Thoth

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For other meanings of "Thoth", or of "Djehuti" and similar, see Thoth (disambiguation).
Thoth
God of Knowledge, Hieroglyphs and Wisdom
Thoth.svg
Thoth, in one of his forms as an ibis-headed man
Major cult centerHermopolis
SymbolMoon disk, papyrus scroll
ConsortSeshat, Ma'at, Bastet or Hathor
ParentsNone (self-created); alternativelyRa or Horus and Hathor,
Thoth (/ˈθoʊθ/ or /ˈtoʊt/; from Greek Θώθ thṓth, from Egyptian ḏḥwty, perhaps pronounced */tʃʼiħautiː/ or */ɟiħautiː/, depending on the phonological interpretation of Egyptian's emphatic consonants) was one of the deities of the Egyptian pantheon. In art, he was often depicted as a man with the head of an ibis or a baboon, animals sacred to him. His feminine counterpart was Seshat, and his wife was Ma'at.[1]
Thoth's chief temple was located in the city of Khmun,[2] later called Hermopolis Magnaduring the Greco-Roman era[3] (in reference to him through the Greeks' interpretation that he was the same as their god Hermes) and Ϣⲙⲟⲩⲛⲉⲓⲛ shmounein in the Copticrendering. In that city, he led the Ogdoad pantheon of eight principal deities. He also had numerous shrines within the cities of Abydos, Hesert, Urit, Per-Ab, Rekhui, Ta-ur, Sep, Hat, Pselket, Talmsis, Antcha-Mutet, Bah, Amen-heri-ab, and Ta-kens.[4]
Thoth played many vital and prominent roles in Egyptian mythology, such as maintaining the universe, and being one of the two deities (the other being Ma'at) who stood on either side of Ra's boat.[5] In the later history of ancient Egypt, Thoth became heavily associated with the arbitration of godly disputes,[6] the arts of magic, the system of writing, the development of science,[7] and the judgment of the dead.[8]

Yahweh

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The Meaning of Yahweh

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The name Yahweh is best known from the famous “I AM” interaction with Moses (Ex. 3) and references the fact that God has always existed and will always exist. Though this is true, it is also a very basic understanding of the meaning of Yahweh. In the ancient world, names communicated something about a person’s character, so a name carried much meaning with it. God in His infinite sovereignty chose to reveal Himself in the name Yahweh. Consequently, one should expect this name to communicate a lot about the character of Yahweh.

The Meaning and Significance

In Ex. 3:13-14, Moses asks God, “Whom should I say has sent me?” and God responds by saying, “I AM that I AM… You must say this to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” However, it could be awkward for Moses to go to the Israelites and Pharaoh and say, “I am has sent me.” So, in Ex. 3:15 God revises this phrase and changes it to the third person by saying, “Tell them that ‘He is’ has sent you.”
The word “He is” comes from the Hebrew root word haya, which means, “to be.” It is the third person form of this word, “He is,” that becomes the name Yahweh.
The significance of the name Yahweh is that it is confirming God’s existence but most importantly His presence. In the context of Ex. 3, God is talking about His presence with Moses and subsequently with Israel. For in Ex. 3:12 Moses says, “Who am I, that I should go?” to which God responds by saying, “Surely I will be with you.” The point is not that He eternally existed (although this is implied) but that He is present with His people.
In light of the above, Ex. 3:14-15 could be paraphrased as, “Call Me ‘I am with you’ (I am the ever present helper) because I am indeed the ever present helper. And this is what you should say to the Israelites, ‘He is the ever present helper’ – the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob – has sent me to you.”
God wants to have a relationship with His people, and so He is giving them permission to call Him by a personal name rather than by His formal name. It is like giving someone permission to call you Bill when your name is William.
This does not mean that every time this name appears in the First Testament that it carries all of this theology with it. Sometimes it is used as just His name and is used in a reverential way.

The Harvard Classics

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The Harvard Classics, originally known as Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf, is a 51-volume anthology of classic works from world literature, compiled and edited by Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot and first published in 1909.[1]
Eliot had stated in speeches that the elements of a liberal education could be obtained by spending 15 minutes a day reading from a collection of books that could fit on a five-foot shelf. (Originally he had said a three-foot shelf.) The publisher P. F. Collier and Son saw an opportunity and challenged Eliot to make good on this statement by selecting an appropriate collection of works, and the Harvard Classics was the result.
Eliot worked for one year with William A. Neilson, a professor of English; Eliot determined the works to be included and Neilson selected the specific editions and wrote introductory notes.[1] Each volume had 400-450 pages, and the included texts are "so far as possible, entire works or complete segments of the world's written legacies."[2] The collection was widely advertised by Collier and Son, in Collier's and elsewhere, with great success.

