Talk:Library of Alexandria/Archive 2

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Contents

Article doesn't go far enough

It is well known that the library was largely destroyed through a fire by the early Christians. The head librarian, whose name escapes me at the moment, tried to prevent this from happening but was killed by the angry mob who used seashells to cut his body to pieces. Those who try to hide this are apparently on the side of the mob and want not only the library to have been destroyed but the story of how it happened to be destroyed. See a Cantacle for Liebowitz for wonderful rendition of the story of early christians, although it is about a nuclear holocaust in the 1950s and the new religion that springs up, and what they do with the past.

According to Sagan at least, whose name I have seen smeared here and there in this debate (not saying Sagan didn't have an agenda), her name was Hypatia, and she was pulled from her chariot and cut to pieces by a Christian mob at the urging of the Bishop of Alexandria. Whether this is true or not, I have no way of knowing.
I find it quite curious that Walter M. Miller's, A Canticle for Leibowitz is mentioned in this regard. Though the book generally seems to parallel some of early Chistian history, I certainly wouldn't recommend it as a guide to early Christian history.
Finally, as you say, the Library was largely destroyed through a fire by the early Christians, but other sources I have seen have stated that the final Library was destroyed much later by Musliums in retaliation for the City of Alexandria revolting against Islamic rule (I think it would have been the second or third such revolt--unlike the Vandals and the Monguls, the followers of Islam were not inherently anti-intellectual). If this is so, this argues for destruction by degrees, and places the final destruction sometime after 700 A.D. GestaltG 15:46, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree the article doesn't go far enough, but in the sense that it doesn't actually have very much information about the library. It's almost entirely about the library's destruction; the account of the founding is kind of weird, without any sources, and no mention of Ptolemy Soter; only one ancient source is cited first-hand, and that not very well (where in Socrates Scholasticus?); there's no mention of the "big names" associated with the library (e.g. Zenodotos? Eratosthenes? Aristarchos??? -- and Hypatia is mentioned only in a quotation?). Basically the article needs more useful information. Can this be fixed? As things stand I don't feel comfortable linking other articles to this one, but am putting in external links. Petrouchka 02:06, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

"POV check"

It seems to have become common practice to slap templates on articles instead of arguing or editing. It's well known that Mr. Hannam, who runs a site called Reasonable Apologetics under the pseudonym of a medieval Christian monk, objects to the neutrality of this article and has resorted to considerable name-calling in doing so, but so far he has been unable to cite any specific factual errors in it. If there will be no substantial arguments as to the neutrality of this article within the next 7 days, I will remove this newly added "POV check" template.--Eloquence* 20:25, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

