Monday, April 25, 2005
today marks (possibly) my final week as a undergrad... haha 4 (including today) more days to the exam and 6 to the end of exams... haha... strive on!!!
hmmm watched the discovery special last night titled "rameses:wrath of god or man"... well the story puts forth an interpretation of the book of exodus that challenges long held beliefs... well personally i believe that the bible was written in a more metaphorical sense rather that it being a factual historical account... in fact, my sis tells me that many faithful now believe the adam and eve story to be of a symbolism of some sort rather than it actually happening...
anyway, together with the fact that the large population of all the faithful are not able to read hebrew and thus are not able to read the bible in its original script or are able to read hebrew but have already read the bible in their younger days in some other language and thus would have some deep set preconvieved notions abt its contents, already suggests that we should not be taking these accounts word for word since after all... each word may have been mistranslated anyway...
for instance... what is refered to as the red sea in and english version of the bible, is (in y opinion) quite a bad mistranslation... apparently... the water body refered to in the hebrew text when translated directly to english reads "REED SEA"... nuff sed...
anyway this reed sea business has quite a bit of significance in the show... cos they apparently discovered a tomb which they believed contained the bodies of rameses' sons... including one believed to be the first born... thought to have been struck down by god during his final plague... well... most people seem to believe that the first born of rameses was a child when he was struck down... and yet evidence on temple monuments and orthe loctaions in egypt have shown that the first son of rameses did indeed live to become the commander in chief of his army... hardly a title u would delegate to a child... in fact... they believe during the exodus... when apparently rameses had a change of heart and decided to go after the hebrews with 600 plus chariots... the person actually chasing the hebrews was in fact the son of Rameses because firstly Rameses would be in his 50s or 60s and medical studies have shown that he suffered from severe arthritis which would make his cahriot chase quite a challenge for him... secondly, rameses lived to a ripe old age of 90 outliving many of his wives and even his children...
so wat has the reed sea got to do with anything? well... instead of crossing the red sea en route to their holy land...the hebrews would have passed a marshland of some sort... it is here that they believe is the location refered to... another mistranslation would be the description of the hebrews leaving egpyt... where most pple believe it to be 600 000 unarmed people,... scholars now believe that the number was in fact only a modest few thousands and that these people were in fact armed... so a likely scenario would be that suspecting that the egyptians would come after them, moses lead them to the marshlands where they set up an ambush... the soft grounds there disabled the chariots and with smoke and fire the hebrews easily finished of the army sent to erradicate them and even possibly killed the son of rameses, the leader of the assault...
well.. i think i wun have time to continue.. but all i can say is that the docu has provided me with a very insightful account of the events leading up to the exodus... one major part in fact was that there is a possiblilty that the hebrew religion was in fact a manifestation of one of the religions of the egyptians that rameses tried to erase becos he demmed it as being pagan... and it is this religion that many believe is the birth of monotheism in history... in fact, the documentary is able to provide a very good alternate scenario that is very believable and that covers all the grounds of whatever is mentioned in the bible... but without the supernatural... so to a math person like myself... it seems highly likely... haha...
okie nuff sed for today... maybe i'll talk abt the 10 plagues later... but for now i shall begin with discrete optimization... haha... ciao!!
{8:35 AM}
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