Contents[edit]

Great Books of the Western World

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[NOTE: This is an edited version of the Wikipedia article. Links for each book have been replaced with links to actual ebooks on this site, not necessarily the same edition used for the Great Books of the Western World series.]
Great Books of the Western World is a series of books originally published in the United States in 1952 by Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. to present the western canon in a single package of 54 volumes. The series is now in its second edition and contains 60 volumes.
The project got its start at the University of Chicago. University president Robert Hutchins collaborated with Mortimer Adler to develop a course, generally aimed at businessmen, for the purpose of filling in gaps in education, to make one more well-rounded and familiar with the "Great Books" and ideas of the past three millennia. Among the original students was William Benton, future US Senator and later CEO of the Encyclopædia Britannica. He proposed selecting the greatest books of the canon, complete and unabridged, having Hutchins and Adler edit them for publishing by Encyclopædia Britannica.
After debates about what to include and how to present it, the project was ready. It was presented at a gala at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City on April 15, 1952. In his speech, Hutchins said
"This is more than a set of books, and more than a liberal education.Great Books of the Western World is an act of piety. Here are the sources of our being. Here is our heritage. This is the West. This is its meaning for mankind."
Originally published in 54 volumes, The Great Books of the Western World covers categories including fiction, history, poetry, natural science, mathematics, philosophy, drama, politics, religion, economics, and ethics. Hutchins wrote the first volume, titledThe Great Conversation, as an introduction and discourse on liberal education. Adler sponsored the next two volumes, The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon, as a way of emphasizing the unity of the set and, by extension, of Western thought in general.
The remaining volumes contained the following works:

Great Books of the Western World : Links included

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Gateway to the Great Books

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Gateway to the Great Books is a 10-volume series of books originally published by Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. in 1963 and edited by Mortimer Adler and Robert Maynard Hutchins. The set was designed as an introduction to theGreat Books of the Western World, published by the same organization and editors in 1952. The set included selections – short stories, plays, essays, letters, and extracts from longer works – by more than one hundred authors. The selections were generally shorter and in some ways simpler than the full-length books included in theGreat Books.

Authors[edit]

A number of authors in the Great Books set – such as Plutarch, Epictetus, Tacitus, Dante, Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, John Stuart Mill, Francis Bacon, Charles Darwin and William James – were also represented by shorter works in theGateway volumes. And several Gateway readings discussed authors in the Great Books series. For instance, a selection from Henry Adams'Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres critiqued the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas.
Indeed, many writers in the Gateway set were eventually "promoted" to the second edition (1990) of the Great Books, such as Alexis de Tocqueville, Molière, Henry James, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Albert Einstein and John Dewey.

Great Books

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Any recommended set of great books is expected to change with the times, as reflected in the following statement by Robert Hutchins:
In the course of history ... new books have been written that have won their place in the list. Books once thought entitled to belong to it have been superseded; and this process of change will continue as long as men can think and write. It is the task of every generation to reassess the tradition in which it lives, to discard what it cannot use, and to bring into context with the distant and intermediate past the most recent contributions to the Great Conversation.[43]
The following is an example list compiled from How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler (1940), and How to Read a Book, 2nd ed. by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren (1972):
  1. Homer – Iliad; Odyssey
  2. The Old Testament
  3. Aeschylus – Tragedies
  4. Sophocles – Tragedies
  5. Herodotus – Histories
  6. Euripides – Tragedies
  7. Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War
  8. Hippocrates – Medical Writings
  9. Aristophanes – Comedies
  10. Plato – Dialogues
  11. Aristotle – Works

Romani people : Gypsy

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According to a legend reported in Shahnameh and repeated by several modern authors, the Sasanian king Bahrām V Gōr learned towards the end of his reign (421–39) that the poor could not afford to enjoy music, and he asked the king of India to send him ten thousand luris, men and women, lute playing experts. When the luris arrived, Bahrām gave each one an ox and a donkey and a donkey-load of wheat so that they could live on agriculture and play music gratuitously for the poor. But the luris ate the oxen and the wheat and came back a year later with their cheeks hollowed with hunger. The king was angered with their having wasted what he had given them, ordered them to pack up their bags on their asses and go wandering around the world
The Romani people, also referred to depending on the sub-group as Roma, Sinti, Kale, Romani or Gypsies, are an Indo-Aryanethnic group, who live primarily in Europe. They originated in the region of northwestern India and now Pakistan,[1][2][3] and left sometime between the 6th and 11th century, brought by Muslims to Europe as slaves.[1] and settled in Europe, Turkey and North Africa via Iran.[4]

Gypsy and Gipsy[edit]

The English term gipsy or gypsy[17] is a common word used to indicate Romani people, Tinkers and Travellers, and use of the word "Gipsy" in English is so pervasive (and is a legal term under English law—see below) that many Romani organizations use it in their own organizational names. However, according to many Romani people and academics who study them, the word has been tainted by its use as a racial slur and a pejorative connoting illegality and irregularity,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24] and some modern dictionaries recommend avoiding use of the word gypsy either entirely, or as a negative modifier.[25][26][27][28][29][30]
'Gipsy/gipsy' originates from the Middle English gypcian, short for Egipcien. It is ultimately derived, via Middle French and Latin, from the Greek Αἰγύπτιοι (Aigyptioi), i.e. "Egyptians"; cf. Greek γύφτοι (gýftoi), a corruption of the same word. It was once believed that the Romanies, or some other Gypsy groups (such as the Balkan Egyptians), originated in Egypt, and in one narrative were exiled as punishment for allegedly harbouring the infant Jesus.[31]
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) states a 'gipsy' is a
member of a wandering race (by themselves called Romany), of Indian origin, which first appeared in England about the beginning of the 16th c.
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