Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2012 April 5

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April 5

Rimatara Tombs

Could someone with a better eye make out the letters on the tombstones in this picture. They are from the royal tombs of Rimatara. Besides the names there are some dates and other words. Also can someone tell me what language it is in?--KAVEBEAR (talk) 01:40, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

I see the word "vahine" (on the right tombstone, second line from the bottom), which means a woman of Tahitian descent: [1]. Given that, and the location, the language is most likely the Tahitian language. StuRat (talk) 01:57, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Vahine is obviously cognate to Hawaiian wahine (sometimes pronounced [vahine]), which just means "woman, wife". As an isolated word, it could probably come from any of several related Polynesian languages... AnonMoos (talk) 05:07, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Right, but as my link states, "wahine" is Hawaiian, while "vahine" is Polynesian. So, we can likely conclude that it's not in the Hawaiian language. StuRat (talk) 05:18, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

I think it might be an old written form of the Austral language which would share some similarities with Tahitian, Hawaiian, and other Polynesian languages.--KAVEBEAR (talk) 05:24, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

StuRat, Hawaiian is a Polynesian language, so what's your point? Your link supports the assertion that in English vahine means 'Polynesian woman'; it does not persuade me that in the language in question it is likely to mean anything other than 'woman' or 'wife'. —Tamfang (talk) 08:07, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

My point is that it's not Hawaiian, as I've stated, or it would be "wahine", not "vahine". StuRat (talk) 06:13, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

I know what vahine is, and arii too, which is chief. I meant words like Pohe, No, Ema, Tepa and the other words I can make out on the tombstone on the left. --KAVEBEAR (talk) 05:24, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Wahine is also a Maori word having the same meaning. Plasmic Physics (talk) 14:23, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Can anyone see the words?--KAVEBEAR (talk) 23:35, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I see the words you listed, "vahine", and a bunch of names. StuRat (talk) 03:22, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Quote attributed to Nina Totenberg

I recently came across a quote attributed to Nina Totenberg of NPR, running something like this: "It's not the evidence that matters, but the seriousness of the charges." There are several variants. However, I have been unable to trace the quote back to its putative origins at the time of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. Is this quote genuine? Perhaps altered a bit? Misattributed? Or invented from whole cloth? --Amble (talk) 05:58, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm guessing that the lack of responses means nobody was able to trace this purported quote back to Nina Totenberg herself, so it may not be genuine. Thanks to anyone who tried. --Amble (talk) 15:12, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

length of correspondence

Recently, I wrote greeting cards to a few friends overseas; two in Japan, one in South Korea. The cards I wrote were sent via regular First Class Mail. How long does it take for them to get to their designated international destinations?24.90.204.234 (talk) 06:48, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

It might just depend what country you sent them from? --ColinFine (talk) 07:20, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

You will probably find information about delivery times on the website of your country's postal authority, as it depends entirely from where you posted them. (If you posted them from the UK by regular first class mail they will not get there at all, as first class mail is domestic only.)--Shantavira|^{feed me} 07:35, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

The sender appears to be located in Brooklyn, NY, in the United States. In the United States, mailing times can also depend on the specific region from which mail is sent. Mail originating in the New York region used to move more slowly than that from other regions, but the experience behind that statement is now a couple of decades old. Assuming that the questioner means letters rather than postcards sent by first-class international air mail, if they were sent from Boston, where I live, I would expect them to reach an address in Japan or South Korea in a week to 10 days. If mail from New York is still slow, it might take as much as 2 weeks. Marco polo (talk) 15:18, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Alright. In my question, I referred to greeting cards sent via First Class international air mail. They were sent from New York. How long might it take for the greeting cards to get to their destinations in Japan and South Korea? If my friends decide to write back to me, how long would it take for their correspondences to reach me?24.90.204.234 (talk) 22:55, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

World Map North_ South_ Divide_4.png

I need to contact the current copyright holder of this image. User Kingj 123 uploaded the original but according to the General Council at CC, he/she has eliminated all copyright interest. But the image has since been modified by subsequent users. Furthermore it seems that this image is not under a CC license or other legal tool so I am not sure about the exact re-use terms. Please help with a contact person as apart from requesting usage consent, we would like to request a high-res version of the map. Thanks 06:48, 5 April 2012 (UTC)~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.2.126.176 (talk)

I assume the image is this one here? (apologies it took so long to get that right) --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:00, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

I think this scenario is worth probing - I started Wikipedia:Media_copyright_questions#Clarify_copyright_status_of_revised_uploads to get better information. But in your particular case, the original image was uploaded as public domain, and only the status of individual countries was changed, so I don't think there's any copyright on it. I'd like to hear more confidently that the licenses on our pages are generally true, though, regardless of revisions. (Also, the fact that the first few PD revisions are acting deleted disturbs me) Wnt (talk) 13:06, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Do archeologists or historians really believe that Jesus rose from the dead?

