Wise old man
The wise old man is an archetype as described by Carl Jung, as well as a classic literary figure, may be seen as a stock character. The wise old man can be a profound philosopher distinguished for sound judgment; this type of character is represented as a kind and wise, older father-type figure who uses personal knowledge of people and the world to help tell stories and offer guidance that, in a mystical way, may impress upon his audience a sense of who they are and who they might become, thereby acting as a mentor. He may appear as an absent-minded professor, appearing absent-minded due to a predilection for contemplative pursuits; the wise old man is seen to be in some way "foreign", that is, from a different culture, nation, or even a different time, from those he advises. In extreme cases, he may be a liminal being, such as Merlin, only half human. In medieval chivalric romance and modern fantasy literature, he is presented as a wizard, he can or instead be featured as a hermit. This character type explained to the knights or heroes—particularly those searching for the Holy Grail—the significance of their encounters.
In storytelling, the character of the wise old man is killed or in some other way removed for a time, in order to allow the hero to develop on his/her own. In Jungian analytical psychology, senex is the specific term used in association with this archetype. In Ancient Rome, the title of Senex was only awarded to elderly men with families who had good standing in their village. Examples of the senex archetype in a positive form wizard; the senex may appear in a negative form as a devouring father or a doddering fool. In the individuation process, the archetype of the Wise old man was late to emerge, seen as an indication of the Self.'If an individual has wrestled enough and long enough with the anima problem...the unconscious again changes its dominant character and appears in a new symbolic form...as a masculine initiator and guardian, a wise old man, a spirit of nature, so forth'. The antithetical archetype, or enantiodromic opposite, of the senex is the Puer Aeternus. Saptarishi Seven Sages of Greece Solon of Athens Chilon of Sparta Thales of Miletus Bias of Priene Cleobulus of Lindos Pittacus of Mitylene Periander of Corinth Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove Ruan Ji Xi Kang Liu Ling Shan Tao Ruan Xian Xiang Xiu Wang Rong Navaratnas The Rabbis, or Sages of Talmudic lore Yohanan ben Zakkai Hillel I Shammai others Jiang Ziya, a genius and patient old man.
He was well known as a legendary military strategist and the most famous Prime Minister of the Zhou Dynasty of China. Nguyen Binh Khiem known as the White Cloud Hermit, he is a saint of the Cao Dai religion and the most prominent person of Vietnam history in the 16th century. Zarathustra, the Persian avestan sage with a dualist cosmology and theogony in perpetual tension between good and evil. Mentor, in Greek mythology Merlin from the Matter of Britain and the legends of King Arthur Nestor from Iliad Tiresias from the Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, other Greek myths Utnapishtim from the Epic of Gilgamesh Mímir, in Norse mythology Chiron from The Iliad Odin, in Norse mythology In fiction, due to the influence of Merlin, a wise old man is presented in the form of a wizard or other magician in medieval chivalric romance and modern fantasy literature and films. See List of magicians in fantasy for more examples; the Elder Kettle, who serves as a father figure to the Cup Brothers in Cuphead follows this role.
When the brothers get roped into The Devil's scheme to gather the contracts, it is the Elder Kettle who helps the brothers in their plan to turn against their master. "Senex" is a name of a wise old character in the novel A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle. Around the 1850s, the antiquarian Robert Reid used the pseudonym "Senex" when contributing articles on local history in the Glasgow Herald; these were published in a series of volumes. Sir Alan Lascelles used the pen-name "Senex" when writing to The Times in 1950 setting out the so-called Lascelles Principles concerning the monarch's right to refuse a prime minister's request for a general election. A character in episode 7 of the anime Ergo Proxy is named Senex Proxy, is the Agent of Moonlight, she is killed by Ergo Proxy. It is possible the name Senex is in reference to the age, immortality of the Proxies. In the roleplaying game Mage: The Ascension, Senex is the wise old leader of the Euthanatos magickal tradition, he dwells in a far distant realm, only stepping onto Earth.
