1.
Parabola
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A parabola is a two-dimensional, mirror-symmetrical curve, which is approximately U-shaped when oriented as shown in the diagram below, but which can be in any orientation in its plane. It fits any of several different mathematical descriptions which can all be proved to define curves of exactly the same shape. One description of a parabola involves a point and a line, the focus does not lie on the directrix. The parabola is the locus of points in that plane that are equidistant from both the directrix and the focus, a parabola is a graph of a quadratic function, y = x2, for example. The line perpendicular to the directrix and passing through the focus is called the axis of symmetry, the point on the parabola that intersects the axis of symmetry is called the vertex, and is the point where the parabola is most sharply curved. The distance between the vertex and the focus, measured along the axis of symmetry, is the focal length, the latus rectum is the chord of the parabola which is parallel to the directrix and passes through the focus. Parabolas can open up, down, left, right, or in some arbitrary direction. Any parabola can be repositioned and rescaled to fit exactly on any other parabola — that is, conversely, light that originates from a point source at the focus is reflected into a parallel beam, leaving the parabola parallel to the axis of symmetry. The same effects occur with sound and other forms of energy and this reflective property is the basis of many practical uses of parabolas. The parabola has many important applications, from an antenna or parabolic microphone to automobile headlight reflectors to the design of ballistic missiles. They are frequently used in physics, engineering, and many other areas, the earliest known work on conic sections was by Menaechmus in the fourth century BC. He discovered a way to solve the problem of doubling the cube using parabolas, the name parabola is due to Apollonius who discovered many properties of conic sections. It means application, referring to application of concept, that has a connection with this curve. The focus–directrix property of the parabola and other conics is due to Pappus, Galileo showed that the path of a projectile follows a parabola, a consequence of uniform acceleration due to gravity. The idea that a reflector could produce an image was already well known before the invention of the reflecting telescope. Designs were proposed in the early to mid seventeenth century by many mathematicians including René Descartes, Marin Mersenne, when Isaac Newton built the first reflecting telescope in 1668, he skipped using a parabolic mirror because of the difficulty of fabrication, opting for a spherical mirror. Parabolic mirrors are used in most modern reflecting telescopes and in satellite dishes, solving for y yields y =14 f x 2. The length of the chord through the focus is called latus rectum, one half of it semi latus rectum
2.
Parable of the Prodigal Son
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The Parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the parables of Jesus and appears in Luke 15, 11–32. Jesus Christ shares it with his disciples, the Pharisees and others, in the story, a father has two sons. The younger son asks for his inheritance and after wasting his fortune and he returns home with the intention of begging his father to be made one of his hired servants, expecting his relationship with his father is likely severed. The father welcomes him back and celebrates his return, the older son refuses to participate. The father reminds the older son that one day he will inherit everything, but, they should still celebrate the return of the younger son because he was lost and is now found. It is the third and final part of a cycle on redemption, following the Parable of the Lost Sheep, in the Eastern Orthodox Church it is read on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son. The parable begins with a man, the younger of two sons, who asks his father to give him his share of the estate. The implication is the son could not wait for his fathers death for his inheritance, the father agrees and divides his estate between both sons. Upon receiving his portion of the inheritance, the younger son travels to a distant country, immediately thereafter, a famine strikes the land, he becomes desperately poor and is forced to take work as a swineherd. When he reaches the point of envying the food of the pigs he is watching, he comes to his senses. The older son, who was at work in the fields, hears the sound of celebration and he is not impressed, and becomes angry. The fathers joy described in the parable reflects divine love, the mercy of God. The request of the son for his share of the inheritance is brash. His actions do not lead to success, and he becomes an indentured servant, with the degrading job of looking after pigs. The mention of the longing to eat with the swine in Luke 15,16 could refer to how the Pharisees viewed the sinners in Luke 15,2. The Pharisees, caught up in their ideas of ritual cleanliness, on the sons return, the father treats him with a generosity far more than he has a right to expect. Some have suggested that this mirrors what Christians should do after sinning, feel contrition and return to their Heavenly Father, the older son, in contrast, seems to think in terms of law, merit, and reward, rather than love and graciousness. He may represent the Pharisees who were criticizing Jesus, emphasizing that God the Father is rich in mercy and always ready to forgive, he stated that reconciliation is a gift on his part
3.
Rembrandt
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Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a Dutch draughtsman, painter, and printmaker. A prolific and versatile master across three media, he is considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art. Having achieved youthful success as a painter, Rembrandts later years were marked by personal tragedy. Yet his etchings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an artist remained high, Rembrandts portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible are regarded as his greatest creative triumphs. His self-portraits form a unique and intimate biography, in which the artist surveyed himself without vanity and his reputation as the greatest etcher in the history of the medium was established in his lifetime, and never questioned since. Few of his paintings left the Dutch Republic whilst he lived, but his prints were circulated throughout Europe, because of his empathy for the human condition, he has been called one of the great prophets of civilization. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on 15 July 1606 in Leiden, in the Dutch Republic and he was the ninth child born to Harmen Gerritszoon van Rijn and Neeltgen Willemsdochter van Zuijtbrouck. His family was quite well-to-do, his father was a miller, religion is a central theme in Rembrandts paintings and the religiously fraught period in which he lived makes his faith a matter of interest. His mother was Roman Catholic, and his father belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church, unlike many of his contemporaries who traveled to Italy as part of their artistic training, Rembrandt never left the Dutch Republic during his lifetime. He opened a studio in Leiden in 1624 or 1625, which he shared with friend, in 1627, Rembrandt began to accept students, among them Gerrit Dou in 1628. In 1629, Rembrandt was discovered by the statesman Constantijn Huygens, as a result of this connection, Prince Frederik Hendrik continued to purchase paintings from Rembrandt until 1646. He initially stayed with an art dealer, Hendrick van Uylenburgh, Saskia came from a good family, her father had been a lawyer and the burgemeester of Leeuwarden. When Saskia, as the youngest daughter, became an orphan, Rembrandt and Saskia were married in the local church of St. Annaparochie without the presence of Rembrandts relatives. In the same year, Rembrandt became a burgess of Amsterdam and he also acquired a number of students, among them Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck. In 1635 Rembrandt and Saskia moved into their own house, renting in fashionable Nieuwe Doelenstraat, in 1639 they moved to a prominent newly built house in the upscale Breestraat, today known as Jodenbreestraat in what was becoming the Jewish quarter, then a young upcoming neighborhood. The mortgage to finance the 13,000 guilder purchase would be a cause for later financial difficulties. Rembrandt should easily have been able to pay the house off with his income, but it appears his spending always kept pace with his income. It was there that Rembrandt frequently sought his Jewish neighbors to model for his Old Testament scenes, in 1640, they had a second daughter, also named Cornelia, who died after living barely over a month
4.
Fable
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A fable differs from a parable in that the latter excludes animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as actors that assume speech or other powers of humankind. Usage has not always been so clearly distinguished, a person who writes fables is a fabulist. The fable is one of the most enduring forms of literature, spread abroad, modern researchers agree. Fables can be found in the literature of almost every country, epicharmus of Kos and Phormis are reported as having been among the first to invent comic fables. Many familiar fables of Aesop include The Crow and the Pitcher, The Tortoise and the Hare and The Lion and the Mouse. The need of instructors to teach, and students to learn, African oral culture has a rich story-telling tradition. As they have for thousands of years, people of all ages in Africa continue to interact with nature, including plants, animals and earthly structures such as rivers, grandparents enjoy enormous respect in African societies and fill the new role of story-telling during retirement years. Children and, to some extent, adults are mesmerized by good story-tellers when they become animated in their quest to tell a good fable, India has a rich tradition of fabulous novels, mostly explainable by the fact that the culture derives traditions and learns qualities from natural elements. Most of the gods are some form of animals with ideal qualities, also hundreds of fables were composed in ancient India during the first millennium BC, often as stories within frame stories. Indian fables have a mixed cast of humans and animals, the dialogues are often longer than in fables of Aesop and often witty as the animals try to outwit one another by trickery and deceit. In Indian fables, man is not superior to the animals, the Indian fable adhered to the universally known traditions of the fable. The best examples of the fable in India are the Panchatantra, ben E. Perry has argued controversially that some of the Buddhist Jataka tales and some of the fables in the Panchatantra may have been influenced by similar Greek and Near Eastern ones. Earlier Indian epics such as Vyasas Mahabharata and Valmikis Ramayana also contained fables within the main story, the most famous fables from the Middle East were the One Thousand and One Nights, also known as the Arabian Nights. Fables had a long tradition through the Middle Ages. During the 17th century, the French fabulist Jean de La Fontaine saw the soul of the fable in the moral — a rule of behavior. Starting with the Aesopian pattern, La Fontaine set out to satirize the court, the church, in modern times, while the fable has been trivialized in childrens books, it has also been fully adapted to modern adult literature. Felix Saltens Bambi is a Bildungsroman — a story of a protagonists coming-of-age — cast in the form of a fable, władysław Reymonts The Revolt, a metaphor for the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, described a revolt by animals that take over their farm in order to introduce equality. George Orwells Animal Farm similarly satirized Stalinist Communism in particular, and totalitarianism in general, in the guise of animal fable
5.
