Talk:Timeline of the Second Temple period

Terminology section + future improvements

@Mariamnei: First off, it's good that someone else is paying attention to the article. Happy to hear any suggestions, and not trying to scare you off with WP:OWN issues - please do make edits! That said.. your addition seems more appropriate for Second Temple period, if it's not already there? In general, timelines are focused on just the timeline aspect. The terminology bit about "Late Second Temple period" isn't really relevant here. I'm hoping to get this article to featured list status some day, and compare this with, say, Timeline of the Warren G. Harding presidency, which just dives into the timeline immediately in the body.

Also, I didn't revert when you moved the article earlier, because you are correct that the base article is at just "Second Temple period". The reason I stuck it where I did is because even if you and me know what the Second Temple period is, I was worried that random readers would have no clue, so including "Judaism" somewhere would clue the matter in. That said, not a big deal, the new title is fine too. SnowFire (talk) 21:52, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Methodology

To go into how items were selected for this list... there's obviously a lot of stuff out there in terms of every random legend and every somewhat related king or governor. So being selective is useful.

The Tier 1 sources are Lester Grabbe and Bezalel Bar-Kochva. Lester L. Grabbe is basically the foremost historian of the Second Temple period from 1985-2020 or so; it's basically his thing. He's the guy organizing the academic conferences and publishing a zillion books and his books are cited everywhere and used in college classrooms and so on. He wrote a two-volume writeup of the Second Temple period in the 1990s (with convenient timeline in the back!), then topped himself and wrote it again but in four volume version in 2,200+ pages of "A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period". If it's part of the Second Temple period, it's in this book, along with a bibliography of who else has written on it, why we know it (archaeology / writing / etc.), and so on. It's by far the best source for this kind of thing and ideally should be used to rewrite tons of other articles on Wikipedia if there's some eager grad student out there. Grabbe is the #1 source used. There is one exception, though: for the period of the Maccabean Revolt, I've used Bar-Kochva instead. His "Judas Maccabeus" features multiple tables of relevant timelines that have already been reduced to focus on the key factors, and justifies which bits of non-Jewish history to include (e.g. Pydna, the campaigns against Timarchus - all relevant to the outcome of the Maccabean Revolt). Well, there's that, and there's also what's already in a footnote: for whatever reason, Grabbe prefers a wacky translation of Seleucid era dates into Julian calendar dates that pushes things forward by a year compared to Bar-Kochva and most everyone else (including Wikipedia articles). So all of Grabbe's dates would need a big disclaimer that "we know the year in SE terms, just are arguing about the proper translation into the Julian calendar, this isn't a one-year range". You can see this a bit in Simon's death, which I've left at "135 or 134 (177 SE)" since nobody is quite sure which starting date was used for that particular date (but that one, the confusion is wider).

For Tier 2 sources... Mendels has a pretty cool chart in his book. Bickerman is dated compared to all the other sources but is also considered the one who cracked the code on SE dates, so fair to mention as well. Schwartz is used for analysis of the books of the Maccabees, although I've tried to avoid it whenever possible to emphasize that this is about the historical record, not the claims in the books. Grainger is used as a backup for Bar-Kochva on the Maccabees, and is unfortunately often the source that best covers the military side of 160-100 or so (but Grainger also has an axe to grind a mile wide). Friedner & the Encyclopedia Judaica are used for some religious Jewish perspectives. I've mostly used EP Sanders on Jesus / Paul, as he was a pretty respected scholar writing fairly recently (although used the dates for Paul's journey from Paul's own article to prevent confusion - Sanders favors the earlier dates himself).

Considering nominating this for FLC, so figured I'd record this for those interested. SnowFire (talk) 05:13, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

• As another side note, I could see someone being worried about overlinking. However, per the guideline, "Duplicate linking in stand-alone and embedded lists is permissible if it significantly aids the reader," and I think it can be credibly argued that each entry stands on its own a la a glossary in a timeline. There's a whole blizzard of unfamiliar names as well as people with the same name (which Antipater? which Ptolemy? etc.), so having a few repeat links is useful for readability IMO. SnowFire (talk) 00:21, 10 August 2024 (UTC)