has won the debate, he's also pretty clear that dissent was still quite strong at the time he wrote - at the least, strong enough to warrant him complaining about it. Which also means strong enough to mention in a neutral treatment of the subject. Thanatosimii (talk) 08:17, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Really Disrespectful

As someone who is converting to Orthodox Judaism in a matter of days, I found this article incredibly offensive. It details obscure scholarly opinions while it fails to even mention authentically Jewish opinions. Since Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia, and it's supposed to present information from all viewpoints, I think this is highly inappropriate. For example, the statement, "In either case, the name appears to have been unique to Israel and Judah, and is not clearly attested outside the two kingdoms," completely fails to mention that in Judaism, the pronunciation of the name of G-d is completely inappropriate and offensive, and the the term "Yaweh" itself is mere speculation about how the name ought to be pronounced, since the correct pronunciation has long been lost.

I'm not asking you to leave out the opinions currently up, but I DO want to see a nod of respect given to the views of the people who actually care about the G-d you're talking about. For some sources of traditional Jewish opinions, you can see articles like these:

"The Tetragrammaton is called God's "proper name" (Shem HaMeforash). Although God Himself is absolutely unknowable and unnameable, the Tetragrammaton is His highest emanation in creation. It is therefore considered most sacred, and is never pronounced as it is written, even in prayer. We are taught that one who pronounces the Tetragrammaton disrespectfully is worthy of death and has no portion in the World to Come. According to tradition, whenever the Tetragrammaton is written yud-hay-vov-hay, it is read Adonai. However, when it occurs in conjunction with the name adonai, it is read Elohim. The only place where the Tetragrammaton was ever pronounced as it is written was in the Temple in Jerusalem, as the Torah states a number of times, "God your Lord will appoint a place to link His Name there" (Deut. 12:5, 12:11, 12:21). It was pronounced daily in the priestly blessing in the Temple, as well as ten times during the Yom Kippur service in the public confessions. In the daily priestly blessing, the Tetragrammaton was vocalized with the vowel points associated with the name Adonai. In the Yom Kippur service, on the other hand, the High Priest would pronounce the Tetragrammaton with its own unique vowel points."

Other good sites to look at for Orthodox viewpoints would be places like simpletoremember.com, ohr.edu, and other websites by great Yeshivot. They often have a great number of articles, and a very little effort on your part would create a much more well-rounded presentation of the information represented.

As the religion which first gave the world monotheism, I think Judaism deserves at least a modicum of respect and shouldn't be treated like just one more little tribal religion of the ancient world.Hobbitgirl14 (talk) 02:09, 4 March 2013 (UTC)hobbitgirl14

An interesting thing is that the taboo hasn't always been there -- for example, if you look at the Book of Ruth (usually dated to around the time of Ezra) the name appears to be being used quite casually in everyday speech.

The article does in fact note this, up in the lead:

By early post-Biblical times the name of Yahweh had ceased to be pronounced. In modern Judaism it is replaced with the word Adonai, meaning Lord, and is understood to be God's proper name and to denote his mercy.[7] Christian bibles follow the Jewish custom and replace it with "The Lord".

and again, under name:

By early post-Biblical times the name Yahweh had ceased to be pronounced aloud, except once a year by the High Priest in the Holy of Holies; on all other occasions it was replaced by Adonai, meaning "my Lord".

So the point is made in the article.

As to whether the name was originally pronounced exactly "Yahweh" as Gesenius suggested, or whether it was originally pronounced something slightly differently, as some modern Jewish sources certainly contend, does it really matter? Perhaps we should nod to the fact that the vocalisation "Yahweh" is a modern scholarly convention, and something certainly open to question, as some previous versions of this article have done. But the locus where this is discussed in detail is Tetragrammaton#Pronunciation. This article is primarily about something different: what can be said about "Yahweh" or "YHWH" or whatever you prefer as an entity.

There is a fair case that this article fails to sufficiently set out older more traditionalist understandings of Yahweh, and that it should do, a case that has been put to PiCo above, and which I believe he accepts, and is one of the things he is working to properly write into the article in his current ongoing revision of it.

But the fundamental point is that we are going to to call the subject of this article something. At the end of the day it doesn't matter whether the pronounciation "Yahweh" is exactly right or not: instead, the reader can be expected to recognise it as a widely-used modern signifier for whatever the original pronounciation actually was -- in the same way that Rashi wouldn't actually have been called Rashi in his own lifetime, or Ramesses is only an approximation to however that name would have pronounced in ancient Egyptian. Jheald (talk) 03:34, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry you find the use of the long-form of the name offensive, but we really do have to call him something, and YHWH is already taken (it's the title of another article). I think if you read that section carefully you'll find the tone is not disrepectful at all.

One thing that needs to be added in the section on the name is the explanation given in Exodus, when Moses asks God for his name.I'll get around to that. PiCo (talk) 03:52, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Purpose of article/Suggested edits

The purpose of this article is a little unclear to me. It definitely has a different goal than the "God in Judaism" page, the "God in Christianity" page, or the "YHWH" page, but I'm not sure "Yahweh" is the best title. The article here focuses on Yahweh's suspected emergence as a religious deity throughout early history. Ideally, I think that should be one section of the article, with other sections focusing on, perhaps, His portrayal in the various Abrahamic religions. When I read this, it comes across as if Yahweh were a past God of ancient religions, when, in fact, millions of people still worship Him. Starting this article by saying He "was" the god of Israel and Judah seems somewhat odd.

I also have some concern about the voice/tone of the article. There are certain sentences that are written as facts, when they are far from undisputed. Other times, the phrasing sounds "copy-and-pasted," while still other times, it sounds unedited or juvenile.

Take, for example, the following: "Following the destruction of the monarchy and loss of the land at the beginning of the 6th century (the period of the Babylonian exile), a search for an new identity through the re-examination of Israel's traditions. Yahweh now became the only god in the cosmos." For one thing, the first sentence isn't even a sentence. (A search for a new identity... what? Began?) Second, there is pretty poor grammar ("an new identity"?). Third, it sounds like someone writing a story or something, not like an encyclopedia article. "Yahweh now became" is not standard encyclopedia phrasing. Assuming that the information in that portion is true, I'd rephrase it something like, "Following the destruction of the monarchy at the beginning of the 6th century, Israelis began to worship Yahweh as their sole god."

The organization is somewhat sloppy too. For example, it would seem to me that in the "Yahwism and the Monarchy" section, there should maybe be three sub-sections: Orthodox, Heterodox, and Syncretism. Furthermore, it's not even entirely clear what monarchy we're talking about. That could use some further explanation.

In short, this article could use some edits, but I'm not knowledgeable enough about the subject matter to do them. My main suggestion would be the addition of modern belief in Yahweh and a clearer introduction stating the intended purpose of the article, beyond just ancient history. As we know, a huge portion of the world's population follows religions with some relation to this god, though they have different perceptions of Him. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.217.183.225 (talk) 17:08, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Edit -

So, I looked back on the history of the article, and it looks like most edits were done by PiCo in late February/early March. While I appreciate his edits, I'm pretty confused about most of them. This is what the page looked like before: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yahweh&oldid=539861486 The organization makes about 1000x more sense. I can't understand for the life of me the purpose of deleting the sections on contemporary religion. Granted, they should be focused on God's persona and historical significance within those religions (not the pronunciation of His name), but those sections definitely need to be there.

The article is indeed not quite right. What it's about is the Iron Age national god of Israel and Judah, c.1000-500 BC, as known from biblical and archaeological sources (there are no others). If things seem a bit vague, that's because they are. Nobody's even entirely sure where the god's name comes from - a storm and war god from Edom (the Kenite hypothesis), or a title of the god El that turned into a separate god? He was definitely not originally the head of the pantheon (there are traces of that in the bible), but he became the god of Israel (the northern kingdom), where he had to compete with Baal; then later he became the god of Judah; and later still he became the sole god of all the universe, but only about 500 BC. And about then he lost his name - he turned into Adonai. Anyway, have a look at the sources and do some editing - but it is a lot of reading. PiCo (talk) 18:53, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. If you really want to focus it that way, I think you need to title it something different - "Yahweh (Iron Age god)" or something. However, I advise against that, since that same God has evolved (or is) the God of Judaism and Christianity. I think it's appropriate to have a page just on "Yahweh" but it needs to have broader scope. The best place to have information about the early origins of Yahweh are indeed on a "Yahweh" page, but there is more to Yahweh than just His early documented history. Everything you said is entirely acceptable material, but you can't separate what history might suggest as His origins from His current role in modern religion. When you go to the disambiguation page, the link to this says "Yahweh, the national god of the Hebrew bible," and that's what most people who end up here are looking for.

Part of the problem is that there are so many similar pages already on Wikipedia. We already have the "YHWH" page, we already have the "God in Abrahamic religions" page - maybe that's why you're ignoring those aspects of Yahweh. In my opinion, if this page is going to exist, it needs to be a sort of conglomerate of the information available on those other pages, along with the early history you're looking to include.

I'm not disputing your information, but that should just be a piece of a larger article.

Don't blame me, I didn't create the article. When I arrived there was this article, plus the article YHWH, both covering much the same material. Plus of course God in Judaism, Names of God in Judaism, and Allah knows what else. I've just tried to narrow it down to some kind of focus.

I don't think I'd agree that Yahweh has any worshipers these days, outside the Divine Name movement maybe (an obscure Christian sect that insists Yahweh is the correct name). It's YHWH in Judaism and never pronounced, Lord in Christianity. If we get into that aspect (what happened to him after c.400 BC) the article will become too long and unfocussed, I fear.

To say that Yahweh doesn't have any followers today is absolutely insane. Catholics may not generally say "Yahweh" out loud, but they consider Yahweh their god. "Lord" is used out of respect. Take a look at the New Jerusalem Bible - YHWH is transliterated at "Yahweh" throughout. I could maybe buy your argument on the Jewish side, since they don't officially consider the pronunciation "Yahweh" correct. Still though, so many Wikipedia pages on religious articles reference this page. For example, take a look at the page of "Eliyahu"(אֱלִיָהוּ). First line, says the name means "My God is Yahweh."— Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.217.183.225 (talk) 20:05, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Always nice to meet someone who knows his stuff and isn't overly committed to a position. Why not register a name and join us? PiCo (talk) 21:05, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Haha, thanks, maybe sometime. Honestly, Wikipedia just confuses me when I try to make edits (I even find editing this talk page to be confusing). I just try to make occasional edits here or there or make comments on the talk page when I see what I consider significant issues on a page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.217.183.225 (talk) 20:06, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Using Masoretic Text, Yahweh would be written as seen in parenthesis(יַ֠הְ֠וֶ֠ה֠), although Masoretic Text in and of itself wasn't around during the time of the first usage of the name. Now it is important to note that there is no letter "J" nor an equivalent in the Hebrew Alef Bet(no, I do not mean Alphabet. I am referring to a Semitic language, not a Greco-Roman Language). In addition to this, there are also the Early(2000-1200 B.C.E.), Middle(1200-400 B.C.E), and Late(400 B.C.E. -70 C.E.) paleo-hebraic forms, according to the Ancient Hebrew Research Center. AurumSpiral1235813 (talk) 19:33, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Henotheism

I'm surprised that the article doesn't mention this. See K.L. Noll,"<ref>{{cite book|last=Noll|first=K.L.|title=Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: An Introduction|publisher=Sheffield Academic Press|location=2001|page=249|url=http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2rnyjxLHy-QC&pg=PA248&dq=Anat-Yahu++Yahweh&hl=en&sa=X&ei=QFt2UbePKY6R0QXK84DYCQ&sqi=2&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Anat-Yahu%20%20Yahweh&f=false}}</ref>: "From many of the examples provided above, it should be clear that the best preserved example of Iron Age Canaanite henotheism is the anthology we call the Jewish Bible (Christian Old Testament). Although the Bible contains a few late additions designed to transform its religion into monotheism, the overwhelming majority of its texts are heno- theistic. To be more precise, the Bible usually expresses monolatry, which is a more extreme form of henotheism. Whereas henotheism believes in many gods, but with one supremely powerful god, monolatry believes in many gods, but with only one god that is worthy of worship. Thus, the monolatrist is a henotheist who acknowledges lesser gods but refuses to worship them."

"Monotheistic passages are rare in the Bible. For example, the famous Shema, a fundamental Jewish confession of faith found in Deut. 6.4, is grammatically ambiguous in the original Hebrew, but no matter how this grammar is interpreted or translated, the passage does not affirm monotheism. Either the text says that Yahweh is 'one god' (perhaps a polemic against the high god's absorption of lesser gods?) or it affirms that Yahweh 'alone' is Israel's god (which is monolatry, not monotheism).7 The only portion of the Bible with a relatively high cluster of monotheistic affirmations is the second half of Isaiah (chs. 40-66), which many scholars call Deutero-lsaiah, and date to the late-sixth century BCE. The remainder of the Bible contains random monotheistic statements among monolatrous and henotheistic passages."

