Bible Code?

One of the things I've always been most skeptical about were the so-called "Bible Codes".  Again and again, important historical events would appear, not just concerning Israel, but also of mankind as a whole.  The date Neil Armstrong landed on the moon appears next to "Man on moon", "spaceship", and even "Apollo 11."  A search using the cipher for "Hitler" turned out "evil man", "Nazi and enemy", and "slaughter."  "Eichmann" proved to be encoded with "Zyklon B", which if you don't know, was the gas used in concentration camps.

Also chilling is the adjacent appearance of "atomic weapon", and "World War" of "Jerusalem". 

There was a warning to humanity was uncovered in association to earthquakes in 2014 and 2113, "Desolated, Empty, Depopulated" and "For Everyone, the Great Terror: Fire, Earthquake."

Although these and many other examples are all these seemingly amazing occurences, there are many mathematicians out there who still refute the Bible Code, and one in particular tested it the same cipher on a copy of Moby Dick and got the same results.

2006 also came up repeatedly for "The End of Days", with a comet, a world-shaking earthquake, and an atomic holocaust.  But if your still around to read this, apparently it didn't work.  A code that is wrong, is no code at all.

All the same, perhaps the Bible Code does contain some truth.  We'd all seem like real idiots if we didn't check it out for some things, and then have to suffer for it later.  It is however it's unquestionable that the code is manipulable.

Tags: Life, Bible, Religion, History

Earth-Shattering Event

Believe it or not - I set down The Histories and picked up a new book!  This is only the third time this has happened.  I pretty much never drop books once I start them, so this is huge for me.  I've started reading Gilgamesh, which is an awesome book!  It's a Babylonain epic about a king of Uruk named none other than Gilgamesh (below).  He was a 2/3 divine, all-gifted, arrogant tyrant, and when the people of the city pray to the gods, they create Enkidu who was as equally supreme as Gigamesh to try to put balance to the city.  So they rumble and Gilgamesh wins, but they immediately become friends and set off on many quests together to defeat monsters from the Netherworlds and whatnot.  Well eventually Gilgamesh offends Ishtar, the love goddess, when he rejects her advances, and so she talks to her papa who is the chief of the gods, Anu, and gets his to put a fissure through Uruk that swallows up Enkidu.  Gilgamesh who is thrown into sharp reality of death pursues Utnapishtim (heard the name before?) to try to learn the secrets of immortality from him, but is killed in the journey.

It's a great story.  I'm really happy about the choice though.  The Histories had gotten stale, and so I needed something more exciting.  I've only read summaries of the story until now, and so I finally get to read the script!  That's pretty exciting for me!  =)

Oh, and did you get the connection with Utnapishtim?  He was the Babylonian Noah!  The Gilgamesh texts is actually what also told the Mesopotamian flood story.  Utnapishtim was given the gift of everlasting life by the gods.  Coincidentally, that's what Gilgamesh desires, and so he goes in search of the man.

Tags: Life, Books, History

Cortez and Queztlcoatl

Did the Aztecs really think the Spanish were gods?

In grade school, that was the story.  The primitive Aztecs wonder at the Spanish sophistication and their white colored skin.  Apparently there was a legend about the god Queztlcoatl (below) that when the Aztec civilization began, the Caucasian god sailed away in a raft, or large canoe according to some versions.  The day he returned would mark the end of their civilization, or again in other cases, to rule the people as he once did before he was exiled.

Well white-skinned people came back and the Aztecs, and sure enough, the empire fell, but did this story correspond with thoughts of the Aztecs?  This is one of history’s mysteries, and perhaps we’ll never know, but Seven Myths of Spanish Conquest by Restall and Elliot did some down talking on the myth.

But before I get into their book, when we review the writings of Cortez and of later Aztec accounts, there is nothing that confirms the Aztecs ever thought the Europeans to be gods.  And, according to Restall and Elliot’s book, the conquistadors probably made up the stories to amuse the Spanish royalty – much in the way Herodotus did in The Histories.

Another theory I read about the story was that it was based on the exile of one god-king named Queztlcoatl (names were often borrowed by royalty from their gods) who was exiled from Tula in the 10th Century.

But whether or not the Aztecs thought that Cortez was the returning Queztlcoatl, it’s certainly not what ultimately destroyed the Aztec empire.

Tags: Life, History

It's In My Blood

Awhile ago I was researching my family history for Green's class and our family timeline.  Well, I have this great book called The Hirschy Genealogy, so it makes finding cool family stuff really easy.  It goes all the way back to my great-great-great-great-grandfather, so it includes over 5,400 descendents, which I'm a part of (see, I'm not even out of middle school and they are already writing books about me!).

So I was reading about the Burckhardt family for awhile and then hopped on my computer to do a 3D tour of Abu Simbel on Encarta, which is a completely normal thing to do!  =)  Well I was doing some reading on it and a name showed up I recognized - Johann Ludwig Burckhardt!  After reading his entry I actually found out, he discovered the great temple (pictured below, top) and the temple to Hathor there.  He also was the first modern European to visit Petra (below, bottom), and probably the only non-Muslim ever allowed to openly visit Mecca (he had some sweet connections with the Viceroy of Egypt).  And sure enough he's my great-great-great-great-uncle.

I was really proud of this one, because I liked the Great Temple of Abu Simbel anyway before this!  It's one of my favorite ancient structures along with the Temple of the Great Jaguar.  It was built by Ramses II I believe, who shows up in some of my other entries if you recall.

So I entered Burckhardt into the encyclopedia and got one other different entry.  Jacob Burckhardt wrote The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, which completely reformed the idea of the Renaissance to the one we study today in history!  He was the first person to refer to Da Vinci as "the universal man".  So I looked him up in my handy reference and found out he's my cousin six times removed, which is like my great-great-great-great-grandfather's cousin I think.

So that kind of inspired me to keep studying history.  A little cool too I thought.

Oh, and in Spell Bowl today we got the word "beachhead".  Double "h"s - what kind of idiot would make a word like that?  Our top three spellers all missed it.  Ha, ha...

 

If you haven't caught on, the polls usually only include the options we've explicitly talked about; if you select "other", you have to comment which one!  =)

Tags: Life, History

Teachers

I just wanted to say how thankful I was to have relatable teachers.  I mean teachers who can be knowledgeable, but still fun.  Those teachers are the best.

I had this great math teacher last year that we played so many pranks on.  One time in the morning before school and before he'd gotten to his class we took packaging tape and sealed up his door.

Another time we told him that tomorrow we'd have a party in his class.  He didn't take us seriously, and so the next day I told him my locker was jammed and gave him the wrong combo when he tried to open it.  He went back to his room to call the janitor, but in that time we'd decorated the room and brought out cookies and chips.  It was pretty awesome.

We had this great history teacher last year, and we used to steal her basket of candy all the time and hide it from her.  It was hilarious.

Ya, last year rocked.  I always worry that this year, or any other year for that matter, won't be as fun as last year.  But, oh well, maybe I'm just judging too soon.  We are almost 1/8 through the year though already.  Isn't that crazy?

So anyway, I just wanted to share how grateful I was to have such good teachers for at least one year, and hopefully many more to come!  =]

Tags: Life, School