Talk:Roman Palestine

Requested move 10 July 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved to proposed (non-admin closure) >>> Extorc.talk 08:46, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

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Roman Palestine (period) → Roman Palestine – This page was originally created over the redirect that currently sits at the base name, but this move was contested, so I have recreated the page with a disambiguated title. Roman Palestine is a period term for the portion of the history of Palestine characterized by Roman rule, from the time of the vassalage of the region after the Romans intervened in local politics until the Arab conquest. There are some slight variations to this, with the Britannica entry setting the start date as the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, but as other sources show [1][2], 63 BC to 70 AD can also be characterized as "Early Roman Palestine". From the literature both on page and out there and discoverable, and not least the Britannica entry, it seems pretty clear that the period is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for the term. While the current redirect to Syria Palaestina strikes upon perhaps the most obvious constituent subdivision of the Roman period, there was nothing less Roman about the earlier Roman Judaea or the period of local dynastic vassalage still prior to this, or the Byzantine-era Diocese of the East period afterwards. On the contrary, it would be highly unusual not to consider the earlier periods also part of the Roman Palestine period (and to laser focus in on Syria Palaestina). Works such as Jesus and the Politics of Roman Palestine simply make no sense if you exclude Roman Judaea from the equation. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:13, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

• Support as an obviously better name than the current one. P Aculeius (talk) 12:33, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

• Support Syria Palaestina was a good stopgap but better to have an article covering the whole Roman period, rather than just a part.Selfstudier (talk) 14:29, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm against this. This is obviously a time period and it should be explicetly clear. EliasAntonakos (talk) 07:01, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Looking at your edit history, 93 edits total starting in June, it seems that you have not really a clear idea about this subject at all, inclusive edit warring your opinion that Roman Palestine is the same thing as Syria Palaestina, which it clearly is not. Selfstudier (talk) 08:42, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

That's not the purpose of parenthetical disambiguation. If it's the primary topic, it should be at the base name. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:37, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

• Support per nom. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 13:19, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Oppose There are a number of issues with this page, as well as problematic arguments in the suggested title-change above. First of all, see list of reliable sources, there is no consensus about Britannica being a reliable source. Second of all the term "Roman Palestine" is misleading, unless it remains clear that you are referring to a period, during which the Romans ruled Palestine, seeing as there was never a region which could be called Roman Palestine until the second century CE, and even then, the official name was Syria-Palaestina. As for the argument that there was nothing less Roman about the periods of Roman Judea or the Diocese of the East, it is unclear how you define "Roman". Judea, Syria-Palaestina and the Diocese of the East are clearly differentiated by different factors, whether they reflect ancient policies, politics, ideologies or identities, and lumping them all together as "Roman" is misleading and insensitive to the historical changes of the region, even if they are to be addressed in the body of the article. Beyond all this, I have not managed to find any consensus among the scholars who use the term Roman Palestine regarding the time period that it defines (many, possibly most, simply use it for the general period of Syria-Palaestina), and as such, to define an ambiguous term such as Roman Palestine, and use it as a point of departure for an entire article with the chronological boundaries it suggests would be Independent Research and does not fit Wikipedia guidelines. At the very least Roman Palestine should be a disambiguation page. Uppagus (talk) 20:00, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Entirely OR, source free opinion that should be completely ignored. Selfstudier (talk) 21:49, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

We're going to have to take Britannica and the other sources at their word, because sources is what we are led by. Academic "insensitivity" is irrelevant. Unless you can present a strongly sourced argument that something other than the period of "Roman Palestine", as defined by scholarship, is the primary topic for the base term, there is nothing to discuss re: the above. Iskandar323 (talk) 04:39, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

"We're going to have to take Britannica and the other sources at their word". No, we don't. Encyclopædia Britannica is not a particularly relevant source for this topic, not written by specialists. It is a tertiary source and Wikipedia's policy on tertiary sources states: "Reliable tertiary sources can help provide broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources and may help evaluate due weight, especially when primary or secondary sources contradict each other. Some tertiary sources are more reliable than others. Within any given tertiary source, some entries may be more reliable than others." Dimadick (talk) 15:17, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

There are loads of books about Roman Palestine, just do Google book search, jeez. Selfstudier (talk) 15:19, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

I already know that, but we are using an American encyclopedia as a source instead of any of these books. Dimadick (talk) 16:23, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Ur right, I agree that the Britannica tertiary is a case of could do better. Selfstudier (talk) 16:28, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

The Economy of Roman Palestine intro does the same job. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:59, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

"and the other sources" Iskandar323 (talk) 16:23, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

• Support. The current disambiguation is clearly unnecessary (compare Roman Britain or Roman Egypt), and the sources linked in the discussion have demonstrated that the term "Roman Palestine" is used and understood in academia. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 15:52, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.