Talk:Israel the Grammarian

No dice

I've just changed "Gospel Dice" to "Game of the Gospels"...

I notice that Lapidge does indeed translate the game "Gospel Dice", so I have just added a {{sic}} to what I take to be a direct quote from this source (although if Lapidge is just supplying the Latin, and we are providing the English translation, I recommend updating this also to "Game of the Gospels"). However, there is really no chance that the meaning of this translation is correct. HJR Murray (1952: 61) notes that the ms. "contains a curious attempt to give a scriptural meaning to hnefatafl which is here named alea." (Hnefataft is a board game that does not incorporate dice.) Parlett (1999: 202) correctly translates the name as "Gospel Game". I have used "Game of the Gospels" simply because that's what we have in Alea evangelii. It is true that alea = dice. However, over time the meaning morphed from dice to board game played with dice (≈Backgammon) ... and evidently this later morphed into board game (even without the use of dice). Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 20:29, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your explanation, but the description is referenced to Lapidge, who as you say translates it as Gospel Dice. We cannot correct our own source - a leading Latin scholar - without even supplying a source for the amendment, so I will have to change it back. Do your sources specifically say that the translation Gospel Dice is wrong? If so, you could add a referenced note explaining that. Dudley Miles (talk) 22:47, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, I'm at a bit of a loss... do you expect me to find a source saying "alea evangelii, that is 'Gospel Game', which by the way should not be translated 'Gospel Dice'"? People don't write like that. I did reference a source (above) for translating the game "Gospel Game". I'm not sure why you didn't accept it, but I will give it in full:

"An English manuscript from the reign of Athelstan (924-40) describes a form of Hnefatafl in a pecurliarly inappropriate allegorical guise, stating 'Here beginneth the Gospel Game (alea euangelii) which Duibhinnsi, bishop of Beinchair, brought over from ... Athelstan, king of the Angles.'"

I'll note that not only is David Parlett the author of the Oxford History of Board Games, but he is also the translator of the Penguin Carmina Burana, so he has demonstrated bona fides in both board games and Latin. He also supports the first part of my etymological assertion thus:

"Alea previously meant lots in general, whether dice or astragals, and subsequently attached itself to the game described above ["Alea", that is, a Roman predecessor to Backgammon]. While it continued to denote that game in literary texts of the early medieval period, on the practical front it was replaced by the more specific name Tabula."

I recognize that we can't correct the verbatim text of our own source, which is exactly why I added the {{sic}} to what I perceived to be a quote. However, the text of the article is ours. And when we see a source which does not describe using dice to play the game, when no one who discusses the game mentions the use of dice, when the game is (almost) universally believed to be a member of an entire family of board-games which doesn't use dice, and when other experts translate "alea" as "game" -- a meaning which "alea" also evidently possessed -- then we have to suspect our leading Latin scholar of translating the word "alea" without sufficient care for its meaning in context. Let us give our readers the best meaning.

References

• Parlett, David (1999), The Oxford History of Board Games, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-212998-8
• Parlett, David (1986), Selections from the Carmina Burana: A New Verse Translation, Penguin Books, ISBN 0-14-044440-8

Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 04:23, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

My point was that you did not cite a reference for your edit. It is not sufficient to just supply it on the talk page. I suggest a note based on your helpful information:

According to the historian of board games David Parlett; "An English manuscript from the reign of Athelstan (924-40) describes a form of Hnefatafl in a pecurliarly inappropriate allegorical guise, stating 'Here beginneth the Gospel Game (alea euangelii) which Duibhinnsi, bishop of Beinchair, brought over from ... Athelstan, king of the Angles.'" The Latin word alea means dice, but according to Parlett Hnefatafl was played with rival teams of counters (not dice), and he therefore translates alea euangelii as gospel game.