He gives a number of examples, including the first 2 commandments. Dougweller (talk) 11:03, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Yahu and Yahweh

When reading this article I clearly see a cross in reference. It was misinterpreted that Yahweh has the same history as his praenomen Yahu (lesser Yahweh.) Yahu has taken on the name of Yahu Yahweh which is the history and facts presented in this article.

It must be noted the development of confusion came when names Yahweh and Yahu Yahweh were shortened to YH to confuse the worship of the two (Yahweh, Yahu Yahweh are not the same reference, they actually are totally opposites, like proactive versus retroactive, good versus bad)

The compounding of Yahu Yahweh and Yahweh as being an identical belief system came with religious leaders translations (YH), as a result, confusing what was good and what was not.

Leaving room for such confusion is contradiction to the meaning of Yahweh which presents TRUTH. All things tend to have their polarities. The definitions in this article represent Yahu not YAHWEH...please edit! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Onlyonecreator (talk • contribs) 21:56, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Um, "lesser Yahweh"? The only source for this phrase I can find is this guy who wants to tell us about THE TRUTH, and fringe author Henriette Mertz, neither of whom we can use as sources.

But what I have noticed is that we've left out Anat-Yahu which I will fix. Dougweller (talk) 10:22, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

With translations and for the purpose of confusion I am sure Anat-Yahu can be the exact same as Yahweh Yahu - key word YAHU. As long as it is noted that Yahweh is not be confused as a deity or false god like the yahu with all of its “notable conjunctions.” YAHWEH is a word that stands alone; any additional wording can change the meaning.

Thanks for the fix. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.51.236.168 (talk) 00:51, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

The god of Israel or the God of Israel?

Do not capitalize terms denoting types of religious or mythical beings such as angel, fairy or deva. The personal names of individual beings are capitalized as normal (the angel Gabriel). An exception is made when such terms are used to denote ethnicities in fantasy fiction, in which case they are capitalized if the source capitalizes them.

— MOS:CAPS#Religions, deities, philosophies, doctrines and their adherents

"The god" unequivocally refers to a god, there is no such thing as "the God", but only "God". Tgeorgescu (talk) 20:41, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

"The" and "God" are mutually exclusive, since there is no such thing as "the Tony Blair". Tgeorgescu (talk) 20:48, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

"Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the LORD God of Israel, (he is the God,) which is in Jerusalem." (—Persian king Cyrus in Ezra 1:3)

In a biblical context, God is capitalized only when it refers to the Judeo-Christian deity, and prophet is generally not capitalized.

— Current MOS:CAPS#Religion

"God of Israel" is a biblical expression that refers to the Judeo-Christian deity and is always capitalized in a biblical context.
—Telpardec  TALK  07:04, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, or at least almost. (There are occasional exceptions.) If it's a title, like "God of Our Fathers", then it's capitalized. If it's a description, like "god of the Amorites", then it's not. The two uses overlap, so it's not always easy to tell whether we should capitalize or not. As a rule of thumb, if we would capitalize if it were Vishnu rather than Jehovah, then we should capitalize here too. But a biblical context would need to be more than just an objective statement that Jehovah was the national god of Israel. — kwami (talk) 18:08, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Is Yahweh the "true God" of the Abrahamic religions?

So, this Yahweh is the GOD, the LORD, the Supreme Being that Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship? Yahweh is the same "one and only God" that all the Abrahamic religions worship in common? The God who says, "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me"? So, Elohim, Jehovah, Allah, etc., are ALL just different terms for Yahweh, THE God? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.161.252.56 (talk) 15:44, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Yahweh is, in fact, a phonetic form of the Tetragrammaton, whose pronunciation was lost more than two thousand years ago. Jehovah is another suggested form, but is most definitely not the good one and thus should not be used. Allah is an arabic noun applied to Yahweh by muslims and various people from arabic origin. Elohim, as well as El and Adonai, is part of the long list of names attributed to Yahweh. 173.237.243.124 (talk) 23:03, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

FYI, Jehovah has a separate article, dealing with that other suggested form. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 13:03, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Yahweh, is it a name of god ?

With my respect to all what it is reported here and in the article, I draw your attention to te text Ex 6, 2&3 where Yahweh himself says he has never appear before under this name . So you can not say it is a god since iron age or before . YHWH is not even any god name . It is written wit a Semitic long WAW not with a Latin short W, it must be pronounced YAHOUWEH , meaning : that one , god of their ancestors... As He had said just one sentence before : I am whom who I am ... Then , he had not the intention to give his name and nothing was urging him to give it just after some word . He was speaking on first person tense , but when he started dictating to Moses what Moses had to say , He can not tell him to speak by : I am !!! but by : Yahooweh , that him or that he or that one , god of your ancestors , is sending me ... --93.185.235.194 (talk) 19:26, 14 July 2013 (UTC)Elias Bouez

Tetragrammaton#Etymology deals with that. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 08:04, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

The problems

This article is certainly much better than it was when I first ran across it, but it is not yet neutral. My basic objections are as follows:
1) The tendentious nature of secondary source writing is still spilling over into a tertiary source. Neutrality demands that we distinguish an author's facts from his theses, and not report his theses as if, by virtue of being published in a secondary source, that makes them facts. Regardless of whether the sources being endorsed are solid, respectable, reliable sources, doing so means the article is taking the side of certain authors is a dispute, which is the definition of not NPOV. Speculative and contestable reconstructions need to be reported in the style "A argues B because of C and D." Not only is it neutral, but it gives a more thorough understanding of the subject matter, and is less likely to need to be deleted wholly the next time an author writes a revolutionary thesis that displaces the previous work.
2) The most recent scholarship is being presented as the only scholarship. You would hardly know from this article that thirty years ago that the Albright school was still dominant over this subject matter. Documenting how our historical understanding of a subject developed is essential to understanding that subject, particularly in the field of pre-literature religious history, where virtually everything we think we know is basically just a reconstruction.
3) Historians who happen to be religious and dispute these theses-presented-as-facts are being declared irrelevant not on the basis of their methodology or peer review process, but because we all know that religious people are closed minded and anti-reason who only say things because their traditions tell them to. Please, spare us the sanctimonious smarter-than-thou tropes. There is a problem with being too intellectually conservative, and there is a problem with being too intellectually revolutionary. Disqualifying the former on the grounds that intellectual conservatism tends to correlate strongly with religion and declaring the latter to be the only intellectually honest academics is a No True Scotsman fallacy and a cheap rhetorical ploy to redefine the center.
4) The position that Yahweh is just an Iron Age Levantine deity and not the God of Christianity and Judaism, which I have seen here expressed as an underlying philosophy in the writing of this article, is simply bizarre.

Remedy would involve reworking the sections "Origins and adoption as "God of Israel"" and "Ancient Israel and Judah" to be less matter-of-fact about the hypothesis that Yahweh and El are separate gods who were assimilated to one another. Thanatosimii (talk) 18:28, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I have a problem with part 3, you have to show that the positions of these historians make up a significant proportion of scholarship on the subject. Wiki has a policy on undue weight. LittleJerry (talk) 20:40, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

See objection 2. Thanatosimii (talk) 17:05, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

I second Thanatosimii and agree with #1. And #2. Though #3.... General point being it should be based on the Text originating Yahweh, and not based on articles by third parties. EDITOR PLEASE RESTRICT THIS ARTICLE TO FACTS, not POETIC HISTORIANS without an Archaeological basis.

Agreed. The theologically liberal bias wouldn't be so bad if it weren't presented as the only option, based strictly upon a few modern authors. The conservative opinion is the prevailing view and gets almost no treatment, except as a former consensus that now has no real grounds (which is not the case). That Yahweh is a developing, imaginary entity is the underpinning of the article, and that is not a NPOV. natemup (talk) 22:32, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

It's not "theologically liberal bias", it's "scientific bias". History is an empirical science, and scientists decide what the facts are. Science is about facts, theology states what a given church should believe as a matter of true belief (i.e. religious dogma). Don't conflate history with theology, there are two different fields, one of them is a science, the other isn't a science. Tgeorgescu (talk) 15:33, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

We've addressed this before, and this is still epistemologically absurd. Fact is objective, man-independent and method-independent reality, which authors merely argue their theses to be. To state something is a fact because an authority has decided it to be so is to abandon the historical method and allow a magisterium to pronounce dogma. Thanatosimii (talk) 14:54, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia renders scientific consensus as fact. If there is no consensus, all notable positions are rendered, each clearly attributed to its proponents. If we would not trust the scientific consensus, we could never state that the Holocaust really happened, since there are always revisionists seeking to deny it. We know that the Holocaust really happened because it is consensually agreed by mainstream historians. They have to say if it happened, Wikipedia editors may only render what mainstream historians state. Wikipedia editors don't pass judgment upon what constitutes a fact, they trust reliable sources to make that judgment for them. Tgeorgescu (talk) 19:34, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

“ If Wikipedia had been available around the fourth century B.C., it would have reported the view that the Earth is flat as a fact and without qualification. And it would have reported the views of Eratosthenes (who correctly determined the earth's circumference in 240BC) either as controversial, or a fringe view. Similarly if available in Galileo's time, it would have reported the view that the sun goes round the earth as a fact, and Galileo's view would have been rejected as 'original research'. Of course, if there is a popularly held or notable view that the earth is flat, Wikipedia reports this view. But it does not report it as true. It reports only on what its adherents believe, the history of the view, and its notable or prominent adherents. Wikipedia is inherently a non-innovative reference work: it stifles creativity and free-thought. Which is A Good Thing. ”

Quoted from Wikipedia:Why Wikipedia cannot claim the earth is not flat. See also WP:NOR: evaluating evidence according to its merits constitutes original research, which is not allowed. Tgeorgescu (talk) 19:47, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I am as well versed in policy here as you are. The problem is that you're jumping between policy and your epistemology so seamlessly you don't seem to be able to tell them apart. The essay, while perhaps an interesting topic for debate, is not policy, nor does NOR have anything to do with instructing editors to present an RS's claims within the formula of "B is true" instead of "A argues B because of C." Thanatosimii (talk) 06:26, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Second. #4 The problem you are picking up on, is a Hebrew slight to Christians. Jesus was Aramaic and all his followers seem to have quoted majorly from the Septuagint Canon's Translation. In Aramaic (Jesus & and other books like Daniel's Language) the phonetic of god is "El-Aw". The author is telling an inside Joke. Our God, not the Christians.

Near Eastern "divine warrior"

The silliness of this bothers me so much. No Biblical basis. And the thinking is rampant in this article. {This term comes from the Quran (Are they trying to slight and take from both Christ & Mohammed?). Quit stealing other peoples religions whoever is writing this stuff. Secondly there is no "Heavenly" in Hebrew. Moses 40 years in the Desert with Mana from Heaven, was the Mene(metal ingots/gold silver etc) of the Chinese Trade Route, in Egypt on the Hieroglyphs, "Heaven" was a map to "China". In order to wonder the dessert for 40 years, Moses worked as a Desert Raider / Bandit / Marauder, robbing people on the trade route after Levi murdered half their tribe for remembering the God of Egypt, on the first palette which he broke when Tribe of Aaron ruined the surprise what God looked like.} 4WhatMakesSense (talk) 23:15, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

This editor has been indefinitely blocked for disruptive editing. Mainly pushing fringe stuff, such as the above claim for an Egyptian hieroglyph that was a map to China claiming there was no such thing as a Hebrew Language and that Aramaic was the language of God, and their article edits here and elsewhere. Dougweller (talk) 07:52, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Both of you have to read and understand WP:UNDUE and WP:NOR. Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:30, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Elaborating upon WP:UNDUE for Thanatosimii: on point (1), in matters of theology there is and there can be no consensus; consensus could only exist in respect to historical facts; historians (if they reach consensus) decide which are the historical facts. So, where there is historical consensus (consensus does not mean unanimity) there are facts, which should be rendered as facts, not as mere opinions. About point (2), you say it yourself that the Albright school once represented the scientific consensus while nowadays it falls outside of the scientific consensus. I could not have put it better myself and it is good that we reached agreement on the Albright school. On point (3), see the point made by LittleJerry above. On point (4), YHWH/God does have a history. He did not begin as the only god nor as the all-powerful creator god, see e.g. the popular book A History of God by Karen Armstrong. Tgeorgescu (talk) 23:55, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Your notion of consensus is a common epistemological error. Facts are not determined by taking a poll of the authorities and then calling the majority position a consensus. There can't be a consensus where there is still dissent - only those who agree with each other will be in consensus. Suggesting that a body has reached a consensus while some disagree is thinly veiled commentary that dissenters should be marginalized. UNDUE instructs that arguments be given text in accordance with their prevalence. The prevalence of dissent from the orthodoxy of the last two decades by the intellectual successors to the Albright School is non-zero. Even if it were, I would never write an article on a subject like this which makes no mention, even in passing, of the previous orthodoxies. It is simply impossible to appeal to UNDUE as a justification for giving the majority view the only word.
I am also not yielding on the tendentious aspect. Encyclopedias do not argue. There is no possible objection that could be raised to rephrasing statements of fact so that they explain who it is who argues something to be a fact and why he does so. The arguments being presented in this article pertain to speculative reconstructions and I expect most of them to be heavily modified or thrown out over the next few decades like most reconstructions tend to be. If this is all going to be obsolete in twenty more years, it better to passively state that someone has made a proposition that people generally accept at present than to endorse that theory. Ask yourself for a moment what you think of The Cambridge Ancient History before you quote cutting edge publications for truth. Much will still remain, but the luster will be lost. Thanatosimii (talk) 07:01, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