Being a Christian, I feel that this question will be blasphemous to some (or many). However, I have been wondering: from an archaeological point of view, did Jesus really rise from the dead? Of course I believe that, but what about historians? Do they believe that he really rose from the dead, or do they believe that he never died and just simply fainted while on the cross? Or do they believe that when Jesus died, he stayed dead, instead his disciples had hallucinations? Whether he rose from the dead or not, he will still be one of the most influential people in history. Also, when was the first record of the story of Jesus' resurrection? For some reason I would think that if there was a story of a person rising from the dead it would have caused quite a commotion and be mentioned by contemporary historians, but why don't such records survive? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 12:54, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

There are some who dispute the historicity of Jesus in the first place, so getting specific details of what contemporaries thought is not really feasible. Of course, the Biblical account doesn't describe him as going out and parading around Jerusalem. We have the writers' word for what happened, and what in our hearts we choose to view as the nature of reality. I can readily imagine that the world's champion archaeologist could find himself holding carefully labelled remains of Jesus that he has genetically linked to remains of Joseph that he found the year before, yet still be prepared to say that he is the Son of God and he is risen. Because when dealing with issues of God and the miraculous, of what is the purpose and nature of existence, of how truth is defined, no fact is as conclusive as it might appear; there is always another interpretation. Wnt (talk) 13:16, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

I very much doubt whether anyone wearing their archaeologist's hat could ever have anything meaningful to say about whether Jesus rose from the dead or not. It's only when they take that hat off and put their human being hat on (not that archaeologists are not human beings), that they could afford themselves the luxury of an opinion or a belief. Because that's what the question must come down to - opinion and belief. It's futile looking to science for answers to such questions, because there is no evidence that would ever satisfy a scientist that he rose from the dead, but they can't absolutely prove he didn't either. It's undecidable from a scientific viewpoint. -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 13:33, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Firstly, not a lot of people confirmed His ressurection, and secondly, He didn't stick around for very long, and thirdly, historians aren't all that interested in rumours. Plasmic Physics (talk) 13:47, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

In general, there isn't any evidence of Jesus's resurrection that would verify it for a historian or archeologist. The story only exists in religious texts, and there are similar stories from many religions. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 13:52, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Especially the archaeological perspective. Even the most prominent people from 2000 years ago wouldn't likely produce enough surviving artifacts during a six-week period of time that we could identify them specifically; given his lack of post-resurrection prominence and the obscurity of his followers before the Ascension, there's surely nothing that could be traced to Christ or those around him during that time. Nyttend (talk) 14:15, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure there must be loads of historians with degrees from universities who believe the whole business. You've got geologists who've gone through university and they think the earth is only a few thousand years old and the flood caused the grand canyon. And biologists who've gone through university and believe all the species were created distinct and dinosaurs lived with humans. It is really quite incredible how easily people can do doublethink. Dmcq (talk) 14:14, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

One of the problems in answering this question is the fact that nobody is able to think without bias. Once you have accepted a certain worldview, it is difficult to objectively examine this worldview. Humans are not stricly rational beings, and scholars and scientists are just as human as the rest of us. Of course, there are Christian historians who believe that Jesus rose from the dead. However, there are very few if any non-Christian historians who believe this, because if they did, they would probably become Christians. If you are asking about secular scholars, there is not really a consensus about what they believe, because all theories have problems associated with them.

