The Bible (from Greek ta biblia "the books") is a collection of sacred scripture of both Judaism and Christianity. There is no single version; both the individual books (Biblical canon) and their order vary between denominations. The Jewish Tanakh divides the Hebrew Bible into 24 books, while the same texts are usually arranged as 39 books in Christian Old Testaments. Complete Christian Bibles range from the 66 books of the Protestant canon to the 81 books in the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible.

Jewish canon

The Tanakh (Hebrew: ) consists of 24 books.

Development of the Jewish canon

Tanakh refers to the threefold division of the Hebrew Scriptures (the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings). This division is alluded to in the New testament: refers to the "law of Moses" (Pentateuch), the "prophets" which include certain historical books in addition to the books now called "prophets," and the psalms (the "writings" designated by its most prominent collection). The Hebrew Bible probably was canonized in these three stages: the law canonized before the Exile, the prophets by the time of the Syrian persecution of the Jews, and the writings shortly after AD 70 (the fall of Jerusalem). About that time, early Christian writings began being accepted by Christians as "scripture." These events, taken together, may have caused the Jews to close their "canon." They listed their own recognized Scriptures and also excluded both Christian and Jewish writings considered by them to be "apocryphal." In this canon the thirty-nine books found in the Old Testament of today's Christian Bibles were grouped together as twenty-two books, equaling the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. This canon of Jewish scripture is attested to by Philo, Josephus, the New Testament,

The Bible used at Qumran excluded Esther but included Tobit. Otherwise, it seems to have been basically the same as the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, albeit with many textual variants.

Torah

The Torah, or "Instruction," is also known as the "Five Books" of Moses, thus Chumash from Hebrew meaning "fivesome," and Pentateuch from Greek meaning "five scroll-cases."

The Torah comprises the following five books: # Genesis, Ge—Bereshith (בראשית) # Exodus, Ex—Shemot (שמות) # Leviticus, Le—Vayikra (ויקרא) # Numbers, Nu—Bamidbar (במדבר) # Deuteronomy, Dt—Devarim (דברים)

The Hebrew book titles come from some of the first words in the respective texts.

The Torah focuses on three moments in the changing relationship between God and people. The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide accounts of the creation (or ordering) of the world and the history of God's early relationship with humanity. The remaining thirty-nine chapters of Genesis provide an account of God's covenant with the Hebrew patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (also called Israel), and Jacob's children (the "Children of Israel"), especially Joseph. It tells of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home in the city of Ur, eventually to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remaining four books of the Torah tell the story of Moses, who lived hundreds of years after the patriarchs. His story coincides with the story of the liberation of the Children of Israel from slavery in Ancient Egypt, to the renewal of their covenant with God at Mount Sinai, and their wanderings in the desert until a new generation would be ready to enter the land of Canaan. The Torah ends with the death of Moses.

The Torah contains the commandments, of God, revealed at Mount Sinai (although there is some debate amongst Jewish scholars as to whether this was written down completely in one moment, or if it was spread out during the 40 years in the wandering in the desert). These commandments provide the basis for Halakha (Jewish religious law). Tradition states that the number of these is equal to 613 Mitzvot or 613 commandments. There is some dispute as to how to divide these up (mainly between the Ramban and Rambam).

The Torah is divided into fifty-four portions which are read on successive Sabbaths in Jewish liturgy, from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Deuteronomy. The cycle ends and recommences at the end of Sukkot, which is called Simchat Torah.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im, or "Prophets," tell the story of the rise of the Hebrew monarchy, its division into two kingdoms, and the prophets who, in God's name, warned the kings and the Children of Israel about the punishment of God. It ends with the conquest of the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians and the conquest of the Kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians, and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Portions of the prophetic books are read by Jews on the Sabbath (Shabbat). The Book of Jonah is read on Yom Kippur.

According to Jewish tradition, Nevi'im is divided into eight books. Contemporary translations subdivide these into twenty-one books.

The Nevi'im comprise the following eight books:

#

Joshua, Js—Yehoshua (יהושע) # Judges, Jg—Shoftim (שופטים) # Samuel, includes First and Second 1Sa–2Sa—Sh'muel (שמואל) # Kings, includes First and Second, 1Ki–2Ki—Melakhim (מלכים) # Isaiah, Is—Yeshayahu (ישעיהו) # Jeremiah, Je—Yirmiyahu (ירמיהו) # Ezekiel, Ez—Yekhezkel (יחזקאל) # Twelve, includes all Minor Prophets—Tre Asar (תרי עשר) #* A. Hosea, Ho—Hoshea (הושע) #* B. Joel, Jl—Yoel (יואל) #* C. Amos, Am—Amos (עמוס) #* D. Obadiah, Ob—Ovadyah (עבדיה) #* E. Jonah, Jh—Yonah (יונה) #* F. Micah, Mi—Mikhah (מיכה) #* G. Nahum, Na—Nahum (נחום) #* H. Habakkuk, Hb—Havakuk (חבקוק) #* I. Zephaniah, Zp—Tsefanya (צפניה) #* J. Haggai, Hg—Khagay (חגי) #* K. Zechariah, Zc—Zekharyah (זכריה) #* L. Malachi, Ml—Malakhi (מלאכי)

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings" or "Scriptures," may have been written during or after the Babylonian Exile. Many of the psalms in the book of Psalms are attributed to David; King Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, Proverbs at the prime of his life, and Ecclesiastes at old age; and the prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written Lamentations. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew. The book of Ruth tells the story of a non-Jew (specifically, a Moabitess) who married a Jew and, upon her husband's death, followed in the ways of the Jews; according to the Bible, she was the great-grandmother of King David. Five of the books, called "The Five Scrolls" (Megilot), are read on Jewish holidays: Song of Songs on Passover; the Book of Ruth on Shavuot; Lamentations on the Ninth of Av; Ecclesiastes on Sukkot; and the Book of Esther on Purim. Collectively, the Ketuvim contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the stories of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the Babylonian exile. It ends with the Persian decree allowing Jews to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple.

The Ketuvim comprise the following eleven books, divided, in many modern translations, into twelve through the division of Ezra and Nehemiah:

#

Psalms, Ps—Tehillim (תהלים) # Proverbs, Pr—Mishlei (משלי) # Job, Jb—Iyyov (איוב) # Song of Songs, So—Shir ha-Shirim (שיר השירים) # Ruth, Ru—Rut (רות) # Lamentations, La—Eikhah (איכה), also called Kinot (קינות) # Ecclesiastes, Ec—Kohelet (קהלת) # Esther, Es—Ester (אסתר) # Daniel, Dn—Daniel (דניאל) # Ezra, Ea, includes Nehemiah, Ne—Ezra (עזרא), includes Nehemiah (נחמיה) # Chronicles, includes First and Second, 1Ch–2Ch—Divrei ha-Yamim (דברי הימים), also called Divrei (דברי)

Hebrew Bible translations and editions

The Tanakh was mainly written in Biblical Hebrew, with some portions (notably in Daniel and Ezra) in Biblical Aramaic.

Groups within Christianity include differing books as part of one or both of these "Testaments" of their sacred writings—most prominent among which are the biblical apocrypha or deuterocanonical books.

Significant versions of the English Christian Bible include the Douay-Rheims, the RSV, the KJV, and the NIV. For a complete list, see List of English Bible translations.

In Judaism, the term Christian Bible is commonly used to identify only those books like the New Testament which have been added by Christians to the Masoretic Text, and excludes any reference to an Old Testament.

The Old Testament is accepted by Christians as scripture. Broadly speaking, it contains the same material as the Hebrew Bible. However, the order of the books is not entirely the same as that found in Hebrew manuscripts and in the ancient versions and varies from Judaism in interpretation and emphasis (see for example ). Christian denominations disagree about the incorporation of a small number of books into their canons of the Old Testament. A few groups consider particular translations to be divinely inspired, notably the Greek Septuagint, the Aramaic Peshitta, and the English King James Version.

Apocryphal or deuterocanonical books

The Septuagint (Greek translation, from Alexandria in Egypt under the Ptolemies) was generally abandoned in favour of the Masoretic text as the basis for translations of the Old Testament into Western languages from St. Jerome's Bible (the Vulgate) to the present day. In Eastern Christianity, translations based on the Septuagint still prevail. Some modern Western translations make use of the Septuagint to clarify passages in the Masoretic text, where the Septuagint may preserve a variant reading of the Hebrew text. They also sometimes adopt variants that appear in other texts e.g. those discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

A number of books which are part of the Peshitta or Greek Septuagint but are not found in the Hebrew (Rabbinic) Bible are often referred to as deuterocanonical books by Roman Catholics referring to a later secondary (i.e. deutero) canon. Most Protestants term these books as apocrypha. Evangelicals and those of the Modern Protestant traditions do not accept the deuterocanonical books as canonical, although Protestant Bibles included them in Apocrypha sections until around the 1820s. However, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches include these books as part of their Old Testament.

The Roman Catholic Church recognizes:

Tobit

Judith

1 Maccabees

2 Maccabees

Wisdom of Solomon

Sirach also called Ecclesiasticus

Baruch

The Letter of Jeremiah (Baruch Chapter 6)

Greek Additions to Esther

The Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children

Susanna

Bel and the Dragon

In addition to those, the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches recognize the following:

3 Maccabees

1 Esdras

Prayer of Manasseh

Psalm 151

Some other Eastern Orthodox Churches include:

2 Esdras i.e., Latin Esdras in the Russian and Georgian Bibles

There is also 4 Maccabees which is only accepted as canonical in the Georgian Church, but was included by St. Jerome in an appendix to the Vulgate, and is an appendix to the Greek Orthodox Bible, and it therefore sometimes included in collections of the Apocrypha.

The Anglican Churches uses some of the Apocryphal books liturgically. Therefore, editions of the Bible intended for use in the Anglican Church include the Deuterocanonical books accepted by the Catholic Church, plus 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh, which were in the Vulgate appendix.

Role in Christian theology

The Old Testament has always been central to the life of the Christian church. Bible scholar N.T. Wright says Jesus himself was profoundly shaped by the scriptures. He adds that the earliest Christians also searched those same scriptures in their effort to understand the earthly life of Jesus. They regarded the ancient Israelites' scriptures as having reached a climactic fulfillment in Jesus himself, generating the "new covenant" prophesied by Jeremiah.

Ethiopian Orthodox canon

The Canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is wider than for most other Christian groups. The Ethiopian Old Testament Canon includes the books found in the Septuagint accepted by other Orthodox Christians, in addition to Enoch and Jubilees which are ancient Jewish books that only survived in Ge'ez but are quoted in the New Testament (citation required), also Greek Ezra First and the Apocalypse of Ezra, 3 books of Meqabyan, and Psalm 151 at the end of the Psalter. The three books of Meqabyan are not to be confused with the books of Maccabees. The order of the other books is somewhat different from other groups', as well. The Old Testament follows the Septuagint order for the Minor Prophets rather than the Jewish order.

Marcionite Bible

Marcion, an early Christian heretic, and his followers, had a Bible that excluded the Old Testament. It consisted of an edited Gospel of Luke (excluding what Marcion considered Jewish additions), and the Epistles of Paul (excluding Titus, the two epistles to Timothy, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and passages rejected as Jewish additions).

Belief in sacred texts is attested to in Jewish antiquity, and this belief can also be seen in the earliest of Christian writings. Various texts of the Bible mention Divine agency in relation to prophetic writings, the most explicit being: "All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness."

In their book A General Introduction to the Bible, Norman Geisler and William Nix wrote: "The process of inspiration is a mystery of the providence of God, but the result of this process is a verbal, plenary, inerrant, and authoritative record." Most evangelical biblical scholars associate inspiration with only the original text; for example some American Protestants adhere to the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy which asserted that inspiration applied only to the autographic text of Scripture. A minority even within adherents of biblical literalism extend the claim of inerrancy to a particular translation, e.g. the King-James-Only Movement.

Bible versions and translations

, on display in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, England. This Bible was transcribed in Belgium in 1407 for reading aloud in a monastery.]] Bible versions are discussed below, while Bible translations can be found on a separate page.

The original texts of the Tanakh were in Hebrew, although some portions were in Aramaic. In addition to the authoritative Masoretic Text, Jews still refer to the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, and the Targum Onkelos, an Aramaic version of the Bible. There are several different ancient versions of the Tanakh in Hebrew, mostly differing by spelling, and the traditional Jewish version is based on the version known as Aleppo Codex. Even in this version by itself, there are words which are traditionally read differently from written (sometimes one word is written and another is read), because the oral tradition is considered more fundamental than the written one, and presumably mistakes had been made in copying the text over the generations.

