Talk:Land of Goshen

Redirect to Qedarites

@Antiquistik: I don't think it's a good idea to redirect a long-standing article without prior discussion, especially when the relationship between the old article and the redirect target won't be obvious to the average reader. You made a bold edit, but someone else objected to it and reverted it. The next step should be discussing the issue, not declaring the reversion "disruptive". A. Parrot (talk) 15:27, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Following on that, I checked the Van Seters source that is cited both here and at Qedarites, and Van Seters considers Redford's etymology for "Goshen" implausible. That means it's not universally acknowledged that the name of Goshen derives from Qedarite rule. (Van Seters says "there is no evidence that the Qedarites actually controlled the Wadi Tumilat" on page 269; unfortunately, the footnote where he says this continues on to the next page, which I can't access with the Google Books preview.) I'm going to revert the redirect. A. Parrot (talk) 16:15, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: The problem with Van Seters' objection is that there is significant evidence, including archaeological, that the Qedarites did control the Wādī Ṭumīlāt though, as can be verified from the various sources used in the article for the Qedarites, such as Rabinowitz (1956), Ephʿal (1984), and Retsö (2013), which makes Van Seters' objection untenable. In fact, Van Seters' reasoning for his objection, when viewed in the context of the evidence for Qedarite control over the Wādī Ṭumīlāt, only confirms the identification.

Regarding the article itself, I fail to see how it can be allowed to exist in its present form when it barely contains information not sourced directly from the Bible, which is itself hardly a reliable academic source. If the article is not to be redirected to what majority scholarly consensus agrees is the identification of the Land of Goshen, it needs to at least be rewritten using reputable sources. Antiquistik (talk) 16:37, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

I agree that it needs to be reworked, but given that even the smallest aspects of biblical stories end up being debated ad nauseam, I feel like there should be enough reputably sourced material for a decent short article. I can cut down the summary of the biblical text, and maybe draw on some of the Exodus-related sources in my possession. But I don't have access to all the scholarship on this issue, and I'm likely to have a terribly busy January, so it may be slow going. A. Parrot (talk) 16:57, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: Alright, this is an acceptable compromise for me. Although I nevertheless would still favour a redirect to Qedarites should there not be enough material for a stand-alone article, given that Van Seters' objection, as I have pointed out, is untenable, and the majority scholarly consensus agrees on identifying the Land of Goshen with the Qedarite-ruled region of the Wādī Ṭumīlāt whose existence is archaeologically attested. Antiquistik (talk) 17:34, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

I've reworked the section that describes the biblical text. I hope my version is satisfactory, but feel free to adjust it if it isn't.

Re: Van Seters, his objections to the Qedarite claim may well seem unreasonable to you or to anyone else who has looked at the evidence, but Wikipedia can't declare his views "untenable" unless a source explicitly says so, in which case it should probably be attributed. A. Parrot (talk) 19:14, 22 January 2023 (UTC)