I didn’t find out about Hurricane Katrina until that Saturday and I left two hours later to go to Tennesse with my friend since the airport had closed. I had left the dorm briefly to go to McDonalds and everthing was alright when I left. Then when I came back people were packing their cars and leaving and I didn’t know what for until I came into the lobby and saw the TV. This hurricane did not look like it was going to miss New Orleans. I left with three friends and went to Tennessee where waited for the call to come back the dorms so we could start the second week of classes. The problem is that the call never came and we later learned that the semester had been cancelled. I went back home to PG County Maryland where I attended Howard University and worked at Sports Authority. It didn’t take much for me to realize that Howard wasn’t the place for me and Xavier was the place for me. I didn’t feel at home at all at Howard. I am glad to be back at Xavier.

I have attended one class so far and my impression from the first class I went to was a good impression. I think that this class will me learn more about spirituality and help me better understand the Bible as well as the Christian religion in general. I expect to learn things about the Bible and Christianity that I did not learn in high school and I also expect to discover the roots of Christianity and how it relates to society today. I took this course because I require six credits of theology to graduate, but in the long run I think I will recognize that this class benefited me more then I expected. The only thing I think I might find a problem with in this course is the writing component. I have never had a class that required me to write 1500 hundred words a week. I think it will be tough, but I am willing to accept the challenge. Don’t be surprised if some of my blogs are a little shorter then 1500. (Just kidding)
I have attended catholic school for thirteen years so I have learned something’s, here and there, about biblical scripture and what it encompasses in relation to Christianity. I think this class will be more in depth then the classes I have taken throughout my academic career. The class I took in high school focused more on the historical aspect of the Christian religion and ethics. Although I wouldn’t label myself an expert on the bible, I think I have some idea of how the Bible is to be read. I hope that this class will further my understanding and teach me new things that will help me as I move further into the college life and adulthood. After college, I hope to venture into the computer engineering industry as either a hardware engineer or data analyst for a major technology corporation such as Microsoft or Sun Microsystems. Although what I aspire to be is not in the field of theology, I think religion will play a major part in getting to where I want to be in the future. Through looking at others experiences with and without some sort of religious guidance, I could say that people who have religion in there life are better off for the simple fact that God is there through the good and the bad. You can thank God for how good he is to you or you can turn to God for guidance when times get rough.
The year 586 BCE is a key event in the Bible because it was the destruction of Jerusalem, which was a major city for the Jewish people. The Babylonians pillaged the city leaving nothing but death and destruction in its path. The people were killed, enslaved, or left with nothing to their name since the Babylonians burned down most of the city during their reign of terror. Lamentations is book in the Old Testament that gives an account of the destruction that was witnessed by some anonymous author (thought to be Jeremiah). This account tells of the Babylonians enslaving most of the people of Jerusalem and killing all those who came in contact with the Babylonians and didn’t want to comply with their commands. The book also describes how the city has now been burned down and how the people that were not captured or killed are now left with no food or water as well as no where to live. However, at the end of Lamentations, the author still shows faith in God and knows that there is method to God’s madness. If anything, the destruction of Jerusalem might have been a test to pick out the true believers. Just like with Noah and the ark. God picked only his most faithful believers to be left behind and start civilization along with animals that would be key to starting another civilization.
The physical geography of the Bible plays a major impact the Bible. Jerusalem is located on the passage that separates Africa from the rest from the middle east. The terrain in that area is mountainous and fairly hard to travel through, which made conquering Jerusalem that much more difficult. The area of Jerusalem is somewhat naturally defended by its surroundings. This natural defense helped keep out most nomadic civilizations and other intruders. This is a contributing factor to why Christianity thrived because if no natural defenses were in place to help keep out hostile civilizations, the Bible will not have existed and life today might be completely different. If the Holy Land was in a setting such as New Orleans, which can be reached by land or water, it would have been easily conquered because of how easily it could be accessed. The Holy Land probably wouldn’t even be holy if it was the same land type as New Orleans for the simple fact that everyone would want control over it since it is a midpoint for Europe, Africa, and Asia. It would be a lot of fighting over who would control that territory since everyone would want to conquer it for there own benefit.
The Merneptah stele is an Egyptian monument that was erected by the pharaoh Merneptah. On this monument are writings that boast some of accomplishments of Merneptah. This monument is important because it is the earliest reference to the Hebrew people that is outside the bible. This is significant because it shows that Israel was around and was an influence on earlier society. Even though in the writings it says that Israel was destroyed, it still can be used as a tool somewhat to draw links to events that happened in the Bible since it has been dated through use of absolute dating techniques that date artifacts thousands of years old.
The only problem with these writings is that they were probably ordered to be written by the pharaoh, which would make them bias and historically unreliable. These writings tell of Merneptah conquer a lot of civilization that he probably didn’t conquer. As Mr. Homan said in class, they might have went to the different civilizations and tried to conquer them, but Merneptah may have exaggerated several instances where he might have been defeated in the process of trying to over power countries that were more powerful then his own. We can’t blame him for exaggerating the truth, any ruler would want to be remembered for being dominate and a great conquer, it’s just that history probably was not as significant to their society as it is to our society. We can be grateful that we have some sort of idea of what was going during those times.
We are now in the process of evacuating for Hurricane Katrina. I think that if hurricanes were to go away, then we would have a situation similar to the Merneptah stele. They would be interpreted as something more then just rain storms with massive amounts of wind. Records left behind by our generation might be interpreted differently then how the authors wrote them. They might interpret hurricanes as “end of the world” type events.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 27th, 2005 at 2:13 pm and is filed under Class Comments, Week 01: Background. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.