The primary biblical text for early Christians was the Septuagint or (LXX). In addition, they translated the Hebrew Bible into several other languages. Translations were made into Syriac, Coptic, Ge'ez and Latin, among other languages. The Latin translations were historically the most important for the Church in the West, while the Greek-speaking East continued to use the Septuagint translations of the Old Testament and had no need to translate the New Testament.

The earliest Latin translation was the Old Latin text, or Vetus Latina, which, from internal evidence, seems to have been made by several authors over a period of time. It was based on the Septuagint, and thus included books not in the Hebrew Bible.

Pope Damasus I assembled the first list of books of the Bible at the Council of Rome in AD 382. He commissioned Saint Jerome to produce a reliable and consistent text by translating the original Greek and Hebrew texts into Latin. This translation became known as the Latin Vulgate Bible and in 1546 at the Council of Trent was declared by the Church to be the only authentic and official Bible in the Latin Rite.

Especially since the Protestant Reformation, Bible translations for many languages have been made. The Bible has seen a notably large number of English language translations.

The Bible continues to be translated to new languages, largely by Christian organisations such as Wycliffe Bible Translators, New Tribes Mission and the Bible society.

Biblical criticism

Biblical criticism refers to the investigation of the Bible as a text, and addresses questions such as authorship, dates of composition, and authorial intention. It is not the same as criticism of the Bible, which is an assertion against the Bible being a source of information or ethical guidance.

Higher criticism

In the 17th century Thomas Hobbes collected the current evidence to conclude outright that Moses could not have written the bulk of the Torah. Shortly afterwards the philosopher Baruch Spinoza published a unified critical analysis, arguing that the problematic passages were not isolated cases that could be explained away one by one, but pervasive throughout the five books, concluding that it was "clearer than the sun at noon that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses...." Despite determined opposition from Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, the views of Hobbes and Spinoza gained increasing acceptance amongst scholars.

Documentary hypothesis

The medieval tradition of Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch (Torah) came under philological scrutiny with the development of Biblical criticism in the 18th century. H. B. Witter , Jean Astruc (1753), and Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1803) separated the Pentateuch into two original documentary components, both dating from after the time of Moses. Others hypothesized the presence of two additional sources. The four documents were given working titles: J (Jahwist/Yahwist), E (Elohist), P (Priestly), and D (Deuteronomist). Each was discernible by its own characteristic language, and each, when read in isolation, presented a unified, coherent narrative.

Subsequent scholars, notably Eduard Reuss, Karl Heinrich Graf and Wilhelm Vatke, turned their attention to the order in which the documents had been composed (which they deduced from internal clues) and placed them in the context of a theory of the development of ancient Israelite religion, suggesting that much of the Laws and the narrative of the Pentateuch were unknown to the Israelites in the time of Moses.

These were synthesized by Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918), who suggested a historical framework for the composition of the documents and their redaction (combination) into the final document known as the Pentateuch. This hypothesis was challenged by William Henry Green in his The Mosaic Origins of the Pentateuchal Codes (available online). Nonetheless, according to contemporary Torah scholar Richard Elliott Friedman, Wellhausen's model of the documentary hypothesis continues to dominate the field of biblical scholarship: "To this day, if you want to disagree, you disagree with Wellhausen. If you want to pose a new model, you compare its merits with those of Wellhausen's model."

The documentary hypothesis is important in the field of biblical studies not only because it claims that the Torah was written by different people at different times—generally long after the events it describes— but it also proposed what was at the time a radically new way of reading the Bible. Many proponents of the documentary hypothesis view the Bible more as a body of literature than a work of history, believing that the historical value of the text lies not in its account of the events that it describes, but in what critics can infer about the times in which the authors lived (as critics may read Hamlet to learn about 17th-century England, but will not read it to learn about 7th-century Denmark).

Wellhausen's hypothesis proposed that the four documents were composed in the order J-E-D-P, with P, containing the bulk of the Jewish law, dating from the post-Exilic Second Temple period (i.e., after 515 BC);

The documentary hypothesis has been modified by numerous later authors. The contemporary view is that P is earlier than D, and that all four books date from the First Temple period (i.e., prior to 587 BC). Martin Noth (who in 1943 provided evidence that Deuteronomy plus the following six books make a unified history from the hand of a single editor), Harold Bloom, Frank Moore Cross and Richard Elliot Friedman also presented versions of the hypothesis.

The documentary hypothesis, at least in the four-document version advanced by Wellhausen, has been controversial since its formulation, and not all biblical scholars accept J, E, D, and P as meaningful terms. Critics question the existence of separate, identifiable documents, positing instead that the biblical text is made up of almost innumerable strands so interwoven as to be hardly untangleable. The J documen in particular, has been subjected to such intense dissection that it seems in danger of disappearing.

The hypothesis dominated biblical scholarship for much of the 20th century, and, although increasingly challenged by other models in the last part of the 20th century, its terminology and insights continue to provide the framework for modern theories on the origins of the Torah.

Archaeological and historical research

Biblical archaeology is the archaeology that relates to, and sheds light upon, the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. It is used to help determine the lifestyle and practices of people living in biblical times.

There are a wide range of interpretations of the existing Biblical archaeology. One broad division includes Biblical maximalism that generally take the view that most of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible is essentially based on history although presented through the religious viewpoint of its time. It is considered the opposite of biblical minimalism which considers the Bible a purely post-exilic (5th century BCE and later) composition. In any case, even accepting Biblical minimalism, the Bible is a historical document containing first-hand information on the Hellenistic and Roman eras, and there is universal scholarly consensus that the events of the Babylonian captivity of the 6th century onward have a basis in history.

On the other hand, the historicity of the biblical account of the history of ancient Israel and Judah of the 10th to 7th centuries BC is disputed in scholarship. The biblical account of the 8th to 7th centuries is widely, but not universally, accepted as historical, while the verdict on the earliest period of the United Monarchy (10th century BC) and the historicity of David is far from clear. For this reason, archaeological evidence providing information on this period, such as the Tel Dan Stele, can potentially be decisive.

Finally, the biblical account of events of the Exodus from Egypt in the Torah, and the migration to the Promised Land and the period of Judges are not considered historical in scholarship.

Regarding the New Testament, the setting being the Roman Empire period in the 1st century, the historical context is well established. There has nevertheless been some debate on the historicity of Jesus, but the mainstream opinion is clearly that Jesus was one of several known historical itinerant preachers in 1st-century Roman Judea, teaching in the context of the religious upheavals and sectarianism of Second Temple Judaism.

See also

Religious text

Biblical studies

Code of Hammurabi

List of major biblical figures

Biblical topics

Alcohol in the Bible

Circumcision in the Bible

Crime and punishment in the Bible

Ethics in the Bible

Murder in the Bible

Slavery in the Bible

Women in the Bible

Summary of Christian eschatological differences

Endnotes

References and further reading

Anderson, Bernhard W. Understanding the Old Testament. ISBN 0-13-948399-3.

Asimov, Isaac. Asimov's Guide to the Bible. New York, NY: Avenel Books, 1981. ISBN 0-517-34582-X.

Berlin, Adele, Marc Zvi Brettler and Michael Fishbane. The Jewish Study Bible. Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-19-529751-2.

Dever, William G. Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come from? Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003. ISBN 0-8028-0975-8.

Ehrman, Bart D. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why New York, NY: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005. ISBN 0-06-073817-0.

Geisler, Norman (editor). Inerrancy. Sponsored by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. Zondervan Publishing House, 1980, ISBN 0-310-39281-0.

Head, Tom. The Absolute Beginner's Guide to the Bible. Indianapolis, IN: Que Publishing, 2005. ISBN 0-7897-3419-2

Hoffman, Joel M. In the Beginning. New York University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8147-3690-4

Lienhard, Joseph T. The Bible, The Church, and Authority. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995.

Lindsell, Harold. The Battle for the Bible. Zondervan Publishing House, 1978. ISBN 0-310-27681-0

Masalha, Nur, The Bible and Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-Colonialism in Palestine-Israel. London, Zed Books, 2007.

McDonald, Lee M. and Sanders, James A., eds. The Canon Debate. Hendrickson Publishers (January 1, 2002). 662p. ISBN 1565635175 ISBN 978-1565635173

Miller, John W. The Origins of the Bible: Rethinking Canon History Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1994. ISBN 0-8091-3522-1.

Riches, John. The Bible: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-19-285343-0

Siku. The Manga Bible: From Genesis to Revelation. Galilee Trade (January 15, 2008). 224p. ISBN 0385524315 ISBN 978-0385524315

Taylor, Hawley O. "Mathematics and Prophecy." Modern Science and Christian Faith. Wheaton: Van Kampen, 1948, pp. 175–83.

Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia, "Book of Ezekiel," p. 580 and "prophecy," p. 1410. Chicago: Moody Bible Press, 1986.

Category:Greek loanwords Category:Judeo-Christian topics

Name	Ravi Zacharias
Birth date	(age 64)
Birth place	Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Nationality	Indian, Canadian and American
Residence	Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Occupation	Christian apologist, Founder and Chairman of the Board of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries
Religion	Christian
Website	http://www.rzim.org

Region	Western Philosophy
Era	21st-century philosophy
Color	#B0C4DE
Name	Ravi Zacharias
Birth place	Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
School tradition	Christian philosophy
Main interests	Philosophy of religion, Christian Apologetics, Worldview
Notable ideas	Four Criteria for a Coherent Worldview
Influences	Norman Geisler, C.S. Lewis, John Polkinghorne, Don Cupitt, Malcolm Muggeridge, Francis Schaeffer

Frederick Antony Ravi Kumar Zacharias (born 1946) is an Indian-born, Canadian-American evangelical Christian apologist and evangelist. Zacharias is the author of numerous Christian books, including Gold Medallion Book Award winner Can Man Live Without God? and he himself was an atheist until the age of 17, when he unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide by swallowing poison. While in the hospital, a local Christian worker brought him a Bible and instructed his mother to read to him out of John 14. Zacharias says that it was John 14:19 that touched him and caused him to commit his life to Christ.

He immigrated with his family to Canada in 1966, earning his undergraduate degree from Ontario Bible College in 1972 (now Tyndale University College & Seminary) and his M. Div. from Trinity International University.

In May 1972 Zacharias married Margaret ("Margie") Reynolds, whom he met at his church's youth group. They have three grown children, Sarah, Naomi and Nathan.

Ministry

Zacharias was invited to spend the summer of 1971 in Vietnam, where he evangelized to the American soldiers, as well as to POWs and Viet Cong. After graduating from Ontario Bible College, he began an itinerant ministry with the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada. In 1974 the C&MA; sent him to Cambodia, where he preached only a short time before its fall to the Khmer Rouge. In 1977, after graduating from Trinity, Zacharias was commissioned to preach worldwide.

In 1983, Zacharias was invited to speak in Amsterdam at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's annual evangelists' conference. It was here that he first noticed a lack of ministry in the area of Christian apologetics. After Amsterdam, Zacharias spent the summer evangelizing in India, where he continued to see the need for apologetics ministry, both to lead people to Christ and to train Christian leaders. In August 1984 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries was founded in Toronto, Canada. Today its headquarters are located in Atlanta, Georgia, and has offices in Canada, England, India, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates.

In 1989, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Zacharias was invited to speak in Moscow. While there he spoke to students at the Lenin Military Academy as well as political leaders at the Center for Geopolitical Strategy. This was the first of many evangelism opportunities towards the political world. Future events included an invitation to Bogota, Colombia in 1993, where he spoke to the judiciary committee on the importance of having a solid moral foundation.

Zacharias took a sabbatical in 1990 and spent part of that year as a visiting scholar at Cambridge University. There he heard lectures by men such as Stephen Hawking and studied under professors such as John Polkinghorne and Don Cupitt. He also wrote his first book, A Shattered Visage: The Real Face of Atheism.

In 1993 Zacharias was invited to speak at his first Veritas Forum at Harvard University, and later that year was one of the keynote speakers at Urbana. Zacharias continues to be a frequent guest at these forums, both giving lectures and answering students in question and answer sessions at academic institutions such as the University of Georgia, the University of Michigan, and Penn State.

Zacharias attracted media attention when in 2004 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) opened its signature pulpit at the Salt Lake Tabernacle to an outside evangelist for the first time in over a century (the last being Dwight L. Moody in 1871). Zacharias delivered a sermon on "Who Is the Truth? Defending Jesus Christ as The Way, The Truth and The Life" to some 7,000 lay-persons and scholars from both LDS and Protestant camps in an initiatory move towards open dialog between the camps.

