Monday, January 07, 2013

Increase Mather on Gynecandrical Dancing

This is just too much fun.

Here is Increase Mather's pamphlet An Arrow Against Profane and Promiscuous Dancing Drawn out of the Quiver of Scriptures (Boston 1684). You understand, he's against mixed dancing because it may lead to mixed dancing.

Of interest, on p.12 he points out that in the description of Jacob's marriage in Genesis, we read of a marriage, but no dancing! On p. 21 he rhetorically asks, Is this a time for Jigs and Galiards! On p. 23 he explains that David and Miriam's dances were "Religious Dances accomodated to the State of the Old Testament-Church." And, of course, those were not "mixt" dances.


13 comments:

  1. This post is #4 in a Google search for "gynecandrical." LOL!

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    1. Let's make it #1! Traffic, comment, etc. LOL

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  2. Replies
    1. We are making lexical history in real time.

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  3. Its already number one in a search for "Jigs and Galiards". Mind explaining what in the world it is?

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  4. It's a little known fact that "Gangnam Style" is a Korean corruption of "Gynecandrical Saltation."

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  5. According to the OED "gynecandrical" should be spelt "gynæcandrical" and it means "pertaining to both men and women". In this context it means a dance involving both men and women. "Saltation" means "leaping, bounding, or jumping", and hence can refer to a dance; jigs and galliards (note: two l's) are old-fashioned dances of a particularly rapid and lively nature.

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  6. Christians are in general not aware of the actual meaning of the 7th commandment. i think this is because of a lack of Hebrew. They seem to confuse the word related to adultery to the word referring to znut. If they would go through the Torah once a year like Jews do they probably would not make this mistake.[They would notice the usage of the word adultery in Leviticus and notice that it refers only to a married woman.] The reason this never a\occurs to them is that Paul considered any sex outside of marriage to be adultery. According to the book of Thecla, he considered sex in Marriage to be adultery. He probably should not be considered an expert in Old Testament Law.

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  7. "Book of Thecla"???

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  8. "Increase" Mather is actually an Anglicized form of Yosef. (Yosef = increase.) And "Cotton" Mather was the Anglicized form of "junior". (Kotton = junior)


    (Read this years ago in a pretty learned work, can't remember. First sounds more plausible than the second, but who knows with these wacky christian hebraists.)

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    1. Interesting. I can see, looking quickly, that it is definitely a belief that is out there. Would like to confirm it.

      Quick peak at Wiki shows that Increase had a brother named Joseph, so that's a little odd. Also, he had a brother named Eleazar (not to mention Samuel and Nathaniel) so I would guess that his parents knew how to give Hebrew names. As for Cotton, according to Wiki he was named for his grandfather, John Cotton.

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  9. Sounds a little more likely than the urban legend about sticking a finger into a Bible at random and naming the kid whatever word turns up. Although I have in my own family tree the names Bava and Tana (Buva and Tuna in the Hungarian pronunciation) and the story I'm told from both ends is that the father went to a tzaddik to ask what to name the kid, but the tzaddik was in middle of learning, and when he called out a word aloud, they used that word.

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