Women In Genesis Essays - Book Of Genesis, Bereshit, Adam And Eve

Women In Genesis As a collective human element, women in Genesis often appear as obstacles to God's broad overriding goals through noncompletion of their particular roles in the divine scheme. From the Garden of Eden right through to the story of Joseph, women, as wives, mothers, and daughters, are typically unreliable, inadequate, deceitful or, simply by virtue of their womanhood, an outright liability, and they frequently threaten to undermine God's will as it is expressed in the opening book of the Bible. God's first instruction to a human being occurs during the initial telling of the creation story in Genesis. Adam and Eve have the mutual responsibility to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it(1:28). However, it is really the second narrative, detailing the creation of man and woman that establishes God's structure of the world. In this structure, Eden is created for the first man, Adam, who has one basic function, to work and guard Eden (2:15), and only one prohibition, to abstain from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge (2:16). Starting right from Genesis, in this additional description of the Eden story, tension already arises between Eve, the first biblical woman, and the divine process. Duped by the serpent, she not only succumbs and eats the forbidden fruit, but also encourages Adam to join her, thereby causing their expulsion. Thus, God is forces to confront human intractability from the very beginning of his quest, and the first instance comes from a woman, t he very creature created to solidify Edenic perfection. God had intended Eden to be a self-contained universe, a paradise for Adam where he would live comfortably without toil or hardship. By disobeying, and then including Adam in her crime, Eve indirectly causes his punishment: a life that requires him to labor for his sustenance. Eve was created to be her husband's helpmate (2:20); instead she turns out to be a catalyst for his demise and the cause of humankind's expulsion from the Utopia. In the creation story, the satisfaction of both God and human are at stake. God aims to realize his will in the world, and the happiness and the content of humanity hinge on God's ability to realize his plan. Eve is created to complete Eden. But, instead of conforming to God's plan, she is a stumbling block to the construction of the divinely conceived universe. The idea that God is striving to create an ideal world recurs in Genesis. And in many instances, as in the case of Eve, it is a woman who impedes the fulfillment of God's vision. However, disobedient actions are not always the mode of obstruction. Sara and Rachel threaten God's plan with their infertility. Although the text does not explicitly blame the matriarchs for their inability to conceive, they are involuntarily liable for not propagating. In every instance, it is the women, rather than their husbands or God, who are passively the physical barriers to conception. God, the narrative explains opens wombs when he so chooses. But closed wombs are never stated to be the result of God's initiative. And, even if conception is perceived as God's intervention, it is significant that infertility in the text is always a result of women's, rather than men's, faulty anatomical equipment, making infertility an inescapable female problem. Propagation is a central these in Genesis. In the Noah story, which is God's attempt to reconstruct the world after the first few generations of humankind have proven incorrigible, God commands Noah to be fruitful and multiply (9:1) immediately after Noah emerges from the ark. Clearly, the production of offspring is integral to the divine conception of this world, just as it was in Genesis 1. And later in Genesis, when God sets out to build his chosen people, part of his blessing to Abraham is to make his offspring as abundant as the dust of the earth (13:16). Women are the obvious vessels necessary for the realization of the blessing. Thus, any women who does not conceive is in direct opposition to both God's desire to populate the world in general through Noah and his descendants, and his aspiration to see his select nation flourish. And culpability is not an issue.

