Talk:Hebrew Bible

Missing information

Such as the history of the bible itself, its physical history. Where did the scripts come from? What are the oldest surviving pieces of it? etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.82.51.145 (talk) 17:59, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

The physical history of the bible, if not completely taboo, is always shrouded in mist, because the biblical scholars are believers, and they want to hide the fact that we have no certified "original" version the sacred text. In another wikipedia article you can find the statement that the Leningrad codex, most ancient complete version of the Hebrew text, dates from around 1000 CE, but "was composed" 100 BCE. How do they know? 2A01:E34:EC0C:8370:1418:831F:CF13:A733 (talk) 22:48, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Anyone is welcome to delete my previous comment. It contains a typo ("version OF the previous text"). And it is a general remark, which I indulged in, but cannot be used to improve the article. 2A01:E34:EC0C:8370:1418:831F:CF13:A733 (talk) 22:52, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Hewbrew Bible?

Who gets to decide on this term? A bunch of academics at Harvard that aren't even Jewish?

There's not a single jew on the planet that uses this term, so what right do these elitists have to define what our holy book is called? Valgrus Thunderaxe (talk) 14:37, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

The WP:PAG is WP:COMMONNAME. If you don't abide by it you will be blocked. I suggest you temper your tone. Wikipedians have a low tolerance for anti-intelectualism. Wikipedia is heavily based upon WP:SCHOLARSHIP, not upon the opinions of the commoners. tgeorgescu (talk) 15:02, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Isn't your statement contradictory?

On one hand you say it's all about WP:COMMONNAME — yet on the other hand you claim it's about scholarship. The two aren't necessarily identical.

Wikipedia may want to save face and not admit it but it clearly looks like since there is no one unified common name for the books of text (that would satisfy both Christians and Jewish faiths alike) scholars settled on inventing a whole third purely academic term that is still not common among ordinary people of any faith or even non faith. —Loginnigol 18:30, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

You're going to have to distinguish "is called" from "title of the article about it on Wikipedia" and avoid using utterly unfounded and extreme statements like "not a single jew on the planet that uses this term" and unfounded declarations like "at Harvard" and "these elitists". (I hope pulling stuff like this out of thin air isn't how you handle every disagreement you have in your life.) Every title on Wikipedia is subject to community consensus, taking into account the pertinent guidelines such as the one Tgeorgescu mentioned, WP:COMMONNAME. And, while written by Jews for Jews, the Tanakh is also a scripture important to Christians and Muslims and a subject of discussion worldwide under multiple names, including "Old Testament", which would have been a really skewed choice of a title. I'm not saying this as a manner of entering into a debate that you've initiated but, instead, to summarize the outcome of the discussions that have been held. Please, let's not start all over again, at least not unless there's anything new to add that wasn't already considered, debated, and decided in the course of the formal debate from 2018, Talk:Hebrew Bible/Archive 1#Requested move 27 June 2018. Largoplazo (talk) 16:28, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

The last sentence of the third paragraph

At the time of this comment, the sentence in question says: "However, such an Urtext has never been found, and which of the three commonly known versions (Septuagint, Masoretic Text, Samaritan Pentateuch) is closest to the Urtext is debated."

The DSS are older than the Masoretic. The Septuagint is a greek translation and as such has the difficulties involved in translating from one language into a much different language. Because the DSS are older, I think they should be included in this list. If it is argued that the DSS is incomplete, then the fact that the Samaritans only recognize the Torah books would be a counter-argument to that argument. Itinerantlife (talk) 01:29, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

No dates for the writing of biblical books at all?

Wow. This page needs some serious work. There are plenty of good scholarly works on the Tanakh written by Professors of Biblical studies who date the books they study according to epigraphy. In some cases they can chart the date of texts by analysis of the Hebrew language, which changed over time. There are many reliable and objective ways to date biblical books or at least provide an accurate window for their probably composition. For instance, Victor Hurowits (professor of Bible, archaeology and ancient Near Eastern studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) dated the book of Proverbs to the 7th C. BCE at the latest (he published a two-volume Hebrew commentary on the Book of Proverbs in the Mikra LeYisra’el). Start with Hurowitz, then branch out to other notables for dating.

Ignoring the matter and just concentrating on the matter of fixing the Cannon is misleading to the general public and looks borderline anti-semitic. 72.105.28.178 (talk) 14:44, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Proverbs is a "collection of collections" relating to a pattern of life which lasted for more than a millennium, and impossible to date.

