Talk:Jerusalem during the Second Temple period

Removed uncited statements from lead

I've removed an unreferenced statement which has had citation request tag since last October. This was a vague statement that Jerusalem was the only large city with a majority Jewish population. "Large" is not defined, and there were certainly many urban areas in Judea and Galilee with overwhelming majorities of Jewish inhabitants. Perhaps it was meant to say that Jerusalem was the "largest" city with a majority Jewish population, but that isn't what was written. It seemed of limited value, so I just deleted it. I am also deleting the redundant OR tag at the top of the article. There is another tag requesting additional references, and it shouldn't be a problem to find references to back up most of the statements in this article. I would be interested in knowing as to specifically why some of the tags at the top of the article were added. The article is at the upper reaches of Wikipedia's recommended length (57k), but not unreasonably so, and it seems premature to tag it for being too long. I'm also wondering about which areas the "tone" tag was flagging. Article-wide tags are of limited usefulness, and I personally would rather these tags had been placed to flag specific sections or sentences. • Astynax ^talk 08:20, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

my two-pence

shalom, here below a few things needing clarifying:
- in the lead: There existed in city, for example, a clear distinction between a rich and cosmopolitan elite and the wider population wishing withdrawal from the outside world. does s.b. understand that sentence? withdrawal from the outside world: some kind of monatisc aspirations?

- Upon completion, Nehemiah held a parade celebration the undertaking.[5] the reference doesn't speak of that and the sentence is not correct

- The conquest of Palestine by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE ushered in the Hellenistic period, which would last until the Maccabean Revolt in 167 BCE. and The influence of Hellenistic culture was already felt in Palestine during Ptolemiac rule, a trend which only increased with the Seleucid conquest. I deleted 'Palestine' as anachronistic

- what is the agreed policy? the temple with or without a capital T?

- The Roman Prefects of Judea were Equestrians assigned their role without any connection to the land or its populace. Meaning?
thanks, Hope&Act3! (talk) 13:33, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for contributing to the article and reviving discussion. There is definitely work to be done here. To your points:

• I don't understand the "withdrawal" statement, either. Unless it is expanded upon within the article, it should be removed from the lead.
• I agree with deleting "Palestine" as it was not known by that name under the Persians, Ptolemies, Selucids, Hasmoneans or Romans (until well after the period covered in the article).
• References to the specific Temple, rebuilt after the exile and subsequently remodeled by Herod, should be capitalized. This is also how it appears in other articles relating to Judaism and Jerusalem. Temple goes lower-case when referring to a generic temple (or a temple for a diety which may be found at multiple locations).
• I think the intended meaning is that provincial Praefects were drawn from Rome's Equestrian Order (i.e., from the knights, rather than from the Senate or People), and that they had no direct interest in the welfare of the land or people—other than fulfilling their Imperial charge. The point is a bit tangential, and I'm not sure it advances the article.

The article needs some major restructuring and streamlining. I also don't come away with much knowledge about the physical city and how it changed during this period, something which needs to be more prominent. I'm still not sure how to correct that major lack. Please do continue editing, and be BOLD, as the article deserves to be improved. • Astynax ^talk 16:19, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your useful input. I edited according to my understanding but I'm not sure yet about the needed improvement -I agree with you- for I don't have enough free time. Actually I am exploring the articles related to the history of Jerusalem in order to downsize that section in the article, eventually adding to the relevant article what I'll take off there. It's quite a challenge, like a blank puzzle... obviously that's why not many are tempted to take part! Cheers, Hope&Act3! (talk) 22:49, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi User Hope. I like your project of creating a history of Jerusalem and wish you well. Just one point for you to check out: the lead sentence says: "Jerusalem was the principal city of Judea in the years between 538 BCE and 70 CE." This is true, but only partly true. In fact in the initial part of the Persian period the capital continued to be at Mizpah. It's not known when it shifted to Jerusalem, but certainly not until the time of Nehemiah - otherwise he wouldn't have had to rebuild the walls (you can't have an unwalled provincial capital). PiCo (talk) 01:27, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Reverting back to old meaningful name