Elderly martial arts master Hermit Ivory Tower Jungian psychology Magic Negro Magicians in fantasy Masonic Philosopher in Meditation Sage Wise Old Woman/Man Yogi
Gospel of Matthew
The Gospel According to Matthew is the first book of the New Testament and one of the three synoptic gospels. It tells how the promised Messiah, rejected by Israel sends the disciples to preach the gospel to the whole world. Most scholars believe it was composed between AD 80 and 90, with a range of possibility between AD 70 to 110; the anonymous author was a male Jew, standing on the margin between traditional and non-traditional Jewish values, familiar with technical legal aspects of scripture being debated in his time. Writing in a polished Semitic "synagogue Greek", he drew on three main sources: the Gospel of Mark, the hypothetical collection of sayings known as the Q source, material unique to his own community, called the M source or "Special Matthew"; the divine nature of Jesus was a major issue for the Matthaean community, the crucial element separating the early Christians from their Jewish neighbors. The title Son of David identifies Jesus as the healing and miracle-working Messiah of Israel, sent to Israel alone.
As Son of Man he will return to judge the world, an expectation which his disciples recognise but of which his enemies are unaware. As Son of God he is God revealing himself through his son, Jesus proving his sonship through his obedience and example; the gospel reflects the struggles and conflicts between the evangelist's community and the other Jews with its sharp criticism of the scribes and Pharisees. Prior to the Crucifixion the Jews are called the honorific title of God's chosen people; the oldest complete manuscripts of the Bible are the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus, which date from the 4th century. Besides these, there exist manuscript fragments ranging from a few verses to whole chapters. P 104 and P 67 are notable fragments of Matthew; these are copies of copies. In the process of recopying, variations slipped in, different regional manuscript traditions emerged, corrections and adjustments were made. Modern textual scholars collate all major surviving manuscripts, as well as citations in the works of the Church Fathers, in order to produce a text which most approximates to the lost autographs.
The gospel itself does not specify an author, but he was a male Jew, standing on the margin between traditional and non-traditional Jewish values, familiar with technical legal aspects of scripture being debated in his time. The majority of modern scholars believe that Mark was the first gospel to be composed and that Matthew and Luke both drew upon it as a major source for their works; the author of Matthew did not, however copy Mark, but used it as a base, emphasising Jesus' place in the Jewish tradition and including other details not covered in Mark. An additional 220 verses, shared by Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark, from a second source, a hypothetical collection of sayings to which scholars give the name "Quelle", or the Q source; this view, known as the Two-source hypothesis, allows for a further body of tradition known as "Special Matthew", or the M source, meaning material unique to Matthew. The author had the Greek scriptures at his disposal, both as book-scrolls and in the form of "testimony collections", and, if Papias is correct oral stories of his community.
These sources were predominantly in Greek, but not from any known version of the Septuagint. The majority view among scholars is that Matthew was a product of the last quarter of the 1st century; this makes it a work of the second generation of Christians, for whom the defining event was the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Romans in AD 70 in the course of the First Jewish–Roman War. The Christian community to which Matthew belonged, like many 1st-century Christians, was still part of the larger Jewish community: hence the designation Jewish Christian to describe them; the relationship of Matthew to this wider world of Judaism remains a subject of study and contention, the principal question being to what extent, if any, Matthew's community had cut itself off from its Jewish roots. There was conflict between Matthew's group and other Jewish groups, it is agreed that the root of the conflict was the Matthew community's belief in Jesus as the Messiah and authoritative interpreter of the law, as one risen from the dead and uniquely endowed with divine authority.
