Talk:Ištaran

Addition of unreliable sources and outlandish claims

Since anonymous user(s) persistently add(ed) incorrect (and borderline irrelevant) information to the article, I feel a few things need to be addressed:

1. An article from 1925 is not a credible source. There are areas of ANE study where even sources from 1980 would not quite be enough, ex. in the case of Ugarit, but that's beside the point. There is no shortage of easily accessible, modern articles, monographs and other publications by rigorously trained authors, there is no need to dredge nonsense from back when Assyriology was a hobby for bored British aristocrats who wanted to have a Bible-themed adventure blowing up monuments in a distant colony. In Ištaran's case, sources from before 1960s can be discarded altogether because it wasn't even established how to read his name correctly until then. It's like insisting on geocentrism in astronomy articles. Hobbyists involved in paleontology or astronomy keep up with new discoveries and the academic consensus and seem to actually take pride in being up to date, I do not understand why this is an alien concept when it comes to study of history of religion.

2. Ishara is demonstrably not Ishtar, originates in a completely different area (Ebla isn't even in Mesopotamia, let alone specifically in the part of modern Iraq relevant to either Ištaran or anything else under discussion), was not worshiped in Lagash and its dependencies (see here for an up to date list of deities attested in documents from the city and discussion of relations between them), and has nothing to do with this article. Before you will make further claims about goddesses being identical please read Jo Ann Hackett's article explaining why this is a problem here. Also simply read recent publications instead of ancient horrors from Google Books, you will see that this sort of broad statements about identity of deities is not exactly in the vogue, to put it colloquially. Good examples of studies which illustrate the need for this approach are Beckman 1997, Cornelius 2008, Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013. Please read these before making further bold claims based on century old publications, especially in completely unrelated articles. HaniwaEnthusiast (talk) 07:27, 6 August 2022 (UTC)