Talk:Exilarch

Deciphering references

I can work out some of these, but this is very far from my areas of expertise.

• Can I assume that "R. E. J." is Revue des etudes juives?
• Do we have articles (or even a convention for links to future articles) for Talmudic books comparable to those for books of the Bible? I don't know what best to do where the text has, for example "Sanh." I'm assuming that's a Talmudic book of "Sanhedrin", right? But how should I best link that?

Jmabel 08:15, Sep 25, 2004 (UTC)

Sanh, is Sanhedrin indeed. A look at Talmud will reveal the names of all the tractates. I will be able to decipher most classical sources, please just post them on my talk page if you're stuck. JFW | T@lk 20:24, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well, actually, just for example, the word "Sanhedrin" does not appear anywhere at Talmud, and offhand the article looks to be of only small use in deciphering citations of classical sources. Perhaps we need an article that would be useful in precisely matters like what I am trying to do right now? It seems an encyclopedic topic. I don't know nearly enough to work on it usefully. -- Jmabel 04:04, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)

So "Yer. Sanh." is "Yerushalmi (Sanhedrin)"? Meaning that the Talmuds diverge here and they are indicating which they are citing? -- Jmabel 04:09, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)

Can I assume that "R." is pretty much always "Rabbi"? -- Jmabel 07:59, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC)

Sanhedrin is a tractate in the order of Nezikin. As there are 36 tractates in the Babylonian Talmud, someone thought every order (of the six) should have its own Wikipedia page. When the tractate name is preceded with "Yer." it denotes the Palestinian Talmud, the less-frequently quoted. The abbreviation "R." is virtually always "Rabbi", although very infrequently it denotes "Rabban" (a title reserved for the head of the Sanhedrin). JFW | T@lk 21:24, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I can decipher a few more. Will do. --Dweller 22:09, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Weird characters

This uses a lot of relatively weird Unicode characters. I don't have them in my font. Are these the normal English-language representations of these names? In particular, I've tried to build internal links for the names of the exilarchs, and a lot of these fail.

The reason is that the editors of the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia liked exotic diacritics for their transliterations, and the people who OCRed the thing kept it that way at JewishEncyclopedia.com. Firefox displays the Unicode glyphs faultlessly. JFW | T@lk 21:24, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Overlinking?

Also, related, can someone with more knowledge of this tell me if I'm overlinking? I suspect that for many of these people their name and their place in the succession is really all we know about them, so there is no value to an additional article. -- Jmabel 07:59, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC)

I'll have a look and unlink some obscure folks. JFW | T@lk 21:24, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Review welcomed

I've done a good bit on this, I could use at least some suggestions from with more knowledge of this as to what would be useful to do next. -- Jmabel 07:59, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC)

Jmabel, you have done a lot of work on this article. My compliments.

In my view, it is still 50% too long. Some sections can be abridged or removed without affecting coverage. Frankly, it suffers from the style and approach of its original (early 20th century) editors, and I personally get a headache from reading large portions at a time.

I have converted the Unicode characters to normal letters. I have also expanded the names of Talmudic tractates.

Most of the gentlemen that have been linked do not merit specific articles (although Zerrubabel would merit one, and Mar Ukva is mentioned in the Talmud enough to deserve some mention). I have not done much unlinking, but this may benefit the article in the long run.

Please don't hesitate to involve me again in the near future.JFW | T@lk 22:00, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

"Nathan di Zzuta"?