The article has a section called Conclusions, which does indeed draw the conclusions you favor. There's no need of supplimenting that with "substantial arguments", it's conclusive proof in its own right. A.J.A. 22:41, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
The conclusion section is as ambiguous as it needs to be to remain NPOV. Having such a section does not in itself constitute POV. Within historical scholarship, the claim that Caesar alone was responsible for the destruction of the library is entirely discredited. This can be seen in the cited sources and in virtually every other contemporary work on the history of the library. As for what happened after Caesar, the article does explicitly avoid making a definitive statement. It does very much not "draw the conclusions I favor". Indeed, the conclusion I favor is not mentioned in the article at all (that the contents of the library were transferred and survived for some time), because there is very little evidence for it. The article is based on the current state of scholarship and historical evidence on the matter. We should give substantial space to the Christian apologist POV only if it is shared by notable historians, and I see no evidence of that. Otherwise, assumptions derived from theological dogma ("The Church cannot have done wrong, therefore ..") do not belong here.--Eloquence* 23:56, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
I enter your own comment as further proof. You think you've succeeded to in pushing your view ambiguously enough to skate just this side of NPOV. You haven't. A.J.A. 01:10, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
You're repeating yourself. I will remove the template unless there are actionable objections on the discussion page.--Eloquence* 04:46, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
So now I need new and persuasive arguments that structuring an entire argument as an argument with explicitly so-labeled conclusions, directed against arguments you personally admit to knowing of and argue are unworthy of inclusion because you disagree with them is POV. But no more conclusive proof is needed, or for that matter possible. A.J.A. 07:54, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Please read Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, particularly the sections on pseudoscience and minority views. Not every person with a website has a right to have their opinion presented in great detail in Wikipedia. This article should primarily rely on historical scholarship. I'm not opposed to including Bede's views in a sentence or two, but they are certainly not representative of the current state of science. James is not a published historian and starts from a religious rather than a scientific perspective. You would not seriously argue to include peculiar views of, say, a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints in the article on gravity, would you?--Eloquence* 09:23, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
Wow. You really do believe that no Mormon, or rather no religious person, can ever have a valid view about anything. And you demand the article be writen with that POV. A.J.A. 16:58, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
I only encountered this article for the first time today, but the whole POV thing would dissolve instantly with a few references to ancient sources. Currently there is not much here that is substantiated: I don't put much stock in "One story holds", "Another story concerns", "the Royal Library is believed to have held" (by whom?), "Carlton Welch provides the following description" (where?), "Socrates Scholasticus provides the following account" (where?), "Paulus Orosius admitted in his History against the pagans" (where in his history?), and I know no reason why Mostafa El-Abbadi is a reliable source for events that occurred 1600 years before his birth. Petrouchka 02:35, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Do PLEASE remove the POV tag. This so-called "controversy" is repellant. What will these apologists do next? They are trying to discredit Darwin in the most absurd way; they assert the Holocaust didn't happen. But what is most disturbing is that they are trying to cloak these biased views with the mantle of scholarship. I am disgusted by it. Come to think of it, what is being suggested is somewhat akin to saying that bin Laden perpetrated the Holocaust. Find a convenient bogey and perseverate in your insistence about its provenance. Any reasonable person can see that Alexandria in the late centuries of the Empire was a very dangerous place for any "pagan" scholar. There are many accounts of cruel persecutions and the Christian state itself forbade the teachings of Plato's Academy. Antiquity was antiquity. Terrible cruelty and what appears to us to be short-sighted stupidity were not restricted to Roman proconsuls. We cannot be certain of what happened exactly, but as it stands, this article gives a reasoned, scholarly and balanced view of the likelihoods, and I applaud it. I think labeling it a "biased" report is an underhanded Inquisition tactic. Why not just write "HERETIC" over the top in red letters? If you had something scholarly to say, you would have made a contribution instead, and been content. --NaySay N. Harris, 1/5/05, 17:30 UTC (--PS, that's "smear," by the way. I suppose a "smeer" is someone who shoots ducks in a barrel.)
    • One of the problems I have had with this whole discussion is the vitriol from certain individuals, who have used the term "anti-Christian" four times in this discussion, once against historian Edward Gibbon and three times against Eloquence, who seems to be coming under attack more than the article itself (including in more than one case a deliberate misreading of his statements). Many of those who this past Christmas season argued that there was a "war against Christmas" used this same term to describe those who say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas".

Remove the tag. It is there for much the same reason states are being told to teach Intelligent design. -- Couillaud 19:49, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

  • I would add that it would helpful if attributions were given for the opinion that the Library was finally destroyed, over several onslaughts, by Muslim mobs. Perhaps it was, but who says it, and based upon what? Weasely words. I was told last year by a friend that Jews destroyed the Library. I was fairly puzzled by this asserveration, but my friend simply could not provide the details. She'd seen it on TV "or something," but nevertheless resisted any attempt to suggest it might not have been so. POV. Dangerous. I was creeped out. NaySay--N. Harris 1/5/05 20:20 UTC.
  • After reading the section, I have spotted no trace of POV in it. The fact that the library may have been destroyed for religious reasons is a commonly accepted one and, most importantly, a very probable one. But this fact shouldn't be regarded by anyone as a personal attack towards himself or his beliefs. An act shouldn't be judged for the person who commits it, but for the meaning of the act itself. A person shouldn't be judged for his beliefs, but for his acts alone. If this was the only reason for POV-checking this, I would remove the POV-tag as well. CharlesDexterWard 18:19, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Getting a Grip

