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I've noticed that you have made several edits regarding the Christian faith, and that's great! We have a committed and diverse group of editors in our community with similar interests! Please feel free to ask us questions and interact with us on the various talk pages for Christian topics; we'd love to have you working with us!

If you have any questions, you can post to the help desk or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome!  -- KHM03 11:57, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your additions to this article were welcome. I am not an "inerrantist" (is that proper?) but try and keep the article balanced and fair; you've added something I didn't know about and really improved the article. Well done. KHM03 11:59, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

L. Could I ask you to have a look at the "Historicity of David" section of the article David? I'm a bit at a disadvantage trying to edit a section while knowing zilch about it (although this small handicap doesn't seem to stop most editors on bibilical matters on Wiki). PiCo 12:00, 24 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just an idle thought that struck me as I was reading the David article: Why did the Judeans speak Hebrew? I mean, in today's world, the English speak English, the French speak French, the Russians speak Russian. (Ok, I don't speak Russian, can't vouch for that, but you get my drift). To look further afield, the Khmer speak Khmer (trust me on this - I lived there 2 years), the Bengalis speak Bengali (to be precise, Bangla lokera Bangla bolen, or something like that), and so on. Who doesn't speak a language with the same name as the people who speak it? Well, the Filipinos speak Tagalog, a lot of them, and the Australians speak English. The Moroccans speak Arabic (and Berber), as do the Egyptians and Syrians. Indians speak lots of languages, but no-one speaks Indian. In short, a people have a different name from the language they speak when the country they inhabit is new (as a political entity, that is - no-one could call India or Egypt "new"). The name of the language, in these cases, comes from the name of some linguistic entity which lacks political identity (Arabic), or from which they have become separated (Australia), or which might have been a smaller but now-dominant part of the whole (Tagalog). So I wonder where Hebrew fits in to this. As a scholar of these things, what's your view? PiCo 11:00, 14 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Judeans spoke Hebrew, _(ivrit_, because they were Hebrews, _(ivriym_. It is the term Judean or Judahite that marks a divergence from the ethnic name Hebrew, because it is a tribal name. Each of the twelve tribes, named for the sons of Jacob, were Hebrews. Given that we are Americans, what are we doing speaking English? Shouldn't it be Americanish? Lawrencemykytiuk 02:58, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"We" are not Americans - or at least I'm not :). So what is "Hebrew"? A people and a language? And how did "Israel" (the northern kingdom) come by that name? PiCo 06:52, 18 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry I guessed wrong, PiCo. I am--and will admit to being--an American (smile). Yes, the term Hebrew is used for the language in all time periods, and it is used for the ethnic group perennially, but especially before the exile. Beginning, I suppose, around the time of the Babylonian exile, the term Jew in its Akkadian form, probably derived from gentilic Yehudi from the tribal name of Judah, Yehudah, began to be used instead of Hebrew. The only evidence for the _origin_ of the term Israel that I know of is in Genesis, in which it became a second name for the patriarch Jacob. Since a man's descendants were all that was left of him, they as a group could be called by the man's name. There is a parallel use of the name Isaac in Amos 7:9 as a term for the northern kingdom of Israel. Lawrencemykytiuk 20:58, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To continue on from the previous entry: as I recall, Diana V. Edelman, the late Gosta Ahlstrom, and one or two other scholars have asserted that Israel was originally a geographic name (GN) and, I think, went on to say that the GN rubbed off on the inhabitants of the central hill-country of the land of Palestine. If you actually need the references on their publications, I can get them for you. Lawrencemykytiuk 23:55, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, PiCo , what advantage do you find in the near-anonymity provided by Wikipedians' login names? Lawrencemykytiuk 21:21, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lawrence: Sorry for the long silence - I've been travelling, and I'm becoming increasingly busy with my realworld activities. Anyway, anonymous nicks and Wiki: I don't find any advantage at all. Wiki is pretty much an Irish stew of fact, opinion, and outright misinformation, and God help the incautious student who relies on it too freely. It's fun to edit when I have free time (I like Renaissance art, about which there's little disputation, Old Testament myths, about which there's lots, and little bits of history. But I'm getting tired of it - me and a computer screen don't exactly make a party. Still, it seems you have the bug, so good luck and happy editing :). PiCo 02:36, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Lawrencemykytiuk, I saw your edits in David. Could you please provide some WP:RS (I hope you are aware of WP:NOR) and change the language to make it more encyclopedic? Thanks. ←Humus sapiens ^ну? 22:23, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dear ←Humus sapiens , thanks for the polite nudge to a Wikipedia beginner. I'm working on some WP:RS for the David article. I had found the comment by 66.214.119.232 , which I incorporated into what is currrently the penultimate paragraph under "Historicity of David", revealed plenty of political, historical, and/or religious mistrust—which is a free choice to which s/he is entitled—but little or no knowledge of the content of the Hebrew Bible—which is the kind of ignorance that is out of place in this article, so I attempted to correct his or her comment by supplying the latter. Stay tuned for the addition of reliable sources and for trimming of the last two paragraphs under "Historicity of David" if I made statements for which I find no reliable sources. Enough commentaries have been written on the former prophets (roughly equivalent to the historical books) of the Bible so that I should be able to find substantial documentation, hopefully without writing a mini-thesis inside the article. Lawrencemykytiuk 22:11, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A second reply to ←Humus sapiens : I just tried to supply the first bit of WP:RS to the end of the section on "Historicity of David" but ran into some problem that chopped off the bottom of the article. There was a warning about excessive page length, so that seems to have been the reason. As a result, I had to delete the last two paragraphs in that section. I would _like_ to add the following pared-down comment, so any advice you may have is most welcome:

The question of whether the biblical portrayal of David and his successors amounts to royal propaganda must take into consideration whether the books of 1-2 Samuel and 1-2 Kings contain prophetic rebukes of the monarchs of Israel and Judah, even an indictment for leading their kingdoms into disobedience and apostasy, resulting in the ultimate defeat and exile of both Hebrew kingdoms, as observed in standard Bible commentaries, such as that of Cogan and Tadmor

A concluding reply to ←Humus sapiens : I have now successfully inserted a modified version of the preceding paragraph at the end of the section on "Historicity of David."

Mesha Stele has been reverted back to the version you wrote 2 years ago. I re-inserted the changes that were made to the translation section since then. Please verify that the changes are good, if you're interested. --Tgeorgescu (talk) 16:03, 29 September 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Itaj Sherman (talk • contribs) 22:10, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Quotes are quotes, i.e. the words belonging to other people. Doctoring quotes, as you did on The Bible and history is not appreciated. We do not have the authority to change the words of the articles published in the Smithsonian. In the future, please refrain from changing the words from quotations. Tgeorgescu (talk) 16:03, 29 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Gentle reader, I completely agree with you that "We do not have the authority to change the words of the articles published in the Smithsonian" or anywhere else. I put what I considered a helpful note within square brackets [ ] to make it explicitly clear that the insertion was an insertion, not part of the quote and not an attempt to "doctor a quote," as you put it. Nevertheless, because your response seems to me to be a clear indication that square brackets are not universally understood as I understand them, though I am not exactly alone in using them this way, I will not attempt to change your deletion of my well-marked attempt to create better understanding. Lawrencemykytiuk (talk) 00:28, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,
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