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Probability of set-theoretic union does not exceed \u03c6(T) \u00d7 P(T)"}, null, {"document_url": "http://tdwotd.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html", "unformatted_src": "http://timothyministries.org/images/Holy_Land_and_12_Tribes_large.jpg", "src": "http://timothyministries.org/images/Holy_Land_and_12_Tribes_large.jpg", "formatted_filename": "Holy Land and Tribes large", "alt_text": "1759 map of the tribal allotments of Israel"}, null, {"document_url": "http://tdwotd.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html", "unformatted_src": "http://timothyministries.org/images/Christianity_percentage_by_country.png", "src": "http://timothyministries.org/images/Christianity_percentage_by_country.png", "formatted_filename": "Christianity percentage by country", "alt_text": "Christianity percentage by country"}, null, {"document_url": "http://tdwotd.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html", "unformatted_src": "http://timothyministries.org/images/Antennae_galaxies.jpg", "src": "http://timothyministries.org/images/Antennae_galaxies.jpg", "formatted_filename": "Antennae galaxies", "alt_text": "The Antennae Galaxies are undergoing a collision that will result in their eventual merger. 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The Edomites

In the Bible

The Bible explains the name "Edom" with no mention of red rock. It refers to the Edomites as descendants of Esau, and the Book of Genesis mentions "red" a number of times in describing Esau and explaining his alternate name Edom.

"The first one [Esau] came out reddish [admoni in Hebrew], as hairy as a fur coat. They named him Esau." Years later, "Jacob was once simmering a stew, when Esau came home exhausted from the field. Esau said to Jacob, 'Give me a swallow of that red stuff [ha-adom, ha-adom, i.e., using the word ha-adom twice]! I'm famished!' He was therefore given the name Edom ['Red' or 'Ruddy']."

The Edomites' original country, according to the Tanakh, stretched from the Sinai peninsula as far as Kadesh Barnea. Southward it reached as far as Eilat, which was the seaport of Edom. On the north of Edom was the territory of Moab. The boundary between Moab and Edom was the Wadi Zered. The ancient capital of Edom was Bozrah. According to Genesis, Esau's descendents settled in this land after displacing the Horites. It was also called the land of Seir; Mount Seir appears to have been strongly identified with them and may have been a cultic site.


Posted by Zhivago of Tookland at 2:01 PM
Labels: Edom, Esau, Genesis, red, Udumi



Theodore Beza Theodore Beza (Theodore de Beze or de Besze) (June 24, 1519 - October 13, 1605) was a French Protestant Christian theologian and scholar who played an important role in the early Reformation. He was a disciple of John Calvin and lived most of his life in Switzerland.


Theodore Beza was born at Vezelay (8 miles west-south-west of Avallon), in Burgundy.

His father, Pierre de Beze, royal governor of Vezelay, descended from a Burgundian family of distinction; his mother, Marie Bourdelot, was known for her generosity. Pierre de Beze had two brothers; Nicholas, who was member of Parliament at Paris; and Claude, who was abbot of the Cistercian monastery Froimont in the diocese of Beauvais. Nicholas, who was unmarried, during a visit to Vezelay was so pleased with Theodore that, with the permission of their parents, he took him to Paris to educate him there. From Paris, Theodore was sent to Orleans in December 1528 to enjoy the instruction of the famous German teacher Melchior Wolmar. He was received into Wolmar's house, and the day on which this took place was afterward celebrated as a second birthday.


Posted by Zhivago of Tookland at 10:49 PM
Labels: John Calvin, John Knox, Reformation Wall, Theodore Beza, William Farel



biblical criticism Biblical criticism is a form of Historical Criticism that seeks to analyze the Bible through asking certain questions of the text, such as: Who wrote it? When was it written? To whom was it written? Why was it written? What was the historical, geographical, and cultural setting of the text? How well preserved is the original text? How unified is the text? What sources were used by the author? How was the text transmitted over time? What is the text's genre and from what sociologial setting is it derived? When and how did it come to become part of the Bible?