The author of Matthew wrote for a community of Greek-speaking Jewish Christians located in Syria (Antioch, the largest city in Roman Syria and the third-largest in the empire, is me
National Diet Library
The National Diet Library is the national library of Japan and among the largest libraries in the world. It was established in 1948 for the purpose of assisting members of the National Diet of Japan in researching matters of public policy; the library is similar in scope to the United States Library of Congress. The National Diet Library consists of two main facilities in Tōkyō and Kyōtō, several other branch libraries throughout Japan; the National Diet Library is the successor of three separate libraries: the library of the House of Peers, the library of the House of Representatives, both of which were established at the creation of Japan's Imperial Diet in 1890. The Diet's power in prewar Japan was limited, its need for information was "correspondingly small"; the original Diet libraries "never developed either the collections or the services which might have made them vital adjuncts of genuinely responsible legislative activity". Until Japan's defeat, the executive had controlled all political documents, depriving the people and the Diet of access to vital information.
The U. S. occupation forces under General Douglas MacArthur deemed reform of the Diet library system to be an important part of the democratization of Japan after its defeat in World War II. In 1946, each house of the Diet formed its own National Diet Library Standing Committee. Hani Gorō, a Marxist historian, imprisoned during the war for thought crimes and had been elected to the House of Councillors after the war, spearheaded the reform efforts. Hani envisioned the new body as "both a'citadel of popular sovereignty'", the means of realizing a "peaceful revolution"; the Occupation officers responsible for overseeing library reforms reported that, although the Occupation was a catalyst for change, local initiative pre-existed the Occupation, the successful reforms were due to dedicated Japanese like Hani. The National Diet Library opened in June 1948 in the present-day State Guest-House with an initial collection of 100,000 volumes; the first Librarian of the Diet Library was the politician Tokujirō Kanamori.
The philosopher Masakazu Nakai served as the first Vice Librarian. In 1949, the NDL became the only national library in Japan. At this time the collection gained an additional million volumes housed in the former National Library in Ueno. In 1961, the NDL opened at its present location in Nagatachō, adjacent to the National Diet. In 1986, the NDL's Annex was completed to accommodate a combined total of 12 million books and periodicals; the Kansai-kan, which opened in October 2002 in the Kansai Science City, has a collection of 6 million items. In May 2002, the NDL opened a new branch, the International Library of Children's Literature, in the former building of the Imperial Library in Ueno; this branch contains some 400,000 items of children's literature from around the world. Though the NDL's original mandate was to be a research library for the National Diet, the general public is the largest consumer of the library's services. In the fiscal year ending March 2004, for example, the library reported more than 250,000 reference inquiries.
As Japan's national library, the NDL collects copies of all publications published in Japan. Moreover, because the NDL serves as a research library for Diet members, their staffs, the general public, it maintains an extensive collection of materials published in foreign languages on a wide range of topics; the NDL has eight major specialized collections: Modern Political and Constitutional History. The Modern Political and Constitutional History Collection comprises some 300,000 items related to Japan's political and legal modernization in the 19th century, including the original document archives of important Japanese statesmen from the latter half of the 19th century and the early 20th century like Itō Hirobumi, Iwakura Tomomi, Sanjō Sanetomi, Mutsu Munemitsu, Terauchi Masatake, other influential figures from the Meiji and Taishō periods; the NDL has an extensive microform collection of some 30 million pages of documents relating to the Occupation of Japan after World War II. This collection include the documents prepared by General Headquarters and the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, the Far Eastern Commission, the United States Strategic Bombing Survey Team.
The Laws and Preliminary Records Collection consists of some 170,000 Japanese and 200,000 foreign-language documents concerning proceedings of the National Diet and the legislatures of some 70 foreign countries, the official gazettes, judicial opinions, international treaties pertaining to some 150 foreign countries. The NDL maintains a collection of some 530,000 books and booklets and 2 million microform titles relating to the sciences; these materials include, among other things, foreign doctoral dissertations in the sciences, the proceedings and reports of academic societies, catalogues of technical standards, etc. The NDL has a collection of 440,000 maps of Japan and other countries, including the topographica
Cynicism (philosophy)
Cynicism is a school of thought of ancient Greek philosophy as practiced by the Cynics. For the Cynics, the purpose of life is to live in agreement with nature; as reasoning creatures, people can gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way, natural for themselves, rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power and fame. Instead, they were to lead a simple life free from all possessions; the first philosopher to outline these themes was Antisthenes, a pupil of Socrates in the late 5th century BC. He was followed by Diogenes. Diogenes took Cynicism to its logical extremes, came to be seen as the archetypal Cynic philosopher, he was followed by Crates of Thebes, who gave away a large fortune so he could live a life of Cynic poverty in Athens. Cynicism spread with the rise of the Roman Empire in the 1st century, Cynics could be found begging and preaching throughout the cities of the empire. Cynicism declined and disappeared in the late 5th century, although similar ascetic and rhetorical ideas appear in early Christianity.