Consider me for this moment as an outside observer. I have not much been involved in this editoral war, I only made a minor comment a couple of days ago in the Article Doesn't Go Far Enough section. Reading this editorial war, I offer the following outside observations:

  • It is utterly fascinating that an event that occurred, at the least, well over a thousand years ago still generates so much heated controversy. It seems that the destruction of the Library or Libraries of Alexandria is a magnet, or symbol, of a sense of collective guilt, regret, and pessamism for the educated portions of Western civilization. It carries with it the sense of the fall.
  • Ninety percent of all of the debates about the destruction of the Library of Alexandria (we use the collective term either out of convenience or ignorance, hard to say) or anything remotely connected to it, center on the "blame game," we want to blame someone for it. And when someone is to be blamed for something, especially something as historically vague as this, the door is opened for POV and agendas. The essence of this debate is really no different than a bunch of Christian theologians arguing over the infamous event in the Garden of Eden; who do we blame for it? Do we blame the Serpent for inducing Eve? Do we blame man for being so easily tempted and fallable? Or do we blame God for making man imperfect? The difference between the two is that while the latter might be regarded as a pointless metaphysical debate (which has lost meaning for most of the population), the former (the arguments about the destruction of the Library) we feel is more accessible because humans did it. Our ancestors did it, people that we feel we might identify with; though it is most unlikely that we share much worldview in common with those people. This suggests that we do not feel that we are significantly different from our ancestors; unlike for example, if you were reminded of something you did as a child, you might respond, "Oh but I was a child! I would never do something like that now."
  • The main problem with the blame game in this particular instance is that there is likely no sigular event that we can call "The Destruction of the Library of Alexandria." If we assume for a moment (as seems reasonable given the history) that the destruction of the Library occurred over several centuries, then potentially every group that was in the area during those centuries could be blamed. Which is exactly what we seem to be doing here. The fallacies of the blame game is that it makes two sorts of unsupportable assumptions: First that the act of the destruction of the Library was deliberate, and second that the motives for the destruction are attributable to the agendas of one of the groups being blamed. Take a moment to examine these assumptions. For example, I have never seen anyone suggest that perhaps the fire (or any of the possible fires) might have been accidental. I am put to mind of the Fire of London, which modern investigation shows likely started in a bakery from flour dust, but which the people of the time needed to blame on someone, and hence they executed a Dutch immigrant (if I recall correctly). There is also the possibility of arson, just a plain old "fire bug" type of deranged person. Such a person's only agenda (though they may state otherwise) is to burn things because they feel the need to do so. The problem is that in the mileu of the time, even if one of the fires that destroyed the Library was an accident, or if it was just plain old arson by a pyromaniac, there would have been accuasations and blaming, and propaganda, by the competing sides. And apparently, we haven't learned any better and see fit here in Wikipedia to continue doing exactly what our ancestors did so many centries ago. The only difference is that we are all a safe enough distance from each other that nobody is going to pull out a sword and start hacking.

The key to resolving this issue, and all similar issues that might arise in other Wikiarticles, is to recognize first what it is that drives these arguments, and then put it in its proper place (not to eliminate it, but don't let it overtake us, to where we are now, arguing over blame games and POV), and to simply present the historical facts as best they are known, and a reasonably neutral paragraph on each major point of view. GestaltG 05:57, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Gestalt. Thank you for weighing in. You're quite right, but the little trouble with what you suggest is that it may not provide the truth. If we cannot know the truth, that must of course be stated--and it has been. But I'm sure you would not propose that the article on "evolution" in Wiki include two paragraphs on natural selection and then two paragraphs on "intelligent design." Sadly, this is the battlefield. The issue here is not entirely one of blame; it is trying to sort the truth from what might quite possibly be arbitrary revisionism, akin to Henry Tudor rewriting the chronicles to eliminate a record of his rather unscrupulous history. In that case too, famous mysteries still remain which probably never will be sorted out. Historians do actually have a point of view; they do often come to conclusions. That is what we pay them to do. Sometimes the conclusions appear in time to be skewed: the Beards seem dogmatic, however lively, for example. But they have their place in the circular hunt for the truth, since their revisionism was an attempt to refresh and review earlier biases. Hopefully, one can, by arguing in this way, sort out some more. Actually, that is probably what has been happening in this tiring, contentious process on the Alexandrian Library, despite my own impatient remarks about it. But what I canNOT see as reasonable is the neutrality cops tagging this article! because to me it seems balanced and the conclusions reached seem reasonable and given authority, if you read the whole article. Perhaps Eloquence could re-state those authorities in his Conclusion paragraph to avoid the appearance of weaselism in the phrase "There is a growing consensus among historians...". Because we take on and reasonably answer objections does not mean we must be persuaded by them. He certainly gives a fine bibliography of works available to the layman. As you said earlier, if anything, perhaps he has been too accommodating. But I applaud his patience. An undefended position won't be true for long. --NaySay 1/6/05 16:43 UTC

