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Older discussions may be found at:
Hey Yoshiah, lets discuss them here first, O.K.? Jayjg 01:24, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
"He succeeded in uniting the heterogeneous anti-rabbinical elements under his leadership, and formed them into a new sect."
O.K., let's start here. Why do you object to this statement? Please bring references. Jayjg 21:35, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Because he didn't form them all into a new sect or adopt the beliefs of some of the sects cited. For example, the Yugdanites (who followed the Isunians) believed that their leader was a prophet and a messiah. The Isunians believed that a man named Obadiah was a prophet. However, in Ya'acov Al-Kirkisani's "History of Jewish sects" he mentions where each resides, and also a few others such as the Malakites. This record was written in 940 c.e., and the parts I just mentioned have been translated by Leon Nemoy in "Karaite Anthology", 7th book in the Yale Judaica series. I may be able to get other references, but it's 11:30pm :P-- Josiah 05:21, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
This edit was made because 1) None of the manuscripts I have examined, the latest of which being written some 600 years after Anan's life ended, mention anything in the manner of venerating Mohammed or Jesus. Professor Nemoy does not mention this idea either. I added the next part, because (as was noted by Nemoy), only manuscripts written long after Anan's death mention the incident with the caliph, leading those who have studied this area to believe that it may never have happened.-- Josiah 21:30, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I'm curious as to why you've changed Orthodox to Rabbinical to some places.-- Josiah 03:33, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
In the context of comparing Karaism to any of the post haskahala judaism's(reform, conservative, orthodox, recon) it would be best to refer to Rabbinical judaism or Talmudism than orthodoxy which is an anachronism. -- Teacherbrock ( talk) 20:13, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
Although the article seems to have been cleaned up from the Jewish Encyclopedia's version, there are still issues here with neutrality. Anan ben David was obviously an insightful person of far-reaching influence, and there need to be (1) well-reasoned explanations of why individual people/groups followed Anan ben David or how his thinking otherwise affected them, and (2) Rabbanite and other criticisms of Anan ben David identified as such. The article still seems to be disproportionately from a Rabbanite and critical point of view, without an explanation that some of the "facts" as presented in the article are criticisms. I don't know how much information survives about ben David, but we still should try to reveal him from different angles.
I also added this article to WikiProject Judaism and assessed its completion state and importance. Please let me know what you think. -- AFriedman ( talk) 19:53, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
First off, nice to see you here. I'm glad you read my post on F & W's talk page. :)
OK, I admit that back in May I was overcompensating for the article's bias with the word "obviously" :). What I meant to say is that Anan ben David seemed to have had a unique set of ideas about Judaism, and his substantial influence suggests that many people agreed with him. I think there is a significant view, even today, that Anan was an original thinker or at least an original synthesizer of a number of ideas that existed in his time. Proponents of this view might be Jewish historians and Karaite Jews. See, for example, the chapter about Karaite Judaism in _Jews, God and History_ by Max I. Dimont, which attempts to describe ben David from both the Rabbanite and the Karaite perspective.
The Jewish Encyclopedia is online and I've read a number of its articles, and personally I think the entire encyclopedia has serious issues with NPOV. You might want to look at its articles about St. Paul and about Reform Judaism, for example.
Another issue is that accurate and detailed information about ben David is difficult to find. I find it hard to believe that members of rival Jewish traditions, who seem to have written the article in the Jewish Encyclopedia, could have been certain about the unflattering details of his interactions with Abu Hanifa that were put in the article. There's plenty of Jewish folk tradition that can't be verified as historical fact, and perhaps his interaction with Abu Hanifa was in that category. -- AFriedman ( talk) 20:47, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
I didn't know this about Dimont. Even so, he's probably a reputable source about basic information on Jewish history and probably better than Encyclopedia Judaica on NPOV. My field is not Jewish history--actually, it's biology, but because I work in it at a professional level I have some idea of how academic scholarship is conducted. Thanks for the source info. Interesting idea, to look into Jewish history sources and figure out who the scholars are. Actually, that's related to the main thing I'm doing on WP right now--trying to get the Judaism article to good or featured article status. I think it's a shame that the main Judaism article is only "B" class. A major section of the Judaism article is about Jewish history and even if you have just a bit of time to find good sources, I think that's a reasonable way to develop our foundation in the subject before we really branch off into a more specialized article like this one. Then we can figure out who else wants to work on this article and what sources we can use. In the meantime, if you can think of little things to change on this page, that would be very helpful. One doesn't need to know anything about Anan ben David to reword the text so it isn't slanderous, just pay attention to the tone of the article and the subtle hints about aspects of him and his movement that don't quite fit the picture Encyclopedia Judaica was trying to paint. (He said Jews could carry little things on Shabbat and eat meat with dairy...can you find others?)