Analogy
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Analogy is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject to another, or a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process. The word analogy can also refer to the relation between the source and the target themselves, which is often, though not necessarily, a similarity, as in the biological notion of analogy. Analogy plays a significant role in solving, as well as decision making, perception, memory, creativity, emotion, explanation. It lies behind basic tasks such as the identification of places, objects and people, for example, in face perception and it has been argued that analogy is the core of cognition. Specific analogical language comprises exemplification, comparisons, metaphors, similes, allegories, and parables, phrases like and so on, and the like, as if, and the very word like also rely on an analogical understanding by the receiver of a message including them. Analogy is important not only in language and common sense but also in science, philosophy. In cognitive linguistics, the notion of conceptual metaphor may be equivalent to that of analogy, Analogy has been studied and discussed since classical antiquity by philosophers, scientists, and lawyers. The last few decades have shown a renewed interest in analogy, in ancient Greek the word αναλογια originally meant proportionality, in the mathematical sense, and it was indeed sometimes translated to Latin as proportio. From there analogy was understood as identity of relation between any two ordered pairs, whether of mathematical nature or not, kants Critique of Judgment held to this notion. Kant argued that there can be exactly the same relation between two different objects. The same notion of analogy was used in the US-based SAT tests, for example, Hand is to palm as foot is to ____. This relation is not apparent in some definitions of palm and sole, where the former is defined as the inner surface of the hand. Analogy and abstraction are different cognitive processes, and analogy is often an easier one and this analogy is not comparing all the properties between a hand and a foot, but rather comparing the relationship between a hand and its palm to a foot and its sole. While a hand and a foot have many dissimilarities, the focuses on their similarity in having an inner surface. A computer algorithm has achieved human-level performance on multiple-choice analogy questions from the SAT test, the algorithm measures the similarity of relations between pairs of words by statistical analysis of a large collection of text. It answers SAT questions by selecting the choice with the highest relational similarity, Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle actually used a wider notion of analogy. They saw analogy as a shared abstraction, analogous objects did not share necessarily a relation, but also an idea, a pattern, a regularity, an attribute, an effect or a philosophy. These authors also accepted that comparisons, metaphors and images could be used as arguments, analogies should also make those abstractions easier to understand and give confidence to the ones using them
6.
Canonical gospels
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A gospel is an account describing the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Christianity places a value on the four canonical gospels, which it considers to be revelations from God. This position however, requires a view of Biblical inerrancy. The word gospel derives from the Old English gōd-spell, meaning good news or glad tidings, the gospel was considered the good news of the coming Kingdom of Messiah, and of redemption through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, the central Christian message. The Greek word euangelion is also the source of the terms evangelist, the authors of the four canonical Christian gospels are known as the Four Evangelists. Paul the Apostle used the term εὐαγγέλιον when he reminded the people of the church at Corinth of the gospel I preached to you, the earliest extant use of gospel to denote a particular genre of literature dates to the 2nd century. Justin Martyr in the Apology wrote of. the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, more generally, gospels compose a genre of early Christian writings. Gospels that did not become canonical also circulated in Early Christianity, many, such as the work known today as Gospel of Thomas, lack the narrative framework typical of a gospel. Scholars hold a wide spectrum of views on the origins and composition of the gospels, for example, the vast majority of material in Mark is also present in either Luke or Matthew or both, suggesting that Mark was a source for Matthew and Luke. He writes that the four gospels were probably all written by the end of the first century. But they did not yet at that time have a consistent narrative, in 170 Tatian sought to find a solution by composing a single narrative out of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, with some additional oral material. Richies concludes that the gospel passages themselves can be unclear, and some of the messages within are straightforwardly ambiguous, the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are considered synoptic gospels on the basis of many similarities between them that are not shared by the Gospel of John. Synoptic means here that they can be seen or read together, the fourth gospel, the Gospel of John, presents a very different picture of Jesus and his ministry from the synoptics. Of the many gospels written in antiquity, only four came to be accepted as part of the New Testament. An insistence upon there being a canon of four gospels, and no others, was a theme of Irenaeus of Lyons. Irenaeus was ultimately successful in declaring that the four gospels collectively and he also supported reading each gospel in light of the others. This canon, which corresponds to the modern Catholic canon, was used in the Vulgate, Gospel of Matthew Gospel of John Gospel of Luke Gospel of Mark This order is found in the following manuscripts, Bezae, Monacensis, Washingtonianus, Tischendorfianus IV, Uncial 0234. Although there is no set order of the four gospels in patristic lists or discussions, moody Smith suggests that the standard order of Matthew-Mark-Luke-John projects a kind of intention that can scarcely be ignored
7.
New Testament
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The New Testament is the second major part of the Christian biblical canon, the first part being the Old Testament, based on the Hebrew Bible. The New Testament discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christianity, Christians regard both the Old and New Testaments together as sacred scripture. The New Testament has frequently accompanied the spread of Christianity around the world and it reflects and serves as a source for Christian theology and morality. Both extended readings and phrases directly from the New Testament are also incorporated into the various Christian liturgies, the New Testament has influenced religious, philosophical, and political movements in Christendom and left an indelible mark on literature, art, and music. In almost all Christian traditions today, the New Testament consists of 27 books, John A. T. Robinson, Dan Wallace, and William F. Albright dated all the books of the New Testament before 70 AD. Others give a date of 80 AD, or at 96 AD. Over time, some disputed books, such as the Book of Revelation, other works earlier held to be Scripture, such as 1 Clement, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Diatessaron, were excluded from the New Testament. However, the canon of the New Testament, at least since Late Antiquity, has been almost universally recognized within Christianity. The term new testament, or new covenant first occurs in Jeremiah 31,31, the same Greek phrase for new covenant is found elsewhere in the New Testament. Modern English, like Latin, distinguishes testament and covenant as alternative translations, John Wycliffes 1395 version is a translation of the Latin Vulgate and so follows different terms in Jeremiah and Hebrews, Lo. Days shall come, saith the Lord, and I shall make a new covenant with the house of Israel, for he reproving him saith, Lo. Days come, saith the Lord, when I shall establish a new testament on the house of Israel, use of the term New Testament to describe a collection of first and second-century Christian Greek Scriptures can be traced back to Tertullian. In Against Marcion, written circa 208 AD, he writes of the Divine Word, by the 4th century, the existence—even if not the exact contents—of both an Old and New Testament had been established. Lactantius, a 3rd–4th century Christian author wrote in his early-4th-century Latin Institutiones Divinae and that which preceded the advent and passion of Christ—that is, the law and the prophets—is called the Old, but those things which were written after His resurrection are named the New Testament. The canon of the New Testament is the collection of books that most Christians regard as divinely inspired, several of these writings sought to extend, interpret, and apply apostolic teaching to meet the needs of Christians in a given locality. The book order is the same in the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, the Slavonic, Armenian and Ethiopian traditions have different New Testament book orders. Each of the four gospels in the New Testament narrates the life, death, the word gospel derives from the Old English gōd-spell, meaning good news or glad tidings. The gospel was considered the good news of the coming Kingdom of Messiah, and the redemption through the life and death of Jesus, Gospel is a calque of the Greek word εὐαγγέλιον, euangelion
8.
Parables of Jesus
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The Parables of Jesus can be found in all the canonical gospels, except for John, and in some of the non-canonical gospels, but are located mainly within the three synoptic gospels. They represent a key part of the teachings of Jesus, forming one third of his recorded teachings. Christians place high emphasis on these parables, since they are the words of Jesus, they are believed to be what the Father has taught. Jesus parables are seemingly simple and memorable stories, often with imagery, scholars have commented that although these parables seem simple, the messages they convey are deep, and central to the teachings of Jesus. Christian authors view them not as mere similitudes which serve the purpose of illustration, as a translation of the Hebrew word מָשָׁל mashal, the word parable can also refer to a riddle. In all times in their history the Jews were familiar with teaching by means of parables, the use of parables by Jesus was hence a natural teaching method that fit into the tradition of his time. The parables of Jesus have been quoted, taught, and discussed since the beginnings of Christianity. Parables are one of the literary forms in the Bible. Parables are generally considered to be short stories such as the Good Samaritan, a true parable may be regarded as an extended simile. Although some suggest parables are essentially extended allegories, others argue the opposite. Dr. Kenneth Boa states that Parables are extended figures of comparison that often use short stories to teach a truth or answer a question, while the story in a parable is not historical, it is true to life, not a fairy tale. The three synoptic gospels contain the parables of Jesus, There are a growing number of scholars who also find parables in the Gospel of John, such as the little stories of the Good Shepherd or the childbearing woman. Otherwise, John includes allegories but no parables, several authors such as Barbara Reid, Arland Hultgren or Donald Griggs comment that parables are noticeably absent from the Gospel of John. The Catholic Encyclopedia states, There are no parables in St. Johns Gospel and we reckon thirty-three in all, but some have raised the number even to sixty, by including proverbial expressions. They list no parables for the Gospel of John, Parables attributed to Jesus are also found in other documents apart from the Bible. Some of these overlap those in the gospels and some are not part of the Bible. The non-canonical Gospel of Thomas contains up to fifteen parables, eleven of which have parallels in the four canonical Gospels, the unknown author of the Gospel of Thomas did not have a special word for parable, making it difficult to know what he considered a parable. Those unique to Thomas include the Parable of the Assassin and the Parable of the Empty Jar, the noncanonical Apocryphon of James also contains three unique parables attributed to Jesus
9.