Is "Nathan di Zzuta" really right, or a typo? -- Jmabel 23:51, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC)

Never mind, answered this for myself, yes it's right. -- Jmabel 23:55, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC)

I sorted out the talmudic tractates. Sherira Gaon was one of the post-Talmudic geonim. I'm not sure how you could best refer to him. JFW | T@lk 01:25, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Via a stub, which I'll create. -- Jmabel 05:13, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)

Status

1. Several places I've written "R. [Rabbi?]" where I'm conjecturing. JFW, if you can confirm this, could you just turn these into "Rabbi"?
2. Again, I've deciphered a bunch of Talmudic citations, but some escape me. There are some near the bottom with bracketed question marks.
3. Doubtless this could use more work, but I think it's out of the range where it needs a cleanup notice. JFW, do you agree?
4. You remarked that this could be considerably shortened. Probably so, but:
   • Now that I think I have it into the range where a normal mortal has half a chance to read it as a text, I suspect I have other tasks that would give a better return on my time than further improving this (I think) now decent article.
   • If we do shorten it, I suggest saving off this longer version someplace (say, Talk:Exilarch/Longer version), because what we have here now is basically a more readable version of the Jewish Encyclopedia article, which has merit in itself, even if we decide that's not the right article for wikipedia.
5. Anyway, I think at this point I personally am going into a mostly reactive rather than pro-active role on this article, at least for now. -- Jmabel 08:00, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)

davidic dynasty

The website i posted is not really relevant to the discussion at hand. Therefore I am starting a new category that will deal with this subject. hebrewpride (5 Dec 2005)

Confusion

I reverted myself where I had changed references to "Palestinian authority" that I thought were anachronistic, because I thought they were talking about 550 BC, and it appears they are correct because they refer to people in 200 AD when the Romans had already renamed Judea... But the article is still confusing to me, it seems to say that someone called Nahum is mentioned in the Tanakh Book of Chronicles, but lived in 135 AD... Even the most revisionist scholars don't try to claim that CHronicles was written that late, or am I misunderstanding something?? ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 15:49, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Modern incarnation

Are you aware of the self-proclaimed Exilarch who lives in London? His Exilarch's Foundation is raising/distributing enormous sums of charitable moneys. --Dweller 22:10, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

News to me. If "enormous" is really valid, then I imagine there is an encyclopedia-worthy topic. - Jmabel | Talk 05:14, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Which king was it

Transcribing entry from Wikipedia Talk:Wikiproject Judaism#Exilarch:

This edit claims to correct Exilarch. Since it is an anonymous uncited edit claiming to correct a statement from the Jewish Encyclopedia, I'm pretty skeptical. The issue is whether Jehoiachin (JE) or Zedekiah (anon., uncited) is the last king descended from David. Does anyone know if there is any reason at all to doubt the JE here? If so, please cite; if you are sure there is not, please revert. Thanks. - Jmabel | Talk 04:18, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

According to the introduction to Hertz's (The Soncino) Jeremiah, at p. x:

Jehoiachin continued the struggle, but when Nebudchanezzar arrived in person three months later to direct operations, he surrendered and was deported to Babylon...(597)...

The final scene in this tragedy was enacted in the reign of his ill-fated successor, Zedekiah, another son of Jehoiakim, and the last king of Judaea.

Thus Jehoiachin and Zedekiah were two separate kings, brothers, both exiled. Jehoiachin was exiled in the first deportation in 597 BCE, while Zedekiah was also exiled, following the destruction of Solomon's Temple in 586, 11 years later. Jehoiachin surrendered voluntarily after visiting the Temple a last time, so the temple's gate of kings was named the Gate of Jehoiachin, and not after Zedekiah. Zedekiah fled Jerusalem in the night and was captured in the Aravah Valley. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Shirahadasha (talk • contribs) 30 August 2006.

Jehoiachin was the one ultimately freed by Amel-Marduk and treated with honor, and is credited as the ancestor of the Exilarchs. Zedekiah was blinded (after his sons were killed in front of him) and died in prison. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 13:23, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Question

Why are some of the kings of Israel called exilarchs? (e.g. Hezekiah) They weren't at all leaders of Jews in exile. 203.206.248.147 11:15, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

None of the kings or Israel or Judaea are listed as exilarchs here. Some exilarchs happened to have the same name as various ancient Jewish/Iraelite kings. There were about five or six exilarchs called Hezekiah, but none of them were the same person as King Hezekiah of Judah; they lived ceturies, some of them many centuries, after him. There was one wikilink which wrongly pointed to King Hezekiah's article, but I have just now fixed this. 62.190.148.115 (talk) 15:39, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Mar Zutra