Interestingly, although St. John the Chrysostom was present at the burning of the Library by Theophilus and urged the mob to destroy this buildings, because... "demons lived there", this is not written here. Maybe it's time for an update? Elp gr 11:24, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Now that is a version of the story even I haven't heard before. Please could you give us a reference and I'll update my own work at least! --James Hannam 16:32, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
I had read it in a Greek orthodox church book, with texts written by Chrysostom himself. I can't remember the title right now, as it was about 6 years ago and never came back to it again. I'll try to find the reference. Elp gr 08:44, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
Probably this is to do with the destruction of the library in the Serapeion, rather than the Great Library itself. Petrouchka 01:52, 22 February 2006 (UTC)


Article is awful and totally POV

This article is awful. It squarely blames Theophilus for something that NONE of the ancient sources mention that he did. It has no section for Caesar, no mention of the other sackings of the city. It gives fantasy as fact (like the ridiculous quote from Welch). I've drafted an accurate article which I will initially post below. Comments please. I will then move it to the frontpage and fill in the references to the sources and scholarly literature. I have noted Eloquence's efforts above to poison the well with regard to my scholarship. I find it insulting that he assumes because I am a Christian I have no professional intergrity. I urge him not to repeat the accusation. --James Hannam 23:31, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

The Great Library of Alexandria is the name usually reserved for the Royal Library of the Ptolemies founded, according to later sources, by Ptolemy II Philadelphus in the middle of the third century BCE. The earliest source for the story of the library’s foundation and for its enormous size is a fictional document from Alexandria’s Jewish community, dated with difficulty to about 100BCE, called the Letter of Aristeas. The author of the letter poses as a gentile and intends to provide reassurance to the Greek-speaking Jewish community that their translation of the Bible, known as the Septuagint, was accurate and even divinely inspired. It tells the famous story about the seventy-two scholars who were summoned from Judea to effect the translation work on the instructions of the Royal Library’s first administrator, Demetrius of Phalerum. This fictional letter has the distinction of being the only ancient source we possess that unambiguously mentions the library while it certainly still existed. However, its religious polemical nature and the fact it dates from well after the events it describes, means cannot be relied upon in any way at all.
However, later and more reliable sources have enabled scholars to glean some information on the library. It had a librarian whose names up until 130BCE were discovered on a much later papyrus scrap at Oxyrynchus although this does not fully reconcile with other sources. The library contained a lot of scrolls although the figures given by much later sources varying from 400,000 to 700,000 are certainly an order of magnitude too great (such a library would require 40 km of shelving!). There was also a catalogue called the Pinakes put together by the poet Callimachus. These catalogues took up 120 scrolls and listed, with biographical and critical summaries, all the works of Greek literature which Callimachus thought were important. Textual scholars also place the editing of Homer and other ancient authors in the hands of Alexandrian scholars. There the evidence ends and speculation takes over. We know nothing about the physical appearance, the location or the relationship of the library to the other institutions of ancient Alexandria. One thing is for certain – the Great Library of Alexandria whose loss set back human development by centuries - is a romantic myth.
The fate of the library has generated more discussion and heat than almost any other ancient mystery. The three parties accused, Julius Caesar, an early Christian bishop called Theophilus and the Caliph Omar have enjoyed as fine a group of advocates and prosecutors as any historical figure could aspire to. In fact, the accusation against Omar is not first heard until the thirteenth century and that against Theophilus until the eighteenth century. The only solid source we have is Plutarch saying in his Life of Caesar in c.100CE that Caesar had accidentally burnt the library down. Even that is problematic because contemporary sources, even those opposed to Caesar, are silent. What we can be certain of is that Plutarch, who was familiar with Alexandria, knew that the Great Library was no more. Thus the accusations against the other two suspects become moot even if we cannot rule out an earlier loss due to Ptolemy VII Psychon who launched a purge against the Greek population in the mid second century BCE, a hundred years before Caesar arrived.