Biblical criticism is "the study and investigation of biblical writings that seeks to make discerning and discriminating judgments about these writings." It asks when and where a particular text originated, how, why, by whom, for whom, and in what circumstances it was produced, what influences were at work in its production, what sources were used in its composition, and the message it was intended to convey. It also addresses the physical text, including the meaning of the words and the way in which they are used, its preservation, history, and integrity. Biblical criticism draws upon a wide range of scholarly disciplines, including linguistics, archaeology, anthropology, folklore, oral tradition studies, and historical and religious studies.

Biblical criticism, defined as the treatment of biblical texts as natural rather than supernatural artifacts, grew out of the rationalism of the 17th and 18th centuries. It can be broadly divided between the higher Criticism (the term is perhaps a little old-fashioned today), which is the study of biblical texts to discover their composition, history, and meaning, and textual criticism, which is the close examination of the text to establish variant and original readings. Contemporary criticism has seen the rise of new perspectives which draw on literary and multidisciplinary sociological approaches to address the meaning(s) of texts and the wider world in which they were conceived.


Posted by Zhivago of Tookland at 12:04 PM
Labels: biblical criticism, criticism



Christian art 



The Roman Empire 

900 000 km². (2,300,000 sq.mi.) of land surface, thereby being the largest of all empires during the classical antiquity period of European history.

In the centuries before the autocracy of Augustus, Rome (Roman Kingdom and Roman Republic) had already accumulated most of its territory beyond the Italian Peninsula, including former Mediterranean competitors Syracuse and Carthage. In the late Republic, Augustus definitively added Egypt to the Imperium Romanum.


Posted by Zhivago of Tookland at 6:43 AM
Labels: The Roman Empire



ancient Greece Ancient Greece is a period in Greek history that lasted for around nine hundred years. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the foundation of Western Civilization. Greek culture had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire, which carried a version of it to many parts of Europe. The civilization of the ancient Greeks has been immensely influential on the language, politics, educational systems, philosophy, science, and arts, giving rise to the Renaissance in Western Europe and again resurgent during various neo-Classical revivals in 18th and 19th century Europe and the Americas.

There are no fixed or universally agreed upon dates for the beginning or the end of the Ancient Greek period. In common usage it refers to all Greek history before the Roman Empire, but historians use the term more precisely. Some writers include the periods of the Greek-speaking Mycenaean civilization that collapsed about 1150 BC, though most would argue that the influential Minoan was so different from later Greek cultures that it should be classed separately.


Posted by Zhivago of Tookland at 2:40 PM
Labels: ancient Greece

 Transubstantiation (in Latin, transsubstantiatio) is the change of the substance of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ occurring in the Eucharist according to the teaching of some Christian Churches, including the Roman Catholic Church. In Greek it is called μετουσίωσις.

Theology of transubstantiation

"Substance" here means what something is in itself. (For more on the philosophical concept, see Substance theory.) A hat's shape is not the hat itself, nor is its colour the hat, nor is its size, nor its softness to the touch, nor anything else about it perceptible to the senses. The hat itself (the "substance") has the shape, the colour, the size, the softness and the other appearances, but is distinct from them. While the appearances, which are referred to by the philosophical term accidents, are perceptible to the senses, the substance is not.


Posted by Zhivago of Tookland at 1:55 PM
Labels: Body and Blood of Christ, Catholicism, Martin Luther, Roman Catholic Church, transubstantiation



The old city of Jerusalem 

The status of the united Jerusalem as Israel's capital is not widely recognised by the international community and Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem is particularly controversial.

Jerusalem's Old City Wall encompasses an area of barely 1km². The existing wall was built in the 16th century (1535-1538) by the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Turks. The 4,018 meter long wall incorporates older parts from the Second Temple, Roman, Byzantine and Medieval periods.

Before King David's conquest of Jerusalem (2 Samuel 5:6-10) in the 10th century BC the city was known as Jebus and the home of the Jebusites. The Bible describes the city as heavily fortified with a strong city wall but not much is known about it.

King Solomon extended the city walls. In about 440 BC, under the Persian empire, Nehemiah arrived from Babylon and rebuilt them.

In AD 41-44 Herod Agrippa, king of Judea, built a new city wall known as the "Third Wall".


