Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2006-08-20 Jacob Neusner article/Archive

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Who's involved?

The author of the article, and myself.

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What's going on?

Quite obviously, the article in question is almost entirely written by Jacob Neusner himself, and is an unrestrained eulogy which makes inflated claims for its subject. There is an extremely full description of Neusner's work and methodology, which claims for it authoritative standing in its subject area. However, I and some other contributors have written a section at the end, entitled "Studies Critical of Neusner's Work," which summarizes some of the most fundamental critiques of that work, its methodology and results, over the past three decades, in order to give balance to the overall article. Neusner, or the author of this article, has simply wiped this section again and again, finding criticism of his work unacceptable "vandalism." So an edit war, in effect, has been going on. I am willing to modify this section but not to eliminate it, since without it the overall article is entirely unbalanced and many of its most questionable claims would not be exposed. At issue, finally, is whether Neusner's portrait of Talmudic literature and religion is authoritative and accurate or not. Many leading authorities on this topic dissent from Neusner's work quite strongly. It would be inappropriate, and a disservice to readers, to wipe out this dissent and to pretend that Neusner's depiction is generally accepted by those familiar with the field as fair, accurate or authoritative.

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What would you like to change about that?

Given that Neusner, or the author of the article on him, provides an extremely full eulogistic account of his research, methodology and main findings, I would like the section on "Critical Studies of Neusner's Work," with its brief account of specific criticisms of this research, methodology and finding, to be left in, without constant "reverts." Only then would an interested reader have the beginnings of a basis for an informed view of Neusner's work. It is also important to leave the bibliography of the main critical articles and books in, to provide guidance on further reading, given that Neusner provides a link to all his publications. Please note that this is not a case of "vandalism," as claimed by Neusner or his surrogate. It is legitimate information about the very work that the article deals with in such elaborate eulogistic detail. It does not intrude upon that eulogy; it merely provides supplementation to it. The glowing account remains untouched. It is merely balanced with an account of some caveats to it. Two further points: an article on a living person should not be totally controlled by the person described; i.e., it is not balanced to provide glowing self-authored biographies without any other more critical input allowed. As I understand it, disapproval of self-authored biographies under the total control of the author is standard Wikipedia policy. Further: the subject at issue is the very nature of Judaism as a religion, not only its history in the Second Commonwealth and Talmudic periods but even whether it is a religion at all or instead a collection of sectarian religions no one of which has any authoritative non-sectarian normative or mainstream status, whether it, or even its early Talmudic version, teaches that God is grotesquely and inhumanly just or on the contrary a merciful and loving God as claimed by all traditional Jews, whether as a matter of fact Rabbinic law inexorably requires capital punishment (according to Neusner in its most excruciating forms!) or actually effectively outlawed it right at the start of the Talmudic period, whether non-Jews are regarded as capable of attaining salvation or not outside of Judaism, whether "ritual purity" is the central sectarian obsession of the Pharisees and their later disciples or they had a broad spiritual interest in the issues of the time and the Jewish people as such, whether even history is recognized by the Talmudic authors and the Temple was understood by them to have been destroyed or is quite madly supposed by them to be still standing in a world of "timeless stasis" centuries after the fall of the actual Temple, and other such matters of fact, on which Neusner consistently takes views that are negative, against literally all other rabbinic and knowledgeable secular authorities down through history. So some counter-voice to his claims is even more necessary than usual, for the sake of balance in the depiction of Judaism. I do not argue that his own version of his work be eliminated: let it stand, but there should be some indication that it is highly controversial, and exactly why that is so.

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Would you prefer we work discreetly? If so, how can we reach you?

...Please contact me through my registration email address, keeping that out of public access.

USER 68.197.244.75 must be stopped. Just a few moments ago he eliminated am essential section of this biography and placed a personal attack on someone on the discussion page. I have no energy to correct this stuff - I like working on content not cleaning up the mess of people who cannot "play nice". Can we revert to before 68.197.244.75 's edits and then block the page. Also is there a way to force people to sign on the discussion page??? Guedalia D'Montenegro 21:58, 1 September 2006 (UTC)