This article was created under the name "Jerusalem during the Second Temple Period" but was recently renamed "Jerusalem during the Persian, Hellenic and early Roman Periods" because the original was not deemed a "secular title". There is nothing religious about "Second Temple Period", a term for which a search in Google Scholar returns over 800,000 results. This is a common modern term for the period, used extensively in academic research and publications. The current title is meaningless, it provides no rationale for the current choice of grouping nor why other eras (late Roman, Byzantine) are excluded. "Jerusalem during Classical Antiquity" is better, but not as good as the original as "classical antiquity" means different things to different people, and, again, does not explain why some eras are excluded. I propose reverting back to the original name. Please voice your objections. Poliocretes (talk) 14:18, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I also noticed this change, which was done without seeking consensus or requesting comment from involved editors. "Second Temple Period" is certainly widely used in archaelogical and historical journals, scholarly discourse and references (including the references used in this article), and neatly covers the period between the city's rebuilding during the Persian period and the destruction during the early Roman Imperial period. The current title is accurate (although it somehow did not include the Hasmonean period, and Herodian would have been better more focused than "early Roman"), but is not, in my experience, widely used. I will also note that a Google search limited to Books returns zero results for the term ""Persian, Hellenic and early Roman Periods" and 54,100 for "Second Temple Period". • Astynax ^talk 15:26, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I moved the article - WP:BRD. The old title was not wikipropriate because it represents the Jewish POV history of Jerusalem, beginning and ending with the construction and destruction of the Jewish temple. The history shows that there were many non-religious Judeans and/or Aramaic/Hellenic/Latin people in the city at the time. If you feel strongly about including the words Second Temple the title would have to be "History of Jews in Jerusalem during the Second Temple" or similar. In other words, I do not disagree that Second Temple Period is a common term and the Jewish POV of Jerusalem is very important, but if we want to make this a Jewish POV of history let's make that clear. I am also happy to go with the middle ground of "Jerusalem during Classical Antiquity". Oncenawhile (talk) 19:47, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand how a name used in both common and academic contexts can be a "Jewish POV", any more than the use of "Persian" is a Persian POV. We might as well claim the name "Temple Mount" is a "Jewish POV". "Second Temple" is name of the period in question, not something that we invented. This is hardly about the ethnic make up of the city, or otherwise "Persian", "Hellenistic" or "Roman" would be inappropriate to describe a predominantly Jewish city. The article was created to cover a specific period of time, using a term in widespread scholarly use. Until the article is broken up to deal with each period separately, there is nothing "Jewish" about the previous title, while the current is meaningless. Poliocretes (talk) 09:04, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

There is no policy which allows a personal viewpoint to be substituted for what an article's sources say. Nor is it PoV to use "Second Temple Period"—it denotes a clearly defined, continuous period between 2 destruction events when the site was unoccupied. To take the rationale given for removing "Second Temple Period" further, we should have to retitle Wiki articles on other periods that contain even clearer references to religion (e.g., Papal States, Abbasid Caliphate, Crusader states, etc.). That is unnecessary, clumsy, and would itself reflect PoV rather than the preponderance of sources and scholarly consensus. • Astynax ^talk 18:15, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

The "Second Temple" time period is a period of Jewish history - see for example here Jewish_history#Time_periods_in_Jewish_history. The reason you find many scholars writing about it is because Jewish history is an important academic subject. But when we talk about the wiki-view of Jerusalem, the Jewish history perspective is just one.

To give you an example of how it looks to an outsider, imagine if we made an article named "Jerusalem during the Dome of the Rock period". This example is clearly not a common scholarly description - i am using it illustratively only to make a simple point clear. Historians of the crusades or modern israel, for example, would find it a rather POV title, as the history during that period was not exclusively islamic. In the same way, your statement that Jerusalem was a "predominantly Jewish city" during the six centuries from 538 BCE and 70 CE is both (i) certainly incorrect for the first few years (Nehemiah-Ezra attest to that), and (ii) unprovable for the rest of the the first four centuries of the period due to a sparsity of primary sources. Even for the final two centuries out of the six where we have most clarity (the periods of Hasmonean and Herodian influence), the number of religious Judeans as a % of the population is unknown.

I suspect the title of this article before did not jump out at either of you as POV because you are both so familiar with (and knowledgable about) Jewish history that it seemed very natural. But to a wider audience, using a term of Jewish history to periodise a city whose history has been shared by many people, is not appropriate.

Oncenawhile (talk) 06:45, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Alas, sometimes Jerusalem's history is Jewish history. On the one hand we have the Bible, Josephus, Philo of Alexandria, Tacitus, The Letter of Aristeas, Maccabees I-IV and a multitude of lesser known works characterizing Jerusalem as a Jewish city (whatever that was at the time). Naturally it was not homogenic, but no city is. On the other, we have speculation on the percentange in the population of something called "religious Judeans", a term that returns a whopping 51 results in a google search. Seems like a lot of WP:OR in the service of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. We have no problem using terms like "Caliphate", a strictly Muslim term, and there's no reason not to use "Second Temple", a term in common academic use. You can make the effort and break up the article to its constituent periods, which would negate the title, but as long as these are grouped together there's no reason whatsoever not to use the "Second Temple" label. It's far better than the current label which, btw, should read Hellenistic and not Hellenic. Poliocretes (talk) 22:31, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

If Astynax agrees (and no other editors disagree), I would be happy to make the effort and break the article in to four (including a separate one for the Hasmonean period). Astynax?

On this point, do either of you have a preference for naming style? I would vote for Achaemenid Jerusalem, Hellenistic Jerusalem, Hasmonean Jerusalem and Early Roman Jerusalem as they are shorter than the alternative "Jerusalem during the [ ] period".