By the 19th century, emphasis on the negative aspects of Cynic philosophy led to the modern understanding of cynicism to mean a disposition of disbelief in the sincerity or goodness of human motives and actions. The name Cynic derives from Ancient Greek κυνικός, meaning'dog-like', κύων, meaning'dog'. One explanation offered in ancient times for why the Cynics were called "dogs" was because the first Cynic, taught in the Cynosarges gymnasium at Athens; the word cynosarges means the "place of the white dog". It seems certain, that the word dog was thrown at the first Cynics as an insult for their shameless rejection of conventional manners, their decision to live on the streets. Diogenes, in particular, was referred to as the "Dog", a distinction he seems to have revelled in, stating that "other dogs bite their enemies, I bite my friends to save them." Cynics sought to turn the word to their advantage, as a commentator explained: There are four reasons why the Cynics are so named. First because of the indifference of their way of life, for they make a cult of indifference and, like dogs and make love in public, go barefoot, sleep in tubs and at crossroads.
The second reason is that the dog is a shameless animal, they make a cult of shamelessness, not as being beneath modesty, but as superior to it. The third reason is that the dog is a good guard, they guard the tenets of their philosophy; the fourth reason is that the dog is a discriminating animal which can distinguish between its friends and enemies. So do they recognize as friends those who are suited to philosophy, receive them kindly, while those unfitted they drive away, like dogs, by barking at them. Cynicism is one of the most striking of all the Hellenistic philosophies, it offered people the possibility of freedom from suffering in an age of uncertainty. Although there was never an official Cynic doctrine, the fundamental principles of Cynicism can be summarized as follows: The goal of life is eudaimonia and mental clarity or lucidity - "freedom from smoke" which signified false belief, mindlessness and conceit. Eudaimonia is achieved by living in accord with Nature. Arrogance is caused by false judgments of value, which cause negative emotions, unnatural desires, a vicious character.
Eudaimonia, or human flourishing, depends on self-sufficiency, arete, love of humanity and indifference to the vicissitudes of life. One progresses towards flourishing and clarity through ascetic practices which help one become free from influences – such as wealth and power – that have no value in Nature. Examples include Diogenes' practice of walking barefoot in winter. A Cynic defaces the nomos of society, thus a Cynic has no property and rejects all conventional values of money, fame and reputation. A life lived according to nature requires only the bare necessities required for existence, one can become free by unshackling oneself from any needs which are the result of convention; the Cynics adopted Heracles as epitomizing the ideal Cynic. Heracles "was he who brought Cerberus, the hound of Hades, from the underworld, a point of special appeal to the dog-man, Diogenes." According to Lucian, "Cerberus and Cynic are related through the dog."The Cynic way of life required continuous training, not just in exercising judgments and mental impressions, but a physical training as well: used to say, that there were two kinds of exercise: that, namely, of the mind and that of the body.
None of this meant. Cynics were in fact to live in the full glare of the public's gaze and be quite indifferent in the face of any insults which might result from their unconventional behaviour; the Cynics are said to have invented the idea of cosmopolitanism: when he was asked where he came from, Diogenes replied that he was "a citizen of the world."The ideal Cynic would evangelise.
