Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2010 August 13

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August 13

St. John of the Cross

What's the origin of "of the Cross"? Our article says nothing about it, and the Catholic Encyclopedia article in the external links says that he adopted that name himself, but it doesn't explain anything about his motives or his source for the name. Nyttend (talk) 00:36, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

It would have ben a scandal at the time to propose Jesus died on a torture stake and not a cross, or that the symbol had been adopted from False Religion, and it still is today. The Catholic Encyclopedia you mention says he prayed constantly "to suffer and to be despised." He wanted, probably, to mark himself with the suffering Jesus experienced at his execution. schyler (talk) 02:13, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

So you're saying that this surname is simply his devotion, similar to that of St. Theresa of the Infant Jesus, so named because she was devoted specifically to the Child Jesus? I don't see how your first sentence is relevant here, however. Nyttend (talk) 02:50, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

That's a Jehovah's Witness thing. Adam Bishop (talk) 05:17, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

This biography, "St John of the Cross: his life and poetry" is on Google Books[1]. It goes into his life in great detail but only says; "This was in November 1568 and Fray Juan de San Matías, who was now 26, put on the rough habit that Teresa had sewn for him with her own hands and changed his name to Fray Juan de la Cruz" (p.15). Alansplodge (talk) 16:15, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

I refer you to; "The Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross", translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. and Otilio Rodriguez. ICS Publications Washington D.C. ISBN 0-935216-14-6 $17.95. The book portrays the famous inspired drawing by St. John of The Cross, called "Christ Crucified". This drawing was in such a dimension that Salvador Dali used this dimension in one of his paintings. It has been said that St. John of the Cross is to the Spanish Language as is Shakesphere is to English. The drawing was in such a novel dimension that today remains extrardinary; hence his name. MacOfJesus (talk) 19:48, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Religions without written texts

1) Are there any current major religions without written texts? Do they all have a corpus of writing such as for example the christian bible? 2) Did all religions which have now died out - for example Norse mythology or the Greek or Roman gods - not have a corpus of texts? 92.24.190.46 (talk) 10:17, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

You could argue to an extent that Shinto has no written texts. Of course, the Kojiki and the Nihongi are said to be Shinto's sacred texts, but really, they mainly cover how the Japanese Imperial family is connected to the gods, while there is a myriad of smaller gods of local importance that get little to no coverage in either. TomorrowTime (talk) 11:29, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

What makes you think Norse mythology and the Greek and Roman gods did not have any written texts? How do you think we know about them now? Or did you mean a corpus of texts which are regarded as sacred in themselves? 82.24.248.137 (talk) 13:40, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Huh? Where did I say they did or didnt have written texts? I'm asking if defunct religions had texts. 92.29.127.240 (talk) 15:20, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

92.24.190.46 -- Ancient Norse culture actually had a rather limited use of writing until after Christianity was adopted; most of our information comes from Icelandic sagas etc. which were written down in the Christian period. Ancient Roman religion had written liturgical and divinatory rituals, and some literary collections of myths (such as by Ovid). Neither had anything that would really qualify as a comprehensive "scripture" similar to the Jewish and Christian Bible... AnonMoos (talk) 16:08, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

African traditional religion would qualify on all counts. --Sean 15:00, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

The religious cults of Greek and Roman antiquity did not have Scripture, but they had hymns (see Homeric Hymn) and they had traditional incantations. Liturgy is a Greek word, an extension of the technical term in ancient Greek, leitourgia, signifying the often expensive offers of service to the people, and thus to the polis and the state. --Wetman (talk) 16:06, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

The Celtic religion administered by the Druids eschewed writing its tenets in favour of memorisation, although some Druids (which, Peter Berresford Ellis and others argue, was a wider social caste from which the priests were drawn) may have been secularly literate in Greek or Latin. Consequently, revived neo-Druidism has to rely on indirect evidence to reconstruct what it can of the original beliefs, sometimes also supplemented by presumed memories of past lives in the original Druidic era. This is not such a problem as it might seem, since neo-Druidism (like other neo-Pagan paths) also actively develops its belief system by experimentation and philosophical debate. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 11:59, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

There are some written accounts of the Druids, but in the written accounts of Saint Bridget and give good evidence of their migratory movements. MacOfJesus (talk) 23:55, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Irish Military Logo as Lyre With Shield?

