Talk:Masada myth

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by SL93 talk 22:50, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

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1969 Masada state funeral

• ... that although Israel honored 27 ancient Masada skeletons with a state funeral in 1969, the story of "freedom fighters' patriotic last stand" is now known to be a myth?

• Source: Ben-Yehuda, Nachman (1996). Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-14833-1, p. xxi: "The bones of twenty-seven humans found on Masada are brought to burial in an official state ceremony."; pages 241-243: "The affair began in October 1963… Immediately, there were newspaper reports to the effect that the remains were probably of the fighters of Masada, and a state burial ceremony was called for. This issue was raised in March 1967, once again, by the same Shlomo Lorentz of the ultra-Orthodox party Agudat Israel. In a blazing speech in the Knesset he demanded that the remains of the skeletons found on Masada should be given a Jewish burial. Mr. Aharon Yadlin, then the minister of culture and education, pointed out that the Jewish identity of the skeletons had not been established and suggested passing the whole issue on to one of the Knesset’s committees. His suggestion was accepted. In fact, the Knesset’s Committee on Culture and Education held a discussion with Yadin on this particular issue in February and March of 1968… On March 12, 1969, Yigael Yadin told Haaretz that he was opposed to a public burial ceremony. He stated that the evidence of the identity of the skeletons was not conclusive enough. He also stated that he believed that the bones were those of the people of Masada but that he lacked definitive proof. In response to this, the spokesman for the Ministry of Religious Affairs stated the next day, also in Haaretz, that “the heroes of Masada came there from Jerusalem and fought the war of the holy city; therefore, it is only natural that their bones would find their final resting place on the Mount of Olives, which was a Jewish cemetery during the days of the Second Temple…. on July 7, 1969, the skeletons that had been uncovered by Yadin’s excavations about five years earlier were brought to burial in a full and formal military ceremony near Masada, at a place called “the hill of the defenders… An impressive array of dignitaries (including Menachem Begin, Yigael Yadin, and Rabbi Shlomo Goren) were present at the burial ceremonies."

• Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/The Chinese in America

Created by Onceinawhile (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 77 past nominations.

Onceinawhile (talk) 05:24, 18 July 2024 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy compliance:

• Adequate sourcing: - Not sufficiently
• Neutral: - This hook states as fact that which the sources do not state as fact
• Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook eligibility:

• Cited: - the cite fails to support the hook
• Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: 2603:7000:2101:AA00:A91E:FA5D:EAB2:D6B0 (talk) 09:26, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't think this is that bad to deserve a cross, but you'll definitely want to add a cite to the first paragraph of Yadin's executions at minimum, and that's before interrogating any of the sources.--Launchballer 14:45, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @Launchballer: I have added a cross-ref (it had been referenced at the end of the paragraph, but the paragraph was then split in to two). Re the IP's comments, the citation quote gives all the info about the funeral, and the rest of his book is about the myth. I guess the IP is referring to the latter question. I can bring some more quotes if helpful.

For context, all the sources in the article say essentially the same thing – there is only one known original source for this event, Josephus. The Israeli national myth version differs from that story in a number of significant ways. We can add some nuance to the words "is now known to be a myth" if that is helpful, but the underlying point is beyond doubt.

Onceinawhile (talk) 16:28, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

It's not a question of "nuance." There is no consensus - as incorrectly and blatantly stated - in RS refs that it "is now known to be a myth." That's simply fake news. 2603:7000:2101:AA00:A91E:FA5D:EAB2:D6B0 (talk) 21:10, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

The wording that it "is now known to be a myth" is simply not supported by the source provided. Perhaps "believed by some to be a myth" or even better "described by one scholar as a myth" could be supported by the citation, but "is now known to be a myth" embellishes the source far beyond any justifiable limit. Alansohn (talk) 01:43, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

What is the “it” you are referring to? Onceinawhile (talk) 06:36, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

@Alansohn: regarding your comment from a few weeks ago, a new section (Masada_myth#Decline) has now been added to the article as suggested by User:Uppagus. It includes a list of the notable scholars which published on this topic between 1975 and Nachman Ben-Yehuda's book in 1996, as given by Ben-Yehuda.

I have read widely on this topic, including the most recent work by Jodi Magness, and can firmly confirm that there is no scholarly debate as to whether this specific narrative is a myth. Not a single dissenting voice. Onceinawhile (talk) 21:18, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Once -- the statement is simply not supported by any of the refs. It's really that simple. Actually, this brings the entire article into question now that I consider it. Plus, it doesn't seem to warrant a standalone article at all. 2603:7000:2101:AA00:6043:6D87:AEA7:B5C8 (talk) 06:26, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Belatedly noting that the article is at a (particularly bad-tempered) AfD, and this should go on hold until this is kept.--Launchballer 12:06, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

Closed as no consensus. This does still sport a {{neutrality}} tag @Onceinawhile:, and I suggest this is actioned.--Launchballer 11:16, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Launchballer. The tag was added without explanation, and the editor who added it was asked to share their concerns on the talk page 10 days ago. I have pinged them again at Talk:Masada_myth#Ensuring_balance, so hopefully we should have clarity soon. Onceinawhile (talk) 17:39, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

@Launchballer: it looks like there was no objection to removing the tag, as the pinged editors declined to comment. My sense is that enough people have now read the article and sources, and have come to understand the topic and its context. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:53, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

There are POV issues with the article as it currently stands. I wrote a detailed, and yet partial explanation on the article's talk page.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Uppagus (talk • contribs) 07:17, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Uppagus. I have responded on the talk page with proposed solutions. Onceinawhile (talk) 08:27, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

What is the status of this nomination @Onceinawhile:?--Launchballer 07:27, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Launchballer: it would be great to have a new reviewer look at this now. There was an initial aversion to the article by some editors - hence the AfD and subsequent talk page discussions. But these challenges have petered out as concerned editors found the time to read the underlying sourcing in detail, and it seems now to be clear to all that this is a well-covered subject with many decades of academic work underpinning it. The article has benefited from the additional scrutiny, which has made it even stronger. There is more work to do to continue to improve the article, but nothing that should impede us proceeding with the DYK review. Onceinawhile (talk) 16:33, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

You have my sympathy, I had similar snorts when I brought Matty Healy here. (They even nixed my P05 article.) I'm looking at this now for the first time; it's certainly strongly worded but all its claims are backed up, so this should be fine. However, you do need an end-of-sentence citation for the hook.--Launchballer 10:32, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

@Onceinawhile: Should probably ping.--Launchballer 12:52, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you @Launchballer: I enjoyed reading those articles you linked to. I am genuinely amazed that an article that has had almost 5 million views since you recreated it last year had all those delete votes.

I have done some more work to the article,[1] including adding a further source which works neatly as an end-of-sentence citation for the hook (Sheldon 1998, p. 448: "The belief system he refers to is a myth created around the story of Masada and the Jewish fighters who committed suicide there at the end of the Great Jewish War against Rome in A.D. 73. The story, as Josephus tells it, is not one of heroism. The sicarii on Masada were simply an extremist group of terrorists who had never participated in the Jewish Revolt to begin with and had spent more time killing other Jews than fighting the Romans. Modern twentieth-century Zionists, however, took the original story, eliminated the more embarrassing parts (like the massacre of Jews at Ein Gedi by the sicarii), then used the remaining core to construct a "mythical narrative" of heroism, sacrifice, and national pride for modern Israelis." Every one of the 38 citations in the article contains a version of this statement, but this is a particularly direct one. Onceinawhile (talk) 01:38, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

(It's because it used to look like this and the 1975 Reddit didn't like it very much.) Hook now checks out - let's roll.--Launchballer 07:37, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I see that my cutting of excessive quotations in the citations per WP:FOOTQUOTE was reverted by Nishidani who said "The main editor is high experienced in both content and wiki norms". I don't believe this is a very good argument so I won't promote this nomination Onceinawhile, but other promoters may disagree. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:08, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

@AirshipJungleman29: to be fair to Nishidani, his comment – one week ago – politely invited you to explain your position at the talk page.

To try to explain Nishidani's comment: Our guideline has been consistent for many years: "Brief quotations of copyrighted text may be used to illustrate a point, establish context, or attribute a point of view or idea... Extensive quotation of copyrighted text is prohibited." An ANI thread interpreting this for a WP:FA from a few years ago includes comments such as: "de minimis refers to each individual source; we never use more than a paragraph" and "We do not have extensive quotation from one source--the longest quote is 365 words long." That same ANI discussion identified why quotations in footnotes are beneficial in articles in controversial topic areas like Israeli history – it saves a lot of time because it allows both experienced and inexperienced editors to verify and contextualize our articles' key claims quickly. In this article, the longest footnote quote (citation #5) is 348 words long, shorter than that mentioned above. Onceinawhile (talk) 21:05, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

I try to not get more into PIA than I have to, unless I notice something especially egregious. As that ANI thread reached no conclusion at all, I remain confident in my interpretation of WP:FOOTQUOTE. I noted above that other promoters may disagree, but I am unwilling to endorse what I regard as copyright violations on the Main Page. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:01, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Understood. For the record, a conclusion was reached – the article (Balfour Declaration) was promoted to WP:FA, and subsequently featured on the main page as WP:TFA. Having surveyed this in the past, I can confirm there are a number of featured articles which contain a significant amount of academic quotations in footnotes.

If consensus here requires them to be removed, I will accept that and remove them. But personally I believe that this is the exact situation that WP:FOOTQUOTE was written for, and our articles, readers and the academics who wrote the underlying sources all benefit from it. Onceinawhile (talk) 04:36, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

No, ANI does not adjudicate content and so no conclusion was reached—see the close. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 01:43, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

I mean that a conclusion was reached in the parallel discussion at WP:FA and WP:TFA, as the article was subsequently promoted and then featured in the highest profile part of the main page. This is one of many such examples – in my experience consensus holds across our project more broadly, as 100% of my Good Articles and Featured Articles have detailed quotations in footnotes to aid verification on complex topics or offline sources. See for example: Mandate for Palestine, Palestinian enclaves, Sarcophagus of Eshmunazar II, Cartography of Jerusalem, McMahon–Hussein correspondence. Onceinawhile (talk) 08:38, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Looking at the actual reviews of those articles, it seems to be an issue continually brought up which you wave aside. For Mandate for Palestine, see this comment at GAN and this comment at the archived FAC; for Palestinian enclaves, see the first and second GA reviews. Seeing the quality of the editors who believe the quotes to be problematic, my view is if anything stronger than before. (Sarcophagus of Eshmunazar II and Cartography of Jerusalem don't have anything similar, so I'm uncertain why you brought them up, and I haven't checked the last). ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:38, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Those editors who brought up the topic discussed collaboratively, we found middle grounds where needed, and consensus was gained. The current version of those articles, which reflects that consensus, have all since been recognized amongst the best 0.1% and 0.6% articles in our encyclopedia, and held that status for many years. Similarly, the Sarcophagus and Cartography articles have equivalent examples of detailed quotes in footnotes. All these FA and GA promotions would simply not have happened if the community felt that the interpretation of the right to quote being used was wrong.

I respect that you have a different view, albeit it’s the first time I have seen it raised in this forum in my 79 DYK nominations.

If you had opened a discussion at the talk page when invited to two weeks ago, we could have worked out a middle ground collaboratively. This feels more like coercion. Onceinawhile (talk) 23:42, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

This seems a bit unreasonable, if all these prior articles somehow are a copyright breach, Diannaa would have been down on it a long time ago, surely? Selfstudier (talk) 10:30, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Maybe ask at WT:DYK?--Launchballer 05:47, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Did you know pulled

For the record, we should note that the DYK posting was pulled from the main page. The discussion at WP:ERRORS was

* ... that although Israel honored 27 ancient Masada skeletons with a state funeral in 1969, the story of "freedom fighters' patriotic last stand" is now known to be a myth?

Our core policy WP:V states that "quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be supported by inline citations." The hook's quotation – "freedom fighters' patriotic last stand" – is not only not cited, it doesn't even appear in the article. Perhaps this is not meant to be a quotation but scare quotes instead? If so, then that is a violation of MOS:SCAREQUOTES.

This is a highly contentious topic and a recent discussion found that there was no consensus that the article should even exist. A high standard of care and caution is expected in such cases but I'm not seeing it here. In the DYK nomination, the hook was rejected by its first reviewer and it doesn't seem to have gotten a clear approval after that. My impression is that the topic was so disputed that the basic issue of checking the hook got lost in all the confusion.

Anyway, as this is a contentious topic, we should take a safety-first approach and pull the hook pending further investigation.

Andrew🐉(talk) 06:54, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

@Onceinawhile pinging. I've removed the quotation marks. BorgQueen (talk) 07:12, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

As such contentious topics are scary it may be that most editors are afraid to touch it and this may be a factor. An experienced admin who is familiar with the case seems needed and that would be Sandstein, ok? Andrew🐉(talk) 07:13, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Putting my oar in as an ancient historian, while the topic is contentious in the sense that people get very agitated about it, there's no serious scholarly disagreement on the facts: just about anyone in the field would consider the hook broadly correct. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 07:49, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

It's not clear what the definite fact is in the hook. Is the bit about the skeletons? Is it "the story" being a myth? Exactly which story is this? Is it Josephus's account that's a myth? Is it a particular retelling such as Limdan's epic poem? Or what? The hook conflates all these things in a murky fashion so that it's hard to tell. And now, without the quotes, this is being said in Wikipedia's voice. Tsk. Andrew🐉(talk) 08:25, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Sorry I was busy today. @Andrew Davidson: the answers to your question are clear in the article. In summary, Josephus is the only source for the event, but he described neither "freedom fighters", nor "patriotism", nor a "last stand". The modern myth invented all of these, and also expunged certain elements such as the massacres by the Masada Jews of other Jewish civilians.

As to the suggestion that the discussion history claims that the article is contentious, if you read all the discussion history you will see what actually happened - a few people reacted to it at first before studying it, then read the (very numerous) scholarly sources describing the phenomenon, and each time the objections then disappeared. Just like this conversation - I am certain that if you make the time to read the article and the discussions behind it, you will reach the same conclusion. Onceinawhile (talk) 20:22, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

The hook was previously discussed at WT:DYK where the issue was whether this was a state funeral or military funeral, as the sources vary. This misses the key point which was that this was primarily a Jewish funeral. You see, it's a matter of Talmudic doctrine (Sanhedrin 46b) that there's a religious obligation to bury the dead and it is an especially great Mitzvah to do so when there is no family to take care of it.

So, a more accurate and attributed hook about the burial might be that:

• ALT ... that although bones found at Masada were given a Jewish funeral in 1969, Joe Zias contended that the presence of pig bones indicated that they were actually the remains of Roman soldiers? (source = Whose bones?)

Andrew🐉(talk) 09:56, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

•  Pulled I think the points made above are valid - we shouldn't be describing them as "patriotic freedom fighters" in Wikipedia's voice, and in any case that terminology doesn't appear in the article, meaning it's not clear what's being described in the hook at all. If an alternative wording can be workshopped we can reinstate.  — Amakuru (talk) 10:32, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Would something like

... that although Israel honored 27 ancient Masada skeletons with a state funeral in 1969, the story is now known to be a myth?

work? It's the original hook without the unsourced text DimensionalFusion (talk ▪ she/her) 11:05, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

No. For example, one point made by Zias is that the bones were quite jumbled and most estimates of the number of skeletons were a much smaller number than 27. So, that number is not definite.

And the bit about "the story" is not a definite fact. Yadin's account of the skeletons is a disputed conjecture. No-one knows for sure what the origin of those bones was just as no-one knows for sure whether Josephus' account was accurate or distorted. You have to be clear about which story you mean before you can say that it was a myth. And, as there was almost certainly a conflict at Masada, some elements seem to be correct.

The uncertainty about an event thousands of years ago makes it hard to be definite, either way. We should stick to undisputed facts rather than engaging in further myth-making. If we're talking about particular claims then we should specify them and attribute them to be clear what we mean.

Andrew🐉(talk) 12:05, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Pinging @Launchballer, @SL93 as reviewer and promoters DimensionalFusion (talk ▪ she/her) 12:47, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

I am fine with Andrew Davidson's proposed ALT above. I think DimensionalFusion's is better, perhaps without the 27 if that is a problem. The original hook without the quotes would be perfect too - it would not be saying something in Wikipedia's voice that it's true, because the "freedom fighters' patriotic last stand" is a famous modern story, and is exactly what the article describes. Perhaps the best revised hook would be the original one, without the quotes but adding the word "modern". Onceinawhile (talk) 20:29, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Own article?

@Onceinawhile I'm not sure that this requires its own article. Maybe it can be part of the main page. Obviously there is conjecture given this happened a long time ago and the lack of sources.

Speaking of which, this page has a lack of sources. Where is your source that it's "an Israeli national myth"

Where is your source that "selectively constructed narrative based on Josephus' account, supplemented with fabrications and omissions. This narrative was socially constructed and promoted by Jews in Mandatory Palestine and later Israel."

Of course there are some scholars who say a siege took place and given the desire to be independent, neutral and balanced, these counter-claims should be added to the article.

For now, there is too much dogma in this article which needs to be toned down considerably if it going to be authoritative. MaskedSinger (talk) 18:16, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi @MaskedSinger: thanks for the feedback. It is good to discuss these points. On the question of this topic as a separate article, the national myth topic is much more notable than the actual siege itself. This article is already longer (22kb) than the siege article (20kb), and it has only just been started. When this article is finished it might be 3 or 4 times the size.

On the sources, please could you confirm you have read the article in detail? The citations and bibliography are primarily scholars published by first class academic publishers, and the citation section includes detailed quotes. I can bring many more quotes if needed, but need to check you have read what is there already? Onceinawhile (talk) 06:34, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

@Onceinawhile thanks for getting back to me. I read the article in detail but it's hard to read the sources without having the books in front of me.

If the article is to have credibility and I hope it does, there are a number of things that have to be addressed

1) Some of the language needs to be toned down, especially that which is unsourced

2) Counter claims that the siege did in fact happen need to be brought to balance it. For when push comes to shove, trying to prove it didn't happen is as tricky as trying to prove that it did, especially when there are historians saying that it did happen. MaskedSinger (talk) 06:58, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi MaskedSinger, thank you. I believe you have misunderstood what the article and sources are saying. Neither claims the siege did not happen. That question has nothing to do with this topic. This topic is about the version of the siege story created by early Zionists for nationalism purposes which markedly differs from the only historical version of the story in existence, which is Jospehus’s version. The differences between the two versions is summarized at Masada_myth#Table_of_elements. Onceinawhile (talk) 14:19, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree that this article should be deleted, it presents an academic debate as if it is already 100% solved, and then goes on to describe one-sided theory as an attack page. I don't think this topic merits at all its own page - the topic at question can and should appear under the "siege of Masada" article. I'll open an AfD HaOfa (talk) 13:52, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

See above. What academic debate? Onceinawhile (talk) 14:21, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Note: this question was discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Masada myth. Onceinawhile (talk) 17:42, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Ensuring balance

@האופה, OdNahlawi, and PeleYoetz: in your comments at the AfD discussion each of you made suggestions of lack of balance / NPOV, but did not provide any specifics, nor any sources. Could you please provide this now so we can address your concerns? Onceinawhile (talk) 11:00, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

This statement for example "The early Zionist settlers often considered themselves direct descendants of the ancient Hebrews" is terribly biased, it implies that we Jews today have no connection to our ancient ancestors. Even if it appears in one source it is such an extraordinary and biased claim that it must be removed. PeleYoetz (talk) 05:33, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

I suggest you share your concern directly with Yael Zerubavel, the Professor of Jewish Studies & History and the founding director of the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life at Rutgers University, as well as with the University of Chicago Press, highlighting the following paragraph from pages 68–69 of her 1995 work: In the period in which the Zionist settlers and the first generation of New Hebrews wished to define themselves as the direct descendants of the ancient Hebrews, they portrayed the Masada people as the authentic carriers of the spirit of active heroism, love of freedom, and national dignity, which, according to the Zionist collective memory, disappeared during centuries of Exile.

If you are worried that this might be the view of just one rogue decorated high-profile scholar, I suggest reading the 163 citations in the article Racial conceptions of Jewish identity in Zionism.

Onceinawhile (talk) 05:53, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

This article looks like it has bias issues as well. The sentence as it appears now in this article seems to deny the continuation of the Jewish people throughout the generations PeleYoetz (talk) 10:56, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

You appear to have ignored the sources above? Repeating statements doesn't verify them, sources do. And you haven't provided any.

Either way, this specific question is tangential to the topic of this article, so I don't object to the phrasing per your amendment.

Are there any other areas of concern that you have identified?

Onceinawhile (talk) 22:15, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

@האופה, OdNahlawi, and PeleYoetz: any further comments on this? If you take the time to read the article and understand the context I think you will agree there is nothing POV in here. On the other hand, if you think there is a POV somewhere, please bring a source which states a conflicting position. Onceinawhile (talk) 17:37, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

Sorry I didn't respond, I didn't pay attention to the discussion here. I don't really like getting into discussions, maybe others will want to comment. I mainly want to write about things that interest me. OdNahlawi (talk) 08:42, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

Dear @Onceinawhile, I have read the article and and there are definitely issues of POV. Here are some of them:

The article is heavily one-sided, it uses questionable phrasing and sources, and quotes selectively from the sources it cites. For example, the source quoted most in the article is Ben-Yehuda's book, which is criticized for being superficial, having a main theory which relies on a misunderstanding of historiographical issues, and being inconsistent in its application of the constructionist method which it officially adopts, but only uses when comfortable, among many other criticisms.(see https://www.jstor.org/stable/43044142) The book is also not self-aware, and is representative mainly of the subjective-constructionist approach, but does not represent the objective approach adequately, and therefore is given undue weight in the article, which relies on this approach exclusively. (ibid.)

As an example for selective quoting of the source, the article ignores the sections of the book which discuss the decline of the "Masada Myth" (Ben Yehuda P. 253 and onward, Magness P. 199).

The article relies heavily on the identification of the inhabitants of Masada as Sicarii, as mentioned by Josephus, and while the passage quoted from the book by Magness is rather blunt -"How did the site of a reported mass suicide of a band of Jewish rebels who terrorized other Jews become a symbol of the modern State of Israel? The creation of the Masada myth—in which these Jewish terrorists are transformed into freedom fighters and the mass suicide becomes a heroic last stand-has been explored by a number of scholars." (Magness P. 197) It is clear that her biting rhetoric is meant to magnify the question she presents. Her actual position, together with other opinions, is mentioned in a previous chapter: "The Jews at Masada likely included unaffiliated individuals and families as well as members of groups such as the Qumran Sect/Essenes",(Magness P. 164) and: "The nature and even the very existence of the Zealots and sicarii are also debated by scholars. Steve Mason proposes that instead of being a distinct faction, the term sicarii was used by Josephus as a “scare-word” to evoke a particular kind of violence and terrorism. Hanan Eshel speculated that because Josephus was a Zealot leader at the beginning of the revolt, when writing War years later he artificially distinguished between the “moderate” Zealots and the “extremist” sicarii, pinning on the latter the responsibility for the disastrous outcome of the revolt and thereby distancing himself. Here I use the terms rebels and refugees to encompass the variety of backgrounds and affiliations represented among the Jews at Masada."(Magness P.165) And so, this would be another example of selective quotation. But regarding the point of discussion, it is not clear whether the Sicarii inhabited Masada at all. The possibility that the inhabitants of Masada were in fact not Sicarii, together with the fact that both Ben-Yehuda and Magness state explicitly that although archaeology cannot confirm the narrative given by Josephus, it also cannot refute it (Ben-Yehuda P.57, Magness P. 195-196), make the idea of the Masada Myth "whitewashing" history or supplementing it "with fabrications and omissions" lose much of its weight, seeing as much is still left for interpretation. These are just few of the issues with the article.

Uppagus (talk) 07:10, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @Uppagus: I see this is a copy of your comment at the AfD. Reading your comment alongside Green's article, it seems you have taken much of what you wrote in your comment from the criticism section of the Arnold H. Green review (your jstor link):

• Constructivism: You incorrectly wrote that Green states that Ben Yehuda has "a main theory which relies on a misunderstanding of historiographical issues"; in fact Green's misunderstanding statement (p.411) refers only to "Barry Schwartz's reconciliation of continuity and discontinuity in collective memory" which is totally irrelevant for the contents of this article. Equally irrelevant to the contents of this article is the reference to "application of the constructionist method". This article doesn't go near any of those areas of nuanced scholarly debate (see Constructivism (philosophy of science) and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy)) about the way history is written, so I am unsure why you are raising it here?
• Core points: Green confirms everything that this article uses Ben Yehuda for, which is only the core points, and underpins this by referencing the scholars before Ben Yehuda who published the same: (p.419) "In summary, Nachman Ben-Yehuda formulates a credible, detailed, concept-based explanation of why and how the Masada myth entered the memory of secular Zionists and modern Israelis"; (p.406-407) "Ben-Yehuda acknowledges that he is by no means the first to recognize mythical elements in the tourist-media-schoolbook version of Masada. He cites Bernard Lewis's History: Remembered, Recovered, Invented (1975) as identifying the popular narrative as an example of "invented history" then discusses (14-16) several other scholarly critics whose work preceded his." Would it address your concern if we were to amend the article to replace all 4 of the citations to Ben Yehuda with citations to Green? That would seem a shame given that Ben Yehuda's book has been cited almost 500 times by other scholars. Perhaps we add Green alongside?
• Decline: Re decline of the myth, I will add a section. That is a good addition, thank you. Green has some good commentary here that I will use (p.414): "A fuller understanding of his motives for doing so can be acquired by examining Ben-Yehuda's explanation of the Masada myth's decline, which is disappointingly superficial. He points out that Israel's devotion to Masada peaked in the 1960s; by the 1970s, "pilgrimages" to the site by Israeli youth and military groups were sharply down and critics were beginning to challenge the myth. Later, the IDF's armored units shifted their swearing-in ceremonies to Latrun, the site of a crucial battle in the 1948 war. By the late 1980s, Masada seemed to function less as a national shrine of heroism and more as just another tourist attraction."
• Josephus vs Modern myth vs Other possibilities: As Green writes: "The status of Josephus as the only surviving literary account does not render it an objective account. Ben-Yehuda acknowledges (27-31) the debate about problematic issues concerning Josephus. For example, The Jewish War constitutes a self-justification for Josephus's defection to the Roman side; he was unlikely an eyewitness of Masada's siege and fall, and — in the Greek tradition exemplified by Thucydides - he very probably fabricated the speeches that he put into the mouth of Eleazar ben Yair." I consciously chose not to go into this debate in this article, since this article is focused only the modern myth itself. That there are an infinite number of other possible truths is not the point of this article, as these speculations into ancient history do not make the modern myth any less of a myth with an interesting modern story. Consider the article on Santa Claus versus the article on Saint Nicholas; personally I don't consider debates on the historicity of Saint Nicholas to be particularly relevant to the story of the modern Christmas myth. If you think it is important I have no objection to adding a reference to this point, but my preference would be to keep it short.

Onceinawhile (talk) 08:25, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

I have added a decline section, based on Uppagus's suggestion of Arnold H. Green. Per the quote in the "core points" bullet above, Green points to an excellent discussion in Ben Yehuda's book which lists all the main scholars who published on the myth before him. Onceinawhile (talk) 20:46, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Onceinawhile, yes you see correctly. I posted it on the AfD, but it was ignored, and considering the fact that the points made were still valid, it made sense to post it again. Another unconcealed fact is that much of my criticism is based on the Arthur H. Green article. I will first respond to the arguments and suggestions you propose, and then I will add a few more issues I see with the entry as it stands. For the sake of clarity I will use your categories, I hope that's alright with you.

• Constructivism: It is not incorrect to say that "Green states that Ben Yehuda has "a main theory which relies on a misunderstanding of historiographical issues"" – And I quote: "In the first place, as applied by Ben-Yehuda, this reconciliation theory rests on a misunderstanding of the historiographical issues." (p.411). Barry Schwartz suggested the reconciliation as a Hypothesis, but it is Ben-Yehuda who wrote his study to test it "directly, explicitly and meticulously" (p. 412), an endeavor which, at least according to Green, was not successful. Even though the article does not delve into these "areas of nuanced scholarly debates" (maybe it should? I suggest not to leave the article at its current superficiality), they are directly related to the composition of the theory under discussion. As the article stands, it bases itself on a book with problematic methodology, and therefore propagates the resulting problems further. I raise it here because the article is based on a theory which is further based on problematic application of a theoretical hypothesis. I would suggest changing the title to "Theory of Masada myth".
• Core points: Green does not confirm the core points, he presents Ben-Yehuda's theory as he critiques him, and as a historian he largely criticizes Ben-Yehuda's historiographical methodology, though he later critiques the sociological arguments for being inconsistent with their own logic. After the citation you brought from page 419, Green criticizes Ben-Yehuda for being "devious in overtly rejecting objectivism while employing it sub rosa, and superficial in accounting for the myth's decline. If all historical explanations are social constructions, then so is this one by Ben-Yehuda. His "objective" summary of Josephus includes subjective emphases. And his Masada Myth may be seen in part as springing from Israeli leftists' perception of a need to deconstruct Masada's "resoluteness" associations in the post-1967 circumstances of peacemaking." (again, p. 419) Green further points to Ben-Yehuda's ignoring the archaeological finds and implies that this is because they weaken the narrative he proposes and the rhetoric he uses. It does not seem like Green agrees with Ben-Yehuda, in fact it would seem that he is not entirely convinced of the existence of the modern myth at all. Therefore, citing Green as a source for the article, supplementing or replacing the Ben-Yehuda citations, would then lead to the wrong impression and should not be done. Given the issues above, and considering the fact that Ben-Yehuda was not the first to propose this theory, why not use one of his sources, such as Bernard Lewis?
• Josephus vs Modern myth vs Other possibilities: I am afraid it is entirely necessary to go into the debate, seeing as the very idea of the Masada myth is dependent on it. If the Sicarii did not exist, or if the inhabitants of Masada were in fact of varied communities, or if the early historians had reason to doubt the historicity of certain portions of Josephus' account, the idea of a myth narrative which "selectively emphasized Josephus's account" promoted by them loses much of its credibility. Ignoring it would be dishonest in my opinion. Even the Santa Claus article you suggested (thank you by the way, I enjoyed reading it and its companion Saint Nicholas), contains a historical description of Saint Nicholas. I think it crucial to provide adequate context to the article, including the finds and the debates, and I also believe that the honest dissemination of knowledge overshadows the preference of brevity.
• Further comments: Even if it exists, the Masada myth is not the invention of the early Zionists, as Green mentions (p.417-418):  "In 1841, about two years after the Mormons' forced eviction from Missouri, Times and Seasons (Nauvoo) reprinted an unnamed historian's account – containing some heroic overtones – of Masada's fall. The editors (Don Carlos Smith and R.B. Thompson) affixed a preface mixing admiration with censure: 'The following thrilling account of the self devotedness of the Jews, scarcely has its equal on the pages of history. – Although such a course must be condemned, it shows their attachment to their ancient religion, the God of their fathers, and also their abhorrence of the Romans.'" It is also not the sole possession of the State of Israel, see the references to Masada by the Latter-Day Saints in Green's article p. 418-419.

In conclusion, I suggest the title be changed to "Theory of Masada myth" in which case the lead should begin with "The theory of the Masada myth suggests that… it was first proposed by… It was then adopted and expanded by…" followed by its narrative and so on. Uppagus (talk) 14:44, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

I think you are giving undue weight to a Mormon historian's angle on this. The title refers to article content specifically discussing the (mis)use of Josephus in Zionism, and 'myth'-making is what this was all about. It is not a 'theory' that in Zionism, a narrative wholly out of whack with our one historical source was patched up and proved functional, even influencing the interpretation of archaeological data. That said, this is not restricted only to Ben-Yehuda's work, as one will see presently as the storyline is thickened out to document deconstructions of that popular story before his own work. Myth in short is fine.Nishidani (talk) 16:41, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

I honestly don't understand how a scholar's religious affiliation is related to the discussion. Green's arguments are valid and they were published in an academic journal. The claim that Josephus was (mis)used in Zionism is in fact a theory, albeit a popular one, and not without issues, see above. As was stated, archaeological data was ignored by Ben-Yehuda. Ben-Yehuda is still the main source the article relies on, it is my suggestion that you rely on the original promoters of this theory.Uppagus (talk) 10:20, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

No need whatsoever to change the title here. Selfstudier (talk) 10:24, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

@Uppagus: thanks for your detailed comments. At the heart of what you wrote are two segments in Green's article. I believe there is a misunderstanding between us here. I will put the two most relevant excerpts below so we can work through them:

Green, page 411: In that regard, I acknowledge that there are risks in having a historian such as myself evaluate a book from a field which its author calls "historical sociology." Among them is that the reviewer may not resist the temptation to quibble about issues persisting between sociology and modern history, which are twentieth-century branches from the same eighteenth-century trunk — including an issue like appropriate kinds and amounts of theorizing. Many historians still view theory as Puritans viewed art — the simpler the better — whereas some sociologists indulge their tastes for conceptualization to a level of baroque splendor. Ben-Yehuda's third theoretical referent — Schwartz's reconciliation of continuity and discontinuity in collective memory — exceeds my puritanical tolerance for theorizing and triggers my quibble reflex.

• In your comments above you again substituted "main theory" (your words) for "reconciliation theory" (Green's words).
• As you can see from this quote, Green describes his point around this reconciliation theory as his "quibble". This means he is characterizing his point as "something trivial; a minor complaint", not some kind of foundational problem with Ben-Yehuda's work as was implied in your comments.
• Your comments have not connected this epistemological debate to the contents of this Wikipedia article. We do not go anywhere near this reconciliation theory topic. Unless you can demonstrate that this quibble affects a specific part of the article, I am not sure what we are discussing.

Green, page 419: In summary, Nachman Ben-Yehuda formulates a credible, detailed, concept-based explanation of why and how the Masada myth entered the memory of secular Zionists and modern Israelis. It is an explanation, however, which is "irritatingly repetitive" overloaded with theory, devious in overtly rejecting objectivism while employing it sub rosa, and superficial in accounting for the myth's decline. If all historical explanations are social constructions, then so is this one by Ben-Yehuda. His "objective" summary of Josephus includes subjective emphases. And his Masada Myth may be seen in part as springing from Israeli leftists' perception of a need to deconstruct Masada's "resoluteness" associations in the post-1967 circumstances of peacemaking.

• The misunderstanding here may lie in how Green uses the term "Masada myth" in the first sentence and "Masada Myth" in the final sentence. One is uncapitalized and unitalicized, referring to the encyclopedic subject of this article, and the other is capitalized and in italics, and refers to Ben-Yehuda's book.
• The paragraph is debating the theory of knowledge – it is saying in a long-winded way that everyone has biases. We don't make that point in the article, but I am happy to add it in if you think it will help. The challenge is that Green thinks these biases are only relevant to this theory-of-knowledge-debate, not to any of the simple facts stated in our article.
• Green's debate, again, is about the nuances of how to tell the story of the creation and propagation of the Masada myth. At no point does he question, implicitly or explicitly, the existence of the modern myth. That is not questioned by any scholar anywhere.

