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Ox-goad
The goad is a Traditional agriculture, traditional farming implement, used to spur or guide livestock, usually oxen, which are pulling a plough or a cart; used also to round up cattle. It is a type of long stick with a pointed end, also known as the cattle prod. The word is from Middle English ''gode'', from Old English ''gād''. In Sophocles's ''Oedipus Rex'', Oedipus's father Laius tried to kill his son with a goad when they accidentally met at a crossroads. Religious significance Goads in various guises are used as iconographic devices and may be seen in the 'elephant goad' or 'ankusha' (Sanskrit) in the hand of Ganesha, for example. According to the Bible, biblical passage Book of Judges, Judges 3:31, Shamgar son of Anath killed six hundred Philistines with an ox goad. Tischler and McHenry (2006: p. 251) in discussing the biblical account of 'goad' hold: In the early days, before Israel had its own metal industries, farmers had to rely on the Philistines to sharp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Traditional Agriculture
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in cities. The history of agriculture began thousands of years ago. After gathering wild grains beginning at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers began to plant them around 11,500 years ago. Sheep, goats, pigs and cattle were domesticated over 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. Industrial agriculture based on large-scale monoculture in the twentieth century came to dominate agricultural output, though about 2 billion people still depended on subsistence agriculture. The major agricultural products can be broadly grouped into foods, fibers, fuels, and raw materials (such as rubber). Food classes include cereals (grains), vegetables, fruits, cooking oils, meat, milk, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conversion Of Paul The Apostle
The conversion of Paul the Apostle (also the Pauline conversion, Damascene conversion, Damascus Christophany and the "road to Damascus" event) was, according to the New Testament, an event in the life of Saul/Paul the Apostle that led him to cease persecuting early Christians and to become a follower of Jesus. The New Testament accounts Paul's conversion experience is discussed in both the Pauline epistles and in the Acts of the Apostles. According to both sources, Saul/Paul was not a follower of Jesus and did not know him before his crucifixion. The narrative of the Book of Acts suggests Paul's conversion occurred 4–7 years after the crucifixion of Jesus. The accounts of Paul's conversion experience describe it as miraculous, supernatural, or otherwise revelatory in nature. Before conversion Before his conversion, Paul was known as Saul and was "a Pharisee of Pharisees", who " intensely persecuted" the followers of Jesus. Paul describes his life before conversion in his Epist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ankusha
The elephant goad, bullhook, or ankus (from Sanskrit ' or ''ankusha'') is a tool employed by mahout in the elephant handling, handling and training of elephants. It consists of a hook (usually bronze or steel) which is attached to a handle, ending in a tapered end. A relief at Sanchi and a fresco at the Ajanta Caves depict a three-person crew on the war elephant, the driver with an elephant goad, what appears to be a noble warrior behind the driver and another attendant on the posterior of the elephant.Nossov, Konstantin & Dennis, Peter (2008). ''War Elephants''. illustrated by Peter Dennis. Edition: illustrated. Osprey Publishing.(accessed: Monday April 13, 2009), p.18 Nossov and Dennis (2008 p 19) report that two perfectly preserved elephant goads were recovered from an archaeological site at Taxila and are dated from 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE according to John Marshall (archaeologist), Marshall. The larger of the two is 65 cm long. Nossov and Dennis (2008: ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crosier
A crosier or crozier (also known as a paterissa, pastoral staff, or bishop's staff) is a stylized staff that is a symbol of the governing office of a bishop or abbot and is carried by high-ranking prelates of Roman Catholic, Eastern Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and some Anglican, Lutheran, United Methodist and Pentecostal churches. In Western Christianity the usual form has been a shepherd's crook, curved at the top to enable animals to be hooked. In Eastern Christianity, it is found in two common forms: tau-shaped, with curved arms, surmounted by a small cross; or a pair of sculptured serpents or dragons curled back to face each other, with a small cross between them. Other typical insignia of prelates are the mitre, the pectoral cross, and the episcopal ring. History The origin of the crozier as a staff of authority is uncertain, but there were many secular and religious precedents in the ancient world. One example is the lituus, the traditional ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kabbalah
Kabbalah ( he, קַבָּלָה ''Qabbālā'', literally "reception, tradition") is an esoteric method, discipline and school of thought in Jewish mysticism. A traditional Kabbalist is called a Mekubbal ( ''Məqūbbāl'' "receiver"). The definition of Kabbalah varies according to the tradition and aims of those following it, from its origin in medieval Judaism to its later adaptations in Western esotericism (Christian Kabbalah and Hermetic Qabalah). Jewish Kabbalah is a set of esoteric teachings meant to explain the relationship between the unchanging, eternal God—the mysterious ''Ein Sof'' (, ''"The Infinite"'')—and the mortal, finite universe (God's creation). It forms the foundation of mystical religious interpretations within Judaism. Jewish Kabbalists originally developed their own transmission of sacred texts within the realm of Jewish tradition and often use classical Jewish scriptures to explain and demonstrate its mystical teachings. These teachings are held by K ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tiferet
