Talk:Mount of Temptation

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Mount Quarantana for sure. Quarantania as well?[edit]

Theoderic (quoted here by Denys Pringle), Edward Robinson & Eli Smith and others write -ana, not -ania, so Mount Quarantana. Two variants, or a typo?

The Latin name als shows up as Mons Quarantana, without an i, in good sources, such as Trelawney Saunders's "An Introduction to the Survey of Western Palestine" (here) or Rehav Rubin's "Portraying the Land: Hebrew Maps of the Land of Israel from Rashi to the Early 20th Century" (here). Arminden (talk) 14:32, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sources for future article expansion[edit]

  • There are 12+ more mentions in the Crusader itineraries translated in Pringle, although Google's previews cuts off how many you can see at any one time.
3 25 94 116 138 144 171 178 195 222 232 281 282 284-5 348 366 368-9 379 389

 — LlywelynII 03:11, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Arabic names[edit]

The official name on local government maps and placards seems to be Jebel Quruntul, which the CIA mangled into Jabal al-Qarantal. Mount of Temptation seems to have also been calqued into Arabic جبل التجربـة (Jebel et-Tajriba, "Mount of the Temptation") for some of the other signs. See eg the 1.3 km sign here and parking lot sign here.

I know the Arabic entry for this mountain is parked at جبل الأربعين (Jabal al-Arbayin, "Mount of the Forty") but—as near as I can tell—that's simply a mistake. The official name is Jebel Quruntul, the new "tourist-friendly" name is Jebel et-Tajriba, and "Mount of the Forty" just seems to be a combination of confusing the meaning of Quarantana with the name of a different mountain in Lebanon. — LlywelynII 20:12, 14 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Elevation[edit]

See here, here, &c. This article previously said Jebel Quruntul had both 350 m and 366 m of elevation and that has been copied everywhere around the internet where people talk about this mountain. (A) There's a bit over or under 350 m of prominence (depending on where you choose to measure from as the low point but that's because Jericho starts about 250 m in the hole. (B) There are other nearby higher peaks that look kinda like part of Quruntul from the valley, but those are properly parent peaks and they all have different names so far. The peak under/just beside the fortress is about 138 m above sea level. — LlywelynII 23:00, 14 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Pace that, the Italian archaeologists on site consider that the elevation of the mountain is properly −35 m. I guess that's just to the end of the mostly vertical part and then it slopes up to the summit more gradually, but it'd be nice to have some clear and authoritative sources. — LlywelynII 00:11, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Douka[edit]

One of the alternative names listed for the mountain is "Douka" (Δουκα) in Greek. Any connection to the Greek term "δούξ", doux, plural "δούκες", doukes), which was used to translate the Latin Dux? Dimadick (talk) 09:33, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Or to the Byzantine family, Ducas/Doukas? No, almost certainly not, unless "δούξ" was in use shortly after Alexander and/or comes from a Semetic root. One or the other may have influenced the shift in spelling since the time of the Maccabeans and Josephus though. — LlywelynII 10:07, 15 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Did you know nomination[edit]