I remember seeing a logo for what I thought was the Irish military -- it was a modern design of a lyre used as a shield with a man carrying a spear. I've searched the military pages and can't find it. Does anyone have any idea what it actually was? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.220.46.47 (talk) 13:55, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Irish units in the British Army often include the Harp of Brian Boru in their cap badge design. I've had a browse too but couldn't see any likely suspects. Alansplodge (talk) 15:17, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Have you tried the emblems of the different Irish Army Regiments? Each have different badges, but never on the hat, that is reserved for the harp of Ireland and never polished! MacOfJesus (talk) 18:09, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

On reflection I think it is one of the Regiment Badges of the Leinster Province. I would need to see it to be sure. When you say "lyre" are you referring to a shape or a musical instrument? MacOfJesus (talk) 19:31, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

If it is an Irish Army Regiment Badge, then part of the badge will have the province, i.e. Munster, Leinster, Cannaught, & Ulster. Their emblems can be viewed in their respective article pages. However, some do not have the province emblem, and I think this is one of them. If I could see the shield/badge you are referring to we may be able to positively identify it. MacOfJesus (talk) 21:29, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

were there any advanced ancient cultures that left no traces?

I'd like to know if there were any advanced ancient cultures that left no traces? 84.153.210.148 (talk) 17:39, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

..umm... how would we know? Ghmyrtle (talk) 17:51, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, just one. It was in modern-day Wisconsin. Highly advanced, but now completely gone. They left no trace of their existence at all, so no study has been done on them and nobody knows that they existed... Honestly... If something leaves no trace that it exists, it is impossible to know that it exists. -- kainaw™ 17:52, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Jokes aside, you may want to rephrase your question - if the civilization left no traces, there'd be no way of knowing it ever existed. You may want to allow for at least some traces - what would those be? Ruins? Artworks? TomorrowTime (talk) 17:59, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Ah, Wisconsin. (Daydreams a bit about Laura Prepon.) Perhaps the person asking the question meant: How likely is this scenario? It is sort of wild speculation, but so is asking about the existence of extraterrestrial life. 83.81.60.233 (talk) 18:04, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

If the question is meant to be "... advanced ancient cultures that left few traces?" there may be some useful answers such as the enigma surrounding the 2000 year old Antikythera mechanism or the little that is known about the Late Paleolithic period ending 30,000 years ago --Senra (talk) 18:13, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

For a culture with no apparent successors and no visible monuments, would the Tocharians and their languages interest you? Major Mayan cities are still being rediscovered. And does talk at the dinner table ever turn to Mari, Syria nowadays?--Wetman (talk) 18:17, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

The Antikythera mechanism was made by ancient Greeks, about whom we know quite a lot, of course (and the mechanism itself is not really an enigma, it's just an astronomical clock). But there are plenty of other cultures that left few traces. Who built Stonehenge? Great Zimbabwe? Catalhuyuk? Adam Bishop (talk) 19:18, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

This is a little like asking if there were any dinosaur species that never got fossilized. And the definitive answer to both is "it's possible". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:53, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

We know that fossilization is an extremely rare occurrence (Fossil#Rarity_of_fossils). So I think we can say that there must have been some small, soft bodied, island species, contemporary with dinosaurs, which didn't live near any handy lakes or tar pits, which went extinct without leaving a single fossil. Making the same kind of extrapolation about advanced civilizations sounds harder work, since a couple of qualities of advanced civilizations are that they are big, and that they habitually leave traces all over the place (was there ever an advanced civilization which didn't create a lot of nice artifacts?). 81.131.18.14 (talk) 20:20, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

It could simply be that the artifacts aren't recognizable. See Terra preta for an interesting example. Matt Deres (talk) 00:05, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