Posted by Zhivago of Tookland at 9:54 AM
Labels: city of David, Jerusalem, The old city of Jerusalem



Presuppositional apologetics 

Comparison with other schools of apologetics

Presuppositionalists contrast their approach with the other schools of Christian apologetics by describing them as assuming that the world is intelligible apart from belief in the existence of God and then arguing on purportedly neutral grounds to support trusting the Christian Scriptures and the existence of God. Thomas Aquinas himself insists that many crucial truths can only be known through scripture, and none of his arguments are intended to show the entire Christian picture. Specifically, presuppositionalists describe Thomistic (also "Traditional" or "Classical") apologetics as concentrating on the first aspect of apologetics with its logical proofs for the existence of God, simply assuming common ground with the non-Christian and utilizing a piece-by-piece methodology. In this scheme, the common foundation of neutral brute facts leads to a generic concept of deity, then to the various characteristics of the Christian God as revealed in Scripture, and so forth. Piece-by-piece, Christian theology is built up from a neutral common ground.


Posted by Zhivago of Tookland at 4:07 PM
Labels: Christian apologetics, Christian Theology, Cornelius Van Til, Gordon Haddon Clark, Greg Bahnsen, John Frame, Presuppositional apologetics

 



Edmund Husserl 

Education and early works


 Dallas Willard (September 4, 1935 - ) is an American philosophy professor and author born in Buffalo, Missouri. His work in philosophy has been primarily in phenomenology, particularly the work of Edmund Husserl. His more popular work has been in the area of Christian spiritual formation, within the various expressions of historic Christian orthodoxy.

Academic career

Willard taught at the University of Wisconsin in Madison from 1960-1965. Since then he has taught at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where he served as Director of the School of Philosophy from 1982-1985. He has also held visiting appointments at UCLA (1969) and the University of Colorado (1984).

His publications in philosophy are concerned primarily with epistemology, the philosophy of mind and of logic, and with the philosophy of Edmund Husserl. He has translated many of Husserl's early writings from German into English.


Posted by Zhivago of Tookland at 7:28 AM
Labels: C.S. Lewis Foundation, Dallas Willard, Edmund Husserl, Phenomenology, The Divine Conspiracy



teleological argument 

The argument

The teleological argument is consistent with Romans 1:20:


Posted by Zhivago of Tookland at 6:51 AM
Labels: God exists, Intelligent design, order, purpose, teleological argument, telos



Leningrad Codex The Leningrad Codex (or Codex Leningradensis) is one of the oldest manuscripts of the complete Hebrew Bible produced according to the Tiberian mesorah; it is dated 1008 according to its colophon. The Aleppo Codex, against which the Leningrad Codex was corrected, was the first such manuscript and is several decades older, but parts of it have been missing since 1947, making the Leningrad Codex the oldest complete codex of the Tiberian mesorah that has survived intact to this day.
In modern times, the Leningrad Codex is most important as the Hebrew text reproduced in Biblia Hebraica (1937) and Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (1977). It also serves scholars as a primary source for the recovery of details in the missing parts of the Aleppo Codex.


The biblical text as found in the codex contains the Hebrew letter-text along with Tiberian vowels and cantillation signs. In addition are masoretic notes in the margins. There are also various technical supplements dealing with textual and linguistic details, many of which are painted in geometrical forms. The codex is written on parchment and bound in leather.


Posted by Zhivago of Tookland at 6:53 AM
Labels: Aleppo Codex, Codex, Leningrad Codex

 

Course of the Euphrates

In Kurdish, fere means "wide", re means "flowing water" and hat is "flowing", giving fererehat, meaning "wide flowing water". The modern Kurdish name, Ferat, is possibly a reduction of the older name. However, the Indo-European etymology of the name is put into doubt by the Sumerian and Akkadian names for the Euphrates are Buranun and Pu-rat-tu, respectively, Buranun being attested in an inscription associated with king Gudea (22nd century BC). It seems thus likely that the Old Persian name arose by popular etymology based on the pre-Iranian name of the river.


Posted by Zhivago of Tookland at 2:35 PM
Labels: Battle of Armageddon, Euphrates, Garden of Eden, Genesis, great river, Hammurabi, Tigris

 

In the Hebrew Bible



Simon Peter Saint Peter, also known as Simon ben Jonah/BarJonah, Simon Peter, Cephas and Kepha — original name Simon or Simeon (Acts 15:14) — was one of the Twelve Apostles whom Jesus chose as his original disciples. His life is prominently featured in the New Testament Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. A Galilean fisherman, he (with his brother Andrew) was literally "called" by Jesus to be a disciple. Above all the other disciples, Peter was assigned a leadership role by Jesus (Matt 16:18; John 21:15–16); and many within the early Church, such as St Clement of Rome and St Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses 3:3:20), mention his primacy.

