6

I have a question about my History Stack Exchange post: Where were the ancient Israelites before they came to Israel (if they were new inhabitants at all)?

I am confused what is happening here. I have asked a question where the ancient Israelites came from, letting open whether they came from Israel or elsewhere, and I have added many aspects from the Bible as a not reliable, but historically interesting source. And it was closed. Since it was just migrated from Politics to History, and since it had taken the close-votes with it, one vote on History has closed the question.

I had just edited the question with a lot of effort. I followed the advice to add my preliminary research. I do not see why this question is not right at history. When I had taken out the Bible analysis at first, comments were that I should add more research. Now I did this with Bible quotes and asked the question how I could get more reliable sources than just the Bible. And the question was closed without any explanation.

On Politics, the reason of closing was:

The primary purpose of this question appears to be to promote or discredit a specific idea, theory, cause, group or person. It does not appear to be a good-faith effort to learn more about history

On History, there is no reason. And I assume that a third person who thought that 2 downvotes are much enough, just voted the third, herd effect, and not knowing that this question was so long because I had been asked to add my preliminary research.

  1. What should I do to get this question re-opened?
  2. Does a question about "where a people may come from originally" fit to History Stack Exchange?

You may answer both or just one of them. Thank you.

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
10

This site expects questions to be ones for which a definitive answer is at least conceivable. Your question, "Where were the ancient Israelites before they came to Israel (if they were new inhabitants at all)?" is more appropriate for a discussion forum. Opinion based question here are almost certain to be closed.

I for one cannot conceive of how any definitive answer could arise for this question.

3
  • I have accepted your answer only for a formal reason. Since I do not see why your answer should not also just be an opinion as well. Who says that here is no answer possible to the question? There is huge DNA analysis, language analysis sheds new light upon language links and using the power of neural networks, and there might be other traits and modern archeology that could that might make an answer possible on History.
    – ETathome
    Jun 6, 2021 at 9:55
  • Have a look at Where did the Gaels originate?. This is an example of a successful question of the same type and time, which has also similarly vague parts in it and was highly upvoted and had 12 answers that are partly similarly vague as a Bible text. And there is no accepted answer, this question should be closed according to your reasoning, should it not? (not my opinion of course)
    – ETathome
    Jun 6, 2021 at 10:27
  • I have tried it again at Where do the Turks of nowadays Turkey come? (time-span: a few generations before, at best at their first migration step)
    – ETathome
    Jun 6, 2021 at 11:28

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .