Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 December 3

= December 3 =

Cut out the Guff?
Who is this "Lord Guff" mentioned in connection with the Second Anglo-Sikh War in Mong, Punjab? I find it rather suspicious that Google cites him only with regard to this one battle. Did he actually exist? Clarityfiend (talk) 00:56, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
 * He was a spelling mistake. See Hugh Gough, 1st Viscount Gough. DuncanHill (talk) 01:06, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Thankee. Clarityfiend (talk) 04:52, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Shame; the British Empire ought to have been built by somebody called Lord Guff. Alansplodge (talk) 12:55, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Or even Lord Guffy. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:02, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Non-Britons might be unaware of guff (third-person singular simple present guffs, present participle guffing, simple past and past participle guffed) 1. (slang) To break wind. Alansplodge (talk) 15:09, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Some Britons might be unaware of that too. I (an ancient Briton) only knew it as a noun meaning "nonsense". Thincat (talk) 22:54, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Certainly in schoolboy use in London, circa 1970. Alansplodge (talk) 09:09, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
 * "Who you gonna call?? - Guff Busters!!" Martinevans123 (talk) 23:07, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Order of the Twelve Minor Prophets
The order of the Four Major Prophets seems perfectly chronological. As for the Minor Prophets, in either the Masoretic Text or the Septuagint, the ordering does not appear to be consistently chronological (either with regard to its purported author's lifetime, or with the time of the book's actual composition), nor according to text length. — 82.79.183.199 (talk) 15:47, 3 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Though impossible to say with any certainty, the order is probably intended to be chronological. The difficulty is that only some have clear historical indicators - others have been placed through similarity to other works, or because of references which may or may not have been contemporary (e.g. Jonah, in which the date of the story setting may be very different to the date when it was actually written down). The Jewish scribes did their best, but it does look as if quite a bit of guesswork went into the process. Wymspen (talk) 19:04, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

The text of these "minor" prophets were typically short and often lack sufficient detail for chronological placement. The entire Book of Obadiah is a single chapter, and serves more as a rant against Edom than a prophecy. It explains nothing about the writer, includes few personal names, and does not seem to mention any known ruler that was alive at the time of writing. Dimadick (talk) 00:44, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
 * The first recorded incident of "trolling"? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:43, 4 December 2017 (UTC)


 * here is one attempt at a chronology for the minor prophets. Notably, the order is not terribly off, which may be backing to Wymspen's assertion that they were probably intended to be chronological, but later scholarship has revised the order some.  You'll note that the the last three are in the correct order, and the only two that are wildly out of order are Obadiah and Jonah.  -- Jayron 32 13:35, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
 * See also Dating the Bible. 92.8.223.3 (talk) 17:27, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

There is good information about this in the very article mentioned in this section's header. See [] --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 11:10, 6 December 2017 (UTC)