The earliest widely accepted record of Jesus' resurrection is found in the letters of Paul (e.g. 1 Corinthians 15:4), written in the 50's of the first century. Some conservative scholars date the Gospels even earlier, but this is a minority view. OF course in the first century, the same problem arises with regard to bias: those that believed it became Christians. Your assertion that the events regarding Jesus caused no commotion is not accurate, e.g. Tacitus: "a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. ". It is also important to realize that the vast majority of writings from the period (>99%) have not survived. Also, I am not aware of a single historian who lived in Palestina in 30 AD whose writings have been preserved. -- Lindert (talk) 14:17, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

However, it wouldn't take more than a month or so for news of something so remarkable as a dead man coming back to life to travel from Judaea to Rome, and plenty of writing from Rome from the first half of the first century survives. It seems odd that the first surviving mention of this by a Roman writer is dated no less than 30 years after the supposed event. That's more than a generation, plenty of time for a miraculous story to become accepted as fact by a community. The coincidences between the resurrection story and existing contemporary beliefs (such as the Mithraic Mysteries or the Myth of Osiris and Isis) might be evidence that the story was created by a person or group, perhaps feeling himself or itself divinely inspired, aiming to create an inspirational cult initially aimed at Jews. There was obviously an audience for these cults during this historical period, but Jews might have been more comfortable with a cult somewhat rooted in Jewish tradition. That said, the truth is that there is no historical or archaeological proof either way. What a person chooses to believe about the story of the resurrection is completely a matter of faith and/or reasoning. Certainly some historians and archaeologists believe the Gospels' account of the resurrection, but not based on empirical archaeological or or unbiased historical evidence. Marco polo (talk) 14:57, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

"the first surviving mention of this by a Roman writer is dated no less than 30 years after the supposed event. That's more than a generation, plenty of time for a miraculous story to become accepted as fact by a community." However, the conversion of Paul is dated by scholars (based on his own writings) to 33-36 AD, which is only a few years after the events. Paul who, by his own admission, persecuted Christians in Judea prior to this, somehow became convinced of Jesus' resurrection and joined the Christians in preaching this message. So the 'miraculous story' was already believed in the very region where the events happened (not Rome), at most a few years afterwards. Also, Roman writers were generally not very interested in what happened in remote parts of the empire. Could you name just a couple of Roman writers who described in any detail what happened in Judea at the time? You'll find that for most of the first century, the only non-Christian account is that of Josephus; and when Paul converted to Christianity, Josephus was not even born yet. -- Lindert (talk) 16:02, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

However, there are no reliable sources for Paul's life outside of the New Testament. That is, we have no historical proof that Paul existed, much less that statements attributed to him are true. Now, I will concede that the most plausible explanation for New Testament references to Paul and for subsequent, historically proven events is that there was a real person named Saul/Paul, but a competent historian would not accept statements by a person of doubtful historicity at face value without some evidence from unbiased sources. Such evidence doesn't exist. So, again, even if we accept that a person named Saul/Paul was involved in spreading this new religion, we don't know anything about him for sure. Marco polo (talk) 19:27, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

"We have no historical proof that Paul existed" What do you mean? We have his own writings and that of other Christians from the first century. Of course, Paul was not that well-known outside of Christianity. In this video, agnostic (ex-Christian) scholar Bart Ehrman tells that he knows of no scholar who doubts Paul wrote the letter to the Galatians. It is of course quite unreasonable to discount the New Testament writings as historical sources, because that is exactly what they are: books written (by scholarly consensus) in the first century. Also, it is a mistake to treat the New Testament as one book, because the individual books are written by various authors and were only put together in one volume centuries later.

"a person of doubtful historicity" Could you name a scholar who doubts the historicity of Paul?

"without some evidence from unbiased sources." There are no unbiased sources period. Sources are written by people, and there are no unbiased people. -- Lindert (talk) 22:49, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Except the burial remains under St. Peter's basillica and St. Paul Outside the Walls have a radio carbon date consistent with a 1st century burial. 24.38.31.81 (talk) 19:30, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Normally historians don't accept the veracity of texts unless it is demonstrated. Personally, I'm not up on my veracity of the Pauline texts given that I spent my time on the veracity of the Synoptic Gospels and John. I would hesitate to use Pauline texts as a historical source for three reasons: 1) I'd need to look into the history of the texts themselves as sources, their creation, transmission and the first known copies; 2) I generally doubt the historical veracity of "involved" parties, at least at the level of plain and simple events, Paul would need to be read against his own text due to his deep involvement; 3) Internal conflict between Paul and the main body of people practicising Jesus' teachings indicates that Paul may not only be biased toward's Jesus' practices, but in addition may be biased against other practices by people following Jesus at the time. All this would be rather complex to follow through, and tends to (legitimate) theology. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:28, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