To your other points, I should remind you of a point that you are forgetting. Every primary source you mentioned above (and every other source from ancient history) characterise the people using a term which can be translated today as either Judean or Jewish, since two thousand years ago there was only one word to describe these terms which today have two different meanings. Using today's meanings of the two modern words, we can say that most Jerusalemites were Judean (because Jerusalem is in a region known as Judea) but not all Jerusalemites were Jewish (i.e. religious Jews or those descended from religious Jews). This distinction, albeit subtle and wide open to misinterpretation and lazy translation, is critical to a proper understanding of the question of Jerusalem's historical "Jewishness" which you appear so certain of. If you analyse the specific references in the primary sources you refer to, your statement should be corrected to say that they all "characterize Jerusalem as a Judean city" - just a simple geographical fact. Oncenawhile (talk) 23:28, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I think it should also be mentioned that this article is actually one of a series of articles translated from featured articles on the Hebrew Wikipedia including Jerusalem in the Mamluk period, Jerusalem during the Crusader period and Jerusalem during the Ottoman period. Together they create a full picture of Jerusalem during ancient and medieval periods. Therefore i think these should also make an appearance in this discussion. --Coin945 (talk) 04:55, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

As a side point, at the moment Jerusalem during the Crusader period is up for speedy deletion as it apparently contains the same content as Kingdom of Jerusalem, however i feel that all these articles should exist to create a full pucture as i said before. --Coin945 (talk) 04:55, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

The Second Temple period is usually treated as a single construct by scholars dealing with Jerusalem. Achaemenid sources and Achaemenid influences detectable in archaeological remains are scant to non-existant. The area was a backwater at best during the Hellenistic period, while the Ptolemies and Seleucids exercised their efforts elsewhere. The culture remained local, and it would be very odd to break up the period and name the parts after empires which had very little direct cultural influence over Jerusalem. There was also considerable fluidity and overlap between the politcal suzerains (i.e., between the Ptolemies, Seleucids and Hasmoneans, and then the Hasmoneans and the Romans/Roman clients). It is immaterial whether "Second Temple period" has religious overtones. Rather, the question is: "Is 'Second Temple period' a term used by reliable sources?" The answer is "Yes", as the term appears in tens of thousands of publications covering archaeology, religion, sociology, history and other subjects. • Astynax ^talk 09:07, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Hi Astynax, you have repeated your own argument from earlier without consideration to the rebuttals provided, and you are focusing on an irrelevant question. We all agreed above that the term 'Second Temple period' is used by WP:RS, just as we all agree that the term is a common designation in Jewish History. The relevant question here is whether the term "second temple period" is the most WP:COMMONNAME title for a period of Jerusalem's history in WP:RS. The answer is an emphatic "no". For example, googlebooks has 1170 books with the words "History of Jerusalem" in the title, however only 3 of these include the phrase "second temple period" anywhere in the books, and all of those 3 are wikipedia-derived books (see Books LLC)!!

So, according to googlebooks, there are actually no scholarly books which include "History of Jerusalem" in the title which mention the phrase "second temple period". I fully agree that some Jerusalem History books do use the term (maybe you even have some in your library), but if a random sample of google's over 1,000 History of Jerusalem books doesn't include the term, attempting to suggest that this is the most WP:COMMONNAME term to periodise Jerusalem's history is absurd.

Of the other renaming options suggested above, which do you prefer? Oncenawhile (talk) 22:20, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually Astynax is making the most salient point. Google Books returns 54,400 hits for "Second Temple Period" (parenthesis included), a term that even you admit is in scholarly use, while "Persian, Hellenic and early Roman Periods" return none. The current title fails WP:COMMONNAME miserably. Right now your objections rest on the fact that a random search of several titles didn't provide a certain phrase, that Jerusalem and Jewish history are somehow discrete subjects which do not overlap or that the later is somehow biased, and that ancient Jerusalem was Judean but not Jewish (with a lot of WP:OR and WP:FORUM in between). All fly in the face of a multitude of respectable academic sources which you insist on ignoring. Poliocretes (talk) 06:43, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Even if the original title was deemed to have a religious slant, Wikipedia does not ignore religion or religious terms in the titles of other articles (per my previous examples). Moreover, Wikipedia uses the most common terms found in reliable sources, whether they are seen by some as PoV or not (and I would dispute that the original title was any such thing). As reverting to the original title is being disputed, I have flagged this as a controversial move below. • Astynax ^talk 08:29, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

This is a perfect example of why google searches are a crappy way to establish most common usage – if you're wiley enough with your search terms they'll say anything you want. Let me throw out a few select variants of Ocenawhile's search which tell a different story: [1] [2][3] [4]

