Talk:Jair

Matthew Henry is an unreliable source
The relevant Wikipedia policies can be found at WP:RS, WP:AGE MATTERS, and WP:FRINGE. Matthew Henry wrote his complete commentary on the Bible in 1708 or 1710, at least a century before modern biblical scholarship began to emerge in anything much like its current form. For that reason alone, he doesn't qualify as a reliable source. While Matthew Henry's work is well-written and remains popular in some circles, biblical scholars don't rely on it for facts -- he has been left behind by biblical scholarship. The work is pre-critical throughout, and holds to views that are now WP:FRINGE in biblical scholarship. For example, he attributes the book of Genesis, among others, to the authorship of Moses, which is now denied in modern scholarship.

You can find his statement on Moses here, where he says, "We have before us the first and longest of those five books, which we call Genesis, written, some think, when Moses was in Midian, for the instruction and comfort of his suffering brethren in Egypt: I rather think he wrote it in the wilderness, after he had been in the mount with God, where, probably, he received full and particular instructions for the writing of it."

In addition, take his statement about Jair, quoted on this page: "Quiet and peaceable reigns [which], though the best to live in, yield least variety of matter to be spoken of. Such were the days of Tola and Jair. They were humble, active, and useful men, rulers appointed of God"." Now compare that to the Bible's own words about Jair (Judges 10:3-5). Are there words there about Jair's humility? About how active Jair was? Matthew Henry is inventing these details. Alephb (talk) 01:48, 28 February 2017 (UTC)