On your other points:

• I have no objection to adding in a short summary on the historicity of Josephus's account, so long as it is clear that this is not the point of this article. Would you like to draft something?
• Re Nishidani's comment, I worry that your reference to Green's Mormon publication example in "Further comments" may be too specific towards the Mormon community.

Onceinawhile (talk) 10:29, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

@Uppagus: are you still interested in discussing this? Onceinawhile (talk) 16:32, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Dear @Onceinawhile,

I apologize for being rather absent, things are very busy for me at the moment, and I thank you for your sensitive, thoughtful and thorough response. I thank you further for identifying the misunderstanding. If you would allow me, rather than addressing each point I will try to explain where I am coming from, and hopefully reply to your comments as I go, directly or indirectly. If you would prefer a point for point response, please let me know.

The general issues I see with the WP article are as follows. It is unclear to me what the article presumes to be. It does not present accurate historical data regarding Masada of the Second Temple period and the Jewish Revolt, because it ignores what we know today based on archaeological finds (Namely, that the residents of Masada were a diverse group consisting of sectarians, Samaritans and others, that it is unclear whether there were any Sicarii at Masada, that there are clear indications for a battle occurring there, that the so called "murderous campaign against innocent Jews" should be seen in the context of the battle over the Balsam shrubs between the Romans and the Jews, that Pliny the elder seems to refer to the mass suicide at the rebels' last stand - thus serving as a corroborative source for Josephus), please see the articles of Guy Stiebel who is one of the leading current archaeologists excavating at Masada (If you need a specific source for any of the details I mentioned, just let me know). Based on the current literature it appears that over time the narrative which grows out of the archaeological finds increasingly approaches the early interpretations of Josephus' description, despite and possibly because of its own issues. As such the mythological aspect of the early narrative is minimized. It is further minimized by the fact that the Mormons too interpreted the narrative in Josephus as heroic in the 19^th century. I did not mean to overemphasize the Mormon contribution to the narrative, rather to present it as a testimony to the fact that the narrative in itself has natural heroic pathos even to relatively unrelated groups, and its heroic status was not dependent on a manipulation of the data by early Zionists.

The main issue with this WP article is that it presents a theory, without stating that it is a theory and without providing context. On the one hand such practice presents a historical narrative which is skewed, based on what we know today (What really happened at Masada, and how incorrect was the early Zionist interpretation?). I am fully aware of the fact that the article does not presume to be a full historical survey of the site, such a survey exists (or should exist) in the main article on Masada. On the other hand it does not provide a full or objective representation of the Masada myth theory either. In truth the theory is presented as fact, and not as a theory at all. It is a theory though; it connects a variety of isolated sources and builds a narrative through interpretation. Furthermore, the theory itself, as mentioned above, is not without issue. The methodology and treatment of sources are dubious, the claims are not well founded and the theory's very basis of "a selectively constructed narrative based on Josephus' account, supplemented with fabrications and omissions" is contentious. To quote Stiebel: "Thus holding the story-tellers responsible, both the ancient and modern ones, is too easy a solution and not a very productive one. Claiming that Josephus and/or Yadin knowingly or unintentionally falsified or manipulated data is similar to claiming that Father Roland Guérin de Vaux identified Qumran with the communal residence of the Essenes because he was a Christian priest or that Israeli scholars interpreted it in the same way because they were influenced by socialist ideologies that flourished in Israel during the 50's and 60's of the past century." (Stiebel, "What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?" p. 181) The one-sidedness of the theory is also demonstrated by the fact that its promoters have been called out as being politically biased, based on their statements in the very publications that promote the theory (See Green's article on Ben-David and Shtiebel's on Magness' book above). I would have no problem if the WP article presented it objectively as a theory, instead, it presents it subjectively as fact, without providing adequate context, i.e. background, origins, evolution, methodology, criticism, opposing opinions etc. I am fully aware of the fact that the article does not delve into the epistemological methodology, but that is to its detriment. Ignoring everything the theory is built upon and all criticism of it does not do it justice, as it is, the article just appears to be shallow demagogy, highly selective in its references and citations.

Lastly, I mean to be constructive and truly hope that it does not cause you any offence, as I am very appreciative of your comments. Uppagus (talk) 15:13, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Uppagus: thanks for your detailed and thoughtful comment. I have gathered some additional sources and further developed the article with the benefit of your various comments above. In particular I added sentences on the structural differences versus other national myths, and on the fact that scholars have analyzed both the differences between Josephus and the modern myth, as well as Josephus versus the archeological evidence.

I believe there are two main points left to address in your last comment: confirming the scope of the article, and discussing Stiebel’s commentary.

Regarding the scope of the article, this is an article on Israeli sociology and modern Israeli history. It is not an article on ancient history or archeology - that is the Siege of Masada article.

Stiebel is an archaeologist, so his discipline is not the core one for this article. Of course, despite that, he has a good knowledge of the modern incarnation, and accepts the existence of the modern myth version and its importance to modern Israeli history. But the modern sociological phenomenon is not his area of scholarship, so he minimizes comment on it directly. Just as scholars of Saint Nicholas rarely comment in detail on Santa Claus. You can see this from the article you referenced (Stiebel, What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?), where he comments around Magness’s modern “Masada Myth” sociological / modern history theme, but doesn’t question it. The closest he gets is when he writes: ”I often tell my students that Masada forms an excellent test case, one that allows us to document the processes Jewish and Israeli society underwent in last century. You can see this a little more clearly in an earlier Guardian article from 2013 (Israel's Masada myth: doubts cast over ancient symbol of heroism and sacrifice: Story of Jewish rebels taking their own lives while under siege in desert fortress was either exaggerated or untrue, say experts): Guy Stiebel, professor of archaeology at Jerusalem's Hebrew University and Masada expert, said the evolution of myth is common in young nations or societies… "The myth evolved. All the ingredients were there.” So he directly describes the modern incarnation as a myth, when being interviewed by a journalist for an article about said myth.

Your comment contains a claim that the "theory's very basis of "a selectively constructed narrative based on Josephus' account, supplemented with fabrications and omissions" is contentious” and that the article should contain "criticism, opposing opinions". I feel very confident that you are wrong here. The 38 citations in this article all say the same thing. In all the reading I have done to prepare this article, I found precisely zero scholars bringing this decades-old concept into question. In the discussion we have had, you helpfully pressure tested this by choosing two new scholars who were not cited in the article, Arnold Green and Guy Stiebel, and we have since confirmed that both of those scholars you chose also accept the existence of a modern Masada myth. I am convinced that this pattern will continue with any other scholars around the subject that we have yet to assess. Onceinawhile (talk) 01:31, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Onceinawhile,

May I ask why the POV banner was removed?

Despite your efforts it seems like most of the issues still remain... In the meantime I'm restoring it. Uppagus (talk) 11:41, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

And I'm removing it. I went through this with a fine-toothed comb during its DYK nomination and I am satisfied that it represents the literature fairly.--Launchballer 11:46, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

• Re your opening remarks on what the article lacks. This is a daughter article, and to vindicate its autonomy it must not repeat what the main Masada article documents. Many of the ostensible omissions you argue for relate to what that article covers or ought to cover.Nishidani (talk) 15:37, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Magnes book

princeton 2021. I think it originally came out in 2019 Nishidani (talk) 21:25, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, you are absolutely right. The google metadata says 2021, but the book itself clearly says 2019. Onceinawhile (talk) 21:34, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Lead’s ambiguity on narrative’s content

The lead refers to an academic consensus against which the mythic narrative stands, but does not summarize or explain it at all or its differences from the myth. It also says the myth relies solely on Josephus’ account but does not refer to additional sources. Is it possible for the lead to explain how the myth differs from the historical consensus? ꧁Zanahary꧂ 20:46, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Good idea. FYI we used to have a table (see below) which set out the key elements side by side, for total clarity. This was prosified in this edit. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:14, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

This is confusing, since the lead cites an over-reliance on Josephus by the Masada myth narrative. What am I missing about this myth’s sources and divergences from them and from the historical consensus? ꧁Zanahary꧂ 22:55, 19 August 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Zanahary: thanks for raising this. I think you are referring to the sentence: …selectively constructed narrative based on Josephus' account, supplemented with fabrications and omissions.

What it is trying to say is that the myth is the combination of selectivity and supplementation, i.e. deletion and addition, or even more simply, the Josephus version was "changed". This is of course the standard construction for a national myth or historical myth, such as the Frontier myth. Onceinawhile (talk) 16:21, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Element	Josephus' Account	Mythical Narrative
Characters	Sicarii, a group of Jewish murderers and robbers ("terrorists", in some sources)	Zealots, freedom fighters
Behavior prior to siege	Raided and massacred nearby Jewish villages	Heroically defended against Romans
Reason for Suicide	Persuaded by Elazar Ben-Yair, most killed by 10 people	Chose death over slavery
Survivors	7 survived	None
Role in Jewish Revolt	Sicarii were living in Masada before Jerusalem's fall	The "last stand", having escaped to Masada after the fall of Jerusalem

C'mon people

Wow this is not a very good article as it stands. I know you all are doing your best, but it's not coming off right. With some work I think we can fix that.

(Full disclosure, I don't like Benjamin Netanyahu either. I hope he steps on a lego. The Gaza situation is horrible and I get that the Israelis are committing war crimes atm, (as is everyone else involved over there tho). And I understand our demographic and how politics mostly works. Hey we're all human. Still... we don't roll like that here. We want readers to walk away from our articles not knowing how we feel about the subject. This article doesn't pass that test or come near.)

Alright. Let's drill down.

First paragraph of the lede. Bolding is for emphasis.

The Masada myth is the early Zionist retelling of the Siege of Masada, and an Israeli national myth. The Masada myth is a selectively constructed narrative based on Josephus's account, supplemented with fabrications and omissions. This narrative was socially constructed and promoted by Jews in Mandatory Palestine and later Israel. Despite the modern academic consensus, popular accounts by figures like Yigal Yadin and Moshe Pearlman have perpetuated the myth, influencing public perception.

Public perception of what. Of whom. Mnmh? Many of the bolded passages are not false, exactly. But you can do a lot with cherry-picking facts and misleading wording. I expect to get a lot of this-professer-said-that pushback and fine, that's a good tactic here given the uh political climate in the Ivy League etc. But I'm not disputing facts, I'm talking about how they're being spun. And they are.

I mean, "modern academic consensus" also holds that the first emperor of Japan was not a god. It would be surprising if it did, and that would be worth pointing out. And I think this would apply to many national myths. We don't generally make a point of that in the first paragraph. And yes of course it was socially constructed. National myths are not written by raccoons. The reader probably knows this. And apparently some people are continuing to tell this story instead of doing what the History Department at Dartmouth wants them to do. So? I do a lot of things that the History Department at Dartmouth would find appalling I'm sure. I wear socks with sandals. Can't please everyone.

Oh and constructed and promoted by "Jews". So we are not talking about just the State of Israel here, but a demographic group more broadly, apparently. Just pointing this out.

I'll just excerpt the rest of the lede. It does have some perfectly normal and acceptable passages like "The early Zionist settlers... used the Masada myth narrative to establish a sense of national heroism and to promote patriotism" and so forth, and that's a good structure to build on, but it also has

This narrative selectively emphasized... the defenders' courage and resistance while omitting the details of their murderous campaign against innocent Jews. The Masada myth's central role in Israeli collective memory has puzzled scholars due to its structural differences from other national myths [as it] is not heroic in nature."

Maybe the scholars who are puzzled cos the myth is not heroic (!) are professors at a driving school or something, who knows. It's news to me that it's an outlier worth pointing out in the lede that in a Jewish national myth they don't portray themselves as monsters. How dare they.

Whatever, but let's look at National myth. It is linked to right up front. Long article, here's a passage: "They [national myths] might over-dramatize true incidents, omit important historical details, or add details for which there is no evidence; or a national myth might simply be a fictional story that no one takes to be true literally". Well of course. What would you expect. Why are the Israelis specifically being called out for doing that.

Let's see. OK, many of these myths are are real old, but a fair number aren't. Finland, 19th century... American wild west, 19th century... Brazil, 1933... New Zealand, 19th century... Germany, 19th century to a degree (Wagner)..' It says here that the Masada myth is from the 20th century (altho the source is old). Recent! So? So is the State of Israel.

Brazil slaughtered natives. Finland displaced the Sami. New Zealand, the Māori...America we know about, and so forth. Everyone has blood on their hands. But somehow for these we manage to describe the subject without talking about murdering innocents and "not heroic in nature" and "fabrications and omissions" and so forth. (Alright, I will grant that the section on Nazi Germany could be seen as kind of unenthusiastic; it even throws in the term " pseudoscientific" -- but it's not as harsh as this article is on the Jews. Kind of a low bar to not pass IMO.)

Maybe the Masada myth is mostly false (it doesn't seem to be entirely false like King Arthur (probably)) cos the 2,000 year old source is super sketchy. But all the ones going back centuries or millennia are pretty sketchy. So? Who are we to imply that the Israeli specifically should be called out if their national myths are not verifiably true or don't point out that that they murder innocents?

That's certainly what this article implies. That's the vibe I got, and I'm sure I'm not alone. C'mon we are better than this. This article was put on the main page (as a Did You Know) which is shameful to the project. I don't like being made ashamed of my work here. Time to get to work. Herostratus (talk) 10:04, 20 September 2024 Herostratus (talk) 15:08, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

@Herostratus: all the bolded words you mentioned (and all the issues you raise elsewhere) appear basically verbatim in the sources - fully quoted in the citations - in the references section. Any debate should focus on each of the sources rather than point at us Wikipedians. Onceinawhile (talk) 15:37, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Of course they do. Did I say otherwise? The editors we are dealing with here are clever. They are not going to use material that is not well sourced. That would be stupid. So they are clever, so what? Have you not heard of cherry picking. Have you not heard of spin, of propaganda. The Devil can quote scripture. Let's not let ourselves be outsmarted.

You don't refute my argument that the lede is egregiously POV because you can't. So why are you arguing. We got a bad lede is all. It happens. I get it. We need to fix it, is all, happens all the time, nothing personal, just business, and sorry no but editors are not hapless drones who don't have choices in what they put in and keep out.

Apparently it may be necessary to make one of my points clearer: the Masada myth is not just involved strictly with the state of Israel and its inhabitants. New or not, it's now cherished also by many Jews who've never been to Israel I'm sure. Just as Roland at the pass is cherished by many francophones and french-identifying people the world over, I suppose, and so forth. Singaporans and and Chinese folklore etc. etc. So, the material is not anti-Israeli, it is anti-Semetic. Even if one wants to be coy, it is at least arguably so.

Not a good look.

Anyone who is going to defend this, they'll do it again I suppose. That'd not be a mistake. It'd be a problem. Who's next? Are we going to change John Henry (folklore) to read "The story of John Henry is told in a concocted and misleading classic blues folk song about his entirely made-up duel against a drilling machine, which exists in many versions, and has been the subject of numerous fictional stories, plays, books, and novels which present a false and misleading narrative of African-American heroism and omit any mention of African-American misdeeds. No problem finding refs for the basic fact parts of that that, nor for "If a real model for John Henry existed, he probably perished from a wasting disease, not heroic exhaustion, and thus his purported heroism was a sham" (got a ref for the first part of that). "Academic consensus is that the trial against the machine did not happen at all, and thus its use as an icon of the Civil Rights Movement etc. was misleading". Got a ref says that. I'm sure we can find refs to add in that "Actually African-Americans were less hard-working than that" (this being true, as Henry had superhuman strength and stamina) and "Myths like this may demonstrate an African-American resistance to modernization which may have contributed to a culture of backwardness and poverty among African-Americans in the South" and whatnot. Can probably find a historian who said that if we dig enough. Want to go edit that article? Won't get far will you.

Huh. Imagine that. Herostratus (talk) 19:08, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

This all appears to be original research. You claim cherrypicking without apparently having read the sources yourself.

And your claim of editor antisemitism is wholly unacceptable.

Fair point to a degree, but I didn't call out any particular editor -- I don't know who wrote the lede (didn't look). And I'm not characterizing any person, just the content. For which I claim truth as a defense, which I explained why, I'm not just name-calling.

I realize that the talk pages you have spent most time on are in [redacted], a very very different topic area to this one].

Uh... just wow. Way off-topic and out of line. I'll discuss this privately on your talk page. Herostratus (talk) 04:32, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

To make progress in this editing area requires collaboration, and crucially, thoughtful discussion of the underlying source material.

Onceinawhile (talk) 20:29, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

The editor is using this page as a forum for his uninformed ideas without any care for wiki sourcing protocols, so you can comfortably ignore him/her Nishidani (talk) 20:57, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

"Ignore the editor" is not a good start for working things out, just saying. I'm not spouting nonsense.

Doesn't look like we're going to get anywhere this way. Let's try a different approach -- an RfC maybe, or something. Herostratus (talk) 05:12, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

The OP writes This article was put on the main page (as a Did You Know) which is shameful to the project. Please note that the DYK was pulled. To avoid developing our own mythology, I have documented the relevant discussion and action in a section above: Did you know pulled.

As for the future, I favour folding this article into the main article Masada as I agree that the debunking tone of this page is not satisfactory and its framing is inherently contrary to NPOV. See WP:POVFORK... Andrew🐉(talk) 07:23, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

@Andrew Davidson: with respect to your last paragraph, which of the underlying sources have you had a chance to review? As I wrote to you above on 20 September after your claims resulted in the DYK being pulled: "… if you read all the discussion history you will see what actually happened - a few people reacted to it at first before studying it, then read the (very numerous) scholarly sources describing the phenomenon, and each time the objections then disappeared. Just like this conversation - I am certain that if you make the time to read the article and the discussions behind it, you will reach the same conclusion."

