Talk:Joseph's Tomb

Joseph, sheikh yousef & Guy Montags reverts
The article currently states:"Joseph’s Tomb is a shrine in Ancient Shechem in the West Bank. It is traditionally considered to be the burial place of the Biblical patriarch Joseph and is located in Nablus city. Joseph's body was taken from Egypt during the Exodus and later reinterred in Shechem."

The article before Guy Montags reverts stated: "Joseph’s Tomb is a shrine near Nablus city in West Bank, it is traditionally considered to be the burial place of the Biblical patriarch Joseph and is located in the Samarian city of Shechem.Many archeologists believe that the site is a few centuries old and possibly containing the remains of a Muslim sheikh named Yossef[1]. According to the Jewish texts, Joseph's body was taken from Egypt during the Exodus and later reinterred in Shechem (Joshua 24:32)."

In my edits on 4th of september, i changed the following details:
 * "is a shrine near Nablus city" instead of "in Ancient Shechem in the West Bank"
 * i did this because i dispute that it is located _IN_ Ancient Shechem, why? read further.
 * "and is located in the Samarian city of Shechem.Many archeologists believe that the site is a few centuries old and possibly containing the remains of a Muslim sheikh named Yossef" instead of "and is located in Nablus city"
 * i did that because according to the context, being located in samaria is the traditional consederation! (who's tradition, i didn't touch that topic).
 * Yousef is indeed the arabic spelling for joseph, but Sheikh Yousef is defenetly not Joseph the patriarch. in arabic texts, sheikh was never associated with Joseph, since Joseph in Arabic Christian & Islamic texts is a prophet or patriarch, not a sheikh!

So, i belive that the version that was before Guy Montag reverted is a more objective one! AFAIK no one disputes the fact that Joseph's Tomb is near the current location of nablus city! but is it in Ancient Shechem? ie is it a part of the Ancient Shechem? the jewish virtual library says that there exist a subset of archologists who belive the site is only a few centuries old :) ! and thus being the tomb of patriarch joseph and being _IN_ Ancient Shechem is disputed! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mayz  (talk • contribs) 21:18, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

The Palestinians' gun-fire
From the entry: "On May, 2007, the Breselov hasidim visited the site for the first time in two years and prayed under gun-fire from the Palestinians." From the source: "A Palestinian gunman opened fire at the escorting troops during the service and soldiers fired back, hitting the gunman." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.136.97.42 (talk) 23:14, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Older as a "holy site" than 1868. Schenke - how reliable?

 * "The present structure, a small rectangular room with a cenotaph, dates from 1868, and is devoid of any trace of ancient building materials.

Schenke seems to me a bit more politically, rather than academically, motivated. We have
 * "One of the inscriptions is said to intimate the tomb's repair by a Jew from Egypt, Elijah son of Meir, around 1749. ... These Hebrew and Samaritan inscriptions were still visible on the white plastered walls as late as 1980... "

You cannot have inscribed plaster from the 18th century surviving if everything was rebuilt from scratch in 1868. Or the two sentences refer to 2 different sets of graffiti, some pre-, some post-1868, and misleads one into thinking they're the same (unless somebody wrote after 1868 about the repair of 1749, which makes very little sense). It's either this, or Schenke is polemical rather than accurate.

Also, the interpretation of "enthält nicht einmal alte Bauelemente" ("doesn't even contain old architectural elements") as meaning "is devoid of any trace of ancient building materials", is plain wrong and overstretched. First, Bauelement can be for instance an old door, carved stone, or column, so well beyond "building materials" (stone, cement, sand, paint...). Second, there is no way one can discern a reused stone from a recently carved one, embedded in a plastered wall, ever. For luminescence dating one must at least dismantle that part of the wall, but that's not even been argued. Also, the structure was rebuilt at the expense of the English consul at Damascus, because its older incarnation was in a bad state of disrepair - but not absent. It's a huge difference between "dates from 1868" and "has last been rebuilt in 1868". Please mind that Schenke was a theologian and Coptologist, not an archaeologist - books, not stones -, a theoretician who came up with a very original proposal about Joseph based on cultural analysis, not on material analysis. Arminden (talk) 15:47, 15 August 2022 (UTC)


 * The historical evidence in the form of drawings and photographs is that the structure decayed and was rebuilt repeatedly. There is a lythograph from 1839 that looks nothing like the present structure and a photo from the 1860s showing a few crumbling walls. And who is/was Shlomo Gafni? He seems to have written some popular books but doesn't have an article in the Hebrew wiki. Why did you choose Schenke to accuse of political bias rather than Gafni? Zerotalk 10:13, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

How is an article with shoddy referencing "good"?
There are 11 no-target errors. Perhaps someone who cares could try to fix them. DuncanHill (talk) 15:15, 6 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Yes, there are a few orphaned refs; must be in the history somewhere. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:57, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I looked back to 2011 and gave up. DuncanHill (talk) 20:45, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
 * You nearly had it, the errors not causes by a recent removal of cites still in use, were caused in early 2011. However the article was nearly completely rewritten in 2011, so does the GA review from 2010 still count? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 16:24, 11 September 2023 (UTC)