Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2013 June 22

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June 22

Foreign coin ID

I found this coin in a collection of miscellaneous foreign coins that my mother got at a flea market. Does anyone know where it's from? 69.111.191.86 (talk) 01:52, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

That's a portrait of Haile Selassie and the script is Amharic, so an Ethiopian coin, one presumes. μηδείς (talk) 02:02, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Medeis has clearly identified the country. For a similar, but less crudely minted (or at least, better condition), coin, with Heile Selassie on the obverse and the Lion of Judah on the reverse, see [1], where it's identified as a one cent piece, of which 20 million were minted. - Nunh-huh 02:58, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you both for the prompt replies! 03:24, 22 June 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.111.191.86 (talk)

No, the denomination is different. I think it says "ammist santim" ("five centimes") as opposed to "and santim" ("one centime") in the example Nunh-huh linked. --ColinFine (talk) 11:37, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Is Python official documentation free to use under the Python License?

Given that it is included with the source code of CPython, which is licensed as such. Czech is Cyrillized (talk) 03:37, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Here's the licencing page: [2]. It looks like the source and documentation are covered under the same licence. Which licence applies will depend on which version of Python you are interested in. Of course, we cannot give legal advice, so you will need to read the licencing yourself to determine what you can and cannot do with it. RudolfRed (talk) 04:14, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Can Python Software Foundation License licensed text be included with CC-BY-SA 3.0 licensed text?

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license, section 4.b:

You may Distribute or Publicly Perform an Adaptation only under the terms of: (i) this License; (ii) a later version of this License with the same License Elements as this License; (iii) a Creative Commons jurisdiction license (either this or a later license version) that contains the same License Elements as this License (e.g., Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 US)); (iv) a Creative Commons Compatible License. If you license the Adaptation under one of the licenses mentioned in (iv), you must comply with the terms of that license. If you license the Adaptation under the terms of any of the licenses mentioned in (i), (ii) or (iii) (the "Applicable License"), you must comply with the terms of the Applicable License generally and the following provisions: (I) You must include a copy of, or the URI for, the Applicable License with every copy of each Adaptation You Distribute or Publicly Perform; (II) You may not offer or impose any terms on the Adaptation that restrict the terms of the Applicable License or the ability of the recipient of the Adaptation to exercise the rights granted to that recipient under the terms of the Applicable License; (III) You must keep intact all notices that refer to the Applicable License and to the disclaimer of warranties with every copy of the Work as included in the Adaptation You Distribute or Publicly Perform; (IV) when You Distribute or Publicly Perform the Adaptation, You may not impose any effective technological measures on the Adaptation that restrict the ability of a recipient of the Adaptation from You to exercise the rights granted to that recipient under the terms of the Applicable License. This Section 4(b) applies to the Adaptation as incorporated in a Collection, but this does not require the Collection apart from the Adaptation itself to be made subject to the terms of the Applicable License.

Python Software Foundation license, section 3:

In the event Licensee prepares a derivative work that is based on or incorporates Python or any part thereof, and wants to make the derivative work available to others as provided herein, then Licensee hereby agrees to include in any such work a brief summary of the changes made to Python.

Is the section 3 of the PSF license a term that "restricts the terms of the Applicable License or the ability of the recipient of the Adaptation to exercise the rights granted to that recipient under the terms of the Applicable License", where the "Applicable License" is CC-BY-SA 3.0? The condition is so easy to comply with, so it should not be a "restriction". Czech is Cyrillized (talk) 09:34, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

A better place to ask this question (which is a good one) may be WP:MCQ. --Jayron32 13:38, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

How important and reliable is the Vulgate?

From our article, Vulgate, I see that in various places, Jerome's Latin bible is conservative in regard to the the Semitic source texts, and that there's no Apocalypse more authentic than its version. I can read the Vulgate now with reader's aids and difficulty in parts with which I am not so familiar already in English. I am wondering what scholarly opinion is as to what I would be losing by focusing on it (i.e., Jerome, as compared to the King James, which I would find much more convenient). I am talking solely about textual authenticity and linguistic integrity, to be clear--not any view based on faith or subjectively faith-based exegesis. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 04:28, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Jerome did the best he could (even consulting with Jews, which was quite unusual for Christian theologians at that time), but nowadays scholars almost always prefer to go back to the original languages whenever possible, so studying the Vulgate would be most relevant to how medieval people understood the Bible etc... AnonMoos (talk) 07:27, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Agreed - it's extremely important for understanding the medieval church (although the conception of the Bible among regular people would need to take several other things into account). And if you don't want to slog through the Latin, the Douay-Rheims version is basically a straight translation of the Vulgate, unlike the KJV. Adam Bishop (talk) 10:49, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