Some evangelicals criticized Zacharias' decision not to use this opportunity to directly address the "deep and foundational" differences between the historic Christian faith and that of the LDS church. He responded by asserting that Christians should not immediately condemn Mormonism's theological differences but "graciously build one step at a time in communicating our faith with clarity and conviction". He said this is just as effective as showing someone the faults of their faith. The speaking engagement was nearly sabotaged by a claim by event organizer Greg Johnson, president of Standing Together, that Zacharias had nothing to do with editing the book The Kingdom of the Cults and had only loaned his name to the latest edition. Johnson later apologized for his comment.

Zacharias is also a frequent keynote lecturer within the evangelical community at events such as the Future of Truth conference in 2004, the National Religious Broadcasters' Convention and Exposition in 2005, the National Conference on Christian Apologetics in 2006.

On successive nights in October 2007, he addressed first the students and faculty of Virginia Tech, then the community of Blacksburg, Virginia, on the topic of evil and suffering in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre. In addition, Zacharias has represented the evangelical community at occasions such as the National Day of Prayer in Washington, DC, the Annual Prayer Breakfast at the United Nations, and the African Union Prayer Breakfast in Maputo, Mozambique, and was named honorary chairman of the 2008 National Day of Prayer task force.

Zacharias was also interviewed in Focus on the Family's Truth Project.

In November 2009, Zacharias signed an ecumenical statement known as the calling on Evangelicals, Catholics and Orthodox to engage in civil disobedience with regard to laws which the declaration claims would force them to accept abortion, same-sex marriage or other matters that go against their religious consciences.

Personal views and philosophies

Zacharias states that a coherent worldview must be able to satisfactorily answer four questions: that of origin, meaning of life, morality, and destiny. He says that while every major religion makes exclusive claims about truth, the Christian faith is unique in its ability to answer all four of these questions. He routinely speaks on the coherency of the Christian worldview, saying that Christianity is capable of withstanding the toughest philosophical attacks. Zacharias asserts that the apologist must argue from three levels: the theoretical, to line up the logic of the argument; the arts, to illustrate; and "kitchen table talk", to conclude and apply.

In particular, Zacharias's own style of apologetic focuses predominantly on Christianity's answers to life's great existential questions, with logical and scientifically inclined defense of God. In some discussion Zacharias appropriates to scientific matters, he answers the question of human origin. He has voiced skepticism over what he believes to be inadequate empirical evidence in the fossil records for an honest endorsement of the theory of evolution. He also questions the claim that evolution is compatible with the second law of thermodynamics, quoting the two to be inconsistent and irreconcilable. This stems from the belief that the second law of thermodynamics dictates that all closed systems in the universe will, unless acted upon by some external influence, tend to disorder. This notion, says Zacharias, does not conform to the key tenets of evolution, which postulate a marked increase in the order of biological life.

Works

A Shattered Visage: The Real Face of Atheism (1994, 2004) ISBN 0801065119

Can Man Live Without God? (1994, 1996) ISBN 0849939437

Deliver Us From Evil (1996, 1998) ISBN 084993950X

Cries of the Heart (1998, 2002) ISBN 0849943876

The Merchant and the Thief (1999) (Children’s) ISBN 0781432960

The Broken Promise (2000) (Children's) ISBN 0781434513

Jesus Among Other Gods (2000, 2002) ISBN 0849943272

Jesus Among Other Gods (Youth Edition) (2000) ISBN 0849942179

The Lotus and the Cross: Jesus Talks with Buddha (2001) ISBN 157673854X

Sense and Sensuality: Jesus Talks with Oscar Wilde (2002) ISBN 1590520149

Light in the Shadow of Jihad: The Struggle For Truth (2002) ISBN 1576739899

Recapture the Wonder (2003) ISBN 1591452767

Is Your Church Ready?: Motivating Leaders to Live an Apologetic Life (2003) (Editor, with Norman Geisler) ISBN 0310250617

Who Made God? And Answers to Over 100 Other Tough Questions of Faith (2003) (General Editor, with Norman Geisler) ISBN 0310247101

The Kingdom of the Cults (2003) (Editor) ISBN 0764228218

I, Isaac Take Thee, Rebekah: Moving From Romance to Lasting Love (2004) ISBN 0849908221

The Prince and the Prophet: Jesus Talks With Mohammed (Copyright 2004, to be released posthumously) ISBN 1590523199

The Lamb and the Führer: Jesus Talks with Hitler (2005) ISBN 1590523946

Walking From East to West: God in the Shadows (With R.S.B. Sawyer) (2006) ISBN 0310259150

The Grand Weaver: How God Shapes Us Through the Events of Our Lives (2007) ISBN 0310269520

Beyond Opinion: Living the Faith We Defend (2008) ISBN 0849919681

The End of Reason: A Response to the New Atheists (2008) ISBN 0310282519

Is There Not a Cause (2008) (National Day of Prayer Feature Book)

New Birth or Rebirth: Jesus Talks with Krishna (2008) ISBN 1590527259

There is a Plan (2009) (excerpts from The Grand Weaver) ISBN 0310318491

Has Christianity Failed You? (2010) ISBN 0310269555

From Oprah to Chopra: Almost Right (2011)

References

External links

Ravi Zacharias International Ministries

Ravi Zacharias Radio Broadcasts Just Thinking and Let My People Think

Category:Living people Category:1946 births Category:Christian writers Category:Christian ministers Category:Christian apologists Category:American writers Category:Members of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Category:Indian immigrants to Canada Category:Indian immigrants to the United States Category:Canadian people of Indian descent Category:American people of Indian descent Category:People from Delhi Category:Tamil people Category:Canadian evangelicals Category:Indian evangelicals Category:Converts to Christianity from atheism or agnosticism Category:Trinity Evangelical Divinity School alumni Category:People who attempted suicide

Name	Penn & Teller
Caption	Teller and Penn at The Amaz!ng Meeting 6.
Birth name	Penn JilletteRaymond Joseph Teller
Birth date	Penn Jillette (March 5, 1955) Teller (February 14, 1948)
Birth place	San Francisco
Residence	Las Vegas
Othernames	Asparagus Valley Cultural Society
Homepage	pennandteller.com
Known for	MagicComedy

Penn & Teller (Penn Jillette and Teller) are Las Vegas headliners whose act is an amalgam of illusion and comedy. Penn Jillette is a raconteur; Teller generally uses mime while performing, although his voice can occasionally be heard throughout their performance. They specialize in gory tricks, exposing frauds, and performing clever pranks, and have become associated with Las Vegas, atheism, scientific skepticism, and libertarianism. Penn and Teller are both self-proclaimed atheists, debunkers, skeptics, and Fellows of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank in Washington, DC.

Careers

Penn and Teller were introduced to one another by Weir Chrisimer. From the late 1970s through 1981, the three made up an act called "Asparagus Valley Cultural Society" which played in San Francisco at the Phoenix Theater. This act was sillier and less "edgy" than today's Penn & Teller act. Chrisimer helped to develop some bits that continued, most notably Teller's "Shadows" trick, which involves a single red rose.

By 1985, Penn & Teller were receiving rave reviews for their Off Broadway show and Emmy award-winning PBS special, Penn & Teller Go Public. In 1987, they began the first of two successful Broadway runs. Through the late 1980s and early 1990s, the duo made numerous television appearances on Late Night with David Letterman and Saturday Night Live, as well as The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Today, and many others.

Penn & Teller had national tours throughout the 1990s, gaining critical praise. They have also made television guest appearances on Babylon 5 (as the comedy team Rebo and Zooty), The Drew Carey Show, a few episodes of Hollywood Squares from 1998 until 2004, ABC's Muppets Tonight, FOX's The Bernie Mac Show, an episode of the game show Fear Factor on NBC, NBC's The West Wing, guest stars during a two-part episode of the final season of ABC's Home Improvement in 1998, four episodes during season 1 of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch in 1996, NBC's Las Vegas, and FOX's The Simpsons episode Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder and Futurama film in 2009. They also appeared as Three-card Monte scam artists in the music video for "It's Tricky" by Run-DMC in 1987, and are thrown out of a Las Vegas hotel room in the music video for "Waking Up in Vegas" by Katy Perry in 2009.

Their Showtime Network television show takes a skeptical look at psychics, religion, the pseudoscientific, conspiracy theories, and the paranormal. It has also featured critical segments on gun control, astrology, Feng Shui, environmental issues, PETA, weight loss, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the war on drugs.

On , the duo describe their social and political views as libertarian.

They have also described themselves as teetotalers. Their book, Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic, explains that they avoid absolutely all alcohol and drugs, including caffeine, though they do appear to smoke cigarettes in some videos. Penn has said that he has never even tasted alcohol, and that his tolerance for certain drugs is so low that his doctor only had to administer a minute amount of anesthetic relative to what one would expect necessary for a man of his size to undergo surgery.

The pair have written several books about magic, including Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks For Dear Friends, Penn & Teller's How to Play with Your Food, and Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic. Since 2001, Penn & Teller have performed six nights a week (or as Penn puts it on Bullshit!: "Every night of the week . . . except Fridays!") in Las Vegas at the Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino.

Penn Jillette hosted a weekday one-hour talk show on Infinity Broadcasting's Free FM radio network from January 3, 2006 to March 2, 2007 with cohost Michael Goudeau. He also hosted the game show Identity, which debuted on December 18, 2006 on NBC.

Penn & Teller have also shown support for the Brights movement and are now listed on the movement's homepage under the Enthusiastic Brights section. According to an article in Wired magazine, their license plates are customized so they read, "Atheist" and "Godless", and when Penn signs autographs, he often writes down, "there is no God" with his signature.

2010 UK Dates

As part of their live dates away from Las Vegas in 2010 they played 5 nights in the UK at the famous Hammersmith Apollo (July 14–18). These were their first dates in the UK for 15 years.

Off-stage relationship

Penn Jillette has told interviewer Larry King that a big part of the duo's success and longevity is due to their never having been close friends. They enjoy working together immensely, but have little in common besides magic. As a result of their drastically different lifestyles and interests, they rarely socialize or interact when not working. Jillette believes that their partnership succeeds precisely because they give each other a great deal of space off-stage.

Tricks

Their tricks include Teller hanging upside-down over a cushion of spikes in a straitjacket, Teller submerged in a huge container of water, Teller being run over by an 18-wheel tractor-trailer, Teller swinging over bear-traps on a trapeze, and knives going through Penn's hands. Many of their effects rely heavily on shock appeal and violence, although presented in a humorous manner.

Sometimes, the pair will claim to reveal a secret of how a magic trick is done, but those tricks are usually invented by the duo for the sole purpose of exposing them, and therefore designed with more spectacular and weird methods than would have been necessary had it just been a "proper" magic trick. For example, in the "reveal" of one trick, while Teller waits for his cue, he reads magazines and eats a snack. Another example is their rendition of the cups and balls, using transparent cups.

Penn and Teller perform their own adaptation of the famous bullet catch illusion. Each simultaneously fires a gun at the other, through small panes of glass, and then "catches" the other's bullet in his mouth.

They also have an assortment of card tricks in their repertoire, virtually all of them involving the force of the Three of Clubs on an unsuspecting audience member as this card is easy for viewers to identify on television cameras.

The duo will sometimes perform tricks that discuss the intellectual underpinnings of magic. One of their acts, titled "Magician vs. Juggler", features Teller performing card tricks while Penn juggles and delivers a monologue on the difference between the two: jugglers start as socially aware children who go outside and learn juggling with other children; magicians are misfits who stay in the house and teach themselves magic tricks out of spite.

In one of their most politically charged tricks, they make a U.S. flag seem to disappear by wrapping it in a copy of the United States Bill of Rights, and apparently setting the flag on fire, so that "the flag is gone but the Bill of Rights remains." The act may also feature the "Chinese bill of rights", presented as a transparent piece of acetate. They normally end the routine by restoring the unscathed flag to its starting place on the flagpole; however, on a TV guest appearance on The West Wing this final part was omitted.

One of their more recent tricks involves a powered nail gun with a quantity of missing nails from the series of nails in its magazine. Penn begins by firing several nails (presumably real) into a board in front of him. He then proceeds to turn the nail gun on himself several times while suffering no injuries. His patter builds as he oscillates between firing blanks at himself and firing nails into the board. While performing he explains that the trick is merely memorization, but the lone fact that he does not flinch when he could fire a nail into his hand is the trick. A later revision to the trick replaced the (false) claims of memorisation with a more open explanation allowing the audience to enjoy the rhythm of the nail gun without fear of a serious mishap.

An avid upright bassist, Penn frequently accompanies jazz pianist Mike Jones, who opens for the magicians' Las Vegas show.

One of their most recent tricks is a modern version of the bag escape replacing the traditional sack with a black bin liner. Teller is placed in the bag which is then filled with helium and sealed by an audience member. For the escape the audience are blinded by a bright light for a second and when they are able to see again Teller has escaped from the bag and Penn is holding the bag, still full of helium, above his head which he then lets float to the ceiling. The duo had hoped to put the trick in their mini-tour in London however it was first shown to the public in their Las Vegas show on 18 August 2010

Awards and recognitions

Visiting Scholars of MIT

Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award, 2001

Richard Dawkins Award, 2005 for promoting atheism

Penn & Teller: Bullshit!

