What Makes People Tick?

Serabit el Khadim is a mountain in the Sinai peninsula in Egypt. Near it are two other peaks with names that, to those who read the Torah / Pentateuch, may sound familiar: Jebel Saniya and Jebel Ghorabi. There is a temple to the goddess Hathor on Serabit el-Khadim. After reading about the location in a fantasy fiction book that mentioned prominent archaeologist Flinders Petrie as well as the temple to Hathor, I became intrigued and wanted to learn more about this desert location. The book also mentioned the possibility that this location had been where Moses received the Ten Commandments, something that most definitely intrigued me as well. I am personally interested in the story of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt and enjoy learning about the period of our world's history in which this Exodus may have taken place. Unlike many, I do not believe that Rameses II was the Pharaoh of the Exodus, believing it to be much more likely that the Exodus occurred around the time of Akhenaten...

Browsing my Facebook feed today, I came across a friend's post asking if shops'd be open tomorrow in her area. I'm in Europe, my friend lives Down Under. I assumed there must be a local holiday I didn't know about until reading the comments - It's "Good Friday" tomorrow. Right. Took a while but : Click. When it dawned on me that I couldn't for the life of me remember what the whole Good Friday and Easter thing was about exactly, I checked Wikipedia. While I understand that Wikipedia is not an encyclopaedia or infallible or anything of the sort, the information it provided still surprised me greatly. Source :  Wikipedia "Easter (...) is a festival and holiday celebrated by Christians and non-Christians" So, according to Wikipedia I celebrate Easter? Uh... NO. I really, really don't! I was raised secular in a mainstream 'Christian' country in western Europe. Even though my family didn't care a...

Lately, I've been researching the historical accuracy of and the history 'behind' the Biblical account of creation and early life on earth. This means examining for instance the Biblical account of Creation, the story of Noah's Flood and the story about the Tower of Babel.  The Babylonian  Enuma Elish creation myth is a lot like the one in Genesis; the story of Noah's flood and ark is for instance also told in the Epic of Gilgamesh .

The Bible is full of stories of ancient prophets, famous leaders and inspiring kings. Stories of courage and loss, conviction and faith, hope and betrayal. Fantastic-sounding stories about men named Adam, Noah, Moses, David, Solomon, Judah... Men who form the backbone (the forefathers) of the Jewish people and have inspired millions with their words, their wisdom or their inspiring deeds.

The Jewish Shema Yisrael and the Qur'an's surah (chapter) 112 known as Al Ikhlas share quite a few similarities. While in today's world many Muslims seem to believe that it is their duty to kill as many Jews as possible and the two religions don't always get on as well as they could, when one looks to the texts and the teachings of these two religions, one finds a lot of similarities. Of the world's three monotheistic faiths, Judaism came first, Christianity came second and Islam came third. While Christianity believes in a three-in-one package deal, as opposed to the only-one beliefs of the other two religions, the three religions are still considered connected monotheistic religions. While Judaism has remained a religion of roughly 20 million people or less, both Christianity and Islam have become huge religions with adherents numbering in the billions, in most countries of the world. All three religions have gone through many changes and developments since thei...