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by SL93 (talk) 18:06, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(
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The Greek Orthodox Monastery of the Temptation on Mt Quruntul, 2021
The Greek Orthodox Monastery of the Temptation on Mt Quruntul, 2021
  • ... that the Temptation of Christ has been associated with Jebel Quruntul in the West Bank since at least the 4th century? Source: Mason, Mike (2017), Jesus: His Story in Stone, Victoria: Friesen Press. "Tradition holds that Christ's forty days of fasting and temptation in the wilderness took place on this mountain... The mountain was first settled by fourth-century Greek monks who lived in its caves... Lower down... the Grotto of the Temptation where Jesus is thought to have lived and prayed during the forty days."
    • ALT1: ... that the Mount of Temptation where Jesus was supposedly tempted by Satan was also the scene of the assassination of the high priest Simon and two of his sons? Source: Pringle, Denys (1994), "Templar Castles on the Road to the Jordan", The Military Orders, Abingdon: Routledge, vol. 1, p. 152, ISBN 9781351542593. "...this lofty plateau... had already been fortified in Hasmonean times, when as the fortress of Dok (or Dagon) it was held by Ptolemy, son-in-law of Simon Maccabeus, and was the scene of the latter's assassination in 134 BC (1 Maccabees 16:15)."
    • ALT2: ... that the grotto on Mt Quruntul believed to be the location of Christ's Temptation can now be reached by cable car, but the monks there won't always open the door? Source: The Mount of Temptation from Jericho, Kehl: Arte Geie, 6 April 2012. "Father Gerasimus has lived in this Greek Orthodox monastery for 30 years... Despite the importance of the monastery for Christianity, few pilgrims stray to Palestine. But the city of Jericho has begun to take advantage of the attraction... A red cable car now leads from the city to the mountain. A rich Palestinian businessman had it built - without first obtaining Father Gerasimus' permission... The few tourists who come anyway want to go to the mountain of temptation and to Father Gerasimus, who sometimes doesn't open the door for them. The conflict between the townsfolk and the 'keeper' of the attraction on the mountain is omnipresent." (Re: the plural, other cites in the article make it clear other monks are also sometimes present.)
    • ALT3: ... that, after the Muslim reconquest of the Holy Land, pilgrims were kept away from the Mount of Temptation until church leaders agreed to pay the locals ten dollars a year for access? Source: Van Egmont van der Nijenburgh, Jan Aegidius; et al. (1759), Travels through Part of Europe, Asia Minor, the Islands of the Archipelago; Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Mount Sinai, &c., vol. 1, London: Lockyer Davis & Charles Reymers. "We went up mount Quarantena in company with some ecclesiasticks, having an Arabian for our guide. Formerly the Arabians concealed themselves in the cavities of this mountain, and would not suffer the Franks to come up; but at present the fathers of the Holy Land pay ten piasters per annum caphar, or passage-money, and thus have free access to it." (Piaster = Kurus = (at the time) a silver dollar)
    • ALT4: ... that under the crusader kingdoms the income of the Mount of Temptation was 5,000 gold coins per year, which Queen Melisende took from the brothers of the Holy Sepulcher to give to the Sisters of Bethany? Source: Pringle, Denys (1994), "Templar Castles on the Road to the Jordan", The Military Orders, Abingdon: Routledge, vol. 1, p. 152, ISBN 9781351542593. ""There was also a Latin presence in the former Byzantine lavra of Douka, on the Mount of Temptation (Jabal al-Quruntul), where a priory of the Holy Sepulchre was established in 1133–34. The tithes of Jericho were given to the priory two years later; and in 1143, the lordship, valued at 5,000 aurei per year, was granted by Queen Melisende to the sisters of Bethany." (Sisters of Bethany being a formal name, but the brothers being formally "Canons Regular"; aurei = bezants = gold coins of the era)
    • ALT5: ... that, after the First Crusade retook Palestine for Christendom, the Byzantine Empire was allowed to rebuild churches and monasteries but the Catholics occupied the most sacred spots of the Mount of Temptation? Source: Pringle, Denys (1994), "Templar Castles on the Road to the Jordan", The Military Orders, Abingdon: Routledge, vol. 1, p. 152, ISBN 9781351542593. "In the twelfth century, benefiting from the relative security afforded by the crusader conquet and from the patronage of Emperor Michael I Comnenus... a number of the Orthodox monasteries around Jericho were rebuilt. There was also a Latin presence inthe former Byzantine lavra of Douka, on the Mount of Temptation (Jabal al-Quruntul)... The Templars, however, had at least two castles in the immediate vicinity. One was on the summit of the Mount of Temptation itself.
    • ALT6: ... that the first phase of Christian worship at the Mount of Temptation ended with a Jewish revolt and Persian invasion in 614? Heenan, Patrick (1994), "Jericho (West Bank)", International Dictionary of Historic Places, Milton Park: Taylor & Francis, pp. 368–371, ISBN 978-1-884964-03-9. "The Christian hermitages and monasteries were mostly abandoned after the Persian invasion of 614 and the Muslim Arab conquest which started in 636."
    • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Ashuanipi
    • Comment: A. Kindly don't add extraneous links to the hooks.
      B. You only need to check the hook you like best. If you really prefer ALT6 to the others, I'll go pull in the relevant cites from our Byzantine–Sasanid war articles.

