Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 September 18

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September 18

Tetragrammaton transliteration variants

Both "YHWH" and "YHVH" are established transliterations for יהוה, but is there typically any significance to the use of one or the other in a specifically Jewish context? This page, a Karaite source, uses both transliterations; I'm not sure if it's a typo or if we should expect that they're indicating something by using both. Nyttend (talk) 00:16, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Would WP:RDL be a better locale for this query? --Jayron32 10:43, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

There's some information on this in Tetragrammaton. See also Names of God in Judaism. FWIW, traditional Jews transliterate the word as "Adonai". --Dweller (talk) 11:28, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

FWIW, they don't. They translate the word as "Adonai". Actually, translate isn't the correct term, as "adonai" is still Hebrew. Since Adonai is the substitution for the actual word printed, which is done to avoid saying the word, strictly speaking the closest English word for that process is probably euphemism. They transliterate the tetragrammaton as YHWH or YHVH, transliteration is the process of rewriting a word from one script into another script. For example, the capital of Russia is Москва́, which is transliterated into the latin script as "Moskva", but translated into English as "Moscow". --Jayron32 12:46, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Adonai means "Lord", which is why at least some Bible translations will say "Lord God" where the translators ran into YHWH superscripted with the vowel points of Adonai. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:50, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

And some readers, who didn't realise the superscript represented a different word rather that being a pronunciation guide, came up with the totally un-historical YaHoVaiH = "Jehovah" (although there isn't complete scholarly consensus about this). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 185.74.232.130 (talk) 18:31, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, especially (probably) by those who use "Jehovah" a lot. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:25, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Around here, Jews transliterate the word as "G-d". At school we learned that the transliteration was originally "Jehovah" but scholars later decided that "Yahweh" was more accurate. We were also told to say our school motto Labor vincit omnia as "Labor winkit omnia" because they had decided the same thing about the letter "v" in Latin. That sounds reasonable - "v" is not a separate letter, stonemasons just found it easier to carve "u" that way.

The old word for "God" was eli, plural elohim, although our article says this is actually a singular form. Aramaic - speaking Christians are persecuted by Muslims, one ground for complaint being their description of God as "Allah". The allegation is that they have appropriated a Muslim term, although of course they were using it long before the foundation of Islam. 92.1.55.84 (talk) 13:12, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

"Allah" means "God". Using it in English (or any language) to imply "the Muslim version of God" is patronizing, and understandably Muslims get annoyed by it. We often use foreign words to make them sound alien. Like the German Air Force, which we called by the German term Luftwaffe to make it sound scary. Luftwaffe means Air Force. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Baseball Bugs (talk • contribs) 23:20, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Similarly mari-huana for its real name cannabis which means Mary-John (that's how you say marijuana but maybe not everyone knew how to pronounce J in Spanish). And Wehrmacht I think means army right? It's a macht that does war. And Panzer might mean tank. Well they were tanks. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 23:49, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Juana is "Jane" and not "John". The spanish equivalent of John is "Juan". --Jayron32 01:11, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Juana corresponds to the English names Jane, Joanna, Janet, Jean, and Joan. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:17, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

None of which are John.--Jeffro77 (talk) 03:42, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Not the whole truth to say Juana equals Jane either. I just thought it had an a at the end because it's a feminine word. Joan might seem a more accurate translation since it's just the female form of John. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 04:01, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

