Sunday, November 1, 2009

"Bara"

The three big monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - share the same god (but with a different name), and of course also their basics. Most notably, they share the story about the creation of the world.

This story, although proven wrong by science, is still important to the people that believe in Genesis. Most people, with the exception of the creationists, won't take the story literally. However, its importance is in the fact that it shows that their respective god is all powerful. After all, creation of the world and the universe is not something anybody can do.

Of course, if this story would prove not to be true, there is a problem. First of all it means that god is not almighty. But perhaps even worse, it also means that there is some other mechanism that has created world. More specifically, it means that there may have been other gods that created everything.

When looking at Genesis, this is exactly what the Dutch professor Ellen van Welde has noticed. The details (in Dutch) can be found in her dissertation about Genesis. She proves that the sentence "bĕrēʾšît bārāʾ ĕlōhîm ʾet haššāmayim wĕʾet hāʾāres" should be translate not with "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth", but rather with "In the beginning when God separated the heavens and the earth...", the main difference being
in the word "Bara", which would not be "to create", but "to separate".

When this interpretation is proven correct, it means indeed that JHWH, God or Allah are not the almighty creators, but rather a winning god amongst others, and becoming the most important one. Interestingly, this seems indeed to be the case when you look into the history of Judaism (read the excellent book A History of God by Karen Armstrong). Genesis for example shows to be the mix of two creation stories, both from another god: one named JHWH (or Jahweh), and another Elohim. But later, in Exodus, it is not only suggested, but also proven that the start of the monotheistic religions is based on multiple gods. The first commandment is "You shall have no other Gods before me". This sounds like there may be, or even are, others, but JHWH wants to be the first one. In the original text of Exodus, it even says further "You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, (...)". Now can this be any more clear? (And yes, people will argue that it means you should not worship idols, but just read Armstrong's book for good arguments.)

As you may know, I have nothing against people that use religion for their own spiritual life. But this shows that the foundations may be a little bit (well, a lot) more shaky than thought before. It means that any form of fundamentalism, from any of the big monotheistic religions, not only is dangerous, but even ridiculous.

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posted by Vince | 8:39 PM | 0 reacties

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Happy Birthday!

Today is the birthday of somebody special I admire. He was born exactly 100 years ago today. His father was a blacksmith. Daniel had three brothers and two sisters, and was to get one more younger brother later.



When he was five years old, the terrible tragedy, later named "The Great War" made his family have to leave all possessions behind, and flee to France. Being the youngest, he was lucky enough to go to school with his little brother Max. But not with the rest of the family, who was living near Paris. It was too dangerous, as the Germans bombed the environment with "Grosse Bertha"



After the war the family continued to live for a while near Paris, where Daniel practised his first trade; together with his parents, his sisters and some brothers he took care of the family business of herding the cows used for milking.



In 1923 his parents constructed two houses in Belgium, only to return to France in 1926. There his parents had a farm, where the reduced family (parents, Daniel and his brothers Max and Pol) lived untill 1931, when his father died. During that period, Daniel started working in the automobile sector. This was an emerging business, and he worked in different garages to learn the mechanics.



He took his mother back to Belgium, where in 1933 he erected together with his youngest brother Max his own garage on the premises of his oldest brother Gaston.



Starting with the modest Renault and Fiat, but in the beginning even doing bikes, he slowly grows and buys the houses around his business, untill the place really becomes too small. During the war his garage was claimed by the Germans, so during one of this very cold winters, when he was supposed to take care of the German trucks, he "accidentally" forgot that water could freeze. The Germans were not pleased with their trucks having broken engines, but luckily he survived.



In 1936 Daniel got married to Ghisele, and in 1937 they had their first child. The couple would be blessed with 6 more children of which one died at 3 weeks, the latest being born in 1948.



In 1954, the people hadn't forgotten about the war yet, he took the gamble to start with a German car: Mercedes. And it seemed to be the correct choice, his business would flourish untill his death. It allowed him to start some other businesses, some of which had a longer life then others.



Finally in 1974, at the age of 65, he finished his major work. He had finished building a new garage outside the city on a large ground. It would establish his name as a big businessman in the wide region. During the odd 20 years of the rest of his life, we would employ lots of people, sell lots of cars and trucks, and acknowledged for his work.



A year after his death in 1992, his sons would sell the garage, although 2 of the 3 would keep working there for a short while. In 2002, when nodoby of the family worked there anymore, the business Daniel Vanbiervliet erected 68 years before, would finish to exist.



Happy birthday, grandfather!

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posted by Vince | 10:06 PM | 2 reacties