My take on it: Jesus died on the cross and was put into the tomb, sealed with wax. Somebody later removed the body, and replaced the wax so it looked like it was never opened. Upon seeing that the body had been removed, and yet the wax was apparently intact, the rest of the story grew as a myth, this being the whole reason the body was removed like that. I believe the wax is mentioned in the Bible, which would seem odd if a large crowd had actually witnessed the resurrection (the presence of wax around the tomb entrance being trivial compared to seeing Jesus rise into heaven). So, I must conclude that the wax was more important originally, than after the myth grew. StuRat (talk) 22:36, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Except that doesn't square with the Bible, and you appear to be making it up as you go along. The first people to come to the tomb, Mary Magdalene and "the other Mary", found the huge tombstone that acted as a seal had already been rolled back. The tomb was open. There was no "wax". -- Jack of Oz ^{[your turn]} 22:46, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

My understanding from 40 years of reading around this subject is (in hasty summary):

(1) The tomb wasn't intended to be Jesus' final, sealed resting place, but a hasty temporary one necessary because he died (unexpectedly early) just before dusk on Friday, i.e. the beginning of the Sabbath, during which dealing with a corpse was religiously impermissible.

(2) The stone was not a near-immovable seal intended to be left undisturbed; it would (as with other excavated tombs of the period) have been a large round slab (like a solid wheel) designed to be rolled across the entrance (thus excluding scavengers, etc) and easily manipulable by a couple of men.

(3) Normal procedure in 1st-century Judea was, post funeral, to lay the body in an accessible tomb for a couple or so years until the flesh had decayed, and then gather the bones in an ossuary (in that culture and era, a thin-walled stone box) to be placed in a permanent family tomb (which in Jesus's case would likely have been in the region of Nazareth).

(4) Because of the nature of Jesus's claimed civil (treason) and religious (blasphemy) crimes, and the manner of his execution, his body should probably by Roman and certainly by Jewish law have been interred in an unmarked common grave for similarly heinous transgressors at the earliest opportunity.

(5) It would have been the routine duty of the Roman authorities (for whom similar situations doubtless arose from time to time) to remove the body from the tomb some time after the end of the Sabbath at dusk on Saturday, probably as early as possible if if they wanted to defuse possible agitation around the body of an executed dissident, and inter it anonymously as in (4) above.

(6) That some friends of the deceased should find, early on Sunday morning, that the tomb's entrance stone had been rolled back and the body had been removed to an unknown grave (by Roman soldiers correctly doing their job), is therefore exactly what should have been the case, with no necessity for any miraculous happenings.

I haven't tried to hunt down specific references for all the various details above which I've accumulated from various historical and archaeological books and articles over decades, but anyone willing to suspend their preconceptions and delve into such literature will, I think, readily find confirmation of most or all of them. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.194 (talk) 00:09, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

It all makes sense. I've seen other theorie on what "really" happened to Jesus. All we know for sure is that His alleged resurrection has been believed to be factual by literally billions of people over the course of time. Possibly one of the greatest cases of mass wishful-thinking ever... but something convinced the early apostles that Jesus had been resurrected. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:54, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

90.197.66.194 seems to be making things up as he goes, unless he has a reliable source for his claim that Roman authorities removed Jewish bodies from tombs as a routine part of their jobs. Edison (talk) 03:08, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

About 15 years ago there was a rumour that Jesus' grave as found in Israel. Some church official explained that this would not be inconsistent with the Bible, because the story about rising from the death isn't supposed to be taken literally. In case of religion, things are taken literally until that time when it is threatened with falsification. Only then do religious authorities decide that it is not to be taken literally. This makes religion immune to falsification. Count Iblis (talk) 02:11, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

The Resurrection is the core concept of Christianity. Without that, it's a nice philosophy but that's about it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:19, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

I would disagree. The important concept of Christianity is the love for every human being, regardless of income or sex or any other feature. The thing that impresses me about it is not old stories about signs and wonders, but the people who have been inspired by it to stand up to racism and many other injustices throughout the world. I have seen the printing press that stopped cannibalism in Fiji. I have watched video of the mothers of the Baptist Church in Birmingham after the Ku Klux Klan bombed them, who with such immense faith and inconceivable dignity responded to terror with an appeal that shook the world. The religion deserves respect - respect I long denied it - because it has done respectable things.