Biblical canon
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A biblical canon or canon of scripture is a list of texts which a particular religious community regards as authoritative scripture. The word canon comes from the Greek κανών, meaning rule or measuring stick, Christians became the first to use the term in reference to scripture, but Eugene Ulrich regards the idea as Jewish. In contrast, a canon, which permits the addition of books through the process of continuous revelation. These canons have developed through debate and agreement by the authorities of their respective faiths. Believers consider canonical books as inspired by God or as expressive of the history of the relationship between God and his people. Differences exist between the Jewish Tanakh and Christian biblical canons, and between the canons of different Christian denominations, the differing criteria and processes of canonization dictate what the various communities regard as inspired scripture. In some cases where varying strata of scriptural inspiration have accumulated, Rabbinic Judaism recognizes the twenty-four books of the Masoretic Text, commonly called the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible. According to Marc Zvi Brettler, the Jewish scriptures outside the Torah, the book of Deuteronomy includes a prohibition against adding or subtracting which might apply to the book itself or to the instruction received by Moses on Mt. Sinai. The Book of Nehemiah suggests that the priest-scribe Ezra brought the Torah back from Babylon to Jerusalem, both I and II Maccabees suggest that Judas Maccabeus likewise collected sacred books, indeed some scholars argue that the Jewish canon was fixed by the Hasmonean dynasty. However, these sources do not suggest that the canon was at that time closed, moreover. They lived in a period of two centuries ending c.70 AD. In addition to the Tanakh, mainstream Rabbinic Judaism considers the Talmud to be another central and it takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs, and history. There are numerous citations of Sirach within the Talmud, even though the book was not ultimately accepted into the Hebrew canon, the Talmud is the basis for all codes of rabbinic law and is often quoted in other rabbinic literature. Certain groups of Jews, such as the Karaites, do not accept the oral Law as it is codified in the Talmud, Ethiopian Jews—also known as Beta Israel —possess a canon of scripture that is distinct from Rabbinic Judaism. Mäṣḥafä Kedus is the name for the literature of these Jews. Their holiest book, the Orit, consists of the Pentateuch, as well as Joshua, Judges, the rest of the Ethiopian Jewish canon is considered to be of secondary importance. It consists of the remainder of the Hebrew canon—with the possible exception of the Book of Lamentations—and various deuterocanonical books. These include Sirach, Judith, Tobit,1 and 2 Esdras,1 and 4 Baruch, the three books of Meqabyan, Jubilees, Enoch, the Testament of Abraham, the Testament of Isaac, the latter three patriarchal testaments are distinct to this scriptural tradition
10.
Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
11.
Rhetoric
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Rhetoric is the art of discourse, wherein a writer or speaker strives to inform, persuade or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of study and a productive civic practice. Its best known definition comes from Aristotle, who considers it a counterpart of both logic and politics, and calls it the faculty of observing in any case the available means of persuasion. The five canons of rhetoric, which trace the traditional tasks in designing a persuasive speech, were first codified in classical Rome, invention, arrangement, style, memory, along with grammar and logic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. From Ancient Greece to the late 19th century, it was a part of Western education. Scholars have debated the scope of rhetoric since ancient times, although some have limited rhetoric to the specific realm of political discourse, many modern scholars liberate it to encompass every aspect of culture. Contemporary studies of rhetoric address a diverse range of domains than was the case in ancient times. Many contemporary approaches treat rhetoric as human communication that includes purposeful, Public relations, lobbying, law, marketing, professional and technical writing, and advertising are modern professions that employ rhetorical practitioners. Because the ancient Greeks highly valued public political participation, rhetoric emerged as a tool to influence politics. Consequently, rhetoric remains associated with its political origins, however, even the original instructors of Western speech—the Sophists—disputed this limited view of rhetoric. According to the Sophists, such as Gorgias, a successful rhetorician could speak convincingly on any topic and this method suggested rhetoric could be a means of communicating any expertise, not just politics. In his Encomium to Helen, Gorgias even applied rhetoric to fiction by seeking for his own pleasure to prove the blamelessness of the mythical Helen of Troy in starting the Trojan War. Looking to another key rhetorical theorist, Plato defined the scope of rhetoric according to his opinions of the art. He criticized the Sophists for using rhetoric as a means of deceit instead of discovering truth, in Gorgias, one of his Socratic Dialogues, Plato defines rhetoric as the persuasion of ignorant masses within the courts and assemblies. Rhetoric, in Platos opinion, is merely a form of flattery and functions similarly to cookery, thus, Plato considered any speech of lengthy prose aimed at flattery as within the scope of rhetoric. Aristotle both redeemed rhetoric from his teacher and narrowed its focus by defining three genres of rhetoric—deliberative, forensic or judicial, and epideictic, when one considers that rhetoric included torture, it is clear that rhetoric cannot be viewed only in academic terms. However, the enthymeme based upon logic was viewed as the basis of rhetoric, however, since the time of Aristotle, logic has changed. For example, Modal logic has undergone a major development that also modifies rhetoric, yet, Aristotle also outlined generic constraints that focused the rhetorical art squarely within the domain of public political practice
12.
Spirituality
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Modern spirituality typically includes a belief in a supernatural realm, personal growth, a quest for an ultimate/sacred meaning, religious experience, or an encounter with ones own inner dimension. The meaning of spirituality has developed and expanded over time, the term spirituality originally developed within early Christianity, referring to a life oriented toward the Holy Spirit. The term spirit means animating or vital principle in man and animals and it is derived from the Old French espirit which comes from the Latin word spiritus and is related to spirare. In the Vulgate the Latin word spiritus is used to translate the Greek pneuma, the term spiritual, matters concerning the spirit, is derived from Old French spirituel, which is derived from Latin spiritualis, which comes from spiritus or spirit. The term spirituality is derived from Middle French spiritualité, from Late Latin spiritualitatem, there is no single, widely agreed definition of spirituality. A survey of reviews by McCarroll e. a. dealing with the topic of spirituality gave twenty-seven explicit definitions and this causes some difficulty in trying to study spirituality systematically, i. e. it impedes both understanding and the capacity to communicate findings in a meaningful fashion. To accomplish this, the re-formation is oriented at a mold, which represents the shape, in Judaism the Torah, in Christianity there is Christ, for Buddhism, Buddha. Houtman and Aupers suggest that modern spirituality is a blend of humanistic psychology, mystical and esoteric traditions, Spirituality is sometimes associated with philosophical, social, or political movements such as liberalism, feminist theology, and green politics. Some argue spirituality is intimately linked to resolving mental health issues, managing substance abuse, marital functioning, parenting, words translatable as spirituality first began to arise in the 5th century and only entered common use toward the end of the Middle Ages. In a Biblical context the term means being animated by God, to be driven by the Holy Spirit, in the 11th century this meaning changed. Spirituality began to denote the mental aspect of life, as opposed to the material and sensual aspects of life, in the 13th century spirituality acquired a social and psychological meaning. In the 17th and 18th century a distinction was made higher and lower forms of spirituality, A spiritual man is one who is Christian more abundantly. The word was associated with mysticism and quietism, and acquired a negative meaning. Modern notions of spirituality developed throughout the 19th and 20th century, mixing Christian ideas with westen esoteric traditions and elements of Asian, especially Indian, Spirituality became increasingly disconnected from traditional religious organisations and institutions. Ralph Waldo Emerson was a pioneer of the idea of spirituality as a distinct field, the Transcendentalists emphasised an intuitive, experiential approach of religion. Following Schleiermacher, an individuals intuition of truth was taken as the criterion for truth, in the late 18th and early 19th century, the first translations of Hindu texts appeared, which were also read by the Transcendentalists, and influenced their thinking. A major influence on modern spirituality was the Theosophical Society, which searched for secret teachings in Asian religions and it aims to present Hinduism as a homogenized ideal of Hinduism with Advaita Vedanta as its central doctrine. Due to the colonisation of Asia by the world, since the 19th century an exchange of ideas has been taking place between the western world and Asia, which also influenced western religiosity
13.
