| The rate of increase of the length of a day due to slowing down of the earth’s rotation, back to the 8th century BCE, has been fixed at an average of 1.7 milliseconds per century (1.7 ms/c; Stephenson, op cit. pp. 513, 514; cf. New Scientist, 30 January 1999, pp. 3033). For this period, therefore, we are on “safe ground.” Furuli can hardly be unaware of this. Today, the gradual change in the rate of the earth’s rotation is definitely not a significant source of error when using astronomical tablets from the NeoBabylonian and Persian eras to calculate the chronology of these periods. The interpolation of intercalary months to compensate for the difference between the solar and the lunar year Arguing that the interpolation of intercalary months in the Babylonian lunisolar calendar might be another potential source of error, Furuli (p. 34) quotes Drs. Ben Zion Wacholder and David B. Weisberg, who say: “As Professor Abraham Sachs pointed out in a communication to us, some of the readings of the intercalary months recorded in Parker and Dubberstein’s tables may not be quite reliable, while a handful are admittedly hypothetical. But even assuming the essential correctness of Parker and Dubberstein’s tables, Professor Sachs maintains, the supposition of a 19year cycle prior to 386 B.C.E. may be reading into the evidence something which possibly is not there.” (Ben Zion Wacholder, Essay on Jewish Chronology and Chronography, New York, 1976, p. 67) Nothing in this statement is not also admitted by Parker and Dubberstein, as can be seen in Babylonian Chronology 626 B.C.–A.D. 75 (1956), pp. 19. As Wacholder and Weisberg further demonstrate in their work, the development of the 19year standard scheme of intercalary months was a gradual process begun in the 7th century. The final stage took place in the 5th and early 4th centuries, when the seven intercalary months of the 19year cycle were fixed in years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14,17, and 19. This process is also clear in PD. Furuli concludes: “This means that calculations based on the Julian calendar can be wrong as much as 44 days or even more if the intercalary months were not added regularly.” (p. 35) This conclusion is based on the unlikely supposition that sometimes four years could pass before an intercalary montli was added. But the weight of evidence, based on the economic and the astronomical texts, shows that this never happened after 564 BCE. (See the updated tables of documented intercalary months presented by Professor John P. Britton in J. M. Steele & A. Imhausen (eds.), Under One Sky, Munster: UgaritVerlag, 2002, pp. 3435.) |
| The head of the Syriac Orthodox Church, Mor Ignatius Aphrem II, called for the international community to work together toward a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Syria at a press conference in Laval on Friday. He said everyone was shocked by the photo of Alan Kurdi, a 3-year-old Syrian boy who was photographed lying lifeless on a beach in Turkey. “Our thoughts go out to his family and to the families of all the victims. I would like to say that Alan, as horrible as his story is, there are thousands of people like him (who drowned) and there are thousands of kids like him, but their stories were not told.” Alan, along with his 5-year-old brother, Ghalib, and his mother, Rehanna, drowned when the boat they were travelling in to Greece sank. The three were buried in their hometown of Kobane in Syria on Friday, according to the Associated Press. The photo brought the Syrian refugee crisis to the forefront of the Canadian consciousness this week because the child’s uncle had applied to be sponsored and come to Canada, but the forms were returned because they were incomplete. Agencies that support refugees have been feeling the effect. “We’ve been getting all kinds of emails and requests,” said Janet Dench, the executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, a Montreal-based national umbrella organization for refugee assistance groups. “I know some of our members have been talking about how they’ve been receiving lots of calls.” “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen such a level of interest,” she said. “We’ve been scratching our heads for a long time. We’ve been quite discouraged by the lack of popular reaction to the scale of the crisis. But now, you feel like people are doing what we expect them to do, which is to say that this is intolerable and we want action.” Ignatius Aphrem II said average Canadians should focus on the people who are trying to stay in their communities by helping groups respond to their needs, including basic necessities like food, clothing and health care. |
