Talk:Wolves in folklore, religion and mythology

Globalization

This article, though it satisfactorily explains the history and evolution of attitudes toward wolves in North America, needs more input form Asian and European sources who know a thing or two about how and why wolves were treated the way they were several hundred years before the pilgrims crossed the pond and brought their inbred notions with them. Other sections similar to the ones written already would be helpful if anyone is knowledgeable regarding the history of the gray wolf in Eurasia. -GrittyLobo441 02:49, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

POV

I started the section on "Early perceptions of wolves in North America" and got through the first paragraph before the obvious agenda became to much. I thought it was a simple little twist in wording that was mistaken and forgivable. But the "With few vouching for them, wolves and other predators were destroyed en masse, resulting in a so-called "hunters' paradise" free from competing predators. To accomplish this, there was no limit to the extent hunters and trappers were willing to go in order to kill predators in large numbers." No one editing WP is far removed enough to make this sort of statement without revealing a bias, whether the readers here prefer it or not. It may not be intentional, but this phrasing comes off with a self-righteous sneer when I read it. Please re-write this to something less sanctimonious. 24.250.247.160 18:41, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Turkish Culture

Wolf is an important figure in the Turkish mythology. In the Ergenekon Legend, a grey wolf shows the way to Turkish warriors when they lost their way in the iron mountain. After reaching to the spets of Central Asia, Turks defeat invaders and take the control of the motherland again. Because of this legend, grey wolf is the center animal figure in Turkish history. Deliogul 11:01, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

"Christian" attitudes section

So is the entire "Christian attitudes" section, which seems to have been written with the intent to make Christians look like horrible people, rather than talking about WOLVES which is what the article was supposed to be about. Genesis 1:29 reads:

And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which [is] upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which [is] the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

The Hebrew word translated as "given" is nathan which can also mean permitted, or entrusted. Using one of these words certainly gives the verse a different flavor, doesn't it? The interpretation of this one verse saying that all of nature was created solely to support man appears to be grossly exaggerated. It is also not stated in Genesis 2:18-20 that the animals were created for man's benefit.

And the LORD God said, [It is] not good that the man should be alone; I will make a helper for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought [them] unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that [was] the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

Genesis 1:24-26 lists the animals as having been created first, which the tense of the original Hebrew in Genesis 2:19 seems to agree with. This whole "everything is about me" dogma is just that--dogma, created by self-loving people who want to be able to do whatever they want "because God said so". Genesis 2:15 has also been interpreted as meaning that man's original purpose was to work the garden for God.

Granted, since most of the people on WP seem to hate Christians, I doubt anyone will bother to do anything about this, but it was worth pointing out. 75.212.87.88 (talk) 20:58, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

You have a point. The thing is, the perceptions of Christians are how they interpret the versions of the Bible they have, and most people don't have the original Hebrew text. In a lot of cases, the Bible is probably misinterpreted, or even have words put in it were it doesn't say that.

However, consider the Seven Deadly Sins: Not once are they mentioned in the Bible. So the Bible isn't the complete source of Christian beliefs.

Also

and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

In my experience, "dominion" means that humans can do what they want with their "subjects." And that would mean killing wolves when they become inconvenient.

Then again, Ecclesiastes Chapter 3:

18 I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts.

19 For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.

Contradictions aside, the former quote sadly seems to feature more prominently in "civilized" attitudes towards nature. Dusk Raven (talk) 23:59, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I think there are some ways we can improve this section.

"The Book of Genesis was interpreted in Medieval Europe as stating that nature exists solely to support man (Genesis 1:29), who must cultivate it (Genesis 2:15), and that animals are made for his own purposes (Genesis 2:18-20). By this perspective, nature was only acceptable if controlled by man, more specifically by a Christian culture."

