Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.
I was wondering if there are any languages that are not sequential i.e start from the beginning of a sentence and ending at the end of the script. Rather, a mass of information, a bit like a map. The meaning is the same but the way the language is expressed is in its entirety rather than a start and a finish. With bits of the map added on whenever new information needs to be expressed. Is there any validity in this. Or perhaps its beyond our intelligence to communicate in this way. I just had this dream that a yet to be discovered alien civilization communicates in this way. -- 15:05, 25 July 2014 82.12.252.148
82.12.252.148 -- Maybe you should look at Charles F. Hockett's list of design features of human language to see why the short answer to your question is "No". A feature not included in Hockett's list is hierarchical structuring (i.e. syntactic constituents are embedded in nested Immediate constituent structures)... AnonMoos (talk) 23:32, 25 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
How are Jewish and Christian values different from each other?
Can someone provide a brief summary of Jewish values and Christian values? (I recently saw an episode of the "Prager University" on Youtube, in which it asked whether or not belief in God or atheism was "more rational", and concluded that belief in God was "more rational". Then, I did a Google search, which led me to Dennis Prager's wiki page, which told me that he's Jewish, with "Judeo-Christian values". If Judeo-Christian values are shared by Judaism and Christianity, then what values distinguish them?) 140.254.45.33 (talk) 15:24, 25 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
All I did was rephrase what I read on Dennis Prager's wikipedia page, and surprisingly, he uses the term, "Judeo-Christian values". I find it surprising, because I often hear Christians use the term, not (observant) Jews. His wikipedia page says his religion is Judaism, though. 140.254.45.33 (talk) 16:57, 25 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently you'd have to ask Prager what he thinks "Judeo-Christian values" means. But at least on a high level, it includes belief in God, belief in the Ten Commandments, i.e. belief in morality, etc. Those would be values generally shared by all three Abrahamic religions Obviously there is a wide variety of opinions on the details. ←Baseball BugsWhat's up, Doc?carrots→ 17:16, 25 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)Some might say that Christianity would side with mercy and Judaism with justice, but in practice it tends to be the other way around. Because of long-term Jews' minority position, being accepting of non-Jewish otherness was the best way to stay sane (and alive). Judaism tends to hold itself to some pretty high (but fairly definite) standards, while it kindly asks everyone else to consider some fairly simple guidelines on not being evil. From what I've read, the concept of Tikkun olam ("repairing the world") tends to be influential even in branches of Judaism that aren't particularly interested in Kabbalah. Israel causes some exceptions to this, but that's an discussion I'm not touching. There's also plenty of finer points (such as distinctions between Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism, and Orthodox Judaism) I lack the experience to comment on.
Meanwhile, almost all of Christianity accepts that there's something like right and wrong (certain interpretations of Kierkegaard and Calvinism can get pretty Antinomian), but what defines morality isn't as firmly nailed down beyond the idea that it should fulfill "Love others," "Love God," and that the values should be in some way Biblical (the latter two used to shoehorn in a lot of ideas). Consequently, many Christians tend to look at what they believe in the here and now, find some way it matches some part of the Bible, and call it Christian values, without comparing them to other Christian values throughout the world and its history (which may or may not be the same as or different from Inculturation, phrasing Christian values using another culture's terms). Since Christianity makes up about a third of the world's population, and has existed in a number of cultures, this raises questions that we can't answer here about whether there are unified Christian values, whether certain groups are right or wrong, etc... (plus no one wants me to make Jeremiah Wright's sermon about America sound like mild mannered patriotism).
The American Religious right tends to favor Young Earth Creationism (source), indicating an overall belief that the world already works the way it's supposed to, in law, society, and nature (whatever the root is of this is a matter of debate). At the other end of the spectrum, there's a lot of overlap between Christians who believe in Theistic evolution, socially progressive Christians, and those who use terms like "Social Gospel". These are very broad and extreme examples, most people falling inbetween. Ian.thomson (talk) 16:31, 25 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Who said values must be mutually exclusive? Every religion or ethical philosophy may teach values, and these values have their similarities and nuances. This does not necessarily mean they are derived from each other, and may mean they have evolved independently. A person may call something "Christian values", because it is a body of values that (a certain group of) Christians (however defined) may hold. 140.254.45.33 (talk) 17:07, 25 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
what are judeo-christian values? that eating people's brains is wrong. that r**ping a woman is an offence first and foremost against her, not against her male relatives who are invested with guarding her chastity. that a handicapped or a pauper are people who had bad luck, not born-again miscreants serving their karmic punishment. you know, that stuff that made Europe great and that you only notice when you see how others got it wrong. I'm an atheist, btw. Asmrulz (talk) 18:41, 25 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It isn't possible to generalize about "Jewish values" or "Christian values", because not all members of either group hold the same values. That is to say, there is no such thing as a uniform set of Jewish values or a uniform set of Christian values. Since Jewish values are in theory codified in the Talmud and the Rabbinic literature, one might expect the values of Jews to be more uniform than those of Christians, and maybe they are, but even among Jews, the values of, say young, gay Reconstructionist Jews are likely to be vastly different from those of elderly Hasidic Jews, even within New York City, let alone in other parts of the world. If anything, there is even more diversity among the value sets of different groups of Christians. For example, the values of Jehovah's Witnesses are very different from those of other Christian groups. Even if it is possible to identify ways in which early Christians' values were different from those of neighboring Jews because of Christians' partial departure from Mosaic law, that has little relevance to differences in values among Jews and Christians today, beyond the trivial observation that some Jews continue to observe dietary and ritual rules laid down in the Jewish scripture while hardly any Christians do. There is much more to a person's or group's set of values than that. Marco polo (talk) 19:06, 25 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Asmrulz: "eating people's brains is wrong" is a pretty universal value. And Leviticus would seem to disagree about who rape is primarily an offence against. (And there are also some Christian movements that seem to think poverty and wealth are signs of God's favour or judgement, and/or a sign of Godly living - although that seems to me to be so at odds with the Gosples that I'd be inclined to consider that heretical). Iapetus (talk) 13:28, 28 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Our article Judeo-Christian is quite informative. In a nutshell, the ethical values of Judaism and Christianity have a broad overlap, since both are based on the Ten Commandments. The moral code of Judaism is somewhat more formalised than in Christianity (dietary restrictions, Sabbath observance, circumcision etc.). The biggest differences between the two religions are in the area of theology, especially around the means of salvation, the status of Jesus and the doctrine of the Trinity. Gandalf61 (talk) 19:09, 25 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Also be aware that "Judeo-Christian values" is fairly common code word, often meaning "conservative" with overtones of "you can trust me; I hate [fill in scapegoat du jour] just like you do". --NellieBly (talk) 13:16, 28 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
This is an extremely Christian-centric explanation and offers no citations for where you're getting these claims. Jewish Principles of Faith may help to clarify some things.
It is entirely possibly to convert to Judaism; you don't need to be born into the religion. Plenty of Christians support the death penalty and plenty of Jews do not. It's a complicated and difficult issue that most large groups of people can't agree on. It is also important to note that just because something is described as happening in the Biblical narrative, it doesn't mean that all Jews -- or all Christians -- either believe it literally happened or approve of the concept. Judaism and violence has a good discussion of the diversity of Jewish thought on passages such as Amalek.
What are you referring to by "inherited guilt"? The concept of original sin is a predominantly Christian doctrine.
Jewish values is impossible to define and any attempt to do so will inevitably fail as there are such wildly different strands in Judaism. --Dweller (talk) 08:38, 31 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