| Thus VAT 4956 gives very strong support to the chronology of the NeoBabylonian era as established by the historians. Attempting to overcome this evidence, the Watch Tower Society, in the abovementioned Bible dictionary, goes on to state that, “While to some this might seem like incontrovertible evidence, there are factors greatly reducing its strength.” What are these factors? And do they genuinely reduce the strength of the evidence in this ancient tablet? (a) The first is that the observations made in Babylon may have contained errors. The Babylonian astronomers showed greatest concern for celestial events or phenomena occurring close to the horizon, at the rising or setting of the moon or the sun. However, the horizon as viewed from Babylon is frequently obscured by sandstorms. Then Professor Otto Neugebauer is quoted as saying that Ptolemy complained about “the lack of reliable planetary observations [from, ancient Babylon],” 274 However, many of the observations recorded in the diaries were not made close to the horizon, but higher up in the sky. Further, Babylonian astronomers had several means of overcoming unfavorable weather conditions. As noted earlier, the observations were performed at a number of sites in Mesopotamia. What could not be observed at one place due to clouds or sandstorms, could probably be observed somewhere else. 275 One method used to get over the difficulty of observing stars close to the horizon due to dust was to observe, instead, “the simultaneously occurring of other stars, the socalled ziqpustars,” that is, stars crossing the meridian higher up on the sky at their culmination. 276 Finally, the horizon as viewed from Babylon was not obscured by sandstorms every day, and some planetary events could be observed many days or weeks in succession, also higher up in the sky, for example, the position of Saturn which, according to our text, could be observed “in front of the Swallow [the southwest part of the Fishes].” As was pointed out above, Saturn can be observed in each of the twelve constellations of the Zodiac for about 2.5 years on the average. |
| Tweet Нравится Saints Piran and Constantine of Cornwall Dmitry Lapa St. Piran " s Church in Perranarworthal, Cornwall (source - Geograph.org.uk) Cornwall is an English county and an ancient Celtic region in the extreme southwest of England. It is washed by the Celtic Sea (part of the Atlantic Ocean between the southern coast of Ireland and western Brittany) to the north and west, by the English Channel to the south. Cornwall borders the county of Devon in the east over the River Tamar. It is unknown exactly when Orthodoxy was first brought to Cornwall. According to unreliable medieval legends, St. Joseph of Arimathea may have visited Cornwall together with the Infant Christ. There is no evidence at all to confirm this, but Joseph was a trader and Cornwall has been famous for its tin since time immemorial, so it is not completely impossible. However, in the fourth century Orthodoxy of the “Roman-British” variety was legalized throughout Britain, as elsewhere in the Roman Empire. In the fifth century the first monks arrived in Cornwall and the whole region gradually became Christian. There were many missionaries from Ireland and Wales, as well. St. Piran " s cross at Perranzabuloe, Cornwall Although a small region, Cornwall over its Orthodox period produced roughly between fifty and sixty individual saints who can be identified, but their number may be greater, given the existence of many obscure saints. Cornwall remained in the Celtic tradition of Orthodoxy and independent from the rest of England more or less until the tenth century. After the Norman Conquest it became Roman Catholic, as all other parts of Britain. The Bible was not translated into the Cornish language until quite recently, and that is why the language has died out, although attempts have been made to revive it. In the nineteenth century, Cornwall was under the strong influence of Methodism, but a liturgical revival began approximately 100 years ago. Today nearly every town and village of Cornwall has its own patron saint, and there are over 100 holy wells in Cornwall (on average, each English county has three or four local saint, and the number of wells is considerably lower also). Lives of many Cornish early saints were well researched by the Anglican hagiographer Gilbert Hunter Doble (1880-1945) and by our contemporary Prof. Nicholas Orme from University of Exeter. Let us now talk about two saints of Cornwall, one of whom was Irish but moved to evangelize Cornwall, and the other one who was Cornish but left his native land to preach in faraway Scotland. They are Sts. Piran (feast: March 5/18) and Constantine (feast: March 9/22). |