Part of the confusion is down to there being several other libraries in Alexandria. There is also a tendency to conflate the Royal Library with the Museum although there is very little in the sources to suggest they were more than loosely related. The Museum may have survived to the fourth century but the only reason to think it did is a to Theon being its head at this time. This reference is extremely late but may be reliable. The most notorious misunderstanding about the library involves the alleged gift by Mark Antony to Cleopatra of 200,000 books from Pergamum. This is mentioned only in Plutarch's 'Life of Antony' but Plutarch himself says the story was being spread around by Antony's political enemies. This means that it is almost certainly Roman propaganda and historians should give it no currency.
Omar and Theophilus can more plausibly be suspected of the loss of the library at the Temple of Serapis in Alexandria which was sacked by Christians in 356CE and more famously in 391AD. Edward Gibbon was the first to make the leap associating the second of these sackings (although interestingly, not the first) with the loss of the Serapeum library. However, none of the five near contemporary ancient sources for the 391CE sacking make mention of the library, even Eunapius, an emphatically anti-Christian one. The suspicion that the library was lost earlier is confirmed by the fact that a close reading shows it was absent during the visit of the historian Ammianus Marcellinus in the 370s. The assumption that the Serapeum had also been founded by the Ptolemies was already current in the fourth century CE, no doubt due to the lack of the actual Royal Library to hook the old stories on. However, archaeology shows that the late antique structure of the Serapeum to have been built in the second century CE by Roman occupiers and it is more likely that the library was installed at this date and given a legendary Ptolemaic foundation by later writers.
Modern scholars have concluded in the main that the ancient sources concerning the library are too late and too garbled to be good evidence. The Great Library has become a myth and symbol, both for the lost knowledge of the ancients and the barbarity of destroying books. One lesson from the story has not been learned. We continue to leave the legacy of the future in jeopardy by insisting on keeping all our most valuable books and manuscripts in huge repositories where any disaster would lead to irreparable loss.

Ownership

This is a free site and those constantly deleting people's work are no more intitled to posting then those being deleting. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Paranoiapenguins (talk • contribs) .

You will need to provide a credible source for the "Paul Nezypour" claim. The name doesn't google. --BorgQueen 19:23, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Applying those {{Fact}} tags!

When the furious editors were applying {{Fact}} tags, it is worth noting the edit of 21 February 2006 in which User:Petrouchka— not to be outdone— applied {{Fact}} tags to a sourced quote! Bravo! Bravo! It's not easy to stand out, among so much competition! --Wetman 08:55, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm not applying more {{Fact}} tags, but they're warranted--the article's citation habits blow. No quoted material is cited properly. Where are we supposed to find that Carlton Welch quote? Which passage in the fifth book of Historia Ecclesiastica should we look at to find that Socrates Scholasticus quote? Where in the sixth book of Orosius? Why doesn't this article direct us to specific passages of Plutarch and Gibbon? --Akhilleus 08:13, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
No one is laughing at the perfectly sensible and thoughtful use of {{Fact}} tags. Many Wikipedia aricles might be improved with a generous handful of them, to be sure. --Wetman 20:00, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure whether we're disagreeing or not, Wetman, but almost every quote or attribution in this article could use a {{fact}} tag. Just to focus on the Carlton Welch quote, no page number is given, and nothing appears in the "references" section--how are we supposed to verify this? And take a look at a google search on Carlton Welch: while I'm really happy I found out about the "Thugz & Thongz" CD, I didn't discover anything about the Library through that search. --Akhilleus 21:04, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
The citation tags are kind of getting out of hand. The article now has a few of them each sentance. If every article cited every single fact from another website...that would get ridiculous. —This unsigned comment was added by Strawberryfire (talk • contribs) .
Actually, every fact in the article does need a citation. See WP:CITE. They don't need to be links to external websites, though: inline citations or footnotes will be fine. This article is sorely lacking in citations: where does the story that Demetrius of Phaleron started the library come from? There needs to be a citation of the exact ancient author and passage where this information comes from, e.g. (Diogenes Laertius 5.37). For quotes from modern works, like this Carlton Welch quote I've complained about already, we need to know what book this came from, and what page(s) it came from, e.g. C. Welch, A Bunch of Stuff I Made Up about the Library of Alexandria, 55. --Akhilleus (talk) 03:25, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Getting Focus

