Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 October 16

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October 16

Tripitaka Koreana during Japanese occupation

What happened to Tripitaka Koreana during the Japanese occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945? --2.37.200.57 (talk) 08:17, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

It does not appear that anything special happened to them at that time (which is to say, I can't find any additional information about them during that period), however there is some information about them during the Korean War located at Haeinsa. --Jayron32 12:43, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

The Canon

The standard western Bible is comprised of a selection of books known as the Biblical Canon. There are a number of books which were not included, now known as The Apocrypha. The Hebrew Torah is very much similar to the Old Testament of the Bible and so question is, why does the Torah not contain these missing books such as the books of Adam and Eve or the Book of Enoch? Who took these out of the Jewish Canon, when did they do this and why? Were they ever in there? And if not, why not and then how did they get into the Christian Canon before their removal? Thanks All Anton 81.131.40.58 (talk) 14:17, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

The Torah is a somewhat imprecise term, I think you want Tanakh, which is the Hebrew religious canon itself. The Torah is often used to refer to only the Pentateuch, but it can also include other works. Anyways, Wikipedia has an entire article dedicated to answering your question. See Development of the Hebrew Bible canon. Notable to answering your question is the quote from that article "There is no scholarly consensus as to when the Hebrew Bible canon was fixed." The idea that the books were "taken out" of the canon may or may not be accurate; they may have been "in" the canon in some traditions and not others, they may have been added and later removed, or have never been included in the first place. It's complex, and as with any canon, the exact form of the canon evolves and changes over time. --Jayron32 14:54, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

And in any case, the Hebrew canon was relatively fixed (anywhere between 150BCE and 200CE, according to our article) long before Christianity did the same (4th century CE, according to this article). So your question really should be why the Christian canon changed the Jewish one, not the other way around. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 15:02, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Additionally, one has to consider the purpose of the works in question. The Old Testament and the Tanakh have different purposes, insofar as Christianity is a different religion with different beliefs than Judaism, and as such the exact nature of how the religion views the scriptures can be different, sometimes subtly and sometimes profoundly. In terms of choosing canonical parts for each, there are likely strong theological concerns why early Christians included the deuterocanonical books while many (but by no means all) forms of Judaism does not include them, that is the books are often chosen because the narrative in them supports the theology of the faith in question. Historical or chronological concerns are often secondary to theological ones. --Jayron32 15:34, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

The traditional Catholic Old Testament is based on the books given greatest prominence by Greek-speaking Alexandrian Jews, while the Hebrew Canon is based on decisions made by Aramaic-speaking Rabbis in the Holy Land in the years after the destruction of the Temple (sometimes attributed to a Council of Jamnia). The Aramaic-speaking Jews in the Holy Land would only accept books written in Hebrew and/or Aramaic, so that II Maccabees was not even a possibility...

Many of the Jewish religious works of the late BC / early AD period had apocalyptic or gnostic tendencies, and were often chronologically later than most of the books that went into the Alexandrian and Hebrew canons (and so hadn't yet had time to establish themselves as scriptures). The Book of Enoch is interesting in a way, but it promulgates a strange and extravagant mythology, and also advocates for a solar calendar which was completely different from the Jewish religious calendar... AnonMoos (talk) 17:20, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Jewish works with Gnostic tendencies sounds funny to me. If a work is Gnostic, isn't it far enough from Judaism to be no longer Jewish? I'm sure I'm wrong, but that's my initial reaction to the idea. Temerarius (talk) 02:41, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Gnosticism and Jewish-derived or influenced monotheism were some of the spiritual trends gaining ground in the eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamia during the early centuries A.D. (as traditional mythologies provided little solace to many inhabitants of empires), so it was almost inevitable that they would intertwine and cross-influence to at least some degree. See Mandaeism etc. AnonMoos (talk) 05:21, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

While strictly speaking, Gnosticism was an early Christian offshoot, at that time those Christians were still Jews, and the influences that created Gnosticism also had an impact on Judaism itself; causing the influence on many traditions of Jewish mysticism, including on Kabbalah. Both the articles on Kabbalah and on Gnosticism mention the connections. --Jayron32 12:28, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

in what year were all early Christians still Jews? Temerarius (talk) 03:23, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

According to the Book of Acts, it was at the Council of Jerusalem that it was determined that non-Jews could become Christians without fully converting to Judaism. Non-Jews didn't become predominant in Christianity until after the destruction of the Temple... AnonMoos (talk) 04:59, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Not to mention the fact that the destruction of the Temple led to massive changes to Judaism itself. --Khajidha (talk) 12:16, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

As noted at Jewish Christian, it was not an instantaneous process. The sect began as a variation of Judaism. In the early years, all Christians were already Jews. The Council of Jerusalem, as noted above, is when it was decided that non-Jews could become Christian (strictly speaking, even before the Council of Jerusalem, you didn't need to be Jewish, you just had to be circumcised to be a Christian. The council removed that requirement). However, Jewish Christians didn't instantly stop being Jewish at that instant; and Christianity spread among both Jews and Gentiles for some time; it's just that after the Council, there's a MUCH greater pool of Gentiles than Jews to work with, so over time the faith lost its Jewish cultural connection. --Jayron32 12:22, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

negative interest rate

Quite a number of countries are nowadays finding buyers for their bonds yielding real negative interest rate (Switzerland, Germany, France, ... Even Greece !). I looked for a learned explanation of why investors would buy such bonds, instead of just keeping cash. I found nothing more than ″they have to, because of some rule (we cannot actually quote)″. Any hint? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.167.113.21 (talk) 18:57, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

