Talk:The Amber Witch

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The article does not make it at all clear how this book called into questions the weaknesses of historical methods. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 13:46, 24 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't see how it could be clearer. The top men in the field couldn't note any sign of a forgery until the forger himself told them. And even then he wasn't believed. It demonstrates how subjective the study is, the reasearcher sees what he expects to see. If he believs it to be medieval he will study it as such. If you have any suggestions though I would be glad to add them.Wolf2191 16:58, 27 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes indeed. But the article itself has all the stylistic marks of something composed in the early 20th century, or possibly even before. If you wrote it yourself, you have a remarkable command of "voice"; if not, you should identify the original author. PiCo 05:45, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree. One whole section is lifted entire from Warner's text (cited in the sources on the bottom of the page).  Even if the work isn't copyright, this is disingenuous and of dubious scholastic value.  Even the reply given below ("I compiled it") concedes the issue.  Nowhere does the article's author make clear that this is a compilation...An entry about a literary fraud does not need to replicate the event in order to make itself clear.Cairninthemist (talk) 00:12, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah! triple deception then.I compiled it in the 21st century from a early 20th century source (library of the world best.. it isn't copyright).To paraphrase "Since modern criticism has now attained to a degree of acuteness never before equalled critics will easily distinguish the passages where Mr. Warner speaks from those written by Wolf2191" I'm glad you like it.Wolf2191 12:15, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

This article still does not explain how the Amber Witch calls into question historical methods. The goal of historical methods is not to distiniguish forgeries from non-forgeries. The goal is to interpret texts in their historical context.


 * Historical context is number five on the DH list. The first four involve a detection of specific linguistic styles an the like.Wolf2191 14:50, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

If the historical method is successful, in fact, logically it would be easier for someone to produce a forgery that escapes detection. Why? because historians using their methods detail explicitly the various elements of a text that indicate when it was written. If historians have done a good job, someone who wants to create a forgery can consult those historical works and in effect find out exactly what they need to do to produce a text that appears to have been written in the past. Indeed, this is precisely what many forgers - for example, forgers of art-work, do: they read works by art historians on the techniques of say Rembrandt or whomever, and make sure that their forgery uses all those techniques. In other words, the ease of producing a convincing forgery actually confirms the power of historical methods, far from refuting them. Now, if someone could produce a manuscript that all or even most historians conclude was written this year - and then provide conclusive proof that it was written hundreds of years ago - then you would really be challenging the validity of historians' methods. That is because if those historians are right, an ancient text could never be mistaken for a modern one. But historians would never claim the opposite, that a modern text could be mistaken for an ancient one. The only way to make that claim would be to prove that it is impossbile to forge an ancient text (I mean the words, not the materials in and on which they are written - although to a degree historians have shown how one could forge even ancient inks and paper), and I know of no historian who has ever come close to claiming that. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 14:32, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

1.Wellhausen did believe in an Interpolater. A forger who deliberately tried to make his work appear earlier than it was.(exactly like Meinhold) 2.At the time it was written, criticism was looked at as an almost infallible science that could detect ANYTHING.

Conclusion- It may not disprove Documentary Criticism but it does demonstrate a certain fallibility in this science. As I said before, the critics will interpret the facts based on preconceived notions. Thus the facts of the DH may prove something like Halivni's thesis or J E,etc depending on the biases of the critic. I think The Amber Witch demonstrates that. There aren't any recent sources on this so I don't see how I can elaborate in the article to make clear these points. Wolf2191 14:47, 29 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Where does Wellhausen claim that the interpolater was a forger? I haven't read anything by him that I can recall where he does this.  I am not even sure Wellhausen ever claimed that the intention of the Interpolater (redactor) was to make the Torah/Hexateuch "appear earlier than it was." Slrubenstein   |  Talk 12:14, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Wellhausen claimed that any reference to Moses in the books of Samuel and the like, are later interpolations to make the "law given by Ezra appear as if it was given by Moses".Wolf2191 14:37, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

It seems there's a misunderstanding about what this forgery was intended to demonstrate. The challenge for the source critics was to identify the various sources which made up an allegedly eclectic text. In reality, the work was a unified whole. It was not an eclectic text. There were no multiple sources. It was the unified work of a single author. This demonstrated the incapacity of the contemporary source criticism methodology to identify accurately the underlying sources of a given text. The fact that source critics were also completely unable to identify its true date was another embarrassment for source criticism methodology, which had been used previously to date texts (instead of using archaeology, which is a proper science). --Taiwan boi 00:58, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Well put! I really should try to clarify this point in the article.Wolf2191 02:51, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

May 2009 - re-written and why
I've restructured and re-written this to make it clear which segments were direct quotes from contemporary sources and which were not and to remove the copyvio from bellaonline.com. I've also provided exact references for the sources with full bibliographic information and copyedited it for coherence and to remove repetition. Was this a joke by a Wikipedia editor to demonstrate a literary hoax in action? I'm more inclined to think it was simple laziness and intellectual dishonesty. The resultant cut and paste job was not only incoherent but blatant plagiarism, and in one instance blatant copyright violation. Not funny, I'm afraid. Voceditenore (talk) 13:53, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Publication and composition
Here we give publication dates 1838 for the German-language original, 1844 for two different translations published in Britain.

German Wikipedia gives original publication date 1843. If I understand and express adequately, it calls the work a re-working or adaptation of another story (length unknown to me) that Meinhold completed in 1826, and submitted for publication without success. Not sure it was submitted to any publishing business, or directly to an office for consideration. German Wikipedia fashions that other story "Meinholds Pfarrerstochter zu Coserow (1826)", which would here imply a book published in 1826. But it was unpublished as of 1843, and evidently its re-worked/adapted story unrecognized. (Rejected in Roman Catholic Vienna for its attitude toward or portrayal of Gustavus Adolphus --lobende Beziehung ..., maybe but uncertainly a quotation from the 17th century censor). --P64 (talk) 19:02, 19 March 2019 (UTC)