Historical Jesus
The term historical Jesus refers to attempts to reconstruct the life and teachings of Jesus by critical historical methods, in contrast to Christological definitions and other Christian accounts of Jesus. It considers the historical and cultural context in which Jesus lived. All scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed. Reconstructions of the historical Jesus are based on the Pauline epistles and the Gospels, while several non-Biblical sources bear witness to the historical existence of Jesus. Since the 18th century, three separate scholarly quests for the historical Jesus have taken place, each with distinct characteristics and developing new and different research criteria. Scholars differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the biblical accounts, the only two events subject to "almost universal assent" are that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate. Historical Jesus scholars contend that he was a Galilean Jew living in a time of messianic and apocalyptic expectations.
Some scholars credit the apocalyptic declarations of the gospels to him, while others portray his "Kingdom of God" as a moral one, not apocalyptic in nature. The portraits of Jesus that have been constructed in these processes have differed from each other, from the image portrayed in the gospel accounts; these portraits include that of Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet, charismatic healer, Cynic philosopher, Jewish messiah and prophet of social change, but there is little scholarly agreement on a single portrait, or the methods needed to construct it. There are, overlapping attributes among the various portraits, scholars who differ on some attributes may agree on others. Most scholars of antiquity agree. Historian Michael Grant asserts that if conventional standards of historical textual criticism are applied to the New Testament, "we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned." There is no indication that writers in antiquity who opposed Christianity questioned the existence of Jesus.
There is no physical or archeological evidence for Jesus, all the sources we have are documentary. The sources for the historical Jesus are Christian writings, such as the gospels and the purported letters of the apostles. All extant sources that mention Jesus were written after his death; the New Testament represents sources that have become canonical for Christianity, there are many apocryphal texts that are examples of the wide variety of writings in the first centuries AD that are related to Jesus. The authenticity and reliability of these sources has been questioned by many scholars, few events mentioned in the gospels are universally accepted; the Synoptic Gospels are the primary sources of historical information about Jesus and of the religious movement he founded. These religious gospels–the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Luke–recount the life, ministry and resurrection of a Jew named Jesus who spoke Aramaic and wore tzitzit. There are different hypotheses regarding the origin of the texts because the gospels of the New Testament were written in Greek for Greek-speaking communities, were translated into Syriac and Coptic.
The fourth gospel, the Gospel of John, differs from the Synoptic Gospels. Historians study the historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles when studying the reliability of the gospels, as the Book of Acts was written by the same author as the Gospel of Luke; the seven Pauline epistles considered by scholarly consensus to be genuine are dated to between AD 50 and 60 and are the earliest surviving Christian texts that may include information about Jesus. Although Paul the Apostle provides little biographical information about Jesus and states that he never knew Jesus he does make it clear that he considers Jesus to have been a real person and a Jew. Moreover, he claims to have met with the brother of Jesus. In addition to biblical sources, there are a number of mentions of Jesus in non-Christian sources that have been used in the historical analyses of the existence of Jesus. Biblical scholar Frederick Fyvie Bruce says the earliest mention of Jesus outside the New Testament occurs around 55 CE from a historian named Thallos.
Thallos' history, like the vast majority of ancient literature, has been lost but not before it was quoted by Sextus Julius Africanus, a Christian writer, in his History of the World. This book was lost, but not before one of its citations of Thallos was taken up by the Byzantine historian Georgius Syncellus in his Chronicle. There is no means by which certainty can be established concerning this or any of the other lost references, partial references, questionable references that mention some aspect of Jesus' life or death, but in evaluating evidence, it is appropriate to note they exist. There are two passages in the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus, one from the Roman historian Tacitus, that are considered good evidence. Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, written around 93–94 AD, includes two references to the biblical Jesus Christ in Books 18 and 20; the general scholarly view is that while the longer passage, known as the Testimonium Flavianum, is most not authentic in its entirety, it is broadly agreed upon that it consisted of an authentic nucleus, subject to Christian interpolation.