There's no substitute for rolling up your sleeves, reading the key sources, and seeing for yourself what they use. And I'm not at all knowledgeable about this subject but I suspect it won't be "Jerusalem in the Persian, Hellenic and early Roman periods" – otherwise Oncenawhile would've given common usage as his reason for moving rather than secularism (which isn't a requirement of article names at all). —Joseph Roe^Tk•Cb, 21:29, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Hi Joey, everything you said above has unanimous agreement here, except your first sentence. The key sentence which you have not considered is "I fully agree that some Jerusalem History books do use the term ["second temple period"] (maybe you even have some in your library), but if a random sample of google's over 1,000 History of Jerusalem books doesn't include the term, attempting to suggest that this is the most WP:COMMONNAME term to periodise Jerusalem's history is absurd.". Noone has claimed that the current title is the commonname either - the debate is now about whether the previous article should be split up. Oncenawhile (talk) 11:11, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to change from the previous name. No opinion on the 'Peroid' vs. 'period' was really made. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:19, 22 April 2011 (UTC) Relisted. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:19, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Jerusalem during the Persian, Hellenic and early Roman Periods → Jerusalem during the Second Temple period — I am requesting that the article be returned to its original name because the period covered is commonly described as "the Second Temple period" in archaeological and historical references and journals: Google Books results for "Second Temple period" vs. Google Books results for "Persian, Hellenic and early Roman Periods". The change to the current title was made without requesting input from editors of this article, and the current name for this period is not widely attested to in either the references used in the article or in other English language works. • Astynax ^talk 08:19, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it's fair to compare "Second Temple period" to "Persian, Hellenic and early Roman Periods" on GoogleBooks as it is unlikely for the 3 periods to be mentioned in sequential order like that however it doesn't reduce the notibility of the individual periods.

• "Persian Period" -wikipedia -"Books, -LLC" jerusalem gives 21,400 results,
• "hellenic Period" -wikipedia -"Books, -LLC" jerusalem gives 276 results
  • ("greek Period" -wikipedia -"Books, -LLC" jerusalem gives 4,280)
• "early Roman Period" -wikipedia -"Books, -LLC" jerusalem gives 2,010 results
  • ("Roman Period" -wikipedia -"Books, -LLC" jerusalem gives 28,200 results).

I am not saying that number of results on Google Books proves notibility, but i am just stating that using this evidence, that argument does not stand.--Coin945 (talk) 16:34, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

"Second Temple period" is more widely used than any single term in your list because it precisely describes an entire, discrete period of Jerusalem's history: the uninterrupted period between the restoration of the city c. 538 BCE and its destruction and abandonment in 70 CE. "Roman period" does not enter into the discussion here, as that term is usually reserved for the period from the founding of Aelia Capitolina through the early Byzantine period (with which it is often conflated) when discussing Jerusalem.

The term "Second Temple period" is the norm in journals discussing the archaeology of the city, it is regularly used in other encyclopedic works (Brittanica, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East 1997, New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land 1993, Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece 2006, Encyclopedia of Islam 1983, Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing 1999, Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion 2009, Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt 2001, Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa 2004, Milestones in Archaeology: a Chronological Encyclopedia 2007, etc. ad nauseum). Anyone conversant with historical, archaeological, ethnographic and, yes, religious history/sociology is instantly familiar with the term "Second Temple period" and the era to which it refers.

Using "Persian", "Hellenic", and "early Roman" is certainly done when discussing Jerusalem's interaction with the surrounding region (and vice versa). To use that term to describe Jerusalem itself is as odd as titling a sub-article of History of Mumbai as "History of Mumbai during the Georgian period". As I stated in the preceding section on this page, the periods in the current title have a great deal of overlap and significant gaps (the Hasmonean and Herodian eras). • Astynax ^talk 18:28, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Coin, it's a perfectly valid comparison since we are discussing the title of the article. As there can be only one title, the question is whether "Persian, Hellenic and early Roman Periods" is preferable to "Second Temple Period", in which case we need to compare these two choices and not the individual elements, none of which is a candidate for the title by itself. Poliocretes (talk) 18:32, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Suggestion to refocus debate - Second Temple grouping or Group by ruling regime

With respect to the ongoing discussion above and in the previous section, noone is arguing that the current name of the article should remain. The debate is therefore focused on whether the proposed (previous) title is also inappropriate. The alternative discussed which seems to be the most popular is to split the article in to five sub articles using periodisation relating to the controlling empires/states. I will summarise my arguments in due course. Oncenawhile (talk) 11:27, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

At minimum, this article should not have been moved from its long-stable title without consensus. Unless a consensus emerges quickly, it should be moved back while discussion proceeds. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 18:50, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

There's clearly never been a consensus for moving the article to this awkward and uncommon name. I've restored it to the longstanding name, pending a consensus to move it. Jayjg ^(talk) 01:22, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

WP:BOLD attempt to institute suggestion above

Since the old name did not achieve consensus, I have put in the hard work required to action the suggestion discussed by a few editors to split the article. Hopefully editors agree that it looks good with the new navboxes, makes it easier for editors with knowledge of separate eras to contribute and also diverts the concern about the inherent pov of using a religious era to title this article. Oncenawhile (talk) 12:26, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Nice try. It was the new name that didn't achieve consensus, and your attempt to do an end-run around that was disruptive. This article is not large enough to need to be broken up into sub-articles, and, even if you were doing it, you didn't do it by creating sub-articles and summarizing them here. Copying material verbatim from this article into small mini-articles is unhelpful, because it removes the material from a larger context. If we ever do need to create a sub-article, propose it here, and we'll see if it gets consensus. Jayjg ^(talk) 21:50, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Jayjg, please don't be difficult for the sake of it. This article itself is very clear "The 600 years of the Second Temple period can be divided into several periods, each with its own distinct political and social characteristics." There is no logic for grouping these subjects in to one other than if you view the world through the eyes of Jewish history. As you know, wikipedia has a broader perspective than that. The navboxes I set up were pretty good I think - you should at least let people see them and comment first. Oncenawhile (talk) 00:00, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

