Talk:Claim of the biblical descent of the Bagrationi dynasty/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: MPJ-DK (talk · contribs) 18:32, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Full disclosure: I am a WIki Cup and GA Cup participant and I am aware that there is a topic ban for the nominator but I figure if I do the review perhaps other wikipedias will pick it up and get issues resolved. At least then we would have tried.

I am about to start my review of this article, normally I provide my input in bits and pieces over a day or two so expect running updates for a while.  MPJ  -US 18:32, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

If there is not a free use image in the top right corner of the article, please try to find and include one.[?] You may wish to consider adding an appropriate infobox for this article, if one exists relating to the topic of the article. [?] (Note that there might not be an applicable infobox; remember that these suggestions are not generated manually) There are a few occurrences of weasel words in this article- please observe WP:AWT. Certain phrases should specify exactly who supports, considers, believes, etc., such a view. allege is considered might be weasel words, and should be provided with proper citations (if they already do, or are not weasel terms, please strike this comment).[?] You may wish to convert your form of references to the cite.php footnote system that WP:WIAFA 1(c) highly recommends.===GA Toolbox=== I like to get this checked out first, I have found issues using this that has led to quick fails so it's important this passes muster.


 * Peer Review
 * If there is not a free use image in the top right corner of the article, please try to find and include one.
 * You may wish to consider adding an appropriate infobox for this article, if one exists relating to the topic of the article. (Note that there might not be an applicable infobox; remember that these suggestions are not generated manually)
 * There are a few occurrences of weasel words in this article- please observe WP:AWT. Certain phrases should specify exactly who supports, considers, believes, etc., such a view.
 * allege
 * is considered

might be weasel words, and should be provided with proper citations (if they already do, or are not weasel terms, please strike this comment).
 * You may wish to convert your form of references to the cite.php footnote system that WP:WIAFA 1(c) highly recommends.


 * Copyright violations
 * Listed at 27.5% - "highly unlikely" ✅ good to go


 * Disambiguation links
 * Link to "Nahor" needs to be more specific


 * External links
 * Link to "nplg.gov.ge" is dead.
 * Link to deltionchae.org gets modified, you may want to consider updating the link to prevent link rot.

Well Written

 * The article starts out kinda backwards, I would like to see the first sentence completly rewritten.
 * "refuge" should be "refugee"
 * "King David playing harp" should be "King David playing a harp"
 * "10th century" should be "10th-century"
 * "with David, but did not allege" should not have a comma
 * "The hypothesis has not been accepted by other scholars and Toumanoff have thoroughly dismissed such as possibility." - I believe it should be "Toumanoff has" and not sure what "such a possibility" is supposed to convey?


 * Lead
 * "dynasty were of a Hebrew origin" should be "was of" as dynasty is singular and either "of hebrew origin" or "had a hebrew origin"
 * "millennium-long ascendancy" - not sure "asendancy" is correct here, it did not take then 1,000 years to assend right? they rules for 1,000 years by the looks of it.
 * " modern mainstream scholarship", you probably meant "scholars"
 * Takaishvili is only mentioned in the lead by name, should be in the article. Later on it refers to " Ekvtime Taqaishvili", slightly different name? I can guess that they're the same but for a Good Article I should not have to guess.
 * "The family's origin is disputed, but the view formulated by the historians such as Ekvtime Takaishvili and Cyril Toumanoff that the Georgian dynasty descended from a refuge prince of the Armenian house of Bagratuni prevails.", a massive run-on sentence that should be rewritten please.


 * Origin of the legend
 * Please link the word "milieu" to "social environment", it's not a commonly known term
 * This reads as a continuation of the lead, jumping straight past describing what the legend is to talk about when it originated. Cart before horse. This should be written as if the lead does not exist, starting with "the legend" without explaining what it is is backwards.
 * Is there a source to support the term "creatively"? otherwise it's borderline peacock term indicating praise for the manipulation.
 * "the Armenians" should be more specfic, Armenians in genera? Probably not but that's how it reads.
 * Possible to provide some sort of link for the term "extant native reference"?
 * "Davidic clamoring" - I am not sure that's the appropriate term, "Davidic claim" perhaps?
 * Who is "Pseudo-Juansher"? Historian? Monk? unpaid intern editing a pre-internet age Wikipedia?
 * "The earliest extant native reference to the Georgian Bagratids and their Davidic clamoring is found in Pseudo-Juansher's brief historical work, written between 800 and 813,[10] where is related the arrival in Kartli, a core Georgian region, sometime after 772, of Adarnase, "who was of the House of David the Prophet". " - Massive run-on sentence again, I am not even sure what it is trying to state.
 * "The Life of St. Grigol Khandzteli, written in 951 by the Georgian hagiographer Giorgi Merchule, is next to refer to the tradition of the Davidic origin as extant at the time of Ashot I, Adarnase's son and the first Georgian Bagratid monarch, whom the monk Grigol addresses as "lord, called the son of David, the prophet and God-anointed"." Run-on and on


 * Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus
 * According to Constantine, the Georgians believed" more specifics, not all Georgians right?
 * "According to Constantine, the Georgians believed they were scions of Uriah's wife Bathsheba, with whom King David committed adultery, and who had children by him." run-on again.
 * "Constantine Porphyrogenitus's account betrays Georgian influence, but some of its details are uncorroborated elsewhere." what details and where?
 * "Finally, Constantine's genealogy reaches the two brothers, David and Spandiatis, who had left Jerusalem at the advice of an oracle and settled at the boundaries of Persia, where they founded their kingdom in Iberia (i.e., Kartli) and increased their power through the help of the emperor Heraclius." run-on again