The ancient Christian Churches, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox, consider Simon Peter a saint and associate him with the foundation of the Church in Rome, even if they differ on the significance of this for the position of the see of Rome and of the Pope in present-day Christianity.

Some who recognize his office as Bishop of Antioch and, later, as Bishop of Rome hold that his episcopacy held a primacy only of honour, as a first among equals.


Posted by Zhivago of Tookland at 6:55 AM
Labels: brother of Andrew, Cephas, Kepha, Simeon, Simon, Simon BarJonah, Simon ben Jonah, Simon Peter

 To be like Christ; showing the spirit of Christ.

We know about Jesus
However, in the above passage we see Jesus in the fullness of His character.


Posted by Zhivago of Tookland at 6:39 AM
Labels: Christlike, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, Messiah



Clement of Alexandria 



Michael (archangel) Michael (Hebrew: מיכאל,) is the archangel mentioned in the Book of Revelation 12:7;


Posted by Zhivago of Tookland at 6:52 AM
Labels: Michael (archangel)



Specified complexity Specified complexity is an argument proposed by American mathematician, philosopher, theologian, and neo-creationist William Dembski, and used by him in his works promoting intelligent design. According to Dembski, the concept is intended to formalize a property that singles out patterns that are both specified and complex. Dembski states that specified complexity is a reliable marker of design by an intelligent agent, a central tenet to intelligent design which Dembski argues for in opposition to modern evolutionary theory. The concept of specified complexity is widely regarded as mathematically unsound and has not been the basis for further independent work in information theory, complexity theory, or biology. Specified complexity is one of the two main arguments used by intelligent design proponents, the other being irreducible complexity.

In Dembski's terminology, a specified pattern is one that admits short descriptions, whereas a complex pattern is one that is unlikely to occur by chance. Dembski argues that it is impossible for specified complexity to exist in patterns displayed by configurations formed by unguided processes. Therefore, Dembski argues, the fact that specified complex patterns can be found in living things indicates some kind of guidance in their formation, which is indicative of intelligence. Dembski further argues that one can rigorously show by applying no free lunch theorems the inability of evolutionary algorithms to select or generate configurations of high specified complexity.


Posted by Zhivago of Tookland at 6:26 AM
Labels: Intelligent design, Irreducible complexity, modern evolutionary theory, no free lunch theorems, Specified complexity, William Dembski



history of Ancient Israel 

In his book What did the Biblical Writers Know and When did they know it? William Dever suggests that rather than there being just one history there are in fact multiple histories and that we can distinguish nine types of history of Israel and Judah as follows.


Labels: Bible, Christianity, Flavius Josephus, history of ancient Israel, Israel, Jesus, Kebra Nagast, Philo of Alexandria, William Dever

 

In the Christian scriptures, the name "Christian" (thus "Christianity") is first attested in Acts 11:26: "For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people.

And in Antioch Jesus' disciples were first called Christians" (Greek χριστιανους, from Christ Greek Χριστός, which means "the anointed").

Within Christianity, numerous distinct groups have developed, with diverse beliefs that vary widely by culture and place. Since the Reformation, Christianity is usually represented as being divided into three main branches:


Posted by Zhivago of Tookland at 7:42 PM
Labels: Christianity, Early Christianity, history of Christianity, timeline of Christianity



fine-tuned universe 

The premise of the fine-tuned universe assertion is that any small change in the approximately 26 dimensionless fundamental physical constants would make the universe radically different: if, for example, the strong nuclear force were 2% stronger than it is (i.e. if the constant representing its strength were 2% larger), diprotons would be stable and hydrogen would fuse into them instead of deuterium and helium. This would drastically alter the physics of stars, and presumably prevent the universe from developing life as it is currently observed on the earth.


Posted by Zhivago of Tookland at 6:45 AM
Labels: Antennae Galaxies, Carinae Nebula, fine-tuned universe, Hubble Ultra Deep Field, Intelligent design, Michael J. Behe, William Dembski
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