Talk:List of biblical figures identified in extra-biblical sources

message: This page would be more useful if it included where the extrabiblical mentions were? Texts, inscriptions, monuments? Rmhermen 13:26, May 2, 2005 (UTC)
:Definitely, this is just a stub so far. The plan:
* Complete the list
* Add info what the extra-Biblical sources are.
* Info on where in the Bible they are mentioned, perhaps just a verse in the case of obscure minor figures.
* Divide the list up according to type of source? 
**Cases of identification in archaeological evidence that prove a Biblical figures existence beyond doubt.
**Cases where its pretty clear that an historical figure is intended but it is uncertain who as in the case of Ahasuerus of Esther identified with numerous Persian kings in different theories
**Cases where it is definitely a Biblical figure being mentioned and the reference is not purely based on the Biblical account but where the extra-Biblical source does not carry any more historical weight than the Bible, e.g Moses in Artapanas.
**Cases of tentative identifications like Marduka in Xerxes I court = Mordecai.
**Cases of tentative identifications that even if correct are insufficient to prove historicity of a figure e.g David in the Tel Dan stele, land of Jacob, land of Joseph in Egyption inscriptions.
Kuratowski's Ghost 21:42, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I would say cases of a bulla saying "X son of Y" fall rather emphatically into the last category: "tentative identifications that even if correct are insufficient to prove historicity of a figure".  Mere coincidence of names can surely not be ruled out for such tiny amounts of data. - Mustafaa 23:02, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've been thinking about this, not too certain in my own mind how definite such identifications are. Will chop the list up into categories soon (if someone else doesn't get to do it before me, I'm meant to be working, not editing wikipedia ;) Kuratowski's Ghost 23:20, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually I'd put these in the second last category, as they would prove historicity if shown to be correct by other evidence. The last category would be more like the possible reading "field of Abraham" in the Shoshenq inscription. Even if it is correct, it is non-contemporary and so it does not prove the existence of Abraham, merely that a field was named after him regardless of whether he was mythical or historical. Kuratowski's Ghost 01:06, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Untitled 

message: We also need to be clear on what constitutes "Biblical" vs "extra-Biblical". For "Biblical figures" I propose anyone mentioned in the Old Testament, New Testament as well as the deuterocanonicals as there are some interesting historical figures in the latter particularly in Maccabees. For "extra-Biblical" I would say anything other than "Biblical" but _excluding_ material which has the "Biblical" material as its source (e.g most of Josephus) or which is part of the body of traditions surrounding the "Biblical material" (i.e Talmud, Midrash, writings of the Church fathers, Koran, Roman references to Judaeo-Christian traditions e.g. Tacitus). Kuratowski's Ghost 01:06, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Biblical and Extra-Biblical

message: What specific scriptures is this supposed to be? 72.228.150.44 (talk) 18:15, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The Hebrew Bible is in its contents identical to the Jewish Tanakh, these are also the books of the old testament as accepted by most protestants. As its name suggests, all were written in Hebrew or (partly) in a related language such as Aramaic or Chaldean. The names of the included books in English are: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. Lindert (talk) 18:35, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Hebrew Bible" 

message: The words Biblical and Bible in every English country is spelt with a capital B.  This article should reflect normal English usage.  The koran/quran is respecte dhere with capitals, why does Wikipedia have a bias? 
:This isn't about punctuation, but never mind. When 'Bible' refers to the title of a book, we capitalise it. When it is just the word 'bible', we don't. In either case it's a noun. Biblical is not a noun, it's an adjective and we don't capitalise adjectives except of course where they are at the start of a sentence or part of a title. This is normal English usage and also part of our manual of style. You will find some usages of 'Biblical' that don't follow this, but I think many more that do. Dougweller (talk) 13:08, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Correct Punctuation 

message: The patriarch Noah is also mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon and Norse kings genealogies. --197.229.149.164 (talk) 22:39, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Noah 