I should also be clear, now that i have just worked out what you meant by end run, this was certainly not an attempt to avoid discussion - if it was I would not have begun this talk section, and my edit note would not have included reference to WP:BRD - note the D for "discuss". Secondly, the debate above did not conclude as to whether the article should be split - sorry to mirror your word but actually you acted "disruptively" by closing the debate before I had been able to summarise my arguments as I had said I would do. Oncenawhile (talk) 00:14, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Can I also point you to WP:SIZERULE - this article is 76KB. For the benefit of other editors, please see below the suggested split articles. See in particular the Navboxes which allow readers to cleanly work through the history:

• Jerusalem during the Achaemenid period
• Jerusalem during the Hellenistic period
• Jerusalem during the Hasmonean period
• Jerusalem during the Early Roman period

So in summary, the revised structure is (1) NPOV (vs this article name which is POV Jewish history as explained here: Second Commonwealth), (2) easier / more manageable to read and to edit, (3) adheres to this article's own explanation that it can be appropriately "divided into several periods, each with its own distinct political and social characteristics" and (4) adheres to the SIZERULE guidelines. Jayjg, please provide your counterarguments (NB: "removes the material from a larger context" does not make sense as one of those counterarguments - the appropriate place for that larger context is clearly History of Jerusalem). Oncenawhile (talk) 00:30, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Responding to the relevant parts of your post:

1. WP:SIZERULE says articles should be 6,000 to 10,000 words in length. This article is just over 9,000 words, so it's not too long yet. If there really were an issue with length (which there is not), and you were not attempting to simply do an end-run around the decision above, you could have (for example), created a new sub-article out the longest section and summarized it properly here.
2. If you did indeed want to create several sub-articles, then you should have created a proper summary sections in this article. Instead you simply cut out all the content of this article and stuck it in 4 other articles, and mangled this one with four nearly bare links - without, I might add, even indicating you were doing this, which is a blatant violation of the GFDL license.
3. The Second Temple Period is a recognized historial era, particularly relevant to a city like Jerusalem, where the Temple stood. It is not simply a "Jewish" notion (the phrase "Second Temple Period", for example, gets 60,000 google book hits, and "Second Temple era" gets over 3,000 more), though of course, Jews and Judaism are relevant to it, since, during this period, Jerusalem was a Jewish city. Attempts to divide this history into little pockets of sub-history, as if the "Jerusalem during the Achaemenid period" was a city totally different from "Jerusalem during the Hellenistic period", is a serious distortion of history. Even worse, attempting to divorce Jerusalem of its relationship to the Second Temple is typically part of a broader, politically motivated modern campaign of history denial, which pretends that there was in fact, no Second Temple at all in Jerusalem. To that end, hypothetically speaking, an editor who more typically edits I-P related articles, and typically from the "pro-P" perspective, might suggest a series of names for articles that avoid using the words "Temple" (or "Jewish"). Wikipedia should not be part of this campaign.
4. Since you recognize WP:BRD, we are now at the D part - that means you discuss now, rather than re-reverting me. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:45, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Jayjg, could I please ask that you endeavor to remain constructive, as you eloquently promised to here? Below are examples of your behaviour which is not constructive:

1. (a) Canvassing: You campaigned with a non neutral message and engaged in votestacking. I politely requested you to undo the votestacking, but was ignored (I note you have since edited your user talkpage and other pages numerous times since my reminder). Your personal and repeated interpretation of my motives "attempting to simply do an end-run" has no basis whatsoever and has been responded to above.
2. (b) Personal attack and attempting to turn an esoteric debate into a political battlefield. Your transparent "typical" / "hypothetical" attack on my motives is unacceptable. I am a pro-N(eutral) editor only, and your attempt to extend my point of view to some rather strange conclusions ("there was in fact, no Second Temple at all") is offensive to me and violates WP:NPA
3. (c) Misrepresenting and hiding my good faith work: Use of the word "mangled" has no basis in reality (see e.g. here for bare linked articles: History of Egypt), nor does the suggestion that I didn't indicate what I was doing (this talk section is clear enough). Most egregious though is that you continue to blank the proposed pages I have created - I clearly requested that these be left up temporarily so that other editors could consider them. Please explain how you propose other editors should come to a decision here when the pages are blank?
4. (d) Misrepresenting guidelines: Your statement "WP:SIZERULE says articles should be 6,000 to 10,000 words in length" is not correct. SIZERULE relates only to KB. The wider guideline WP:LENGTH discusses number of words as another consideration, amongst others, of which number of printed pages is another one. Your statements "so it's not too long yet" and "an issue with length (which there is not)" are unconstructive oversimplifications. It would have been reasonable for you to acknowledge that on any of the guidelines, the current article is at best around the upper limit of appropriate length.

Please don't try to bully your way through because you believe there may be some bizarre hidden agenda. Let's sit back and let other editors comment instead - but you'll need to revert your blanking first so they can review the alternatives.

