Humanities desk
< February 6	<< Jan \| February \| Mar >>	February 8 >

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.

February 7

1883 VA House of Delegates

Can anybody help me confirm the name of the Virginia State Delegate who preceded John W. Lawson. It's currently (as of September 2013) listed at the John W. Lawson article (without a source) as "Irwin Duck". I wonder whether this is accurate or whether this is a joke reference to Irwin the Disco Duck. I don't know one way or the other so it could just be a coincidence. I did a little searching, but I didn't find much... I'll be busy for the next few hours but I didn't want to leave this fact unverified. Thanks in advance. -Thibbs (talk) 18:44, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

According to this it was Irvin W. Duck (note the spelling of his given name). Deor (talk) 21:40, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ah excellent work, Deor! Thank you. I've amended the article and added the source. -Thibbs (talk) 01:48, 8 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What evidence is there that Christian monasticism was/wasn't borrowed from Buddhism?

It is generally recognised that, via Greco-Buddhism, the Silk Route and the Spice route, Buddhism has been present throughout asia minor, and in in places such as ancient greece, with established buddhist monasteries in Parthia and present the Pre-christian Roman World. Three decades ago, I was privileged to hear the musings of a well-known German Cistercian monk who had spent time talking with a Tibetan monk about monastic life, and they were both surprised at the similaritie - down to sharing many 'house rules' - even though their culture and religions were so distinct. Have there been any published works that suggest the possibility that Christians 'borrowed' Buddhist monasticism, or that have discussed it? It occurs to me that it was possible that some Christian monastics could have been converted Buddhists (20040302 (talk) 21:40, 7 February 2015 (UTC))[reply]

Just to provide a counter argument, ascetism was well known in the Jewish world during the formative years of Christianity, see Essenes. John the Baptist practiced an ascetic lifestyle, leading a life of poverty, hermitism, and ministry that formed aspects of later Christian monasticism. You should read Christian monasticism before 451 which covers some of the early history of Christian monasticism, traditionally tied to the life of Saint Anthony, and the Desert Fathers. It is true that there was contact between Christians and Eastern faiths (Buddhism and Hinduism, for example) especially in places where Christianity spread eastward (the Nestorians, the Saint Thomas Christians). However, these were not Christian groups that had a lot of contact with (or influence on) the sort of Monasticism that developed in the more Western strains of Christianity (Eastern Orthodox, Coptic, and Roman Catholic traditions primarily). Your hypothesis is interesting, but given that a) Jewish sects living in the time and place of the formative years of Christianity and practices later mirrored by the first Christian monastic communities and b) The first recognized Christian monastic communities did not form in places known for significant Buddhist influence, the most straightforward explanation is that the practices of Christian monasticism came from the Jewish traditions that Christianity grew up near. --Jayron 32 22:21, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There is evidence, though I can't remember the source, that solitary worshippers of the Horned God existed in Celtic areas in pre-Christian times, effectively living as hermits (presumably because of the requirement to avoid all contact with females). This is also practised in the present day, though I imagine this is a revived, rather than a continuous, tradition. RomanSpa (talk) 23:49, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

But how old are these Jewish ascetic traditions themselves, in turn? You cannot simply assume by default that any Jewish tradition is native and old. That would be a serious fallacy. Shortly before the rise of Christianity, Jewish culture was heavily affected by Hellenistic culture, and monastic traditions could have been borrowed via Hellenistic culture and Judaism into Christianity. (Christianity was itself a kind of syncretism of Jewish religious traditions with a significant number of Hellenistic elements, after all, and Christian monasticism arose in a heavily Hellenised environment in the Near East, especially Egypt.) See Buddhist influences on Christianity, where Greco-Buddhist monasticism is pointed to. I agree, however, with the difficulty of excluding parallel development. Especially the close similarities implied would be stunning after all this time, space and cultural differences to be bridged. You'd expect that more differences would have arisen. So I can't help but wonder how many of those rules are so similar because they are simply sensible for a monastic community to have, because they are good solutions – pure parallel evolution. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 03:52, 9 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

To your first point, nothing is native. Human culture borrows and adapts from contact with other cultures. You're running into a chicken-and-egg issue. Ultimately, it depends on whether one is asking for the proximate influence (that is, what cultures directly influenced Christian culture in the development of monasticism) and ultimate influence (which is likely unknowable, ascetic traditions probably exist within all cultures, and as you note, may have developed in parallel and without influence in some cases.) --Jayron 32 13:50, 9 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

20040302 -- Clement of Alexandria once mentioned the name "Boutta" in passing, the story of Barlaam and Josaphat certainly came from a Buddhist source; and there has long been scholarly speculation that certain techniques and "styles" of asceticism in eastern Mediterranean cultures of classical antiquity were due to remote/indirect diffusion of originally Hindu and/or Buddhist practices. However, it may be stretching things too far to try to connect details of monastic discipline between Buddhism and Christianity. Organized monasticism in Christianity originated from a slow process of gathering originally solitary ascetics and hermits into groups. We have an article Buddhist influences on Christianity (which very oddly doesn't even mention "Barlaam and Josaphat" one of the most obvious influences). AnonMoos (talk) 02:26, 10 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]