Awards won

Writers Guild of America: Comedy/Variety (Including Talk) - Series (2004)

Nominations

Writers Guild of America: Comedy/Variety (Including Talk) - Series (2005, 2006)

Directors Guild of America: Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Reality Programs (2006)

Emmy Awards

* Outstanding Picture Editing for Nonfiction Programming (Single-Camera) (2006)

* Outstanding Reality Program (2004, 2005, 2006, 2007)

* Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Programming (2004, 2005, 2006, 2007)

* Outstanding Main Title Design (2003)

* Outstanding Main Title Theme Music (2003)

Other media

Movies

Penn & Teller Get Killed 1989, (Lorimar Pictures/Warner Bros. Home Video)

Television

Penn & Teller appeared on the American kid's show, FETCH! With Ruff Ruffman as guests. They taught one of the show's contestants, Rubye, to perform magic tricks.

They have recently recorded a UK TV Show called '', hosted by Jonathan Ross. It challenges aspiring magicians to perform in front of Penn and Teller. If any illusionist can fool the professionals, they will win a five star trip to Las Vegas to perform as the opening act in Penn & Teller’s world famous show at the Rio Hotel & Casino.

Books

Penn & Teller's How to Play in Traffic (1997, ISBN 1-57297-293-9)

Penn & Teller's How to Play with Your Food (1992, ISBN 0-679-74311-1)

Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends (1989, ISBN 0-394-75351-8)

Sock 2004, ISBN 0-312-32805-2 (Penn Jillette sole author)

How to Cheat Your Friends at Poker: The Wisdom of Dickie Richard 2006, ISBN 0-312-34905-X (Penn Jillette and Mickey D. Lynn)

When I'm Dead All This Will Be Yours: Joe Teller—A Portrait By His Kid 2000, ISBN 0-922-23322-5 (Teller sole author)

Music

The horse you rode in on by Pigface (Penn Jillette only)

Penn & Teller Present: Music To Look At Boxes By (With Mike "Jonesy" Jones)

Never Mind the Sex Pistols, by Bongos Bass & Bob (Penn Jillette with Dean J Seal and Bob "Running" Elk)

Tattoo of Blood by the Captain Howdy (Penn Jillette with Mark Kramer)

Money Feeds My Music Machine, by the Captain Howdy (Penn Jillette with Mark Kramer)

''You Be Illn video, by RunDmc" Penn and Teller shown throughout the video and at the end appear to take over the persona of RunDMC

Jillette also toured with the Residents during the Mole Show, and hosted Ralph Records' 10th Anniversary Radio Special (1982). There is some mild controversy and confusion surrounding this. While the premise of 10th Anniversary Radio Special revolved around Jillette having never heard of the label or any of the bands on it (the Residents included), he was credited as a collaborator on the 1981 album Mark of the Mole, and he can be heard giving news bulletins in the first track. This has led some to speculate that Jillette may have been a Resident at one point.

Theater

In 2008 Teller co-directed a production of Macbeth in Red Bank, New Jersey and Washington, DC.

Video games

Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors 1995 - Absolute Entertainment for Sega CD & 3DO, Unreleased.

References

External links

Penn & Teller's official website

Penn's "Hydro-therapeutic stimulator" (aka Jill-jet) patent

One of many Penn & Teller videos accessible on the internet.

A man, a ball, a hoop, a bench (and an alleged thread)… TELLER!

Category:Living people Category:Magician of the year Award winner Category:Celebrity duos Category:American magicians Category:Comedy duos Category:Duos Category:1955 births

Name	Michael Shermer
Caption	Shermer on the Skeptics Society Geology Tour on June 8, 2007.
Birth name	Michael Brant Shermer
Birth date	September 08, 1954
Birth place	Glendale, California, USA
Occupation	Academic Historian of science and editor
Title	Editor-in-Chief of Skeptic and
Website	MichaelShermer.com

Michael Brant Shermer (born September 8, 1954, in Glendale, California) is an American science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine Skeptic,

Early life, education and career

Shermer was born and raised in Southern California, graduated from Crescenta Valley High School in 1972. He began his undergraduate studies at Pepperdine University, initially majoring in Christian theology, later switching to psychology. Shermer began competitive bicycling in 1979, and spent a decade in the sport. During the course of his cycling, Shermer worked with cycling technologists in developing better products for the sport. During his association with Bell Helmets, a bicycle-race sponsor, Shermer advised them on design issues regarding their development of expanded-polystyrene for use in cycling helmets, which would absorb impact far better than the old leather "hairnet" helmets used by bicyclists for decades. Shermer advised them that if their helmets looked too much like motorcycle helmets, in which polystyrene was already being used, and not like the old hairnet helmets, that no serious cyclists or amateur would use them. This suggestion led to their first model, the V1 Pro, which looked like a black leather hairnet, but functioned on the inside like a motorcycle helmet. In 1982, Shermer worked with Dr. Wayman Spence, whose small supply company, Spenco Medical, adapted the gel technology Spence developed for bedridden patients with pressure sores into cycling gloves and saddles to alleviate the carpal tunnel syndrome and saddle sores suffered by cyclists.

Shermer earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the Claremont Graduate University in the History of Science in 1991 (with his dissertation titled "Heretic-Scientist: Alfred Russel Wallace and the Evolution of Man: A Study on the Nature of Historical Change"). Shermer later based a full-length, 2002 book on his dissertation: In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace: A Biographical Study on the Psychology of History.

The Question of God: Sigmund Freud & C.S. Lewis (2004)

The Eyes of Nye on "Pseudoscience" (2005)

''The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe (October 4, 2006)

Coast to Coast AM (September 1, 2007)

Decoding the Past - Doomsday 2012 (2007)

Larry King Live (July 13, 2007 and January 24, 2008)

(2008)

Skepticality (Regular guest)

"Mr. Deity and the Skeptic" (September 15, 2009)

Personal life

Shermer lives in Altadena, California, on the edge of a cliff in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains atop which Mount Wilson stands. He and his wife, Kim Ziel Shermer, have a daughter named Devin.

Politically, Shermer has described himself as a libertarian.

List of books by Shermer

Sport Cycling: A Guide to Training, Racing, and Endurance 1985 ISBN 0-8092-5244-9

Cycling: Endurance and Speed (Sportsperformance) 1987 ISBN 0-8092-4775-5

Teach Your Child Science 1989 ISBN 0-929923-08-1

. (1997, 2nd Revision edition 2002) ISBN 0-8050-7089-3

Teach Your Child Math and Mathemagics 1999 ISBN 0-7373-0134-1

The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense 2001 ISBN 0-19-514326-4

How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science 2001 ISBN 0-613-35413-3

''The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience (ed.) 2002 ISBN 1-576-07653-9

2002 ISBN 0-520-23469-3

In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace: A Biographical Study on the Psychology of History 2002 ISBN 0-19-514830-4

2004 ISBN 0-8050-7520-8

2005 ISBN 0-8050-7708-1

Secrets of Mental Math: The Mathemagician's Guide to Lightning Calculation and Amazing Math Tricks 2006 ISBN 978-0307338402

2006 ISBN 978-0-8050-8121-3

The Mind of The Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics 2007 ISBN 978-0805078329

The History of Science: A Sweeping Visage of Science and its History 2009 audio lecture

The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths (To be released May 2011) ISBN 978-0805091250

List of Skeptic columns published in Scientific American

{|width=100% |-valign=top |width=50%|

2001-04 Colorful Pebbles and Darwin's Dictum

2001-05 The Erotic-Fierce People

2001-06 Fox's Flapdoodle

2001-07 Starbucks in the Forbidden City

2001-08 Deconstructing the Dead

2001-09 Nano Nonsense and Cryonics

2001-10 I Was Wrong

2001-11 Baloney Detection

2001-12 More Baloney Detection

2002-01 Shermer’s Last Law

2002-02 The Gradual Illumination of the Mind

2002-03 Hermits and Cranks

2002-04 Skepticism as a Virtue

2002-05 The Exquisite Balance

2002-06 The Shamans of Scientism

2002-07 Vox Populi

2002-08 Why ET Hasn’t Called

2002-09 Smart People Believe Weird Things

2002-10 The Physicist and the Abalone Diver

2002-11 Mesmerized by Magnetism

2002-12 The Captain Kirk Principle

2003-01 Digits and Fidgets

2003-02 Psychic Drift

2003-03 Demon-Haunted Brain

2003-04 I, Clone

2003-05 Show Me the Body

2003-06 Codified Claptrap

2003-07 Bottled Twaddle

2003-08 The Ignoble Savage

2003-09 The Domesticated Savage

2003-10 Remember the Six Billion

2003-11 Candle in the Dark

2003-12 What’s the Harm

2004-01 Bunkum!

2004-02 A Bounty of Science

2004-03 None So Blind

2004-04 Magic Water and Mencken’s Maxim

2004-05 The Enchanted Glass

2004-06 Death by Theory

2004-07 God’s Number Is Up

2004-08 Miracle on Probability Street

2004-09 Mustangs, Monists and Meaning

2004-10 The Myth Is the Message

2004-11 Flying Carpets and Scientifi c Prayers

2004-12 Common Sense

2005-01 Quantum Quackery

2005-02 Abducted!

2005-03 The Fossil Fallacy

2005-04 The Feynman-Tufte Principle

2005-05 Turn Me On, Dead Man

2005-06 Fahrenheit 2777

2005-07 Hope Springs Eternal

2005-08 Full of Holes

2005-09 Rumsfeld’s Wisdom

2005-10 Unweaving the Heart

2005-11 Rupert’s Resonance

2005-12 Mr. Skeptic Goes to Esalen

|width=50%|

2006-01 Murdercide

2006-02 It’s Dogged as Does It

2006-03 Cures and Cons

2006-04 As Luck Would Have It

2006-05 SHAM Scam

2006-06 The Flipping Point

2006-07 The Political Brain

2006-08 Folk Science

2006-09 Fake, Mistake, Replicate

2006-10 Darwin on the Right

2006-11 Wronger Than Wrong

2006-12 Bowling for God

2007-01 Airborne Baloney

2007-02 Eat, Drink and Be Merry

2007-03 (Can't Get No) Satisfaction

2007-04 Free to Choose

2007-05 Bush's Mistake and Kennedy's Error

2007-06 The (Other) Secret

2007-07 The Prospects for Homo economicus

2007-08 Bad Apples and Bad Barrels

2007-09 Rational Atheism

2007-10 The Really Hard Science

2007-11 Weirdonomics and Quirkology

2007-12 An Unauthorized Autobiography of Science

2008-01 Evonomics

2008-02 The Mind of the Market

2008-03 Adam's Maxim and Spinoza's Conjecture

2008-04 Wag the Dog

2008-05 A New Phrenology?

2008-06 Expelled Exposed

2008-07 Sacred Science

2008-08 Wheat Grass Juice and Folk Medicine

2008-09 Folk Numeracy and Middle Land

2008-10 A Random Walk Through Middle Land

2008-11 Stage Fright

2008-12 Patternicity

2009-01 Telephone to the Dead

2009-02 Darwin Misunderstood

2009-07 I Want to Believe

2009-08 Shakespeare, Interrupted

2009-09 Skeptic - Paranoia Strikes Deep

2009-10 Captain Hook Meets Adam Smith

2009-11 Will E.T. Look Like Us?

2009-12 Political Science: The Psychological Differences in the U.S.'s Red-Blue Divide

2010-01 Kool-Aid Psychology: Realism versus Optimism

2010-02 Cultivate Your Garden

2010-03 Surviving Death on Larry King Live

2010-04 The Sensed-Presence Effect

2010-05 Doing Science in the Past

2010-06 When Ideas Have Sex

2010-07 When Scientists Sin

2010-08 Our Neanderthal Brethren

2010-09 Democracy’s Laboratory

2010-10 Can You Hear Me Now

2010-11 The Skeptic’s Skeptic

2010-12 The Conspiracy Theory Detector

2011-01 The Science of Right and Wrong

|}

See also

James Randi

References

Bibliography

Shermer, Michael. Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time. 2002, ISBN 0-8050-7089-3 page 127.

External links

MichaelShermer.com – Official website of Dr. Michael Shermer

Skeptic.com – Official website of The Skeptics Society

Skepticality – Official podcast of The Skeptics Society

Media

Multimedia files featuring Michael Shermer

Ted Talks

*On strange beliefs - filmed February 2006.

*The pattern behind self-deception - filmed February 2010.