Does this seems OK and can you supply page numbers to reference the last sentence? Dudley Miles (talk) 17:25, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

I think your edit goes into unnecessary detail about definitions. How about:

1.In the first sentence about the game: "a board game called Alea Evangelii (Gospel Game),[b]"

2. Note [b]: Alea Evangelii is a member of the hnefatafl family, which are asymmetrical board games in which two opponents have unequal forces and different goals. The historian of board games, Harold Murray, describes Alea Evangelii as "a curious attempt to give a scriptural meaning to hnefatafl, which is here named alea", [ref Murray p. 61.] while another historian of games, David Parlett, regards it as "a form of hnefatafl in a peculiarly inappropriate allegorical guise". [ref Parlett p. 202]

3. In the quote from Lapidge "Here begins the Gospel Dice[c]"

4. Note [c]: "Alea" means lots or dice, and Lapidge translates "Alea Evangelii" as "gospel dice", but dice are not used in the game, and Parlett prefers "gospel game". [refs Lapidge p. 89, Parlett, pp. 72, 202]

I think this adds interesting comments by Murray and Parlett, and I do not think other sources are needed. What do you think? Dudley Miles (talk) 22:05, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

@Dudley Miles: Short answer: 1 & 2 mostly OK with me; 3 & 4 problematic. Let me clarify my central thesis. Some of your comments suggest that you have not appreciated it. You're free to disagree, but if we're talking past each other, then we can't agree or disagree... so, here goes:

• Alea Evangelii = Gospel Dice is an incorrect translation. Period. This is because alea = dice/lots is an inadequate definition for that period. This is why I felt Schädler:82 was needed (and Parlett:72). According to Schädler, Isidore uses tabula = game board and alea = a particular board game (i.e. "proto-Backgammon") and tesserae = dice. Thus the correct "dictionary entry" for the time would be alea: (1) this particular board game; (2) dice or lots -- and probably in that order.
• So Lapidge had a choice, and he chose wrongly -- just as if you said "I have a personal computer" and I interpreted this to mean "there is a person in my sole employ who calculates figures for me on an adding machine." No one can deny that I have used a genuine definition of "computer", indeed until recent decades the usual one. But time moves on, and in 2015 I would be insane to assume that's actually what you meant (without compelling context). This is why I cannot agree with what I perceive to be your underlying goal of saying "The correct translation is "Gospel Dice", but "Gospel Game" is a useful paraphrase." I am flatly denying that "Gospel Dice" is a correct translation, so I can't support verbiage that implies this.
• But my flat denial depends on the game not using dice and, as far as I understand, the game play is not really described at all in the ms. -- game historians have only deduced (I think rightly) that it must be a type of hnefatafl. So I used "widely regarded" and felt the need to substantiate these weasel words with lots of references... and then inevitably I needed briefly to describe hnefatafl for the sole purpose of showing that dice were not a component. I think most of this crap belongs on the talk page, but my sense was that you demanded all my documentation to be in the article, so now it's there.

So where do we go from here? Well, I'm staying on the talk page for now, as my article edits seem to be very unsuccessful.

1. If you think my refs for "widely regarded" are overdone (they probably are) you should feel perfectly free to delete Botermans and Helmfrid, as Murray and Parlett are the big dogs. And if you feel justified in simply saying it "is" a variety of hnefatafl, rather than it's "widely regarded" that's fine with me too (I vaguely remember seeing an alternative hypothesis somewhere, but hnefatafl is absolutely the consensus).
2. If the indented bit is indeed a verbatim quote (I never got confirmation on that) then my edit there was plainly wrong, as it would have to remain "Gospel Dice". I have no objection to splitting my note in 2 and putting half of it here (in lieu of a {{sic}}). I do think you are obliged to put your quote in {{quote}} or <blockquote>...</blockquote> rather than just using the ":". But again, an explanation which asserts merely that "alea means dice" is, to me, factually incorrect. If Schädler:82 and Parlett:72 are not persuasive to you, I believe I can find something similar in R. G. Austin (shockingly, I was unable to find such a statement in Murray, son of the first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary). If I were to suggest an amendment to your note (4) above, it would be something along the lines of "Lapidge translates "Alea Evangelii" as "gospel dice", but dice are not used in the game, and Parlett notes that while "alea previously meant lots in general, whether dice or astragals" the word later attached itself to a Roman board game,[ref] hence his translation "Gospel Game"."
3. Random note: never in my life (except on his Wikipedia page) have I seen H. J. R. Murray called "Harold Murray".

Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 18:10, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

1. I think you misunderstand the intention of my wording. What I was attempting to convey was that Lapidge as a Latin expert reasonably translated alea as dice, but not being a games expert he did not realise that it was an incorrect translation in the context. My wording was: "Alea" means lots or dice, and Lapidge translates "Alea Evangelii" as "gospel dice", but dice are not used in the game, and Parlett prefers "gospel game". However "Alea can mean lots or dice" would be better.