Sri Lanka Facts and History

Sri Lanka Facts and History With the recent end of the Tamil Tiger insurgency, the island nation of Sri Lanka seems poised to take its place as a new economic powerhouse in South Asia. After all, Sri Lanka (formerly known as Ceylon) has been a key trading hub of the Indian Ocean world for more than a thousand years. Capital and Major Cities Administrative Capital: Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte, metro population 2,234,289 Commercial Capital: Colombo, metro population 5,648,000 Major Cities: Kandy population 125,400Galle population 99,000Jaffna population 88,000 Government The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka has a republican form of government, with a president who is both head of government and head of state. Universal suffrage starts at age 18. The current president is Maithripala Sirisena; presidents serve six-year terms. Sri Lanka has a unicameral legislature. There are 225 seats in Parliament, and members are elected by popular vote to six-year terms.  The Prime Minister is Ranil Wickremesinghe. The president appoints judges to both the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals. There are also subordinate courts in each of the countrys nine provinces. People Sri Lankas total population is approximately 20.2 million as of the 2012 census. Nearly three-quarters, 74.9%, are ethnic Sinhalese. Sri Lankan Tamils, whose ancestors came to the island from southern India centuries ago, make up about 11% of the population, while more recent Indian Tamil immigrants, brought in as agricultural labor by the British colonial government, represent 5%. Another 9% of Sri Lankans are the Malays and Moors, descendants of Arab and Southeast Asian traders who plied the Indian Ocean monsoon winds for more than a thousand years. There are also tiny numbers of Dutch and British settlers, and aboriginal Veddahs, whose ancestors arrived at least 18,000 years ago. Languages The official language of Sri Lanka is Sinhala. Both Sinhala and Tamil are considered national languages; only about 18% of the population speaks Tamil as a mother tongue, however. Other minority languages are spoken by about 8% of Sri Lankans. In addition, English is a common language of trade, and approximately 10% of the population are conversant in English as a foreign language. Religion Sri Lanka has a complex religious landscape. Almost 70% of the population are Theravada Buddhists (mainly the ethnic Sinhalese), while most Tamils are Hindu, representing 15% of Sri Lankans. Another 7.6% are Muslims, particularly the Malay and Moor communities, belonging primarily to the Shafii school within Sunni Islam. Finally, about 6.2% of Sri Lankans are Christians; of those, 88% are Catholic and 12% are Protestant. Geography Sri Lanka is a teardrop-shaped island in the Indian Ocean, southeast of India. It has an area of 65,610 square kilometers (25,332 square miles), and is mostly flat or rolling plains. However, the highest point in Sri Lanka is Pidurutalagala, at an impressive 2,524 meters (8,281 feet) in altitude. The lowest point is sea level. Sri Lanka sits at the middle of a tectonic plate, so it does not experience volcanic activity or earthquakes. However, it was heavily impacted by the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, which killed more than 31,000 people in this mostly low-lying island nation. Climate Sri Lanka has a maritime tropical climate, meaning that it is warm and humid throughout the year. Average temperatures ranges from 16 °C (60.8 °F) in the central highlands to 32 °C (89.6 °F) along the northeast coast. High temperatures in Trincomalee, in the northeast, can top 38 °C (100 °F). The entire island generally has humidity levels between 60 and 90% year-round, with the higher levels during the two long monsoonal rainy seasons (May to October and December to March). Economy Sri Lanka has one of the strongest economies in South Asia, with a GDP of $234 billion US (2015 estimate), a per capita GDP of $11,069, and a 7.4% annual growth rate. It receives substantial remittances from Sri Lankan overseas workers, mostly in the Middle East; in 2012, Sri Lankans abroad sent home about $6 billion US. Major industries in Sri Lanka include tourism; rubber, tea, coconut and tobacco plantations; telecommunications, banking and other services; and textile manufacturing. The unemployment rate and percentage of the population living in poverty are both an enviable 4.3%. The islands currency is called the Sri Lankan rupee. As of May, 2016, the exchange rate was $1 US 145.79 LKR. History The island of Sri Lanka appears to have been inhabited since at least 34,000 years before the present. Archaeological evidence suggests that agriculture began as early as 15,000 BCE, perhaps reaching the island along with the ancestors of the aboriginal Veddah people. Sinhalese immigrants from northern India likely reached Sri Lanka around the 6th century BCE. They may have established one of the earliest great trade emporiums on earth; Sri Lankan cinnamon appears in Egyptian tombs from 1,500 BCE. By about 250 BCE, Buddhism had reached Sri Lanka, brought by Mahinda, the son of Ashoka the Great of the Mauryan Empire. The Sinhalese remained Buddhist even after most mainland Indians had converted to Hinduism. Classical Sinhalese civilization relied on complicated irrigation systems for intensive agriculture; it grew and prospered from 200 BCE to about 1200 CE. Trade flourished between China, Southeast Asia, and Arabia by the first few centuries of the common era. Sri Lanka was a key stopping point on the southern, or sea-bound, branch of the Silk Road. Ships stopped there not only to restock on food, water and fuel, but also to buy cinnamon and other spices. The ancient Romans called Sri Lanka Taprobane, while Arab sailors knew it as Serendip. In 1212, ethnic Tamil invaders from the Chola Kingdom in southern India drove the Sinhalese south. The Tamils brought Hinduism with them. In 1505, a new kind of invader appeared on Sri Lankas shores. Portuguese traders wanted to control the sea-lanes between the spice islands of southern Asia; they also brought missionaries, who converted a small number of Sri Lankans to Catholicism. The Dutch, who expelled the Portuguese in 1658, left an even stronger mark on the island. The legal system of the Netherlands forms the basis for much of modern Sri Lankan law. In 1815, a final European power appeared to take control of Sri Lanka. The British, already holding the mainland of India under their colonial sway, created the Crown Colony of Ceylon. UK troops defeated the last native Sri Lankan ruler, the King of Kandy, and began to govern Ceylon as an agricultural colony that grew rubber, tea, and coconuts. After more than a century of colonial rule, in 1931, the British granted Ceylon limited autonomy. During World War II, however, Britain used Sri Lanka as a forward post against the Japanese in Asia, much to the irritation of Sri Lankan nationalists. The island nation became fully independent on February 4, 1948, several months after the Partition of India and the creation of independent India and Pakistan in 1947. In 1971, tensions between the Sinhalese and Tamil citizens of Sri Lanka bubbled over into armed conflict. Despite attempts at a political solution, the country erupted into the Sri Lankan Civil War in July of 1983; the war would continue until 2009, when government troops defeated the last of the Tamil Tiger insurgents.