Real Detroit Weekly Interview, February 7, 2007

Skeptiko Audio Interview: Darwin, Evolution and Creativity, February 14, 2007

Is Christianity Good for the World? – Debate with Dinesh D'Souza at the Oregon State University Socratic Club on October 15, 2007, part 1

Is Christianity Good for the World? – Debate with `Dinesh D'Souza at the Oregon State University Socratic Club on October 15, 2007, part 2

Michael Shermer interviewed about "The Mind of the Market" on The Polyschizmatic Reprobates Hour

Video of an hour long interview/discussion with Shermer by John Horgan on Bloggingheads.tv

Democracy's Laboratory: Are Science and Politics Interrelated? Mixing science and politics is tricky but necessary for a functioning polity from the September 2010 Scientific American Magazine.

Michael Shermer at the Internet Movie Database

An Interview with Michael Shermer. Free Market Mojo

Category:1954 births Category:Living people Category:American skeptics Category:American humanists Category:American agnostics Category:American libertarians Category:American scientists Category:California State University, Fullerton alumni Category:People from Glendale, California Category:Pepperdine University alumni

Name	Killah Priest
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Walter Reed
Alias	Priest
Origin	Brooklyn, New York, United States
Genre	Hip hop
Occupation	Rapper, producer, actor
Years active	1993–present
Label	MCA Records, Legion of D.O.O.M.
Associated acts	Wu-Tang Clan, HRSMN, Almighty, One Over, Black Market Militia, Starkim, Sunz of Man, Felony Fights

Walter Reed, better known as Killah Priest, Iron Sheik from the Middle East, King Kong, The Missing Link or Masada, is an American rapper and affiliate of the hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan. He is known for intensely spiritual lyrics loaded with metaphors and religious references. He is also connected to the Black Hebrew Israelites (specifically the Israeli Church of Universal Practical Knowledge) and the Nation of Gods and Earths (Five Percenters) through his rhymes, and is known for controversial and Afrocentric subject matter. He is also a part of supergroup The HRSMN along with: Canibus, Ras Kass, and Kurupt.

Biography

1990s

Priest first made himself known to the hip hop world rapping on two songs on the Gravediggaz album 6 Feet Deep in 1994, and followed this with two appearances on each of two Wu-Tang Clan solo albums, Ol' Dirty Bastard's and GZA's Liquid Swords, both from 1995 (see 1995 in music). Liquid Swords in fact included a Killah Priest solo track titled "B.I.B.L.E. (Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth)". Also in 1995, Priest's group Sunz Of Man with rappers Hell Razah, 60 Second Assassin, Prodigal Sunn were signed to Wu-Tang Records and released three 12" singles through the label. Initially Sunz Of Man included Shabazz the Disciple, who had previously been in a duo with Priest called The Disciples, but Shabazz basically left the group before the contract with Wu-Tang Records was signed, thus only appearing on the B-side "5 Arch Angels".

Killah Priest's first solo album was Heavy Mental, released on Geffen Records in May 1998. It mostly expanded on the themes of "B.I.B.L.E.", featuring religious references and allegory woven into commentary on African American society and history. The album was mostly produced by the Wu-Elements producers, a group of in-house Wu-Tang producers mentored by Wu leader RZA. Sunz Of Man released their debut album The Last Shall Be First later in 1998, but by that time Priest's ties to the Wu were beginning to weaken, as he and long-time friend Shabazz clashed with RZA (their business ties with the Wu also began to weaken after the GZA Entertainment management agency, which they were both signed to, dissolved in 1996). After unsuccessful attempts by the pair to create new post-Wu Tang crews (Priest proposed a crew called the Maccabeez which would include himself, Shabazz and Timbo King among others, while Shabazz proposed a group including himself and Priest called the Sunz Of Thunder) they both effectively went their separate ways and cut their respective Wu-Tang ties.

2000s

After leaving the Wu stable, and consequently also effectively leaving Sunz Of Man, Priest helped form the hip hop supergroup The HRSMN with Ras Kass, Canibus and Kurupt. In October 2003, Killah Priest and Dreddy Kruger released a nine track album entitled The Horsemen Project. It was released independently through Think Differently Music/Proverbs Music Inc. and was only available to purchase off the internet."Who are the Sunz of Man?"/"The Valley of Death"/"Bring Back the Mike"/"Valley of Kings" |- |align="left"|The Horsemen Project with The HRSMN

Released: 2003

Billboard 200 chart position: -

R&B;/Hip-Hop chart position: -

Singles: -

|- |align="left"|Black Market Militia

Released: March 22, 2005

Billboard 200 chart position: -

R&B;/Hip-Hop chart position: -

Singles: "Audobon Ballroom"/"Thug Nation"/"Hood Lullabye", "Gem Stars (Remix)"/"Mayday!"

|- |align="left"|Original S.I.N. with Almighty

Released: July 22, 2008

Billboard 200 chart position: -

R&B;/Hip-Hop chart position: -

Singles: "Obey (The Statesmen)"

|- |align="left"|Beautiful Minds with Chief Kamachi

Released: September 23, 2008

Billboard 200 chart position: -

R&B;/Hip-Hop chart position: -

Singles: -

|}

Guest appearances

1994 "Diary of a Madman" and "Graveyard Chamber" (Gravediggaz album 6 Feet Deep)

1995 "Where Ya At?" and "Where Ya At? (extended version)" (with Ice-T, Ice Cube, Chuck D, RZA, Kam, Mobb Deep, DA Smart, Insane, Shorty, & Smooth B) and "Wicked Ways" (with Sunz Of Man) (from One Million Strong)

1995 "Greyhound, Pt. 2" (from the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion album Experimental Remixes)

1995 "Snakes"; "Proteck Ya Neck II The Zoo"; & "Don't U Know" (from the Ol' Dirty Bastard album )

1995 "4th Chamber" & "B.I.B.L.E. (Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth)" (from the GZA album Liquid Swords)

1996 "America" (from the AIDS compilation album America Is Dying Slowly)

1996 "Parle (Hip-Hop Remix)" (with Kavalier album Nikera)

1997 "Repentance Day" (off the Gravediggaz album The Pick, the Sickle and the Shovel)

1998 "Degree Zero" (from the DJ Spooky album Riddim Warfare)

1998 "Abide By" (with other HRSMN members Canibus, Ras Kass, & Kurupt from a 12" single called "White Label")

1998 "No Superstar" (from the Bounty Killer album Next Millennium)

1998 "Moanin"(By Antonio Chance,Killa Sin) and "Street Opera" (from the "One Step" UK single)

1998 "5 Boroughs" (with KRS-One, Buckshot, Cam'Ron, Redman, Run, Keith Murray, Prodigy, & Vigilante) (The Corrupter Soundtrack)

1999 "4 Bars" (along with Canibus & Rose Cartel from Universal)

1999 "Real Nigga Livin" (with Fat Kat Kareem) (album unknown)

1999 "Temple of the Mental" (from the Material album Intonarumori)

1999 "Beneath The Surface" Feat, RES (From GZA/Genius "Beneath The Surface")

1999 "1112" Feat, Masta Killa & Njeri (From GZA/Genius "Beneath The Surface")

1999 "Feel Like An Enemy" Feat, Hell Raizah, Trigga & Prodigal Sun (From GZA/Genius "Beneath The Surface")

2000 "Horsementality" (from the Canibus album 2000 B.C.)

2000 "Im a Horseman (Promo)" (on Tim Westwood's Radio 1 Rap Show with HRSMN members Canibus & Ras Kass)

2001 "Bread of Life" (from the Cappadonna album The Yin and the Yang)

2001 "Catechism" (with DJ Spooky off the Wu-Chronicles, Chapter 2)

2001 "In Here" (from the Guru album Baldhead Slick & Da Click)

2002 "Catechism Part 2" (with DJ Spooky)

2002 "Out Tha Spot” (with Kurupt) (Released: 2002 (Unknown)) 2002 "No Chaser" (with Raze, Hot Rod, & Fokis) (also released in 2003 by Raze on "Leavin Empty Shells")

2004 "Masters Degree" (with Block McCloud, Jean Grae, & Pumpkinhead on album Uncle Howie)

2004 "Ain't No Way" ((with the HRSMN) off the unreleased album Catch Me If You Can)

2004 "Never Imagined" (with Main Flow & Master Foul, off the album Hip-Hopulation)

2004 "Chains" (with Masta Killa) (from R.A. The Rugged Man album Die, Rugged Man, Die)

2004 "Secret Rivals" (from the Masta Killa album No Said Date)

2004 "Saviorself" (from the Jedi Mind Tricks album Legacy of Blood)

2005 "Champions" (with Soulstice) and "Wannabattle Tactics" (with Buckshot & Donte) (from Main Flow album Notebook Assassins)

2005 "Horsemen" (by Pak-Man and the HRSMN off the Pak-Man album Chow Time)

2005 "The Saints" (with Nas) (From the Dirty Harry mixtape The Warriors)

2005 "The 10 Plagues" (by Socalled off the Socalled album The Socalled Seder)

2005 "Testimony" (with SHI 360 and Remedy)

2006 "Beastin" (from the Chino XL album Poison Pen)

2006 "Constant Dreams" (from The UNDC album Closed captioned)

2006 "Pagan Helmets" (from Neurologists album As The Dark Settles)

2007 "Awaiting The Hour" (From The Ill Bill mixtape Black Metal)

2007 "Divine Sacred" (from Lightborn album "The Psychology of Fire")

2007 "Shall I Continue" (from Gumz album From Fetus to Genius...)

2007 "In The Name Of Allah" (from the Cilvaringz album I)

2007 "Liquid Wordz" (from the Canibus album For Whom the Beat Tolls)

2007 "Taarruz Basladi" (from the Ako-Akonomi album)

2007 "Build" (from the Contribution X album Cobra Of The North)

2007 "Law & Order" (from the iCON the Mic King & Chum album Mike and the Fatman)

2008 "Galaxies" (from the Praxis album Profanation (Preparation for a Coming Darkness))

2008 "Eat Ya Food" (from the Brooklyn Zu album Chamber #9, Verse 32)

2008 "Bloody Moon" (from VoodooCore {Shaka Amazulu The 7th & Wasabifunk})

2008 "One Day" (From Endemic (Terminal Illness) ft. Killah Priest & Timbo King)

2008 "Theory Of Dominance" (with Corown Da Sensei/Da Shogunz)

2008 "Se7en" (With Shaka Amazulu The 7th ft. Timbo King)

2008 "Walking The Line" (with Annakin Slayd from the album Stalwart Empire)

2008 "Immaculate for the Babylon A.D. Film" (With Michael Arkangelo and Shakura Holiday Prod by RZA and Shavo (Achozen))

2009 "Babylon Beast" (from the Heavyweight Dub Champion album Rise of the Champion Nation)

2009 "Where I Come From (Remix)" (with Tha Advocate, Willy Northpole, Hussein Fatal, Stat Quo, DoItAll, Big Lou, Sha Stimuli, Mr. probz)

2009 "God is Love" (from the U-God album Dopium)

2009 "Memoir Of A Gravedigga" (from Shaka Amazulu The 7th [Black Stone of Mecca album] ft. 9th Prince, Warcloud, Frukwan, and Shabazz The Disciple)

2009 "Murder" (with Chino XL & Sean Price, off the DJ-JS1 album "Ground Original 2- No Sellout")

2010 "Soul Purpose" (from Dusty Philharmonics album "The Audiotopsy", Unexpected Records)

2010 "Purified Thoughts" Feat, GZA/Genius (From Ghostface Killah "Apollo Kids")

References

External links

Official Site

HRSMN official website

Interview on DUBCNN

Uncensored Interview on Conspiracy Radio

Category:1970 births Category:African American rappers Category:Black Hebrew Israelites Category:Living people Category:People from Brooklyn Category:Wu-Tang Clan affiliates Category:Rappers from New York City

Name	James Randi
Birth name	Randall James Hamilton Zwinge
Birth date	August 07, 1928
Birth place	Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Occupation	Magician, writer, skeptic
Website	www.randi.org
Nationality	Canadian-American
Religion	Atheist

James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge; August 7, 1928) He dropped out of high school at 17 to perform as a conjurer in a carnival roadshow. Then on January 26, 2007, Altea and Randi again appeared on Larry King Live. Once again, she refused to answer whether or not she would take the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge.

JREF maintains a public log of past participants in the Million Dollar Challenge. However, he says, he has paid out large sums to personally defend himself in these suits.

Eldon Byrd

A Baltimore District Court found Randi guilty of defaming Byrd for calling him a "convicted child molester" because although Byrd had been found guilty of child pornography offences and admitted to molestation, the admission was part of a plea bargain so he was not actually convicted.