Bible
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The Bible is a collection of sacred texts or scriptures that Jews and Christians consider to be a product of divine inspiration and a record of the relationship between God and humans. Many different authors contributed to the Bible, what is regarded as canonical text differs depending on traditions and groups, a number of Bible canons have evolved, with overlapping and diverging contents. The Christian Old Testament overlaps with the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint, the New Testament is a collection of writings by early Christians, believed to be mostly Jewish disciples of Christ, written in first-century Koine Greek. These early Christian Greek writings consist of narratives, letters, among Christian denominations there is some disagreement about the contents of the canon, primarily the Apocrypha, a list of works that are regarded with varying levels of respect. Attitudes towards the Bible also differ amongst Christian groups and this concept arose during the Protestant Reformation, and many denominations today support the use of the Bible as the only source of Christian teaching. With estimated total sales of over 5 billion copies, the Bible is widely considered to be the book of all time. It has estimated sales of 100 million copies, and has been a major influence on literature and history, especially in the West. The English word Bible is from the Latin biblia, from the word in Medieval Latin and Late Latin. Medieval Latin biblia is short for biblia sacra holy book, while biblia in Greek and it gradually came to be regarded as a feminine singular noun in medieval Latin, and so the word was loaned as a singular into the vernaculars of Western Europe. Latin biblia sacra holy books translates Greek τὰ βιβλία τὰ ἅγια ta biblia ta hagia, the word βιβλίον itself had the literal meaning of paper or scroll and came to be used as the ordinary word for book. It is the diminutive of βύβλος byblos, Egyptian papyrus, possibly so called from the name of the Phoenician sea port Byblos from whence Egyptian papyrus was exported to Greece, the Greek ta biblia was an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books. Christian use of the term can be traced to c.223 CE, bruce notes that Chrysostom appears to be the first writer to use the Greek phrase ta biblia to describe both the Old and New Testaments together. The division of the Hebrew Bible into verses is based on the sof passuk cantillation mark used by the 10th-century Masoretes to record the verse divisions used in oral traditions. The oldest extant copy of a complete Bible is an early 4th-century parchment book preserved in the Vatican Library, the oldest copy of the Tanakh in Hebrew and Aramaic dates from the 10th century CE. The oldest copy of a complete Latin Bible is the Codex Amiatinus and he states that it is not a magical book, nor was it literally written by God and passed to mankind. In Christian Bibles, the New Testament Gospels were derived from traditions in the second half of the first century CE. Riches says that, Scholars have attempted to reconstruct something of the history of the oral traditions behind the Gospels, the period of transmission is short, less than 40 years passed between the death of Jesus and the writing of Marks Gospel. This means that there was time for oral traditions to assume fixed form
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Gospel
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A gospel is an account describing the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Christianity places a value on the four canonical gospels, which it considers to be revelations from God. This position however, requires a view of Biblical inerrancy. The word gospel derives from the Old English gōd-spell, meaning good news or glad tidings, the gospel was considered the good news of the coming Kingdom of Messiah, and of redemption through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, the central Christian message. The Greek word euangelion is also the source of the terms evangelist, the authors of the four canonical Christian gospels are known as the Four Evangelists. Paul the Apostle used the term εὐαγγέλιον when he reminded the people of the church at Corinth of the gospel I preached to you, the earliest extant use of gospel to denote a particular genre of literature dates to the 2nd century. Justin Martyr in the Apology wrote of. the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, more generally, gospels compose a genre of early Christian writings. Gospels that did not become canonical also circulated in Early Christianity, many, such as the work known today as Gospel of Thomas, lack the narrative framework typical of a gospel. Scholars hold a wide spectrum of views on the origins and composition of the gospels, for example, the vast majority of material in Mark is also present in either Luke or Matthew or both, suggesting that Mark was a source for Matthew and Luke. He writes that the four gospels were probably all written by the end of the first century. But they did not yet at that time have a consistent narrative, in 170 Tatian sought to find a solution by composing a single narrative out of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, with some additional oral material. Richies concludes that the gospel passages themselves can be unclear, and some of the messages within are straightforwardly ambiguous, the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are considered synoptic gospels on the basis of many similarities between them that are not shared by the Gospel of John. Synoptic means here that they can be seen or read together, the fourth gospel, the Gospel of John, presents a very different picture of Jesus and his ministry from the synoptics. Of the many gospels written in antiquity, only four came to be accepted as part of the New Testament. An insistence upon there being a canon of four gospels, and no others, was a theme of Irenaeus of Lyons. Irenaeus was ultimately successful in declaring that the four gospels collectively and he also supported reading each gospel in light of the others. This canon, which corresponds to the modern Catholic canon, was used in the Vulgate, Gospel of Matthew Gospel of John Gospel of Luke Gospel of Mark This order is found in the following manuscripts, Bezae, Monacensis, Washingtonianus, Tischendorfianus IV, Uncial 0234. Although there is no set order of the four gospels in patristic lists or discussions, moody Smith suggests that the standard order of Matthew-Mark-Luke-John projects a kind of intention that can scarcely be ignored
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Parable of the Good Samaritan
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The parable of the Good Samaritan is a didactic story told by Jesus in Luke 10, 25–37. It is about a traveler who is stripped of clothing, beaten, first a priest and then a Levite comes by, but both avoid the man. Finally, a Samaritan happens upon the traveler, Samaritans and Jews generally despised each other, but the Samaritan helps the injured man. Jesus is described as telling the parable in response to the question from a lawyer, whom Leviticus Lev 19,18 says should be loved. In response, Jesus tells the parable, the conclusion of which is that the figure in the parable is the man who shows mercy to the injured man—that is. He then tells the lawyer to go and do likewise and his answer corresponds to his words in the Gospel of Matthew 5, 43-48, to love ones enemy. Portraying a Samaritan in a light would have come as a shock to Jesus audience. It is typical of his speech in which conventional expectations are inverted. Some Christians, such as Augustine, have interpreted the parable allegorically, with the Samaritan representing Jesus Christ, others, however, discount this allegory as unrelated to the parables original meaning and see the parable as exemplifying the ethics of Jesus. The parable has inspired painting, sculpture, satire, poetry, the colloquial phrase good Samaritan, meaning someone who helps a stranger, derives from this parable, and many hospitals and charitable organizations are named after the Good Samaritan. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the Bloody Pass, and you know, its possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. And so the first question that the priest asked, the first question that the Levite asked was, If I stop to help this man, jesuss target audience, the Jews, hated Samaritans to such a degree that they destroyed the Samaritans temple on Mt. Gerizim. Due to this hatred, some think that the Lawyers phrase The one who had mercy on him may indicate a reluctance to name the Samaritan, the Samaritans in turn hated the Jews. Tensions were particularly high in the decades of the 1st century because Samaritans had desecrated the Jewish Temple at Passover with human bones. Today, the story is often recast in a modern setting where the people are ones in equivalent social groups known not to interact comfortably. Christians have used it as an example of Christianitys opposition to racial, ethnic, for example, anti-slavery campaigner William Jay described clergy who ignored slavery as following the example of the priest and Levite. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his Ive Been to the Mountaintop speech, sundee Tucker Frazier saw the Samaritan more specifically as an example of a mixed-race person. Samaritans appear elsewhere in the Gospels and Book of Acts, in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus heals ten lepers and only the Samaritan among them thanks him, although Luke 9, 51–56 depicts Jesus receiving a hostile reception in Samaria
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Old Testament
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Its counterpart is the New Testament, the second part of the Christian Bible. The books that comprise the Old Testament canon differ between Christian Churches as well as their order and names. The most common Protestant canon comprises 39 books, the Catholic canon comprises 46 books, the 39 books in common to all the Christian canons corresponds to 24 books of the Tanakh, with some differences of order, and there are some differences in text. The additional number reflects the split of texts in the Christian Bibles into separate books, for example, Kings, Samuel and Chronicles, Ezra–Nehemiah, the books which are part of a Christian Old Testament but which are not part of the Hebrew canon are sometimes described as deuterocanonical. In general, Protestant bibles do not include books in its canon. The Old Testament consists of translations of many books by various authors produced over a period of centuries. The canon formed in stages, first the Pentateuch by around 400 BC, then the Prophets during the Hasmonean dynasty, and finally the remaining books. The Old Testament contains 39 or 46 or more books, divided, very broadly, into the Pentateuch, the books, the wisdom books. For the Orthodox canon, Septuagint titles are provided in parentheses when these differ from those editions, for the Catholic canon, the Douaic titles are provided in parentheses when these differ from those editions. Likewise, the King James Version references some of these books by the spelling when referring to them in the New Testament. The Talmud in Bava Batra 14b gives a different order for the books in Neviim and Ketuvim and this order is also cited in Mishneh Torah Hilchot Sefer Torah 7,15. The order of the books of the Torah is universal through all denominations of Judaism and they are present in a few historic Protestant versions, the German Luther Bible included such books, as did the English 1611 King James Version. Empty table cells indicate that a book is absent from that canon, several of the books in the Eastern Orthodox canon are also found in the appendix to the Latin Vulgate, formerly the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. The books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings follow, there is a broad consensus among scholars that these originated as a single work during the Babylonian exile of the 6th century BC. The two Books of Chronicles cover much the material as the Pentateuch and Deuteronomistic history and probably date from the 4th century BC. Chronicles, and Ezra–Nehemiah, were finished during the 3rd century BC. Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments contain two to four Books of Maccabees, written in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC and these history books make up around half the total content of the Old Testament. God is consistently depicted as the one who created or put into order the world, the Old Testament stresses the special relationship between God and his chosen people, Israel, but includes instructions for proselytes as well
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Nathan (prophet)
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For other biblical people with this name, see Nathan. Nathan is a person in the Hebrew Bible and his actions are described in the Books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. According to 2 Samuel, he was a prophet who lived in the time of King David. According to Chronicles, Nathan wrote histories of the reigns of both David and Solomon, and was involved in the music of the temple. In 1 Kings 1, 8-45 it is Nathan who tells the dying David of the plot of Adonijah to become king, resulting in Solomon being proclaimed king instead, Nathan presides at the anointing of King Solomon, and his name appears in the coronation anthem Zadok the Priest. The feast day of Nathan the Prophet is on 24 October, in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and those Eastern Catholic Churches which follow the Byzantine Rite, he is commemorated as a saint on the Sunday of the Holy Fathers. Book of Nathan the Prophet and History of Nathan the Prophet Nathan Sunday of the Holy Fathers Orthodox synaxarion synaxarion
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Islam