You are very welcome to open another AfD, but if you haven't reviewed the sources before doing so it will not be a good use of everyone's time. Onceinawhile (talk) 07:41, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Debunking ergo bad?. 'Myths' of this variety, that is social stories that utterly distort an objective or historical reality are by their natuyre subject to deconstruction, unmasking, debunking. It is what scholarship does with social memes all over our cultural landscape. Thus the Mayo clinic speaks of 19 Covid myths, or the UN on 8 myths about climate change etc. There is indeed a considerable scholarship that handles the topic of 'social myths' and we probably need an article on it.Nishidani (talk) 08:39, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

That previous discussion to which you refer did not result in a consensus and so the issue is still open and pending. The fact that we have something to say and that there are good sources doesn't mean that we have to have a fork for them. They will fit fine in the main article where they can be presented in a more comprehensive way.

The next step in my view should be a formal merger proposal which I might start myself but I am currently deferring to Herostratus who started this section. Andrew🐉(talk) 08:39, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

The editors we are dealing with here are clever. They are not going to use material that is not well sourced. That would be stupid. So they are clever, so what? Have you not heard of cherry picking. Have you not heard of spin, of propaganda. The Devil can quote scripture. Let's not let ourselves be outsmarted.

What this is insinuating is that the page is, yes, policy-compliant, but that the 'cleverness' (read 'deviousness') of the editors has tricked itself around the rules. That is a WP:AGF violation, for starters.

Cherrypicking? One often sees this generic cliché thrown into a talk page. The serious way to handle it is to ask the insinuator about what, in their view, has been suppressed in the sources. You haven't done this. You just wave the usual polemical flag about selective bias. There is no evidence in the rant you opened this dismissal with that you have read the sources. You argue by analogy with other stuff out there.

Spin? Propaganda? Vapid, empty assertions that look like shouting back from a WP:IDONTLIKEIT. The article shows by substantive sourching to quality scholarship that a myth has been debunked in Israel. And you are asserting that the main editor is engaged in spinning for propagating public access to and awareness of this scholarship's consensus. Meaningless.'

'Let's not let ourselves be outsmarted'. That's the royal plural I suppose (would King Charlie's ears flap in vigorous agitation were he to learn that his verbal privilege is being hijacked here?) If you think the article is trying to outsmart you personally, you can push back, but you have to have rational grounds based on a mastery of the material used (and critical scholarship that might challenge the debunking) if you want a serious hearing here.Nishidani (talk) 09:17, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

The article is not a fork, that was already covered at AfD. One debunks myth, that might account for the "debunking tone"? Nothing to see here. Selfstudier (talk) 09:51, 6 October 2024 (UTC){

OK, I hear you. I remain unconvinced, because reasons, but I'm not going to fight a whole basketball team, sheesh. It's not uncommon for an article to benefit from tweaks, changes, and improvements, but not always I suppose. Maybe some more eyes on the subject, idk. Herostratus (talk) 23:43, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

@Herostratus and Andrew Davidson: the best thing about our encyclopedia is that people who have different perspectives can work together. This article can (always) be improved, and as experienced editors I suspect your inputs will be valuable.

You received a reaction here because your comments were explicitly based on instinct rather than study, and pointed at editors rather than sources. If you could make the time to read the bibliography thoroughly, as well as any other sources that you can find, we can work together to make our coverage here even better. Onceinawhile (talk) 06:30, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

My position is based on policy – see WP:NPOV and WP:POVFORK. The problem starts with the article's title which begs the question by characterising the matter as a myth. This framing seems unacceptable because Masada seems to be quite historical and so the accounts of it form a spectrum from solid fact to complete fantasy with a lot of uncertainty in between. Dividing the topic in two is then arbitrary and so it's better to keep it all together. We don't have such slanted articles for equivalent topics such as Alamo myth, Bastille myth and Dunkirk myth. Creating one especially about Israel is not a good look. Andrew🐉(talk) 08:40, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

It is not a good use of your or anyone else’s time to keep commenting before reading the sources. Your argument is simply WP:OTHERSTUFFDOESNTEXIST, but it ignores Category:Historical myths. It also ignores many differences, such as "Masada Myth" being a widely published topic title, unlike your three proposed negating-examples. It also ignores the fact that all of those three examples are clouded by the large number of contemporary sources, whereas this topic is a pure example of a myth since there was just one underlying source for the original story that was then significantly changed in the mythmaking process. Just read the bibliography, please. Onceinawhile (talk) 14:37, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

I take the view that editors shouldn't care whether someone thinks something is not a good look. And editors shouldn't care about the many people out there who don't need to understand, care about or follow Wikipedia's decision procedures and complain about content. Content decisions have no dependency on those things. What matters is that editors follow the rules. And obviously there should be no special treatment for Israel. I commend Onceinawhile for their collaborative attitude and I hope people can constrain themselves to clear policy and source-based arguments that are all signal and zero noise. Sean.hoyland (talk) 09:08, 7 October 2024 (UTC)

Oh, looked at the AfD, it wasn't judged not a fork, it wasn't judged a fork, it wasn't judged either way -- just "no consensus". Herostratus (talk) 23:50, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Hook

Heh, I just noticed that the DYK hook was "Did you know...

... that although Israel honored 27 ancient Masada skeletons with a state funeral in 1969, the story of freedom fighters' patriotic last stand is now known to be a myth?

Interesting hook. Clearly written by an intelligent person, I think we can all agree on that.

The thing is, tho, is that it's not true.

It's not true that the story of freedom fighters' patriotic last stand is now known to be a myth. It was always known to be a myth. A myth is certain kind of story. The term "myth" has nothing to do with veracity -- Some myths are true, some not true. Paul Revere's ride really happened. Abner Doubleday inventing baseball didn't. Both myths.

Nobody -- nobody, of consequence -- ever thought that the story of freedom fighters' patriotic last stand was a post-modern novel or an R&B song or a sweater label or anything other than a myth.

(I mean we could be saying it is "now known to be a myth" in the sense that we could say "the Eiffel Tower is now known to be an iron structure", which while not actually wrong is still a ridiculous thing to say, so I think we can dismiss that.)

But wait. There is a another definition of the term "myth" that you will find in common parlance -- "falsehood", basically. "Everybody thought Smith was working hard on the Jenkins report, turned out that was just a myth", that sort of thing. The phrase just a myth (which is in the hook!) is a good indicator that the term "myth" is being used in this common pejorative meaning. And it is always pejorative. You might hear, for instance, "Yes, I've been studying early Etruscan creation stories, which I've found to be fascinating foundational myths"; you're not going to hear "Yes, I've been studying early Etruscan creation stories, but it turns out they're just myths".

But the Wikipedia is not going to use the term "myth" in this common meaning in our own words, anymore that we are going to say "When Frederick heard the casualty figures, he literally fell to pieces" and so forth. Right? We're not a scholarly work, but we're not a conversation with Pete down at the Pick-n-Pay either.

Except on that hook. On that hook we did use the term in the common, unscholarly, pejorative sense. Didn't we.

Oops. Imagine that.

Well, we all make mistakes, don't we. I mean it's not like an editor would ever deliberately use a scholarly-seeming term in its common (pejorative!) sense in order to confuse the issue and bamboozle the reader. It's a good thing that we don't have to worry about that sort of thing here.

Right? Herostratus (talk) 05:03, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Your comment has the following features

• a low signal to noise ratio
• an absence of references to reliable sources
• zero-utility subjectivity
• a temporal mismatch between "Heh, I just noticed" and your comments here several days ago
• a patronizing, passive aggressive, sarcastic tone

This makes it difficult for me to distinguish it from trolling. Even if it is not trolling it has very low utility, so low that it is the kind of comment that may benefit from hatting, something that I am perfectly willing to do. I'm sure you are able to improve the quality and efficiency of your comments here in a way that demonstrates a respect for how content decisions should be made and the value of editors' time, right? Sean.hoyland (talk) 05:45, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

It's not craven to think too precisely on the event, but, on wiki and particularly in the IP area we try to stave off minute or lengthy parsings of text in terms of personal scruples by, uh, reading widely on anything related to the crux that, left to the minute scrutiny of our subjective impressions, just ends up, when shared, confusing others with WP:OR, and holding up article development. In this case, all you needed to do to evaluate the propriety of the use of myth was to look at articles like National myth and Political myth for leads to clarify this usage or cast about on google and read articles like

• Anton Oleinik's on the Role of Historical Myths in Nation-State Building: The Case of Ukraine,' Nationalities Papers, 47:6, November 2019 pp.1100-1116 or
• Ramy Magdy, Mythos Politicus: A Theoretical Framework for the Study of Political Myths in Athens Journal of Mediterranean Studies, 6:2, April 2020, pp.155-178

In short, one of the things we should endlessly thank the resources on wikipedia for is that they challenge our presumption to know, off the top of our heads, anything about something - a particularly dangerous premise for readers who jump at the opportunity to think they know more than what scholarship knows. We should take it as a vademecum to understand, via wiki resources, the shortcomings in our pretensions to know, the limits of autodidacticism and free-wheeling opinionizing. In this case, about the use of a word like 'myth', which you challenge on a personal 'feel' than it may be inappropriate when it is attested in the relevant Masada literature, where its use is perfectly consonant with a vast range of studies on the way the past is (re-)invented for nationalist ends.Nishidani (talk) 07:37, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Wait, all I was saying is that that hook was false and pejorative. You haven't refuted that and you can't, so I suppose you can now go to your Plan B of hatting it instead, heh. I mean as I said, it was surely just a mistake, and God knows I've made my share, I think its legit to point out mistakes here and you can't take it personally. Anyway, not a major point, over and done with.

I did read national myth... that is how I found out, as I believe I said, that the Nazis come off better in that article than the Masada guys do in this. I haven't seen anything yet that indicates that the Masada guys were monstrously evil to a world-historical level. (That makes the Roman Empire the good guys I guess, and boy howdy!) But who knows, it was a long time ago, so if you say.

Anyway, I think I already said that, I guess we're repeating ourselves here, so let's see if we can get some fresh eyes on the subject.

But one more thing, off-topic but just so you seem where I'm coming from and why we maybe are not getting along so well. Jim Jordan, he's an American politician, and... well let's just say that I hope he steps on several legos. I'm really into American politics and the survival of American democracy (in the balance maybe!), I'm a social democrat and I have a really really really strong bias against this guy.

Buuut, I recently went to his article and cleared up some stuff that, while true, was overly negative. I watch some other articles like that... heck I recently tried to get at least something positive added to Laura Loomer's article (failed, but tried). Cos that's the Wikipedia way. That's how I exercise my good-Wikipedian chops. I recommend it!

Hey for a fun contest, I challenge you to go find an article involving Israel that's got passages that are spun a little too harshly against them -- There's got to be some out there -- and correct them to NPOV. I mean you've got the chops, access to sources and can understand them, got the time and focus to work that stuff, got the brobdingnian vocab, the pure-as-the-driven-snow dedication to following the science without fear or favor (right?) so I'm confident you could do that.

Just a thought, but I mean you wouldn't want anyone to get the impression that I've got the high ground here. Right? Herostratus (talk) 05:34, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I should have addressed your claim about the hook earlier: You wrote It was always known to be a myth. A myth is certain kind of story. The term "myth" has nothing to do with veracity -- Some myths are true, some not true.

Every single scholarly source confirms that the Masada myth – in longform: the Zionist version of the Masada story – is not true. It has been very easy for them to prove this, because there is only one contemporary source. The scholars have compared the myth with Josephus and identified core elements which have no basis.

Your logic is that the word myth doesn’t necessarily imply untruth. That is correct, but in this case it is demonstrably irrelevant. Onceinawhile (talk) 07:05, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree that Writing for the opponent might help with some WP:NPOV balance on certain contentious articles. Worth noting that the WP:ERRORS in the hook were actually the difference between a state funeral and an military funeral, or the quote involving the "patriotic freedom fighters," not the mythologizing of the Masada events thing. It's definitely well-sourced that the Masada story was mythologized, but not that it was a false story. I'd say this article relies in large part on the work of Jodi Magness, who cites Nachman Ben-Yehuda (though I do see Bernard Lewis cited at least once in the article) and a reasonable critique that could be incorporated to balance it a bit more would be the review of Ben-Yehuda by Arnold H. Green, which appears in this article's bibliography and is used a few times but doesn't appear to be used at all to actually criticize the position of Ben-Yehuda, available on The Wikipedia Library JSTOR. Green points out, among other things, that Josephus isn't exactly un-subjective either, and shouldn't be implicitly trusted. Ben-Yehuda asserts that historical explanations are subjective, but adopts an objectivist stance when summarizing Josephus, which raises questions about whether he acknowledges alternative readings. Green also criticizes Ben-Yehuda's theoretical framework and his treatment of the archeological studies. The work of Ehud Netzer could also be interesting in terms of archeology confirming aspects of the story. This article might also more properly contextualize the view of Magness. According to Jerusalem Post, Magness declares that archeologists are not equipped to determine whether a mass suicide occurred at Masada in 73 CE. In her view, the archeological remains “can be interpreted differently as supporting or disproving Josephus’s account.” Jewish Book Council, Mag­ness, who in 1995 co-direct­ed exca­va­tions at an area of Masa­da that had not yet been ful­ly explored, dis­cuss­es the dif­fi­cul­ty with the his­to­ry as record­ed by Jose­phus, yet in the end does not take a posi­tion either way. It turns out that archae­ol­o­gy is not as straight­for­ward as an out­sider might assume. Arti­facts can be inter­pret­ed in mul­ti­ple ways, and in this instance, can­not prove or dis­prove Josephus’s account. Is he a reli­able his­to­ri­an, as we under­stand that today? The answer, she con­cludes, is beyond her exper­tise as an archae­ol­o­gist. She there­fore leaves it to schol­ars of Jose­phus to determine. That's quite a bit more equivocal than our article. She refers to scholarly disagreements and contradictions, and even acknowledges moments when she has changed her own mind from previous publications. She is always careful to remind the reader that archaeology cannot prove or disprove Josephus's narrative, and that lack of archaeological evidence does not mean that an event did not happen. Rachel Hallote in AJS Review Andre🚐 06:03, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoughtful source-based comment. Some of this – particularly Green's "quibble" – has been discussed in full further above on this page.

Most of your comment is about whether Josephus's story was true. That is not what this article is about – it is instead about the sociological construction and impact of a modern version of the story. Think about it as the Siege of Masada article is Gone with the Wind (novel) and Masada myth is Gone with the Wind (film), except instead of the versions of the story being 3 years apart and mostly similar, these two are 2,000 years apart and very different.

The more serious analogy I used above was Saint Nicholas and Santa Claus. Scholars debate whether contemporary sources about Saint Nicholas are true. Just like Josephus's Masada story, it is probable that the "real truth" was different. In the infinite number of possible true versions of Saint Nicholas, there is a theoretical scenario where he really did have a flying sleigh and reindeer, just as it is theoretically possible that the Sicarii (dagger-people) were kind-hearted brave and nationalistic defenders of Jewish culture. Since it can be demonstrated that both Santa Claus and the Masada myth are modern inventions, scholars leave it there rather than getting stuck in a loop of philosophical indeterminacy. This allows us to be comfortable saying that both modern stories of Santa Claus and the Masada myth are untrue.

This article is about a single version of the story which was demonstrably invented in modern times and had a meaningful social legacy. As our article says: Notable scholars who have studied the phenomenon include Bernard Lewis (1975), Baila R. Shargel (1979), Yael Zerubavel (1980),Edward M. Bruner and Phyllis Gorfain (1984), Barry Schwartz, Yael Zerubavel, and Bernice M. Barnett (1986), Robert Paine (1991, 1994),Pierre Vidal-Naquet (1983, 1991), Anita Shapira (1992) and Nachman Ben-Yehuda (1996).

Onceinawhile (talk) 07:23, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Mnmh, I hear you. I just don't agree, I don't agree with your interpretation of sources, at least the ones I've had time to look at. Source can be interpreted in different ways, and their conclusions presented with different emphases. They can! Some sources can be used a lot and some set aside and not used at all. The provenance of sources can be ignored. Forensic examination of sources and their authors can be dispensed with. Caring to understand academic political and social cultures and how academic historians work and what they are here to do can be forgone. Right? Otherwise we wouldn't need talk pages. We could just gather sources and give them to Chatbot to write the articles.

Anyway... so what if the myth is new? How is that a problem? Israel is new. And apparently something or other probably did happen at Masada, it wasn't made up from whole cloth, so there is some sort of really old source, older than hella other myths.

I mean, if you think being new invalidates a myth, Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson might want to have a word with you. "My Friend Wyatt Earp" is from the same century as the Masada Myth and not even twice as old. Because what do you expect? The American West is new too, are our myths about it supposed to date back to the tenth century or something? Yeah sure a lot of the American Wild West mythology was written in historical times by actual known individuals. So was the Kavala, in 1835 if I recall correctly. What does that have to do with the price of eggs. They are still legit myths.

Anyway... I'm sorry, but the elephants in my room are trumpeting so loud that it's hard to hear you. They know -- as do I, and hopefully you altho I'm not going to bank on that -- that the hook could have read something like this:

Did you know... that Israel honored 27 ancient Masada skeletons with a state funeral in 1969, in the belief that they were legendary freedom fighters according to a modern myth with roots in ancient times.

Or something like that. Hmm? Hey it was a bad hook, is all, a mistake, and that's OK. What's not super is OK is being like "No it wasn't, because we don't make mistakes.