Personal life

In 1987, Randi became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Randi also said that after he is gone he does not want his fans to bother with a museum of magic named after him or burying him in a fancy tomb. Instead, he said, "I want to be cremated, and I want my ashes blown in Uri Geller's eyes." His physicians put his five-year survival rate at 50%. Randi underwent his final chemotherapy session on December 31, 2009, as he explained in a January 12, 2010 video in which he related that his chemotherapy experience was not as unpleasant as he had imagined. In a video posted April 12, 2010, Randi stated that he has been given a clean bill of health.

In a March 21, 2010 blog entry, Randi came out as gay, a move he explained was inspired by seeing the 2008 biographical drama film Milk, in which Sean Penn portrayed Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California.

World records

The following are Guinness records:

Randi was in a sealed casket for an hour and 44 minutes, which broke Harry Houdini's record of one hour and 31 minutes set on August 5, 1926. Randi was encased in a block of ice for 55 minutes.

Bibliography

A Magician in the Laboratory. (Forthcoming)

TV and film

Actor

Good to See You Again, Alice Cooper (1974) as the Dentist/Executioner

Ragtime (1981) (stunt coordinator: Houdini)

Penn & Teller's Invisible Thread'' (1987) (TV)

Penn & Teller Get Killed (1989) as the 3rd Rope Holder

Beyond Desire (1994) as the Coroner

Himself

Wonderama (1955) (TV) as The Amazing Randi

Happy Days – "The Magic Show" (1978) as the Amazing Randi

Zembla, 'De trucs van Char' (The tricks Char uses). (March 2008)

ZDF German TV (2007)

Wild Wild Web (1999)

West 57th Street (1980s)

Welt der Wunder – Kraft der Gedanken (January 2008)

Today on NBC (1980s)

The Don Lane Show (1980)

That's My Line (1980) (Appeared with James Hydrick)

The View ABC TV (1999)

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (32 appearances between 1973 and 1993)

The Secret Cabaret (produced by Open Media for Channel 4 in the UK)

The Power of Belief (October 6, 1998) (ABC News Special) (TV)

The People are Talking (1980s)

The Dave Patterson Show (1970s)

The Art of Magic (1998) (TV)

The Ultimate Psychic Challenge (Discovery Channel/Channel 4) (2003)

Spotlight on James Randi (2002) (TV)

Secrets of the Super Psychics (Channel 4/The Learning Channel), produced by Open Media, 1997/8

Scams, Schemes, and Scoundrels (A&E; Special) (March 30, 1997)

Raitre TV Italy (1991)

Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher

* End of the World (2003) TV Episode

* ESP (2003) TV Episode

* Signs from Heaven (2005) TV Episode

Oprah Winfrey

NOVA: Secrets of the Psychics (1993)

Mitä ihmettä? (Finland) (2003) TV Series

Midday Show (Australia)(1990s)

Magic or Miracle (1983)

Magic (2004) (mini) TV Series

Larry King Live of CNN (June 5, 2001, September 3, 2001, and January 26, 2007)

James Randi: Psychic Investigator (1991) (Open Media series for the ITV network)

James Randi Budapesten – Hungarian documentary (free download for schools)

Inside Edition – (1991, 2006, and 2007) TV

Horizon – Homeopathy: The Test (2002) TV Episode

Houdini Dead Men Talking (Biography Channel)

Fornemmelse for snyd (2003) TV Series (also archive footage)

''Extraordinary People – The Million Dollar Mind Reader (September 2008).

Exploring Psychic Powers Live (June 7, 1989) (Hosted by Bill Bixby)

CBS This Morning (1990s)

Anderson Cooper 360, CNN (January 19, 2007 and January 30, 2007)

A Question of Miracles (HBO) (1999)

20/20 ABC TV (May 11, 2007)

Dilbert (TV series) parodied in "The Infomercial" (1999) TV Episode

Other media

Music

James Randi can be heard speaking an introduction on Tommy Finkes song "Poet der Affen / Poet of the Apes", released on the album of the same name in 2010. The message was recorded by James Randi and sent to Tommy Finke via email.

See also

International Zetetic challenge

Pigasus Award

Project Alpha

Massimo Polidoro

Basava Premanand

Prabir Ghosh

Narendra Nayak

Robert Todd Carroll's Skeptic's Dictionary

Jerry Andrus

Sima Nan

Notes

References

External links

Official

James Randi Educational Foundation – Official website

James Randi Educational Foundation official YouTube channel

Video of short talk by Randi in 2007 at TED

Supportive

James Randi in the Skeptic's Dictionary

Project Alpha in the Skeptic's Dictionary

How Randi and fake psychic Carlos fooled millions

Media

James Randi interview (May 2009) from the podcast of MagicNewswire.com in which Mr. Randi discusses his career in magic, his feud with Uri Geller and more

James Randi interview (November 2007) from the BSAlert.com radio show where Mr. Randi discusses the TV show "Phenomenon," the current status of Uri Geller and his thoughts about whether society is becoming more or less superstitious.

"20 Major Aspects of Liars, Cheats, and Frauds" by James Randi"

The Power of Belief (Video clip) from ABC News

Randi's Internet Audio Show from the James Randi Educational Foundation

Skepticality Internet Radio

Transcripts (Sylvia Browne and Randi) (Sylvia Browne's manager and Randi) (Altea and James Randi) (Rosemary Altea and Randi) (Sylvia Browne and Randi)

Criticism

A Skeptical Look At James Randi Michael Prescott

James Randi's response to criticism James Randi Educational Foundation

Benveniste, Jacques, and Peter Jurgens. On the Role of Stage Magicians in Biological Research The Anomalist 1998

Thalbourne, Michael A, “Science versus showmanship: A history of the Randi hoax,” American Society for Psychical Research 89 (4) October 1995

Category:1928 births Category:Living people Category:American atheists Category:American magicians Category:American people of Canadian descent Category:American people of German descent Category:American skeptics Category:Canadian atheists Category:Canadian immigrants to the United States Category:Canadian magicians Category:Canadian people of German descent Category:Canadian skeptics Category:Cancer patients Category:Gay writers Category:LGBT writers from Canada Category:LGBT writers from the United States Category:MacArthur Fellows Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:People from Toronto Category:Professional magicians Category:American humanists

Name	GZA
Landscape	yes
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Gary Grice
Born	August 22, 1966Brooklyn, New York, United States
Alias	The Genius
Genre	Hip hop, hardcore hip hop
Occupation	Lyricist, rapper, songwriter
Years active	1975–present
Label	Cold Chillin', Loud, Geffen, MCA, Angeles Records, Babygrande
Associated acts	Wu-Tang Clan, DJ Muggs, Soul Assassins, Easy Mo Bee

Gary Grice (born August 22, 1966 in Brooklyn, New York) is best known by his stage name GZA (). Called by many of his fans The Genius, he is an American hip hop artist and is a founding member of the seminal hip hop group the Wu-Tang Clan. GZA has continued to appear on his fellow clan members' solo projects, and has continued to maintain a successful solo career.

Biography

Gary Grice developed an interest in hip-hop by attending block parties as a child in the early '70s. He formed a three-man group with his cousins, who would later be known as RZA and Ol' Dirty Bastard. The group, All in Together Now, saw the three rapping and DJing, switching off names and performing local shows; since they lived in different boroughs, GZA and Ol' Dirty would travel from Brooklyn out to Staten Island to meet up with their cousin RZA, after which the three would travel across NYC and challenge other MCs to battles. After some years of this, GZA was signed to Cold Chillin' Records as a solo artist under the name The Genius. He put together an album called Words from the Genius, produced mostly by Easy Mo Bee, but after it failed to sell—and his rocky experience on tour—Grice became fed up and asked for release from the label.certifications200]] !width="40"|US R&B; !width="40"|US Rap !width="40"|CAN |- |1991 |Words from the Genius

Released: February 19, 1991

Label: Cold Chillin'/Reprise/Warner Bros. Records

| style="text-align:center;"|- | style="text-align:center;"|- | style="text-align:center;"|* | style="text-align:center;"|- | |- |1995 |Liquid Swords

Released: November 7, 1995

Label: Geffen/MCA Records

| style="text-align:center;"|9 | style="text-align:center;"|2 | style="text-align:center;"|* | style="text-align:center;"|20 |Gold |- |1999 |Beneath the Surface

Released: June 29, 1999

Label: MCA Records

| style="text-align:center;"|9 | style="text-align:center;"|1 | style="text-align:center;"|* | style="text-align:center;"|13 |Gold |- |2002 |Legend of the Liquid Sword

Released: December 10, 2002

Label: MCA/Universal Records

| style="text-align:center;"|75 | style="text-align:center;"|21 | style="text-align:center;"|* | style="text-align:center;"|- | |- |2005 |GrandMasters (with DJ Muggs)

Released: October 25, 2005

Label: Angeles Records

| style="text-align:center;"|180 | style="text-align:center;"|69 | style="text-align:center;"|* | style="text-align:center;"|- |- |2008 |Pro Tools

Released: August 19, 2008

Label: Think Differently Music/Babygrande Records

| style="text-align:center;"|52 | style="text-align:center;"|13 | style="text-align:center;"|9 | style="text-align:center;"|- |- |2011 |

Release: TBA

Label: TBA

| style="text-align:center;"| TBR | style="text-align:center;"| TBR | style="text-align:center;"| TBR | style="text-align:center;"| TBR |}

Singles

References

External links

GZA interview and photo shoot with Maxim.com

Video interview with GZA

GZA Interview with exclaim!

GZA UK Live Reviews 2008

The Making Of Liquid Swords: Waxpoetics' Interview By David Ma

LOOKOUT Presents: Montreal interview with GZA

UNCENSORED GZA Radio Interview 2010

GZA Interview - GZA Interview with SLUG Magazine

Category:American vegetarians Category:African American musicians Category:African American rappers Category:Members of the Nation of Gods and Earths Category:People from Brooklyn Category:Wu-Tang Clan members Category:Geffen Records artists Category:MCA Records artists Category:Rappers from New York City Category:Living people Category:Cold Chillin' Records artists Category:1966 births

Name	Eve
Imagesize	255px
Caption	Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder shows Eve giving Adam the fruit.
Birth date	3760 BC (Hebrew calendar)4004 BC (Ussher chronology)
Birth place	Garden of Eden
Death date	2820 BC (Hebrew calendar) [aged 940]3064 BC (Ussher chronology)AbelSethmore sons and daughters

Eve (Hebrew: חַוָּה, Ḥawwāh in Classical Hebrew, Modern Israeli Hebrew: "Khavah", Arabic:حواء) was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the first woman and the second person created by God, and an important figure in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Her husband was Adam, from whose rib God created her to be his companion. She succumbs to the serpent's temptation via the suggestion that to eat the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil would improve on the way God had made her, and that she would not die, and she, believing the Serpent rather than the earlier instruction from God, shares the fruit with Adam. As a result, the first humans are expelled from the Garden of Eden and are cursed.

Name and origin

Bible, Eve (Hebrew: חַוָּה, Ḥawwāh; , Hawwa'; Ge'ez: ሕይዋን Hiywan; "living one" or "source of life", from Hebrew ḥavvâ, "living", "life", from ḥāyâ, "to live"; ultimately from the Semitic root ḥyw) is Adam's wife. Derived from the words chavah, meaning "to breathe" and chayah, meaning "to live", her name occurs only five times in the Bible, where she is called "the mother of all living" (Genesis 3:20), a title previously held by the Babylonian creatrix Tiamat. Historically the name appears to have been derived from that of the Hurrian Goddess "Kheba", who was shown in the Amarna Letters to be worshipped in Jerusalem during the Late Bronze Age. It has been suggested that the name Kheba may derive from Kubau, a woman who reigned as the first "king" of the Third Dynasty of Kish Another name of Asherah in the first millennium BCE was Chawat, Hawwah in Aramaic, (Eve in English). on the Orvieto Cathedral, Italy ]]

Eve is the first woman mentioned in the Bible. Here it was Adam who gave her the name Eve. Eve lived with Adam in the Garden of Eden during the time Adam was described as having walked with God. Eventually, however, with the Fall, the pair were removed from the garden because she was encouraged by a serpent to take a fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and with the Temptation led Adam to eat of the Forbidden Fruit.

In the Tyndale translation Eve is the name given to the beasts by Adam, his wife is called Heua.

Eve is not a saint's name, but the traditional name day of Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, has been celebrated on December 24 since the Middle Ages in many European countries, e.g. Germany, the Netherlands, Hungary, Scandinavia, Estonia.

by Michelangelo]]

Creation of Eve

Eve was created in the Garden of Eden to be the wife of Adam. God decides that "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a companion fit for him." and in Genesis 2:21–22 it states

:"And God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man" After her creation, Adam names his companion Woman, "because she was taken out of Man." "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh."

