Talk:Monastery of St Lot

Wrong name

The place is known from literature as the monastery of Lot or St Lot.

Word by word: "sanctuary" is wrong, as it is a regular Byzantine monastery. Poor translations from various languages lead to churches and monasteries being called "temples" and "sanctuaries". Also, there is no need whatsoever to keep the original Greek word "ag[h]ios" for "saint". Finally, monasteries in the region are normally called "Monastery of X" or "X's Monastery", seldom "Monastery of Saint X". The exceptions are such named after exceptional characters, which would fit here (Old Testament figure morphed into Christian saint), or after pairs of saints (see "Church of Sts. Lot and Procopius" at Mount Nebo).

So both in terms of common use of the name, and in terms of its inner logic, it needs to be either "Monastery of Lot" / "Lot's Monastery", or "Monastery of St Lot" (St, as being a contraction, in BE; St. in AE).

Politis, the head archaeologist, who is Greek, might tend towards using "Aghios" due to personal affinity to the language and the Greek Orthodox sense for naming holy figures, as well as due to the concrete wording of the Madaba Map:

τό(πος) τοῦ ἁγίου Λ[ώτ] = "(Holy) place of Saint Lot." (The so-called Madaba Mosaic Map..., University of Oxford)

The Madaba Map always uses this formula, τό(πος) τοῦ, "(holy) place of...".

Some very strict academics or bureaucrats might also be inclined to reproduce the exact Greek wording from the Madaba Map, translating "(Holy) place" with "Sanctuary". But here the leading principle is to choose the common name, not to stick to such pedantic literal translations.

Joan Taylor, a Dead Sea specialist and Enhglish native speaker, consistently uses "monastery of Lot" - lower case, descriptive, but the vernacular, which Wiki always follows, adopts such as proper names, thus upper-case M. (The Dead Sea in Western Travellers’ Accounts from the Byzantine to the Modern Period.)

Andrew M. Madden, in A New Form of Evidence to Date the Madaba Map Mosaic, uses "Church of St. Lot at Deir ‘Ain ‘Abata" (pp. 501, 510).

Ian C. Freestone uses "Monastery of Lot" (in 'Highlights'), "monastery of St. Lot" and "St. Lot glazes" (in 'Abstract'), and "Monastery of St. Lot" (in 'Keywords'). ("An early Byzantine alkali glazing tradition?" in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports).

So, which one do you prefer: "Monastery of Lot" / "Lot's Monastery", or "Monastery of St Lot"? I would prefer the last one, as it can satisfy both the more relaxed and the more pedantic. The remaining ones, including the current, awkward "Sanctuary of Agios Lot", would all receive redirects, of course. Arminden (talk) 23:00, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Konstantinos D. Politis needs article

Main discussion at Talk:Ghor es-Safi page. Arminden (talk) 05:56, 17 January 2024 (UTC)