5x expanded by LlywelynII (talk). Self-nominated at 10:25, 16 May 2022 (UTC).[reply]

  • On it. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:37, 27 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ok, this is my first DYK review, so please be patient with me, but, based on my initial observations, the article is fundamentally all OK in terms of length of time between expansion and nomination, 5x expansion, being properly written out in prose and the absence of major problems, instability issues or maintenance tags, etc.
However, I should straight away flag that the current version of the Khayat source is hosted on IntechOpen, which is a "likely or proven predatory open-access publisher" that appears on both User:JzG/Predatory/I and on Beall's List, so I would suggest either finding an alternative host for this paper or a suitable replacement citation for the relevant material before this page is promoted.
On the subject of hook selection, the 'location of the temptation of Chirst' angle seems like the one with the broadest appeal, so I am leaning towards ALT0 or ALT1.
ALT2 and ALT3 both yield issues for me in terms of accuracy. With ALT2, the problem with door being opened seems to be specific to a single personality, Father Gerasimus, not the monks in general, and the source is from 2012, so potentially not current. With ALT3, I do not like the leap from the 'after the Muslim reconquest' (a 13th century event) to an observation on access made in 1759 - this seems to skip a lot, introduces unnecessary vagueness and is not necessarily valid for the whole period. I'm also not sure how 'piasters' turned into 'dollars'.
I have no issue with ALT4, ALT5 or ALT6 at present, but all seem more obscurely historical and less likely to draw attention that the more obvious ALT0/ALT1 hooks. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:26, 27 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • @LlywelynII: Belated ping, FYI.Iskandar323 (talk) 14:56, 28 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Iskandar323: Heya, thanks for the review. Always nice to get someone who pays close attention and not just going through the motions. (a) Like I mentioned, in the future, you only need to go research the specific hooks you like best. It's great when you can check all of them so there's more poking to ensure a new article is a bulletproof, but there are only so many hours in a day. (b) You didn't actually choose the one that you wanted to focus on. If you like ALT0 or ALT1 best, just pick one. (c) There's no issue with the article regarding ALT2 and the 'accuracy' issue you have here could be addressed by changing the verb to specific 'haven't... opened' rather than speculative 'don't... open'. I'll make that change if you actually prefer this hook. Otherwise, it's moot. (d) There isn't any issue at all with ALT3. 1st one event, 2nd no change in that status, 3rd a second event caused in part by the first. In fact, as the article discusses and sources, the local economy did collapse and bandits were rife for these centuries. You seem to be imagining some kind of anti-Islamic racism that isn't there or warranted. Not all Muslims or Muslim areas descend into banditry. This particular area's particular bedouins did, as documented. I'm sure they were also unpleasant to other Muslims in the area as well, although—this being a Western website and this article an area of Christian pilgrimage—that bit was the focus for this particular hook. Again, though, you don't need to promote ALT3, particularly if you think it might have undesired knock-on affects among actually racist or latently racist readers. (e) It would be useless and unhelpful for the article to go into extreme detail on Ottoman currency during the period just for the sake of precisely nailing down the more accessible phrasing of a DYK hook. You are well within rights to demand it for the hook to be accepted but (i) you don't even like this hook so it's all moot xD, (ii) there's always WP:IAR when overprecise application of general policy leads to pointless outcomes (as here with this) and (iii), as discussed and sourced at the linked article on the Ottoman kurus (and already clarified in the information provided above), what Europeans called piasters during this period were silver coins equivalent in weight and purity to the era's Spanish silver dollars.