I would argue that perhaps Indigenous Australians loosely fit this bill. Their presence in Australia over 50 thousand years ago can not be accounted for by what we currently know, or any evidence we have so far found. The only way they could have reasonably got there is by sea, but that would have required a level of seafaring not seen anywhere else in the world for some tens of thousands of years. Vespine (talk) 01:04, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Not necessarily (regarding your last point); thanks to glaciation, the gap between the Malayan archipelago and Australia was probably not that great, perhaps around 90km, according to our Prehistory of Australia article. That's a considerable distance, but hardly something requiring advanced ship-building or anything. Matt Deres (talk) 01:17, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

I disagree with your conclusion. I agree the distance might have only been 60km but that still requires a coordinated effort to go out to sea and reach a land which could not have been "known" of, in a time several tens of thousands of years before any other culture would be in a similar position to do so. Other Asian cultures migrating out to Polynesia didn't repeat the feat until around 4k BC. The earliest boats we have evidence of are simple dugout canoes about 10k BC, which aren't really craft you'd make even a 60km sea journey easily, especially if you don't know what's over the horizon. Studies have been done which show that the absolute minimum number of people required to start a viable colony in Australia would have been something like 25. This seems to exclude the possibility that a few fisherman (or more necessarily "women") were just "blown off course". I definitely think there is a gap between what we know and what happened. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting this means Aborigines are from Atlantis, or that aliens did it, or something ridiculous like that, I just mean we currently don't seem to have the evidence to account for what happened, we might never find out conclusively. Vespine (talk) 02:33, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

There might well be some early advanced civilization whose artifacts have not been found, or which have been found but attributed to a later civilization, Edison (talk) 01:00, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

In addition to the points already made about you needing to allow some traces, you need to clarify "advanced". "Advanced" is a relative term, so you need to tell us what you are measuring it relative to. Do you want civilisations that were advanced compared to other civilisations around at the same time in the same general area? Advanced compared to some particular baseline (eg. iron age Europe)? Advanced compared to us? (Discovering signs of a previously unknown civilisation from millennia ago (or even a different species millions of years ago) with more advanced technology than us is a staple of science fiction, but it's likelihood is pretty much zero - technologies certainly have been lost when civilisations failed, but anything on that scale is highly implausible.) --Tango (talk) 03:03, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

There's the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex, which may (or may not) have been home to an ancient civilization previously "lost". Apparently it is not clear yet and researchers don't agree about it. See the section Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex#A previously unknown civilization? Of course there are "traces" to be found or we'd never learn about lost civilizations. For a civilization lost without a trace, see Mu (lost continent). Pfly (talk) 17:05, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

...although, just for clarity, "Mu is today considered to be a fictional place." Ghmyrtle (talk) 10:43, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

It may be possible to estimate the number of traceless cultures by adapting the technique described on page seven of this book http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SBQGhcS0gPAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=biology+by+numbers&source=bl&ots=04q-SLAU74&sig=n-Pn-zv23WSJ0-mtgrfiMDd1TN8&hl=en&ei=2-NnTMuMK5KTjAfI5sXEDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false 92.29.114.222 (talk) 12:58, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Depending on your definition of "advanced", the answer could be "almost certain". For instance, where was Rhapta, and was it the centre of a small ancient civilisation? Even if guesses at its site as being Pemba are correct, the only evidence of its existence are an inscription and some coins, none of which were created locally. The Ikom monoliths are the only known remains of an ancient civilisation, about which nothing else is known. Given these examples, it seems highly likely that there were similar civilisations which left no (known) remains at all. Warofdreams talk 17:19, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Sir Percy Blakeney's Title Confusion

The Scarlet Pimpernel

Sir Percy Blakeney is several times called, or referred to by other characters in the Baroness Emmuska Orczy novel as "my Lord," and "your Lordship." But if he is a "Sir," his rank can be no higher than that of a Baronet, in which case he would/should never be called "Lord." Is this a mistake by the author, or something else I missed in reading it?

According to Wikipedia and Debrett's, a Baron is a Peer of the Realm, and is addressed as "Lord." Thus if Blakeney was a Baron (or higher rank), he would not be "Sir Percy Blakeney," but "Lord Blakeney," or "Lord (place name)."