The elephants are telling me that you and I have pretty different ideas of what the Wikipedia is for, and whether or not there are truths about certain groups of people that are so important to let the world know about that we must reluctantly set aside other considerations. Guess we'll have to agree to disagree on some things.

I mean, you can say that there are no elephants in the room, that all of this has nothing to do with current events in the Middle East and what sides people are on and how strongly they feel about this group or that group and so forth, that the writing of this article is just a hey-what-about-that pure coincidence to these events, these things happen when you're so busy doing rigidly NPOV scholarly work that you can hardly take time to notice such things.

But the problem is you can't make people believe it. It's hard to make people believe things that aren't true. This frustrates a lot of people, always has, but it is what it is. You can't make people assume good faith when when after reading all this and considering the question, their socks literally jump off their feet and run around the room shouting "POV! POV! POV!". Herostratus (talk) 19:50, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Stop the blather.Nishidani (talk) 20:17, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

OK. I will! I mean, I can't argue with that kind of logic. You've got me Herostratus (talk) 03:02, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Herostratus, I would have been equally happy with the hook you suggest above. I genuinely cannot see any substantial difference. It seems that you have veered so far away from WP:AGF that you have lost perspective, and are reading into things that don’t exist. Comments like ”How is that a problem?” and ”if you think being new invalidates a myth” appear to have no connection with reality - noone said there is a problem, and noone said anything was invalidated. Your suggestion that this article has anything to do with current events in the Middle East is absurd - I have been writing about both ancient and modern Middle Eastern history here for almost 15 years, and this topic is an elegant overlap between the two. The topic of the myth was discussed many times over the years at Talk:Masada.

WP:AGF exists as a formal guideline for a reason - I recommend you stop. Onceinawhile (talk) 20:26, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

"...equally happy with the hook you suggest above. I genuinely cannot see any substantial difference..." Okey doke then. I have already explained it to you, but I can't understand it for you.

Re AGF, sure, but there's a point where assumption ends once you get to know more about the person. Then they have to demonstrate good faith. You can haul me to WP:ANI on the rule violation if you like. I hope you don't, cause ANI sucks, but your call. You might have better luck with a WP:CIVIL complaint, I don't know.

But, gah let's stop! As Nishidani has pointed out, my work here is blather. A telling point, if true. Maybe he's right, who truly knows themself. This is getting us nowhere. I am out of this thread! But thank you for your engagement, godspeed and dread nought. Herostratus (talk) 03:02, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I noticed that the hook was problematic on the day that it was run (20 Sep 2024). I got it pulled and subsequently updated the header of this talk page to make this history clear. See above.

As for blather, the current score may be seen at the statistics for this talk page. It's triple the size of the article and counting... Andrew🐉(talk) 14:19, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

References

RfC on the article lede

Is the lede for this article basically OK (except for maybe some minor tweaks)? or is it Not OK and needs some major changes? Herostratus (talk) 05:05, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

N.B., update 04:36, 21 October 2024 (UTC): An editor is wanting to make a change to the material under discussion and is insisting. Even if its a good change, that is not usually considered good practice, but it's a small change and if nobody wants to fight about it, we have:

• Original text. Third sentence: "This narrative was socially constructed and promoted by Jews in Mandatory Palestine and later Israel."
• Changed text. Third sentence: "This version first emerged and was promoted in Mandatory Palestine and later Israel.""

Herostratus (talk) 04:36, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

For convenience, here is the lede as of October 13 2024

---

The Masada myth is the early Zionist retelling of the Siege of Masada, and an Israeli national myth.[1] The Masada myth is a selectively constructed narrative based on Josephus's account, supplemented with fabrications and omissions. This narrative was socially constructed and promoted by Jews in Mandatory Palestine and later Israel. Despite the modern academic consensus, popular accounts by figures like Yigal Yadin and Moshe Pearlman have perpetuated the myth, influencing public perception.[2][3]

In the myth narrative, the defenders of Masada were depicted as national symbols of heroism, freedom, and national dignity. This narrative selectively emphasized Josephus's account, highlighting the defenders' courage and resistance while omitting the details of their murderous campaign against innocent Jews, as well as certain elements of their final mass suicide.[4] The early Zionist settlers wished to reconnect with ancient Jewish history, and thus used the Masada myth narrative to establish a sense of national heroism and to promote patriotism.[5][6]

The Masada myth's central role in Israeli collective memory has puzzled scholars due to its structural differences from other national myths: it is not an origin myth, does not provide formative context, and is not heroic in nature.[7] It has been described as "an extreme example of the construction of national memory", as it has no prior basis in Jewish collective memory.[8][9]

---

Previous recent conversations and their participants

• #C'mon people immediately above, about just the lede specifically. I believe this is the only discussion just about the lede.

Other discussions are about the article generally or its DYK hook, provided as general background if desired:

• AfD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Masada myth. Closed as no consensus.
• DYK discussions, just about the DYK hook tho: nomination discussion [[2]]. Article was accepted. Further discussions after posting: here (you have to then go to the "Errors in 'Did you know ...'" section). Ended up being pulled from DYK on grounds of lack of clarity. Further discussion immediately above: #Hook

I'm going to notify everyone who participated in the above discussion and the AfD discussion (not the DYK discussions tho -- can if you like). User:Nishidani, User:Onceinawhile, User:Selfstudier, User:Andrew Davidson, User:Sean.hoyland, User:Herostratus (here), User:Sandstein, User:האופה, User:Artem.G, User:OdNahlawi, User:Huldra, User:PeleYoetz, User:Uppagus, User:Gödel2200, User:FortunateSons, User:Eladkarmel, User:Parabolist, User:Mushy Yank, User:Mangoe, User:Bearian, User:O.maximov, User:Vice regent, User:Dotyoyo, User:Iskandar323, User:ABHammad, and User:Buidhe (the AfD) (User:PARAKANYA I do not summon as xir user page says xe is stressed atm and wants peace and quiet. You can if you want). Herostratus (talk) 05:05, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

I too am busy and stressed, but thank you. Going back to less stressful things. Bearian (talk) 05:10, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah no kidding. Dealing with this subject is just super stressful, it is really affecting me. I've done this before (different subject) but that was 15 years ago, and more localized, and even then took a year of my life. As the movie cops say. "I'm getting too old for this" heh. Herostratus (talk) 05:06, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

WP:NOTAFORUM Selfstudier (talk) 08:32, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Survey

• Not OK That's an easy answer because most of Wikipedia is not OK per the Wikipedia:General disclaimer. Here's a fresh example.

The lead talks of the modern academic consensus. That's begging the question but it's cited so I looked at the first citation. The author was Nachman Ben-Yehuda so I just took a look at that article. As a BLP it ought to be a sober and serious account of the person and his work. Instead it is almost totally dominated by a large section called "Masada myth" too. That seems to violate WP:COATRACK so, looking at the article history, one finds an attempt to provide a more comprehensive account of the professor. This was immediately reverted completely. So, that's Not OK too.

The problem seems to be that someone has an axe to grind. So it goes...

Andrew🐉(talk) 07:32, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

The edit to Ben-Yehuda's article was reverted because it was completely unsourced, which is unacceptable per WP:BLP (to be fair, the previous and current version completely lacks inline citations, which isn't great either). Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:22, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

No, it wasn't "completely unsourced" – that assertion is completely false as you just have to look to see that it contained at least 24 publications, 5 references and 2 external links. It may not have had any inline citations but the reverted version didn't either and still doesn't. So that revert was a complete fail - undoing good faith work which improved the article and made it less of a POV coatrack.

And, checking out the reverter, they seem to have been a spammer who kept being blocked and changing their user name. Presumably they made blind random reverts to try help cover their tracks. The knee-jerk defence of this bad actor is telling.

Andrew🐉(talk) 08:39, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

• OK. But can be improved. Move the ref to the source attributing the quote to Shlomo Sand directly after the quotation marks and indicate before ”by the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand”, for example.-My, oh my! (Mushy Yank) 07:44, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

• Can be improved. It can benefit from incorporating the content from Siege_of_Masada#Masada_myth where the symbolism of the myth is discussed. Also, I'm a bit wary of stating in wikivoice that a certain action 2000 years ago was "not heroic in nature," such claims should be attributed. Also, the lede should summarise the article which says that the prominence of the myth has declined. Alaexis_¿question? 20:11, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

• Procedural Close. I'm wholly uninvolved in this and came from the listing on the RfC but the above conversations are full of passive aggressive assertion that makes it nigh unreadable, and the RfC doesn't seem to have any clear goal or dispute to resolve. From what I can glean from the discussion above, the proposer of the RfC admitted in the discussion that the majority opinion in the discussion didn't agree with them Special:Diff/1249813219, made another very passive aggressive sounding discussion Special:Diff/1250394712 and when informed by other users that their discussion seemed to have no purpose, continued with the passive aggressive sniping Special:Diff/1250895022 without ever actually providing a concrete suggestion or even attempting to make any change to the lead themselves, only insisting that it is currently false and pejorative and was told Special:Diff/1250902513 what the sources represent and has provided no sources to the contrary, though they did offer an alternative hook for the DYK. The question "Is it okay" doesn't present any dispute, nor is there any remediation possible. "Okay" has plenty of different possible meanings on Wikipedia, and everything on Wikipedia is simultaneously in need of improvement and also okay per WP:NOTDONE. As it currently stands the RfC looks poised to do nothing more than waste editor time by asking an extremely vague question when the user decided WP:IDONTLIKETHAT Special:Diff/1250998335. --Brocade River Poems (She/They) 03:48, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Alright. I hear you. That is a separate question, and for navigation and neatness I have moved it into a whole separate thread (not just a subsection, because reasons), here: #Procedural close of above RfC?. Herostratus (talk) 08:00, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Not Okay. As the subject of the Procedural RfC has passed, and some manner of explanation was provided below, I would note on the subject of WP:NPOV the lead should be adjusted. Brocade River Poems (She/They) 00:51, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

• Not OK, the lead has serious issues with neutrality. While it is true that the "Masada myth" is discussed in literature, in many instances it focuses on different aspects of the event, as other editors have already pointed out, like whether the rebels actually committed suicide as Josephus claimed, or not. This article, however, comes across as promoting the perspective of one scholar—Nachman Ben-Yehuda—in Wikipedia's voice, and thus, I find Andrew's comment above convincing. The lead, written in an essay-like, judgemental and unencyclopedic style, is just one of many problems with this article that require a major rewrite. Also, I agree with those who believe the RfC needs better clarification. Perhaps it's time to consider WP:TNT? ABHammad (talk) 07:32, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

• Not OK, but not intentionally so, lead should have edits made for tone. I was on the fence on this until I read the message from ABHammad. Yes, this article is not an intentionally non-WP:IMPARTIAL tone article, it simply relies too heavily on Nahman Ben-Yehuda, but in doing so, it states a skeptical view in overly strong terms simply because Ben-Yehuda did so. Similarly as discussed above, others have critiques. Nobody actually knows what happened during the Siege of Masada, so to state in such strong terms that the account was fabricated or has omissions, when in fact, the account is something mysterious and historical that is being unpacked through archeology. Jodi Magness actually believes that in some cases Josephus' account was fabricated, but other accounts do not survive, so archaeologists are actually critiquing Josephus' account based on reconstructing the story, and demythologizing. It's likely not a myth that Jewish rebels were in Herod's fortress, and a last stand perhaps likely historical, the suicide may be mythological, the way it's written can give the impression that no rebels had a historic last stand, which Magness doesn't say is a myth. Magness expressed "appreciation for Yadin’s methods and cautiousness as an archaeologist." That doesn't mean we need to get rid of Ben-Yehuda, whom Magness also engages with, but basing more of the article on a wider cross-section of newer sources could help, along with needed attribution. Magness therefore doesn't say Masada is a myth altogether but has a nuanced and critical understanding which could be reflected in the article. Andre🚐 07:51, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

Nobody actually knows what happened during the Siege of Masada, so to state in such strong terms that the account was fabricated or has omissions, when in fact, the account is something mysterious and historical that is being unpacked through archeology.

Sigh. I'll reformulate that propositionally so that its useless as a comment becomes clearer

• (a) no one knows what happened at Masada
• (b) in lieu of information, a large story developed about what happened
• (c) (this paper examines scholarship that analyses and deconstructs the contradiction between (a) and (b)), using also archaeology. Go figure.

Well, but as to not intentional, lots of people have strong emotions about Israel, and User:Nishidani is an editor heavily involved in all this, quite tireless and determined and at times acerbic, and I think Xir user page is worth looking over while pondering the question of whether any agendae might be in play here, and, if so, whether it matters, and to what degree we are required to pretend otherwise. Herostratus (talk) 08:50, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

(i) it has been established that you are not familiar with the sources

(11) that all of your comments are meandering opinions

(iii) so the game shifts to suggesting those who argued knowledgeably (i.e. from familiarity with the sources) have an agenda, and an emotional attitude towards 'Israel'. The one agenda which we know of is that under Zionism fadged a story which (a) distorted the only source we had and (b) did so for political-ideological purposes.

Editors who point out this result from scholarship may themselves be running an agenda.

In short, stop wasting everyone's time, by misdirections and AGF violations personalizing by questioning the motives of those who wrote little more than a précis of contemporary Israeli scholarship.Nishidani (talk) 11:41, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

• Source-based discussion needed and only WP:FA and WP:GA article leads might be considered OK: this RfC was worded as an open-ended question – the vast majority of articles in Wikipedia would not pass this threshold until they are WP:GA or WP:FA. Perhaps we should open a peer review page instead of this so we can move the article up the quality scale.

What is "not OK" is that the editor who opened this discussion has yet to confirm that they have read the sources; how can they reach a reasonable view on what the lead should look like without having done that. It may be that this RfC is being opened in the hope that other editors will do the reading and hard work in their place. Onceinawhile (talk) 21:34, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

• Reading Magness, Magness considers the heroic last stand likely historical. Do you agree? Andre🚐 21:38, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

  Please could you bring a quote? That doesn’t match with my interpretation.

  Here are two other quotes from Magness that I think are useful that could be added to our article:

  • The creation of the Masada myth—in which these Jewish terrorists are transformed into freedom fighters and the mass suicide becomes a heroic last stand—has been explored by a number of scholars. While archaeology has been used in many countries to advance political or nationalistic agendas, Masada perhaps best exemplifies this phenomenon.
  • Although Masada has lost much of its relevance to Israelis as a national symbol, it still resonates with Diaspora Jews

  Onceinawhile (talk) 21:48, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

  See her other work where she makes her view clearer and quotes from the book below. She regards the siege and the attack of the Romans, including description of the siege weaponry and military equipment the Romans used which she compares and considers to confirm Josephus. She also mentions the inscription "Josephus" found in Latin. She clearly treats the rebels' last stand as historical and doubts the suicide aspect and the stories in Josephus which she regards as a possible pro-Roman inversion. many scholars now believe Josephus’ description of the mass suicide (the only ancient account of this episode) is fabricated—that it never happened! She treats the rebels and Yadin's research as serious while considering that Josephus may not be reliable. She is largely positive, laudatory toward Yadin, and she considers that the mass suicide was probably a myth and she points out that Josephus might have had his own agenda. page numbers are not precise due to the edition I'm reading.

  In 72 or 73 CE, 967 Jewish refugees holding out atop Masada watched helplessly as thousands of Roman soldiers surrounded the base of the mountain, cutting off all contact with the outside world. Our story of Masada begins at this critical moment: the siege of the fortress three years after the fall of Jerusalem. In this chapter we examine the Roman siege works and become acquainted with Josephus—the only ancient author who describes the siege of Masada.... Approximately eight thousand Roman troops participated in the siege of Masada:...I now believe that the archaeological evidence can be reconciled with Josephus’s testimony. As Gwyn Davies has observed, “It is inconceivable that the Romans didn’t have bolt-firers at the siege [of Masada].

  Recently scholars have employed postcolonial theory (which analyzes the negotiation of relationships between imperial powers and conquered peoples) to understand how Josephus manipulated and subverted Greco-Roman cultural values and norms.56 Scholars have also become increasingly skeptical of Josephus’s credibility and therefore less confident of our ability to reconstruct history based on his accounts. Already in 1979 Shaye Cohen stated, “By now it should be clear how little we know of the events of 66–90. Because Josephus is our only extensive source and because he is so unreliable our

  pp. 187–200,

  The nature and even the very existence of the Zealots and sicarii are also debated by scholars. Steve Mason proposes that instead of being a distinct faction, the term sicarii was used by Josephus as a “scare-word” to evoke a particular kind of violence and terrorism.6 Hanan Eshel speculated that because Josephus was a Zealot leader at the beginning of the revolt, when writing War years later he artificially distinguished between the “moderate” Zealots and the “extremist” sicarii, pinning on the latter the responsibility for the disastrous outcome of the revolt and thereby distancing himself.7 Here I use the terms rebels and refugees to encompass the variety of backgrounds ... other evidence supports Yadin’s position. For example, the Casemate of the Scrolls also yielded fragments of the Joshua Apocryphon. This genre—in which the author retells and reshapes the story in a biblical book—is well-represented at Qumran, where five other fragments of the Joshua Apocryphon were found. Furthermore, there are indications that the Joshua Apocryphon might be a sectarian composition....there is reasonably compelling evidence of sectarian presence at Masada,...in recent years some scholars have questioned Josephus’s account of the mass suicide at Masada on both archaeological and literary grounds.

  Shaye Cohen, who published a seminal article decades ago questioning the Masada mass suicide, writes, “Josephus the rhetorical historian realized that the murder-suicide of some of the Sicarii at Masada would be far more dramatic and compelling if it became the murder-suicide of all the Sicarii … Out of these strands—historical truth, a fertile imagination, a flair for drama and exaggeration, polemic against the Sicarii, and literary borrowings from other instances of collective suicide—Josephus created his Masada story.”... Even archaeology cannot verify whether the mass suicide took place because the archaeological remains can be interpreted differently, depending on how one evaluates Josephus’s testimony. For example, today visitors to Masada are shown the spot where the “lots” were found, in a space to the west of the large bathhouse in the northern palace complex.23 This area displayed signs of a violent conflagration, and more than 250 ostraca were found dumped here among and on top of heaps of ashes.... the archaeological remains have been interpreted as either supporting or disproving Josephus’s testimony.... I am often asked if I believe there was a mass suicide at Masada, to which I respond that this is not a question archaeology is equipped to answer. The archaeological remains can be interpreted differently as supporting or disproving Josephus’s account. Whether or not the mass suicide story is true depends on how one evaluates Josephus’s reliability as an historian—a matter that I prefer to leave to Josephus specialists to resolve.

  Ben-Yehuda concludes that Yadin’s interpretation of the archaeological remains at Masada may have been impacted by his Zionist-nationalistic perspective, but it did not affect the quality of the fieldwork, as I can confirm from personal experience.

  Andre🚐 22:19, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

  Reading these quotes, I wonder if you noticed my response to you above from 3 days ago. All the quotes you have brought are about whether the Josephus version is true, not whether the modern myth version is true. This article is only about the modern myth. Onceinawhile (talk) 23:02, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

  The point is that the lead makes it sound like the rebels' last stand against the Roman Empire was a myth, that part is historical, right? Or at least, Magness believes so. Andre🚐 23:17, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

  To see eye to eye here we will need to be precise:

  • Above you wrote: Magness considers the heroic last stand likely historical. But Magness does not say she thinks they are heroes (that is myth).
  • Just now you wrote: …rebels' last stand against the Roman Empire… Magness believes so. Magness does not believe they were "rebels" in the way that term is used in the modern myth version, nor standing "against the Roman Empire", which makes it again sound nationalist in nature as opposed to "against a Roman battalion" or something similarly local.

  And what do you mean by "last stand"? Last versus what prior relevant events exactly?

  Onceinawhile (talk) 23:26, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

  On the contrary, Magness does call them the rebels, throughout most of the book, and only refers to them as possible terrorists on that one page. She has extensive historical information about the Bar Kochba revolt/Second Jewish Revolt and the Jewish–Roman wars in her book. See her other work as well. The first few portions of the book are very detailed exploration of how the archaeology confirms an account of Jewish rebels at Masada. She questions the mass suicide portion. She does look at the impact on Israeli nationalist mythmaking, but she doesn't say the last stand is a myth. She says Jewish rebels are transformed into freedom fighters and the mass suicide becomes a heroic last stand, Although Masada has lost much of its relevance to Israelis as a national symbol, it still resonates with Diaspora Jews who make the pilgrimage to the top of the mountain, where their guides relate the story of a small band of freedom fighters who made a heroic last stand against Rome. It's a misread to say she says that the heroic last stand never happened. What she actually says is that Josephus' account of a mass suicide might not have happened. Andre🚐 23:45, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

  I am confused by this comment – are you withdrawing the claim that Magness states the "heroic last stand likely historical"? I couldn’t find evidence for that and seems you cannot either.

  Re rebels, I wrote "in the way that term is used in the modern myth version" for a reason. She explains that rebels are not freedom fighters. As the Collins dictionary says, there are various versions of the noun rebel:

  1. Rebels are people who are fighting against their own country's army in order to change the political system there.

  2. You can say that someone is a rebel if you think that they behave differently from other people and have rejected the values of societyor of their parents.

  In simple terms, when Magness is using the word rebel, she may be contrasting them as rebels against the majority of the Judean population, or she may be saying they are freedom fighters against the Romans. The quote above shows that the latter is not what she believes, and if you read the original Josephus his version is clear on this point. And since archeology did not record the political thoughts of the sicarii, it will never be able to move us further from the Josephus version on this question. Onceinawhile (talk) 06:53, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

  I didn't withdraw any claim. Magness clearly devotes a good portion of her book to exploring what she considers to be historical based on the archaeology, and she refers to the historical existence of rebels based on Yadin.

Long quote

events that left a less visible but no less enduring legacy: the fortress’s occupation by Jewish rebels and refugees during the First Revolt. This chapter presents their story as illustrated by archaeological remains from Yigael Yadin’s excavations....Archaeological evidence suggests that after the Romans destroyed Qumran in 68, some of the sectarians (Essenes) might have fled south to Masada. Presumably other Jews took refuge there during the revolt and after the fall of Jerusalem in 70. By the time the Romans arrived in the winter–spring of 72/73 or 73/74, Masada was occupied by a rag-tag group of men, women, and children, totaling 967 according to Josephus. Although we cannot know if Josephus’s number is accurate, archaeological remains indicate that hundreds of Jews were living on the mountain at the time of the siege..... What about the physical remains of the rebels? Aside from the skeletons found on the lower terrace of the northern palace (discussed above), the only human remains Yadin discovered were in a cave on the southeastern side of the mountain. Here Yadin reportedly found about twenty-five skeletons, which he identified as Jewish rebels who had been disposed of by the Romans. However, Zias claims that there is documentary evidence of only five skeletons, and their association with pig bones found in the cave suggests they are Romans (or perhaps Byzantine monks), not Jewish rebels.24 After Yadin’s excavations, all these remains, which were assumed to be Jewish, were given an official burial by the State of Israel in a small mound at the foot of the Roman ramp. The fact that Yadin found no other human remains atop Masada neither proves nor disproves Josephus’s mass suicide story. On the one hand, had all the rebels committed suicide, presumably the Romans—who left a garrison on the mountain after the siege—would have disposed of the corpses by cremating them or burying them in a mass grave somewhere. Similarly, had only some of the rebels died, either at their own hand or in battle, with the rest taken captive, the result would have been the same: the Romans would have disposed of the corpses rather than leaving them to rot... Geva’s interpretation accords with Cohen’s suggestion that Josephus embellished the story of the fall of Masada by reporting that all the defenders, not just some of them, committed suicide....Whether or not the Jews committed mass suicide at the time of the siege, when Masada fell to the Romans, many of the buildings went up in flames. This destruction level at Masada yielded the richest assemblage of finds of any occupation period, including artifacts made of organic materials such as cloth and leather, which were buried in the collapse of the ruined buildings and were preserved thanks to the arid desert climate. Yadin describes the eerie experience of excavating these remains....The rebel dwellings were equipped with the basic necessities of daily life and survival, including stoves and ovens for cooking and baking, and silos, shelves, and cupboards for storage. Ben-Tor notes that approximately 145 ovens and 85 stoves were discovered at Masada, most of them in the casemate wall rooms—the largest number of cooking and baking installations discovered at any site in Israel.....During the revolt, workshops were installed in some of the Herodian buildings. For example, the rebels partitioned a room in the western casemate wall, creating five plastered cells separated by a corridor. One of the cells contained two large circular vats that drained into a smaller vat, leading Netzer to suggest that this was a tannery where leather was produced from animal hides.17 Surprisingly, the rebels installed an iron arrowhead workshop in the waiting room or reception hall adjacent to the throne room of Herod’s western palace—which was decorated with the most elaborate mosaic floor found at Masada—and in another room nearby. The largest concentrations of arrowheads at Masada, totaling more than two hundred, were discovered in these two rooms. The arrowheads were found together with pieces of slag, charcoal, and arrow shafts, lying in hearths where the heat was so intense it had whitened the surrounding areas. These rooms might have been selected for use as arrowhead workshops because the pools in the nearby bathhouse contained water necessary for quenching and tempering the iron. The arrowheads manufactured by the rebels were of typical Roman type

• More to the point she clearly describes them as Jewish refugees from the Romans.Andre🚐 07:23, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

• Procedural close Poorly motivated and ill prepared RFC, in case it is not procedurally closed then OK as far as it goes because I do not see any merit in the objections that cannot be remedied in the normal course.Selfstudier (talk) 12:44, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

* Not OK. I think Andrevan above provided some good comments on how to proceed so I think we should follow their lead. I'll be happy to help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by OdNahlawi (talk • contribs) 15:37, 17 October 2024 (UTC)Blocked sock

• None of those long quotes Andrevan provides, if you read them carefully and examine Onceinawhile's replies, address the issues here, and provide no clue as to how to proceed, on the article or in this thread. Nishidani (talk) 17:12, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

• Bad RFC; procedural close. Because Wikipedia is WP:NOTDONE, hypothetically anything could probably be somewhat improved while also being potentially somewhat okay. 'Is the lead okay or not' is too vague to be meaningfully acted upon after a closure. If the RFC says the lead is okay, are we preventing any future edits to it (I'm noticing a comma splice, for instance); if the RFC says the lead needs improvement, what improvements? This RFC can take us nowhere and should be closed procedurally. There have been some long comments that seem to miss the mark on what the topic is: the valorization as heroes of particular historically real fighters whose full motives are archaeologically and historically irretrievable. The fighters existed, but the myth is in the particular telling of the story and in the particular attribution of a nationalist meaning to the story. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:19, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
• Not OK, way too POV. I have read some of the sources, but that is not my wheelhouse, I have ADD am lazy -- also cannot access these sources, I can not even get to the library cos ice has already formed on the river -- so I will come in from a different angle. The work on analyzing sources is super great, and better than anything I have to offer. But here goes. There're number of things to think about:

• Sources sources sources. I know, pound the facts, pound the law, pound the table. Other editors have the law, I have the facts. The fact is that this lede is real poor. The guideline WP:RS does say peer-reviewed papers are excellent sources, but it also does say "Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply" and "In the event of a contradiction between this guideline and our policies regarding sourcing and attribution, the policies take priority" and "Proper sourcing always depends on context; common sense and editorial judgment are an indispensable part of the process" and "The reliability of a source depends on context. Each source must be carefully weighed to judge whether it is reliable for the statement being made in the Wikipedia article" [emphasis added]. So I mean let's not be too rigid here. We have to look at various factors to vet these refs.
• It is possible to cherry pick and spin source material. It is! Protestations that this is not possible are not very convincing. You can use some sources and ignore others. You can use some passages from a source and ignore others. This is literally possible under the laws of physics. Has that happened here? You figure it out. It's not impossible. There're certainly motives. Does that enter into this case, or is everyone here being an ice-cold and disinterested Fair Witness? You decide.
• In real life, academic sources are not as reliable as you might think. For one thing, the motive for an academic historian is to formulate, publish, and defend new theses. Doesn't mean they are true necessarily. What is important is that they are new. Actually, popular historians are often better sources. I could go into this at length. I wrote Wikipedia:Ref vetting checklist so I'm not a complete tyro here. "Academic journal article == all statements true, period" is OK for most purposes, but not if we want to dig deeper.
• For statements of fact published in our own voice, we need about 99.3% confidence (something like that) that the fact is true. That is possible for the modern myth, but not possible for events described by Josephus, even if forensically examined and considered by current academics. 99.3%.
• I mean, look at the lede for the American frontier myth. Also recent, and also based (partly) on authored books. It is one paragraph, and just describes the mythos. It is a good lede in my opinion. Let's do that. The stuff about what is true and what isn't, and how it's pretty racist and valorizes events where the American Indians were, I don't know, exterminated practically, that goes in the article body where it can be laid out more fully.
• So just to take one small passage from the lede, we have got "murderous campaign against innocent Jews". But that is not true. They were not innocent. They were collaborating with the occupying empire, which is generally considered a crime (treason). Or anyway the Masada guys thought they were. That passage implies that the Masada guys were simply cutthroats and brigands. But they were not. They were terrorists, extremist anti-imperialist nationalists. That's way different. Yeah they burned whole villages or whatever, but I mean that presumably was to terrify -- that is why they are called "terrorists", n'est-ce pas? Would get people's attention and maybe point out "hey, better not collaborate". Guerilla wars are messy. Terrorism is messy. Fighting the Roman Empire is not a tea party.
• But wait. We don't even know that. We cannot trust Josephus... he had no fact checkers, had an agenda, has zero other sources to corroborate him, was not there, and is known to have gotten things wrong when we can check him. Who knows who really did what to who. It's not cool to be putting his stuff, or stuff based on his stuff (which is everything except the archeologist finds, the meaning of which is mostly disputed) in our own voice.
• I call WP:IAR. This is just really bad stuff to be putting out there. Come ON. Everybody knows how this looks. This is not a good look for the project. We do not want to do this. Herostratus (talk) 06:46, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

• Ill-formed RfC, should be closed really, this is just textbook how-not-to-do-it stuff. Paragraphs upon paragraphs of snide, passive-aggressive comments, followed by an RfC statement so vague and disorganised any hope of reasonable discussion unsurprisingly immediately collapsed, followed by more paragraphs of snide, passive-aggressive comments. Why not suggest some changes, and ask "would this version be better", instead of essentially asking "is the lead good?" I have my own problems with the article (see the DYK nom above), but this is honestly ridiculous, especially coming from an experienced editor who should know better. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:21, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
• Not OK, primarily relating to tone issues (summoned from Yapperbot). While I'm still yet to have an opinion on whether this should be procedurally closed, I do think that there are better ways to introduce the article than that. I also agree that the sources do seem cherry-picked from what I've seen. InvadingInvader (userpage, talk) 14:31, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
• Not OK: How can you supplement something with omissions? What are the fabrications? BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:27, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Not Ok I am never heard of this before I came here, and reading the lead it isn't clear. What exactly is the myth? Was it a real battle? It seems just to be talking about a nationalist interpretation of an historic battle. Something comparable to Pop culture depictions of the Battle of the Alamo. Tinynanorobots (talk) 16:09, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Threaded discussions

This RFC is not at all focused, more throw mud and see if anything sticks. If there are specific issues with the lead that have been raised and not resolved, then make the RFC about those. Atm, I'm minded to vote OK on this basis. Selfstudier (talk) 09:45, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

• It is just one more pointless waste of time. Please read the 'Wow' thread above. The work of a scholarly wikipedian who specializes in this area of ancient Middle Eastern history and its inflections in modern times has been subjected to a mother-lode of unfocused waffle. There is no indication in that gallimaufry of opinions of anything, other than that the original complaint was based on a popular misreading of the scholarly use of 'myth'. In short that the plaintiff had no idea of the very large literature on the function of Invented traditions in modern politics and nation-building. There is zero substance in this niggling, no familiarity with, or readiness to read, the adduced documentation. And, after all the airy opinions were replied to, now we have a time-wasting rehash per an ill-thought out RfC, which in this area will just invite the usual numbers gaming. Nishidani (talk) 11:47, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Benedict Anderson wept.Dan Murphy (talk) 13:43, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

• As noted above, Nachman Ben-Yehuda seems to be significant in this matter. I started reading his Fraud and Misconduct in Research which explores the general issue. My eyebrows soon rose on reading "Let us summarize this affair briefly, based mostly on succinct Wikipedia summaries." So, while investigating scientific fraud, they seem willing to take Wikipedia on trust. To fully open their eyes, they should start investigating Wikipedia next... Andrew🐉(talk) 08:14, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

That itself is misreportage. They studied 748 cases of scientific misconduct and used summaries from wikipedia articles reporting such incidents. They do not take wikipedia on trust. They use it, as virtually every scholar, journalist and politician out there does, for the condensed material we write up briefly, for whatever leads it may provide to a vast topic like theirs. And unlike those three representative professionals, wikipedia scrutinizes itself, thoroughly as in the recent Polish-Jewish articles case, which took on board criticisms of wikipedia.Nishidani (talk) 21:42, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

"Scholar, journalist and politician", eh. The latter professions are notoriously unreliable and the book indicates that scholars can't be taken on trust either. Anyway, see Wikipedia is not a reliable source and Citing Wikipedia. Andrew🐉(talk) 07:44, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Oh great! That's it then. Scholars and journalists, who provide the basic sources for 99%of articles on wikipedia, are 'notoriously unreliable,' Do you have the faintest idea of what these two remarks mean logically? Nachman Ben-Yehuda in a book on scientific fraud uses wikipedia. That book, written by a scholar, takes 'on trust' wikipedia which cannot be trusted. But you trust his book for 'demonstrating' that scholars can't be taken on trust, which logically means Ben-Yehuda's conclusion cannot be trusted, nor can he. Sheesh. That allows me to rethink the word demonstrating. Nishidani (talk) 08:34, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

His book is nothing new. The weakness of much academic scholarship has been apparent for some time. See Why Most Published Research Findings Are False and the replication crisis. See also Sturgeon's Law... Andrew🐉(talk) 08:57, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

More epistemological naivity and irrationality. You cite a paper by John Ioannidis arguing that most' published research findings are false, and accept that conclusion when a competent statistician in peer-reviewing that kind of claim, Jeffrey T. Leek, concluded something in the order of 14% was a more realistic assessment. I.e., Ioannidis's 'results are false (14% vs 'most'=80-90% is a huge variation), as, since we are dealing with hypotheses derived from research, conversely are those of Leek. What you are actually saying is a variation of Pyrrhonism, which you yourself however in practice disregard. For what you are saying is that no one should trust the content of the 886 articles you have created for wikipedia. So be it. Nishidani (talk) 12:24, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm certainly inclined to be sceptical rather than trusting, especially when dealing with topics of this sort. The point remains that Ben-Yehuda's published work is based to some extent on Wikipedia and this seems remarkable. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:59, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Do you have any evidence of unreliability? Shall we inquire at RSN? Selfstudier (talk) 14:02, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Let us not waste any more time, esp. since the last point is farcical. Ben-Yehuda's work dates to 1996 several years before wikipedia existed, so it is ballocks to suggest, in the context of the Masada myth, that his 'published work is based to some extent on Wikipedia. Nishidani (talk) 15:19, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

Alright. Work has slowed down a bit, so let's summarize to this point. It's not a vote, and particularly on fraught subjects which this is, but let's look at headcount. If I counted correctly we have got:

• OK: 4 (User:Mushy Yank, User:Hydrangeans, User:Nishidani (who didn't actually "vote" but pretty clear what it would be), User:Onceinawhile (he actually voted Source-based discussion needed and only WP:FA and WP:GA article leads might be considered OK. Because reasons, I'm going to put him here as "OK unless and until I see sources requiring change"
• Not OK: 5 (User:Andrew Davidson, User:ABHammad, User:Andrevan, User:OdNahlawi, User:Herostratus [add 1 more, InvadingInvader, 19:32, 23 October 2024 (UTC)])
• Unclear: 1 (User:Alaexis). Xir "vote" was Can be improved, with suggestions for rewrites that don't seem like minor tweaks, so I dunno. (User:Hemiauchenia and User:Dan Murphy participated but didn't give a firm opinion).
• And not voting but instead asking for the RfC to be just shut down as being malformed in some wau,, 3 (User:BrocadeRiverPoems, User:Selfstudier, and also User:Hydrangeans who elsewhere indicated that the lead is fine, so I put her in both categories. (User:ABHammad also thought it was a crummy RfC, but participated anyway and didn't ask for it to be shut down.) I think User:Onceinawhile also thought it was crummy.

