Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2008-03-04 Amen

Who are the involved parties?
Raystauber, Nuwaubian Hotep, Gareth Hughes

What's going on?
I am requesting the removal of a WP:NPOV tag from the subject heading, and citation tag added to the statement "It has been proposed that Amen is a derivative of the name of an Egyptian god named Amen (Amun)."

What would you like to change about that?
I would like the Amen page from the Catholic Encyclopedia cited as a reference based upon this statement.

"...Finally, we may note that the word Amen occurs not infrequently in early Christian inscriptions, and that it was often introduced into anathemas and gnostic spells. Moreover, as the Greek letters which form Amen according to their numerical values total 99 (alpha=1, mu=40, epsilon=8, nu=50), this number often appears in inscriptions, especially of Egyptian origin, and a sort of magical efficacy seems to have been attributed to its symbol. It should also be mentioned that the word Amen is still employed in the ritual both of Jews and Mohammedans."

I have provided sufficient documentation and evidence to support the inclusion of the Egpytian use of the word Amen. Many sources have been provided showing the relationship between the Egyptian use of the word amen and the use of the word by the Jews. Some of the parties in this mediation attempt are trying to pose a theory that the Jews left Egypt after worshiping the God Amen for hundreds of years and suddenly forgot all about the use of the term once they hit the border. The notion that the term was derived from Hebrew is absurd. A trip to the Jewish Encyclopedia to see when the Hebrew language was invented should be sufficient in disproving their theory. 

Lucky (talk) 04:34, 23 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Utter Nonsense - see Hanina's comments on the Amen talk page. The Egyptian inscriptions reflect a numerical value. Does Amun in Egyptian mean 99? Does the word Amun originate in the number 99? Nonsese.Guedalia D&#39;Montenegro (talk) 03:14, 25 April 2008 (UTC)


 * This is the first paragraph of the Catholic Encyclopedia.
 * "The word Amen is one of a small number of Hebrew words which have been imported unchanged into the liturgy of the Church, propter sanctiorem as St. Augustine expresses it, in virtue of an exceptionally sacred example. "So frequent was this Hebrew in the mouth of Our Saviour", observes the Catechism of the Council of Trent, "that it pleased the Holy Ghost to have it perpetuated in the Church of God". In point of fact St. Matthew attributes it to Our Lord twenty-eight times, and St. John in its doubled form twenty-six times. As regards the etymology, Amen is a derivative from the Hebrew verb aman "to strengthen" or "Confirm". (emphasis added)"Guedalia D&#39;Montenegro (talk)

Discussion

 * "Etymology" is WP:NPOV-tagged, but the actual Amen subject heading is not.
 * The Catholic Encyclopedia citation does not even discuss the (unproven) POV that amen<--Amun. It is OR to use this reference to demonstrate the amen<--Amun POV.
 * Inscriptions of "especially Egyptian origin" that include the number 99 tell us something only about the Greek word amen. (Greek was widely spoken in Egypt from Alexander the Great until the rise of Islam.) The numerical value of the Greek word amen is 99; this has nothing to do with an Egyptian word.
 * Any dictionary etymology of "amen" will show that Greek borrowed amen from Hebrew, and will say nothing of Egyptian.
 * Hanina (talk) 00:48, 5 March 2008 (UTC)