History - Rwanda Genocide Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

History - Rwanda Genocide - Research Paper Example Though efforts are done, those harms do still happen in controlled settings. Mutual understanding among nations and people may have reduced the occurrences of conflicts and violence. Conflicts and violence may occur anytime and anywhere which means people must be aware of their surroundings at all time. Nobody knows when it may happen though there are some ways that people especially the government agencies can predict the occurrences of violence through patterns they get from the data of past events. One of the nations that experienced a significant violence and conflict is Rwanda. That country is located in the eastern part of Africa near Tanzania and Congo. The topography of the land of Rwanda is composed of mountains and valleys. Rwanda then has the highest peak at 4,324 meters which is the top of a volcano called Mount Karisimbi (King 2007, p. 7). The people then that live the mountains and valleys are generally called Rwandans and composed of the ethnic groups Pygmy, Hamitic an d Bantu. The population overall of the Rwandans is approximately 11 million and the size of population is attributed to high mortality rate. Many die because of diseases because of poor sanitation and major diseases like the dreaded Autoimmune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS. They are mostly poor as only 19 percent of them are in the urban areas. They also lack potable water to cater the needs of everyone. In terms of religion, Rwandans are mostly Christians with majority of them are Catholic. When it comes to basic education, most of them know how to read and write by 15 years old and above (Streissguth 2007, p. 36). The government of Rwanda then became a parliament recently and its laws are patterned after France and Belgium. The constitution of Rwanda was then ratified in 2003. The said constitution pledges to protect the rights of the Rwandans, to provide peace among groups there and to prevent political party formations based on culture and race. The government then is divided into judicial, legislative and executive just like in the government form seen in Europe and USA. The people allowed to vote must be at least 18 years old. Once the election is finished, the president then has been decided and he is the one responsible to appoint the prime minister and the cabinet who will assist him in leading the country (King 2007, p. 43). Before the government of Rwanda has been patterned after the Western nations, the country started as a land roamed by Pygmy group called Twa but the said ethnic group is only one percent of the current population. It was known in the past that Twa had interactions and interrelationships with the other ethnic groups like Tutsi and Hutu. The two groups were very similar in traditions but they are differentiated for their source of livelihood as Tutsi are cattle growers while Hutu are crop growers. It was then in 1933 when Belgian people controlled Rwanda and commanded the Rwandans to wear identification cards to clearly separate them by races (Kalayjian and Paloutzian 2009, p. 73). Probably that decision of the Belgians had bred further conflicts and violence among the ethnic groups which became prevalent since the independence of Rwanda. Rwanda became occupied by Germany before. When the First World War came, Belgium took over Rwanda as the Belgians snatched it from the Germans. After the war, it became a joint-state with Burundi which was also a colony of Belgium. It was then under the custody of United Nations which also played a big role in giving those