Also, Anan ben David is not the only early Karaite scholar whose WP article has neutrality issues because of text taken from the Encyclopedia Judaica. He's just the most extreme example I've found. -- AFriedman ( talk) 02:21, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:
Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 ( talk) 02:42, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
Could we have some discussion on Anan ben David's dates please with sources? F.Tromble ( talk) 16:06, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
Onel5969 Excuse me. The article had 2 tags in it, one from 2010, and a second one from July 2022 (not so old at all). The material that is currently in it is obviously not properly sourced (that's why it had the two tags), but it is sound in general, in my own view and knowledge of the subject. You could add additonal "cn" tags to each paragraph that looks not good to you, but otherwise, the two tags at the top of the page already account for that. In my view, it would be preferable to leave the content there, with the tags of course, until someone finds the time to source them, or to remove them if they can't be sourced. I don't think that simply deleting 95% of the content of the page improves the encyclopedia in this case. I think that my suggested course of action would be better and more productive. Thank you, warshy (¥¥) 19:12, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
I think the "Rules for slaughtering", "Rules for sabbath", and "Science" sections are all sourced back to the PD-notice'd Jewish Encyclopedia, just as a general reference, because they have not significantly changed from the original version of this article in 2003, which was an edited version of the Jewish Encyclopedia article. I think those can be safely re-added, preferably with inline citations to the Jewish Encyclopedia and checking that the content lines up. I may do that myself at some point if no objections are raised.
Also, is there policy backing behind removing the majority of an article which is sourced to a general reference? Skarmory (talk • contribs) 06:21, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
![]() | This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Older discussions may be found at:
Hey Yoshiah, lets discuss them here first, O.K.? Jayjg 01:24, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
"He succeeded in uniting the heterogeneous anti-rabbinical elements under his leadership, and formed them into a new sect."
O.K., let's start here. Why do you object to this statement? Please bring references. Jayjg 21:35, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Because he didn't form them all into a new sect or adopt the beliefs of some of the sects cited. For example, the Yugdanites (who followed the Isunians) believed that their leader was a prophet and a messiah. The Isunians believed that a man named Obadiah was a prophet. However, in Ya'acov Al-Kirkisani's "History of Jewish sects" he mentions where each resides, and also a few others such as the Malakites. This record was written in 940 c.e., and the parts I just mentioned have been translated by Leon Nemoy in "Karaite Anthology", 7th book in the Yale Judaica series. I may be able to get other references, but it's 11:30pm :P-- Josiah 05:21, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
This edit was made because 1) None of the manuscripts I have examined, the latest of which being written some 600 years after Anan's life ended, mention anything in the manner of venerating Mohammed or Jesus. Professor Nemoy does not mention this idea either. I added the next part, because (as was noted by Nemoy), only manuscripts written long after Anan's death mention the incident with the caliph, leading those who have studied this area to believe that it may never have happened.-- Josiah 21:30, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I'm curious as to why you've changed Orthodox to Rabbinical to some places.-- Josiah 03:33, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)
In the context of comparing Karaism to any of the post haskahala judaism's(reform, conservative, orthodox, recon) it would be best to refer to Rabbinical judaism or Talmudism than orthodoxy which is an anachronism. -- Teacherbrock ( talk) 20:13, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
Although the article seems to have been cleaned up from the Jewish Encyclopedia's version, there are still issues here with neutrality. Anan ben David was obviously an insightful person of far-reaching influence, and there need to be (1) well-reasoned explanations of why individual people/groups followed Anan ben David or how his thinking otherwise affected them, and (2) Rabbanite and other criticisms of Anan ben David identified as such. The article still seems to be disproportionately from a Rabbanite and critical point of view, without an explanation that some of the "facts" as presented in the article are criticisms. I don't know how much information survives about ben David, but we still should try to reveal him from different angles.