message: Name      	Title            	Date (BCE)	Attestation and Notes                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    	Biblical references
Adramelech	Prince of Assyria	          	Identified as the murderer of his father Sennacherib in the Bible and in an Assyrian letter to Esarhaddon (ABL 1091), where he is called Arda-Mulissi.De Breucker, Geert, in The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture , edited by Karen Radner, Eleanor Robson, Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 643Kalimi, Isaac; Richardson, Seth (ed), Sennacherib at the Gates of Jerusalem , BRILL, 2014, p. 45                                                                                    	,
Ahab      	King of Israel   	          	Identified in the contemporary Kurkh Monolith inscription of Shalmaneser III Rainey, Anson F. Stones for Bread: Archaeology versus History  in Near Eastern Archaeology, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Sep., 2001), pp. 140-149 which describes the Battle of Qarqar and mentions 2,000 chariots, 10,000 soldiers of Ahab the Israelite defeated by Shalmaneser.Lawson Younger, K., KURKH MONOLITH. In Hallo, 2000, Vol. II p. 263                                                                     	,
Ahaz      	King of Judah    	          	Identified in the contemporary Summary Inscription of Tiglath-Pileser III which records that he received tribute from Jehoahaz of Judah, as mentioned in Kings and Chronicles.Galil, G., The Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah, Brill, 1996, p. 67  Also identified in a contemporary clay bulla, reading of Ahaz [son of] Jotham king of Judah.Deutsch, Robert First Impression: What We Learn from King Ahaz’s Seal  in Biblical Archaeology Review, July 1998, pp. 54-56, 62	, , ,
 
 
I propose to change the format of this article to something like the above table, at least for the first two sections, because it would improve readability. Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated. - Lindert (talk) 14:25, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Since there's been no response in over a week I've decided to go ahead and implement the format change I proposed above. Feedback is still appreciated. - Lindert (talk) 13:10, 31 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal: table format 

message: So far this article only includes characters from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, in other words from the Protestant Bible. I think the article would be more complete if we also added characters from the Deuterocanonical books, as these are considered part of the Bible in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Christianity, and are also read by Protestants and Jews. I don't think a separate article for this exists, nor is one really necessary. So I've gone through some of the apocrypha, and 1 Maccabees in particular has a lot of people who qualify for this article. A preliminary list:
From 1 Maccabees:
:Philip II of Macedon
:Alexander the Great, 
:Darius III
:Antiochus IV Epiphanes
:Antiochus III
:Ptolemy VI Philometor
:Demetrius I Soter
:Seleucus IV Philopator
:Philip V of Macedon
:Perseus of Macedon
:Eumenes II
:Alexander Balas
:Cleopatra Thea
:Demetrius II Nicator
:Mithridates I of Parthia
:Antiochus VII Sidetes
:Attalus II Philadelphus
:Ariarathes V of Cappadocia
From 2 Maccabees:
:Antiochus V Eupator
:Heliodorus
:Aretas I
From Bel and the Dragon: 
:Astyages
From Tobit: 
:Cyaxares
I'm planning to add these and others if I find them, which is obviously going to take some work. Any help or feedback would be appreciated. EDIT: added three from 2 Maccabees. - Lindert (talk) 13:41, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adding Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical characters 

message: Lindert this is a fine piece of work. I am researching this area at the moment. When I asked an expert about where this information had been consolidated, he pointed me to this page Peter Damian (talk) 12:47, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello, Peter Damian! Many thanks for your kind words and for your edits. I've not kept up with wikipedia recently because of medical problems (I'm doing better now). I'll try find and add some references to support (or amend) the recently added material. - Lindert (talk) 10:07, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Hope you get better soon! Peter Damian (talk) 18:27, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Brilliant page

message: Many of these names have too much detail about the person that doesn't related to the contemporary source. That detail belongs in their articles, adding it here seems off-topic at best. Doug Weller talk 12:07, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too much detail 

message: @User:Epinoia Why the revert of Erastus? Did you want the bible verses where he is mentioned? He is mentioned a little more than Joanna of Chuza, for example.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gregory david baker (talk • contribs) 01:41, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Erastus of Corinth 