The epistemological problem with the Albright school is that they used archeology as ancilla theologiae, so no wonder they fell out of grace in mainstream history and archeology. Science gets done for the pursuit of truth (knowledge) and scientists go where evidence leads them. Science is not meant as a servant to preaching the good news about Jesus. Of course, all notable positions have to be rendered, but only the consensus (majority) view will have the lion's share. Coming back upon consensus, how do you know that water boils at 100 degrees centigrade? You know it from your natural science teacher, who knows it from his natural science teachers. But how do they know it, did they all made experiments about it? No, for them it is enough that it is mentioned in natural science books. But why is it mentioned there? Because scientists have consensually agreed upon it. If there is a large measure of consensus, that makes it a fact. Like there is a consensus that you cannot accelerate a particle faster than the speed of light. About a century ago, that was a disputed new idea of the new natural science. Now it is generally accepted by physicists. That makes it a fact. Tgeorgescu (talk) 08:13, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

See e.g. Constructivist epistemology. Tgeorgescu (talk) 08:31, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

That definition of "fact" is the reason "truth" has a half life as I alluded to earlier. So far as your first two sentences, I refer you to objection 3. Beyond all this, if you write "Of course, all notable positions have to be rendered, but only the consensus (majority) view will have the lion's share" so as to concede, I am glad we have come to an agreement. This is, after all, what I have insisted on from the beginning, notwithstanding repeated attempts to portray me as someone upset that this page doesn't preach inerrancy. Thanatosimii (talk) 08:37, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, that's the Wikipedia standard: render all notable positions. However, I would point out that the idea "YHWH=the One True God" is not amenable to proof (as in scientific proof), it can be believed or disbelieved, but it cannot be a matter of archaeological inquiry, since archeology cannot decide which is the true god, if any. Otherwise, Yahweh having a history (i.e. an evolution) is a fact, not an opinion. It could not be otherwise, once Yahweh became an object of historical research, it is part of the package. It could be said, if it were true, that Hebrews believed that Yahweh was the One True God, but it has to have reliable sources which pass WP:UNDUE. Tgeorgescu (talk) 08:56, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Yahweh having any specific history is a reconstruction, not a fact. But if you ascribe to constructivist epistemology, I expect we're irreconcilable on this point. Thanatosimii (talk) 09:15, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm not exactly a champion of constructivist epistemology, but it is right that we are just humans and our science and religion are ultimately produced by humans, in human ways (or: social ways). For the purpose of this discussion, we could just bracket the idea of objective facts and of real God, for how could we know about them, except in a human way? By God having a history I mean that Yahweh left a trace in writings and archaeological evidence, and this trace cannot be always equated with "the One True God and the Only God". In so far there is empirical evidence for it, it is a fact (regardless of whether facts are constructed by humans). Tgeorgescu (talk) 10:46, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Back to basics: why isn't the article NPOV? Why isn't Wikipedia:Why Wikipedia cannot claim the earth is not flat convincing that the article obeys NPOV? Just because academic insights might/will change 30 years later? And, even more enlightening, how would you address such NPOV issue? Through claiming that Yahweh is eternal and unchanging? But that is theology, it isn't science. Through claiming that many believe that Yahweh is eternal and unchanging? I have already added a quote about the idea of historical evolution of Yahweh offending some believers. Tgeorgescu (talk) 11:18, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

It's getting rather obvious that you're trying to have an argument with a crackpot instead of with me, and you'd rather I be using theology rather than historical methodology to make my points, so you can snidely make comparisons of my view with flat-earthism. I have already made my objections, and it doesn't feel like you've actually read them any more than is necessary to deconstruct them and then reconstruct them within your paradigm of how all people disagreeing with the present state of this article must think. Thanatosimii (talk) 19:28, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Sorry if I misunderstood you, but as far as I know the purpose of the Albright school was to prove that the Bible is right through archaeological inquiry. And you talked about the Albright school representing past scientific consensus, and you said that that has to be mentioned in the article. The specific point from the essay I had in view is "Similarly if available in Galileo's time, it would have reported the view that the sun goes round the earth as a fact, and Galileo's view would have been rejected as 'original research'." I meant that Wikipedia has to render present-day scientific consensus, we are not using this article to write a history of the scientific consensus in the 20th century historiography. But, of course, there are indeed the maximalists, who grant maximal reliability to the biblical text. Thereupon I have listed some quotes at Talk:Omri. In most history faculties maximalists have lost ground. Tgeorgescu (talk) 20:05, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

I re-read the above and indeed you do not advocate stating theology as if it were fact, but a more careful writing. My bad, I have conflated your viewpoints with 4WhatMakesSense's viewpoints. Tgeorgescu (talk) 20:20, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

No need to look to the Albright school to find relevant maximalist works. In 2003, K.A. Kitchen wrote On the Reliability of the Old Testament, on the extra-biblical archaeological evidence supporting maximalism. Kitchen is no small-fry at the University of Liverpool's School of Archaeology. He is described on this very site as "foremost" and most of his body of work "the standard" and "comprehensive". I am comfortable with you bringing up science. Science allows theories to compete so we can perfect them, or glean from both to merge them into a unified theory. I agree with the original four problems stated by Thanatosimii. This article ties the reader down exclusively to minimalist interpretations of the raw scientific data. Please don't fabricate NPOV by pretending the maximalist view is dead by a consensus that does not exist. Umarekawaru (talk) 22:24, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

That 'foremost' comment bothered me as it looked as though you were saying our article described him as "the foremost". It doesn't, it says he is one of the foremost - but even that is done badly as it says that in Wikipedia's voice rather than attribute it to the Times newspaper article. I can't find the article yet, only [2] which says "These rock carvings have thrown startling new light on ancient Egypt and the Bible story. Along with other new evidence amassed by the Egyptologist David Rohl, they show that the people and events recorded in the Old Testament were real" and if it takes Rohl as gospel, then it may need fixing. Dougweller (talk) 07:59, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

The major problem here is that an article about religion is based entirely on anti-religious views. For example: "Yahweh (/ˈjɑːweɪ/ or /ˈjɑːhweɪ/; Hebrew: יהוה‎), was the national god of the Iron Age kingdoms of Israel and Judah" Was? Yahweh is one of the names of God, and as far as my own knowledge goes, it is an indisputable fact for Catholics that Yahweh IS God, not some long-forgotten myth from ancient times. If not to make it fair, this article needs reworking at least to make it true to the facts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 181.28.119.79 (talk) 06:56, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

You're beating a dead horse. The matter has been settled once and for all by WP:RNPOV, which is an official Wikipedia policy. Tgeorgescu (talk) 19:24, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

I suggest to you that you're misreading RNPOV. I can't find anything in it that says that neutrality in dealing with religious history involves only using the scholarship of people who contradict the religion's version of history. Thanatosimii (talk) 14:47, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

No, I didn't assume that it says that. RNPOV says: say how theologians view it, say how historians and religious studies scholars view it, then state how theologians have replied to such views. Historians don't have to be against religion in order to be reliable sources, but if they have theologically unorthodox views does not mean that they should be ignored. Science is autonomous from religious authorities and therefore may disagree with mainstream theology. In fact, in other sections should be discussed how Yahweh is generally viewed by theologians, i.e. as the Judeo-Christian divine being. But do consider that in the article God such view is spelled out in much detail. E.g. it would be strange to hear from a Christian that he prayed to Yahweh for his sick child, instead most Christians would say that they prayed to God, instead of Yahweh. So, Yahweh is kind of technical jargon for the god worshiped by ancient Jews, which later made a career as The Almighty. Tgeorgescu (talk) 15:31, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

I would only consider that strange because the Christian tradition for naming God got started in a Jewish tradition which had already put a taboo on vocalizing the tetragrammaton. Every time a Christian prays to "The Lord" he's taking his cue from the translators of the Septuagint who substituted YHVH with kyrios, which became dominus in the Vulgate and "Lord" in English. But the point I was moreover making is more that while theologians are often untrained in historical analysis, they don't strictly speaking need to be in order to weigh in on the purely textual, literary aspects of their sacred texts. It strikes me that only those positions which are iconoclastic (cf. the documentary hypothesis) are being presented as legitimate scholarship, whereas those who argue that the text of the Hebrew scriptures can be read as an integral whole pointing to Yahweh as a universal deity with a chosen people who are covenanted to worship him monolatrically but who engage in cycles of apostasy and renewal are being written off as just being theologians, as if theologians weren't legitimate authorities on the subject of theological literature. When documenting the historical development of an idea, disciplines overlap, and those who specialize in history and those who specialize in the idea stand on approximately equal footing. Thanatosimii (talk) 16:54, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Granted, theology and history work independently of each other and each of them is notable. However, historians seek to establish objective facts (which do not depend upon someone's confessional allegiance) while theologians establish subjective dogmas (which are true or untrue depending upon the confessional allegiance of the subject). History is thus about objective truth, while theology is about subjective truth, in Kierkegaard's meaning. He insisted that religious faith cannot be conflated with objective knowledge, the later being specific to sciences, while the former is not based on objective evidence and does not even require objective evidence in order to be accepted as meaningful. WP:RNPOV tells Wikipedia editors to present them both history and theology, but of course there are the articles God in Abrahamic religions, God in Judaism, God in Christianity, God in Islam, which we cannot repeat in this article. "Yahweh" is a word which neither Jews, nor Christians, nor Muslims commonly employ, unless they are doing historical scholarship. Tgeorgescu (talk) 23:19, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm afraid you've missed it entirely. Theology and history don't work independently of each other when it comes to matters of the lower and higher criticisms of a religion's source texts. With very few exceptions, the views being described in this article boil down to literary analysis of the Hebrew canon, but the article does not hold on equal footing nor even mention conclusions drawn by parties who perform literary analysis if that analysis has been or can be used in theological instruction. The DH and all other interpretive paradigms which selectively wade through the Hebrew canon looking for elements which are supposedly indicative of an earlier state in a religion's evolution are necessarily chopping up and splicing together bits of a text which very easily can be taken as a coherent whole exactly as written. It is, to a large number of theological academics, an objective fact which can be established by the same kind of literary interpretative methods which could be deployed on Homer or Plutarch or any other ancient that you're making a dog's breakfast out of your source, and it will come as quite a surprise to them when you suggest that by their status as churchmen they're disqualified from performing methodologically rational analysis due to your imposition of a fairly extreme position concerning the quandary of the integration of faith and reason. And I have no idea where you're getting the idea that Jews and Christians don't commonly use Yahweh. The use of a euphemism to avoid vocalizing the word does not constitute a lack of use, but is rather a form of use. Thanatosimii (talk) 08:05, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

What you say makes sense, except that I did not say theologians should be discarded, I said that they receive due attention elsewhere. I still do not understand what specific edits you are advancing, so be bold and make such edits in order to flesh out your point. Tgeorgescu (talk) 13:18, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Receiving due attention elsewhere would divide the work of literary critics into work done by religious literary critics and work done by secular literary critics, which is uncalled for and conceivably prejudicial in cases where the principles of literary analysis being used on all sides are all sufficiently academic in nature. Beyond this, I am unfortunately not comfortable advancing a specific remedy to the deficiencies I find on this page. My formal training is in Egypt, and I was only really exposed to this subject when I mingled with the department down the hall. Which is why I'm deliberately restricting myself to the concerns listed in the beginning of this section. Thanatosimii (talk) 20:48, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

@Thanatosimii, just to clarify some terms you use:

• "Theology and history don't work independently of each other when it comes to matters of the lower and higher criticisms of a religion's source texts." The terms "lower" and "higher" criticism" aren't used these days. The old "lower criticism" is now called text[ual] criticism; the 19th century "higher criticsm" is now called source criticism; and is only one of many tool-kits used by biblical scholars. I'm not sure why you think that theology has any role in biblical criticism anyway - it's the study of the meaning[s] of ancient texts, including the theology of the original authors, and no scholar would try to impose modern theology. (And no historian would attempt to explain the events of history in terms of God's anger at Israel's faithlessness, which is the underlying theology of the bibli's history books).