Eve is also mentioned in the Book of Tobit (viii, 8; Sept., viii, 6) where it is simply affirmed that she was given to Adam for a helper.

An alternate tradition, originating in a Jewish book called The Alphabet of Ben-Sira which entered Europe from the East in the 6th century A.D suggests that Lilith, not Eve, was Adam's first wife, created at the same time and from the same dust. The tradition goes that Lilith, claiming to be created equal, refused to sleep or serve "under him" (Adam). When Adam tried to force her into the "inferior" position, she flew away from Eden into the air, where she copulated with demons, conceiving hundreds more each day. God sent three angels after her, who threatened to kill her brood if she refused to return to Adam. But she did refuse. So God made Eve from Adam's rib to be his "second wife."

Controversy regarding the "rib" continues to the present day, regarding the Sumerian and the original Hebrew words for rib. The common translation, for example, that of the King James Version, is that אַחַת מִצַּלְעֹתָיו means "one of his ribs". The contrary position is that the term צלע ṣelaʿ, occurring forty-one times in the Tanakh, is most often translated as "side" in general.[7]. "Rib" is, however, the etymologically primary meaning of the term, which is from a root ṣ-l-ʿ, "bend", cognate to Assyrian ṣêlu "rib".[8] Also God took "one" ( ʾeḫad) of Adam's ṣelaʿ, suggesting an individual rib. The Septuagint has μίαν τῶν πλευρῶν αὐτοῦ, with ἡ πλευρά choosing a Greek term that like the Hebrew ṣelaʿ may mean either "rib", or, in the plural, "side [of a man or animal]" in general. The specification "one of the πλευρά" thus closely imitates the Hebrew text. The Aramaic form of the word is עלע ʿalaʿ, which appears, also in the meaning "rib", in Daniel 7:5.

An old story of the rib is told by Rabbi Joshua:

:"God deliberated from what member He would create woman, and He reasoned with Himself thus: I must not create her from Adam's head, for she would be a proud person, and hold her head high. If I create her from the eye, then she will wish to pry into all things; if from the ear, she will wish to hear all things; if from the mouth, she will talk much; if from the heart, she will envy people; if from the hand, she will desire to take all things; if from the feet, she will be a gadabout. Therefore I will create her from the member which is hid, that is the rib, which is not even seen when man is naked."[9]

illustration of Eve and the serpent]] Anatomically, men and women have the same number of ribs - 24. When this fact was noted by the Flemish anatomist Vesalius in 1524 it touched off a wave of controversy, as it seemed to contradict Genesis 2:21.

Some hold that the origin of this motif is the Sumerian myth in which the goddess Ninhursag created a beautiful garden full of lush vegetation and fruit trees, called Edinu, in Dilmun, the Sumerian earthly Paradise, a place which the Sumerians believed to exist to the east of their own land, beyond the sea. Ninhursag charged Enki, her lover and husband, with controlling the wild animals and tending the garden, but Enki became curious about the garden and his assistant, Adapa, selected seven plants and offered them to Enki, who ate them. (In other versions of the story he seduced in turn seven generations of the offspring of his divine marriage with Ninhursag). This enraged Ninhursag, and she caused Enki to fall ill. Enki felt pain in his rib, which is a pun in Sumerian, as the word "ti" means both "rib" and "life". The other gods persuaded Ninhursag to relent. Ninhursag then created a new goddess named Ninti, (a name made up of "Nin", or "lady", plus "ti", and which can be translated as both Lady of Living and Lady of the Rib), to cure Enki. Ninhursag is known as mother of all living creatures, and thus holds the same position in the story as does Eve. The story has a clear parallel with Eve's creation from Adam's rib, but given that the pun with rib is present only in Sumerian, linguistic criticism places the Sumerian account as the more ancient.

Temptation, fall, and expulsion from the garden

at the entrance to Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France. The portrayal of the image of the serpent as a mirror of Eve was common in earlier iconography as a result of the identification of women as the source of human original sin]] The serpent tells the woman that she will not die if she eats the fruit of the tree: "When you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." So the woman eats, and gives to the man who also eats. "Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons." The man and woman hide themselves from God, the man blaming the woman for giving him the fruit, and the woman blaming the serpent. God curses the serpent, "upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life;" the woman he punishes with childbirth (and the pain therein), and with subordination to man: "your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you;" and Adam he punishes with a life of toil: "In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground." The man names his wife Eve, "because she was the mother of all living."

"Behold," says God, "the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil." God expels the couple from Eden, "lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever;" the gate of Eden is sealed by cherubim and a flaming sword "to guard the way to the tree of life."

Eve as mother of humanity

According to the Bible, for her share in the transgression, Eve (and womankind after her) is sentenced to a life of sorrow and travail in childbirth, and to be under the power of her husband. Early anti-feminists argued that "sex education" for women was a violation of God's curse and should be resisted. While believers accept all subsequent humans have Eve as an ancestor, she is believed to be unique in that although all people after her were physically created from women, Eve herself was created from a man. Adam and Eve have two sons, Cain and Abel, the first a tiller of the ground, the second a keeper of sheep. After the death of Abel, Eve gives birth to a third son, Seth, from which Noah (and thus the whole of modern humanity) is descended. According to the Bible, Eve states "God hath given me [literally, "put" or "appointed"] another seed, for Abel whom Cain slew" (Genesis 4:25).

Eve in other traditions

Eve in Judaism

Even in ancient times, the presence of two distinct accounts was noted, and regarded with some curiosity. The first account says male and female [God] created them (Genesis 1:27), which has been assumed by critical scholars to imply simultaneous creation, whereas the second account states that God created Eve from Adam's rib because Adam was lonely (Genesis 2:18 ff.). Thus to resolve this apparent discrepancy, mediaeval rabbis suggested that Eve and the woman of the first account were two separate individuals.

Preserved in the Midrash, and the mediaeval Alphabet of Ben Sira, this rabbinic tradition held that the first woman refused to take the submissive position to Adam in sex, and eventually fled from him, consequently leaving him lonely. This first woman was identified in the Midrash as Lilith, a figure elsewhere described as a night demon.

The word liyliyth can also mean "screech owl", as it is translated in the King James Version of Isaiah 34:14, although some scholars take this to be a reference to the same demonic entity as mentioned in the Talmud.

In the Talmud, Adam is said to have separated from Eve for 130 years, during which time his ejaculations gave rise to "ghouls, and demons." Elsewhere in the Talmud, Lilith is identified as the mother of these creatures. The demons were said to prey on newborn males before they had been circumcised, and so a tradition arose in which a protective amulet was placed around the neck of newborns. Traditions in the Midrash concerning Lilith, and her sexual appetite, have been compared to Sumerian mythology concerning the demon ki-sikil-lil-la-ke, by scholars who postulate an intermediate Akkadian folk etymology interpreting the lil-la-ke portion of the name as a corruption of lîlîtu, literally meaning female night demon.

The Alphabet of Ben Sira Midrash goes even further and identifies a third wife, created after Lilith deserted Adam, but before Eve. This unnamed wife was purportedly made in the same way as Adam, from the "dust of the earth", but the sight of her being created proved too much for Adam to take and he refused to go near her. It is also said that she was created from nothing at all, and that God created into being a skeleton, then organs, and then flesh. The Midrash tells that Adam saw her as "full of blood and secretions," suggesting that he witnessed her creation and was horrified at seeing a body from the inside out. Ben Sira does not record this wife's fate. She was never named, and it assumed that she was allowed to leave the Garden a perpetual virgin, or was ultimately destroyed by God in favor of Eve, who was created when Adam was asleep and oblivious. It should be noted here, that both Lilith and the Second Wife are free from any curse of the Tree of Knowledge, as they left long before the event occurred.

Genesis does not tell for how long Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, but the Book of Jubilees states that they were removed from the garden on the new moon of the fourth month of the 8th year after creation (Jubilees 3:33); other Jewish sources assert that it was less than a day. Shortly after their expulsion, Eve brought forth her first-born child, and thereafter their second — Cain and Abel, respectively.

Another Jewish tradition---also used to explain "male and female He created them" line, is that God originally created Adam as a hermaphrodite[Midrash Rabbah - Genesis VIII:1], and in this way was bodily and spiritually male and female. He later decided that "it is not good for [Adam] to be alone," and created the separate beings of Adam and Eve, thus creating the idea of two people joining together to achieve a union of the two separate spirits.

Only three of Adam's children (Cain, Abel, and Seth) are explicitly named in Genesis, although it does state that there were other sons and daughters as well (Genesis 5:4). In Jubilees, two daughters are named - Azûrâ being the first, and Awân, who was born after Seth, Cain, Abel, nine other sons, and Azûrâ. Jubilees goes on to state that Cain later married Awân and Seth married Azûrâ, thus, accounting for their descendants. However, according to Genesis Rabba and other later sources, either Cain had a twin sister, and Abel had two twin sisters, or Cain had a twin sister named Lebuda, and Abel a twin sister named Qelimath. In the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan, Cain's twin sister is named Luluwa, and Abel's twin sister is named Aklia.

Other pseudepigrapha give further details of their life outside of Eden, in particular, the Life of Adam and Eve (also known as the Apocalypse of Moses) consists entirely of a description of their life outside Eden. Generally in Judaism Eve's sin was used as an example of what can happen to women who stray from their childbearing duties.

According to traditional Jewish belief, Eve is buried in the Cave of Machpelah, in Hebron.

Eve in Christianity

In Christian tradition Eve is often used as the exemplar of sexual temptation, a tendency not found in Judaism where Lilith plays that role. Furthermore, the serpent that tempted Eve was interpreted within most Christian traditions to have been Satan, although there is no mention of this identification in the Torah. In fact, Genesis does not even hint at any of these readings, although it is found in some of the Jewish apocrypha but their adoption by many Christians has marked the religion's radical break from its Judaic parent. Writings dealing with this subject are extant in Greek, Latin, Slavonic, Syriac, Armenian and Arabic. They go back undoubtedly to a Jewish basis, but in some of the forms in which they appear at present they are Christianized throughout. The oldest and for the most part Jewish portion of this literature is said Primary Adam Literature (see Life of Adam and Eve). Before we discuss this Primary Adam Literature we shall mention other members of this literature, which, though derivable ultimately from Jewish sources, are Christian in their present form; The Book of Adam and Eve, also called the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan and a Syriac work entitled Cave of Treasures. This work has close affinities to the Conflict, but is said by Dillmann to be more original.

Drawing upon the statement in II Cor., xi, 3, where reference is made to her seduction by the serpent, and in I Tim., ii, 13, where the Apostle enjoins submission and silence upon women, arguing that "Adam was first formed; then Eve. And Adam was not seduced, but the woman being seduced, was in the transgression", because Eve had tempted Adam to eat of the fatal fruit, some early Fathers of the Church held her and all subsequent women to be the first sinners, and especially responsible for the Fall because of the sin of Eve. She was also called "the lance of the demon", "the road of iniquity" "the sting of the scorpion", "a daughter of falsehood, the sentinel of Hell", "the enemy of peace" and "of the wild beast, the most dangerous." "You are the devil's gateway," Tertullian told his female listeners in the early 2nd century, and went on to explain that all women were responsible for the death of Christ: "On account of your desert _ that is, death - even the Son of God had to die." In this way Eve is equated with the Greco-Roman myth of Pandora who was responsible for bringing evil into the world.

Saint Augustine, according to Elaine Pagels, used the sin of Eve to justify his idiosyncratic view of humanity as permanently scarred by the Fall, which led to the Catholic doctrine of Original sin.

In 1486 the Renaissance Dominicans Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger took this further as one of their justifications in the Malleus Maleficarum ("Hammer of the Witches") a central text in three centuries of persecution of "witches". Such "Eve bashing" is much more common in Christianity than in Judaism or Islam, though major differences in women status does not seem to have been the result. This is often balanced by the typology of the Madonna, much as "Old Adam" is balanced by Christ - this is even the case in the "Mallus" whose authors were capable of writings things such as "Justly we may say with Cato of Utica: If the world could be rid of women, we should not be without God in our intercourse. For truly, without the wickedness of women, to say nothing of witchcraft, the world would still remain proof against innumerable dangers" but were perhaps aware that (tragically) a large percentage of those accusing witches were female as well, and feared losing their support: "There are also others who bring forward yet other reasons, of which preachers should be very careful how they make use. For it is true that in the Old Testament the Scriptures have much that is evil to say about women, and this because of the first temptress, Eve, and her imitators; yet afterwards in the New Testament we find a change of name, as from Eva to Ave (as S. Jerome says), and the whole sin of Eve taken away by the benediction of Mary. Therefore preachers should always say as much praise of them as possible." It is interesting to note that in pre - industrial times, misogynic authorities were often (such as in "The Romance of the Rose" feminist debate) just called "The Roman Books", due to the perceived paternalistic attitude of both Pagan & Christian Romans to gender problems. Another example often given of this, Gregory of Tours report of how, in the 585CE Council of Macon, attended by 43 bishops that one bishop maintained that woman could not be included under the term "man", and as being responsible for Adam's sin, had a deficient soul. However, he accepted the reasoning of the other bishops and did not press his case for the holy book of the Old Testament tells us that in the beginning, when God created man, "Male and female he created them and called their name Adam," which means earthly man; even so, he called the woman Eve, yet of both he used the word "man."