No, they translate the word as G_d. (I wouldn't start speaking in loud tones if people listened the first time). To make it clear, you're using the word transliterate wrong. Transliterate means "take the word from the original language and put it in a new writing system" (literate...literary...literature...writing). Translate means "take the word and give its equivalent meaning in a completely different language". I'm not saying that Jewish people don't use words like Adonai and G_d in speech and writing. What I am saying is that rendering יהוה as "Adonai" or "G_d" is not transliteration. In the first case, it's a form of euphemism (that is, word replacement to avoid offensiveness) and in the second case it's a form of translation (that is, using equivalent terms in a different language, since G_d is not Hebrew). YHWH is the transliteration of the tetragrammaton, because that renders the original Hebrew term into the latin script while preserving it in the original Hebrew language. --Jayron32 14:02, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Since the discussion's gotten rather off-topic (thanks to Jayron for pointing it back to the original question somewhat), let me restate: since there are two different transliterations in the same document (both "YHWH" and "YHVH"), should we understand the authors as implying somewhat different things in the two situations, or should we understand them as having proofread insufficiently? Nyttend (talk) 00:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

You'd have to contact the authors directly. No one should make presumptions about anything, doubly so here, since we cannot find references for the author's original intent on the paper you are citing. --Jayron32 01:09, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Now you're totally missing the point. Please re-read the original question and comment thereon. Nyttend (talk) 03:24, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Jayron32 appears to have understood the point correctly. The latinization of waw (= vav) as either w or v doesn't really have a 'Jewish context'.--Jeffro77 (talk) 03:42, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

I think the answer you're looking for is that the Hebrew letter in question can be pronounced differently depending on time frame (Biblical Hebrew, Tiberian Hebrew, Modern Hebrew, etc.) and reading tradition (Ashkenazi Hebrew, Sephardi Hebrew, Mizrahi Hebrew, etc). It's exact value during Biblical Hebrew times is still sometimes debated, but is assumed to be /w/. It's not uncommon to see both YHVH and YHWH used interchangeably in the same work. See also Waw (letter).--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 03:50, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

In France, Jean is a man. In England, she's a woman. Here, someone with a name like Carol can be either, though I've never met a man called Carol. On the continent, as has been noted before (probably at the Language desk) Jose Maria is a man. 92.25.66.15 (talk) 09:32, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Jeffro, did you happen to observe who asked the question in the first place? Kindly demonstrate how Jayron knows better than I do what I was trying to say. Nyttend (talk) 00:23, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

You asked if it was a typo, or if the author's meant something. I told you the only person who may know that was the original authors, and to contact them. --Jayron32 16:33, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Unreadable words in the Bible

From a not reliable source I got that some words in the Bible could not be understood. One of these is the 'daily', in 'our daily bread.' Can someone confirm or refute this hypothesis, if possible with sources? If this is true, what words in the Bible could not be understood so far due to the hand-writing. --Jubilujj 2015 (talk) 17:43, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

WP:WHAAOE. The word in Greek is epiousios, and the Lord's Prayer (in both Matthew and Luke) is the only place in the entirety of ancient Greek literature that it's found (and there's a phrase for that: hapax legomenon). We can only interpret it by how it was translated into Latin - as quotidianum ("daily", "everyday") in the Vetus Latina translation, and as supersubstantialem ("super-substantial", whatever that means) in the Vulgate translation.

If you look at most translations of the Bible, they'll have footnotes, some of which point out where, for example, the Hebrew is unclear and the meaning has been interpreted according to the Greek Septuagint. --Nicknack009 (talk) 17:53, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Should probably add that it's rarely, if ever, to do with unclear handwriting. It'll usually be either because the word is rare and its meaning is not well-understood, as in epiousios, or, as Jayron points out below, variation in the manuscripts means we can't be sure which word is the correct one. --Nicknack009 (talk) 18:10, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Well, for one, you need to be clear on what you mean by The Bible. The collection of texts we call the Bible does not have one, definitive set of original manuscripts. Indeed, we don't have a single manuscript written by the original author of ANY of the works of the Bible, so we don't generally know what words the original authors may or may not have used. You can read more at Biblical manuscript about some extant, very old manuscripts. In many cases, when constructing modern translations, there will be differences in the exact wording between different manuscripts, such differences will be noted in the marginalia of modern translations, so the reader will know what the disagreement is. Specifically about "our daily bread", the phrase is most associated with the Lord's Prayer, which is found in two places, with slightly different wording, in Matthew 6 and in Luke 11. In Matthew, the original greek text covering "daily bread" is "τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον", in which the word "ἐπιούσιον" is used. This word is actually discussed in the Wikipedia article Epiousios, which notes that it is a unique word, and does not appear anywhere else in contemporary Classical Greek literature. The history and etymology of how the word ἐπιούσιον gets translated as "daily bread" is complex, and covered in some detail by the Wikipedia article. --Jayron32 17:55, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Then there's the "trespasses" question. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:24, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