Exegetical theology is biblical criticism and biblical criticism is exegetical theology. There is a rich history of churchmen publishing on the meanings of ancient texts and the theology of their original authors. Because historians are limited in their source material to more or less just the Hebrew scriptures when reconstructing Yahwism, they really aren't doing anything broader in scope or superior in methodology than the churchman is, and to place peer reviewed secular work ahead of work done in peer reviewed religious publications would be thus inappropriate. Hence what my next sentence said. Thanatosimii (talk) 21:53, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

• "With very few exceptions, the views being described in this article boil down to literary analysis of the Hebrew canon, but the article does not hold on equal footing nor even mention conclusions drawn by parties who perform literary analysis if that analysis has been or can be used in theological instruction." I'm not at all sure what this sentence is saying - literary analysis used in theological instruction? Can you name some specific scholars?
• "The DH and all other interpretive paradigms which selectively wade through the Hebrew canon looking for elements which are supposedly indicative of an earlier state in a religion's evolution are necessarily chopping up and splicing together bits of a text which very easily can be taken as a coherent whole exactly as written." I guess by DH you mean the documentary hypothesis. That's only one theory on the composition of the Torah, there are several others, and it's not even dominant these days. It would be better to refer to "source criticism", which is the approach underpinning the DH. Nor is source criticism selective.
• "It is, to a large number of theological academics, an objective fact which can be established by the same kind of literary interpretative methods which could be deployed on Homer or Plutarch or any other ancient that you're making a dog's breakfast out of your source, and it will come as quite a surprise to them when you suggest that by their status as churchmen they're disqualified from performing methodologically rational analysis due to your imposition of a fairly extreme position concerning the quandary of the integration of faith and reason." On the contrary, source criticism is also used in the study of Homer - in fact it was developed by Classicists specifically to better understand the composition of the Homeric works, and only later taken up by biblical scholars. Nor do biblical scholars deny the unity of the biblical texts - but it's an editorial unity (produced by the final editors), not an authorial one - none of the biblical books have a single author, all of them have been edited. There's nothing controversial about that, and your churchmen wouldn't be at all put out by the idea.

Which is precisely what "selective" means. The source critic disassembles the text, weighs elements, and tries to reconstruct the shape of an earlier version. Moreover, source criticism's application to Homer doesn't have anything to do with my objection. Thanatosimii (talk) 21:53, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

• " I have no idea where you're getting the idea that Jews and Christians don't commonly use Yahweh. The use of a euphemism to avoid vocalizing the word does not constitute a lack of use, but is rather a form of use." They don't - where did you get the idea that they do? Saying Adonai instead of Yahweh (Jews) isn't "a form of use", it's an avoidance of use, and most Christians have never heard of the word. More to the point, Yahweh is very different from the gods of both Judaism and Christianity - animal sacrifice was central to his worship (Jews and Christians don't sacrifice sheep in synagogues and churches), there were elaborate rules regarding supernatural purity (the first half of the Book of Numbers isn't much consulted these days by pastors and rabbis), Christians have totally abandoned the idea that Yahweh was the god of the Israelites alone (Jews haven't), and both Jews and Christians are monotheists - something the Bible quite obviously doesn't agree with, since it talks continually about the gods of other peoples (who are "false" in the sense that they won't stand by their peoples as Yahweh stands by Israel, not in the sense of not existing). Please, before you criticise the article, read the books, ands ince you're in a university (or I guess you are), maybe take a course. PiCo (talk) 04:46, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

The use of a euphemism to avoid vocalization is not an aversion of use. A subject's being taboo is a cultural quirk, and doesn't qualitatively modify that subject. But anyone with a passing familiarity with Christian theology wouldn't buy the rest of what you write. Animal sacrifice is still kind of a big deal, the spiritual application of ritual purity is a fairly important theological dispute, and monotheism, monolatrism, and henotheism are a lot closer in practice than some purists like to think. To clarify one last point - the level of expertise necessary to point out that something is broken and the level necessary to fix it are quite far apart, and since I don't have a degree in this field, I won't be editing as if I did. That doesn't mean I'm a novice to this subject either, as you seem to want to suggest by choosing to be pedantic throughout and dismissive at the end. I frankly expected to leave a few obvious objections and then move on, as the patent one-sidedness of what is a partially theological article (whether you want it to be or not) shouldn't have been open for dispute. That should not require high qualifications. Thanatosimii (talk) 21:53, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

You don't need a degree in order to edit, you need reliable sources, i.e. actually having read what scholars have to say about it. It is not required to have an exhaustive knowledge of the field (i.e. you are not required to have read *all* scholars), you may offer quotes from reputable scholars and if somebody else thinks that is WP:UNDUE, it will be discussed on the talk page. Tgeorgescu (talk) 13:23, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia's editorial standards and my editorial standards are different. Other people may edit with less; I'm generally hesitant to edit an article when I'm not comfortable writing the entire article, which does take actual and extensive formal training. Thanatosimii (talk) 06:19, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, this is the difference between Wikipedia and Citizendium: on Citizendium only experts are allowed to edit articles in their own field, while on Wikipedia everybody may edit. That's why Wikipedia is richer in information than Citizendium: on Wikipedia everybody may add their grain of knowledge, and if it is found good it remains, if it is substandard it gets reverted. I don't have a degree in history, theology or religious studies, but I know that e.g. Bart Ehrman, Michael Coogan and Israel Finkelstein are widely regarded as authorities in their own field. And I know some specific points made by them because I have read some of their books. I might be wrong about the whole picture, but I cannot be wrong that on page number ... Ehrman or Coogan or Finkelstein said so and so. As long as I don't pretend to know what I don't know, it is nothing wrong with it. Tgeorgescu (talk) 20:56, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

That's your prerogative. I edit more conservatively.
Alternate positions on historical Yahwism are bound to be found in the works of Kitchen, Hoffmeier, Walter Kaiser, Tremper Longman, and from slightly older sources, Gleason Archer, Gordon Wenham, and of course Albright and the other maximalists, whom I am not ready to accept should be unmentioned due to being dated. Beyond this, quite nearly any commentary is going to suggest textual elements which are made much of in higher criticism were written deliberately for theological purposes, and are not necessarily to be taken as leftover artifacts of intellectual evolution concealing hints of the primordial religion. Thanatosimii (talk) 06:22, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for a very interesting discussion! I think Thanatosimii is correct about the missing point 3), but the article topic is pretty messed-up by itself; we have some five "histories" to deal with and balance against each other:

• the archeological history of the "godhead Yahweh" as seen from an academic perspective based on archeology and external sources,
• the history of the evolution of the "godhead Yahweh/Adonai/Lord God" as seen from a Judaeo-Christian perspective, either perhaps as a god changing his mind, or as an initially misunderstood god,
• the history of theological view upon Yahweh/Tetragrammaton when did it occur to the Jews that he was alone, they couldn't spell out the name, (already dealt with in the section Yahweh#History),
• the history of the academic research about this godhead,
• each and every denominations' idiosyncratic conception of a history or lack thereof in their view upon this guy Yahweh, up to and including every dishonesty and the denial of the obvious, such as that there are henotheist verses here and there in the Bible.

Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 07:50, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

The following quote affirms that some of the above mentioned authors are doing substandard scholarship:

Of course, there has been plenty of vilification of 'maximalists'. The trouble is that finding maximalists is like the hunting of the snark—they are very elusive. Rainer Albertz has sometimes referred to himself as a 'conservative maximalist', but he is only making a joke. He is nowhere near being a maximalist. In fact, until recently I could find no 'maximalist' history of Israel since Wellhausen. For when Philip Davies asked what separated a minimalist from a maximalist, he was actually using 'maximalist' to refer to standard critical scholars. In fact, though, 'maximalist' has been widely defined as someone who accepts the biblical text unless it can be proven wrong.⁶ If so, very few are willing to operate like this, not even John Bright (1980) whose history is not a maximalist one according to the definition just given.

But just recently a maximalist history has appeared: A Biblical History of Israel, by Iain Provan, Philips Long, and Tremper Longman (2003). Reading it is utterly boring. An occasional extra-biblical inscription or cuneiform tablet is brought in, but it is mainly just a paraphrase of the biblical text—a very brief paraphrase of the biblical text because much of the troublesome detail is omitted. There are some attempts at harmonizing texts with outside data, there is the occasional quotation of another scholar—usually a fellow conservative evangelical. But the basic ploy is to ignore difficulties. There are no novel solutions to conundrums in the text, there are no innovative reconstructions, there are no new insights.

— Lester L. Grabbe, Some Recent Issues in the Study of the History of Israel

The quote is about the who's who in the field and presents such works as a failed attempt at doing historical scholarship. It is acceptable, however, as theology, since theology does not require evidence in order to state "true beliefs", it just requires having faith in a given theological tradition. Tgeorgescu (talk) 19:54, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

A scholar says scholars he doesn't agree with are doing substandard scholarship. You shouldn't be surprised to find this cuts both ways. Thanatosimii (talk) 20:17, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

First, Grabbe is also critical of minimalism, so he does not partake in the usual minimalist vilification of maximalists. Second, the work described as substandard is written by scholars with a strong theological bias, namely by conservative evangelicals. Not that conservative evangelicals cannot write good history, but when it comes to critically evaluating the Bible they are unable or unwilling to do it. Some of them even took formal oaths that the Bible is infallible and inerrant or that they will uphold the Westminster Confession of Faith and if they breach such oaths they lose their jobs. The gist is that people with a strong theological bias are described by the following cartoon: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_HfSXLXtVnOI/ScgC8IYDHDI/AAAAAAAACOc/MiUOUN2m7s4/s400/sci%5B1%5D.png

For Kitchen, the biblical story (at least from the time of Abraham) is true until proven otherwise. Needless to say, he is not troubled by postmodernism or deconstruction, which he dubs "the crown of all follies." His critiques of Lemche, Thompson and others are not without substance, but his own views are too blatantly apologetic to warrant serious consideration as historiography.

More sophisticated, but ultimately equally apologetic, is another volume published in 2003, Iain Provan, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman III, entitled provocatively, A Biblical History of Israel.

— John J. Collins, The Bible after Babel. Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age.

The fact is that we are all minimalists—at least, when it comes to the patriarchal period and the settlement. When I began my PhD studies more than three decades ago in the USA, the 'substantial historicity' of the patriarchs was widely accepted as was the unified conquest of the land. These days it is quite difficult to find anyone who takes this view.

— Lester L. Grabbe, Some Recent Issues in the Study of the History of Israel

... fundamentalism lost control of biblical history (fifty years later in America than in Europe). ... Apart from the well-funded (and fundamentalist) “biblical archaeologists,” we are in fact nearly all “minimalists” now.

— Philip Davies, Beyond Labels: What Comes Next?

Let me reinforce this claim in respect to my own work. The mainstream view of critical biblical scholarship accepts that Genesis-Joshua (perhaps Judges) is substantially devoid of reliable history and that it was in the Persian period that the bulk of Hebrew Bible literature was either composed or achieved its canonical shape. I thus find attempts to push me out onto the margin of scholarship laughable.

— Philip Davies, Minimalism, "Ancient Israel," and Anti-Semitism

I am certainly not insisting that authors of Western Civilization texts for university classes should agree with the suggestions made about ancient Israel in recent decades by scholars such as those whom I have cited. What I am saying is that it is bad scholarship, and bad pedagogy, simply to ignore an important body of recent work, offering adult students a literalist-leaning account that is by scholarly standards probably twenty years out of date. At the very least, textbook authors should include more critical scholars' works and some minimalist works in their recommended readings, so that students would have a chance to confront such arguments on their own.

The Hebrew Bible is simply not a reliable source for the history of ancient Israel, and the authors of the textbooks surveyed seem largely unaware of this fact. Writers of textbooks for undergraduates need to ask themselves: If we are content to provide students with mythical, legendary, uncritical histories of ancient Israel, how can we have any legitimate grounds for complaint or criticism when others are willing to provide mythologized, fictionalized histories of other peoples and places?