Oncenawhile (talk) 16:06, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

This time period is almost always referred to as the Second Temple period (except if you want to say Judah/Judea/Israel under the *insert people after the Achmaenid Persians*), and then you talk about years to be more specific, at least in my experience. That is just for this area as a whole. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 21:45, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Oncenawhile, responding again to the relevant and constructive parts of your post:

1. I notified previous participants in the discussion of the actions you had taken. You didn't "request" anything about "votestacking", and this isn't a vote. I didn't interpret your motives, I described your actions.
2. I was pointing out a fairly common internet and Wikipedia phenomenon; I'm glad to hear it doesn't apply to your own beliefs and motivations. However, the very first words you used here to describe what you had done were at best, untrue. You wrote "Since the old name did not achieve consensus...". No, it was your proposed new name that did not achieve consensus, because no other editor agreed with it. As stated above, I was describing actions, and as has been noted before many times on Wikipedia, Assume Good Faith is not a suicide pact.
3. Someone who is creating a sub-article does a proper job of it; they leave a title, summarize the sub-article in a couple of paragraphs, etc. Ripping out the entire contents of an article, and leaving essentially four links is, indeed, "mangling" it. The pages you copied from this article were up for a day, and anyone who still wants to seem them can view them in their respective article histories. For that matter, they can view them by reading this article, since you copied them verbatim from it. There is absolutely no need to revert the redirecting of these disruptive article creations, which, as stated before, also violated Wikipedia's copyright rules.
4. WP:SIZERULE is a section in Wikipedia:Article size, which, long before it gives simplistic heuristics about article size, states quite clearly and explicitly "Readers may tire of reading a page much longer than about 30 to 50 KB, which roughly corresponds to 6,000 to 10,000 words of readable prose. If an article is significantly longer than that, it may benefit the reader to move some sections to other articles and replace them with summaries (see Wikipedia:Summary style)." It is misleading to pretend that article size is constrained solely by KB, or that "fixing" over-long articles involves simply ripping out their entire contents and parceling them out to other articles, rather than doing as Wikipedia:Article size suggests, creating proper sub-articles and summarizing in the main article - which, in this case in still not required because this article is not too long.
5. If anyone is "bullying" here, it is you. You tried to unilaterally expurgate the term "Second Temple" from this article's title, and essentially every other editor here disagreed with your actions. You then made a number of claims regarding the phrase "Second Temple Period", with which everyone else here disagreed, and brought proof as to why it was false. You then did the exact same thing, except using four articles, rather than one, using the same title words everyone here had already rejected, and pretending you were trying to implement the suggestions of the editors here. This was false; you were simply trying to achieve your rejected objective by a slightly different means. When I pointed this out, you repeated the exact same arguments you had raised before regarding article titles (e.g. "Second Temple Period" is a "Jewish" term), as if they had not already been disproved and rejected by editors here.

If you want to create four new articles from this one, then you need to get consensus for it. And again, anyone who wants to see what that would look like can examine article histories. Jayjg ^(talk) 21:51, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

One glaring problem is that the periods listed overlap, and who was in charge shifted frequently with the flow and ebb of the powers of the day. Alexander's Hellenistic empire was of very short duration and largely overlapped the end of Achaemenid Persia as far as Jerusalem was concerned. That was followed by Jerusalem shifting back and forth between Ptolomaic Egypt and the Seleucid Empire, which both overlap with the Hasmoneans, and in turn overlap with the first Roman influence in the area, and the Herodian kingdom which ended c. 6 CE (and a brief restoration 41-44 CE) with direct Roman rule. Herod himself played off both the Romans and Ptolomies. It is a bit like dividing up the history of Thessaloniki from the High Middle Ages to 1423/1430 based upon who happened to be ruling it (much easier to just describe it culturally as the "Byzantine period"). As previously noted, the term "Second Temple Period" is an acceptable and widely-used designation for the post-exilic period of Jerusalem's history until the city's destruction in 70 CE. Although I suppose most of us know all that, it bears restating for the benefit of people coming onto this page. I see no virtue in breaking up the article. • Astynax ^talk 07:26, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Ah right, I forgot about that. To back up your point, I will include this photograph taken from Jerusalem Besieged by Eric H. Cline. [5] The image is of the first two pages (of three) of his exhaustive list of all 118 recorded battles in the city in the last 3.000 years. I have marked the relevant time period in pencil (seperating the Second Temple Period between the time of the dinky little temple and the renovations Herod made that basically created a new one). All the times it was captured are underlined. You don't have any conflict during the Achmaenid time, but when the Hellenes come in, it's a whole different story. It is pages 8 and 9 in the book btw. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 20:26, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

• Hi SayShalom, please could you let us know how many times the book "Jerusalem Besieged" refers to the Second Temple Period? I ask in relation to your previous comment that "In the context of Jerusalem, it's always referred to as the Second Temple period.".
• Hi Astynax, with respect you have made some factual errors above because you are mixing up culture with ruling powers. The only period in which you are correct is re the macedonians/ptolomies/seleucids - which is exactly why we keep it as one "hellenistic" period. Alexander's destruction of the Achaemenid empire was one of the most important events in world history and marks the beginning of the classical era. You clearly believe Jerusalem is different - please could you prove your suggestion that it "largely overlapped the end of Achaemenid Persia as far as Jerusalem was concerned"? i am aware of the sparsity of sources for that period and suspect you will be unable to do so credibly. Finally Herod's political tactics are simply not relevant to the point you were trying to make - the course of Jerusalem's history was permanently changed when the romans took over in 63BC. Oncenawhile (talk) 22:26, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

  I'm unclear as to whether you are now arguing for presenting the periods based on a cultural or political basis. Neither really applies.

