Fun Facts

Whenever there are festive events, we like to sing some songs about these extraordinary events. Carol’s are suppose to be joyful songs that have some religious link, most often it has some relation to Christmas. The main feature of a carol is repetition more often or not chorally or musically, repeating like a circle. The word carole entered the English language from the French language  at the dieing end of the 13th century. Anciently a carole was a ring dance around a circle, where men and women held hands and danced & sang around the circle.

Most of the time these carols are sang at Christmas parties but there are quite a few Easter carols too. There are some advent carols out there too. So if you’re quite the festive type, you might like to look them up.

Fun Facts, Fun Stuff, Religious Stuff french traditions in english, french words in english, old french traditions

Less than a century ago, critics of the Holy Bible raised hundreds of historical errors of the Book. One of the most vicious attacks on the historical accuracy of the Holy Bible is the theory advanced that writing was not yet existent during the time of Moses and therefore, there was no way that the events in the Book of Genesis were recorded.

Are you a believer of the Bible or do you consider it as a myth?

Some biblical critics go as far as saying that the Old Testament merely narrated myths that have been passed down by oral tradition from generations. This theory has been repudiated by the excavations of hundreds of thousands of inscriptions, marks, pictures, and other forms of writing found in stone and clay tablets in the ruins of biblical cities even before the time of Moses by centuries and millenniums.

Big libraries with thousands of books have also been uncovered in many cities in Babylonia as well as in other biblical places like Ur, the early home of Abraham, the father of the Hebrew nation.

With the coming of archaeology, each spade dug in the ruins of biblical cities has unearthed records that coincided exactly with biblical accounts.

By digging the mound ruins in biblical cities, which were as high as 100 feet, the life and civilization of the people during the biblical times were revealed. These mound ruins sometimes cover as many as 20 cities, each city being identified by a separate layer. Through the passage of time, the mounds grew bigger in height and width due to continuous accumulation of the earth.

Sometime in 1947, the Dead Sea became the focus of world attention when the oldest manuscripts of the Holy Bible were found in the desert caves near the northwestern shores of the Dead Sea more specifically in a cave in the Qumran Valley. In later years between 1950 and 1960, other biblical manuscripts were again excavated in other caves, this time in the western shores of the Dead Sea.

A total of 11 caves yielded other manuscripts and documents. The Dead Sea Scrolls is considered today as one of the greatest discoveries of biblical archaeology of this century. It is also the most significant archaeological breakthrough even made regarding the Old Testament of the Holy Bible.

Biblical archaeology involved the excavation of the ruins in the biblical places like Palestine, Egypt, Babylonia and other countries with which the Hebrews and the early Christians came in contact with. The ruins revealed the material remains of the artifacts the ancient men used in their daily lives like tools, weapons, utensils, charred bits of wood buried in the ruins, documents or other manuscripts that give indication of the lifestyle of the ancient people.

The collection of Dead Sea Scrolls also included documents and other artifacts found inside an ancient building near a cliff overlooking the Dead Sea. All these artifacts that have been excavated are now in the possession of the government of Israel and housed in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Religious Stuff bible, holy bible, religion

Whatever your religious beliefs may be, the concept of creation has always been a controversial subject.  Ever since human beings have inhabited the earth, different people from all over the world have come up with various myths, theories and ideas about how the earth was created and how humans came to live here.  We will describe for you some of the more interesting creation stories in human history.

The first is one of many Hindu myths of creation.  According to this story, there once lived a gigantic creature named Purusha who had a thousand heads, eyes and feet.  Purusha surrounded the earth and the gods eventually sacrificed him.  At the time of sacrifice, his body produced a butter that became the animals on earth.  His body parts became the elements of the earth, several of the gods and the four Hindu castes.

In China there exists a second creation myth which is based on an egg floating in the cosmos and containing the yin and yang forces.  Pan-gu was the first to emerge from the egg once it matured.  The yin, or heaviest parts of the egg formed the earth while the lighter parts or yang became the sky.  Pan-gu, wishing to prevent the yin and yang from rejoining, stood on the earth and held the sky up.  Once the sky was 30,000 miles away from the earth, Pan-gu died and his parts became the elements of the universe.  Some people theorize that fleas on Pan-gu became human beings while others believe that the goddess Nuwa created men out of mud.

We travel to ancient Egypt for our third creation story.  The Egyptians had several creation myths.  I n one myth, Atum, an omniscient eye, came into existence by the sheer force of its own will.  It create the god of air, Shu and the goddess of moisture, Tefnut.  The two siblings created the earth and the sky and worked to create order in the universe.  Shu and Tefnut became lost however and Atum removed its eye to try to locate them.  When it found them, it cried tears of joy and these tears fell to earth, creating humans.

A fourth creation myth comes from ancient Babylon and begins with the gods of fresh and salt water, Apsu and Tiamat.  These gods created numerous other gods, including the god Ea.  The new gods were very noisy and disturbed the sleep of Apsu and Tiamat.  Apsu planned to kill the new gods but Ea managed to murder Apsu before he could carry out his plan.  Ea joined forces with one of the goddesses to create a giant god to protect them from Tiamat who was seeking to avenge Apsu’s death.  This giant god eventually killed Tiamat and split her body, creating the heavens with one half and the earth with the other half.   The giant then created humans to do the jobs that the gods would not.

These creation myths are very fascinating and very different from the creation stories of the world’s major religions today.  However you may seem some similarities among them all.  In any case they are an important part of understanding ancient cultures and interesting as well!

Religious Stuff creation stories, myth, religion, religious creation stories