message: @User:Editor2020 Why Papias of Hierapolis is not a Reliable Source?(Pseudo-Dionysius the areopagite (talk) 15:11, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: - while it is debated, the reliablility of Papias has been questioned since at least the time of Eusebius of Caesarea - Epinoia (talk) 15:25, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Papias was a Greek Apostolic Father and the Bishop of Hierapolis, so he obviously would assume that James the Just had existed. He is not a neutral, uninvolved source. Editor2020 (talk) 03:10, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I have reconsidered and self-reverted. But we need to discuss the criteria for inclusion as a Reliable Source. Editor2020 (talk) 01:09, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Papias of Hierapolis

message: Continuing a discussion begun in the previous section, we need to talk about sources here. The Hebrew Bible and Apocrypha sections rely exclusively on external sources to support them, such as documents from other, non-Judaic ANE writings.
The New Testament section does not. For Matthew, the citation given is Papias, whose reliability should always be taken with a grain of salt because of the fragmentary and ambiguous nature of his writings—the fragment cited about Matthew is widely argued about for these reasons (his page does a reasonable job of explaining the litany of issues). The article also conflates Matthew the Evangelist with Matthew the Apostle, which is traditional and not supported by the texts themselves, even if the conflation seems to be occurring in Papias (who, to be clear, says that the Matthew he speaks of wrote in Hebrew, which is not the language of the Gospel; who lived likely after the death of Matthew the Apostle; and whose life overlapped with the fairly secure date assigned to the writing of the Gospel (80-90 CE), suggesting the Evangelist and Apostle are not the same by his own standards). The most glaring reason this is poor sourcing, of course, is that Papias was Christian. Of course he would report and likely believe the traditions of Christianity. Why would he doubt the existence of the Apostle or Evangelist, same or separate? He is not simply unobjective, he is apologetic—to the point where his evidence ought to be disregarded here.
The same can be said of the Paul citation, whose only supporting sources are the Church Fathers. And, really, given that we have uncontested texts written by Paul, I don't think he ought to be here at all—just as the article does not need to defend the historical existence of Jesus, I don't think it needs to defend Paul, either).
The name of the article merely specifies "extra-biblical" sources, so these are not technically warranted for removal. However, this standard of evidence is poor, and if we extrapolated the use of Papias—a Christian source who has reason to believe the traditions passed on to him—then we can do the same for any biblical figure. Just cite the Talmud and voilà, you have an extra-biblical source for Adam and Eve. The standard and scope of the article, and thus maybe also the name, should be clarified to sources outside of the respective religious traditions. This doesn't seem to be an issue for the Hebrew figures—Hezekiah, for instance, is supported through archaeological finds and non-Judaic textual references. If the same can't be said for New Testament figures, like the apostles, then I think they should be removed. 
(As an additional aside, I also find it misleading that attestation and notes are combined in a single column. For Ananias, we have "He held the office between c. 47 and 59 CE, as recorded by Josephus, and presided over the trial of Paul." Though the citation is placed after "Josephus," combining the evidence (the extra-Christian writings of Josephus that verify Ananias' existence) and the tradition (that he tried Paul) is misleading and still seems to imply that Josephus reported what is in Acts. This conflation is, again, an issue largely resigned to the New Testament sections. I don't know if there have been apologetic edits happening or what, but this problem is mostly with the Christian content)
— anthologetes (talk • contribs) 14:22, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: thanks, but have you missed the key word "contemporary"? That's also been a major problem with this article, people ignoring that criterion. Doug Weller talk 14:30, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  That's certainly an additional problem, though I fail to see its relevance to the issues at hand, beyond my sarcastic comment about Adam Eve. anthologetes (talk • contribs) 14:37, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sourcing, especially in the New Testament 

message: why are you adding sources that are not contemporary? Doug Weller talk 13:02, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:   actually, it is: the Mesha Stele identifies the House of David, which was ruling Judah when the Stela was inscribed.--Karma1998 (talk) 14:25, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: This is an article on "biblical figures", a dynasty is not a biblical figure. Doug Weller talk 14:48, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  sigh, forgot to ping. Doug Weller talk 14:51, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Mesha stele is not a contemporary source for David 

message: Should the Biblical figure of Gad be listed because the "men of Gad" are mentioned in the Mesha stele? 132.66.129.121 (talk) 14:07, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: "men of Gad" is a very ambiguous thing so nah Temerarius (talk) 20:25, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gad