That's a translation question, not a matter of the original word being a hapax legomenon; ὀφειλήματα occurs in this passage and (in the singular) one other biblical text, and this recent book notes that the same word appears in Thucydides. Nyttend (talk) 03:34, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Why haven't I heard fundamentalists say that minors shouldn't be taken to zoos?

it appears the OP was trying to close this, but messed it up. The OP has acknowledged it was an inappropriate question, and tried to make amends. --Jayron32 18:17, 22 September 2015 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Cause they might see animals mating? That sounds like something some fundamentalists might say. I've seen it said that some Victorians wanted animals to wear clothes too, though I think I've seen it refuted that anyone suggested that piano and table legs wear clothes. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:11, 18 September 2015 (UTC) I don't know, but a conservative politician in Poznań managed to get two donkeys separated for a short time because of outrage about children having to witness them mating in the zoo (Antosia and Napoleon were reunited after a week). See "Love-struck donkeys reunited at Poland zoo after being separated for one week". ---Sluzzelin talk 22:18, 18 September 2015 (UTC) Both city and country children, especially the latter have ample opportunity to see animals mate, see their anatomy, and draw the obvious parallel. Add to it that children have access to more readily-available information, for example, from us, and I think such tales, while supporting beliefs about conservatives, are likely not general.--Wehwalt (talk) 22:25, 18 September 2015 (UTC) I don't think I've seen an animal mate outside a zoo until I was a teenager. I saw worms and cockroaches and pigeons mating as a teenager, I might've seen sparrows mate in my 20s, and I don't think I've seen any other animal mate outside of 5th grade at the zoo. I heard a cat yowl sometimes in the alley in my 20s that maybe was mating (cats penises have tom-ward facing barbs to cause ovulation). (I'm from a very big city, 8 million/24 million metro). At any rate, when pigeons and sparrows mate, it doesn't look like mating (one of their cooing types that sounds exactly like pigeon mating is not even pre-mating ritual much less mating, which sounds only like his wings trying to hover and is near instant). Also, I'm not sure if there are common animals without a penis sheath. Any other common male animal's genital area tends to be on the less penis-looking side and the actual penis is inside and has a very unhuman color. And female animals have fur. Many people don't tell their children what sex is until very early puberty. So I don't know what hearing about it from their parents has anything to do with it before then. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 23:46, 18 September 2015 (UTC) Wait, you want us to explain why you haven't experienced something based on your own prejudiced view of what a group of people you don't understand but assume you know enough about to make offensive inaccurate judgements about what you think they would believe? How is this even close to an appropriate ref desk question?Jayron32 06:03, 19 September 2015 (UTC) I used to believe a religion and read Scripture and go to church every week you know. I'm not even agnostic much less the anti-religion flavor of atheist. I never thought it'd be too common because people outside high population density just wouldn't care. But some Christian groups don't wear makeup, show female knees and have stricter limits on TV ratings. I think it's plausible that some big city fundamentalists might not take their kids to the zoo cause the elephants or chimps might mate while they're watching or something. At the least they would cover their eyes if it happened. Is that so implausible? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:34, 19 September 2015 (UTC) Look, let me make this simple for you. This desk does not exist to validate your bigotry. --Jayron32 01:07, 20 September 2015 (UTC) We're being trolled. Everyone who lives in a big city has seen dogs mating from a very young age. 92.1.55.84 (talk) 12:50, 19 September 2015 (UTC) See his post to "Women's nipples" below. 92.1.55.84 (talk) 12:58, 19 September 2015 (UTC) I don't remember seeing dogs mating. Sniffing rears and humping on pants, not mating. Most dogs are spayed or neutered and so have no interest, cannot go into heat etc. Stray dogs are very rare, it's even possible I haven't seen one outside of Washington Navy Yard area, DC and one in the suburbs. I don't go out much. Nor do I stand at the out of the way dog pen in the park to watch for mating. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:16, 19 September 2015 (UTC) Also, pigeons don't mate just anywhere, they do it on ledges and windowsills that don't get opened often cause they're still afraid of the predators of where they evolved. Those places are usually blocked from view if you don't like to be seen at home from all those other apartments. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:34, 19 September 2015 (UTC) What Jayron32 said.--Jeffro77 (talk) 23:44, 19 September 2015 (UTC) Agreed. "Why haven't I heard" some person(s) tell some other person(s) that they should not do some thing(s)?" is the template for a near-perfect troll question, not an answerable Reference Desk question. Please do what needs to be done (I'm not yet sure what current best practice is or would do so myself immediately - I will learn from your example). Thanks. -- Paulscrawl (talk) 09:23, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

