不知道会不会再用的博客

 

sorry to those who are getting bored and annoyed by my religious stuff…it’s always been my HUGE interest (i mean huge) but only stopped for a while after i came here..and it’s time now to continue my study…

 

all right…so…one silly question struck me when i was on the train this morning…about moses…

 

the answer is no..even jesus didnt have a last name..christ means the messiah…it simply became "christ" when translated from hebrew to greek and then to latin and then to other lanauges…people in the bible didnt really have last names…so what we see in the bible is moses, the son of amram…or jesus of nazareth, where he was originaly from…

 

question answered..then keep being silly!

 

it varied in different regions..we chinese started quite early,,some source said it was 5th century bc..it was until 11th century ad that the english had their last names..started by norman elites

 

the name moses is from a root meaning "take out" (he was taken out from the river)..while some said the root m-s-s means "son of" in egyptian..while his hebrew name was moshe..and moses was actually a translation..

 

he was born on  Adar 7 (the 7th day of the 12th month of the jewish year) in the year of 2368, and died in 2488, which mean he was then 120 years old (i finally figured it out!)…it is worth noting that his mother was 130 years old when giving birth to him..moses’ lifespan has been considered as ideal..so in jewish tradition people may say "may you live to be 120!" (never heard of it…funny)

 

god killed him…when israelites were camping by the jordan..moses climbed up the mountain with god’s guidance and was showed the promised land..then he died..end of moses..so that was god’s will…his death can be found in deuteronomy..the fifth book of the bible..it was moses who wrote the first five books..but how could he write about his own death..well..people say he foresaw it…to put it in another way..he didnt write the books..but only transcribe god’s words..so…for mighty god..nothing is impossbile..

 

i have to say that god was so mean to him..god wanted obedience and service….when he asked moses to speak to the rock in order to get water after they escaped from egypt..moses struck the rock with a rod instead..which showed his lack of faith…so god decided to make him rest in peach before israelites arrived there after wandering in the deseart for 40 years…

 

two sons at least. he might as well have daughters. neither of his sons inherited his leadership of israel. his successor was joshua.

 

moses needed his older brother aaron to be his spokesman because he would stutter when he spoke in public…because little moses listened to an angel and put coal into his mouth to avoid being killed by pharaoh when he was tested to choose gold or coal. choosing coal meant he wouldn’t be a threat to pharoah…

 

two reasons

1. god was punishing them. the israelites appeared to be so ungrateful that they complained over a lot of things although god had gave them everything. so..basically..god was angry and swaore that the first generation of them would not enter the promised land except caleb and joshua, and in the end it was the second generation who got there.

2. god wanted them to get rid of egyptian influence before entering israel.

 

 

3. jewish holidays

 

when holidays begin

All Jewish holidays begin the evening before the date specified on most calendars. This is because a Jewish "day" begins and ends at sunset, rather than at midnight. If you read the story of creation in Genesis Ch. 1, you will notice that it says, "And there was evening, and there was morning, one day." From this, we infer that a day begins with evening, that is, sunset. Holidays end at nightfall of the date specified on most calendars; that is, at the time when it becomes dark out, about an hour after sunset.

 

—-interesting…that’s why jews have seders in the evening…ok..so sunday is the first day of the week, and sabbath is on saturdays…does it mean sabbath starts friday evening at sunset and ends saturday evening at sunset?

 

4. aliyah…returning to palestine and zionism

 

—-found it very complicated after my research…haven’t figured out if it was returning or invasion..i will post my findings later…

 

1. passover 2009

"In 2009 Passover begins at sundown on Wednesday April 8 and ends at nightfall on Thursday April 16 in the Diaspora (Wednesday April 15 in Israel)."

 

—-passover is about history..not mythology…but why there wasn’t a moses or ten plagues coming to salvation during the holocaust…or they did get rescued in the end? only with a huge drop of population…

 

2. jewish polulation

"According to the Jewish Agency, as of 2007 there were 13.2 million Jews worldwide, 5.4 million of whom lived in Israel, 5.3 million in the United States, and the remainder distributed in communities of varying sizes around the world; this represents 0.2% of the current estimated world population. These numbers include all those who consider themselves Jews whether or not affiliated with a Jewish organization." so sad that throughout history they had been persecuted…from 1942 to 1945 alone, about 6 million were killed. According to James Carroll, "Jews accounted for 10% of the total population of the Roman Empire. By that ratio, if other factors had not intervened, there would be 200 million Jews in the world today, instead of something like 13 million."

 

—-ok..so..US has 40% of jewish population which accounts for 0.2% of the world population. 1.7% of american population are jewish, which means you may find 1.7 jews among every 100 people in america..while among which you only find 1.2 chinese…i guese those undocumented are excluded…1.7…1.2…no big differentce..does it mean that the chance of seeing a jew and a chinese is kind of the same..but let’s do a math…correct me if i’m wrong..i’m poor at probabilities..so the probability for a jew seeing a chinese is 1.7% times 1.2% which equals to 0.0204%? is it a high or low probability accordingly?

the good news is that it won’t be long before the figure for chinese rises to 2% according to a news article i came across recently…

 

to be continued…