Celestial objects have amazed the human race ever since history started being recorded. The moon, the stars and all visible heavenly bodies have been studied for thousands of years, millions of people over the decades have dedicated their lives to researching these wondrous objects. The moon alone has been the subject of not only research but endless discoveries as well, and for many others, the moon was a goddess. According to Donald J. Frederick, ancient civilizations like the Mayans deemed the moon as a feminine entity, they worshipped the moon in order to get pregnant. The Greeks called the goddess of the moon by the name Selene, and also adored it. Copious other ancient civilizations saw the moon with great reverence as well. Others have taken the time to decode what ancient writings say of the heavenly spheres, the Bible specifies that the moon, sun, and the stars are used by God to mark the different seasons. According to Dennis McCarthy from the U.S. Naval Observatory, to be able to distinguish between seasons, one uses the location of the sun with respect to the stars, to be able to tell from day and night, one uses the rising and setting of the sun, and to be able to tell between months, one uses the phases of the moon. In that respect it can be assumed that the Bible, which was written more than two thousand years ago, was indeed, correct. But what about the portions that say that those same celestial bodies are used by God as divine signs?
The moon is mentioned abundantly in the scripture, many researches say the phases of the moon have a direct relationship with what occurs around the world. Judy Isacoff writes "The phases of the moon are a significant part of our experience of life on Earth." According to NASA, one ...
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... and offered Israeli citizenship to Jerusalem’s Arab residents, most of whom declined.
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Many of the heavenly bodies were considered to be the representations of deities. The master of reason, Aristotle, stated once long ago that everything was made of only five elements the final being what makes up the heavenly bodies, after all they lacked the proper technologies to know differently. It was Galileo in 1610, using his telescope, that found dark spots on the sun. So as technological innovations occur our understanding of physics and astronomy grow. Newton in 1687 discovered the laws of gravity, suggested that all the solar and stellar bodies operated the same.
However Vala mentions that the Sun didn’t have her “hall” yet or know her purpose nor did Moon, noted to be Sun’s companion, know its purpose yet. The Northern Europeans understandably associated the sun and moon together as it appeared that one rose at night and one in the morning and both celestial objects glowed and must’ve held a purpose or influenced life on earth.
Bill Anders, Jim Lovell and Frank Bormann will possibly never be recognized as great theologians, yet their extraordinary act, demonstrated a profound validation of how our vocations can glorify God. In 1969, the Apollo 8 Mission was the most watched television broadcast, these three astronauts, read in turn from the Book of Genesis as they orbited the moon. Bill Anders began, "We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you. ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’” Each astronaut then continued through the story of creation finishing the broadcast with “and God saw that it was good.”
According to the dictionary a myth is a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events..(oxforddictionaries.). On the other hand, there are no myths in the Bible because the Bible tries to explain the world we live in. It is a historical account of the world and its surroundings before, during, and after Jesus' time on earth. Therefore, the Bible itself contains a timeline of historical events that include places, historical figures and also coincides with other non-biblical related events. For example, mythical stories aim to explain how things have come to be, but does not point to a particular location or involve human beings, nor do they give any information regarding the future. However, in the Bible, the events take place in places still known to people today, with historical figures such as Pontius Poilate, Herod, Jesus and many more figures. The Bible gives insight and information into many more days to come and into the distant future.Although the Bible is not a scientific book, it is accurate regarding scientific knowledge and facts. This is because in the Bible, God is the creator of the world, and is all-knowing. In 1861, the French Academy of Sciences claimed to find 51 scientific errors in the Bible. However, with the progress of scientific research and time the 'errors' found by the French Academy of Sciences were errors caused by the academy itself and not by the Bible. There were some facts written in the Bible long ago, and with the progress of life we started to discover and witness them. One of these facts is the spherical Earth:
In Luke 21:11, 25 Jesus states that there will be Signs in the Sun and Moon. In Acts 2:18-21 we read, “Sun will turn to darkness, and the moon to blood.” Whether anything has to do with the blood moons is not the real issue. The real issue is that we are on the verge of some world-shaking events. These events will be the greatest prophetic spectacles described in the Bible since the crucifixion and resurrection. Interestingly, the next Tetra will not occur for another 400
suggest that I do not believe that the sun and moon are gods, as is the general
Rachel Perkins hybrid musical drama One Night the Moon set in the 1930’s Australian outback and Malala Yousafzai’s ‘speech to the UN’ in 2013 were composed to raise awareness and reveal truths of multiple perspectives, representing the voice of the unheard and disempowered in juxtaposition to the dominant and powerful. Both Perkins and Yousafzai challenge societal expectations of their context, advocating for all voices to be heard and for the potential unity between cultures and races through education and shifts in paradigm.