London Missionary Society Choice of Location

Why did the London Missionary Society choose Tahiti as the inaugural grounds for their missionary activities? Why specifically Tahiti?--KAVEBEAR (talk) 22:49, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Not an answer but a source: archive.org has The History of the London Missionary Society which might well contain the answer. Page 20 refers to the recent discovery by Europeans of the Pacific islands, seen as virgin territory for missionaries. 184.147.131.85 (talk) 15:44, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Women's nipples

How does it come that there are different rules for covering nipples for men and women? Do human female breasts have some magical attribute that could traumatize children? --Scicurious (talk) 23:43, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

I thought it was weird as a pre-pubescent also. But I wondered why they're allowed to show the breast as there's really no difference between parts of the beast near the top and parts near the areola. They're all about equally round and identical.

It's not about trauma, it's about sexuality. Because they are female secondary sexual characteristics that only females old enough to have children have they will make males horny. They are direct signals of reproductive fitness and show ability to breastfeed which you do with sex (intermediate steps elided). This is why big breasts are especially sexy. Some women are hot enough as it is, there's no need to make men suffer in horniness and have difficulty thinking at the business meeting or something. That's why I started masturbating, it was hard to even use the subway anymore after so long without ejaculation (since birth) cause even clothed females made me so horny. Maybe some females don't realize how horny males are. After months of masturbation clothed females in the street that looked my age or older would still make me somewhat horny.

In Africa, Oceania, and the Amazon I guess there was so much damn heat that they let females wear no top. Kind of like the Ancient Egyptian civilization which let people be naked but they still had to cover their secondary sexual characteristics after they got them. Why should their culture have anything to do with us, anyway? Maybe they associate breasts with babies so much that it becomes less sexy for them, too. We however, aren't either suckling or pregnant our whole life from 12 to menopause anymore because babies aren't likely to die anymore. Maybe this is why they showed a lot of the breast in Da Vinci's and Marie Antoinette's time but not in later Industrial Revolution when fertility rates might've been lower. It's clearly too different ed:a technological level to say if they do it, so we should do it, too. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 00:57, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Er...great? Thanks? Adam Bishop (talk) 09:21, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

A lot of this is a "nudity taboo" in western culture. Cultural taboos do change over time, but they change very slowly. About 100 years ago the "taboo" against upper body nudity was stronger than it is today, and applied to men as well as women. It was considered somewhat shocking for men to go shirtless - which is why old swimming costumes for men included shirts.