  Politically, Alexander was in the Levant by 333 BCE, and Jerusalem was opened to him in late 332 BCE. The Achaemenid Empire would fall in 330 BCE. Culturally, Alexander's campaign did not wipe out the previous cultural or even governmental structures, much of which he adopted. Hellenization policy is a feature of the successor states. Alexander was dead by mid 323 BCE. Thus there is overlap. In addition, several Jerusalem excavation reports note a paucity of remains tied to the Hellenistic world (a situation unlike that seen in other parts of the Levant) throughout the periods you would lump together as "Hellenistic". There are literary references to attempts at importing Greek culture into the city, but primarily in the context of Jerusalem being one of the centers of resistance to Hellenization. As Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie notes below, there have been very few ancient mentions or physical remains unearthed that shed much light on this period in Jerusalem to fill a stand-alone article, unless it was mainly a summary of material related to sites and political events outside Jerusalem. Ancient source materials and artifacts for Jerusalem's time under Achaemenid rule also do not give much of a picture worthy of an entire article/sub-article.

  Politically, although Pompey intervened on behalf of Hyrcanus II is 63 BCE, that hardly established Roman rule, merely temporary Roman influence. Jerusalem sided with Rome, then Parthia, then Egypt, then Rome again over the next decades. After 37 BCE the Herodian dynasty was indeed supported by and closely allied with Rome though not directly ruled until c. 6 CE. There is no "Early Roman period" which coincides with Roman rule over Jerusalem, and Jerusalem did not become a culturally "Roman" city until the Aelia Capitolina period in the second century. • Astynax ^talk 09:42, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi Astynax, hope you're well. Your statement about the Early Roman period is contradicted by all of the major scholars in this field. See this reference book here as a good example. Chapter 5 (p94) onwards is most relevant here.

On the Persian period, we are in agreement that the source material is sparse. That is exactly why you are unable to substantiate your earlier claim about the culture not changing. Your suggestion that the ten years between Alexander's battles and his death being meaningful "overlap" doesn't make sense when you consider that it took from 599-582BC for Nebuchadnezzar II to complete his destruction and deportation of the city, and you would certainly never argue that that period was not also a defining turning point in the city's history.

SWMFP, hello - I will respond to your points as soon as I can. Oncenawhile (talk) 19:47, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Ocenawhile, he did not fully deport the population, only the elite. The area was still populated by Judahites, though they were mostly the farmers, and yokels who would not cause trouble. There was no actual real cultural change in Jerusalem (especially not during the Persian period as Perisans left in place the institutions and Gods of places that they conquered; we are pretty certain nothing changed) until the Romans kicked the Jews out thanks to Bar Kokhba (who was a moron). Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 19:56, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi SWMFP, your statement that "There was no actual real cultural change in Jerusalem until the Romans kicked the Jews out" is wholly incorrect - you are forgetting all the history that you know well:

• As we know from Jospephus, when the greeks came in they "hellenized" the city
• The hasmoneans de-hellenized the city, and made it into an important and wealthy city as the center of an empire
• As this article correctly says, when the Romans came in "Herod once again turned Jerusalem into a Hellenistic city, including all the constituent elements and institutions of a Polis."

Hence the statement in the lead which says "The 600 years of the Second Temple period can be divided into several periods, each with its own distinct political and social characteristics". Fair? Oncenawhile (talk) 22:17, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

I am afraid that you may have not studied the city all that closely if you consider their "hellenisation" to qualify as any sort of real cultural change (except among a few of those often called hellenised Jews). (though the comment I made was mostly about the Persian period) That is not a personal attack, but an observation. The culture was still very much Jewish though there were certain restrictions placed on various rituals (none of which went over well) and some people allowed themselves to become more Greek or Roman at those times. You have to realise that having the architecture built by a controlling power and a different political structure are not the same thing as a cultural change.