      (f) It's a similar issue with the IntechOpen source. It is better to have a more reliable source and WP:RS is a bedrock policy for Wikipedia, although work in predatory journals is just less trustworthy and not actively false. In this case, no, there aren't other sources that aren't behind academic paywalls that detail the rock structures of these particular parts of the West Bank. In my opinion, this is an WP:IAR judgment call. I could blank all that information just to pass your DYK review, but that's not actually helpful for the article, is it? I could leave the information without sourcing that makes your nose wrinkle, but that's less helpful for the article, isn't it? The real decision here is whether you honestly think the source—online and easy for readers to go consult for themselves—is actually inaccurate and probably wrong. These are local Palestinian geologists studying the area's water supply. Here's the lead writer's entry at ResearchGate. I personally think it's extremely likely the specific geological information is accurate, regardless of whether they were forced to publish with a less presigious house or whether the conclusions and policy suggestions of this paper got insufficient peer review. (They probably didn't, true!) If you feel otherwise, that's perfectly fair. Just blank that information from the infobox and the source from the bibliography or shunt it to the talk page for reinclusion in a few decades when an academic geologist takes an interest and can offer sth better. — LlywelynII 00:53, 29 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

      Full disclosure: I view all non-public-access academic publishing as "predatory", most peer review as sloppy in practice, and academic treatment of alternative journals as radioactive and filled with cooties actively self-defeating, serving 1st world scholars to gatekeep poorer and 3rd world competition at the expense of more robust science and open public access (and greater trust!). That said, of course, you can't trust the reasoning or conclusions of such articles in such journals to have been as fully vetted as something in (eg) Nature or even /r/AskHistorians.
  • Hey look, I don't really have much of a personal value judgement to make about IntechOpen - as a platform, it does not seem that dodgy, and it seems to be electively sharing just a chapter here of what it claims is peer-reviewed material that appears to have been originally published on that platform, no biggie - all I am pointing out is that by entertaining a link on the page that is currently flagged as predatory, the content is being placed at risk, since an editor with a stronger position on predatory resources could easily come along and rip out the link and all of the associated material. My suggestion was simply to avoid this risk by inserting a less onerous link, and there is indeed a research gate link that does just that - it also, incidentally, has a doi that then links back to IntechOpen for anyone interested in following the trail of breadcrumbs. In fact, I've gone ahead and made that switch, as I think having a more benign link will be better for the stability of the encyclopedic entry in the long run, though you can revert it if you feel strongly about the issue.

    As for the other material, I mainly provided feedback just for your information, but as you say, it's largely by and by. I prefer the temptation theme and ALT0 overall, since ALT1 blends two factoids and arguably brushes over the more theologically significant one. For ALT0, however, I wonder if it could be fleshed out a little more, for instance by mentioning the association with a specific cave, and also possibly inserting "in Christian mythology" since this is the corpus in which the 4th century mentions appear. If you add the latter component, the first part could always be rewritten 'temptation of Jesus' to avoid the double use of 'Christ' - speaking of which, perhaps it is also worth inserting the explicit 'by Satan' note about the temptation from ALT1, to aid the uninitiated in the ins and outs of the gospels. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:10, 29 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Iskandar323: If there aren't any problems with the hooks or articles, great, but you still need to sign on a particular one and use the subby {{DYKtick}} template so people know the review is over and it's ready for the front page. — LlywelynII 08:56, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      • @LlywelynII: I raised some questions/made some suggestions pertaining to ALT0 - I was just awaiting a response/confirmation that you saw the feedback. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:10, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
        • @Iskandar323: But none of those questions/suggestions had anything to do with its eligibility. There are 5 other options if you still don't like it. — LlywelynII 11:41, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
          • @LlywelynII: I think the angle in ALT0 and ALT1 is correct; I just wondered if we couldn't have the best of both. I'm confused as to why your seem unwilling to even engage with my suggestions, even just to dismiss them. You said in your first comment that you appreciate people not just going through the motions, which I took as a sign of encouragement that you would be interested in some constructive feedback from a third party. However, if just going through the motions is what you would now prefer, I can do that too. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:58, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment:

General: Article is new enough and long enough
Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
QPQ: Done.

Overall: ALT0 approved. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:25, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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