Quoted from Dating the Bible. tgeorgescu (talk) 15:46, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

The authorship and dating of each book is covered at the respective book's article. It's best that the matter isn't covered here because then each book would have to get a whole treatment here because it isn't a simple matter, and that would overwhelm the article unnecessarily. Shaking my head at people who jump to anti-Semitism, or any other bigotry, as the reason for every perceived shortcoming. (And I'm Jewish and I despise anti-Jewish hatred, in case your response to me was going to be an unfounded accusation.) Largoplazo (talk) 16:50, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Hurowitz was a bona fide scholar, but here at Wikipedia we follow due weight of scholarly opinion.

And it's a tad difficult to do epigraphy when all available manuscripts are relatively late (say at least 500 years later than the presumed dating). tgeorgescu (talk) 01:54, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

References

Requested move 13 October 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) — MaterialWorks 18:05, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

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Hebrew Bible → Tanakh – Placing the central Jewish holy text at a name that is derivative of the Christian holy text is a deeply embedded structural and systemic bias. This is exactly the same as placing the wikipedia page for Koran at the name "Islamic bible." Darker Dreams (talk) 05:23, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

• Comment Anyone participating in this discussion should be aware:
  • that the applicable guidelines are at WP:COMMONNAME; any disagreement with those guidelines should be raised at Wikipedia talk:Article titles as it cannot be resolved here.
  • that this article was moved here from Tanakh as the result of a Talk:Hebrew Bible/Archive 1#Requested move 27 June 2018, and should be familiar with the arguments given there and the basis given for the outcome so as to avoid unnecesarily rehashing old ground.
  • that the requestor's rationale This is exactly the same as placing the wikipedia page for Koran at the name "Islamic bible" is a false premise. The term "Hebrew Bible" is in common use, with most of the world not even knowing the word "Tanakh", while "Koran" (alternatively, "Qur'an") is the name by which most people know that work, and "Islamic Bible" is virtually nonexistent. So they are not "exactly the same thing" in the context of what common usage is, which, per WP:COMMONNAME, is what's relevant to this discussion. Largoplazo (talk) 10:43, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose: "Hebrew Bible" is the neutral, scholarly term (e.g. Women in the Hebrew Bible: A Reader). The "Christian" name is, of course, "Old Testament". StAnselm (talk) 13:54, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per COMMONNAME and StAnselm. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 13:57, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:USEENGLISH and WP:COMMONNAME per the Google Ngrams. And the nom's assertion that this is "exactly the same as placing the wikipedia page for Koran at the name 'Islamic bible'" is not correct. The text of the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament section of the Christian Bible overlap, so the terminology makes sense. Whereas there is no overlap in the text of the Christian Bible and the Koran. Rreagan007 (talk) 17:34, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

The N-grams result is very interesting - the increase over the past forty years is, I think, connected to the publication of The Art of Biblical Narrative in 1981. StAnselm (talk) 19:05, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

• Mild oppose for reasons given above (although I would accept a rename with consensus). The OP did themselves no favours with the rather fanciful 'exactly the same as placing the wikipedia page for Koran at the name "Islamic bible"' attempted rationale, which isn't comparable and has no bearing on this particular discussion. Feline Hymnic (talk) 15:05, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose for what it's worth, consensus aside, it means 'the books' in Greek, and many Jews in the Mediterranean world spoke Greek at the time the canon of the Hebrew Bible was being finalized. A lot of specific proper names have banal, general etymologies, but it doesn't really seem like the word 'Bible' emerged out of a Christian-specific context. Here's Josephus in Antiquities of the Jews, for my own edification (if not exactly a revelation):

τρέψομαι δὲ ἐπὶ τὴν ἀφήγησιν ἤδη τῶν πραγμάτων μνησθεὶς πρότερον ὧν περὶ τῆς τοῦ κόσμου κατασκευῆς εἶπε Μωυσῆς: ταῦτα δ᾽ ἐν ταῖς ἱεραῖς βίβλοις εὗρον ἀναγεγραμμένα. ἔχει δὲ οὕτως:

"I shall now betake myself to the history before me, after I have first mentioned what Moses says of the creation of the world, which I find described in the sacred books after the manner following.".

A smoking gun!

Remsense聊 02:48, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:34, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

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

"(Classical) Jewish Texts" article is needed

Proposed the topic at Talk:Rabbinic literature#"(Classical) Jewish Texts" article is needed, please continue there. Thanks, Arminden (talk) 22:02, 19 December 2023 (UTC)