If he was – as is likely – a Baronet or a knight, then "Sir Percy Blakeney" would be correct, but he would not be referred to as "Lord" by others. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Old Rogue (talk • contribs) 19:05, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

In The Scarlet Pimpernel, it calls him "Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart." in chapter 6, therefore a baronet. However, I can only find one place where he is called "lord". Sir Andrew Ffoulkes says "my lord always wears beautiful clothes" to the innkeeper Brogard, but that may be as a synonym for "leader". Clarityfiend (talk) 03:26, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Which would agree with the WP page Milord; "In the nineteenth century, milord (also milor) was well-known as a word which continental Europeans (especially French) whose jobs often brought them into contact with travellers (innkeepers, guides, etc.) commonly used to address Englishmen or male English-speakers who seemed to be upper-class[1] (or whom they wished to flatter) – even though the English-language phrase "my lord" (the source of "milord") played a somewhat minor role in the British system of honorific forms of address, and most of those addressed as "milord" were not in fact proper "lords" (members of the nobility) at all." Alansplodge (talk) 08:55, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Legal question

I'm not looking for legal advice, first of all--this is purely hypothetical and I don't intend to use it to defend myself in court or whatever. Is there any way I could modify anything I legally own (provided these modifications do not turn my stuff into weapons and could not possibly affect other people in any way) for my own, private use, that would be illegal where I live (Waukesha). I mean things I own as in furniture and stuff, not real estate (i.e., so not like rewiring my house to be a safety/fire hazard or turning it into a factory in violation of zoning laws, and also including turning my car into a racecar). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.229.185.33 (talk) 20:10, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean Waukesha, Wisconsin? Nyttend (talk) 23:28, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

(ec)The tricky part is the "could not possibly affect other people in any way"; if nobody is affected at all, then nobody knows about what you've done and, as the saying goes, it ain't illegal if you don't get caught." That's terrible advice, but I'm not sure what else to say without something more specific about what you're planning on doing. I don't know about Wisconsin, but in some places it might be illegal to, say, carve your headboard into a sexually explicit statue of a prepubescent child. Is that the kind of thing you're after? Matt Deres (talk) 00:12, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

I think the article you need is List of items for which possession is restricted; you would go through the list and decide what illegal items are possible for you to create out of otherwise legal items. For example, you could probably make an illegal radar jammer out of a black & white TV set, two amplifiers, some baling wire, and a paper clip. Comet Tuttle (talk) 06:21, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Buy (legal) electronic components, build an (illegal) TV transmitter and broadcast your own TV shows. It might not affect other people if you keep the output power low and stay away from interfering with other transmitters. However, as demonstrated in PTV (Family Guy), it won't be long before the FCC show up on your doorstep (at which point you can burst into song). Pirate radio Astronaut (talk) 10:29, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

I think — though I am no lawyer — that the legal point here is that the modification of personal property is not illegal as a modification of personal property. (There are potentially some exceptions where modifications are prohibited.) I think what's more important is what you are making out of it, which will fall under all sorts of more specific laws. For example, if you modify an assault rifle to be fully automatic in states where that is illegal, that is thus illegal. But it's not illegal because you are modifying personal property more generally — it is legal because of specifically what you are modifying it into. In New York City, if you paint your handgun pink, that is illegal. It is not because painting one's household objects pink is illegal, but because of specific laws against modifying real guns to look like toy guns. I could be wrong — the law is complicated — but it seems all the examples I can think of are of this nature. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:00, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Modification of the property as in and of itself could be prohibited if there was lien, easement, covenant or other such restriction on the property when purchased. These are most commonly applied to real estate, but, depending on jurisdiction, could be applied to other property. For example, the purchase of a work of art could be accompanied with a restriction that the owner may not destroy or deface it. Other examples are heirlooms or other inherited items, where a will might specify (potentially complex) conditions of ownership (although see rule against perpetuities for various limitations). - The other example prohibiting modification of items I can think of is computer software, where modification tends to be prohibited by EULA, although technically that's because you don't *own* the software itself, but rather *license* its use. -- 174.24.200.206 (talk) 20:56, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

That's interesting — thanks! --Mr.98 (talk) 03:18, 15 August 2010 (UTC)