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Islam is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion which professes that there is only one and incomparable God and that Muhammad is the last messenger of God. It is the worlds second-largest religion and the major religion in the world, with over 1.7 billion followers or 23% of the global population. Islam teaches that God is merciful, all-powerful, and unique, and He has guided mankind through revealed scriptures, natural signs, and a line of prophets sealed by Muhammad. The primary scriptures of Islam are the Quran, viewed by Muslims as the word of God. Muslims believe that Islam is the original, complete and universal version of a faith that was revealed many times before through prophets including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses. As for the Quran, Muslims consider it to be the unaltered, certain religious rites and customs are observed by the Muslims in their family and social life, while social responsibilities to parents, relatives, and neighbors have also been defined. Besides, the Quran and the sunnah of Muhammad prescribe a comprehensive body of moral guidelines for Muslims to be followed in their personal, social, political, Islam began in the early 7th century. Originating in Mecca, it spread in the Arabian Peninsula. The expansion of the Muslim world involved various caliphates and empires, traders, most Muslims are of one of two denominations, Sunni or Shia. Islam is the dominant religion in the Middle East, North Africa, sizable Muslim communities are also found in Horn of Africa, Europe, China, Russia, Mainland Southeast Asia, Philippines, Northern Borneo, Caucasus and the Americas. Converts and immigrant communities are found in almost every part of the world, Islam is a verbal noun originating from the triliteral root s-l-m which forms a large class of words mostly relating to concepts of wholeness, submission, safeness and peace. In a religious context it means voluntary submission to God, Islām is the verbal noun of Form IV of the root, and means submission or surrender. Muslim, the word for an adherent of Islam, is the active participle of the verb form. The word sometimes has connotations in its various occurrences in the Quran. In some verses, there is stress on the quality of Islam as a state, Whomsoever God desires to guide. Other verses connect Islām and dīn, Today, I have perfected your religion for you, I have completed My blessing upon you, still others describe Islam as an action of returning to God—more than just a verbal affirmation of faith. In the Hadith of Gabriel, islām is presented as one part of a triad that also includes imān, Islam was historically called Muhammadanism in Anglophone societies. This term has fallen out of use and is said to be offensive because it suggests that a human being rather than God is central to Muslims religion
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Sufism
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Sufism or Taṣawwuf, which is often defined as Islamic mysticism, the inward dimension of Islam, or the phenomenon of mysticism within Islam, is a mystical trend in Islam characterized. These orders meet for sessions in meeting places known as zawiyas, khanqahs. They strive for ihsan as detailed in a hadith, Ihsan is to worship Allah as if you see Him, if you cant see Him, Rumi stated, The Sufi is hanging on to Muhammad, like Abu Bakr. Sufis regard Muhammad as al-Insān al-Kāmil, the perfect man who exemplifies the morality of God. The orders largely follow one of the four madhhabs of Sunni Islam, classical Sufis were characterized by their asceticism, especially by their attachment to dhikr, the practice of repeating the names of God, often performed after prayers. According to William Chittick, In a broad sense, Sufism can be described as the interiorization, historically, Muslims have used the Arabic word taṣawwuf to identify the practice of Sufis. In this view, it is necessary to be a Muslim to be a true Sufi. However, Islamic scholars themselves are not by any means in agreement about the meaning of the word sufi, Sufis themselves claim that Tasawwuf is an aspect of Islam similar to Sharia, inseparable from Islam and an integral part of Islamic belief and practice. Classical Sufi scholars have defined Tasawwuf as a science whose objective is the reparation of the heart and turning it away from all else, two origins of the word sufi have been suggested. Commonly, the root of the word is traced to ṣafā. Another origin is ṣūf, wool in Arabic, referring to the simple cloaks the early Muslim ascetics wore, the two were combined by the Sufi al-Rudhabari, who said, The Sufi is the one who wears wool on top of purity. Scholars generally agree that ṣūf or wool is probably the word of Sufi. This term was given to them because they wore woollen garments, the term labisal-suf meant he clad himself in wool and applied to a person who renounced the world and became an ascetic. Others have suggested that the word comes from the term ahl aṣ-ṣuffah and these men and women who sat at al-Masjid an-Nabawi are considered by some to be the first Sufis. Al-Qushayri and Ibn Khaldun both rejected all other than ṣūf on linguistic grounds. Sufi orders are based on the bayah that was given to the Prophet Muhammad by his Sahaba, by pledging allegiance to the Prophet Muhammad, the Sahaba had committed themselves to the service of God. According to Islamic belief, by pledging allegiance to Prophet Muhammad and it is through the Prophet Muhammad that Sufis aim to learn about, understand and connect with God. Such a concept may be understood by the hadith, which Sufis regard to be authentic, in which Prophet Muhammad said, I am the city of knowledge, eminent Sufis such as Ali Hujwiri refer to Ali as having a very high ranking in Tasawwuf
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Idries Shah
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Born in India, the descendant of a family of Afghan nobles, Shah grew up mainly in England. His early writings centred on magic and witchcraft, in 1960 he established a publishing house, Octagon Press, producing translations of Sufi classics as well as titles of his own. His seminal work was The Sufis, which appeared in 1964 and was well received internationally, in 1965, Shah founded the Institute for Cultural Research, a London-based educational charity devoted to the study of human behaviour and culture. S. In his writings, Shah presented Sufism as a form of wisdom that predated Islam. Emphasizing that Sufism was not static but always adapted itself to the current time, place and people, Shah made extensive use of traditional teaching stories and parables, texts that contained multiple layers of meaning designed to trigger insight and self-reflection in the reader. He is perhaps best known for his collections of humorous Mulla Nasrudin stories, Shah was at times criticized by orientalists who questioned his credentials and background. His role in the surrounding a new translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, published by his friend Robert Graves and his older brother Omar Ali-Shah. However, he also had many notable defenders, chief among them the novelist Doris Lessing, Shah came to be recognized as a spokesman for Sufism in the West and lectured as a visiting professor at a number of Western universities. His works have played a significant part in presenting Sufism as a form of spiritual wisdom not necessarily attached to any specific religion. Idries Shah was born in Simla, India, to an Afghan-Indian father, Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah, a writer and diplomat, and his family on the paternal side were Musavi Sayyids. Their ancestral home was near the Paghman Gardens of Kabul, Shah mainly grew up in the vicinity of London. Through these travels, which were part of Ikbal Ali Shahs Sufi work, Shah was able to meet and spend time with prominent statesmen. But a career of diplomacy did not attract Idries Shah, Shah described his own unconventional upbringing in a 1971 BBC interview with Pat Williams. Shah described this as the Sufi approach to education, after his family moved from London to Oxford in 1940 to escape The Blitz, he spent two or three years at the City of Oxford High School for Boys. In 1945, he accompanied his father to Uruguay as secretary to his fathers halal meat mission and he returned to England in October 1946, following allegations of improper business dealings. Shah married Cynthia Kabraji in 1958, they had a daughter, Saira, in 1964, followed by twins – a son, Tahir, and another daughter, Safia – in 1966. Towards the end of the 1950s, Shah established contact with Wiccan circles in London and then acted as a secretary and companion to Gerald Gardner, the founder of modern Wicca, for some time. In those days, Shah used to court for anyone interested in Sufism at a table in the Cosmo restaurant in Swiss Cottage every Tuesday evening
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Anthony de Mello
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Anthony Tony de Mello was an Indian Jesuit priest and psychotherapist. A spiritual teacher, writer and public speaker, De Mello wrote several books on spirituality and hosted numerous spiritual retreats and he continues to be known for his unconventional approach to the priesthood and his storytelling which drew from the various mystical traditions of both East and West. De Mello was the oldest of five born to Frank. He was born in Bombay, British India, on 4 September 1931 and he was raised in a Catholic family and dreamed of one day joining the Jesuit order. As a teen, he entered the Society of Jesus in Bombay and he was ordained into the priesthood in March 1961. De Mello was first attracted to the Jesuits for their strict discipline and those who knew him during his earlier years in the order described him as somewhat conservative in his theology and reluctant to explore other religions. According to Malcolm Nazareth, a fellow Bombay Jesuit, Tonys theology of religions was primitive at that time, having made my preliminary explorations into Hindu religion and spirituality, I approached him with my questions about Christology. Provided me with a set of answers that were most unsatisfactory, I walked away from him knowing that Tony hadnt yet dared to encounter any non-Christian religion with openness and vulnerability. His Catholic Christian theological conditioning was blocking his spiritual progress, if I may presume to say so and it was sometime in the mid-70s that Tony opened his heart and mind to vipassana meditational practice. Im inclined to think that this was a turning point for Tony as he slowly began to move into a phase. De Mellos first published book, Sadhana – A way to God, was released in 1978 and it outlined a number of spiritual principles and Christian exercises in eastern form inspired by the teachings of Saint Ignatius. Other books published during his lifetime include The Song of the Bird, One Minute Wisdom, the first two were collections of stories and the last a collection of exercises similar to Sadhana. In 1972, he founded the Institute of Pastoral Counselling, later renamed the Sadhana Institute of Pastoral Counseling, in Poona, De Mello died suddenly of a heart attack in 1987, aged 55, in New York City. In particular, notification argued that de Mello believed, Jesus is not recognized as the Son of God, while the group showed appreciation for many of de Mellos writings, they determined some of his positions to be incompatible with the Catholic faith. In response to the statement, the Indian magazine Outlook claimed it was an attempt by Rome to undermine the clergy in Asia, a number of de Mellos works were published posthumously as collections or based on notes or recordings of his conferences. Sadhana, A Way to God,1978, Spirituality for Today,90 minutes of talks given before a live audience. The Song of the Bird, Image,1982, ISBN 978-0-385-19617-8 One Minute Wisdom, Image,1985. ISBN 0-385-24290-5 The Heart Of The Enlightened, Doubleday,1987, ISBN 0-385-24672-2 Taking Flight, Image,1988
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Economics
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Economics is a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work, consistent with this focus, textbooks often distinguish between microeconomics and macroeconomics. Microeconomics examines the behaviour of elements in the economy, including individual agents and markets, their interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, macroeconomics analyzes the entire economy and issues affecting it, including unemployment of resources, inflation, economic growth, and the public policies that address these issues. Economic analysis can be applied throughout society, as in business, finance, health care, Economic analyses may also be applied to such diverse subjects as crime, education, the family, law, politics, religion, social institutions, war, science, and the environment. At the turn of the 21st century, the domain of economics in the social sciences has been described as economic imperialism. The ultimate goal of economics is to improve the conditions of people in their everyday life. There are a variety of definitions of economics. Some of the differences may reflect evolving views of the subject or different views among economists, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue for the publick services. Say, distinguishing the subject from its uses, defines it as the science of production, distribution. On the satirical side, Thomas Carlyle coined the dismal science as an epithet for classical economics, in this context and it enquires how he gets his income and how he uses it. Thus, it is on the one side, the study of wealth and on the other and more important side, a part of the study of man. He affirmed that previous economists have usually centred their studies on the analysis of wealth, how wealth is created, distributed, and consumed, but he said that economics can be used to study other things, such as war, that are outside its usual focus. This is because war has as the goal winning it, generates both cost and benefits, and, resources are used to attain the goal. If the war is not winnable or if the costs outweigh the benefits. Some subsequent comments criticized the definition as overly broad in failing to limit its subject matter to analysis of markets, there are other criticisms as well, such as in scarcity not accounting for the macroeconomics of high unemployment. The same source reviews a range of included in principles of economics textbooks. Among economists more generally, it argues that a particular definition presented may reflect the direction toward which the author believes economics is evolving, microeconomics examines how entities, forming a market structure, interact within a market to create a market system
