Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2012 July 1

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July 1

Bible - St. Mark. Messanic Secrets

How Many Messanic Secrets are there in the bible King James? ```` — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.179.150.223 (talk) 09:35, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

None. The bible is a work of religious, moral, and philosophical revelation, meant to teach everyone. It's not a sudoku puzzle. 146.90.44.251 (talk) 10:28, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Although another possible answer is, "All of them." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:25, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Per our article on the Gospel of Mark, the "Messianic Secret" theory was advanced by William Wrede in 1901 to describe the literary device of said gospel. As such, it's not a question of "how many secrets." — Lomn 14:14, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Why do you specify the King James Version versus others? Barring translators' errors (either mistranslations or picking the wrong texts from which to translate), every translation will have the same information. Nyttend (talk) 00:24, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

If the King's English is good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me. μηδείς (talk) 22:23, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Jesus and Mark would have used the Septuagint. One significant extra mention in this is Gog and Magog as the king of locusts. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:36, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Smaller number, better model

Many products, eg cars (Audi 4, 5, 6; BMW 3,5, 6, 7 series; Volvo S40, 60, 80), planes (707, 737, 747; 320, 380), etc, are better (or certainly newer), the bigger the number assigned to the model. I could only think of one type of product, cameras, where it works the other way round (Canon 1D, 5D, 450D; Olympus OM1), and even with cameras it's not uniform (Nikon D1, D2, D3). There must be other products and product types where 1 is better than a bigger number, but I can't immediately think of any. Anyone? Ericoides (talk) 14:18, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Smaller numbers are catchier and easier to remember, so manufacturers and marketers will reserve small numbers for their flagship models (but still increment them normally; the OM1 was followed by the OM2, etc). When the LNER renumbered their locomotives in 1946, the most prestigious and high-profile classes were given the smallest numbers, with the flagship Gresley A4s numbered 1 to 34. FiggyBee (talk) 15:21, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

A couple thoughts:

1) For a company moving downmarket (creating new, cheaper products), the cheaper ones, being newer, are likely to have higher numbers.

2) At some point numbers just get too high, and the company may start over again with low numbers. In the Boeing 7x7 series convention, for example, they only go up to 797, then need to start over at 707, unless they want to have a 7107 or 7A7 airframe (apparently they had proposed a Boeing 7J7). StuRat (talk) 17:45, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Formula 1, First Class (mail and travel), Division 1 (at least before they introduced the Premiership). A factor that makes it harder for products to be place '1 is best' is that if you replace the '1' product with something newer and better...what do you call it? If you use bigger = better then you have an easier mechanism for showing progress/figuring out what's the current 'top' model. . ny156uk (talk) 19:24, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

The humble countdown has a descent history.  :)  :) -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 20:07, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

I dispute your premise Ericoides. In the car world, generally bigger numbers just mean a bigger car - see Audi A1 (supermini), A3 (small family car), A4 (compact exec) [...] A8 (full-size luxury car); or BMW 1 Series (small family car), 3 Series (family car) [...] 7 Series (full-size luxury car). I can't think of a single manufacturer who increases their numbering sequentially to denote 'newness', except possibly Peugeot, with the 106, 107 and 108, but even they use the 'bigger number/bigger car' theme - compare Peugeot 108, Peugeot 208 and Peugeot 308. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 20:26, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

But I can. Ford increased their model names to denote newness from their start (alphabetically) Model A, B, C, and later numerically in Cortina Mark I, II, III, IV, V. Jaguar have sold models identified solely by Mark V, VII, IX, X and developed racing models identified alphabetically as C-Type, D-Type, E-Type.DriveByWire (talk) 01:07, 2 July 2012 (UTC)