Talk:Habiru/Sources

Your patience is only exceeded by your generosity. Wetman 00:47, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

What to do with this Sources page is a new direction for Wikipedia. I'm just an amateur here... Very interesting in the long range, where many pages might have a reference section backing them up. I don't even know which Wikipedia page to open the discussion on! Wetman 01:11, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hi Ben! Somehow I missed hearing about your attempt to rewrite this article (I'm not making accusations; I sometimes don't notice developments on WP), otherwise I would have held off from my own rewrite of the article. I pulled the part about king Idrimi from Marc Van De Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), pp.142-4. I think it is part of the same Blackwell bookstore.

ANET³ is another reference I used (I have owned my copy for many years, & it is well marked up), & found the sections at p.22n.4, 247n.47, & 486-9 the most useful. Looking forward to your finished contribution. -- llywrch 16:38, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, Llywrch! Do you have any opinion on how to handle a "reference page"? I'm thinking about moving it to Habiru/References or something like that once I've exhausted the quotes I can contribute. Also, what do you think of the new van de Mieroop? I really liked his stab towards an ANE historiography, but haven't been able to get through his book on Mesopotamian cities. -Benwbrum 17:05, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Incidentally, if you have any corrections from your third edition to my quotes from the second edition, please let me know. Benwbrum 17:12, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The principal differences between the 2nd & 3rd editions (that I have been able to identify) are: (1) the text of the translation of the Amarna Letters on pp.486-490 may be different (there's a note that they've been revised at the beginning of the section), & (2) there's an important addition to the source material on p.557 -- the text of the Stela of Idrimi, translation by Leo A. Oppenheim. (The editors tried to preserve the pagation of the material over the editions which makes access to the material a bit difficult, so I hadn't even noticed this material was in the book until last night!) I'd be happy to add the material from both of these sections when I have a moment this weekend. -- llywrch 16:48, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

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Hi Ben! In response to your question about a permanent home for this page, I'd like to point out that much of this material is copyrighted, & Wikipedia may not be allowed to permanently store it here. (It's a legal thing, & I am not a lawyer, yaddayadda. I made my contributions since ANET is an expensive book, & I felt everyone involved in developing this article ought to have access to the materials for the period of the initial writing.) However, I hope that we can make fair use of the more important quotations in the article.

Also, established policy is that Wikipedia articles should not contain primary sources. There are projects related to Wikipedia, Wikisource (http://sources.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) & Wikibooks (http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page), but I am not clear on how they fit what you intend to do.

That being said, I'd favor a title like Primary texts that mention the Hapiru. I admit it's bland & somewhat awkward, but it gets the point across accurately. -- llywrch 18:57, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Llywrch,

Thanks again for your contributions to the primary sources! I agree that the ANET is a bank-buster. I got mine at a rare/used book place and probably shelled out about $160 for both volumes.

Do you mean ANET & ANE Pictures? I still have the receipt for my copy of ANET: purchased in 1978 for $42.50 plus $0.18 shipping. (I was working at the univeristy library & managed to take advantage of a good deal.) -- llywrch 23:55, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

That's it. I think you lucked out -- I paid that much for the second edition because I could only find the third edition for $200! -- Benwbrum 15:00, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I think that almost all of the page so far falls well within fair use, with the possible exception of EA No.254. I posted a link to the page on Wikipedia:Possible copyright infringements a few days ago and got no response.

I also don't think that such a page (in finished form) would be a violation of the primary source policy, since the quotations are so small.

The goal I've had in mind with this page has been to attempt to resolve some of the disputes between Levzur and Zestauferov on one side, and Wetman, RickK, and myself on the other. The idea was to make the sources of the article as transparent as possible, so that arguments about about it would be about how to interpret and present the evidence, rather than on what the evidence is. We could then organize the article into a section on the term itself and its use, and a second section on theories regarding the identity of the hapiru, where the views of ANE scholars, biblical researchers, and Georgian historians could each be presented to their fullest. I'd also like to try to put footnotes into the article, linking to the sources page, for justifying statements, much like in a regular research paper.

I'm tempted to move ahead (slowly) with this plan, and then request peer review for the article. With luck, we'd get some discussion on the format, the content, and the fair-use issues.

--Benwbrum 22:35, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I missed the referrence to the 'Apiru in EA No.254 . I have a note that Oppenheim also translated this letter in his book, Letters from Mesopotamia (1967), p.125. Where Albright uses the word "son" in line 30, Oppenheim translates "Dumuya". Perhaps there the copyright issue could be avoided by taking elements from both translations, & thus be considered an original composition. (And no, my annotations fail to show any other letters mentioning the 'Apiru that Oppenheim also translated.) -- llywrch 23:55, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

From possible copyvio

• User:Benwbrum/Hapiru -- I'm reporting myself on this to solicit comment on pages made up almost entirely from quotations. I'm pretty sure that all the quotes on this page are small enough to qualify as fair use, but wanted to raise a red flag anyway. Benwbrum 03:09, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)
  • Moved here from Wikipedia:Possible copyright infringements. Sounds like fair use. - Texture 18:37, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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A wonderful list, I probably could not have done better myself. However, the fact that there was apparently no attempt to work with what is perhaps the most important find concerning the Habiru/Hapiru i.e. the Tikunani Prism, the huge sourcing looks a little bit like an attempt to shirk the fact that the early Habiru were of Hurrian origin. Zestauferov 12:05, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Let me assure you that the list isn't an attempt to "shirk" anything -- it was just the result of me going through my library of popular history, typing up every occurence of the term. Unfortunately I ran out of time to edit the article itself after compiling the sources page -- I'm very pleased with the work you guys have done in the last few days, and the organization (here's the term, here's the context, here are the different interpretations of what that means) is almost exactly what I'd hoped for. For the record, I have no emotional investment on whether the hapiru were Hurrian speakers or not, though am skeptical of any over-hasty attempt to identify any ancient people with a modern ethnic/national group. I suspect that in this case you'll convince me, though. Benwbrum 16:26, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

"skeptical of any over-hasty attempt to identify any ancient people with a modern ethnic/national group" Me too, which is why I am very suspicious of people trying to proove the Habiru were original Hebrew speakers. I have used the term proto-hebrews before now to indicate a linguistic difference, but apparently this caused offense from some religious perspective. All we are doing is reporting the findings on the Hurrian connections with people generally considered as the culturally Protohebrews (not the modern linguistic hebrews). Glad to see that you are enjoying the results so far. Please add what you can if you have time. Zestauferov 23:11, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)