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Jan Wijnants
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Jan Jansz Wijnants was a Dutch Golden Age painter. He was born in Haarlem, the son of a Catholic art dealer also named Jan Wijnants, Wijnants was active in Haarlem until 1660, after which he moved to Amsterdam. Wijnants is primarily known for his Italianate landscapes and paintings featuring topography, Jan Wijnants profile @ Artnet. com Biodata, cartage. org Media related to Jan Wijnants at Wikimedia Commons
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Allegory
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As a literary device, an allegory is a metaphor whose vehicle may be a character, place or event, representing real-world issues and occurrences. Many ancient religions are based on astrological allegories, that is, allegories of the movement of the sun, in classical literature two of the best-known allegories are the Cave in Platos Republic and the story of the stomach and its members in the speech of Menenius Agrippa. One of the examples of allegory, Platos Allegory of the Cave. In this allegory, Plato describes a group of people who have lived chained in an all of their lives. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows, using language to identify their world. He tries to tell the people in the cave of his discovery, also allegorical is Ezekiel 16 and 17, wherein the capture of that same vine by the mighty Eagle represents Israels exile to Rome. Allegory has an ability to freeze the temporality of a story, Mediaeval thinking accepted allegory as having a reality underlying any rhetorical or fictional uses. The allegory was as true as the facts of surface appearances, if, then, the Greeks or others say that they were not committed to the care of Peter and his successors, they necessarily confess that they are not of the sheep of Christ. This text also demonstrates the frequent use of allegory in religious texts during the Mediaeval Period, following the tradition, since meaningful stories are nearly always applicable to larger issues, allegories may be read into many stories which the author may not have recognised. This is allegoresis, or the act of reading a story as an allegory. S, lewis and A Kingdom Far and Clear, The Complete Swan Lake Trilogy by Mark Helprin. The story of the apple falling onto Isaac Newtons head is another famous allegory and it simplified the idea of gravity by depicting a simple way it was supposedly discovered. It also made the scientific revelation well known by condensing the theory into a short tale. According to Henry Littlefields 1964 article, L. Yet, George MacDonald emphasised in 1893 that, A fairy tale is not an allegory, I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and this further reinforces the idea of forced allegoresis, as allegory is often a matter of interpretation and only sometimes of original artistic intention. Like allegorical stories, allegorical poetry has two meanings – a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning, some unique specimens of allegory can be found in the following works, Edmund Spenser – The Faerie Queene, The several knights in the poem actually stand for several virtues. Nathaniel Hawthorne – Young Goodman Brown, The Devils Staff symbolises defiance of God, the characters names, such as Goodman and Faith, ironically serve as paradox in the conclusion of the story. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter, The scarlet letter symbolises many things, the characters, while developed with interiority, are allegorical in that they represent ways of seeing the world. George Orwell – Animal Farm, The pigs stand for political figures of the Russian Revolution, lászló Krasznahorkai - The Melancholy of Resistance and the film Werckmeister Harmonies, It uses a circus to describe an occupying dysfunctional government
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Morality
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Morality is the differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are distinguished as proper and those that are improper. Morality may also be synonymous with goodness or rightness. Moral philosophy includes moral ontology, or the origin of morals, as well as moral epistemology, an example of normative ethical philosophy is the Golden Rule, which states that, One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself. Immorality is the opposition to morality, while amorality is variously defined as an unawareness of, indifference toward. Ethics is the branch of philosophy which addresses questions of morality, the word ethics is commonly used interchangeably with morality, and sometimes it is used more narrowly to mean the moral principles of a particular tradition, group, or individual. It does not connote objective claims of right or wrong, descriptive ethics is the branch of philosophy which studies morality in this sense. In its normative sense, morality refers to whatever is actually right or wrong, normative ethics is the branch of philosophy which studies morality in this sense. For example, while they might concede that forces of social conformity significantly shape individuals moral decisions and this may be the philosophical view propounded by ethical naturalists, however not all moral realists accept that position. Moral anti-realism, on the hand, holds that moral statements either fail or do not even attempt to report objective moral facts. Some forms of non-cognitivism and ethical subjectivism, while considered anti-realist in the robust sense used here, are considered realist in the sense synonymous with moral universalism, celia Green made a distinction between tribal and territorial morality. She characterizes the latter as predominantly negative and proscriptive, it defines a persons territory, including his or her property and dependents, apart from these proscriptions, territorial morality is permissive, allowing the individual whatever behaviour does not interfere with the territory of another. By contrast, tribal morality is prescriptive, imposing the norms of the collective on the individual, Green relates the development of territorial morality to the rise of the concept of private property, and the ascendancy of contract over status. Some observers hold that individuals apply distinct sets of rules to people depending on their membership of an in-group or an out-group. Some biologists, anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists believe this in-group/out-group discrimination has evolved because it enhances group survival and this belief has been confirmed by simple computational models of evolution. In simulations this discrimination can result in both unexpected cooperation towards the in-group and irrational hostility towards the out-group, falger have argued that nationalism and patriotism are forms of this in-group/out-group boundary. Jonathan Haidt has noted that experimental observation indicating an in-group criterion provides one moral foundation substantially used by conservatives, peterson and Seligman approach the anthropological view looking across cultures, geo-cultural areas and across millennia. They conclude that certain virtues have prevailed in all cultures they examined, the major virtues they identified include wisdom / knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. Each of these includes several divisions, for instance humanity includes love, kindness, and social intelligence
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Unintended consequences
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In the social sciences, unintended consequences are outcomes that are not the ones foreseen and intended by a purposeful action. The term was popularised in the century by American sociologist Robert K. Merton. Unintended consequences can be grouped into three types, Unexpected benefit, A positive unexpected benefit, Unexpected drawback, An unexpected detriment occurring in addition to the desired effect of the policy. Perverse result, A perverse effect contrary to what was originally intended and this is sometimes referred to as backfire. The idea of unintended consequences dates back at least to John Locke who discussed the consequences of interest rate regulation in his letter to Sir John Somers. The idea was discussed by Adam Smith, the Scottish Enlightenment. However, it was the sociologist Robert K. Merton who popularized this concept in the twentieth century and he emphasized that his term purposive action. Concerned with conduct as distinct from behavior and that is, with action that involves motives and consequently a choice between various alternatives. Mertons usage included deviations from what Max Weber defined as social action, instrumentally rational. Merton also stated that no blanket statement categorically affirming or denying the practical feasibility of all social planning is warranted, akin to Murphys law, it is commonly used as a wry or humorous warning against the hubristic belief that humans can fully control the world around them. As a sub-component of complexity, the nature of the universe—and especially its quality of having small. Likewise the creation of no-mans lands during the Cold War, in such as the border between Eastern and Western Europe, and the Korean Demilitarized Zone, has led to large natural habitats. The sinking of ships in shallow waters during wartime has created many artificial coral reefs, in medicine, most drugs have unintended consequences associated with their use. For instance, aspirin, a reliever, is also an anticoagulant that can help prevent heart attacks and reduce the severity. The existence of beneficial side effects also leads to off-label use—prescription or use of a drug for an unlicensed purpose, famously, the drug Viagra was developed to lower blood pressure, with its main current use being discovered as a side effect in clinical trials. The implementation of a profanity filter by AOL in 1996 had the consequence of blocking residents of Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire. The accidental censorship of innocent language, known as the Scunthorpe problem, has been repeated, in 1990, the Australian state of Victoria made safety helmets mandatory for all bicycle riders. The risk of death and serious injury per cyclist seems to have increased, research by Vulcan, et al. found that the reduction in juvenile cyclists was because the youths considered wearing a bicycle helmet unfashionable
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Metaphor
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A metaphor is a figure of speech that refers, for rhetorical effect, to one thing by mentioning another thing. It may provide clarity or identify hidden similarities between two ideas, antithesis, hyperbole, metonymy and simile are all types of metaphor. The Philosophy of Rhetoric by rhetorician I. A. Richards describes a metaphor as having two parts, the tenor and the vehicle, the tenor is the subject to which attributes are ascribed. The vehicle is the object whose attributes are borrowed, other writers employ the general terms ground and figure to denote the tenor and the vehicle. Cognitive linguistics uses the target and source, respectively. Metaphors are most frequently compared with similes, a simile is a specific type of metaphor that uses the words like or as in comparing two objects, whereas what is commonly referred to as a metaphor states that A is B or substitutes B for A. What is usually referred to as a metaphor asserts the two objects in the comparison are identical on the point of comparison, a simile merely asserts a similarity, for this reason a common-type metaphor is generally considered more forceful than a simile. The metaphor category also contains these types, Allegory, An extended metaphor wherein a story illustrates an important attribute of the subject. Antithesis, A rhetorical contrast of ideas by means of parallel arrangements of words, clauses, or sentences Catachresis, A mixed metaphor used by design and accident. Hyperbole, Excessive exaggeration to illustrate a point Metonymy, A figure of speech using the name of one thing in reference to a different thing of which the first is associated, example, in lands belonging to the crown the word crown is metonymy for ruler or monarch. Parable, An extended metaphor narrated as an anecdote illustrating and teaching such as in Aesops fables, pun, Similar to a metaphor, a pun alludes to another term. However, the difference is that a pun is a frivolous allusion between two different things whereas a metaphor is a purposeful allusion between two different things. Metaphor, like other types of analogy, can usefully be distinguished from metonymy as one of two modes of thought. Thus, a metaphor creates new links between otherwise distinct conceptual domains, whereas a metonymy relies on the links within them. A dead metaphor is one in which the sense of an image has become absent. Examples, to grasp a concept and to gather what youve understood use physical action as a metaphor for understanding, the audience does not need to visualize the action, dead metaphors normally go unnoticed. Some people distinguish between a dead metaphor and a cliché, others use dead metaphor to denote both. A mixed metaphor is one that leaps from one identification to a second identification inconsistent with the first, e. g. Checkmate
28.
