Talk:A Jewish Princedom in Feudal France

Changing article to be about book

Since this article is mostly about the book and most of the references are to the book, I would like to change the subject of the article to be the book. Any thoughts? Editor2020 (talk) 23:07, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi Editor2020, thx for your contributions. Which new subject are you suggesting? Which problem would it solve? --Dranoel26 (talk) 08:46, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

I think we should change the article to be about the book A Jewish Princedom in Feudal France. Editor2020 (talk) 23:14, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

@Editor2020: I agree, the title should really be changed. This whole article is the opinion of one scholar and it defiantly shouldn't be portrayed as commonly accepted as a historical truth. Ibn Daud (talk) 17:38, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Absolutely. There is very little acceptance among the broader historical community for Zuckerman's entire historical framework, and in particular his proposal that several generations of Carolingian counts in Septimania were actually all pseudonymous Davidic Exilarchs (excepting a couple of genealogists with a tendency to give the benefit of the doubt to controversial connections, so long as they provide long exotic genealogical descents). We really shouldn't be presenting this as authentic history in Wikipedia's voice. Agricolae (talk) 23:40, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Makes sense. I'll change the article to be about the book. --Dranoel26 (talk) 07:12, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Just to be clear, as there seems to be some confusion, making it 'about the book' means that if we are going to summarize Zuckerman's entire thesis based only on what he wrote, then that should be presented in Zuckerman's voice, not Wikipedia's voice, with everything that is his interpretation attributed to him and not presented as a historical narrative. This is not critique, and should not be shunted to a critique section at the end; rather it is simply distinguishing the conventional history from the alternative being suggested by Zuckerman. That is how you make it about the book. Well, it is one way to do that. There is another way that is actually more in line with policy, and that is to only include in the article what description of the book is found in secondary sources, rather than using the book itself as source for a full recitation. I would not object to someone doing that, but I don't have all of the reviews handy to know exactly what they all said. Though this approach is likely to give us a summary that is only about three paragraphs long, that is really the preferred way to write an article about a book. So, if you really want it to be only about the book, that is a better approach than this full-attribution rendering of his reconstruction, but retaining a full description in Wikipedia's voice rather than Zimmerman's is simply untenable. Agricolae (talk) 23:14, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

I totally agree with @Agricolae:, the best way to further this article is to avoid using the book as a primary source. We should also be careful as to not portray this as a historical fact. Zuckerman's theory is very controversial and is far from being widely accepted among historians. Also this [review] is a nice summary of zuckerman's work. Ibn Daud (talk) 05:24, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

I believe we made a very good progress by providing a balanced approach. There is lot of material on Internet with exaggerated claims from both sites, for these cases a detailed book description might be useful. On the other hand, the critical approach is now also well represented. Very few history scholars took actually a position in the discussion which makes good research material still rare. --Dranoel26 (talk) 17:59, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

This is always a problem with fringe historical theories - most actual historians are too busy pursuing their own projects to waste time refuting every crackpot theory that gets published. This is why WP:FRINGE exists, but these ideas are so obscure they haven't even been critiqued in detail in lesser-quality sources. That makes basing an article on the fringe publication itself easier, but often misleading in that it does not reflect the full degree to which the theory is dismissed by the larger community. The real test is whether other scholars are incorporating Zuckerman's ideas into their works. Do other scholars writing about William of Gellone simply refer to William of Gellone as a Jewish exilarch in their narrative (not just a footnote mentioning Zuckerman's theory)? I have never seen anyone bring Zuckerman's ideas into their work except for the two cited wishful-thinking genealogists. (Kelley had a penchant for building elaborate chains of conjecture for overcoming genealogical brick walls - sometimes he would lower typical critical standards if it allowed one past a genealogical brick wall, all the more so when the resulting connections were enticing - they were intellectually stimulating, but in the end more akin to a house of cards, only standing because nobody looked close enough to see how flimsy they were. Moncreiffe seemed to unquestioningly accept every tradition of elaborate origin attached to the Scottish clans, even the most dubious of them, and he needed this exilarch descent and the equally-dubious Georgian one to give his publication novelty, rather than just being a repetition of dozens of similar books). Admittedly, I don't do that much reading in the area, but if this was 'a thing' it would find its way into a broader collection of sources and it hasn't, and since you can't cite the absence of sources referring to something, simply using its own text risks giving the specific ideas more weight than they deserve. Agricolae (talk) 19:43, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

@Agricolae: Does this article even meet WP:NOTE? Ibn Daud (talk) 21:17, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

(no need to ping me - I have it watchlisted) Since it is about the book, the specific criteria would be those of WP:BOOKCRIT, and only #1 and #3 seem possibly relevant. Starting with the latter, The book has been considered by reliable sources to have made a significant contribution to a notable or significant motion picture, or other art form, or event or political or religious movement. Taking an extremely lenient view of this, it could be said that this work has made a significant contribution to the two listed works of historical fiction, but I don't think either of those is 'notable or significant', and likewise, we would need reliable sources making the connection. For the first criterion, The book has been the subject of two or more non-trivial published works appearing in sources that are independent of the book itself. This can include published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, . . . and reviews. I didn't find anything in newspapers but I don't have access to the best search tools. It wouldn't surprise me if some Jewish-interest newspapers got hold of this and did a small write-up, but it also wouldn't surprise me if this was treated like an Academic book and they didn't do the whole publicity whoring deal in 1973 that they do now for even the most obscure books. We cite a review by Chazan, and Taylor perhaps didn't review the book, per se, but he, Bachrach, Cohen and Grabois all seem to have reviewed the thesis presented in the book. In addition to those we cite, I am seeing on Google Scholar reviews by Cabaniss in The Catholic Historical Review (1973), by Cutler in Journal of the American Oriental Society (1977), by Wells in The Historian (1973), by Wallace-Hadrill in Medium Ævum (1973), and one by Nahon in Annales (1975) that has a dead link, so I can't determine the full name of the journal. Some of these aren't exactly top-line journals, but Annales du Midi and AJS Review, where the Grabois and Cohen critiques appeared definitely are. I would have to say that taking all of this together and not Wikilawyering over the precise distinction between a review of the book and a critique of the thesis, this is probably sufficient to satisfy the spirit of that criterion. (And on a more practical level, given this list of reviews and other scholarly sources addressing it, an AfD to delete the page would almost certainly fail given how many people will !vote keep based on the most superficial coverage, or in some cases with no coverage at all just because they don't like losing any information from Wikipedia.) Agricolae (talk) 23:09, 21 June 2020 (UTC)