The starry night sky is a vast and beautiful realm that appears every night. It has fascinated humanity since the dawn of time. Coupled with our wonderful gifts of creativity and imagination, the night sky was our ultimate canvas and perhaps the oldest storybook. The sky has provided a place for us to draw mythical creatures and commemorate epic heroes. Our first record of the constellations date to approximately 6000 years old and were written in cuneiform (Coder, 2012). These texts were found in the valley of the Euphrates River and are simple constellations of animals (Coder, 2012). The question is why? It could be that human brain often seeks patterns in randomness. That humanity will see images in the sky to help our brains deal with the unorganized nature of the universe. However, I feel that this sells humanity short. The constellations are much more than the brain grabbing patterns and creating something it recognizes. These groupings of stars and stellar objects now hold our history. We have been passing along the stories of the constellations for thousands of years. After all, the sky is the perfect medium. It can store pictures and help tell stories and lessons that have lasted throughout time. As a small girl I remember vividly the Legend of the Dipper. How the little girl, in search of water for her ill mother, was compassionate on her journey. For her compassion she was rewarded and a reminder of this compassion is fixed in the night's sky (Bennett & Hague, 1995). I never forgot the story, or its message. How could I? That diamond encrusted dipper appears in the sky each night! It is wonderful how the constellations reach across time, culture, and beliefs. The most recognizable constellations usually originate from...
Next my gaze is drawn upward to the golden dome and crescent moon covering the Mosque. Many non-Muslims are of the belief that Muslims pray or worship a "moon god". We do not. We believe in the same God as Christians and Jews. We believe in the oneness of God', the Creator of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. The crescent moon reflects our practice of adhering to the lunar calendar, or God's calendar, rather than the Georgian calendar, or man's calendar. This is why many Mosques will have a crescent moon topping the domes.
The novel, Moon at Nine, by Deborah Ellis, is about two girls in Iran just after the Iran/Iraq war when the Shah is defeated and Ayatollah Khomeini comes to power instituting harsh laws that are particularly hard on girls and women. In what I have read so far, I think the most memorable part is when the Revolutionary Guard enter the girls’ school demanding that the girl who wrote the feminist brochure come forward. Farrin, the protagonist, is apprehended by the guards until Rabia, another student, confesses “I wrote the pamphlet…I wrote it and typed it and printed it myself” (Ellis 128). This reminds me of what happened to women under the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan, depicted in the novel The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini. As the story
Moon Shadow resided a simple life in the Middle Kingdom (China) with his mom and grandma. They live peacefully for seven years, until a cousin, Handclap came with a letter from Moon Shadow’s father, a man he never met. Moon Shadow decided to go and sets on a year long journey to meet his dad. He knew very little about his father. His mother would say she had to do something else to talk about him. One thing she did say was that his father was a great kite maker.When Moon Shadow arrived he got acquainted with members of the Company of the Peach Orchard Vow. He also gets used to the busy streets of the Land of the Golden Mountain (America). Most importantly, he sees how demons act to the Tang people in real life. For he only heard how his grandfather
3 In Book VIII of Paradise Lost, Raphael discusses the source of the moon’s light (140-58).
Upon its first mention the moon is used as a marker for the passage of time. In the opening lines of the play Theseus, the duke of Athens, laments to his fiancée Hippolyta that time is passing too slow and blames this on the moon:
Since the first Egyptian farmers discovered the annual reappearance of Sirius just before dawn a few days before the yearly rising of the Nile, ancient civilizations around the Mediterranean have sought to explain the movements of the heavens as a sort of calendar to help guide them conduct earthly activities. Counting phases of the moon or observing the annual variations of day length could, after many years' collection of observations, serve as vital indicators for planting and harvesting times, safe or stormy season for sailing, or time to bring the flocks from winter to summer pastures. With our millennia of such observation behind us, we sometimes forget that seeing and recording anything less obvious than the rough position of sun or nightly change of moon phase requires inventing both accurate observation tools (a stone circle, a gnomon used to indicate the sun's shadow, a means to measure the position of stars in the sky) and a system of recording that could be understood by others. The ancient Greeks struggled with these problems too, using both native technology and inquiry, and drawing upon the large body of observations and theories gradually gleaned from their older neighbors across the sea, Egypt and Babylonia. Gradually moving from a system of gods and divine powers ordering the world to a system of elements, mathematics, and physical laws, the Greeks slowly adapted old ideas to fit into a less supernatural, hyper-rational universe.
some ancient text or on the position of the moon. In general the 12 rules of