If you type the phrase "how do negative yield bonds work" into Google, you an astronomical number of good explanations. Take your pick of which one makes more sense to you. It's not hard to find them. This link is the first one of many many many in that search, and it says "Investors are willing to pay a premium—and ultimately take a loss—because they need the reliability and liquidity that government and high-quality corporate bonds provide. Large investors such as pension funds, insurers, and financial institutions may have few other safe places to store their wealth." That is, even at that negative interest rate, the bonds in question are still a better investment than other options; that is taking into account the level of risk and expected gains and losses from putting the money in other vehicles, the negative interest rates still lose less money than do other investments. This is one of those intertwined cause-and-effect things as well; because if no one was buying the negative yield bonds, the sellers would have to raise the rates to a more positive yield to generate interest. If the purchasers of those bonds had better options, they would take them, but they don't, so they've got no other options. Here is yet another good link for you to read. The other thing is that there are rules that require the purchase of these bonds. That is because there are investors that, because of their nature, are only allowed to invest in certain types of investment vehicles, such as pension funds, payroll funds, commercial banks, etc. They are not allowed to invest their money in riskier investments because regulatory agencies want to prevent key institutions, such as those, from going bankrupt through bad investments, and taking the rest of the system down with it. For example, a bank may be required to keep a certain percentage of their money in liquid assets; assets that can be converted to cash essentially on-demand. They may also be prevented from investing in high-risk investments like stocks or "junk bonds" or "mortgage backed securities" that pay higher yields, because the higher risk means they could lose money too! So they are stuck with low-risk, high-liquidity assets, and these negative yield bonds are basically the only thing going. The bank has no option, they have to put their money somewhere, they can't keep it locked in giant vaults. There isn't even enough physical currency to do that! So, it goes into these crappy bonds. --Jayron32 20:27, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

the FT link required a subscription. The Bloomberg's is the kind of stuff I already found: interesting (and this one as figures about the amount), but not really explaining. I understand that people don't want to hoard large amount of cash, because of the cost of the security and handling, and the risk to lose it to stealing, fire or whatever; but most of the money is electronic now, isn't it? so they dont really need to store it as banknote. I see a number of options (even when ruling out anything risky):

• the ECB charge "only" 0.5% for money deposit, would cost less than buying bond with -0.6% yield as they do. All the more so that you cannot expect the ECB price to be kept this low for the next 10 years
  • Besides, the rationale for this ECB price is (if I am right) "I (the ECB) want you to put the money in the economy, to lend it so that people can go to work″, so, depositing it in ECB account or buying negative interest bonds seems to defeat this purpose
• exchange € for $, buy US T-bonds (still positive), and hedge the exchange rate. Yield of T-bonds are not great, but they would cover the premium for the hedging. If you want security, Dollar and T-bonds seems perfect for just this purpose.
• give back borrowed money. This include money from shareholders (up to them to get some better investment)
• stop collecting new money / change business (since the ECB seems to kill this line of business)
• be "creative" the way they used to be, to collect money out of junk bonds back in the day, but the other way round (that is, turn money into high yield bonds). I don't know how this can be done, but I didn't know how the opposite could be done either, and it was, so, why not? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.167.113.21 (talk) 08:18, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

• If those links don't work, I here is another: [1]. as I mentioned already, there are hundreds of different versions you can read. Pick one or two or twelve until you find a good one. --Jayron32 12:24, 17 October 2019 (UTC)
• I feel you may be confused about the ECB deposit facility. This is for banks to deposit money with the central bank [2] [3][4] [5] [6]. It's not something which any random company or person can avail themselves to. BTW "All the more so that you cannot expect the ECB price to be kept this low for the next 10 years" applies both ways. Maybe the rate will be 0% in 10 years. Maybe it will be -1.0% 10 years. Remember that the rate has been negative for about 5 years now and has slowly gotten more negative [7]. In 2014, I'm sure there were some who believed it would be in positive territory by now in 2014. Nil Einne (talk) 16:45, 17 October 2019 (UTC) 17:02, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Indeed, looking over his post, it sounds like he's confusing heavily regulated institutional investors like commercial banks and the like, and the average Joe on the street investor who wants to acquire more income through investing. When a large institution like a commercial bank "invests" their assets, what they are really looking for is a place to store those assets. Central banks, like the ECB, provide that storage in the form of short-term bonds. That the bonds pay a negative yield is annoying but unavoidable as the system is set up primarily as a way for banks to store their liquid assets in a safe investment vehicle and not as a means for private investors to grow their own wealth. --Jayron32 16:54, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

Oh. I did not know only banks can deposit money to the central bank.