 * Sumbat's chronicle
 * "which has come down to us" very informal phrasing, should be rephrased.
 * why use the word "stemma" when "family tree" is more easily accessible to readers?
 * "to a certain Solomon, whose seven sons left the Holy Land and went to Armenia, where a certain queen Rachael baptized them." - I am confused by the appearance of the term "certain" twice.
 * "Three of them remained" should be "Three of the sons remaind"
 * "One of them" again using "them"
 * "his descendants is apparently the Roman", the term "apparently" is like heding a bet, saying "well I heard it was this guy".
 * "The source of the genealogy of Cleopas and his descendants is apparently the Roman scholar Eusebius of Caesarea, who, in his Ecclesiastical History, quotes Hegesippus, according to whom, the Romans searched for King David's scions in order to remove from the Hebrew territory the potential pretenders to the throne who would have had the biblical legitimation." - run-on, one of the worst yet.
 * "Thus, Sumbat's work contains the version of the family legend, which became the basis of a dynastic and political ideology, and, in the course of history, influenced the worldview of the Bagrationi dynasty." - so if this is a legend, not accepted by scholars how did it influence the "world view"? in the past was this "legend" generally accepted in Europe, Asia or anywhere? not clear.


 * Other sources
 * Is David Winfield a contemporary historian? what's the time frame for his claim that the stone relief supports the Davidc claim? If modern scholars dispute this it'd be good to know if Winfied is considered a "modern scholar"?


 * Later sources
 * "Subsequent historical works refer on many occasions" should be rephrase to "On many occasions subsqeunt historical works refer"
 * "Just after Sumbat composed his history, an 11th-century anonymous author of the so-called Chronicle of Kartli mentions, while relating the event on the eve of the Georgian Bagratid accession to power, the Davidic tradition as existing at the time of Ashot I's father Adarnase." Run-on sentence again.
 * "However, the latter source suggest that the claim was not, in the days of Adarnase, as yet widely known, for the princess of Kartli, whose son married Adarnase's daughter, is shown by the chronicle to have been ignorant of her son-in-law's descent from King David." do I have to say it?
 * "Later on, the chronicle compares David IV's coronation of his son Demetrius I, prior to the former's death, to the biblical David's enthronement of Solomon and once again emphasizes the "resemblance to his ancestral stock"." Run-on
 * "contemporaneous versified dedicatory inscription on the venerated " - What now?
 * "Finally, the 18th-century Bagratid historian Prince Vakhushti attempted to incorporate the Davidic theory into his chronology, while his father, King Vakhtang VI of Kartli, composed a family tree, integrating the biblical lineage of the Bagrationi with that of the Georgian people, the origins of which was traced by the medieval chronicles to Togarmah, a descendant of Noah." and they keep running-on.
 * "Prince David of Georgia, a son of the last King of Georgia, writing in the early years of the 19th century, shortly after the dethronement of the Bagrationi by the expanding Russian Empire, summarized the Davidic origin of his family, being the first to have directly incorporated in his history, written in Russian, the original Armenian account of a Hebrew provenance of the Bagratid dynasty authored by Movses." run-on


 * Parallels
 * "historian Ivan Biliarsky have conjectured" - Should be "has conjectured"
 * "As the historian Ivan Biliarsky have conjectured, the Caucasian paradigm of Davidic royalty may have influenced the Old Testament-modeled vision of kingship in early medieval Bulgaria, the country then in transition from an ethnic pagan state to a Christian empire, as evident in the case of Tsar Izot, cited in the Narration of Isaiah, the so-called Bulgarian Apocryphal Chronicle of the Eleventh Century." Run-on


 * Modern interpretations
 * "The family's alleged Hebrew provenance was utilized and elaborated by the Georgian Bagratids to claim the descent from the divinely appointed model biblical king David, himself a descendant, in an unbroken line, of Adam and the ancestor of Jesus Christ, at the same time obscuring the dynasty's true origin and blood-ties with Armenian cousins." Run-on
 * You know the "modern interpretations" really focus a lot on the old interpretations
 * It really needs to emphasis more that modern scholars dispute this, the main focus here is repeating the legends and then recapping a british historian's attempt to give legitimacy to the article. This has actually made me change my view on neutrality as its almost a foot note that it's dismissed.

Sources/verifiable

 * Looks okay, published sources etc. ✅

Broad in coverage

 * As broad as this very narrow subject can be I guess. ✅

Netural

 * ❌ as stated above.

Stable

 * Has been AFD'ed in the past and one user has been causing waves but it looks to be stable for the last six months or more so I am satisfied that it's currently stable ✅

Illustrated / Images

 * Image "David the Prophet (Georgian Psalter MSS, 1494) 01.jpg" needs a U.S. public domain tag
 * Image "Ashot kurapalati.JPG" needs a U.S. public domain tag and has an issue listed on the image page, please address.
 * Image "Gruzinski.jpg" same as above, issues need to be addressed for licenses
 * Image "Royal charter of King Erekle II.jpg" again needs U.S. Public domain tags
 * All need to be addressed for GA level ❌

My review is complete and honestly every single section needs a major rewrite, it's not where near GA level writing at the time of article submission. it's supposed to be GA or close to GA upon submission, not relying on the reviewer to improve the article for you. For that reason I am going to fail the article. ❌