| МР1968,1,1т; 5,3; 5,8; 8,1; 8,3; 9,2; 9,3; 9,t; 12,7. МР 1969,1,19; 3,7; t,3; 5,8; 10,65. МР 1970,1,5; 1,10; t,ll; 5,6; 5,23; 7,1; 8,6; 8,8; 8,19; 9,1; 9,2; 10,1; 11,2. МР1971,5,2; 7,1; 10,1. МР 1972,6,13; 7,1; 8,2; 8,21–2t. МР 197t,5,3. МР 1975,5,6; 7,1t; 10,5. МР 1976,1,9; 7,2. " МР 1977,1,1t; 1,27; 2,t; 3,3; 3,t; 5,7; 7,t; 8,3; 8,5; 10,3; 11,3. МР 1978,2,7; t,t; t,S; t,10; 6,t; 8,t0; 9,2; 10,3; 11,t; 12,6; 12,8. МР 1979,2,6; 2,8; 3,t; 3,5t; t,S; t,9; 5,3; 5,63; 6,5; 6,33; 9,3; 10,5; 10,t3. Literatur: МР1980,3,3; 3,6; 3,47–50; 6,7; 6,8,57; 7,26; 8,5; 9,9; 10,3; 10,37; 11,4; 12,4. МР 1981,1,35; 2,3; 2,4; 2,7; 2,9; 2,11; 3,2; 3,25; 5,3; 5,7; 5,12; 6,5–6; 9,5; 11,2; 12,6; 12,58. МР 1982,1,4; 2,11; 5,6; 6,33; 6,56; 7,9; 7,10; 8,9; 9,37; 10,61; 12,108. МР198 3 ,1 ,52f ; 2,10; 2,67; 5,7; 7,30; 8,9; 8,55; 9,18; 11,16. МР1984,1,15; 2,4; 2,17; 3,4; 4,5; 6,2; 6,4; 6,9; 6,18; 8,11; 8,25; 12,29. МР1985,2,6; 2,7; 2,9; 5,6; 5,7; 5,8; 10,2; 11,35; 11,36. МР 1986,9,6; 10,6; 12,7; 12,56. МР 1987,3,3; 5,6; 11,21–22; 12,10. МР 1988,1,45; 4,5; 4,6; 4,9; 6,10; 8,31; 9,2; 9,60; 10,7. StdO 1966,6,4. StdO 1967,10,35; 11,10. StdO 1970,10,19–21. StdO 1971,9,8. StdO 1972,6,22; 7,5; 7,22. StdO 1973,6,28. StdO 1980,5,5. StdO 1981,3,12. StdO 1982,3,29; 6,5. StdO 1983,8,21. StdO 1985,1,4. StdO 1986,1,7. StdO 1987,1,39; 4,7. StdO 1988,1,15. A.E. Levitin-Krasnov, Otee Dimitrij Dudko, in: Posev 1975,1, hier 35. Gleb Jakunin, sovremennom poloenii RPC..., in: Volnoe Slovo vyp. 35–36, S.42. D. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church 410, 438, 440, 445f, 448, 450, 451–453. Christ in der Gegenwart 37(1985)72. J. Ellis, The Russian Orthodox Church 204, 207, 209, 217, 266, 344, 358, 361, 411, 437. SOP (Service orthodoxe de Presse) Nr. 120 (7/8 1987) S.12. The Orthodox Church 23(1987)7,5; 8,3. Glaube in der 2. Welt (G2W) 1987,7/8,26–32. Literatur: Posev 1987 ,8 Protodiakon Vladimir Rusak, Svidetel " stvo obvinenija, Episkopy, in: Prav. Rus T 1988,13,5: er sprach von «herzlichen Beziehungen der Kirche zum Staat». |
| Was Moses Really the Author of the Pentateuch? How should the Orthodox be? I would suggest, above all, not imposing grievous ties on oneself by confusing the stubbornness of Protestant fundamentalism with Patristic Tradition. For them, the authority of Scripture is based upon a literal interpretation of Revelation: God dictated these words to the great Prophet Moses, and therefore they are trustworthy. But for them, on the other hand, there is no such thing as Tradition. The average Orthodox reader of the Bible doesn’t think about questions such as the authorship or dating of individual books. The first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch of Moses? Of course, the Prophet Moses wrote it – after all, that’s what it’s called, and that’s what Scripture and Tradition teaches. And whoever doesn’t agree is an impious atheist. But then this Orthodox reader might come up against arguments from the other side. He either rejects them out of hand, starting directly from the conclusions without bothering with the arguments, or… he considers them and agrees with some of it. Does this then mean Scripture and Tradition are unreliable? Some draw this conclusion. Let’s stop and think about it. Tradition is a difficult and diverse thing; in it one can find all kinds of different statements (for instance, about a flat earth, the sun revolving around the earth, and the marriages of hyenas with morays), but only some of them are in fact of doctrinal significance. The question of the authorship of Biblical books clearly is not one of them. But what about the name the “Pentateuch of Moses”? Doesn’t it indicate an author? Not necessarily. Thus, the Psalter bears the name of King David, but David definitely didn’t write Psalm 136, “By the waters of Babylon,” simply because he died long before the Babylonian captivity. It’s unlikely that Jonah, Ruth, and Job themselves wrote the books that bear their names. And the Prophet Samuel certainly didn’t write the two books bearing his name in the Hebrew tradition (First and Second Kings in ours [i.e., in the Septuagint]) simply because he died in the middle of the first book. |
