Both specialized retail and the problem of inflation began early in human history although much of the economy during Bible times was still based on farming, herding and bartering.
Still early predecessors to our shopping malls; Bible writers speak of such early markets situated at city gates as the Sheep Gate, the Fish Gate, and the Gate of Potsherds.
Nehemiah 3: 1,3 mention two of these gates, describing how "Eliashib the high priest and his brothers, the priests, proceeded to get up and build the Sheep Gate. They themselves sanctified it and went setting up its doors" And at Jeremiah 3: 1, and 3 Jeremiah is directed by God to go down to the Gate of the Potsherds to buy an earthenware flask apparently.
Inflation too had early roots in human history with prices that kept getting higher and higher. The actual price of merchandise naturally fluctuated throughout the centuries just as they do today and it is hard to pinpoint what something would have cost at a given date --but generally prices for got steadily more as we can see in the human slave trade;.
The information from ancient sources, including the Bible shows that this trade existed and that when slaves were sold to new masters inflation was a factor. Joseph, the son of Joseph, for instance was told by his brothers for 20 silver prices, (possibly shekels) in the 18 century B.C.E. according to Genesis 37:28.
Three hundred years later, however, the price had risen to 30 shekels -- by the 8th century B.CE. to 50 shekels according to Exodus 32:22 and 2 King s 15:20 -- and by 200 years after this, during the time of the Persian Empire, the price for a slave had risen to 90 silver shekels.
So neither specialized commercial centers or the problem of inflation are something new to the modern era.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Do Ants Really Do That?
Remember how Proverbs 6: 6-8 say: " Go to the the ant, you lazy one; see its ways and become wise. Although it has no commander, officer or ruler, it prepares its food even in the summer; it has gathered its food supplies even in the harvest." This, as we'll see was no myth or allegory.
According to experts some ants, including the harvester (Messor semirufus) found in Israel today do in fact gather and store food.
These ants leave their nests during warmer weather to harvest or collect such things as seeds they find either on the ground or growing on plants -- just as we today often search for and pick fruits from trees.
Not only that but this species of ant also constructs nests close to granaries or threshing floors and store their harvest in underground ganaries or chambers up to five inches in diameter and one-half inch high.
These are not isolated holes in ground forcing the ants to expose themselves to predators or cold weather to run from one to the other in search of more food. Each granary is a part of a network connected underground by galleries forming an underground city.
Such well-stocked colonies enable the ant to survive underground for up to four months without any outside source of food -- or water.
So Solomon's advice to copy the planning and activity of the ant was truly well founded.
According to experts some ants, including the harvester (Messor semirufus) found in Israel today do in fact gather and store food.
These ants leave their nests during warmer weather to harvest or collect such things as seeds they find either on the ground or growing on plants -- just as we today often search for and pick fruits from trees.
Not only that but this species of ant also constructs nests close to granaries or threshing floors and store their harvest in underground ganaries or chambers up to five inches in diameter and one-half inch high.
These are not isolated holes in ground forcing the ants to expose themselves to predators or cold weather to run from one to the other in search of more food. Each granary is a part of a network connected underground by galleries forming an underground city.
Such well-stocked colonies enable the ant to survive underground for up to four months without any outside source of food -- or water.
So Solomon's advice to copy the planning and activity of the ant was truly well founded.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
How Far Did Early Missionaries Travel?
Part 3 - Pytheas Sails North
In 320 B.C.E. the Greek mariner set out on a voyage to discover new lands north of the Mediterranean
By that year Massalia (now the modern French city of Marseilles) had become a prosperous commercial centre with traders sending Mediterranean wines, oils and bronzeware to countries to the north and importing amber and raw metals, such as tin from those lands.
According to scholars Massiliote traders commissioned Pytheas to find a quicker (and probably safer) sea route to those lands. From the careful account that Pytheas kept of seas, tides, geography as well as the different peoples he encountered and different readings he took of the sun's angle with a survey device known as gnomon which showed how far he had traveled, it appears that after sailing westward from Massalia he sailed north along the Iberian Peninsula ( Spain) to Brittany (France) and then northward still farther between Ireland and Britain and even farther north.
He wrote that he sailed some 6 days north of Britain to the land called Thule, a land where the sea was frozen and had a midnight sun.
There is some debate about exactly what land this was: Iceland, Norway, the Faroe or Orkney Islands, but Pytheas described it as a land of frozen seas and "the midnight sun" so he obviously had sailed pretty far north before returning home, sailing south through the North Sea back to Brittany and the Atlantic coast and home.
Other Phoenician, Greek, Roman, as well as sailors from other lands followed followed over the years. The world of Paul's day was one of expanding exploration, trade, and travel around the southern tip of Africa as well as far north as the Arctic.
But for most people these new territories were still unknown to most of the people Paul was writing to and it was not likely that he had these frontier territories in mind when he spoke about the good news being preached, "in all creation that is under heaven."
It was more likely that he was still referring to Mediterranean lands such as: Parthia, Elam, Media, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Asia Minor parts of Libya, and Rome. By Paul's day, long after Pentecost of 33C.E. when many Jewish persons as well as proselytes from these lands accepted Christianity the Christian message had indeed become well known in these areas of Mediterranean.
It's possible that individuals could have begun to carry the Christian message even farther afield into Africa and Europe by Paul's day -- but if so there is apparently no record of it.