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Apocalypticism
Apocalypticism is the religious belief that there will be an apocalypse, a term which referred to a revelation, but now refers to the belief that the end of the world is imminent within one's own lifetime. This belief is accompanied by the idea that civilization will soon come to a tumultuous end due to some sort of catastrophic global event. Apocalypticism is conjoined with the belief that esoteric knowledge that will be revealed in a major confrontation between good and evil forces, destined to change the course of history. Apocalypses can be viewed as good, ambiguous or neutral, depending on the particular religion or belief system promoting them, they can appear as a personal or group tendency, an outlook or a perceptual frame of reference, or as expressions in a speaker's rhetorical style. Some scholars believe that Jesus' apocalyptic teachings were the central message Jesus intended to impart, more central than his messianism. Various Christian eschatological systems have developed, providing different frameworks for understanding the timing and nature of apocalyptic predictions.
Some like dispensational premillennialism tend more toward an apocalyptic vision, while others like postmillennialism and amillennialism, while teaching that the end of the world could come at any moment, tend to focus on the present life and contend that one should not attempt to predict when the end should come, though there have been exceptions such as postmillennialist Jonathan Edwards, who estimated that the end times would occur around the year 2000. The gospels portray Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet, described by himself and by others as the Son of Man – translated as the Son of Humanity – and hailing the restoration of Israel. Jesus himself, as the Son of God, a description used by himself and others for him, was to rule this kingdom as lord of the Twelve Apostles, the judges of the twelve tribes. Albert Schweitzer emphasized that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, preparing his fellow Jews for the imminent end of the world. Many historians concur that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, most notably Paula Fredriksen, Bart Ehrman, John P. Meier.
E. P. Sanders portrays Jesus as expecting to assume the "viceroy" position in God's kingdom, above the Apostles, who would judge the twelve tribes, but below God, he concludes, that Jesus seems to have rejected the title Messiah, he contends that the evidence is uncertain to whether Jesus meant himself when he referred to the Son of Man coming on the clouds as a divine judge, further states that biblical references to the Son of Man as a suffering figure are not genuine. The preaching of John was, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand", Jesus taught this same message. Additionally, Jesus spoke of the signs of "the close of the age" in the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24, near the end of which he said, "his generation will not pass away until all these things take place". Interpreters have understood this phrase in a variety of ways, some saying that most of what he described was in fact fulfilled in the destruction of the Temple in the Roman Siege of Jerusalem, some that "generation" should be understood instead to mean "race" among other explanations.
Other scholars such as Ehrman and Sanders accept that Jesus was mistaken, that he believed the end of the world to be imminent. "We make sense of these pieces of evidence if we think that Jesus himself told his followers that the Son of Man would come while they still lived. The fact that this expectation was difficult for Christians in the first century helps prove that Jesus held it himself. We note that Christianity survived this early discovery that Jesus had made a mistake well." There are a few recorded instances of apocalypticism leading up to the year 1000. However they rely on one source, Rodulfus Glaber. In Western Europe, during the year 1000, Christian philosophers held many debates on when Jesus was born and when the apocalypse would occur; this caused confusion between the common people on whether or not the apocalypse would occur at a certain time. Because both literate and illiterate people accepted this idea of the apocalypse, they could only accept what they heard from religious leaders on when the disastrous event would occur.
Religious leader, Abbo II of Metz believed that Jesus was born 21 years after year 1, accepted by close circles of his followers. Abbot Heriger of Lobbes, argued that the birth of Jesus occurred not during the year 1 but rather during the 42nd year of the common era. Many scholars came to accept that the apocalypse would occur sometime between 979-1042. Although there were debates about the apocalypse itself, few people understood the consequences of what would happen if the apocalypse occurred. Few documents from around the year 1000 exist to interpret what people thought would happen, because of this, many scholars are unaware of what people felt. People do understand that the idea of apocalypticism has influenced several Western Christian European leaders into social reform. With influences by the German ruler Otto III, the Sibyls, Abbot Adso of Montier-en-Dier, many of the people under these influential figures felt that their rule was a sign of spiritual preparation for the apocalypse itself.
It is suggested that because of the influence and reputation of these people, many wanted to follow suit and believe that the apocalypse would occur because their leaders felt it to be true. The Fifth Monarchy Men were active from 1649 to 1661 during the Inter