— Jack Cargill, "Ancient Israel in Western Civ Textbooks"

The last quarter of the 20th century has also seen the development of a crisis in the historiography of ancient Israel, which shows no sign of abating in the early years of the 21st. This crisis takes the form of a progressive loss of confidence in the historical value of the biblical narratives. In the middle of the 20th century, English language scholarship on ancient Israel was dominated by the Albright school, which placed great confidence in the archeology as a a means by which to affirm the essential reliability of the biblical text, beginning in the time of Abraham. This approach found its classic expression in John Bright's History of Israel, an impressive attempt to contextualize the biblical story by interweaving it with what we know of ancient Near Eastern history. Even when Bright wrote, a more skeptical view prevailed in German scholarship, at least with regard to the early books of the Bible. But the scene has changed drastically in the last quarter century. In a book originally published in 1922, Philip Davies claimed that "biblical scholars actually know - and write - that most of the 'biblical period' consists not only of unhistorical persons and events, but even of tracts of time that do no belong in history at all.

— John J. Collins, The Bible after Babel. Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age.

Many archaeologists question whether the obsessive scramble to prove the biblical narrative is a healthy enterprise. One of them, Tel Aviv University's Raphael Greenberg, flatly states, "It's bad for archaeology.

— Robert Draper, David and Solomon, Kings of Controversy

In this search, the Old Testament has quite literally been his guide. This approach was once common for archaeologists in Israel, but in recent years it has come to define an extreme position in a debate over whether the Bible should be read as historical fact or metaphorical fiction.

— Jennifer Wallace, „Shifting Ground in the Holy Land” Smithsonian Magazine

So although much of the archaeological evidence demonstrates that the Hebrew Bible cannot in most cases be taken literally, many of the people, places and things probably did exist at some time or another.

— Jonathan Michael Golden, Ancient Canaan and Israel: new perspectives

These quotes show that maximalists have been pushed outside of mainstream historical research. It is true that when Albright was alive things were very different, but now historia ancilla theologiae has become quite shunned by the academe, as far as we speak of scientists, instead of theologians. Tgeorgescu (talk) 22:22, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

We're going around in circles. These points have already been hashed out before, and I've already responded. You've started by defining a certain group of scholars as the mainstream, and then disqualifying others for disagreeing with them. If, however, you begin by not presuming the inherent inferiority of one class, these positions aren't representative of the totality of scholarship, and can't be used to disqualify those who need to be discounted in order to demonstrated that your preferred group are superior. This is circular reasoning. Read the quotes you've provided. They state simply that the authors don't agree with another position. That necessarily means the position actually exists. The article can state that scholars such-and-such don't accept the work of other scholars such-and-such. It cannot, however, unduely ignore the published works of people your authorities clearly consider important enough to respond to. I'll also remind you again, we aren't strictly speaking talking about history in this article, as much as literary analysis. Literary analysis of a religious work is theology. Therefore this is at least as much an article on theology as it is on history. Let's take this particular part of the article:

In the earliest stage Yahweh was one of the seventy children of El, each of whom was the patron deity of one of the seventy nations. This is illustrated by the Dead Sea Scrolls and Septuagint texts of Deuteronomy 32:8–9, in which El, as the head of the divine assembly, gives each member of the divine family a nation of his own, "according to the number of the divine sons": Israel is the portion of YHWH.[40] Keil and Delitzsch note that the Septuagint rendering is of no critical value, based as it is upon the "Jewish notion of guardian angels of the different nations (Sir. 17:14), which probably originated in a misunderstanding of Deuteronomy 4:19, as compared with Daniel 10:13, Daniel 10:20–21, and Daniel 12:1."[41]

This isn't about any particular point of history, this is about the Deuteronomist's theology, and most interpreters of Deuteronomy tend towards the position that, because the Penteteuch is a thoroughly monolatrist work teaching Israel's special place among the nations, the Deuteronomist means to say that Yahweh-El appointed a son of God to each nation but reserved Israel as his own special people - the suzerain's personal demesne instead of the nations sublet out to the vassals. This is what I meant when I said the article's POV "selectively wades through the Hebrew canon looking for elements which are supposedly indicative of an earlier state in a religion's evolution are necessarily chopping up and splicing together bits of a text which very easily can be taken as a coherent whole exactly as written." Polytheism cannot have been deliberately included by the Deuteronomist, therefore the straightforward theological ramifications of this text have to be discarded in order to allow that this text is a mere accidental remnant of more ancient polytheism. And this entire theological question is being treated without input from theologians. Thanatosimii (talk) 22:52, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, agreed, maximalism is a position in historical scholarship, however it is an extreme position. Albright believed in historia ancilla theologiae, present-day mainstream scholars believe that's not done. Tgeorgescu (talk) 23:01, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Minimalism-Maximalism represent a spectrum, so a position on the extreme of the maximalist side of the spectrum is tautologically extreme, yes. And the concept of ancillating a discipline to another is more of an epistemological consideration than a methodological consideration. Most proponents of ancilla theologae are probably merely expressing wholism. I, as a wholist, find that listening to a "this is this, but that is that" epistemology that separates history from truth claims in supposedly non-overlapping magisteria will often leave me with a wholly unsettling sense of cognitive dissonance. Thanatosimii (talk) 02:41, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, according to Bart Ehrman this belief in a whole, comprehensive, absolute and objectively true Truth ruined the faith of many Christians. It has certainly ruined mine. I would not go so far as to suggest that NOMA should be accepted by everyone, but I find Kierkegaard's distinction between objective and subjective truths compelling. Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:43, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

There is a problem with handling Christian theology as objective truth: you would rejoice when the National Academy of Sciences would validate specific points of the theology of your church, but you would not have a panel of the NAS rewrite the creeds of your church in the light of new scientific evidence. Tgeorgescu (talk) 23:20, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

You're conflating objective truth with the product of empirical examination. It's an easy slip for a post-enlightenment individual to make, but it's not quite proper. If the theist held his truth claims on the basis of empirical examination, it would be a double standard for him to approve of empirics validating his truth claims and disapproving of empirics invalidating them. But the theist classically holds revelation to be truth independent of the scientific method. Said theist will naturally feel happy when two separate epistemologies which he holds as valid produce harmonious truth claims, and feel naturally uncomfortable with any dissonance, and will proceed to seek to reconcile them. Reconciliation which finds fault in the empiricists is hardly disingenuous, given the theist never endorsed them as arbiters of objective theological truth to begin with.

To put it another way, I can easily rewrite your statement "You would rejoice when the Pope endorsed the findings of your experiment, but you would not have him rewrite scientific textbooks in light of his theology. This is the problem with handling science as objective truth." Clearly this falls flat because you don't hold to Papal infallibility, but neither does the theist hold to the rationalist conceit of the infallibility of the human mind.

I'll end with three points.
1) I think I've done my best to keep this impersonal. My own religious beliefs aren't germane.
2) The best I can say about Bart Ehrman is that he's not Elaine Pagels. I realize not everything he's written is on the same level as the monstrosities he writes for mass consumption, but it's hard to trust a scholar's integrity when he writes humdingers in the popular press.
3) This discussion is becoming tangential to the actual purpose of a talk page. Thanatosimii (talk) 05:30, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Thantosimii -- this article is not up to Wiki standards, as it's grossly lacking in neutrality. It presents certain authors' points of views as if they were fact. Regardless of where one stands on the issue, this is not an unbiased, encyclopedic approach that is supposed to characterize a Wiki article, and should be changed.68.198.138.69 (talk) 08:50, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

The consensus of historians is rendered as fact and Wikipedia does not have a problem with that. You may want to read WP:ABIAS for more information. Besides, it would be impossible to deny that the cult of Yahweh began as a deity worshiped among other deities; he only later made a career as the One True God. Only the fundamentalist and very conservative evangelicals have a problem with that and even for them it is problematic to publish in mainstream scientific journals peer-reviewed research restating the fundamentals. Tgeorgescu (talk) 14:34, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

User:Rursus has shown above the real complexity of the matter, and imho his arguments have not been refuted. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:32, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm not one to put words in other people's mouths, but last time I checked, Rursus said he agreed with me on the point the anon is agreeing with me. At any rate, I don't see why his arguments would need to be refuted. I am certainly in agreement with them. Beyond this, you're repeating a lot of statements that have already been challenged without interacting with how they've been challenged. Thanatosimii (talk) 05:26, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

"You've started by defining a certain group of scholars as the mainstream, and then disqualifying others for disagreeing with them."

Thanatosimii, you are the one who is picking and choosing. You are choosing to define the mainstream in a way that suits your pre-existing theological biases - as the (mostly half-century out-of-date) group of predominately orthodox theological traditionalists who share your religious world-view. To me that represents a twisting of words, a subtle, slick attempt at misdirection. Wikipedia is not a work of theology, but a body of fact led by reason. It is not a place for proselytising and for attempting to maintain and enforce your own particular religious orthodoxy and attempt to pass it off to the general public as fact. Your endless persistence in this matter, in the face of all evidence and reason, is very tiresome, and is beginning to strike me as the height of intellectual dishonesty. Heavenlyblue (talk) 22:05, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

If we're going to start talking about intellectual dishonesty, what do you call it when, instead of interacting with any of about a half dozen clearly expressed theses you write, someone tells you what you're actually saying - that is, what you must be saying because we all know why it is people who disagree with that someone actually believe? And if we're going to start talking about slick misdirection, I notice when you take issue with the historians whom I identify as holding to the minority position, you use the fact that many happen to be theological traditionalists as a justification for calling their historical work theology and thus out of place. This is verbal slight of hand.
Let's review. Certain parties do not want to disclose the majority position using the following formula, taken from the NPOV faq: "Many adherents of this faith believe X, which they believe that members of this group have always believed; however, due to the acceptance of some findings (say which) by modern historians and archaeologists (say which), other adherents (say which) of this faith now believe Z." Or, as I earlier put it, "A believe B because of C and D." This formula is more enlightening, and will always be true no matter if future scholars contradict B, as happens often in the process of writing history. Rather, they write theses as facts, which captures the tendentious nature of secondary writing but is wholly inappropriate in a tertiary source, and obscures the fact that theses are held on the basis of arguments and don't hold water if the arguments aren't granted. It is necessary in particular in this case to make these disclosures because the majority view is not the only view which has ever been held or is presently held. A minority position - which I have never claimed was anything more than a minority position - among historians has not adopted the current majority position. Furthermore, because this is an article not on strict history, but on historical theology as understood mainly through interpreting Judeo-Christian holy texts, literary analyses of these texts (theology) are germane. But both the minority position and the literary analyses done by people who happen to be professionally religious are being dismissed as not important enough for one sentence's mention in the entire article because they disagree with the majority and thus are supposedly fringe. Fringe doesn't work that way. If it did, any minority view that deserves due attention could be stripped from articles by defining a certain group of scholars as the mainstream, and then stripping the status of scholar from anyone who disagrees with them, regardless of the quality of their scholarship, their credentials, or the peer review process.
These are fairly modest requests. Write a tertiary source. Report, don't argue. Have a few passing sentences signifying the majority position has multiple independent published critics. Consult theological sources when writing on theology. Thanatosimii (talk) 05:45, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

For the record, if this weren't a religious article, it would still be very, very wrong. I've established long before I ever set foot here a record of demanding the same exhaustive explanation of the evolution of and rationale behind modern scholarship in many other articles. Cf. the dating paragraphs of most of the 18th dynasty pharaohs. If Thutmose II were written the same way as this article, it would be five words long. Thanatosimii (talk) 05:53, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. It should be obvious to anyone familiar with an encyclopedia that this article reads as biased in favor of a secular perspective that views the Judeo-Christian writings/legacy as something that MUST have derived from a mundane source because a supernatural origin is impossible. That is not a presentation of fact or history or science, but bias, as there are plenty of historians and archaeologists (past and present) who would argue quite rationally and with considerable evidence against the secularist position. Wikipedia should NOT play favorites or take sides, which is what those who have written and control this article have apparently done, which is journalistically dishonest, illegitimate and substandard. I say allow Thantosimii to prepare an article that reflects the views of all of the primary contenders, and which doesn't suggest that any one is the correct view, since that's a matter for individuals to determine for themselves. It is not the place of an encyclopedia article to decide which interpretation suits their worldview is the truth.96.250.78.18 (talk) 07:44, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Let me spell out this for you: history is an empirical science, all empirical sciences work with methodological naturalism, therefore supernatural events could never be affirmed as historical facts. Simply, the historical method does not allow for proving supernatural events. If you believe in supernatural events, that is a theological view, not a scientific one. There is a line between history and pseudohistory/cryptohistory and stating that history could prove supernatural events is pseudoscience. According to WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE Wikipedia does not treat all views equally, it treats scientific consensus as fact and pseudoscience as complete bollocks. Take it or leave it, it's part of the package. Tgeorgescu (talk) 16:30, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I have nothing against writing that "The Pope affirms that Jesus has really risen from the dead." The Pope is notable and he is entitled to hold his own opinions, but that does not make it a scientific view or a scientific theory or a scientific fact. Tgeorgescu (talk) 16:47, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

