Timeline for What does "the sacred and profane" possibly mean? and what's the meaning of the sentence?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
18 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 19, 2017 at 7:56 | vote | accept | jack bang | ||
| Feb 18, 2017 at 9:14 | comment | added | Teacher KSHuang | @jackbang, 1) Yes, it could. 2) Not really. More like "gathering" or "accumulating." It's the river that's collecting the sacred and profane; it's not cleaning itself up. | |
| Feb 17, 2017 at 7:40 | comment | added | jack bang | and does collecting mean cleaning up in this case? | |
| Feb 17, 2017 at 6:12 | comment | added | jack bang | Could this sentence, anyway, be rewritten as "by collecting the sacred and profane in its arid watershed"? | |
| Feb 16, 2017 at 19:17 | comment | added | choster | Like mundane, earthly, or wordly, profane can have negative meanings, but as OrangeDog notes, it is neutral here, and sacred is not a reference to possession of virtue, but of a sanctiied purpose. In other words, the sacred and the profane is not equivalent to the righteous and the wicked, it is more like the lay and the clergy. It originated in theological discourse, but Nicean Christianity does not hold that earthly things are evil (this is characteristic of the Gnostics and Manicheans, whose influence on English is slight). | |
| Feb 16, 2017 at 14:21 | comment | added | OrangeDog | "sacred and profane", "religious and secular", "spiritual and temporal" - all mean "everything" | |
| Feb 16, 2017 at 12:56 | comment | added | stangdon | @TeacherKSHuang - I think OrangeDog's point is that "sacred and profane" is kind of a stock phrase, in the context of which "the profane" means "the stuff that is not sacred" (if you look up "profane", that's one of its definitions) and as such it doesn't quite mean the same thing as obscene, dirty, violating, etc. | |
| Feb 16, 2017 at 12:14 | comment | added | Teacher KSHuang | @OrangeDog. I don't know. I'm OK with the second part of this comment, but the first part is a little shaky to me. Does "not sacred" (profane) necessarily mean secular? And I'm still not clear how the sacred and profane dichotomy applies? Perhaps I misunderstand the dichotomy when I see it to mean only group interests versus individual interests? | |
| Feb 16, 2017 at 11:56 | comment | added | OrangeDog | The literal definition is "not sacred". Common usage (e.g. "profanity") has more negative connotations. The literal interpretation of the phrase is that the land around the river (the arid watershed) will be occupied by both religious and secular activity. The mingling of the water in the river is a metaphor for the mingling of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, Jewish, Muslim and Atheist, in peace. | |
| Feb 16, 2017 at 11:53 | comment | added | Teacher KSHuang | @OrangeDog. Do you mind explaining why you think that link applies? Because I had tried to imagine this essay in that context at first, but at the end, I felt like I was forcing the explanation and so settled for the literal definitions of the words. | |
| Feb 16, 2017 at 11:50 | comment | added | Teacher KSHuang | @OrangeDog. Hmmm, yes, I see what you mean. | |
| Feb 16, 2017 at 11:47 | comment | added | OrangeDog | "profane" just means "not sacred" in this context. Note it refers to the purified river as collecting the profane, so it doesn't mean (just) the effluent. This is the better Wikipedia link: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred%E2%80%93profane_dichotomy | |
| Feb 16, 2017 at 11:19 | history | edited | Teacher KSHuang | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Feb 16, 2017 at 11:03 | history | edited | Teacher KSHuang | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Feb 16, 2017 at 10:21 | history | edited | Teacher KSHuang | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Feb 16, 2017 at 10:05 | history | edited | Teacher KSHuang | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Feb 16, 2017 at 9:35 | history | edited | Teacher KSHuang | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Feb 16, 2017 at 9:30 | history | answered | Teacher KSHuang | CC BY-SA 3.0 |