| It could be that for an average Orthodox person, weighed down by everyday errands and worries, such resources are not so obvious or readily available, and that they do not have access to proper interpretations of Church writers in the modern context. These would most directly be provided by the parish priest. Also, certain Church writings might seem to offer a lot of theory, but not much practical advice on how to meet existing challenges that parents face. Many younger parents belong to a generation that did not have the privilege to grow up in a Christian home, and they feel disconnected from the vast experience and traditions that such a life offers. These parents are now actively searching for a new set of values to impart to their children that would arguably be deeper than the superficial adherence to societal rules of proper conduct. Seeing that quite a few Orthodox texts and books are painfully disengaged from real life, contemporary Orthodox parents often turn to secular parenting books in search of answers to their child rearing dilemmas. However, while there are plenty of “real issues” addressed in them, few of these books even remotely reflect the values and goals of parenting the Orthodox would find relevant. So, what are these experts saying? It proves to be a tall order – 1) their advice to take charge of our children’s life, and 2) the enormous responsibility thrown at parents to be the omniscient, omnipotent enablers of their children’s happiness and success in this world. No mention, naturally, of giving our children over to God’s care and tending to their souls rather than worrying about their worldly success and material needs alone. After all, parents need a break, too, and relief from the pressure to break the code of perfect parenting. Ironically, oftentimes this pressure comes from the very people who advertise their intention to (see note below) Today’s parents are stressed out, overworked and anxious about doing the right thing by their children. This concern often inspires them to “overdo it” in their parenting efforts, resorting to what has been labeled as “helicopter parenting,” micro-managing their children’s existing activities and burdening them with an ever increasing list of new ones. |
| As the chronology after this Introduction indicates, the Orthodox-with the Jews, Muslims, and other traditional Christians-trace their beginnings back to the Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and then to Moses-if not before the Patriarchs to humankind’s prototypical parents, Adam and Eve. These stories are so well-known that they hardly bear repeating here. But it is worthwhile to point out that the Orthodox understand this “history” (not always history in the modern sense) as a chronicle of God’s revelations, not only to particular human beings, but to humankind in general. The revelations are infrequently, if ever, individual in the restrictive sense of the word, but are meant to guide all of humanity by ultimately forming a people (the People of God) that lives its community life in communion with the one self-revealing God. Further, for the Orthodox this revelation continued personally in Jesus Christ, the unique and preexistent Son of God and Lord, and personally as well in the revelation of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit and revelation are ongoing in the life of the Church-one God in three Persons. Indeed, the Orthodox faith described as the Church of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and the life of the Holy Spirit is arguably more apropos than that of the Ecumenical Councils, since religious faith and experience are more meaningful and readily accessible to the average American than the difficult historical and theological questions of the conciliar period. Orthodox history, most simply put, is a retrospective view and present appreciation of the life of God’s Spirit embracing humanity. Probably the most striking historical witness of the Orthodox Church for modern Christians is its uninterrupted presence at the holy places described in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, the Apostle Paul, or the Bible generally. Further, the Orthodox may also be found speaking the descendant language(s) in which the words of the Bible were originally spoken and written-appreciating these words from within their own languages rather than from without. When Western Christians make pilgrimage to the Holy Land or look at the Church’s roots, they invariably meet the Orthodox firmly and permanently entrenched on these foundations-whether in the Church of the Resurrection (Holy Sepulcher), on the Ascension Mount, or in the ancient churches of Thessalonika or Athens. This history is intrinsically connected with classical Western history from Rome to Charlemagne, on to the Crusades, Renaissance, Reformation, and up to the present. Hierarchy and Administration |