"Jesus has risen" is not a falsifiable statement, therefore it is not scientific. As Wolfgang Pauli said about something else, "Jesus has risen" is not even wrong. If it can't be shown to be wrong, it can't be a scientific theory. Tgeorgescu (talk) 16:55, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

No amount of ancient manuscripts would be enough to establish as historical facts that Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Apollonius of Tyana, Muhammad or Buddha could walk on water, turn water into wine, rise the dead, be risen from the dead, ascend to heavens, have supernatural inspiration and so on. The same holds for Jesus, he was a historical figure like any other historical figure and real people cannot be shown to perform miracles in peer-reviewed scientific articles. Tgeorgescu (talk) 17:15, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Science cannot tell if my god is better than your god. That's not what scientists do for a living. Miracles cannot be shown to be objective facts, for the very idea of miracles goes against the very idea of scientific fact. There's a limit to what science can do, if you ask from it impossible solutions to empirically unanswerable questions, you fall into pseudoscience. Tgeorgescu (talk) 17:56, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

There is no scientific debate about science being able to prove miracles the same way there is no scientific controversy about intelligent design. "Teach the controversy" does not have much to teach: in science there is no controversy about the validity of evolution and ID is not considered a scientific theory, but it is relegated to pseudoscience. The same way historians who prove miracles are doing pseudoscience. There are no history courses at Harvard, Princeton, Oxford, Cambridge and Sorbonne devoted to presenting evidence about miracles because there is no historical evidence about miracles and it can't be any. You may want to read User:Ian.thomson/ChristianityAndNPOV and Wikipedia:Christian POV on Wikipedia. Tgeorgescu (talk) 18:12, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

If you want to write all that in the mainspace as the foundational assumptions implicit in everything else you'd have the article say, that might actually improve the article. Presently the article suggests we can know your positions to be true. If you disclaimed that you and all your historians conclude what they conclude not because they've actually proven their theses but because they presume naturalistic materialism, I think most readers would be capable of recognizing the claim that Yahweh must have had a natural origin because historically Yahweh can't have not had a natural origin because historical fact is materialism as being complete bollocks.
History is what happened. If naturalistic materialism is true, then history is merely natural and materialistic. If it's not true, then history is also supernatural and immaterial. What we can know about history by examining the material record may be purely material, but that simply restricts the scope of the study of history to the material, it does not mean that things outside of the scope of what we can empirically know are all also materialistic. I would suggest to you that the reason you're getting all these anons angry with the way you want this page to look is that the article presumes that what we can know to be true about Yahweh through historical and literary analysis is all that is true, and what people to believe to be true about Yahweh if we accept the authority of any particular magisterium or text are just faith, where faith is defined as false things people sometimes believe. All claims about what Yahweh ontologically is are made by the historians, and at best you're willing to include a paragraph saying that some creeds oblige some believers to believe Yahweh is what he ontologically isn't. This hardly lives up to even your own statements that the divine can't be falsified, as the historical mainstream is being presented as a falsification of the religious narrative that Yahweh always revealed himself as the only god to be worshiped.
The Biblical history itself and pretty much all established church teachings have never disagreed that Yahweh was worshiped among other gods, so there is no substantial dispute over what the historical record is going to say on that subject. Why then is the reconstruction of Yahwism wherein monotheism evolved getting priority over the reconstruction of Yahwism wherein Israel finally came around to the monotheism they ought to have believed in the beginning? I can tell you why - because even though the data could fit with either reconstructions, if you don't presume a real Yahweh that actually contacted Israel, you'd never work one into your reconstruction. That's OK. We all have to accept certain priors or we'd never be able to reason. As a historian, I assume that we weren't all created five minutes ago, though I can't prove it. Assuming all these critical priors, the scholars quoted in this article make some valid arguments, at least as far as the peer reviewers who went over their work could tell. I don't begrudge them this line of argumentation at all, and believe these sources should be cited as the mainstream historical position in the article. But these presumptions mean that from a theological perspective, which has been the perspective from which most academics throughout history have approached Jehovah, the mainline historical position is unsound, and the article does not interact with that point whatsoever, either by disclaiming why the historians cited arrive at their conclusions, or by interacting with any serious theological treatment of Yahweh. This is an article on a god. Those suggesting that a treatment on a god is historical to the exclusion of being theological perhaps need to look up the word "theology."
As an aside, we're talking about historical and literary analyses here, never "scientific" - use of that word in the humanities is highly inappropriate, as the scientific and historical methods are quite different. Science depends on testable hypotheses, whereas in history tests are often impossible, so we rely on induction, which unfortunately has a greater tendency to result in specious conclusions. I sometimes wonder if your insistence upon being matter-of-fact comes down to a confusion of history, where most theses have a fair bit of unprovable speculation in them, with science, which hands down lots of facts which can easily be tested if doubted. Characterizing historical Yahwism is nothing at all like, say, establishing the speed of light in a vacuum. There's a lot more guesswork going on in here than it sounds like you're comfortable acknowledging. Thanatosimii (talk) 20:39, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I did not claim that theology was false, I claimed that it does not establish objective facts. It still may be subjectively true, instead of objectively true. Some purely theological facts, like the resurrection of Jesus, can neither be proved right nor wrong by historians. Other theses, like the documentary hypothesis and the theories that came to replace it are (or were) historically sound, i.e. they are real scientific insights. Unlike "Jesus has risen" they do qualify for being at least wrong, while some of them may even qualify to being correct or consensually accepted by historians.

In [[Kierkegaard]]'s meaning, purely theological assertions are [[subjective truth]]s and they cannot be either verified or invalidated by science, i.e. through objective knowledge.<ref name=solomon>Robert C. Solomon, No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life, The Great Courses, The Teaching Company, http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=437</ref> For him, choosing if one is for or against a certain subjective truth is a purely arbitrary choice.<ref name=solomon/> He calls the jump from objective knowledge to religious faith a [[leap of faith]], since it means subjectively accepting statements which cannot be rationally justified.<ref name=solomon/> For him the Christian faith is the result of the trajectory initiated by such choices, which don't have and cannot have a rational ground (meaning that reason is neither for or against making such choices).<ref name=solomon/> Objectively regarded, purely theological assertions are neither true nor false.<ref name=solomon/> Some assertions which are not purely theological, but they are falsifiable, have been scientifically verified (e.g the fact that [[Jesus]] has really existed<ref name=consensus>{{cite book|last1=Ehrman|first1=Bart D.|authorlink1=Bart D. Ehrman|title=Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are.|format=EPUB|accessdate=2011-09-02|edition=First Edition. EPub|year=2011|month=February|publisher=HarperCollins e-books|location=New York|isbn=978-0-06-207863-6|page=285|chapter=8. Forgeries, Lies, Deceptions, and the Writings of the New Testament. Modern Forgeries, Lies, and Deceptions. The Death Sentence of Jesus Christ.|chapterurl=http://www.scribd.com/doc/55685655/Forged|quote=This does not mean, as is now being claimed with alarming regularity, that Jesus never existed. He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees, based on clear and certain evidence. But as with the vast majority of all persons who lived and died in the first century, he does not appear in the records of the Roman people.}}</ref>) or have been scientifically invalidated (e.g. [[Eusebius]]'s vision that the primary Christian church had a monolithic unity based upon the truth received from the [[Apostle]]s<ref>{{cite book|first1=Bart D.| last1=Ehrman|title=Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew | publisher=Oxford University Press, USA | year=2003 | isbn=0-19-514183-0|pages=173-176}}</ref>).

Allan Bloom perfectly understood the role of historical Biblical scholarship in the contemporary age. He disagreed with its conclusions but as highly academically educated he knew there is no easy refutation of its claims:

Bloom, Allan (1987). "The Student and the University". The Closing of the American Mind (Pbk ed.). New York: SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS. pp. 374–375. ISBN 0-671-65715-1. Retrieved 18 august 2010. I am distinguishing two related but different problems here. The contents of the classic books have become particularly difficult to defend in modern times, and the professors who teach them do not care to defend them, are not interested in their truth. One can most clearly see the latter in the case of the Bible. To include it in the humanities is already a blasphemy, a denial of its own claims. There it is almost inevitably treated in one of two ways: It is subjected to modern "scientific" analysis, called the Higher Criticism, where it is dismantled, to show how "sacred" books are put together, and they are not what they claim to be. It is useful as a mosaic in which one finds the footprints of many dead civilizations. Or else the Bible is used in courses of comparative religion as one expression of the need for the "sacred" and as a contribution to the very modern, very scientific study of the structure of "myths". (Here one can join up with the anthropologists and really be alive.) A teacher who treated the Bible naively, taking at its word, or Word, would be accused of scientific incompetence and lack of sophistication. Moreover, he might rock the boat and start the religious wars all over again, as well as a quarrel within the university between reason and revelation, which would upset comfortable arrangements and wind up by being humiliating to the humanities. Here one sees the traces of the Enlightenment's political project, which wanted precisely to render the Bible, and other old books, undangerous. This project is one of the underlying causes of the impotence of the humanities. The best that can be done, it appears, is to teach "The Bible as Literature," as opposed to "as Revelation," which it claims to be. In this way it can be read somewhat independently of deforming scholarly apparatus, as we read, for example, Pride and Prejudice. Thus the few professors who feel that there is something wrong with the other approaches tend to their consciences. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)

We cannot state that material events are all that is, but we may state that material events is all we could objectively know during our short life on this planet. The materialism of the historical method is methodological, not ontological. Potential truths like Vespasian became a god or Attila the Hun was possessed by evil spirits cannot constitute history. There is no way to objectively know if they were true, but there can be made theological arguments they are are either true or false. I do not plead for the removal of theology from Wikipedia articles. But theological statements always have to be attributed like "the Pope said this", "Catholics generally believe that to be true, while Protestants generally don't buy it", "most Mormons believe such and such to be true", "the Seventh-Day Adventist Conference has proclaimed that". As long as theological truths depend upon the theological allegiance of the subject, they are clearly no objective facts (as Kant defined objectivity). Historians generally write for a multi-religious audience, consisting of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, Neo-Pagans and so on and they do not want that the arguments used in their articles depend upon the theological persuasion of their readers. If historians would publish peer-reviewed articles acceptable only to a Christian audience or only to a Muslim audience, they would themselves undermine the objectivity of their own conclusions. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan put it, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."

As I have stated before, there are other Wikipedia articles about God in Christianity, God in Judaism, God in Islam and so on, so the theological views upon Yahweh are covered inside Wikipedia, it is just that they are too long to also be covered in this article, besides this article would not be the proper place to cover them, since is title is seldom employed by rank-and-file religious believers, it's academic jargon employed by scholars.

We would like to believe that "history is what really happened", but all we can establish to be historically proven facts, if anything at all could be historically proven, is "history is what is written by historians". And as far as Wikipedia is concerned, historical facts are established by mainstream historians. Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:54, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm going to start with the second to last claim, because we've been over it twice before by my count. I have no idea where you're getting the idea that the rank and file believer doesn't use Yahweh. The term is used quite regularly in the circles I listen to, and Yahweh, Jehovah, and Lord are all completely interchangeable in Christian terminology, where the last two are obviously used all the time. Saying this article should exclude the theological aspects of Yahwism is like saying Jesus should redirect to the Historical Jesus with Jesus in Christianity as an afterthought.

At the end of the day, this is an interesting philosophical discussion, and I strongly believe your epistemology embodies everything you can possibly do wrong when writing history as it uses "fact" in contexts referring to things which could be not true but which a lot of people agree with, but we are getting beside the point. You're jumping back and forth between policies and your philosophy, and I'm sorry, Wikipedia doesn't operate upon your epistemology. In the first place, Wikipedia does not render the majority of historians as the arbiters of fact. It renders the majority of historians as the majority of historians, and the minorities as minorities in proportion to the degree they've been published. Here is the first place you've overcommitted. You want all of the article to reflect the positions of not all of the participants in the debate. If a position is truly fringe that's appropriate, but in this case it's not. Numerous sources which have been proffered here have made admission against interest that there are still opponents to the present majority view. The fact that these same sources say all kinds of bad things about people who haven't adopted that view is really not very surprising if you've ever followed an academic debate of any kind. And suffice it to say, undue weight would read very differently if the mere fact that the majority reject the findings of a minority made that minority fringe.