By way of adding to the above, I've read that the Vulgate is not very important from a textual perspective, although that point about the Apocalypse rather threw me - I didn't even know it had that much credibility. Erasmus in the 16th century espoused the study of the original Greek, and others, I think inspired by him, returned to the original manuscripts, having been immersed in the Vulgate to that time. I'm sure I remember reading that Latin enjoyed a primacy that could not easily be challenged, because it might weaken the authority of the Catholic church, but it was exactly this rigidity that prevented textual errors from being corrected from the original manuscripts. This is slightly at variance with the article, so someone might correct or confirm me here. The article only says the Church gave it official status at the Council of Trent, which does not quite contradict my point, but may leave me out on a limb slightly. IBE (talk) 18:03, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

I'll write about New Testament textual criticism: We actually have the original printings of the 1769 Oxford Revised KJV (and the others). We don't have Jerome's original Vulgate, we have thousands of different historical manuscripts, and then reconstructions based on those. So there's that issue. The KJV is mainly based on the Byzantine textform, which is largely regarded as inferior to the Alexandrian textform (maybe it shouldn't even be mentioned, lest the misconception continue, but an easy misconception is that the KJV is based significantly on Codex Bezae. The KJV is supported significantly by Beza's Greek editions, but Beza's Greek editions are still largely Textus Receptus, and only occasionally brought to align with Codex Bezae). Jerome corrected an Old Latin version with (probably and mainly) Alexandrian textform Greek manuscripts. The Old Latin manuscript he used was probably an example of European form, which was itself based on a Greek vorlage of the Western textform. The Western textform is also considered inferior to Alexandrian. LMU has a very recent one hour lecture by Ehrman on the KJV up on Youtube [3]; very interesting.

There are some comments about Early Versions in general (the Vulgate, Old Latin, Syriac and Coptic) in NA27: "The versions still enjoy an important role in critical decisions because they represent Greek witnesses of an early period. But their value for scholarship today in comparison with earlier generations has been modified by the great number of Greek manuscripts on papyrus and parchment discovered in the twentieth century." (p. 64). NA27 categorizes the Greek manuscripts for each of the books of the New Testament into "consistently cited of the first order", "consistently cited of the second order", "frequently cited", and "occasionally cited". Unfortunately, there's no comparable categorization for the versions (including the Vulgate). So to get more specific than the claim that the versions are "important" you have to go through the critical apparatus yourself; easier said than done.

Metzger and Ehrman, Text of the New Testament, 4th Edition (2005) lists ten Vulgate manuscripts as "Important Witnesses to the Text of the New Testament".

Further reading:

Burton, "The Latin Version of the New Testament" in Ehrman and Holmes (eds.), The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research (Brill, 2012), pp. 113–130. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 02:07, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks for the answers so far. I have to explain my purpose is to familiarize myself with and have a source primarily for the Old Testament, which I do not and really cannot foresee myself ever reading in the original Semitic. Unless, as a substitute, I find a good three- or four-line interlinear OT with the original hebrew/transcription/gloss/literal translation or: KH-R-B KH-W-R hkuraB khauR Spirit-NOM F Holy Adj "Holy Spirit" (assuming that's not too far off) for example. As for the New Testament, I can read it much more easily in the Greek than I can the Latin Vulgate. I will stick with the Greek for the Gospels. What I read in the vulgate article seems to imply that Jerome's Vulgate is textually very respectable so far as its choice of sources. Of course I know translations a bitch. Bottom line question is, is there any other source for the Old Testament not in Latin or Semitic that's more reliable than the Vulgate? Is the Septuagint? Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 03:23, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