So, headcount to this point 5-4, if I am pigeonholing User:Onceinawhile correctly. With those numbers, I personally would count the headcount as a wash. So adherence to policy and strength of argument we want to look at. No policy issues were brought up I think, except about scholarly sources (per WP:RS). I myself don't think WP:RS is being used properly here, at all, because reasons, which I could expand on if asked.

So, strength of argument. Hoo boy. Well, the points made and the responses were like:

• Evidence show that some editors are too partisan.

• Does not.

• We rely too much on one guy (Nachman Ben-Yehuda, who according to his article theorizes that Masada guys were basically just cowardly mass murderers. Consequently its too POV.

• Nachman Ben-Yehuda is a scholar and a good one. Relying on him is sensible. And we have material sourced to other scholars.

• (Considerable back and forth about what Jodi Magness says, and what other scholars say, and interpreting what they meant, such as in what sense were they using the word "rebel" and so forth.

• Our academic professor sources are not reliable here. Their job is to disagree with each other. Our scholarly sources here are just giving different opinions, different interpretations of the scant known facts.

• WP:RS specifically says that peer-reviewed academic work is of the very highest reliability [added 19:32, 23 October 2024 (UTC)].

• Totally POV. For one instance (there are others), we say in our own voice that the Masada guys wage a "murderous campaign against innocent Jews", when we have no idea if that is true or not. 50% chance that it's true or something. And so on.

• That statement is reffed to an excellent source [added 19:32, 23 October 2024 (UTC)].

For the just shut it down crew we have:

• The question text ("Is the lede for this article basically OK (except for maybe some minor tweaks)? or is it Not OK and needs some major changes?") is nonsensical, because nothing here is OK, everything is subject to improvement, so the question cannot be understood.
• Probably because the RfC writer (me) is a passive-aggressive idiot (based on my writings elsewhere). Also he couldn't get a decision in the local discussion, so making another discussion is flogging the horse.
• A waste of time bordering on the tendentious, starting an RfC which points to no clear dispute, proposes no real remedy for the dispute, and asks an extraordinarily vague question is really bad. "Is this OK, is this not OK" says absolutely nothing about what is being disputed or even the nature of the dispute or how the dispute can be remedied, and that is not acceptable.

That's my Cliff Notes of the above. Other editors might have summarized it differently. Did my best. It's usual to summon editors who are being discussed, I just didn't want to bother them. You can if you like. Herostratus (talk) 02:57, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Alright. So let's see. Above, I tried to present a neutral précis of the discussions above. Now I'll talk about some things from my perspective. Allow me to expand on my point about our scholarly sources here.

So, our starting point is Wikipedia:Reliable sources. It is technically only a guideline, not a policy.But in real life it is treated with the respect of policy, and that is well and good. I am not going to be like "only a guideline, nyah". But still, it does say:

• "This is... a content guideline, Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply." That is right up top.
• First sentence is "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published sources, making sure that all majority and significant minority views that have appeared in those sources are covered." Emphasis in orginal, so they really wanted to bring that front and center. Drilling down and picking from the body text we find
• "In the event of a contradiction between this guideline and our policies regarding sourcing and attribution, the policies take priority".
• "Proper sourcing always depends on context; common sense and editorial judgment are an indispensable part of the process".
• There's a little section about that called WP:CONTEXTMATTERS, it starts off "The reliability of a source depends on context. Each source must be carefully weighed to judge whether it is reliable for the statement being made in the Wikipedia article".

Re the third bullet, that policies trump or at least equal WP:RS, well, Wikipedia:Neutral point of view for instance is a policy. The other policies are at Wikipedia:CONPOL. WP:SYNTH is at the policy Wikipedia:No original research; I'm not saying that applies here, but we want to watch out for that. WP:BURO is also a policy, and it tells us "Do not follow an overly strict interpretation of the letter of policies without considering their principles". (It also says "he written rules themselves do not set accepted practice. Rather, they document already-existing community consensus regarding what should be accepted and what should be rejected" which sometimes isn't true, so in that basis its OK to argue "Rules shmools, this is accepted good practice".)

Anyway, WP:RS also says "Deciding which sources are appropriate depends on context. Material should be attributed in-text where sources disagree." Note the second sentence.

Now, WP:RS does say "Many Wikipedia articles rely on scholarly material. When available, academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources. However, some scholarly material may be...controversial within the relevant field". Emphasis added, for your delectation. But note the sentence immediately following.

So there is that one sentence, yes, altho it goes on to say "Articles should rely on secondary sources whenever possible. For example, a paper reviewing existing research, a review article, monograph, or textbook is often better than a primary research paper."

Anyway, that bolded section is basically the crux of the argument that peer-reviewed scholarly papers written by professors and published in reputable academic journals is the gold standard here. And that is true for a lot of content, but also not true for a lot of content. That is why it is way outnumbered by the other text I cited above.

You know, the thrust of WP:RS is about sourcing facts. If we want to say that chromium chloride is toxic to humans, really a single article in The Lancet is probably sufficient. Like that. That's not the sort of thing we are discussing here.

Beyond all that, as you can see, WP:RS is shot thru with "usually" and "exceptions may apply" and "often" and "exceptions may apply" and so forth. We are supposed to work together to produce the best articles, not worry about reading tea leaves.

Alright? I don't like arguing the precise wording of rules. There's hella rules here, many contradictory. Rules are great, sometimes. But we are experienced encyclopedia editors and not robots, morons, newbies, or Rasputin-bearded professors. We want to be flexible. But if you want to argue the precise text of rules and shout at each other with WP:I'M_RIGHT and WP:NO_I'M_RIGHT to try to get an advantage to push thru your argument... well, you won't be the first -- whatever.But per all the above, even then you lose if you are trying to overvalorize or even much valorize academic sources. Herostratus (talk) 04:04, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't think 'in the absence of contrary evidence, the historians and archaeologists likely know what they're talking about' is overvaloriz[ing] academic sources. And as much as I respect the effort you've gone to Herostratus in describing the discussion and your perspective on the topic, I'm hard pressed to see where this is going beyond you trying to say that you want to ignore the reliable sources guideline because the academic sources don't say what you want them to say. There are times when we don't want to let rules inhibit the project, sure, but I don't find the reasons you've provided to be very compelling, especially when it's still not clear what is wanted besides, somehow 'not what the scholars say'. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 05:02, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Mnmh. It's partly a matter of different perspective, you and me. We will just have to agree to disagree I guess. Maybe you're a college person or something, and college people tend to think that academic sources are the cat's meow. College people write papers about, I don't know, how the dragon figures in Etruscan graves are or might be related to inscriptions on Basque burial mounds and whatnot, I suppose. This here is an encyclopedia tho and what we do is quite different. We ourselves are not a scholarly work. As I said, a primary job of an academic writer is to publish new thoughts and new perspectives. Otherwise you won't get tenure. Our remit is kind of the opposite of that, we mostly want to publish old thoughts and old perspectives... the leading edge is a treacherous razor's edge for us to navigate. I'm not saying to scorn academics. Those guys are smart, mostly. But outside of hard science and hard facts, they are just another source to consider.

I could tell you a funny story, but this is already long.

IMO this is a case where secondary sources are needed, I think. Articles in Time or The New Yorker or Der Spiegel or what have you. That'd be better. A popular history book if the writer is reliable. Of course, at the current moment, getting any fair opinion on anything related to Israel is going to be tricky. I would certainly not trust anything about Israel past or current from the Guardian and really most sources. (And WP:RS does say "Reliable non-academic sources may also be used in articles about scholarly issues, particularly material from high-quality mainstream publications", altho I suppose you could say that "may" is a little weak.)

But anyway, so, my question is, for matters of actual fact, how confident to we have to be that the statement is true in order to give the statement in our own voice (as opposed to "Professor XYZ opines..." or whatever). For instance, to state "The Vikings had a settlement in Newfoundland", how sure to we want to at least strive to be? 99%? That seems too low... one fact in 100 being dead wrong is pretty mediocre. 99.9% is not humanly possible. So, 99.3% or so maybe. Of course there's a continuum from "dead wrong" to "pretty much true but not precisely". One of the reasons why writing an encyclopedia is complicated. Herostratus (talk) 22:38, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I am struggling to find your point in these walls of text. If you don’t trust the secondary sources, please just go and look for yourself in the primary source for the overarching topic – i.e. Josephus. I did exactly that as part of the research for building out this article. Once you have done that, it will be easier to engage with you. Otherwise you are just tilting at windmills. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:48, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

this is a case where secondary sources are needed: Which is precisely why scholarly publications in the social sciences and humanities are cited. Those are the highest quality secondary sources for the topic.

Of course, at the current moment, getting any fair opinion on anything related to Israel is going to be tricky: All of the sources cited in the article as it currently exists predate 'the current moment' by at least three years, in most cases more. This also relates to your statement that we mostly want to publish old thoughts and old perspectives. While in fact we want to cite current scholarly consensus when available, the point that Wikipedia is not the leading edge is well taken—and is already accounted for in the article, which cites sources published from 1967 to 2020 and all throughout that range. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 23:07, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't really think there's anything wrong with the sources used. The problem is, nobody really knows what happened in antiquity, we simply reconstruct based on archeology. The sources, in this case, the ancient sources, should not be trusted at face value. We also shouldn't use critical sources uncritically. WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV could help here. Not all reputable academics and commentators agree on the relative merits of Yadin's archeological research. Ben Yehuda is critical of it, while Magness is largely laudatory. Similarly, Magness questions the reliability of Josephus, while Ben Yehuda largely doesn't. Andre🚐 23:19, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Right. Hmnh Britannica says:

Many historians doubt the reliability of Josephus’s account, some going so far as to argue that the Siege of Masada never occurred.

From here. Britannica is very reliable and has a robust fact-checking operation and their business model is to be very accurate.

Now, the next sentence does say "Archaeological evidence, however, indicates that a battle was indeed fought at the site...". But still.

Sorry If I have been too long-winded. I'll try to cut that down as much as possible. Herostratus (talk) 03:03, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I think that's about right. Some historians doubt the reliability of the source, but it is not, as some people claimed in this discussion the only source for information on Masada. It's the only surviving textual account, that's true, as others were lost to us. This is a case of history being written by the winners (Romans). Some archaeologists have found evidence of the Siege of Masada, which is basically enough for its historicity or at least, many people do accept its historicity, such as Magness. That doesn't mean Josephus was correct or is the only source. The main source, as you point out, correctly, is the archaeological evidence and that is where the story of Yigal Yadin comes from, which Magness also accepts. Andre🚐 03:18, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

which Magness also accepts: Magness looks at the archaeology, but to say she accepts Yigal Yadin's interpretation of the archaeology doesn't seem accurate. From her Masada: From Jewish Revolt to Modern Myth (Princeton University Press, 2019): How did the site of a reported mass suicide of a band of Jewish rebels who terrorized other Jews become a symbol of the modern State of Israel? The creation of the Masada myth—in which these Jewish terrorists are transformed into freedom fighters and the mass suicide becomes a heroic last stand-has been explored by a number of scholars. While archaeology has been used in many countries to advance political or nationalistic agendas, Masada perhaps best exemplifies this phenomenon. (197)

Magness criticizes Yadin's assessment of the archaeological evidence at Masada as driven by a nationalistic agenda. She even goes so far as to say that Yadin's interpretation of the evidence mask[ed the] violent activities of the sicarii, and Magness explicitly expresses agreement with Nachman Ben-Yahuda. Also from Magness's 2019 book: Nachman Ben-Yehuda, an Israeli sociologist, notes that the Masada myth is based on a whitewashing of Josephus's account. For example, instead of referring to sicarii, the Jews atop Masada are typically described as Zealots, as for example by Yadin, or as defenders or rebels-neutral terms that mask the group's violent activities. Their terrorism of other Jews, including the massacre of innocent villagers at Ein Gedi, is overlooked in the Masada myth. (197)

Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 04:03, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

For clarity, the question isn't "did the Romans siege Masada", because scholars agree the answer to that is "yes". When speaking of the "Masada myth", Magness and Ben-Yahuda refer to the characterization of the siege and of the sicarii participants, and the semiotic meaning that people attributed to that characterization. To use another example, Christopher Columbus really did cross the Atlantic Ocean and bump into the Americas, but the early United States' repackaging of him as an enlightened, liberatory, anti-monarchic hero for new nation made a myth out of the man. (See America Discovers Columbus: How an Italian Explorer Became an American Hero [University Press of New England, 1984]; The Battle Over America's Origin Story: Legends, Amateurs, and Professional Historiographers [Palgrave Macmillan, 2022]). Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 04:10, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

That's a selective quoting of Magness, and fairly duplicative to the discussion above. If you read a bit outside of those quotes you'll see she largely praises Yadin, and is a contrast to Ben-Yehuda. I won't requote what I've already quoted above, but she has positive things to say about Yadin, and she acknowledges his ideology and explicitly says it doesn't affect the quality of his fieldwork. In fact, nobody knows if the sicarii was the right term - they are also called zealots or rebels, and it is pointed out as I quoted above when Magness cites another scholar (and she does mention Ben-Yehuda but she also criticizes him elsewhere) she mentions the possibility that sicarii was a "scare-word" being used to demonize or denigrate the Jewish rebels from the perspective of the lawful orderly Romans, with whom Josephus collaborated. Andre🚐 04:21, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

A reminder that we have discussed this above. The description of Yadin’s archeology in Magness is not relevant to the topic of this article, because the question of whether the Josephan story is accurate is not in scope. Onceinawhile (talk) 23:44, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

But the article takes an implicit stance that Josephus is accurate by saying that the changes to the story are inaccurate. Andre🚐 23:48, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

That is the same as saying that the article Santa Claus takes an implicit stance that the miracles of Saint Nicholas are accurate by saying that the changes to the story are inaccurate. It is incorrect logic. Onceinawhile (talk) 06:42, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

No, because reputable sources say there was a Siege of Masada. Andre🚐 06:57, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

And reputable sources say Saint Nicholas was a real bishop. When you work through your logic you will see that it doesn’t add up. Onceinawhile (talk) 07:05, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

+1 Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 07:45, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't think we can calculate the probability of something being true. Good sources should express reservations, and expressing reservations is something that should be expected in more academic sources. The policy for wikivoice is that it should reflect the majority opinion. I think the wikipedia policy was thought of more with science in mind than history. There may not be a majority opinion on every detail. Furthermore, it is difficult to find out what the majority opinion is. It is always safer to use attribution. This sometimes runs into conflict with WP:WEASELWORDS, but that is not a clear-cut policy. Really, this is a case for editor discretion. Tinynanorobots (talk) 12:11, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

References

References

Procedural close of above RfC?

(I think it's better to put this in a whole separate thread, for navigation purposes. We are talking about the RfC immediately above, #RfC on the article lede. An editor, [[User:BrocadeRiverPoems, made the point quite strongly that that RfC is not legit and should be shut down. I don't agree, and I think it ought to be discussed first.)

BrocadeRiverPoems wrote:

• Procedural Close. I'm wholly uninvolved in this and came from the listing on the RfC but the above conversations are full of passive aggressive assertion that makes it nigh unreadable, and the RfC doesn't seem to have any clear goal or dispute to resolve. From what I can glean from the discussion above, the proposer of the RfC admitted in the discussion that the majority opinion in the discussion didn't agree with them Special:Diff/1249813219, made another very passive aggressive sounding discussion Special:Diff/1250394712 and when informed by other users that their discussion seemed to have no purpose, continued with the passive aggressive sniping Special:Diff/1250895022 without ever actually providing a concrete suggestion or even attempting to make any change to the lead themselves, only insisting that it is currently false and pejorative and was told Special:Diff/1250902513 what the sources represent and has provided no sources to the contrary, though they did offer an alternative hook for the DYK. The question "Is it okay" doesn't present any dispute, nor is there any remediation possible. "Okay" has plenty of different possible meanings on Wikipedia, and everything on Wikipedia is simultaneously in need of improvement and also okay per WP:NOTDONE. As it currently stands the RfC looks poised to do nothing more than waste editor time by asking an extremely vague question when the user decided WP:IDONTLIKETHAT Special:Diff/1250998335. --Brocade River Poems (She/They) 03:48, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

(Responding as the editor who initiated the RfC... Executive Summary: yeah I know that I was far from my best on the thread referred to (doesn't make me wrong tho), but I was required to point to it, but even so the RfC is supposed to be a new beginning that stands on its own).