In 320 B.C.E. the Greek mariner set out on a voyage to discover new lands north of the Mediterranean
By that year Massalia (now the modern French city of Marseilles) had become a prosperous commercial centre with traders sending Mediterranean wines, oils and bronzeware to countries to the north and importing amber and raw metals, such as tin from those lands.
According to scholars Massiliote traders commissioned Pytheas to find a quicker (and probably safer) sea route to those lands. From the careful account that Pytheas kept of seas, tides, geography as well as the different peoples he encountered and different readings he took of the sun's angle with a survey device known as gnomon which showed how far he had traveled, it appears that after sailing westward from Massalia he sailed north along the Iberian Peninsula ( Spain) to Brittany (France) and then northward still farther between Ireland and Britain and even farther north.
He wrote that he sailed some 6 days north of Britain to the land called Thule, a land where the sea was frozen and had a midnight sun.
There is some debate about exactly what land this was: Iceland, Norway, the Faroe or Orkney Islands, but Pytheas described it as a land of frozen seas and "the midnight sun" so he obviously had sailed pretty far north before returning home, sailing south through the North Sea back to Brittany and the Atlantic coast and home.
Other Phoenician, Greek, Roman, as well as sailors from other lands followed followed over the years. The world of Paul's day was one of expanding exploration, trade, and travel around the southern tip of Africa as well as far north as the Arctic.
But for most people these new territories were still unknown to most of the people Paul was writing to and it was not likely that he had these frontier territories in mind when he spoke about the good news being preached, "in all creation that is under heaven."
It was more likely that he was still referring to Mediterranean lands such as: Parthia, Elam, Media, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Asia Minor parts of Libya, and Rome. By Paul's day, long after Pentecost of 33C.E. when many Jewish persons as well as proselytes from these lands accepted Christianity the Christian message had indeed become well known in these areas of Mediterranean.
It's possible that individuals could have begun to carry the Christian message even farther afield into Africa and Europe by Paul's day -- but if so there is apparently no record of it.
Friday, November 30, 2012
Creator Needed
Notice in the post below that it was scientists that designed and built this brain.
Nothing like this ever happens without intelligent direction -- a Designer.
Now the same designers will have to keep this brain maintained or like everything else it won't improve by itself. It will start to crumble.
The Bible says that God created... Yet evolutionists will still claim that the human brain -- just evolved by itself.
Nothing like this ever happens without intelligent direction -- a Designer.
Now the same designers will have to keep this brain maintained or like everything else it won't improve by itself. It will start to crumble.
The Bible says that God created... Yet evolutionists will still claim that the human brain -- just evolved by itself.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
How Far Did Early Missionaries Travel?
Part Two -- Necho 's Phoenician Flotilla
You can imagine the look or surprise on faces of natives living along the East and West coasts of Africa one day in the seventh century B.C. as they saw a fleet of foreign galleys sailing past them.
These vessels were part of a flotilla commissioned by the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho to sail around Africa from East to West starting in the Red Sea.
There was no certainty they would succeed. For centuries Phoenician mariners had been trying to sail southward along Africa's Atlantic coastline for centuries but had not succeeded in a complete trip around Africa from that direction according to the Greek historian Herodotus, because of tricky Atlantic currents and winds along that part of the coastline.
Still, they set off, sailing down the Red Sea and then southward along the East coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean. And according to Herodotus they returned to Egypt after sailing around the southern tip of Africa, north along the Atlantic coastline and eastward through the Mediterranean three years later after stopping over somewhere along the route long enough to plant and harvest a food crop.
Some historians have debated the reliability of Herodotus' account but historian Lionel Carson believes there is no reason why skilled Phoenician mariners could not have completed the voyage in the time mentioned.
This successful voyage by the Phoenican flotilla do doubt opened up the way for merchants and traders and even early Christian missionaries to follow behind them just as the voyage of Pytheas we'll look at in Part Three did much the same thing North of the Mediterranean along the Atlantic Ocean as far as Britain and beyond.
You can imagine the look or surprise on faces of natives living along the East and West coasts of Africa one day in the seventh century B.C. as they saw a fleet of foreign galleys sailing past them.
These vessels were part of a flotilla commissioned by the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho to sail around Africa from East to West starting in the Red Sea.
There was no certainty they would succeed. For centuries Phoenician mariners had been trying to sail southward along Africa's Atlantic coastline for centuries but had not succeeded in a complete trip around Africa from that direction according to the Greek historian Herodotus, because of tricky Atlantic currents and winds along that part of the coastline.
Still, they set off, sailing down the Red Sea and then southward along the East coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean. And according to Herodotus they returned to Egypt after sailing around the southern tip of Africa, north along the Atlantic coastline and eastward through the Mediterranean three years later after stopping over somewhere along the route long enough to plant and harvest a food crop.
Some historians have debated the reliability of Herodotus' account but historian Lionel Carson believes there is no reason why skilled Phoenician mariners could not have completed the voyage in the time mentioned.
This successful voyage by the Phoenican flotilla do doubt opened up the way for merchants and traders and even early Christian missionaries to follow behind them just as the voyage of Pytheas we'll look at in Part Three did much the same thing North of the Mediterranean along the Atlantic Ocean as far as Britain and beyond.
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