Henry Watson Fowler
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Henry Watson Fowler was an English schoolmaster, lexicographer and commentator on the usage of the English language. He is notable for both A Dictionary of Modern English Usage and his work on the Concise Oxford Dictionary, and was described by The Times as a lexicographical genius. After an Oxford education, Fowler was a schoolmaster until his age and then worked in London as a freelance writer and journalist. In partnership with his brother Francis, and beginning in 1906, he began publishing seminal grammar, style, after his brothers death in 1918, he completed the works on which they had collaborated and edited additional works. Fowler was born on 10 March 1858 in Tonbridge, Kent and his parents, the Rev. Robert Fowler and his wife Caroline, née Watson, were originally from Devon. Robert Fowler was a Cambridge graduate, clergyman, and schoolmaster, at the time of Henrys birth he was teaching mathematics at Tonbridge School, but the family soon moved to nearby Tunbridge Wells. Henry was the eldest child of seven, and his fathers death in 1879 left him to assume a leading role in caring for his younger brothers. Henry Fowler spent some time at a school in Germany before enrolling at Rugby School in 1871. He concentrated on Latin and Greek, winning a prize for his translation into Greek verse of part of Percy Bysshe Shelleys play Prometheus Unbound. He also took part in drama and debating and in his final year served as head of his house and he was greatly inspired by one of his classics teachers, Robert Whitelaw, with whom he kept up a correspondence later in life. In 1877 Fowler began attending Balliol College, Oxford and he did not excel at Oxford as he had at Rugby, earning only second-class honours in both Moderations and Literae Humaniores. Although he participated little in Oxford sport, he did begin a practice that he was to continue for the rest of his life and he left Oxford in 1881, but was not awarded a degree until 1886, because he failed to pass his Divinity examination. Trusting in the judgement of the Balliol College master that he had an aptitude for the profession of Schoolmaster, Fowler took up a temporary teaching position at Fettes College in Edinburgh. After spending two terms there, he moved again to Yorkshire to begin a mastership at Sedbergh School in 1882. There he taught Latin, Greek and English, starting with the first form and he was a respected but uninspiring teacher, earning the nickname Joey Stinker owing to his propensity for tobacco smoking. Several of the Fowler brothers were reunited at Sedbergh, charles Fowler taught temporarily at the school during the illness of one of the house masters. Arthur Fowler had transferred from Rugby to Sedbergh for his last eighteen months at school, Henry Fowler made several lifelong friends at Sedbergh, who often accompanied him on holiday to the Alps. Despite being the son of a clergyman, Fowler had been an atheist for quite some time and he had the chance of becoming a housemaster at Sedbergh on three occasions
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Principle
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Tarnas is professor of philosophy and psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and is the founding director of its graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness. Tarnas was born on February 21,1950 in Geneva, Switzerland and his father, also named Richard Tarnas, worked as a government contract attorney, former president of the Michigan Federal Bar Association, and professor of law. His mother, Mary Louise, was a teacher and homemaker, the eldest of eight children, he grew up in Detroit, Michigan, where he studied Greek, Latin, and the Classics at the University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy. In 1968 Tarnas entered Harvard, graduating with an A. B. cum laude in 1972 and he received his Ph. D. from Saybrook Institute in 1976 with a thesis on psychedelic therapy. In 1974 Tarnas went to Esalen in California to study psychotherapy with Stanislav Grof and he also served as Esalens director of programs and education. Jeffrey Kripal characterizes Tarnas as both the literal and figurative gate-keeper of Esalen, Tarnas is the founding director of the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where he remains a core faculty member as of 2014. In 2006, Tarnas published his book, Cosmos and Psyche. It claims that the events of Western cultural history correlate consistently and meaningfully with the observed angular positions of the planets. The book received reviews in Tikkun magazine, in an anthroposophical journal, and in the web magazine Reality Sandwich. Tarnas featured in the 2006 film Entheogen, Awakening the Divine Within, in 2007 a group of fifty scholars and researchers in the San Francisco Bay Area formed the Archetypal Research Collective for pursuing research in archetypal cosmology. Advisory-board members include Christopher Bache, Jorge Ferrer, Stanislav Grof, Robert A. McDermott, Ralph Metzner, contributors have included Keiron Le Grice, Richard Tarnas, Stanislav Grof, and Rod ONeal. In 2008 Tarnas was invited to address members of the Dutch Parliament about creating a sustainable society, in 2007 John Cleese and Tarnas gave some public lectures together at Esalen and in Santa Barbara. The lectures discussed regaining a connection to the sacred in the modern world, di Carlo, Towards a New World View, Conversations at the Leading Edge. Jung, Cosmology, and the Transformation of the Modern Self, recorded at Pacifica Graduate Institute on April 8–9,2006. Skeptical Inquirer Volume 30.4, July / August 2006 Review of Cosmos and Psyche, Intimations of a New World View. by Alice Klein Now Magazine April 17–24,2008 Vol 27 No 33
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Middle Ages
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In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and later argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
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Jesus
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In Christology, the Person of Christ refers to the study of the human and divine natures of Jesus Christ as they co-exist within one person. There is no discussion in the New Testament regarding the dual nature of the Person of Christ as both divine and human. Hence, since the days of Christianity theologians have debated various approaches to the understanding of these natures. In the period following the Apostolic Age, specific beliefs such as Arianism and Docetism were criticized. On the other end of the spectrum, Docetism argued that Jesus physical body was an illusion, docetic teachings were attacked by St. Ignatius of Antioch and were eventually abandoned by proto-orthodox Christians. However, after the First Council of Nicaea in 325 the Logos, historically in the Alexandrian school of christology, Jesus Christ is the eternal Logos paradoxically humanized in history, a divine Person who became enfleshed, uniting himself to the human nature. The views of these schools can be summarized as follows, Alexandria, Antioch, Logos assumes a specific human being The First Council of Ephesus in 431 debated a number of views regarding the Person of Christ. At the same gathering the council debated the doctrines of monophysitism or miaphysitism. The council rejected Nestorianism and adopted the term hypostatic union, referring to divine, the language used in the 431 declaration was further refined at the 451 Council of Chalcedon. However, the Chalcedon creed was not accepted by all Christians, because Saint Augustine died in 430 he did not participate in the Council of Ephesus in 431 or Chalcedon in 451, but his ideas had some impact on both councils. On the other hand, the major theological figure of the Middle Ages. The Third Council of Constantinople in 680 held that both divine and human wills exist in Jesus, with the divine will having precedence, leading and guiding the human will. John Calvin maintained that there was no element in the Person of Christ which could be separated from the person of The Word. Calvin also emphasized the importance of the Work of Christ in any attempt at understanding the Person of Christ, the study of the Person of Christ continued into the 20th century, with modern theologians such as Karl Rahner and Hans von Balthasar. Balthasar argued that the union of the human and divine natures of Christ was achieved not by the absorption of human attributes, thus in his view the divine nature of Christ was not affected by the human attributes and remained forever divine
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Correspondence (theology)
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The term correspondence was coined by the 18th century theologian Emanuel Swedenborg in his Arcana Coelestia, Heaven and Hell and other works. In the terminology of Swedenborg’s revelation, “correspondence” is a relationship found between two levels of existence. Thus, for instance, light corresponds to wisdom because wisdom enlightens the mind as light enlightens the eye, warmth corresponds to love because love warms the mind as heat does the body. Swedenborg’s 12-volume Arcana Coelestia provides verse-by-verse details of the meaning of Genesis and part of Exodus. The Arcana Coelestia, for example, explains how the creation and they had a holy book, the Ancient Word, written in correspondences, which is still used in heaven. As the human race fell into evil the ability to understand correspondences was lost, what was preserved of the Ancient Word, according to Swedenborg, are the first eleven chapters of Genesis. The first seven of these chapters were copied verbatim, the Bible also refers to various books of the Ancient Church now lost, including the “Wars of Jehovah”, “Enunciators” or “Prophetic Enunciations” and the “Book of Jashar” or “Book of the Upright”. Of note is that the stories from the Ancient Word were all made-up history and that is thus true for the first 11 chapters of Genesis as well. Making up such stories was a custom in churches of antiquity. In fact, the history recorded in the Word was chosen because it had correspondence to an internal sense. Psalm 78 tells the history of Israel and actually says it is a parable, when the Lord was in the world he spoke by correspondences, and thus both spiritually and naturally at the same time. This is apparent from His parables, in every single expression contains a spiritual sense. However people of Jesus’ time only understood the natural level of His teaching. Correspondences were not disclosed to the primitive early Christians because they were too simple to understand them, thus Jesus said, “There is so much more I want to tell you, but you can’t bear it now. ”. The people of the Golden Age loved correspondences, and made small images to remind themselves of heavenly things. But as the race declined into evil and the knowledge of correspondences was almost lost, people began to worship the images themselves. The knowledge of correspondences of the Ancient and Israelitish Words spread widely in Asia, in Greece the correspondences were turned into the myths of antiquity. There were people, notably those referred to as ones, diviners or magi
33.