This article is one of the worst in Wikipedia, most people who edited it have no sense of classical texts whatsoever and try to ridiculously push an anti-Christian agenda which is a shame to all Wikipedia. It says nothing about the shifting centres of scholarship in Antiquity (Alexandria was very strong in 3rd-1st BCE, it lost this proeminence later to regain it in the 3rd CE), it says nothing about the Library of Pergamum, nothing about the Ptolemaion of Athens which was perhaps even more important to the actual textual transmission, nothing about the Imperial collection, nothing about the changing media of late antiquity (pergamin, codex instead of papyrus and scroll). It is just a diatribe against the "mean Christians".

To put it clear, the fire on the Library caused by Ceasar is easily found in Plut. Caes. 49, and I even got its translation in the following link: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Plut.+Phoc.+49.1

After that, Antonius brought the Library of Pergamum to Alexandria and was perhaps installed later in the Serapaeum, but quoting Alphonse Dain "la primautè d'Alexandrie en matière de livres était définitivement atteinte". Because the Ptolemaion of Athens became the greatest center of scholarship, it was there that the editions of the 2nd Century were made and later the collection was brought to Constantinople by Constantine and the medieval history began. But, on the Serapaeum, it is sure that Christians destroyed the temple in 391, but it is absolutely nonsense to imagine "mean Christians" burning tousends of scrolls or codices in a sort of Alexandrinian bonfire, paper (or more properly papyrus) was too expensive to be burned, and Christians, constantly in need of papyrus at that time (all the heated 5th century controversies were beginning) would rather re-use it to other ends. I don't have ancient quotes for all these facts I quoted, but they are all in A. Dain (Les Manuscripts, "Le Belles Lettres", 1964), one of the greatest specialists in textual transmission, please use credible sources and neither popular science nor biased historians. Bruno Gripp 07:17, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for providing sources, something that few editors of this page have done. But of course everything you say is in dispute: the ancient testimony about Caesar's fire in Alexandria does not unanimously say that it caused the destruction of the Library. Note also that a footnote in the translation you linked to says "The destruction of the library can have been only partial"--whether this note is right or wrong, it shows that there is scholarly dispute about the destruction of the Library, so we can't take the Plutarch quote at face value.
I completely agree that the article should say more about the nature and operation of the Library before its destruction, whenever that happened. --Akhilleus (talk) 20:35, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Of course we can't take Plutarch at face value, he is clearly biased against Caesar in several other points, and is even more clear that Gibbon was well biased against Christians. But it must clearly be mantained that it is sure that the bulk of ancient literature was not lost due to distruction of the LA, but for several other reasons, more complex and less Romantic. Bruno Gripp 03:42, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

But wasn't Gibbon a Christian himself? From the look of his Wikipedia entry, he took religion rather seriously, converting to Catholicism at one point and converting back to Protestantism later. These do not sound like the actions of a man who has a bias against Christians per se. Ionesco 17:45, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Regardless of whether Gibbon was a Christian, The Decline and Fall has often been accused of anti-Christian bias. Frankly, I don't really care whether it's biased or not--for the purposes of this article, Gibbon should be cited as an example of a popular story about how the library was destroyed, because Decline is such a famous account of the (alleged) destruction. Otherwise, Gibbon's methods and conclusions aren't representative of modern scholarship, and so we should turn to more recent sources for the bulk of this article.