Today, the taboos are changing... In many parts of the western world, it is now perfectly acceptable for women to go topless at the beach - yet it is unacceptable for them to do so while sitting in a cafe next to the beach. Taboos are not always logical. Blueboar (talk) 12:28, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Australian male escorts still can't show their nipples in ads. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:15, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

I can kind of see the logic in the beach thing. Anything in the street has more of the trappings of civilization (compare business meeting), it closes off less area to parents who don't want their kids to see things that make men very horny, sunbathers are more extroverted than average. Beaches are kind of boring as an adult if you've gone a few times — unless you're not that introverted. You just lie there for hours without anything cognitively simulating, have somewhat of a preference to reading indoors anyway, don't want to do kid things like make sandcastles anymore, might not know how to swim like me. Which leads to some statistical thing with a name where 9X% of beachgoers have gone more than 3 times (participation bias?). Beaches really are only nice when they're in nature. Especially if you have a girlfriend with you. Who wants their kids to see body parts that many/most people only show to their sexual partners and physicians? I wonder if that beach is near the sexual businesses, lol. The lingerie stores and vibrator stores and strip clubs and stuff. My classmates were as least likely to say this as any in the US and even they said it was weird that in Europe like 15 year old girls and their mother and father all sunbathe together naked on the beach. And one 15 year old boy said "15 years old! I'm going to strip off and lie down next to her. How you doing?" That probably happens, lol. Extroverted weirdos. No protective instinct for their children. "Oh I'm sorry good sir but you and your grandson appear to be erect next to my 15 year old daughter. Would you possibly mind going away where you'll probably masturbate to her slightly engorged vulva?" No one said "I don't think it's weird to strip in public with your parents." (or the polite naturist satire before that either).

I guess it was a civilizedness instinct. When I see men in an undershirt or especially topless in New York City far from a beach/pool/heat wave it's always an extroverted troglodyte. (I have never seen a breast's areola in public even though it's legal in this state). 1900 AD wouldn't be a bad vacation spot though legs was too sexy to say then ^{(use limbs)} and today gives almost as much instant "poor match" clue as realistically possible unlike then, so I wouldn't want to trade taboo sets (little skin that's not cause of religion = the right tail of the bell curve). I'm just not romantically attracted to females that show lots of cleavage or leg anymore. They're terrible personality matches. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:04, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

One cannot help but mention Portnoy's Complaint at this juncture... Tevildo (talk) 15:12, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't know why families sunbathe like that. Don't they realize how if two or three 9th grade friends suddenly did a similar "double take and erected and then ogled a few seconds" it would suddenly go from harassment/low level sex crime to just tactless if everyone had clothes on?

The original question is a problem especially for small children, related to sexualization of the little girls. On the beach in my European culture in the past, it was common and normal for all little girls to wear the same kind of bathing suits as the boys, with no bra. It used to help make it feel very natural that children have no sexuality. But since everything has been commercialized and merchandized, even children and even little children, now on the same beaches you always see the little girls wearing a bra, as if they had something to hide. Akseli9 (talk) 15:44, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Good point. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:57, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Sigh... Those who get hot and bothered by the idea of "topless" beaches have probably never been to one... sure there may be the occasional hot babe to stare at, but right next to her will be several topless over-weight housewives (and their mothers). Blueboar (talk) 23:25, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

And many have been in the sun for years, essentially turning them to leather and/or cancer. InedibleHulk (talk) 18:13, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

• Leather Cancer is the name of my death metal band. —Tamfang (talk) 07:15, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Well depending on exactly how old and how over-weight topless housewives might not do it for me anymore if I were to masturbate to their pictures but they're probably more arousing at a topless beach. Especially if there's several housewives next to a hot babe. Some nationalities also generally start with such exceeding attractiveness that they age very well. I've shared looks with someone pretty with gray hair. (This does appear to violate WP:BLP) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 00:34, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Holy shit, do you even think before you post this crap? --Jayron32 01:32, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

You don't think; why should anyone else?  :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:18, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Best RD post ever. This one is a keeper Void burn (talk) 04:27, 22 September 2015 (UTC)