In the second place, Wikipedia only defers to historical authority within historians' bailiwick. This is an article on a god, as understood primarily through his religious texts. Several passages state the nature of the development of Yahwism by literary analysis of those texts. Said authors may be employed as historians, and their critics may be employed as theologians, but now they're both doing literary analysis, assuming their scholarship is peer reviewed, they're equals, background notwithstanding. I find it particularly inappropriate that historians are doing exegetical theology but we're calling it history so that the article doesn't have to interact with the voluminous literature written on that subject by exegetical theologians.

In the third, Wikipedia never endorses the burying of explanatory information like why or how someone arrived at a certain conclusion unless that's patently unnecessary (cf. We can know George Washington was the first US president because...). I clearly don't feel that the mainstream position in this article is correct. I'm cynical and jaded by academic dishonesty and I know that people get Ph.D.s and tenure by publishing a lot of groundbreaking crap that eventually gets shot down, but generally only after the author dies because academic bigshots have clout they use to further their careers and not the study of history. Even with all of that, I'm don't have a problem with letting the views remain, if they were slightly better qualified. But let's say I didn't understand NPOV and insisted this article has to say what I believe is true. What does the NPOV faq tell me? "The great thing about NPOV is that you aren't claiming anything, except to say, 'So-and-so argues that ____________, and therefore, ___________.' This can be done with a straight face, with no moral compunctions, because you are attributing the claim to someone else." And also "[T]o be neutral is to describe debates rather than engage in them. In other words, when discussing a subject, we should report what people have said about it rather than what is so." But this is exactly what I'm being told the article cannot do for fear that qualifying arguments somehow undercuts them.

As long as this last problem remains, you will never have any end of religionists taking issue with this page. Whether or not the arguments with which exception is being taken are valid, they're not sound for a large body of persons because they reason from the starting point: "First, assume Yahweh is not real," which is obviously a nonstarter. And as for me, I may not be a Levantine historian, but I know when someone's blowing smoke. These parties can argue their theses in their secondary literature as much as they want. They can even have their theses recorded as the majority view in this article. But it's wholly inappropriate to say that speculative reconstructions of the beliefs of an illiterate society can be reliably based on fragmentary evidence supposedly written five to seven centuries after the fact. These theses need to be explained, not endorsed, because while the explanation will always be a valid explanation of why some people held some views, we will assuredly end up taking the endorsements down sooner or later, and the intellectually honest will have egg all over our face that we ever stated as fact what we could have just reported neutrally as any tertiary source should. Thanatosimii (talk) 23:24, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

That the word "Yahweh" is commonly used by ordinary believers is contentious, my view it is that "LORD" is an avoidance of using Yahweh, and I am far from being the only one who believes this. Scholars could be quoted who believe this.

I did not claim that theology should be removed, but I think there are better places for rendering theological claims about God, there already is the article God which clearly talks about the Being considered the Creator of the world.

There is a difference among minority views, fringe views and pseudoscientific views. Minority views should be rendered when notable, taking WP:UNDUE in consideration, fringe views should have their own article if they are notable, but they cannot be presented as representing science and pseudoscientific views should only be presenting stating that they are a failed attempt at doing science. This applies inasmuch we talk of objective facts. Theology is notable, but it is utterly subjective. If one quits a church, lots of theological statements may become invalid for him/her.

I am not opposed to explaining why historians don't operate with supernatural facts, but I think the proper place for doing it would be historical method. This is a very general claim and Yahweh would not be the proper place to describe it, since it applies to so many other Wikipedia articles. It could be passingly mentioned in Yahweh, but a thorough description belongs in historical method.

We are not required to explain that chemists do not operate with supernatural facts in hydrochloric acid, nor that physicists don't operate with supernatural facts in electron, nor that biologists don't operate with supernatural facts in felidae, although theologians would say these were all created by God. If scientists are to be smeared as adepts of materialism, why not use these articles in order to accuse them of theological bias?

I have never said "First, assume Yahweh is not real". What I stated is that neither "Yahweh is real" nor "Yahweh isn't real" are objective facts. Neither one nor the other could be proven through historical research, since they are facts belonging to theology, be it Jewish, Christian or atheism.

As Bart Ehrman stated, historians have no access to God. They cannot describe the millitary conflicts between Protestants and Catholics as the will of God or as the hand of divine providence, because that's theology, it isn't history. And of course Catholic theologians would describe them quite differently from Protestant theologians, simply because they are committed to the truth of their own theology. I did not say that theological views cannot be mentioned, but they should always be mentioned as subjective views instead of facts.

As I have pointed before, if Wikipedia were written during Galileo's lifetime, it would dismiss heliocentrism as a fringe idea:

If Wikipedia had been available around the fourth century B.C., it would have reported the view that the Earth is flat as a fact and without qualification. And it would have reported the views of Eratosthenes (who correctly determined the earth's circumference in 240BC) either as controversial, or a fringe view. Similarly if available in Galileo's time, it would have reported the view that the sun goes round the earth as a fact, and Galileo's view would have been rejected as 'original research'.

— Wikipedia:Why Wikipedia cannot claim the earth is not flat

The idea is that we understand facts through science, broad agreement among mainstream scientists produces the scientific consensus, it changes in time and therefore what counts as fact depends on the time when we are making such judgment. I guess there were astronomy textbooks presenting the Chamberlin–Moulton planetesimal hypothesis as fact. Or that there is only one galaxy. Now they are no longer considered facts, but they were once considered facts. So, if this holds for astronomy, why wouldn't it hold for history? If people quote chemistry books for learning about facts, why shouldn't they quote history books for learning about facts? How do we know that the Holocaust really happened? We know it because it is consensually affirmed by historians. Children learn in school from history books about the Holocaust. University students learn it from textbooks. Wikipedia learned it from reliable sources. We have to draw somewhere the line between objective historical fact and imaginative speculation. If historians don't consider as facts the views about Yahweh presented in this article, this has to be shown through citing mainstream historians who say so. Maybe the editors were wrong and there is no consensus, but till now this has not been shown. Otherwise your statements boil down to "there are no historical facts" or "history isn't about facts" or "we have no way to know historical facts". By "we" I mean Wikipedia editors, in their quality of being Wikipedia editors. Wikipedia is always looking at the world through the lens of mainstream scholarship. I think this is the epistemology of Wikipedia. If Ehrman could be cited to show that historians believe it is a fact that Jesus has really existed, I don't understand why he (or his peers) cannot be cited to establish facts about Yahweh. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:59, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Comparisons to how we would behave on pages with no theological contents just aren't valid. This is a subject of theological interest, theologians have written extensively about it, and to the extent that both historians and theologians are studying the earliest understanding of Yahweh through literary, exegetical analysis in peer reviewed work, they are equals. And I'm really getting concerned with the way you jump back and forth between scientific and historical spheres as if history were a science and not a humanity. Published historical works regularly are speculative on such a level as would cause any scientific paper to crash and burn in peer review. Science produces facts because we can readily test them. Historical theses can rarely be tested, so we rely on induction, which means a lot of what passes for fact is properly just an educated guess. Even if historical consensus rendered fact, (and it doesn't, because no fact is ever false, but many consensuses are overthrown) the simple fact that a lot of historians are ascribing to the same line of inductive reasoning doesn't make the reasoning stronger. There are two relevent axes here - number of adherents and degree of certainty - and even if 100% of historians took the same position, that still wouldn't necessarily mean there is a historical consensus that something is fact if the consensus is simply that everyone thinks a position to be probable. "Modern scholarship feels that" or "scholars consider it likely that" would go a long way to taking the tendentiousness off the article.

The idea that all contrary positions are fringe seems to be based on the fact that lots of scholars in the mainstream say bad things about the position, whereas the true definition of fringe is a dearth of peer-reviewed literature backing a subject. Authors and works have been suggested to you, it has not been suggested that they receive any particularly large amount of attention, and your own sources raised to discredit them testify against interest that the mainstream position has not been quite as successful in annihilating all opposition as you'd have us believe. There can't be a serious effort by the mainstream to discredit the less minimalist without there being recalcitrant Albrightists still out there. It strikes me that certain parties, seeing how Evolution-ID panned out, want to treat every dispute between the conservative and revisionist takes on an article of theological relevance as if they must play out according to that pattern, specifics be damned.

You're right that this page doesn't need to be the one to take the debate over priors all the way down to epistemological bare-bones, but it does need to disclose a certain amount of the thought and argument which the authors being quoted deploy in order to make their case. This almost always diffuses NPOV disputes. Parties arguing against X will never consider it appropriate for the article to simply state "X" but also can't disagree with the statement "so and so argues X because of such and such and has been followed by in the bulk of the historical literature." When X is only sound if, ultimately, we presume !God, you will never see the end of dispute here if you do anything more than report that lots of scholars have concluded X. I don't think we're going to get anywhere in this dispute until you own up to the fact that the suggestions I'm making which you're taking exception to are direct quotes from or at most mild paraphrases of the POV dispute resolution process.

The problem you seem to be having with this is that you really want to use the simple indicative to indicate "facts," where by facts you mean things which might be objectively incorrect but are the product of some kind of constructivist historical epistemology. That puts us in the position of writing true falsehoods and untrue facts in a mood indicating objective reality. You should have a problem with this. It's hardly onerous to fix this problem either. Just put "X argues" or "because Y" throughout the article. It's more enlightening. It's more neutral. And if I had taken the tack of a POV pusher, it's what I would have been reprimanded with. I'm beginning to wish I had been a POV pusher, because the remedy when someone complains that an article isn't telling "the truth" is to tell him in Wikipedia we don't endorse arguments, we just report them. Thanatosimii (talk) 03:52, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't object to saying that "mainstream historians consider that... because of...". What I was saying is that "there are henotheist verses in the Bible" is a fact, not a speculative opinion (as Rursus indicated above). There are historical facts about the Bible, although there is also much historical theory about the Bible which relies on speculation or it is accepted as true until it will be proven wrong. I did not say that all what mainstream scholars affirm would be fact. The problem with historical facts is that we have to trust the historians to tell us this has really happened, that has probably happened, that may have happened, that is highly unlikely to have happened, that alleged fact is pseudohistory and so on. Wikipedia had a choice between presenting Jesus as a real person, a mythical character or saying that it is unable to say which of these is true. It does not silence the claim that Jesus did not exist, but it does not present it as fact. Instead, it presents as fact that Jesus did exist. Wikipedia considers the existence of Jesus as fact because most scholars who studied this problem affirm that he really existed. Wikipedia does not perform original research on their evidence, nor second guesses their ability to tell us that Jesus really existed. But other views about Jesus are mere theories, or, better said, hypotheses and we, as Wikipedia editors, know this from the fact that there is no broad consensus upon such hypotheses. What I am saying is that we have to draw somewhere the line between historical fact and speculation. Of course it can be debated if this or that affirmation represents a fact or it is merely educated opinion. Tgeorgescu (talk) 09:02, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

In the end, historical facts can't be known with absolute certainty, since they cannot be experimentally retested. For some of them there is more evidence, for others there is less evidence. History books cannot say all over the place Julius Caesar has probably crossed the Rubicon, he probably became Consul, he was probably assassinated by a conspiracy led by Brutus and so on. Instead they affirm these as facts and so does Wikipedia. So even if it seems paradoxical, historical facts could in theory be false. Tgeorgescu (talk) 09:38, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with including in the article theological scholarship, since there are theologians who actually do historical research upon the Bible. Most theologians would not get disturbed by the conclusions of mainstream historical research as there are many theologians which agree with most of it or at least with it as a practice. The problem is when fundamentalist theologians deny what has become obvious after centuries of historical research. That's what characterizes them as fringe and not as minority view. A minority view means reasonable disagreement, fringe means being unreasonable. There are people who are not willing to engage arguments made by historians, and go to extreme lengths in order to deny that the Bible is fallible. As Allan Bloom himself admitted, whether he wanted to do that or not, it has become academically obvious that the Bible is a very human book. There are many theologians who agree with this, not all of them are fundamentalist. Whether the Bible should be the guide for faith is another matter, which has to be judged theologically, not historically. But if they are not willing to listen to and engage historical arguments, it renders their position as autistic or deaf to the world. At least they should admit that there are real problems with the fundamentalist understanding of the Bible and of the Levantine history. If they are not prepared to admit that much, they will remain fringe and they will be increasingly marginalized in historical journals. At least being discredited by mainstream scholars is a sign of receiving attention and being read. They risk losing even being discredited by mainstream historians, like in a Twilight Zone episode wherein lawbreakers were stamped on their forehead and declared inexistent as persons. I hope you do not conflate theology with fundamentalism. Tgeorgescu (talk) 13:18, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

At least the Pope issued an official statement recognizing the importance of mainstream historical research for understanding the Bible. As we know, the Catholic Church is the largest Christian denomination and it benefits from an age-old theological tradition. So, this is by default a view adopted by a large number of theologians and Christian history scholars, who happen to be Catholic. I don't know much about Eastern-Orthodox theology, but it is divided between academical scholarship and substandard works, the substandard works being generally intolerant, fundamentalist and displaying a crass lack of academical competence, while the academical scholarship is open to understanding and cooperating with other denominations. Tgeorgescu (talk) 13:34, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Comparing a historical reconstruction of the belief system of an illiterate people only documented well after the fact to our understanding of events even in the Roman period isn't valid. There are things that can be presumed to have met a burden of proof and don't need qualifications, but a reconstruction isn't one of them. Since I have in every response here maid my main point that you need to disclaim the reasoning upon which the reconstructions rest apparent, and you have repeatedly told me that a lot of scholars accept the reconstructions so we can just state that they're true and move on, I don't see how you can argue you're not taking exception to qualifying thee statements at this point. I don't want to be one of of those people who can't gracefully receive a conciliatory position, but just so I'm sure you're on the same page, you'll take no issue if someone were to implement a simple reportive analysis of the positions at this point?

