Talk:List of Christian holy places in the Holy Land

Levant not Holy Land
This page contains entries of places well beyond the bounds of the traditional "Holy Land" in Christianity, including in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Sinai, i.e. the whole Levant, while Holy Land is characterized as "roughly located between the Mediterranean Sea and the Eastern Bank of the Jordan River", i.e. the area c. equivalent to modern-day Israel/Palestine. I'll be moving the page to reflect the more apt and less erroneous geography of Levant if no one objects. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:51, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Go through RM. Srnec (talk) 23:08, 13 September 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 15 September 2023

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. Consensus below to not move. estar8806 (talk) ★ 18:49, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

List of Christian holy places in the Holy Land → List of Christian holy places in the Levant – This page currently defines itself in terms of a religiously conceptualized space rather than a clear geography and is moreover not very WP:PRECISE. It is very much stretching the limits of the definition of "Holy Land" – a space that is variously defined, but in its typical sense is considered the Israel/Palestine area between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River. The contents of the page range far further than this, reaching deep in Syria to the North, Jordan to the East and the Sinai to the South. All of the places align quite well however with the area ascribed to the Levant in the sense used in the 21st century (as a term bracketing the Westernmost portion of West Asia), so this term feels like both more appropriate and precise term for delineating the geography here. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:08, 15 September 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. Edward-Woodrow  •  talk  14:24, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
 * The suggestion would extend the scope of the list considerably. The Holy Land merely covers the areas between the Mediterranean Sea and the Eastern Bank of the Jordan River. The Levant region, under various definitions, covers every country in the Eastern Mediterranean, including Akrotiri and Dhekelia, Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, the State of Palestine, Syria, and Turkey. Dimadick (talk) 09:52, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
 * @Dimadick: It already does extend to many of those countries, but to the substance of the issue you've raised, extremely few interpretations of "Levant" extend to Libya, and an extension of it to Greece, or even Turkey, are archaisms at this point. The Britannica page has the basically conventional version, and that is how I understand it, but I appreciate that there might be a diversity of opinion on this. On a side point, I would note that Wikipedia also has some internal inconsistency on this topic, with the List of Christian pilgrimage sites (something of a parent), explicitly not including Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon or Syria. So, if the page is not to be renamed then perhaps a harsh trimming of all the geographies not generally taken to be within the Holy Land nor taken as such on the closest thing to a parent page is in order. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:28, 15 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Oppose. I agree with Dimadick that the change potentially justifies significant scope increase. Just slim the list down to Israel, Palestine and Jordan to match the current title. Delete the sections "Syria", "Lebanon" and "Red Sea and Sinai". I think the East Bank definitely counts as the Holy Land. Perhaps Lebanon and Sinai are sometimes considered the Holy Land, given that St Catherine's was a standard part of pilgrim itineraries and Jesus ventured as far north as Lebanon. Srnec (talk) 01:34, 16 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Soft Oppose / Comment I see this issue popping up again and again and really wonder if we can’t come up with some reasonable solution to these various communalistic historic designations in a way that doesn’t push too many buttons.

What about having the following variations available:

List of Christian holy places in the Holy Land / Historic Palestine

List of Christian holy places in the Holy Land / Palestine (region)

List of Christian holy places in the Holy Land / Land of Israel

List of Christian holy places in the Land of Israel / Palestine (region)

List of Christian holy places in Palestine (region)

Etc etc etc - given that we have a number of geographic catch-alls being used for a region, there has to be a hyphenated one that can be sufficient and ease all these debates. Mistamystery (talk) 05:37, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.