Eve in Christian Art is most usually portrayed as the temptress of Adam, and often during the Renaissance the serpent in the Garden is portrayed as having a woman's face identical to that of Eve.

Some Christians claim monogamy is implied in the story of Adam and Eve as one woman is created for one man. Eve's being taken from his side implies not only her secondary role in the conjugal state (1 Corinthians 11:9), but also emphasizes the intimate union between husband and wife, and the dependence of the latter on the former "Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh."

Eve is commemorated as a matriarch in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod with Adam on December 19.

Eve in Gnosticism

Eve too has different roles within Gnosticism. For example she is often seen as the embodiment of the supreme feminine principle, called Barbelo (from Arb-Eloh), barbeloth, or barthenos. As such she is equated with the Light-Maiden of Sophia (Wisdom), creator of the word (Logos) of God, the "thygater tou photos" or simply the Virgin Maiden, "parthenos". In other texts she is equated with Zoe (Life). Again, in conventional Christianity, this is a prefigurement of Mary, also sometimes called "the Second Eve". In other Gnostic texts, such as The Hypostasis of the Archons (The Reality of the Rulers), the Pistis Sophia is equated with Eve's daughter, Norea, the wife of Seth.

As a result of such Gnostic beliefs, especially among Marcionites, women were considered equal to men, being revered as prophets, teachers, travelling evangelists, faith healers, priests and even bishops.

Eve in Islam

library, Istanbul.]] Eve is not mentioned by name in the Qur'an, she is nevertheless referred to as Adam's spouse, and Islamic tradition refers to her by an etymologically similar name - حواء (). Mention of Adam's spouse is found in verses 30-39 of Sura 2, verses 11-25 of Sura 7, verses 26-42 of Sura 15, verses 61-65 of Sura 17, verses 50-51 of Sura 18, verses 110-124 of Sura 20 and in verses 71-85 of Sura 38.

In particular, Sura 7 recounts:

(Al-A`raf 7:22-23)

Islamic texts, which include Quran and the books of Sunnah (Hadith), differ from the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. The Qur'an, contrary to the Bible, places equal blame on both Adam and Eve for their mistake. The Qur'an does not say that Eve tempted Adam to eat from the tree or even that she had eaten before him. In the book it states both Adam and Eve committed a sin and then asked God for forgiveness and He forgave them both. Original Sin is not generally considered to exist in Islam.

Traditionally, the final resting place of Eve is said to be the "Tomb of Eve" in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Eve in modern times

On the basis of Eve's transgression, in the late sixteenth century a young scholar, Valentius Acidalius, who was working as a teacher in Silesia, published a pamphlet later republished at Lyons in France in 1647 in Italian, That was entitled Women do not have a soul and do not belong to the human race, as is shown by many passages of Holy Scripture. This belief was taken up by Johannes Leyser, a Lutheran pastor from the region of Frankfurt in 1675, who linked the story to a misreading of the results of the Council of Macon. Pierre Bayle, a Dutch Calvinist with a marked distaste for the Catholicism to which he had once adhered, spread Leyer's belief further by writing in his Dictionnaire: "What I think yet more strange is to find that in a Council it has been gravely proposed as a question whether women were human creatures, and that it was determined affirmatively [only] after a long debate."

An alternative view was given by Matilda Joslyn Gage who in Woman, Church and State: A Historical Account of the Status of Woman Through the Christian Ages with Reminiscences of the Matriarchate (1893, reprinted by Arno Press Inc, 1972), who showed that in book printed in Amsterdam, 1700, in a series of eleven reasons, threw the greater culpability upon Adam, saying of Eve (pages 522–523):

First: The serpent tempted her before she thought of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and suffered herself to be persuaded that not well understood his meaning.

Second: That believing that God had not given such prohibition she ate the fruit.

Third: Sinning through ignorance she committed a less heinous crime than Adam.

Fourth: That Eve did not necessarily mean the penalty of eternal death, for God's decree only imported that man should die if he sinned against his conscience.

Fifth: That God might have inflicted death on Eve without injustice, yet he resolved, so great is his mercy toward his works, to let her live, in (that) she had not sinned maliciously.

Sixth: That being exempted from the punishment contained in God's decree, she might retain all the prerogatives of her sex except those that were not incidental with the infirmities to which God condemned her.

Seventh: That she retained in particulars the prerogative of bringing forth children who had a right to eternal happiness on condition of obeying the new Adam.

Eighth: That as mankind was to proceed from Adam and Eve, Adam was preserved alive only because his preservation was necessary for the procreation of children.

Ninth: That it was by accident therefore, that the sentence of death was not executed on him, but that otherwise he was more (justly) punished than his wife.

Tenth: That she was not driven out from Paradise as he was, but was only obliged to leave it to find out Adam in the earth; and that it was full privilege of returning thither again.

Eleventh: That the children of Adam and Eve were subject to eternal damnation, not a proceeding from Eve, but as proceeding from Adam."

Early feminist theologian Katharine Bushnell writes that Eve was deceived by the Serpent and therefore sinned in ignorance. She confesses her sin and God does not banish her from Eden. Adam, however, sinned in full knowledge and does not repent, and is therefore assigned the blame.
 
Pamela Norris in her book "Eve: A Biography" argues that throughout history the story of Eve "was developed to manipulate and control women." Bryce Christiansen, commenting upon Norris's work shows how "The effort to demystify Eve requires a context that sharply contrasts her subordination to Adam with the awesome power of female deities prominent in Babylonian and Canaanite myths. Norris exposes the various ways in which the Genesis account of Eve's transgression has justified centuries of scapegoating women". Norris also reports upon the snaky Lamias and Liliths who haunted nineteenth-century painting and literature, suggesting that centuries of disobedient women have been linked with Eve, the original bad girl, providing ample ammunition for male fears and fantasies.
 
Elaine Pagels in her book "Adam, Eve and the Serpent" shows how the disgust felt by early Christians for the flesh was a radical departure from both pagan and Jewish sexual attitudes. In fact, as she demonstrates, the ascetic movement in Christianity met with great resistance in the first four centuries. Sex only became fully tainted, inextricably linked to sin through the work of Tertullian and Augustine, attacking Gnosticism while adopting certain of their attitudes.
 
Modern feminists have tended to examine the story of Eve as the source of patriarchal misogyny in Christianity. Genesis 2-3 is more often cited than any other biblical text justifying the suppression of women and proof of their inferiority to men. Others like Phyllis Trible, have contested that it is a certain kind of interpretation of Genesis 2-3 that is the source of the problem. Trible, for instance, argues that before the fall, there is an amazing equality between Adam and Eve. Before the creation of Eve, she argues, 'ādām or human, is created from the 'ădāmāh or humus, and although a male pronoun is used for this creature Trible argues that it was androgynous, not yet sexually differentiated. This interpretation is not original, it in fact goes back through Rashi, the 10th century Jewish interpreter, and ultimately back to Plato.
 
Trible also argues that Eve is the crown of creation rather than an afterthought. She further argues that the word 'ēzer, meaning "helper" is not to signify a subordinate position to man as it is also most often used describe God and is thus a superior rather than an inferior being. In the story of the garden, Eve is also autonomous and independent while Adam is surprisingly passive.
 
Mieke Bal, while less positive than Trible, nevertheless argues that Eve taking of the fruit is the first act of human independence, and by gaining knowledge of good and evil, she achieves a position of greater equality with the divinity, rather than remaining a puppet of God.
 
Robert McElvaine argues that the story of Adam and Eve can be linked to the gender dynamics associated with the rise of Patriarchy in the ancient world. The Garden of Eden he claims is a mythical reference to hunting and gathering societies in which people lived in nature, not doing much work. With eating of the tree of Knowledge, first women, and then men took conscious control over the food supply, and now had to take care and be answerable for any ecological problems this brought. The parallel between Adam cursing Eve is paralleled in the Cain and Abel story, according to McElwaine, as "real men don't fool about with plants". Through associating male semen metaphorically with seed 'man became the Godlike creator of life and women from their Goddess-like creators [transformed] into ...dirt ...In Genesis the soil has no creative power" (p. 128). Projecting this into the sacred world, the belief that through planting seed in the Earth men had procreative power, just as with planting semen in the womb he had the same. As a result, it was argued, the Supreme God must also been male and men are closer to God than women. The hierarchy that emerged was

::God - over ::Men - over ::Women - over ::the Earth.

Thus according to McElvaine, men can be the sons of God, but all women are the daughters of men.

See also

Mitochondrial Eve

Eve Grave

Pre-Adamite

Footnotes

References

Primary sources

Genesis ii.7-iii.23

Paulinus Minorita, Compendium

Secondary sources

Flood, John (2010) "Representations of Eve in Antiquity and the English Middle Ages" (Routledge)

Pamela Norris (1998) "The Story of Eve" (MacMillan Books)

Elaine Pagels (1989) "Adam, Eve and the Serpent" (Vintage Books)

Category:Adam and Eve Category:Burials in Hebron Category:Hebrew Bible people Category:Old Testament female saints

Name	Adam
Imagesize	350px
Caption	Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam, a fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Adam is the figure on the left, and God the figure on the right.
Birth date	3760 BC (Hebrew calendar)4004 BC (Ussher chronology)
Birth place	Garden of Eden
Death date	2830 BC (Hebrew calendar) [aged 930]3074 BC (Ussher chronology)
Death place	Unknown
Spouse	LilithEve
Children	CainAbelSethmore sons and daughters

Adam (Hebrew: אָדָם‎, Arabic: آدم‎) is a prominent figure in Abrahamic religions. He is the first man created by God in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He appears originally in the Hebrew Bible in the Book of Genesis. His wife was Eve [Hawa حوآء (Quran) Hawa]. In and the writer weaves together the generic and the personal senses of the word. In all that pertains to the first man as the passive subject of creative and providential action the reference is exclusively generic. It may also be observed that the writer in always says "the man" instead of "Adam", even when the personal reference is intended, except after a preposition.

The usage of the word as personal pre-dates the generic usage. Its root is not the standard Semitic root for "man" which is instead -(n)-sh but is attested as a personal name in the Assyrian King List in the form Adamu showing that it was a genuine name from the early history of the Near East. Compare Gen. iii. 19.

Christianity and Judaism

Hebrew Bible

The story is told in the book of Genesis, contained in the Torah and Bible. These texts have a central role in both Judaism and Christianity. Adam is discussed in and , with some additional elements in chapters 4 and 5. These might present two accounts of the creation story. Several apocryphal books, such as the Book of Jubilees, Life of Adam and Eve and Book of Enoch also contain details of Adam's life. .]]

Creation

According to Genesis 1, God (Elohim) created human beings. "Male and female created He them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam..." (). "Adam" is a general term, like "Man" and could refer to the whole of humankind. God blessed them to be "fruitful and multiply" and ordained that they should have "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth" ().

The account in records that God first formed Adam out of "the dust of the ground" and then "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life", causing him to "become a living soul" (). God then placed Adam in the Garden of Eden, giving him the commandment that "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" ().

God then noted that "It is not good that the man should be alone" (). He then brought every "beast of the field and every fowl of the air" () before Adam and had Adam name all the animals. However, among all the animals, there was not found "a helper suitable for" Adam (), so God caused "a deep sleep to fall upon Adam" and took one of his ribs, and from that rib, formed a woman (), subsequently named Eve.

Lilith

In Jewish folklore, Lilith is the name of Adam's first wife, who was created at the same time and from the same earth as Adam. She left Adam after she refused to become subservient to Adam and then would not return to the Garden of Eden after she mated with archangel Samael.

Druze religion

In the Druze religion, Adam and Eve are seen as dualistic cosmic forces and are complementary to one another. Adam represents the universal mind and Eve, the universal soul.

See also

Adam Kadmon

Banu (Arabic)

Paradise Lost

Table of prophets of Abrahamic religions

Y-chromosomal Adam

Notes

Category:Burials in Hebron Category:Gnosticism Category:Hebrew Bible people Category:Old Testament saints Category:People celebrated in the Lutheran liturgical calendar Category:Prophets of Islam

Category:Book of Genesis