So far as fringe goes, I've heard all that and worse out of critics of the present position. The fact that one position considers another position bad scholarship is about as noteworthy as observing that water is wet. You can't rely on the arguments of the majority position to dismiss all dissenters, or all we'd have are a majority view and fringe views. Wikipedia uses a different standard, assigning space in the article on the basis of the size the positions take up in the literature. When you write an article that takes one position exclusively, you're not saying that said position is the consensus, you're saying that dissent among scholars doesn't exist. If I had been asking for any lengthy treatment of these positions, undue weight would tell me that Hoffmeier and Kitchen and a smattering of Albrightists don't get the lion's share of the article. But I've made much more modest requests, and by dismissing the need of any qualification anywhere that the majority position has detractors, you're clearly overreaching.

Lastly, bifurcating scholarship into historical scholarship and fidelist theology is still causing you to identify as history things which are not. You take issue with pseudohistory, I take issue with pseudotheology. We wouldn't suggest that the article on Calvinism is actually an article on sixteenth century Geneva so theologians have no say in the particulars, and we wouldn't say that N.T. Wright has nothing to say on the meaning of Paul because he's a churchman and theological statements come down to faith, not scholarship. I suggest you reread the paragraph Ancient Israel and Judah and tell me that an analysis of the text of the Hebrew Bible isn't theologically germane. Thanatosimii (talk) 15:11, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

As I said there are theologians who do historical research according to all the rules of the craft. Informally we may say that they went historian (but they still are theologians). And I said that I am not opposed to rendering theological views, but they have to be attributed, since one's theology deeply depends upon his/her churchly allegiance. I doubted that this article would be the proper place for pure theology, but if you want to improve the article, do it. Do consider that fundamentalist theology is just a fraction of all theology. A mark of pseudoscience is "Be especially careful of anyone trying to prove the validity of their religious beliefs and practices by using science" (quoted from [3]). Tgeorgescu (talk) 16:40, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I will agree to the necessity of attribution, since all non-analytical propositions depend on the assumption of priors. I also don't suggest much by way of pure theology here, but rather, that neither historian nor theologian is given authority over a matter which is neither strict theology, or strict history, but literary exegesis. But I'm not a Tanakh exegete. I take your final point, but I don't see much value in dividing the world into spheres of knowledge, so I don't differentiate the religionist from an adherent of any secular philosophy and am equally skeptical of anyone trying to prove any philosophical -ism scientifically. Though I think it's also worth remembering that the religionists taking issue with this page probably don't really want history to prove their views (which it can't) but only that it not claim to have disproved their views (which it also can't in such a dimly understood time but which it presently reads as if it's doing). It's my experience that such people take authority from revelation and only address other avenues of obtaining knowledge when those methods are being presented as falsification of dogma. If you aren't trying to write a page that says "Jews and Christians believe Yahweh is actually real. This is false, and therefore the only rational explanation of why people started thinking monotheistically about Yahweh is...." then you've not succeeded. Most parties don't accept nuances like subjective truth or objective truth and tend to think along more old fashioned lines like P or !P. To suggest P objectively and !P subjectively comes off as suggesting P is true and !P is make-believe that the faithful collectively delude themselves with. Thanatosimii (talk) 21:10, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

William Dever wrote "(Of course, for some, that only made the Biblical story more miraculous than ever—Joshua destroyed a city that wasn't even there!)" That is a statement of fact, since there is good evidence for it. As I said, one can neither prove nor disprove that Yahweh is real through the historical method, since that is not a falsifiable statement. Upon being either science or belonging to the humanities, history is I think both at the same time. Methodological naturalism or methodological materialism is the least common denominator for people with various religions and -isms, since they agreed to disagree on religions and -isms, but agreed that they may agree upon material phenomena. Of course history cannot prove that materialism is better than idealism or that idealism is better than materialism. I said that you may add theological analysis to the article, having in mind that other editors will consider if it is appropriate (I will take a step back). I said that not everything that mainstream historians affirm could be treated as fact. Facts are those enjoying a broad consensus, and such consensus can only occur if there is plausible evidence for such alleged fact. At least for Wikipedia, facts can only be reconstructed, namely by reliable sources. There is no essential difference in how Wikipedia learns about electrons and how it learns about the Napoleon's life: it can only learn from experts, scientists, scholars, academics, journalists and such; what it cannot do is learn from the bare reality, from unadulterated direct evidence. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:07, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

About "historical reconstruction based upon almost no evidence", it sounds straightforward. But since it is so straightforward why did mainstream historians not tackle it? It pertains to their area of expertise and therefore there should be plenty of mainstream sources discussing this problem. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:16, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

The statement that there was no Jericho to destroy relies on premises. Whether it's a fact depends on whether the premises are as good as you say they are. What's a fact is that radiocarbon dating suggests the site was uninhabited from 1500-1000. It's a fact no one sticks Joshua that early, if they have him at all. It's also a fact that nearly all published sources agree on this much. Why not just stick to those facts? Because their logic is valid, but their premises - validity of radiocarbon and a high MBIIC-Iron I chronology - are vulnerable to serious revision. I happen to have done work on the absolute chronology of MBIIA finds in the delta, and I can assure you that there's serious grumbling about how highly Syrio-Palestinian archaeologists have jacked up their dates, and if Bietak ever gets enough people into the ultra-low camp, the bottom is going to fall out of this thing. Radio-carbon dates are consistently telling ANE historians that things happened impossibly early. There are published complaints to that effect. These complaints haven't specifically been applied to reevaluating Syrio-Palestinian dating schemes in print yet, so doing that in Wikipedia would be a Synth violation, but obviously one should be treading cautiously here.

We're a tertiary source. If something is actually as certain as "Caesar crossed the Rubicon," you can just write it. But if not, you need to passively report what other people have written, which means not adopting the tendentiousness intrinsic in argumentative writing. Virtually nothing in ancient history is ever that straightforward. I'm thus not certain what you mean when you ask "why do mainstream historians not tackle it?" If we didn't use reconstructions, we couldn't say hardly anything about the ANE at all. That doesn't mean we don't have to tacitly acknowledge that these are just very widely accepted hypotheses subject to change. You can't look at ANE history like Renaissance history or American History or even Classical history. Discoveries and advancements rarely prove, they just tend to suggest.

I've just made an edit to one paragraph where I actually have some background. That now reads as tertiary writing should. Do you take exception to the idea that the whole article should be written in that tone? Because if not, I don't know what we're arguing about. Thanatosimii (talk) 01:18, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

As I said I will take a step back from your edits and let other editors evaluate them. As far as Wikipedia is concerned, the difference among "it is a fact that...", "scholars consider that is is fact that...", "scholars consider that..." and "for mainstream scholarship it is settled that..." is moot, since according to Wikipedia policies and guidelines they render the same information. Anyway, repeating all over the place "scientists consider that the electron has a spin of 1/2", "mainstream scientists consider that beta rays consist of electrons" and so on would look weird or be in bad taste. In physics, just as in history, many issues are fuzzy or controversial, while others are settled through broad consensus. Tgeorgescu (talk) 21:30, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

They don't remotely render the same information. I really have to wonder which policy page you believe you're quoting. And I particularly have to wonder how much background you have in history if you think the period we're taking about is understood to the same extent as the spin of the electron. How could anyone even imagine this [4] could be written about a subject known even as spottily as the Egyptian history of the same period? There isn't even an extrabiblically attested king list for Israel or Judah. Thanatosimii (talk) 03:53, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, something unanimously agreed to be true , such as the spin of the electron , will be presented much differently than historical theories which are subject to constant revision . — kwami (talk) 05:31, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

This does not deny the argument that facts are established through broad scientific consensus, it only denies that it is applicable to the specifics of some issues about Yahweh (which I did not deny, either). Do mind that theories/facts of physics are not a priori exempted from being revised. By the policies and guidelines I meant WP:SOURCES, WP:PRIMARY and WP:UNDUE. Tgeorgescu (talk) 15:41, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

My idea is to discuss for each notable scholarly conclusion if it constitutes fact or opinion, instead of globally saying that all alleged facts about Yahweh are merely educated guesses. Tgeorgescu (talk) 15:48, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Please stop trying to cast this issue as one wherein a distinction between facts and opinions is germane. We're talking about theses and arguments, which categorically transcend a fact/opinion dichotomy. A thesis is an opinion an author asserts to be a fact for a reason, and this all needs to be disclosed. In many fields arguments may regularly be airtight enough and theses falsifiable enough for us to assume they represent reality as it actually is, but ancient history is not exactly what one would consider one of those fields. When I say we can't be sure about the actual factuality of a lot of scholarly work, I'm not talking about the baseline epistemic humility to which you have assented. I'm talking about real uncertainty arising from the fact that we're talking about a people's religious concepts from a preliterate society which left us virtually nothing by way of primary source material. If you want to talk about facts we can really know, most of those are the textual and archaeological data in the paragraphs I've edited so far. But the paragraph I've been directing my criticism toward which purports to trace an evolution in Yahwism rests not on texts or artifacts but on reconstructions of a secondary witness to ancient Yahwism (the Hebrew Bible) which interpolates the sociological construct that theology is deified society. This may be persuasive today, but the argument is reconstructive on such a level that the intended audience would never go so far as to say history must have unfolded this way and this reconstruction will still be the standard model in a hundred years. Yet you are suggesting that when a large majority of scholars agree on something, though it might be wrong, it only might be wrong the same way that there's a remote possibility that we've horrendously mismeasured a universal constant and thus we don't have to worry about maintaining neutrality by reporting instead of endorsing. This is the only way I can make sense of your parallelism between the fact which you believe may be established in this article and facts like the life of Caesar or the properties of subatomic particles. This makes me again wonder what your particular background in ancient history is, because when it comes to the appropriate tone for an article on the ANE to have, you sound, as it were, a little tone-deaf. There is nothing in those policy pages which you cite which suggests you may adapt a tendentious tone when an argument reaches a certain level of positive reception, and unfortunately WP:Ignore all nuance isn't policy yet. Thanatosimii (talk) 19:52, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

I suggest more nuance than "there can be nothing known with reasonable certainty about Yahweh". If there are no facts to be known in this matter, then all opinions are equal, and equally worthless. What I object to is the thesis that there are absolutely no facts about Yahweh, although you have admitted about that at least something can be known about Yahweh. Tgeorgescu (talk) 23:26, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't recall suggesting that nothing can be known about Yahwism with reasonable certainty, only that whether a specific proposition is one of the things which can be known will depend on the validity of an argument, and that the argument should be given instead of the conclusion asserted whenever it's clear that an author, however widely followed, is reconstructing history rather than reporting a patently obvious or easily falsifiable fact. Hence, even though I could have written "Yahweh was first worshiped by the Shasu" I disclaimed that this conclusion hinges upon our understanding of the rendering of Asiatic proper nouns in Hieroglyphics, and that an expert in the field, followed by other experts, thinks the connection is valid. I don't see why that's such a scary way to write history. You're really tied down to this fact/opinion dichotomy, but I don't accept your false dilemma. We are not obliged to either overstate the conclusiveness of theories or throw out all theories as worthless. The fact that a lot of scholars familiar with a period suggest one thing gives that position a lot of clout. But a weighty yet ultimately non-falsifiable theory can't be treated as if it's on the same level as "Assyria conquered Israel" or other facts which no reasonable educated person could be uncertain about. We are not obliged to qualify the indisputable, only everything else. Thanatosimii (talk) 01:39, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

I just noticed and have to find it ironic that the article presently uses "evidence increasingly suggests" to qualify the fact that many Israelites worshiped Asherah as Yahweh's wife, when that's one of the least disputable statements in the article shy of the description of the overarching political and religious milieu. Thanatosimii (talk) 01:47, 23 September 2013 (UTC)