You mean, people are buying at -0.5%, for fear it might be -1% or worse later? I just cannot imagine what this would mean, if I were in the investment business.

But may be the numbers are not that huge? I mean, each fund has a part of its assets that must be keep in cash or cash-like (to be able to seize an opportunity, or whatever), and if the bank charge them to keep the money (which is fair) it may be cheaper to buy this kind of bonds. So maybe the money invested in these bonds is a small part of the total assets, but because the total is big, so is the total in these bonds? In which case, it would not be as surprising as I thought. I have no idea of the amounts: are 13 $Trillion big, when compared to the total assets managers handle?

Well the fact you cannot imagine is one reason why people tend to recommend those unfamiliar seek advice or at least follow some simple rules when investing. As I said, I'm, sure there were some in 2014 who "couldn't imagine" we'd be at -0.5%" and it wouldn't get much worse than -0.1%. Anyway putting that aside, I'm not sure if you quite understand my main point. My main point was you said you said those investing in bonds at -0.6% should just deposit with the central bank at -0.5% because it's a better rate. But even if we put aside the impossibility of most people doing so, a -0.5% short term rate is not necessarily better than a -0.6% long term rate unless you somehow magically know what the future rate will be. When investing you have to always consider the possibility it can either go up or down in the future and by differing amounts, if you don't you tend to open yourself up to a world of pain. You choose the best options for you based on the risk acceptable to you which depends on many things including the time frame given different levels of volatility etc. If you don't have a magic crystal ball or whatever, then any predictions you make about the future, if based on the best available information, will tend to be the same predictions others are making and therefore this information will generally be priced into the available options (along with everything else that goes in to it). If not, then it's likely someone will find a way to take advantage of this. See also efficient market hypothesis. Note also that while not everyone agrees with it, I'm fairly sure few of them would suggest you can be sure -0.5% is the worst it will be because you can't imagine it being worse. See also the answers by Dor (HK) and the answers Jayron32 if you haven't already. Nil Einne (talk) 16:18, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

• I have to try this out on my friends: "Oh no, I don't want to borrow money from you, I am offering you an opportunity to invest your money with me at an exciting negative interest rate !". SinisterLefty (talk) 16:51, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

• Just to clarify as well as to why central banks have set negative interest rates, the reason is complex, but the basic idea is that the overnight rate is the rate that the central bank pays as interest on money loaned to it; other banks will peg their interest rates on other vehicles to this rate set by the central bank. The central bank, by the way, does not really need the money; it uses the sale of this debt (not loans, but bonds) to banks to give the banks a safe place to store its money; it is basically the savings account the central bank uses to give other banks a place to keep their money. Why is the rate on these things so low? Because of the Financial crisis of 2007–2008, the entire short-term overnight debt market (known as Commercial paper) basically ground to a halt, which means all of the liquid assets banks have dried up, known as a liquidity crisis. They stopped being liquid. Lowering the overnight rate is how the central bank tried to get that money flowing again, by lowering the overnight rate, as the theory goes, it discourages the banks from keeping their cash at the central bank, and instead encourages the banks to put that money into the commercial paper market and get it flowing again. It took negative interest rates, but it worked, the financial market reached a new equilibrium that allowed the commercial paper system to get flowing again. The downside is that the new equilibrium includes the negative-interest bonds, and to raise interest rates to the old pre-2008 levels would throw off that equilibrium, and could endanger the system again. So we're in kind of a catch-22; we have a stable commercial paper market, but it's dependent on a negative interest rate. If you want an actual well-written expert source on this, this pretty much explains just what I did. --Jayron32 18:06, 17 October 2019 (UTC)

We should note that the Original Post specified “bonds yielding real negative interest rate,” which involves either current inflation rates (time period X, location Z), or expectations for future rates of inflation. DOR (HK) (talk) 18:43, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Indeed. Although I wasn't that coherent with myself, since later I mentioned -0.5% (for instance) when I should have mentioned -0.5%-inflation, so I cannot expect answer clearer than I was...

The answer is actually very simple: Many Institutions are obligated to invest their money into secure shares, bonds and alike to establish a certain financial stability in their financial balance which is higher than just keeping that money in a safe (inflation risk for example). Because the financial market is totally flooded and bloated more and more each year it has become very hard to find secure investment possibilities even if negative interest rates are included. Also many countries (like Germany) have changed their policy or habits regarding national debts in recent years.--Kharon (talk) 17:27, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Can you point out those rules? Or, better yet, are they explained/referenced in some WP article (because I fear they might be quite technical for the layman)?

Wikipedia has articles titled Banking regulation and Financial regulation which covers the concepts in general and acts as a good starting point for your research. If you follow on links from those articles you're likely to get where you need. --Jayron32 11:55, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

In the end it is simply governmental policy to prevent the "Too big to fail"-dangers and their results like the Financial crisis of 2007–2008 in a totally bloated financial system. Its difficult to point out rules because they are very, very disputed (example: Glass–Steagall in post-financial crisis reform debate). Just compare for example Elizabeth Warrens Agenda with Donald Trumps regarding financial market regulations. --Kharon (talk) 18:26, 21 October 2019 (UTC)