Talk:Purity of Virgins

RFV discussion: April–December 2022

 * Captain of Man's Salvation
 * Father of Heaven and Earth
 * Glory of Heaven
 * King of Glory
 * Joy of Angels
 * King of Patriarchs
 * Light of the World
 * Redeemer of the World
 * Sun of Justice

Being an epithet of some (real or fictional) entity does not, in my opinion, by itself imply a term is entry-worthy. Satan has been called “the adversary of man”. To fully understand the significance of the epithet requires some background, in particular (1) that as a common noun means “adversary”, (2) that in the common Christian conception “the devil” and “Satan” refer to the same supernatural being; and (3) that the author of  warns us, human beings, “” It only becomes lexical when writers use the term adversary of man, while readers are supposed to understand, without being told so, that this term refers to Satan. Likewise, if we read “Jesus, Purity of Virgins”, this use does attest to this being one of many Christian epithets for Jesus Christ, but verification requires more: uses attesting to the epithet’s having become lexicalized. --Lambiam 18:43, 21 April 2022 (UTC)


 * FWIW I agree mere use as a descriptor or epithet in a form like (e.g.) "Jesus, Captain of Man's Salvation" does not (itself) suggest that "Captain of Man's Salvation" lexically means "Jesus"; we need, at a minimum, more cites like the "when the Captain of Man's Salvation visibly ascended" one. (Even then, cf Talk:Prince of the Power of the Air...) - -sche (discuss) 23:44, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
 * That quotation is lifted from a sermon on the . In the context it will be clear to anyone who understands English, including people who have never before encountered the collocation Captain of Man’s Salvation and are also otherwise quite ignorant of the doctrines of Christology, that its referent is none other than Jesus Christ. Otherwise it would be like claiming that Stetsoned billionaire is a lexical term for . --Lambiam 09:43, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree. These don’t seem like set phrases. — Sgconlaw (talk) 20:13, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Good point. (Reminds me of what I raised with regard to "Prince of the Power of the Air", that "forty-third President of the United States" likewise always means one specific person, but . . . ) - -sche (discuss) 15:49, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
 * In that case, the meaning is understood because the term is a transparent sum of parts, like “the oldest son of Emperor Frederick III of Germany”. It is not particularly relevant that this means one specific person; the same issue applies to “the descendants of Emperor Frederick III of Germany”. Captain of Man’s Salvation is in contrast rather opaque and not a priori particularly meaningful; to assign it the idiomatic meaning of Jesus in our dictionary, we need to make sure the term is used by itself and meant to be understood as having that meaning. --Lambiam 18:20, 23 April 2022 (UTC)


 * Most of those are random descriptive phrases that have just happen to have been been used as epithets. King of Glory seems more like a set phrase, especially since (like Ancient of Days, which comes from Biblical Aramaic) it preserves something of the construct formation of the Hebrew original. I would note, however, that it originally referred to God- its application to Jesus is secondary and not deserving of an entry on its own. Light of the World feels like a set phrase to me as well. As a member of a church choir I've encountered it many times in prayers and anthems where the context implies a set phrase, though I'm not sure I can find them online. Also, it's used as part of organization names such as "Light of the World Ministries", which again implies a well known set phrase.
 * Looking at the google hits for "Oh, Light of the World" I also see some non-Christian usage where it refers to someone seen as the epitome of brightness. Perhaps it might be better to generalize it and make the Christian epithet a subsense. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:36, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * If there are senses meeting our CFI, they can be added. This holds equally for any subsenses, but a subsense does not automatically become entry-worthy by dint of the worthiness of its supersense. This RfV is an rfv-sense specifically for the (non-gloss-definition) sense “an epithet for Jesus Christ”. --Lambiam 18:01, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Whew! I have cited all of these epithets. The ones I could not cite, I moved to another heading where they have been marked failed. Whether these epithets are inclusion-worthy is more a question for RFD than RFV. Kiwima (talk) 05:05, 27 May 2022 (UTC)


 * I am unfortunately inclined to say not cited (for the most part); while I appreciate the time and effort you've put into finding occurrences of these sequences of letters in texts, they (mostly) don't demonstrate that these phrases idiomatically mean what the entries claim they idiomatically mean, as other users have laid out above, and that has traditionally been an RFV issue, despite some efforts of late to insist such things should be offloaded to the Tea Room, RFC, and/or RFD. (This has been an occasional issue with other things being marked as passed because the sequence of letters occurred in a book, but not actually in the claimed meaning, e.g. at quenouille.) For example, citations of the form "He is the immaculate Lamb of God; He is the Purity of Virgins; He is the Lover of Chastity." don't seem to me (or apparently Lambiam or other users above) to support the idea that it means or is lexically an epithet for "Jesus" any more than "Biden is the President" would support a sense "Epithet for Joe Biden" at President. I can see how the border between this and an RFD issue is a bit grey and fuzzy, but in this case the discussion above suggests that enough people think this (issue that we need other citations, if they exist [which we have RFVed the entries because we doubt], not citations of the form provided) is an RFV issue that I think it's correctly listed here. I don't want to step on anyone's toes but I am tempted to remove the citations like that ("He is the Purity of Virgins; He is the Lover of Chastity") for that reason (they don't satisfy the RFV issue). - -sche (discuss) 19:36, 29 May 2022 (UTC)


 * Failed, it appears that the consensus here is that these should not be kept even if they have been used. - TheDaveRoss  16:19, 6 December 2022 (UTC)