By the way, when talking about Josephus, never say as we know from Josephus, rather say that he said as Josephus is to be taken with a grain of salt. You're also not supposed to say we know anything btw. You can only be pretty sure, there is nothing definite in this study. :p

Please also make sure to study the differences between the terms political, social and cultural. They are not that closely related. While politics and some social characteristics in this whole region may have changed at times, the cultures themselves of the indigenous people were always a bit more static (especially outside the cities) until the time of the Muslim Conquests really. Hence the saying about empires coming and going, but the people staying the same. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 22:40, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

That a forced Hellenization under Antiochus IV (and his Tobiad allies) was attempted is noted by almost all histories of the city. Antiochus was determined to impose Hellenism precisely because the city had not adopted a Hellenistic culture. Most historians also note that this attempt failed spectacularly (giving rise to the Hasmonean independence movement). As I said, and you ignored, Jerusalem excavations do not support widespread adoption of imported Hellenistic wares, unlike other areas in the Levant which quickly adopted and adapted Hellenistic culture (q.v., John Strange, "Herod and Jerusalem" in Thomas L. Thompson, ed. 2003. Jerusalem in Ancient History and Tradition, London: T&T Clark, p. 104; Ephraim Stern, "The Acra" in The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, v. 2, Israel: The Israel Exploration Society and Carta, p. 723; Mazar, Benjamin, 1975. The Mountain of the Lord, Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., p. 216; Kathleen Kenyon, 1974. Digging up Jerusalem, London: Ernest Benn , pp. 188-204; and others have noted that concentrations of Greek imports seem to be either lacking or associated with installations occupied by Seleucid forces). Herod did indeed rebuild or provide the city with many (though hardly all) of the physical trappings/ἄστυ of a Hellenistic city (gymnasium, theater, hippodrome, etc.). That he had to erect these structures is an indication of a failure of Hellenization to take root, not proof of it. And those elements of a Hellenistic polis which were missing are also telling: absence of temples to Greek and syncretized Greco-local dieties, lack of an ekklesia and local governance (IIRC, the elite were drafted as citizens of Antioch, rather than Jerusalem having its own citizenry), hippodamic planning, widespread adoption of Greek religious and philosophical views, presence of colonists, etc. Indeed, there is no indication that Jerusalem ever received the status of a polis under either Alexander, the Ptolemies or the Seleucids (Jack Pastor, 1997. Land and Economy in Ancient Palestine, London: Routledge, pp. 31–32). The scant remains of the periods under Persian and Greek political domination, in addition to the scant records of that time, aren't enough to construct stand-alone articles or sub-articles, which is all the more reason to leave them within the context of the local "Second Temple Period". • Astynax ^talk 02:52, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

• Hi Jayjg, you continue to make the same error by trying to guess what editors are thinking. "the very first words you used here to describe what you had done were at best, untrue"? An oddly aggressive statement, made absurd by the fact that by "old name" i meant my own suggestion. Perhaps my choice of words could have been clearer, but that does not excuse you jumping to conclusions. Then you wrote "You tried to unilaterally expurgate the term "Second Temple" from this article's title" - suggesting that I am trying to do things unilaterally. That use of the word unilateral doesn't even make sense in the context of wikipedia's consensus editing. I would much prefer to engage on the substantive issue here than waste time defending myself from your attack-based style of discussion.

Oncenawhile (talk) 22:26, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Errr... Do you not remember me? We had a long long long convo about Palestinians in the Talk there? (My name is the other one btw... you said hi to a talk page link. =p) That is when you talk about the time period as a whole, like when you say Bronze Age or Iron Age (which you usually subdivide into Early, Middle and Late). Please understand that Cline's book uses rather dramatic section and chapter titles and does not really name the periods as would be done in an article in a peer-reviewed journal. The relevant chapters here are called "The End of the Beginning" and "Oil upon Troubled Waters". He just gives the info in a way that is meant to appeal to a wider audience of readers and has the chapters begin at natural beginning points rather than giving them period names. He only makes reference to the time period as a whole when he finishes talking about it, after the First Jewish Revolt: "But it was not really the end of Jerusalem; merely the end of the five-hundred year-long period when the Second Temple loomed large over the city and over Judea as a whole." There is also a quote from another archaeologist, Meri Ben Dov, according to his very thorough citations. Alexander's conquest had little to no actual impact on the city until his sucessors started causing trouble there btw, so Jerusalem is different in that regard. Just because an event has a big impact on a large area, does not mean that life changes in the individual cities in that area, in particular a backwater like Jerusalem. Here is another photo of the relevant pages btw, as I am lazy [6]. This book is supposed to deal with the entire history of the city up to 2.000 AD btw, not just the time it was a Jewish city. If you want to find other references to the Second Temple Period, you could just google it. =p

Also, given the fact that few archaeologists or historians write about the Persian period (I think there is maybe only one notable one doing it atm, why does it get its own article? O_O You just have Jews coming back, the three groups fighting over who gets to build the new temple, a silly wall, and then not much after.

Hmmmm... the reason why the article is called the Second Temple Period is because (as Cline said and as we all know) that was the center of everything in the city, no? I think it's also what most people focus on, if I'm not mistaken. Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie | Say Shalom! 23:28, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Hatnote

This may be related to the long naming discussion above; apologies for not reading through it all before making a passing comment. It doesn't seem conventional to have a "Main article" hatnote at the top of an article: I'm not sure I've ever seen it, and they appear mostly under headers for summary sections. Almost every article is a subtopic of something. The sidebar is probably sufficient to alert readers that this is part of a bigger topic. Cynwolfe (talk) 11:52, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree. The lead section itself is also not in keeping with guidelines. I've removed the hatnote as the history links are covered in the template box in the lead section, and a link to the city is now in the first sentence of the lead. The article, including the lead, does need more work. • Astynax ^talk 18:03, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

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