2. I do not have access to Schädler, but I do now have Parlett, and he say does not say on p. 72 that the change was to proto-backgammon, but that it was the name in early medieval literary texts for the dice game commonly known as tabula. As I see it Lapidge not being a games expert did not realise that Alea Evangelii was not a dice game. As you say, dice is one correct translation. Parlett silently corrected what was - according to his account - the literal translation to one which is not strictly correct but more reasonable in the context.

3. I did order Lapidge but the library gave me the wrong volume. I will phone them tomorrow and ask them to check the quote.

4. I am happy to change Harold to H J R. Maybe you should move the Wikipedia page to his usual name?

I think the differences between us are minor and I trust we can find a wording we are both happy with. Dudley Miles (talk) 20:30, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Re: Schädler: Rare; for a couple of years I honestly believed it was legendary. I finally got a copy, and I think the Loch Ness Monster has the other. But if you have JSTOR or a good library, see the first couple pages of R. G. Austin: "Roman Board Games II". Greece & Rome, Vol. 4, No. 11 (Feb., 1935), pp. 76-82 (Jstor link) for a similar position on "alea". (I see Murray does discuss this a bit on p. 31, but (to me) not very quotably.)

Re: proto-Backgammon: I used this term informally to mean "Tabula" because I don't think anyone knows what "Tabula" means, but I thought "proto-Backgammon" would give a reasonably clear picture. Obviously, I've failed again. My point is, if you observed Zeno playing Tabula, you'd say "oh, Backgammon".

Re: Tabula: If you insist that Monopoly, Ludo, and Backgammon are "dice games", then, fine, Tabula is a dice game. Everyone else calls them board games (which do indeed feature dice).

Re: not strictly correct: What can I say? Since for Israel "Alea" is the proper name of a board game, the only "strictly correct" translation would be "Gospel Alea" followed perhaps by "Gospel Tables" -- but these don't really translate anything. "Gospel Board Game" seems the strictest and most literal translation possible, and "Gospel Game" is a reasonable shortening.

I think you see Isidore's and Israel's game as really "a game called dice". But as far as I can tell, this is not the way to view it. Rather, "alea" is a word whose meaning has morphed over time. It is just "a game called Alea". I assume that if I dice potatoes, this verb derives from gaming dice (which are also little cubes). We can still makes puns with them, but the verb "dice" is now so much its own word, that we (I at least) don't think of "to cubic lots potatoes" as being its actual underlying meaning. What was 1 word is now 2 words. Lapidge translated one as literally as possible; Parlett translated the other as literally as possible. Phil wink (talk) 00:56, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. I have confirmed that the quote is "Here begins the Gospel Dice which Dub Innse, bishop of Bangor, brought from the English king". Do you disagree with adding a note: "Alea" can mean lots or dice, and Lapidge translates "Alea Evangelii" as "Gospel Dice", but dice are not used in the game, and Parlett prefers "Gospel Game". If not, what wording do you suggest? Dudley Miles (talk) 12:59, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

WP:URFA/2020 comments

I think this article just might be too short to be considered comprehensive enough for an FA-class article. I think it might fall into the category of GA-worth articles where there isn't enough information on the subject to take it to FA, if it is considered worthy of GA status. Other major issues I have with this article are its lack of exploration on the legacy of Israel or basically any meaningful exploration of who he was outside of a few quotes about what a shiny beetle (re: rare person) he was for his time. After reading this article I still feel I have no idea who Isreal was or why he's all that important. I suspect, seeing how it hasn't been meaningfully edited since 2015, it's just one of those articles written when WP had a much lower standard for FA. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 23:24, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

A. C. Santacruz, WP:WIAFA standards have not risen since this article was promoted in 2014. (In fact, an argument can be made that standards declined after rigorous sourcing reviews that began in 2009 ceased for many years, and after many of the stricter prose reviewers left FAC.)

More importantly, length is not part of WP:WIAFA, and short articles have always been acceptable, albeit debated; comprehensiveness (1b) is part of the criteria. I do get a solid sense of why Israel is significant from the lead, and it's possible there is nothing more to say about him. To demonstrate that an article fails to meet 1b, we would need to see sources that have been neglected. If you are aware of material that is not covered, the sources should be listed here, and I'm confident that User:Dudley Miles will incorporate them as needed. Best regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:21, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Sandy. The only thing I would add is that two leading experts on the subject have read the article and both were very happy with it. Dudley Miles (talk) 09:16, 18 December 2021 (UTC)