I also added this article to WikiProject Judaism and assessed its completion state and importance. Please let me know what you think. -- AFriedman ( talk) 19:53, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
First off, nice to see you here. I'm glad you read my post on F & W's talk page. :)
OK, I admit that back in May I was overcompensating for the article's bias with the word "obviously" :). What I meant to say is that Anan ben David seemed to have had a unique set of ideas about Judaism, and his substantial influence suggests that many people agreed with him. I think there is a significant view, even today, that Anan was an original thinker or at least an original synthesizer of a number of ideas that existed in his time. Proponents of this view might be Jewish historians and Karaite Jews. See, for example, the chapter about Karaite Judaism in _Jews, God and History_ by Max I. Dimont, which attempts to describe ben David from both the Rabbanite and the Karaite perspective.
The Jewish Encyclopedia is online and I've read a number of its articles, and personally I think the entire encyclopedia has serious issues with NPOV. You might want to look at its articles about St. Paul and about Reform Judaism, for example.
Another issue is that accurate and detailed information about ben David is difficult to find. I find it hard to believe that members of rival Jewish traditions, who seem to have written the article in the Jewish Encyclopedia, could have been certain about the unflattering details of his interactions with Abu Hanifa that were put in the article. There's plenty of Jewish folk tradition that can't be verified as historical fact, and perhaps his interaction with Abu Hanifa was in that category. -- AFriedman ( talk) 20:47, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
I didn't know this about Dimont. Even so, he's probably a reputable source about basic information on Jewish history and probably better than Encyclopedia Judaica on NPOV. My field is not Jewish history--actually, it's biology, but because I work in it at a professional level I have some idea of how academic scholarship is conducted. Thanks for the source info. Interesting idea, to look into Jewish history sources and figure out who the scholars are. Actually, that's related to the main thing I'm doing on WP right now--trying to get the Judaism article to good or featured article status. I think it's a shame that the main Judaism article is only "B" class. A major section of the Judaism article is about Jewish history and even if you have just a bit of time to find good sources, I think that's a reasonable way to develop our foundation in the subject before we really branch off into a more specialized article like this one. Then we can figure out who else wants to work on this article and what sources we can use. In the meantime, if you can think of little things to change on this page, that would be very helpful. One doesn't need to know anything about Anan ben David to reword the text so it isn't slanderous, just pay attention to the tone of the article and the subtle hints about aspects of him and his movement that don't quite fit the picture Encyclopedia Judaica was trying to paint. (He said Jews could carry little things on Shabbat and eat meat with dairy...can you find others?)
Also, Anan ben David is not the only early Karaite scholar whose WP article has neutrality issues because of text taken from the Encyclopedia Judaica. He's just the most extreme example I've found. -- AFriedman ( talk) 02:21, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:
Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 ( talk) 02:42, 14 June 2013 (UTC)
Could we have some discussion on Anan ben David's dates please with sources? F.Tromble ( talk) 16:06, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
Onel5969 Excuse me. The article had 2 tags in it, one from 2010, and a second one from July 2022 (not so old at all). The material that is currently in it is obviously not properly sourced (that's why it had the two tags), but it is sound in general, in my own view and knowledge of the subject. You could add additonal "cn" tags to each paragraph that looks not good to you, but otherwise, the two tags at the top of the page already account for that. In my view, it would be preferable to leave the content there, with the tags of course, until someone finds the time to source them, or to remove them if they can't be sourced. I don't think that simply deleting 95% of the content of the page improves the encyclopedia in this case. I think that my suggested course of action would be better and more productive. Thank you, warshy (¥¥) 19:12, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
I think the "Rules for slaughtering", "Rules for sabbath", and "Science" sections are all sourced back to the PD-notice'd Jewish Encyclopedia, just as a general reference, because they have not significantly changed from the original version of this article in 2003, which was an edited version of the Jewish Encyclopedia article. I think those can be safely re-added, preferably with inline citations to the Jewish Encyclopedia and checking that the content lines up. I may do that myself at some point if no objections are raised.
Also, is there policy backing behind removing the majority of an article which is sourced to a general reference? Skarmory (talk • contribs) 06:21, 15 May 2023 (UTC)