Gnosticism
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Gnosticism is a modern name for a variety of ancient religious ideas and systems, originating in Jewish milieus in the first and second century CE. This Divine spark could be liberated by gnosis of this Divine spark, the Gnostic ideas and systems flourished in Mediterranean in the second century CE, in conjunction with and influenced by the early Christian movements and Middle Platonism. In the Persian Empire Gnosticism spread as far as China with Manicheism, a major question in scholarly research is the qualification of Gnosticism, based on the study of its texts, as either an interreligious phenomenon or as an independent religion. The word Gnosticism is a construction, from the Greek word gnosis. Gnosis refers to knowledge based on experience or perception. In a religious context, gnosis is mystical or esoteric knowledge based on direct participation with the divine, in most Gnostic systems the sufficient cause of salvation is this knowledge of the divine. It is a knowing, comparable to that encouraged by Plotinus. With gnosis comes a fuller insight, and gives an understanding of the deeper meanings of doctrines, scriptures. The usual meaning of gnostikos in Classical Greek texts is learned or intellectual, platos use of learned is fairly typical of Classical texts. By the Hellenistic period, it began to also be associated with Greco-Roman mysteries, the adjective is not used in the New Testament, but Clement of Alexandria speaks of the learned Christian in complimentary terms. The use of gnostikos in relation to heresy originates with interpreters of Irenaeus, some scholars consider that Irenaeus sometimes uses gnostikos to simply mean intellectual, whereas his mention of the intellectual sect is a specific designation. The term Gnosticism was derived from the use of the Greek adjective gnostikos by St. Irenaeus to describe the school of Valentinus as he legomene gnostike haeresis the heresy called Learned, the Syrian-Egyptian traditions postulate a remote, supreme Godhead, the Monad. From this highest divinity emanate lower divine beings, known as Aeons, the Demiurg, one of those Aeons, creates the physical world. Divine elements fall into the realm, and are locked within human beings. This divine element returns to the realm when Gnosis, esoteric or intuitive knowledge of the divine element within is obtained. Gnostic systems postulate a dualism between God and the world, varying from the radical dualist systems of Manicheanism to the dualism of classic gnostic movements. Radical dualism, or absolute dualism, posits two co-equal divine forces, while in mitigated dualism one of the two principles is in some way inferior to the other, in qualified monism the second entity may be divine or semi-divine. Valentinian Gnosticism is a form of monism, expressed in terms previously used in a dualistic manner, Gnostics tended toward asceticism, especially in their sexual and dietary practice
34.
Gospel of Mark
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The Gospel According to Mark, the second book of the New Testament, is one of the four canonical gospels and the three synoptic gospels. It portrays Jesus as a man of action, an exorcist, a healer. Jesus is also the Son of God, but he keeps his identity secret, all this is in keeping with prophecy, which foretold the fate of the messiah as Suffering Servant. The gospel ends, in its version, with the discovery of the empty tomb, a promise to meet again in Galilee. Traditionally thought to be an epitome of Matthew, which accounts for its place as the gospel in the Bible. The Gospel of Mark is anonymous, early Christian tradition ascribes it to John Mark, a companion and interpreter of the apostle Peter. Hence its author is often called Mark, even though most modern scholars are doubtful of the Markan tradition and instead regard the author as unknown. It was probably written c. AD 66–70, during Neros persecution of the Christians in Rome or the Jewish revolt, as suggested by references to war in Judea. The author used a variety of pre-existing sources, such as stories, apocalyptic discourse. Mark was written in Greek, for an audience of Greek-speaking Christians, Rome, Galilee, Antioch. The gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke bear a resemblance to each other. Their close relationship is termed the problem, and has led to a number of hypotheses explaining their interdependence. The most widely accepted hypothesis is that Mark was the first gospel and was used as a source by both Matthew and Luke, together with additional material. The strongest argument for this is the fact that Matthew and Luke agree with other in their sequence of stories. The 19th century recognition of Mark as the earliest gospel led to the belief that it must therefore be the most reliable, the modern consensus is that Marks purpose was to present a theological message rather than to write history. Marks gospel is nevertheless seen as the most reliable of the four in terms of its overall description of Jesuss life. This recognition allows scholars to chart the evolution of Jesus in the scriptures, Marks Christ, for example, dies with the cry, My God, my God, historical reconstruction suggests that the original despairing death of Jesus has become more and more victorious over time. From the outset, Christians depended heavily on Jewish literature, supporting their convictions through the Jewish scriptures and those convictions involved a nucleus of key concepts, the messiah, the son of God and the son of man, the Day of the Lord, the kingdom of God
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Kingship and kingdom of God
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The concept of the kingship of God appears in all Abrahamic religions, where in some cases the terms Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven are also used. The notion of Gods kingship goes back to the Hebrew Bible, also, a Kingdom of the Gods is common in paganism such as Mount Olympus in Greek mythology or the phrase King of the Gods. The Kingdom of God and its equivalent form Kingdom of Heaven in the Gospel of Matthew is one of the key elements of the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. Drawing on Old Testament teachings, the Christian characterization of the relationship between God and humanity inherently involves the notion of the Kingship of God, the Quran does not include the term kingdom of God, but refers to Abraham seeing the Kingdom of the heavens. However, Baháí writings do use the kingdom of God. The term kingdom of God does not appear in the Hebrew Bible, although his kingdom, yours is the kingdom, O Lord is used in 1 Chronicles 29, 10-12 and His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom in Daniel 3,33, for example. The Hebrew word malkuth refers first to a reign, dominion, or rule, when malkuth is used of God, it almost always refers to his authority or to his rule as the heavenly King. The enthronement psalms provide a background for this view with the exclamation The Lord is King. 1 Kings 22,19, Isaiah 6, Ezekiel 1 and Daniel 7,9 all speak of the Throne of God, although some such as Saadia Gaon. The phrase the Kingdom of God isnt common in intertestamental literature, the term does occasionally, however, denote an eschatological event, such as in the Assumption of Moses and the Sibylline Oracles. In these cases, Gods Kingdom is not the new age, along these lines was the more national view in which the awaited messiah was seen as a liberator and the founder of a new state of Israel. The Gospel of Luke records Jesus description of the Kingdom of God, for indeed, the kingdom of God is within you. The Apostle Paul defined the Kingdom of God in his letter to the church in Rome, For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, in the Gospels, especially the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus speaks frequently of Gods kingdom. However, Jesus never defines the concept and he assumed this was a concept so familiar that it did not require definition. The Kingdom of God is one of the key elements of the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, drawing on Old Testament teachings, the Christian characterization of the relationship between God and humanity inherently involves the notion of the Kingship of God. Most of the uses of the Greek word basileia in the New Testament involve Kingdom of God, Matthew is likely to have instead used the term heaven because the background of his Jewish audience imposed restrictions on the frequent use of the name of God. However, Dr. Chuck Missler asserts that Matthew intentionally differentiated between the kingdoms of God and Heaven, Most commentators presume that these terms are synonymous. However, Matthew uses Kingdom of Heaven 33 times, but also uses Kingdom of God five times, even in adjacent verses, Kingdom of God is translated to Latin as Regnum Dei and Kingdom of Heaven as Regnum caelorum
