In the novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame by great French author Victor Hugo, Esmeralda is sentenced to death for killing of Captain Phoebus. But when you continue reading the novel you'll find out Phoebus is still alive. At some point even King Louis XI ordered his soldiers (including Phoebus) to...

What is the difference between OBV (Old Babylonian Version) and SBV (Standard Babylonian Version), in Babylonian texts translated to English ? Is SVB a standardized translation or standardized form of Babylonian vocabulary/grammar/literature ?

I've sometime before tried reading the Blood Meridian, and mroe recently, die Verwandlung. I find that in both these books, there seems to be difficulty in me understanding things which happen in the story due to them happening in a totally different cultural context than I have been used to. For...

Chapter 1 of Introduction to Psalms by Hermann Gunkel contains the following quote: The primary preliminary task will be to provide an overview of the entire material transmitted to us. The reason is self-evident. It cannot be satisfactory simply to observe the poetry of the biblical psalter. Ra...

Consider the following sentence: When Harry pulled back his sheets, he found his invisibility cloak folded neatly underneath them. Blockquote Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone I would suppose that he pulled one sheet, but the plural usage of the word "sheet" bewilders me. Does it mean th...

He stretched out under the tree does it mean he lied down or just stretched his limbs while sitting?

In S. Y. Agnon's short story "Two Pairs", in part 10, the narrator experiences several odd dreams involving his tefillin, and a couple strange instances with them, and then his house burns down, including burning his old Rabbi Elimelech pair of tefillin. The next day I discovered that the wings ...

They didn't meet anyone else until they reached the staircase up to the third floor. Peeves was bobbing halfway up, loosening the carpet so that people would trip. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone Does the word "bobbing" imply movement towards the middle of the stair, or movement up and...