So anyway, I have to say I pretty much resent most of this. There's no need to be personally insulting. Nobody has required you to participate. Calling for the question to be taken off the table, this is a pretty serious thing. This is a fraught subject and people have strong emotions around it. Let's try to be restrained here, colleague, please.

Your comments about me, my motives, my competence, and so on are sufficient to bring me up on charges at WP:ANI on various charges -- not being here to contribute to the encyclopedia, lacking the competence to do so, not accepting a settled matter, opening unusable RfC, and general trollery or POV-warring I guess. If true, you owe it to the project to get this sort of thing quashed, right? In fact, I insist -- if I'm engaging in bad behavior, I'd want be told, otherwise I demand the chance to clear my good name, which I cherish. Don't forget to notify me on my talk page.

Anyway, there are plenty of admins at WP:ANI, so you can make the request for the procedural close right there when you are bringing me up on charges, I guess. Alright?

On the merits, I'm not sure that your point is that no RfC on the article lede is legit -- it stays as it is, end of story, I guess, or else, work it out locally without an RfC -- or that an RfC is legit (unwise etc perhaps, but legal), but just that it is poorly formed. The RfC text is:

Is the lede for this article basically OK (except for maybe some minor tweaks)? or is it Not OK and needs some major changes?

IMO that's a reasonable question. I was trying to follow the instructions at WP:RFC which suggest that the RfC text be short, neutral, clear, and focused. I may have failed, but IMO it is, if imperfect, clear enough to continue (after all, a few editors responded, and did not seem to be all at sea as to what was being asked).

It's a really fraught subject, I want to be careful here to go thru a precise step-by-step process.

My thought was, there would probably be no consensus, but perhaps there would consensus for "OK" (thus problem solved, no important changes) or "Not OK" (major deletions, additions, redactions, and rewordings called for, this understood to be needed, the exact form these to take to be worked out by further discussion, but "basically just leave as is" not really a legit part of that discussion, this having been decided by the RfC.)

I did not want to get into "should it say this instead of this, that instead of this" and so on as then you're going to get "No, not this or that, but rather the other" and "No, not the other, but such-and-so" maybe turning into kind of a dog's breakfast and it'd be hard to get a clear decision. I believe I am in the right here, willing to be corrected.

So, the point of an RfC is, get new eyes on the matter, new points made, bigger quorum. That is why I made the RfC. I have not yet participated, will later but want to hear other voices first. I did not want to continue to try to work it out locally, as we didn't seem to be getting anywhere, but I still believe that it is worth further discussion.

It is true that (of course) I pointed to previous discussions, in particular #C'mon people. I'm not suggesting that my participation there was super good (doesn't make me wrong tho) but I did have to point to it, but this RfC should be new start.

(Full disclosure, I don't have a super strong opinion on the Current Unpleasantness, as I think everyone involved are assholes, but also victims too in a way. But being old I was brought up on Exodus (1960 film) and the Holocaust and "plant a tree in Israel" and all that, plus I really hate fascism, so altho I do think the West Bank settlements are criminal, and the situation in Gaza is horrible and must be ended somehow, emotionally I guess I do tend to feel OK about Israel existing and all. I have read history some, and I think the Israelis are regular assholes and not world-historical monsters-in-human-form, and using the Wikipedia to give that impression -- we don't flay other people's national myths like this -- pisses me off. Plus river-to-the-sea chants by 1st world college people who couldn't find Burkino Faso on a map leave me cold. Anyway, I put NPOV fairness very high in importance, so sue me. And this explains -- not excuses, granted -- my sarcasm etc. there.)

I would wish that other people would also be transparent about how they feel about Israel, Jews, Palestine, the current Gaza situation, etc. But I'm not going to hold my breath. Herostratus (talk) 08:35, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

This is yet another waste of time bordering on the tendentious. Selfstudier (talk) 09:04, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

So anyway, I have to say I pretty much resent most of this. There's no need to be personally insulting.

Saying that an RfC which points to no clear dispute, proposes no real remedy for the dispute, and asks an extraordinarily vague question is wasting editor's time is hardly an insult. In the discussions that are directed, there is no evidence that you made a substantial point supported by sources, you were told multiple times that the content of the article represented what the sources said, and you continued to do little more than make passive aggressive insinuations that the other editors were WP:POVPUSHING because they didn't agree with your assesments and had some bias against Israel due to current happenings. You stated a few times that you were done with the topic, or saying I remain unconvinced, because reasons, but I'm not going to fight a whole basketball team. Saying you remain "unconvinced because reasons" and that you're "not going to fight a whole basketball team" seems to me to be a clear recognition that the result of the discussion was not to implement whatever change you wanted, and "because reasons" comes across as blatantly WP:IDONTLIKEIT. After two discussion threads wherein you were passive aggressive and sarcastic, you create an RfC with a vague question, which seems pretty clearly like a failure to WP:DROPTHESTICK, as these discussions started 20 September 2024, ended around October 6, were picked up again by you on 10 October 2024, on 14 October you said This is getting us nowhere. I am out of this thread! and then you left and created an RfC with an entirely vague question.

Calling for the question to be taken off the table, this is a pretty serious thing

Your question is "IS the Lead OK". A vague, nebulous, nigh unanswerable question that cannot really be substantiated by policy. If you had asked a question that had any degree of focus, it would be far less of an issue.

This is a fraught subject and people have strong emotions around it. Let's try to be restrained here, colleague, please.

Again, this reads as pure passive aggressiveness and the implication being that I am ruled by emotions? Your statement Let's try to be restrained here is advice you may well have wanted to give yourself several days ago.

So, the point of an RfC is, get new eyes on the matter, new points made, bigger quorum.

A bigger quorum on what? You did not articulate in any capacity in the RfC what the dispute actually is. All you did was ask "Is the lead OK or Not OK?", which resulted in the first answer of the RfC Survey being Not OK That's an easy answer because most of Wikipedia is not OK As you pointed out WP:RFC which suggest that the RfC text be short, neutral, clear, and focused (emphasis added). Your question, and the discussion which you link to fails to articulate what exactly a vote of "Not OK" even fully means or what the proposed solution of "Not OK" even is (Major Changes? Delete Content? Rewrite The Content? Edit the Content? New Sources?). There is no focus on what the dispute is, or how a vote either way resolves it.

To the best of my understanding you are contending that the lead is not neutral, but you never once in the discussion provided any sources or substantiated the claim that this isn't the majority, scholarly view as WP:NPOV mandates all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic. If there are no other significant sources that contradict what is currently represented in the article, I do not understand what it is you want to accomplish. Wikipedia editors cannot editorialize what the sources say.

I did have to point to it, but this RfC should be new start

It would be helpful if you had articulated in the RfC what that point was, since it should be new start. Because just asking "Is this OK, is this not OK" says absolutely nothing about what is being disputed or even the nature of the dispute or how the dispute can be remedied.

And for the record, comments like I would wish that other people would also be transparent about how they feel about Israel, Jews, Palestine, the current Gaza situation, etc. But I'm not going to hold my breath insinuate that everyone involved in the discussion has some ulterior, political motive and is the exact kind of remarks that I referred to as "passive aggressive snipes", and which other editors likewise complained about in the discussions above. Also, WP:RFCBEFORE details what should transpire before attempting an RFC and states RfCs are time consuming, and editor time is valuable and WP:RFCBRIEF states The statement should be self-contained and also links to WP:WRFC which helpfully notes Some RfCs do not work because the requester oversimplifies a specific issue to arrive at a question that is so general that answering it is not only difficult, but useless Brocade River Poems (She/They) 09:11, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

1) I do not agree. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. 2) IMO calling for procedural close -- after other editors seem to be OK enough with the RfC to engage -- would be the move of someone who knows they do not have a strong argument. I'm not saying you don't have a strong argument, I'm just saying that it is what an editor without a strong argument would do. The reader can make up her own mind what to think about that. 3) Can you articulate how the RfC should have been worded? Just a quick general post. 4) Go to WP:AN and ask for a procedural close if you're not just blowing off steam. In other words, the old saying "Put up or pipe down" is appropriate here. If you are just blowing off steam, Yeh OK, it's an emotional subject for you it seems, so fine, but hopefully steam now blown, so let's move on please. Herostratus (talk) 22:46, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

would be the move of someone who knows they do not have a strong

No, it's the move of someone who tried to figure out what the point of the RfC even is contending, saw other people voting arbitrary answers referncing WP:NOTDONE and realized your quesiton is too vauge to be actionable. I don't have an opinion about any of this, I wouldn't even know where to begin to have an opinion about this dispute because it still isn't even clear to me what the dispute is.

it's an emotional subject for you it seems

Again with this. Enough. You are quite literally the one who has described yourself as pissed off about the article. All I have done in this discussion is point out that your RfC is malformed. There is no clear dispute. There is no clear remedy to the dispute. There is a vague question that if not unanswerable, would be effectiveless and useless to answer. Brocade River Poems (She/They) 01:27, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Alright, so. let me explain. I started the RfC because in my personal opinion the lede was really bad. There is dispute! Between "This lede needs major revisions" and "Nah it's fine". OK? If I needed to have written "There is a dispute over whether the lede should be majorly redacted or not" before the other text, OK. I can add that now if you think its super important and that editors are going to be like "huh? I'm all at sea here". Would that solve the problem? If not, what would?

So back to the dispute. I wasn't getting anywhere with even the basic idea that some major changes were called for the local discussion, so I figured more eyes on the matter would be OK. This is typical and proper I think.

I figured that since this is a fraught subject, it would be best to go step by step. First decide if major changes should even be made. If not, OK, we are done. If so, then in a new discussion we coud talk about what changes should be made. If that is wrong could you be a bit more collegial in suggesting other paths that should have been taken?

For the other stuff, that is a different thread. Fine, I lost my cool some in that thread. Fine, I'm an asshole generally, whatever. But I don't think "Shut down this RfC because of things the person said earlier" is a good precedent. In all this, I still haven't seen what an RfC on the lede should actually say. I'm all ears. Or if your point is that I, personally, should not be permitted to open an RfC on this subject (due to being an asshole or too POV or whatever), I don't agree. The RfC should stand on its own merits. Herostratus (talk) 04:52, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

"There is a dispute over whether the lede should be majorly redacted or not"

Yes, that is better. Better would be to give context such as "There is a dispute about the neutrality of the lead. Is the lead okay, or not?" or "There is a dispute about the quality of the sources" or any number of actual, actionable complaints. You can plainly state the nature of the dispute in a neutral term without being so general that you have entered the territory of vagueness. It is not Shut down this RfC because of things the person said earlier, I reference the discussions because the RfC process is usually used as a means of dispute resolution when there is no clear consensus. The discussion boards you linked to seemed to indicate you just did not want to accept the consensus that the other editors reached and declared you weren't going to fight the entire basketball team. That makes the RfC seem like a failure to WP:DROPTHESTICK when you create an RFC that just asks "Is the lead okay or not?".

Do you think there's POV Violations? Do you think that material needs to just be attributed? Are there factual issuews?

It's hard to discern because a lot of the discussion linked was about the DoYouKnow Hook, which gives very little context to the conversation of "Is the lead okay". As for I still haven't seen what an RfC on the lede should actually say I cannot even begin to propose what wording would be appropriate because I have said numerous times in this discussion, I do not have a clear understanding of what you found wrong policy-wise with the lead. Brocade River Poems (She/They) 05:15, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Well in that case just vote "OK, I cannot find anything wrong here policy-wise" I guess. That is fine. "I, personally, cannot find anything wrong here policy-wise, and anyone who disagrees should shut up and like it, close this down" is not the Wikipedia way. And there there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your policy. Rules are good for most purposes. But the law is a blunt instrument, and when we are really examining things deeply we have to go beyond these general rules, if we are flexible in our thinking. And WP:RS is not a policy anyway. Herostratus (talk)

Yes, I can paraphrase Shakespeare as well, which I shall do as I opt to disnegage from this pointless conversation with you as you continue to attempt to portray me as some dictator who is trying to silence the masses. It is a post full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.--Brocade River Poems (She/They) 09:41, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

No one has displayed, to reply in your own Shakespeare-allusive tone, an 'I am Sir Oracle , And when i ope my lips , let no dog bark!" approach to your remarks. (a) to 'examine something deeply' means, on wikipedia, to read all of the sources for which there is no evidence you have; (b) 'flexibility in our thinking has nothing to do with wikipedia. We read sources, and paraphrase them as closely as we can, without messing reportage with 'our own thinking'. That is the error you are making. Or to follow more closely your allusion to Hamlet, we must not slip up in

thinking too precisely on th' event
A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom
and ever three parts coward

The 'event' here being the Masada articleNishidani (talk) 07:18, 19 October 2024 (UTC)

Alright, some alternative suggestions, good. So let's see:

• Current wording: "Is the lede for this article basically OK (except for maybe some minor tweaks)? or is it Not OK and needs some major changes?"
• Suggested possible alternative wording: "There is a dispute over whether the lede should be majorly redacted or not."
• Another suggested as even better: "There is a dispute about the neutrality of the lead. Is the lead okay, or not?"
• Another suggested as even better: "There is a dispute about the quality of the sources"
• Or: Any number of actual, actionable complaints.

Mnmh, couple things about that.

For one, maybe you are right, but I am not seeing these as all that hugely different. At least, not so different as to request the discussion be, I don't know, completely shut down even tho some editors have already engaged and expended effort on the matter. As well as the person who wrote the original question (me) to be pretty much insulted, and their motives, competence, and willingness or ability to follow procedures called into question. Sheesh. Way out of proportion.

Second, I mean I don't think we've seen many RfC in the manner of "Should we do X or Y? There's no dispute -- everybody agrees X is best. We're just having this RfC for no reason". Wikipedia editors are not dolts, the can probably figure out that if there's an RfC there is some dispute, so it's not an existential deal-killer for the RfC if we don't explicitly point out that, yes, there is indeed some dispute.

Third, I mean I did consult WP:RFC before forming the RfC. Their example of a good RfC is:

== RfC about the photo in the history section ==
[ rfc tag goes here ]
Should the "History" section contain a photograph of the ship? ~~~~

The RfC doesn't suggest saying whether the dispute is over just layout issues, or that a photo of the ship has little to do with the article text, or none of our photos are free and the rationale for using one is insufficient, or that all our photos are ugly and unclear, or whatever. Just a yea/nay vote (altho of course reasoning and probably conversations would be expected.)

Similarly, yes I initiated the RfC cos of the POV/NPOF dispute, but editors are free to say "It's not OK, there's no POV but it is way too long given the the length of the article" or whatever. Another discussion would be required I figure, altho often these sort of things are worked out right them and there, RfC sometimes expand past the question given, and that is fine.

Altho that is the only example given in the main page, at the subpage Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Example formatting they do give more examples, and yes it is allowed have more than one sentence, explaining the question a bit. As the last example, they suggest that a table could be used (I have never seem this tho) summarizing the pros and cons of the issues. I don't think that is a good idea here because no matter how well I tried to summarize both sides I am sure it would not satisfy everyone and so there would be objections to that and the disscussion would turn around that. (That has happened anyway, but I didn't expect it.) I mean would you trust me to summarize your point of view to your satisfaction.

Fourth, I could have said "Here is the current lede, and here is a suggested revision, which one is best" and then provide my whole suggested revision." The problem is you're asking two questions: 1) should we change? and 2) if so, should we make this change? That is mediocre RfC formulating IMO, and liable to lead to confusion. You're very likely to get "Change, but not that one, instead say such-and-so" or "The current version is pretty bad, but the suggested replacement is even worse" or "I support current version [or: suggested change] but only' if such-and-so change is made" and so on. And this is not given as an example at WP:RFC. (But we are not bound by that and in some case I'm sure it'd be fine, but just not a good idea here.

Fifth, I mean a person (not I!) might get the impression that the procedural close request is a political tactic to prevent a change to the lede by quashing discussion altogether, and even if unsuccessful to muddy the waters and direct the conversation toward procedural questions rather than the merits of the question. People! They will jump to all sorts of conclusions. I'm sure you wouldn't want people to get that impression, mnmh? So, even if the wording of the RfC makes you claw the draperies, better to just let it go, yes? Herostratus (talk) 05:37, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

If it's any reassurance, I'm not very taken with the merits of the question either. The lead is grounded in well-researched academic sources, and your swipe at the legitimacy and reliability of the work of historians, sociologists, and archaeologists—based on some link about biodiversity?—doesn't convince me. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 06:26, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

@Herostratus: Your use of the rfc tag above has caused this mess, and the best way that I can see to stop it is to amend your post, as permitted by WP:TPO#stoptransclude. It's not a transclusion, but Legobot ignores <syntaxhighlight>...</syntaxhighlight>, just as it ignores <nowiki>...</nowiki>. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:04, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

User:Redrose64 oops, sorry, thanks for fixing that. Is everything OK again, or have their been other effects to be cleaned up? My bad, but I was just copying text from the middle of a text section (at WP:RFC). There is a live {{rfc}} template there; somehow it is not messing up that page, maybe because it is not a talk page. I didn't think of that so I guess I figured it was OK and didn't think it thru. I should have checked tho. Again, thanks. Herostratus (talk) 19:22, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

What type of change are you wanting to make to the lead? I find the problem with the lead is that it doesn't explain the topic well and doesn't reflect the body of the article. If there is a consensus that the lead should be changed, that leaves a big question what to change it to. There is no reason why you can’t change it. Normally, a RfC would ask about a specific change. "Should the lead include less jargon?" for example. Tinynanorobots (talk) 18:28, 30 October 2024 (UTC)