46. More than three thousand versions of the entire Bible, or portions of it, exist in English.
47. Chapter and verse divisions in the Bible were not determined by those who wrote the words we read. These divisions were added to the text hundreds of years after the authors died. The original writers neither planned nor anticipated these divisions.
48. Chapter and verse numbers in the apostles' letters, for example, would appear as strange to them as the following does to us:
Dear Aunt Sue,
Chapter One
Last week we went to town and learned that...
49. "Divided on horseback" was the criticism of Robert Estienne, a French publisher and convert to Protestantism who decided to number the verses in the New Testament in order to make it easier to study and memorize. While Stephen Langton had divided the text into chapters, Estienne then broke each chapter into numbered verses. According to his son, he did much of the work while on horseback-leading critics ever since to suggest the reason some verses' divisions are short and others are long was because of the bumpy ride between his office in Paris and his home in southern France.
50. The Bible was designed more for the ear than the eye. In antiquity people passed history and genealogy from generation to generation by oral tradition-through storytelling or by reading aloud. Those who wrote the Bible did so knowing that their words would be read aloud. So puns, acrostics, and cryptograms are all used widely throughout the Hebrew Scriptures.
51. Mgn rdng ths bk wtht vwls. Myb ftr whl y cld fll n sm f th blnks nd fgr t mst f t. Ftr ll, t's smpl nglsh. Bt nw, mgn t s prt f n ncnt lngg tht hs flln nt dss vr svrl cntrs. Tht s hw th Bbl nc pprd. Imagine reading this book without vowels. Maybe after a while you could fill in some of the blanks and figure out most of it. After all, it's English. But now, imagine it as part of an ancient language that has fallen into disuse over several centuries. That is how the Bible once appeared.
52. Hieroglyphics-derived from two Greek words that mean "sacred carvings," since the signs were at first chiseled on stone-were the basic writing system in Egypt
at the time of Moses. Since young Moses was educated in the Egyptian sciences and arts, he no doubt learned to read and write Egyptian hieroglyphics. About 750 pictures were used at first in hieroglyphics. At least twenty-two signs existed for various birds, such as the curved neck of the Egyptian vulture, the flat face of an owl, and the tail feathers of the pintail duck.
53. The alphabet's origin. A few hundred years after the time of Moses, the Phoenicians invented an alphabet. They took the Egyptian syllabic signs and used each to represent a single sound. The Phoenicians and the Hebrews used only twenty-two symbols and had no letters for vowels.
54. The alphabet quickly spread throughout the Mediterranean world colonized by the Phoenicians. About 800 B.C. it was transmitted to the Greeks, who improved it by adding vowels. This is the alphabet that spread to the Romans, who passed it on to us almost in its present form.
55. The Hebrew alphabet has twenty-two letters, all of them consonants. In fact Semitic languages like Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic are still generally written without any vowels, although a system of dots and dashes above and below the line of writing has been added in recent times to aid in knowing what vowels are needed. Readers of classical Hebrew were and are versed in its oral traditions and provide the vowel sounds from memory,
Thursday, June 4, 2015
The Human Body (Creationism)
Skeleton:
Your skeleton is made of 206 bones, which provide strength and protection and are joined together by short fibrous cords called ligaments, which provide stability for the joints and hold the bones in place. The end of each bone id covered with cartilage, which acts like a shock absorber to cushion and protect. If this cartilage degenerates, arthritis develops.
Teeth:
Your teeth are the hardest part of your entire body. They are covered in a layer of enamel that stops them from wearing down and protects them from chemicals in food. Because we are omnivores (we eat both plants and animals), our teeth are adapted to both tear food (front teeth-incisors and canines) and chew (back teeth-molars. Children have 20 teeth; the adult set usually contains 32 (including the four wisdom teeth, which don't always appear).
Digestion:
Your body begins to break down food as soon as it enters your mouth. Chewing combined with enzymes in your saliva starts the digestion process. Food then travels through the esophagus to the stomach, where a very strong acid partly digests the food to produce chyme, which travels into your small intestine. Here, proteins are converted into amino acids; carbohydrates are broken down into a simple sugar called glucose; and fats are turned into tiny droplets by bile that is produced in the liver and stored and released by the gallbladder. Nutrients are absorbed through the intestinal wall. Onwards to the large intestine, where some of the water and minerals are removed and "friendly" bacteria help further digestion, then through the colon to the rectum from which solid waste is excreted.
Muscles:
Your skeleton is covered with about 660 muscles that account for about half your body weight. They are made up of fibers that convert energy (from digestion) into action by contracting and releasing. They come in pairs because each muscle can only pull in one direction. Without muscles your body could not move. Your heart is also a muscle, one that is highly specialized for endurance and consistency.