I think you now sort of find yourself right in the middle of the evolving debate of originality and "earliest inferable state of the text", including the related debate of "diplomatics versus eclecticism" in Old Testatment/Hebrew Bible scholarship. Originally of course Catholicism went with the Vulgate. Protestantism raised the status of the Masoretic Text, and eventually Catholicism was brought around to that too. But now scholars have problematized the whole issue: authenticity, reliability and originality are particularly problematic concepts for the Old Testament. They are as well for the New Testament, but not to the same degree. There is a persnickety or hard-nosed issue of originality: You see Ehrman talk about this with regards to even the letters of Paul (the biblical texts for which originality is least problematic in defining), when he asks hypothetical things like "Paul dictates to his amanuensis. The amanuensis writes down the dictation with a change of one letter in one word of what Paul dictated. Is the original what was written, or what Paul dictated?" Such things are problems for all texts, but I think most people don't them as significant problems. A more general concern does come in however with many biblical texts, when these have gone through stages of evolution. So what then is the original? This becomes particularly piquant when different religious groups have taken different stages as authoritative. I think in general scholars have moved from such questions to views that defining an "original" or "authentic" text is problematic, but views do vary widely. For example, see Müller, The First Bible of the Church: A Plea for the Septuagint (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement 206; Copenhagen International Seminar 1; Sheffield Academic Press, 1996). What Müller is saying (not non-controversially, but still respectably): Early Christians, the very writers of the New Testament, are quoting Old Testament texts that are more like the Septuagint than the Masoretic. The Masoretic was not yet wholly developed at that time. Therefore, those who take the New Testament as religiously important, should not disregard the Septuagint and place value only in the Masoretic. That's just an example.

Okay, the debate. This has roughly the supporters of the Oxford Hebrew Bible like Ron Hendel on one side, and the supporters of the Hebrew University Bible like Emmanuel Tov and the Biblia Hebraica Quinta like Williamson on the other. I feel like I shouldn't write much more, but if you want a poor characterization of the positions of each side: Hendel: There really are first editions of these books which are properly regarded as originals, and we can get closer to them with eclectic textual criticism, and this eclectic text is valuable just for that. Tov, Williamson: "First" editions are not so valuable, but the text that was important to some religious group is just for that reason valuable. Really, those citations on the Oxford Hebrew Bible page will link you to these issues.

Okay, so then, how does this relate to your question: What is the value of the Vulgate, of the Septuagint? Well, first pick a side: If you're with Tov or Williamson: Each has a sui generis value for being of paramount importance is bringing you to the "authentic" text of certain religious groups (with a rather minor value for filling in the gaps for the authentic text of other religious groups when the main evidence is lacking). If you're with Hendel: The answer is more complicated and needs a more careful answer, but generally it's going to be ending up like the answer (concerning the Vulgate) with regards to the New Testament, these are "important" witnesses to the earliest inferable state of the text, but you'll have to consult (the yet uncompleted) critical apparatuses for specifics. I think I feel comfortable in saying (this is anecdotal, from a general impression of the apparatuses) that the Septuagint is cited a lot more than the Vulgate. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 07:30, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Charles Leander Weed in Hawaii

When did Charles Leander Weed travel to Hawaii? I know it was in around 1865 but exact dates would be helpful. Thanks.--KAVEBEAR (talk) 05:47, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

March 4, 1865 (the day he reached Honolulu, California History, 1979, vol. 58, p. 219, isn't shown in snippet itself though). Brandmeister^talk 14:27, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Edward Bulwer-Lytton separation?

Our article on Edward Bulwer-Lytton states that he was separated from his wife Rosina Bulwer-Lytton, but other sources say he divorced her. Who's right? Was there a divorce after the separation? If there was only a legal separation would it be correct to call Rosina "his ex-wife"? Thanks, Ericoides (talk) 15:22, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

According to the external link in the article, which links to the Ancestry Lord Lytton Study Group, it was only a legal separation not a divorce. --TammyMoet (talk) 15:36, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

This is confirmed by Women Writers and the Artifacts of Celebrity in the Long Nineteenth Century, edited by Ann R. Hawkins, Maura Ives (p. 48) and Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850, edited by Christopher John Murray (p. 140) We have an article on Legal separation. Alansplodge (talk) 16:10, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks very much. So she was never his ex-wife. Ericoides (talk) 18:02, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Technically not, but from what I've read EBL would have preferred that she was! As to why he never actually divorced her, who knows? It's a fascinating topic, thanks for raising it. --TammyMoet (talk) 18:06, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