I see what this is trying to get at, I think, that Christian Europe thus didn't have a problem killing wolves, which were perceived as interfering with "man's dominion". I'm not sure I fully buy it, but the problem right now is that it is a fragment, which needs to be tied to wolves as such. I don't think I can do it, because I think it would need a cite "As a result, wolves were hunted to extinction"[cit] or whatever is being driven at, and I don't have such a cite, nor am I totally confident I understand the original intent of the original editor. It occurs to me that while the section has references to specific verses of Genesis, the contention that the medieval church believed X is left uncited.

The next sentence in the paragraph and the last seem fine. However, the penultimate sentence is a little problematic.

"The Roman Catholic Church often used the negative imagery of wolves in order to create a sense of real devils prowling the real world."

This minimally needs a cite. It seems to me, however, that it is being used to editorialize in a way designed to make medieval European Christianity look foolish or conspiratorial, insofar as it would seem that it is essentially saying that the Church (apparently not the E. Orthodox Church, etc, though) used the wolf metaphors established in the previous sentence in ways consistent with those metaphors. Maybe something like "Christian leaders [more specific, obviously, if the cite supports it] thus often compared people perceived as evil to wolves" although that would still need a cite. And having looked at the cite for the next sentence, it can't be validly used as a site this sentence (nothing about Christianity, period, at least in the cited area - and I would question the work more broadly, as it refers to "the Inquisition... condemn[ing] hundreds of alleged werewolves to burn at the stake" when that is in broad contradiction with the Wikipedia articles on both Werewolves and the Inquisition). -5/17/2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.226.144.109 (talk) 05:45, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

India?

Where's India on this thing? You know, the place where wolves have killed children in double digit numbers as recently as the 90's. How do they feel about that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.98.223.97 (talk) 00:58, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

And what percentage of their population is that?Dusk Raven (talk) 12:52, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Moving from "Attitudes Towards Wolves"

The "Attitudes Towards Wolves" page got moved to here, according to the logs, and yet there's no trace of anything that was in the "Attitudes Towards Wolves" page (except maybe a few religious details), so essentially the page just got deleted for no reason, and can't be restored, even. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dusk Raven (talk • contribs) 03:08, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Correction: I did a bit of checking, and the article as I remembered it is here, in the edit history. It was removed because most of it was "plagiarised" from the hunting and reintroduction articles, but (after admittedly a short search) I'm not sure how that's the case.Dusk Raven (talk) 03:15, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Mythology, Religion

Why are some cultural legends and beliefs categorized as "mythology", and others as "religion"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.112.71.2 (talk) 18:01, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Böri

In Old Turkic, Böri means wolf. Böri (talk) 10:26, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Asena? The wolf or the boy?

So, on this page it says Asena is the name of the blue-maned wolf, yet, on the actual Asena page it says Asena is the name of the boy that the wolf saved... Which one is correct? ItsWolfeh (talk) 11:33, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I think the Asena article explains that Asena is really the boy in the narrative, but that the Turkish nationalists in the 1920s got it wrong, so that in Turkey it is now generally believed that Asena is the name of the wolf.

I suppose this illustrates that folklore cannot be 'incorrect' as long as it remains folklore, but when it is resurrected for the purpose of nationalism, it becomes 'un-folklore' or 'undead folklore', and may be represented either correctly or incorrectly by people with a political agenda. Such mistakes may then sink back into the popular mind and become neo-folklore. --dab (𒁳) 14:18, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Disrepectful

Why is Hinduism categorized as a mythology while Christianity and Islam are considered religions? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.164.230.142 (talk) 12:19, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Are wolves directly involved in Hindi religion or just part of the mythology? That's my understanding for the seperation GimliDotNet ^{(Speak to me,Stuff I've done)} 13:27, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

you cannot treat religion and mythology as separate. There is no religion without mythology, and no mythology without religion. The division is not necessarily "disrespectful" but it is certainly misguided. I rearranged the toc, but obivously I cannot turn a crappy article into a good article just by rearranging text. --dab (𒁳) 14:16, 19 December 2012 (UTC)