Blood:
The average adult body contains eight pints of blood. Blood is produced in your bones and is the fluid which transports oxygen, food, hormones, and warmth to organs and removes waste products from every cell in your body. There are four blood types: A, B, AB, and O, combined with two Rhesus factors (+ and -). Each drop contains millions of cells in a clear liquid called plasma. The red cells, from which blood gets its color, contain hemoglobin, which enables them to carry oxygen. The white blood cells attack germs or infection and are always on the lookout for disease. After an injury, irregularly shaped, colorless platelets gather at the site of the wound and then break down to form a threadlike structure called fibrin to trap blood cells and form a clot.
Circulation:
Your blood is pumped at very high pressure through about 100,000 miles of blood vessels by your heart, which beats about 1000,000 times each day. With each beat, the top of the heart (atrium) contracts, forcing blood from the lungs into the lower part (ventricle), which contracts a fraction of a second later, sending blood away from the heart in the arteries. The veins bring the deoxygenated (a bluish color) blood back to the heart where it is pumped into the lungs.
Skin:
The whole body is covered with this tough, flexible layer that forms a protective barrier and helps to regulate body temperature. It is made of two main layers. The outer layer, the epidermis, consists of about 25 smaller layers of dead skin and a single layer of dividing cells. The deeper dermis is much thicker and elastic, giving skin its stretchiness. It also contains hair follicles, sweat glands, nerve endings, and capillaries (tiny blood vessels).
Your skeleton is made of 206 bones, which provide strength and protection and are joined together by short fibrous cords called ligaments, which provide stability for the joints and hold the bones in place. The end of each bone id covered with cartilage, which acts like a shock absorber to cushion and protect. If this cartilage degenerates, arthritis develops.
Teeth:
Your teeth are the hardest part of your entire body. They are covered in a layer of enamel that stops them from wearing down and protects them from chemicals in food. Because we are omnivores (we eat both plants and animals), our teeth are adapted to both tear food (front teeth-incisors and canines) and chew (back teeth-molars. Children have 20 teeth; the adult set usually contains 32 (including the four wisdom teeth, which don't always appear).
Digestion:
Your body begins to break down food as soon as it enters your mouth. Chewing combined with enzymes in your saliva starts the digestion process. Food then travels through the esophagus to the stomach, where a very strong acid partly digests the food to produce chyme, which travels into your small intestine. Here, proteins are converted into amino acids; carbohydrates are broken down into a simple sugar called glucose; and fats are turned into tiny droplets by bile that is produced in the liver and stored and released by the gallbladder. Nutrients are absorbed through the intestinal wall. Onwards to the large intestine, where some of the water and minerals are removed and "friendly" bacteria help further digestion, then through the colon to the rectum from which solid waste is excreted.
Muscles:
Your skeleton is covered with about 660 muscles that account for about half your body weight. They are made up of fibers that convert energy (from digestion) into action by contracting and releasing. They come in pairs because each muscle can only pull in one direction. Without muscles your body could not move. Your heart is also a muscle, one that is highly specialized for endurance and consistency.
Blood:
The average adult body contains eight pints of blood. Blood is produced in your bones and is the fluid which transports oxygen, food, hormones, and warmth to organs and removes waste products from every cell in your body. There are four blood types: A, B, AB, and O, combined with two Rhesus factors (+ and -). Each drop contains millions of cells in a clear liquid called plasma. The red cells, from which blood gets its color, contain hemoglobin, which enables them to carry oxygen. The white blood cells attack germs or infection and are always on the lookout for disease. After an injury, irregularly shaped, colorless platelets gather at the site of the wound and then break down to form a threadlike structure called fibrin to trap blood cells and form a clot.
Circulation:
Your blood is pumped at very high pressure through about 100,000 miles of blood vessels by your heart, which beats about 1000,000 times each day. With each beat, the top of the heart (atrium) contracts, forcing blood from the lungs into the lower part (ventricle), which contracts a fraction of a second later, sending blood away from the heart in the arteries. The veins bring the deoxygenated (a bluish color) blood back to the heart where it is pumped into the lungs.
Skin:
The whole body is covered with this tough, flexible layer that forms a protective barrier and helps to regulate body temperature. It is made of two main layers. The outer layer, the epidermis, consists of about 25 smaller layers of dead skin and a single layer of dividing cells. The deeper dermis is much thicker and elastic, giving skin its stretchiness. It also contains hair follicles, sweat glands, nerve endings, and capillaries (tiny blood vessels).
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