You're welcome; just doing some MS checking. Ericoides (talk) 18:10, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Remember that divorce was legally complicated - this was before the 1857 Act, which made it a civil matter. If they weren't planning to remarry, there was very little practical benefit and a lot of costs to pressing for a divorce. Andrew Gray (talk) 20:17, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Separation was sometimes called "divorce a mensa et thoro"... AnonMoos (talk)

To quote our Matrimonial Causes Act 1857: "Before the Act, divorce was governed by the ecclesiastical Court of Arches and the canon law of the Church of England... Divorce was de facto restricted to the very wealthy as it demanded either a complex annulment process or a private bill, either at great cost. The latter entailed sometimes lengthy debates about a couple's intimate marital relationship in public in the House of Commons." Even after the act, husbands who wished to grant their wives a divorce were sometimes required to be found in bed with a professional lady by a witness to prove adultery.[4] Alansplodge (talk) 17:31, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Has there ever been a song made about the Somalian Flag?

What drove me to ask was that there was a song made about a very, very similar one. You would think the Somalians were inspired by the Bonnie Blue Flag at some point.

But if there's a song about the Somalian flag, I hope for your assistance because Google couldn't help, when it comes to finding it in the native language, as I would pretty much know not the first thing about the Somali language(s).

And how similar of a tune would the song be to the Bonnie Blue's? --70.179.161.230 (talk) 18:07, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, some websites translate the beginning of "Qolobaa Calankeed" as "Every nation has its own flag. Ours is like the heavens. Without any clouds". I couldn't find any reliable sources giving this (or any) translation yet, but you can find some attempts by googling "Qolobaa Calankeed" + "flag". ---Sluzzelin talk 18:45, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

"Calanka" means "flag" according to flag of Somalia. Adam Bishop (talk) 23:49, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Is there any evidence the creators of the Somali Flag were influenced by the Bonnie Blue Flag? Were they even aware of it? It's a very simple design, and Occam's Razor would suggest it could easily have been thought of by different people at different times in different places, completely independently of any of the others. If Google has produced no results for any connections between the flags, then it seems there are none, which would be the default expectation. Given that, it would be extraordinary to assume a song might have been written about the Somali Flag simply because one had been written about a similar flag elsewhere. The flags of Indonesia and Monaco are identical except one is squarer than the other, but that implies precisely zero about the separate histories of the flags and their associations. -- Jack of Oz ^[Talk] 20:18, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

According to this Mohammed Awale Liban picked blue for the UN and the star represents peace (white colour) and the regions of Somalia. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 02:28, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Older royal woman and her younger husband

What is the greatest age gap between an older royal woman and her husband? Had Henry III of France married Anna Jagiellon they would have been 28 years apart and they were also Elizabeth I marrying one her suitors in her later life. But I want to know if there were ever any significant age (20+ years) gaps between an older woman and a younger husband in a royal marriage.--The Emperor's New Spy (talk) 21:11, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Not as large a difference as you were looking for but Henry II of England (5 March 1133 – 6 July 1189) married Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122 or 1124 – 1 April 1204) about 9-11 years his senior. Philip II of Spain (21 May 1527 – 13 September 1598) married Mary I of England (18 February 1516 – 17 November 1558), again 11 years older than her husband. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 02:09, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Queen Kaʻahumanu of Hawaii did (forcibly) marry Kealiiahonui (son of Kaumualii, king of Kauai), who was 32 years younger than herself, but at the time of that marriage she was no longer queen, but co-regent (Kuhina Nui) of Hawaii. - Lindert (talk) 12:29, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Joanna I of Naples's third husband was cca 10 years younger than her. The 65-year-old Katherine Neville, great-granddaughter of Edward III of England, became Edward IV's sister-in-law by marrying her fourth husband, the 19-year-old John Woodville; the difference between them was 46 years. Surtsicna (talk) 13:26, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Prince of Denmark'

When did the title Prince/Princess of Denmark started to be used officially for the descendants of the King of Denmark? It seems like the children of the early Oldenburg kings were only Count/Duke/Prince of Holstein (the only title they held by hereditary right). Was it in 1660 when Frederick III implemented absolute monarch or was it before this?--The Emperor's New Spy (talk) 21:25, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

I would assume it was indeed in 1660, but not because of the introduction of absolute monarchy. I believe it's the introduction of hereditary monarchy that made it desirable to highlight one's right to the crown by adopting a suitable title. Surtsicna (talk) 11:32, 23 June 2013 (UTC)