Kendrick7 asks for the source on "After a failed attempt by the exilarch Mar Zutra to make the Jews politically independent." It is basically the same source as most of the rest of the article: the Jewish Encyclopedia article, which says

Mar Zuṭra, who came into office at the age of fifteen, took advantage of the confusion into which Mazdak's communistic attempts had plunged Persia, to obtain by force of arms for a short time a sort of political independence for the Jews of Babylon. King Kobad, however, punished him by crucifying him on the bridge of Maḥuza (c. 520).

So there was brief independence, but (presuming this source is accurate) I think it is appropriate to characterize this as a "failure", given that it ended in his crucifixion.

Kendrick7, if you want to also cite a variant from another source and indicate the discrepancy in a footnote, I'd have no problem with that. - Jmabel | Talk 05:25, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I had subsequent reasons to believe I was confused by my sources. Forget the tag I threw in -- Kendrick7^talk 06:36, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

List with the dates of each exilarch’s reign and all know alternative spellings.

There exist other more extensive lists of exilarchs.

1. http://www.peerage.org/genealogy/exilarch.htm

The following two links contains names of three possible exilarchs proceeding Bostanai possibly speculative?

1. http://www.alsadiqin.org/en/index.php?title=Table_1._Babylonian_Exilarchs
2. http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~jkatz/The%20Persian%20conquest%20of%20Jerusalem%20in%20614CE%20compared%20with%20Islamic%20conquest%20of%20638CE.pdf

Another list.

1. http://www.dangoor.com/74059.html

Most of exilarchs are the same probably but there sure seems to be a lot of different ways to spell their names. It would be nice to have a list with the dates of each exilarch’s reign and all know alternative spellings. This would be a big job to do right and probably better source are available. Jonney2000 (talk) 06:28, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

None are listed between the close of the Hebrew Bible and the time of Hadrian.

But we know the position existed during that area because there are references to how the Exilarch of the time treated Hyrcanus.--JaredMithrandir (talk) 07:38, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

JaredMithrandir I'm very curious what you mean by this.HerbiePocket (talk) 21:11, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Pomp and circumstance?

"The position was restored in the 7th century, under Arab rule. Exilarchs continued to be appointed through the 11th century. Under Arab rule, Muslims treated the exilarch with great pomp and circumstance."

I looked this up and it seems word for word copied in other pages but it isn't clear what the source is and the phrasing just seems out of place in wiki. There is no details of how they were treated and just seems like a flowery way of saying they were well treated. I think this should be changed to actually be usefully descriptive or removed if no real source is available. Rs180216 (talk) 14:37, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

"Title of the Office" & Greek

In the Title of the Office section, it says:

The Greek word exilarch is a calque of the Hebrew Rosh Galut (ראש גלות).... The contemporary Greek term that was used was Aechmalotarches (Αἰχμαλωτάρχης), literally meaning the 'leader of the captives'. This Greek term has continued to be applied to the office, notwithstanding changes to the position over time, which were largely titular.

First of all, "exilarch" is not a Greek word, but a hybrid form combining the Latin root exil- and the Greek -arch. I think it is a fairly recent coinage. But I actually came to this article in the first place because I was trying to figure out how old the form Aechmalotarcha/Αἰχμαλωτάρχης was. The phrasing of the article as written ("The contemporary Greek term that was used ... This Greek term has continued to be applied...") implies that the term goes all the way back to antiquity, but, so far, the oldest attestation I can find is in 1572.

If the term truly is ancient, or even Medieval, then I really want to know. If not, the text needs to be rephrased. Can anyone find an older attestation, or even the source the wiki got the claim from (it is not cited in the text)? I would really appreciate it.

--Iustinus (talk) 21:45, 24 December 2021 (UTC)