Tiferet ( he, תִּפְאֶרֶת ''Tip̄ʾereṯ,'' in pausa: תִּפְאָרֶת ''Tip̄ʾāreṯ'', lit. 'beauty, glory, adornment') alternatively Tifaret, Tiphareth, Tifereth or Tiphereth, is the sixth sefira in the kabbalistic Tree of Life. It has the common association of "Spirituality", "Balance", "Integration", "Beauty", " Miracles", and "Compassion". Description In the Bahir it states: "Sixth is the adorned, glorious, delightful throne of glory, the house of the world to come. Its place is engraved in wisdom as it says 'God said: Let there be light, and there was light.'" Arthur Green. ''A guide to the Zohar'' Tiferet is the force that integrates the Sefira of Chesed ("Kindness") and Gevurah ("Strength, also called Din, "Judgement"). These two forces are, respectively, expansive (giving) and restrictive (receiving). Either of them without the other could not manifest the flow of Divine energy; they must be balanced in perfect proportion by balancing compassion wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gevurah
Gevurah or Geburah ( he, גְּבוּרָה, Gəvūrā}, Tiberian: ''Găḇūrā,'' lit. 'strength'), is the fifth '' sephirah'' in the kabbalistic tree of life, and it is the second of the emotive attributes of the ''sephirot''. It sits below Binah, across from Chesed and above Hod. Gevurah is "the essence of judgment (DIN) and limitation", and corresponds to awe and the element of fire. In the Bahir it is written "And who are the Officers? We learned that there are three. Strength (Gevurah) is the Officer of all the Holy Forms to the left of the Blessed Holy One. He is Gabriel." According to some modern sources, Gevurah is associated with the color red. Description Gevurah is the fifth of the ten Sefirot and second of the emotive attributes in Creation, and which corresponds to the second day of creation (Zohar 2:127b). In the Bahir it says "What is the fifth (utterance)? Fifth is the great fire of God, of which it says 'let me see no more of this great fire, lest I di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hieroglyph
A hieroglyph ( Greek for "sacred carvings") was a character of the ancient Egyptian writing system. Logographic scripts that are pictographic in form in a way reminiscent of ancient Egyptian are also sometimes called "hieroglyphs". In Neoplatonism, especially during the Renaissance, a "hieroglyph" was an artistic representation of an esoteric idea, which Neoplatonists believed actual Egyptian hieroglyphs to be. The word ''hieroglyphics'' refers to a hieroglyphic script. The Egyptians invented the pictorial script, which refers to any writing system that employs images as symbols for various semantic entities, rather than the abstract signs used by alphabets. The appearance of these distinctive figures in 3000 BCE marked the beginning of Egyptian civilization. Though based on images, Egyptian script was more than a sophisticated form of picture-writing. Each picture/glyph served one of three functions: (1) to represent the image of a thing or action, (2) to stand for a sound or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crook And Flail
The crook and flail (''heka'' and ''nekhakha'') were symbols used in ancient Egyptian society. They were originally the attributes of the ancient Egyptian deities, deity Osiris that became insignia of pharaonic authority. The shepherd's crook stood for kingship and the flail for the fertility of the land. The earliest known example of a crook is from the Gerzeh culture (Naqada II), and comes from tomb U547 in Abydos, Egypt, Abydos . By late Prehistoric Egypt, Predynastic times, the shepherd's crook was already an established symbol of rule. The flail initially remained separate, being depicted alone in some earliest representations of royal ceremonial. Approximately by the time of the Second dynasty of Egypt, Second Dynasty the crook and flail became paired. The only extant pharaonic examples of both the crook and flail come from the Tomb of Tutankhamun. Their staffs are made of heavy bronze covered with alternating stripes of blue glass, obsidian, and gold, while the flail's b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semitic Languages
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant and expatriate communities in North America, Europe, and Australasia. The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen school of history, who derived the name from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis. Semitic languages occur in written form from a very early historical date in West Asia, with East Semitic Akkadian and Eblaite texts (written in a script adapted from Sumerian cuneiform) appearing from the 30th century BCE and the 25th century BCE in Mesopotamia and the north eastern Levant respectively. The only earlier attested languages are Sumerian and Elamite (2800 BCE to 550 BCE), both language isolates, and Egyptian (a sister branch of the Afroasiatic family, related to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin Alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the other modern European languages. With modifications, it is also used for other alphabets, such as the Vietnamese alphabet. Its modern repertoire is standardised as the ISO basic Latin alphabet. Etymology The term ''Latin alphabet'' may refer to either the alphabet used to write Latin (as described in this article) or other alphabets based on the Latin script, which is the basic set of letters common to the various alphabets descended from the classical Latin alphabet, such as the English alphabet. These Latin-script alphabets may discard letters, like the Rotokas alphabet, or add new letters, like the Danish and Norwegian alphabets. Letter shapes have evolved over the centuries, including the development in Medieval Latin of lower-c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biblical Manuscripts
A biblical manuscript is any handwritten copy of a portion of the text of the Bible. Biblical manuscripts vary in size from tiny scrolls containing individual verses of the Jewish scriptures (see ''Tefillin'') to huge polyglot codices (multi-lingual books) containing both the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and the New Testament, as well as extracanonical works. The study of biblical manuscripts is important because handwritten copies of books can contain errors. Textual criticism attempts to reconstruct the original text of books, especially those published prior to the invention of the printing press. Hebrew Bible (or Tanakh) manuscripts The Aleppo Codex (c. 920 CE) and Leningrad Codex (c. 1008 CE) were once the oldest known manuscripts of the Tanakh in Hebrew. In 1947, the finding of the Dead Sea scrolls at Qumran pushed the manuscript history of the Tanakh back a millennium from such codices. Before this discovery, the earliest extant manuscripts of the Old Testament were in Greek ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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