By comparison, what is resurrection? What is life in the first place? Why does a person feel pain when he is injured, or when certain cells alter physiologically in response to an injury, but we suppose a stone does not, even when its crystals are shattered? Why does a person exist in the left side of a brain, and in the right side of a brain, two separate pieces of meat, but not in the head that may be resting immediately adjacent? Is there a difference between one person and another, or does memory just propagate only in certain directions? And if it could jump - if a certain spiritual awareness that redefines a person, a superman, the Son of Man - if it could be communicated from one person to another by learning or example or by some unknown grace - then would that not offer a path to immortality?

Things religious go deeper and deeper, weirder and weirder. You can't just chuck a grenade down the tunnel and assume that's the end of it, it won't work any better with these things than it did in Vietnam. Wnt (talk) 20:50, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

The belief that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, died and was resurrected is the defining characteristic of Christianity. Loving your fellow man may have been Jesus' main teaching, but it is hardly unique to Christianity and nor is it a universal feature of Christians. --Tango (talk) 21:01, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, as Paul puts it: "And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; (...) If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." (1 Corinthians 15:17-19) -- Lindert (talk) 21:23, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

If He did not return to life, He could not possibly be our current and eternal Kohen Gadol. Plasmic Physics (talk) 22:17, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

The same text says that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable." This hints that "raised" in this context may not be interpreted in the conventional, modern, materialistic sense. Wnt (talk) 23:31, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

That would be an example of taking verses out of context. Flesh and blood refers to those who resign to their mortality (those who reject the covenant). Plasmic Physics (talk) 00:53, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

And that Jesus' resurrection was indeed bodily and physical, can be seen clearly from Jesus' statement "touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." (Luke 24:39). So the resurrected body has flesh and bones and can be seen and touched. -- Lindert (talk) 08:35, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Yet, that might not be the same as saying that that's the exact same flesh and bones involved. Someone (not me) should be able to summarize a range of theological opinion here which includes my impression that many Christians believe that the resurrected new flesh differs from the old in important ways, perhaps only one of which is in not growing old and dying. Certainly, in a scientific sense, if one postulates the observation of this new flesh, there is still no basis for speculating whether physical remains of the old form would still exist somewhere or not. Wnt (talk) 12:56, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

That was written in a book long after the supposed event. There's no corroborating evidence, and as noted above, some sects of Christianity do not interpret the story literally. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 22:46, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Hebrew Bible

Contradiction in dates of birth and death for the following; King David from 1040 to 970 BCE King Solomon from 848 to 796 BCE (son of David) King Rehoboam from 937 to 915 BCE (son of Solomon) How can Solomon's son be born before his father ? What are the proper birth and death dates for the above ? Thank you, Sid Moshenberg. end of question. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Moshenberg (talk • contribs) 17:25, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Where did you get those dates? --Tango (talk) 18:39, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

[edit conflict]That absolutely has to be either a set of typos or the result of vandalism to Solomon's dates; I know that the other two are approximately correct. On which page did you find these dates? Please specify, so that we can fix the error more easily. Nyttend (talk) 18:40, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

These dates for Solomon need not be the result of vandalism or typos. They correspond roughly with the orthodox Jewish dating of the Israelite kings, based on the Seder Olam Rabbah (see here for an example). Although these dates are generally rejected by scholars outside of Judaism, for some the Seder Olam Rabbah is an authoritative source. These dates should not be used in Wikipedia articles, because they represent a vary small minority (what Wikipedia describes as wp:fringe). -- Lindert (talk) 22:36, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

I figured that these dates were all on the same page; if that's the case, it's surely not a matter of going with the orthodox Jewish dating. Can you imagine from what page these dates are coming? They're greatly at variance with those on the Solomon article; its "Chronology" section says 970 to 931 for his reign. Nyttend (talk) 01:59, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

I tried searching in Wikipedia, but could not find any page with the abovementioned birth/death dates. Maybe someone already corrected them, or the OP found them outside of Wikipedia. In any case, unless the OP can tell us where he found them, there's little we can do. -- Lindert (talk) 07:47, 6 April 2012 (UTC)