| According to World Health Organization and UN data from 2005, Georgia has 19.1 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age, one of the highest rates in Europe, although it is in the middle among former Soviet countries. The average woman in Georgia will have three abortions in her lifetime. To Ban Or Not To Ban Conservative forces in Georgia, including the influential Orthodox Church, see a broader problem and are urging an outright ban on abortions. In his Easter message this week, Patriarch Ilia II declared: “This happens because of the desire and decision of the parents. It is a horrible murder of an innocent, helpless creature. And the doctor is an accessory to this murder. When the country is in such a difficult demographic situation, I think that the government must pass a law banning abortions, with just a small number of exceptions, of course.” Feminists and other women’s advocates see the debate as a question of fundamental women’s rights. Tbilisi-based gynecologist Mzia Gambashidze says abortion bans are dangerous and counterproductive. “No bans! We had one under the communists and how many people died from unsanitary, illegal abortions? How many doctors were thrown in prison for performing them?” she asks. “This is not a way out of the current situation.” Gambashidze urges greater family-planning education to reduce the abortion rate. She recounts seeing patients who wanted abortions because they had been advised by their Orthodox priests not to use birth control. Nina Tsikhistavi, head of the Caucasus Women’s Network NGO, says the right to abortion must remain sacrosanct, although she, too, is concerned about the alarming figures on sex selection. Is Development The Answer? Lawmaker Khundadze agrees that an outright ban is no solution. “It is impossible to completely ban pregnancy termination, since that would increase the number of abortions done unprofessionally and that would lead to more deaths,” he said. “We will consider this topic together with the appropriate specialists at a session of my committee.” |
| However, what is the cause of the deaths? Alas, but it is due to a sad imperfection of human nature, namely, that it is natural for people to die. They die regardless of whether they are participating in trials or just watering the plants at their country house. If there is no war or other emergency in the country, people die with approximately the same rate: this is called the natural death rate. It is by the way how much it has exceeded that epidemiologists are now calculating how many lives the coronavirus has taken. Trials of the Prizer/BioNtech vaccine took place from April 29 to November 14 (to be more precise, they are still ongoing, it is simply that documents with a report for this period have been submitted to the FDA). In total, more than 40 thousand people took part in them. It is almost inevitable that some people out of these 40 thousand would die. Moreover, calculations based on the natural mortality rates in the countries, where the tests were conducted, show that the rates are almost the same. Yet, the trials of other vaccines were suspended several times due to side effects in participants and a special investigation was conducted, and only after it established that there was no connection, the trials were resumed. This is true, but it concerns suspicious side effects: that is, those for which natural causes of death are not immediately evident, and which are similar to complications that may somehow relate to the vaccination. Obviously, deaths in the placebo group should be excluded: especially since Pfizer/BioNtech used normal saline and not another vaccine as in AstraZeneca trials, for example. Heart attacks and strokes are the most common causes of death in all people from western countries, so there is no reason to believe that these two deaths are due to the vaccine and not due to the natural course of things. Moreover, the overall mortality rate among volunteers did not differ from the average one. When a participant developed transverse myelitis, an autoimmune disease, during the AstraZeneca vaccine trials, they were immediately suspended, as this is, to put it mildly, not the most common disease and, importantly, it can theoretically be related to vaccination, since both vaccination and transverse myelitis affect the immune system. |
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