March 1, 2013

Gordian knots, fingers and attitude


Did you try doing this?  Both my wife and I tried.  I did because I was curious and she did because she said it was a woman's hand (which has different digit lengths than a man does).  Now, I know some people have talents different than mine (Jackie Chan in the picture is a prime example) but this is a "Gordian knot" to which I do not have an answer. Since not everyone has heard the story of Alexander The Great and the Gordian knot, I'm including some information from Wikipedia:

Legend

At one time the Phrygians were without a king. An oracle at Telmissus (the ancient capital of Phrygia) decreed that the next man to enter the city driving an ox-cartshould become their king. A peasant farmer named Gordias drove into town on an ox-cart. His position had also been predicted earlier by an eagle landing on his cart, a sign to him from the gods, and on entering the city Gordias was declared king by the priests. Out of gratitude, his son Midas dedicated the ox-cart[1] to the Phrygian godSabazios (whom the Greeks identified with Zeus) and either tied it to a post or tied its shaft with an intricate knot of cornel (Cornus mas) bark. The ox-cart[2] still stood in the palace of the former kings of Phrygia at Gordium in the fourth century BC when Alexander arrived, at which point Phrygia had been reduced to a satrapy, or province, of the Persian Empire.
Several themes of myth converged on the chariot, as Robin Lane Fox remarks:[3] Midas was connected in legend with Alexander's native Macedonia, where the lowland "Gardens of Midas" still bore his name, and the Phrygian tribes were rightly remembered as having once dwelt in Macedonia. So, in 333 BC, while wintering at Gordium, Alexander the Great attempted to untie the knot. When he could not find the end to the knot to unbind it, he sliced it in half with a stroke of his sword, producing the required ends (the so-called "Alexandrian solution"). That night there was a violent thunderstorm. Alexander's prophet Aristander took this as a sign that Zeus was pleased and would grant Alexander many victories. Once Alexander had sliced the knot with a sword-stroke, his biographers claimed in retrospect[4] that an oracle further prophesied that the one to untie the knot would become the king of Asia.[5]

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Status of the legend

Alexander is a figure of outstanding celebrity and the dramatic episode with the Gordian Knot remains widely known. Literary sources are Alexander's propagandistArrian (Anabasis Alexandri 2.3) Quintus Curtius (3.1.14), Justin's epitome of Pompeius Trogus (11.7.3), and Aelian's De Natura Animalium 13.1.[6]
While sources from antiquity agree that Alexander was confronted with the challenge of the knot, the means by which he solved the problem are disputed. Both Plutarchand Arrian relate that according to Aristobulus,[7] Alexander pulled the knot out of its pole pin, exposing the two ends of the cord and allowing him to untie the knot without having to cut through it. Some classical scholars regard this as more plausible than the popular account.[8]
Alexander later went on to conquer Asia as far as the Indus and the Oxus thus, for Callisthenes, fulfilling the prophecy.

[edit]
Interpretations

The knot may have been a religious knot-cipher guarded by Gordian/Midas's priests and priestesses. Robert Graves suggested that it may have symbolized the ineffable name of Dionysus that, knotted like a cipher, would have been passed on through generations of priests and revealed only to the kings of Phrygia.[9]

Unlike fable, true myth has few completely arbitrary elements. This myth taken as a whole seems designed to confer legitimacy to dynastic change in this centralAnatolian kingdom: thus Alexander's "brutal cutting of the knot... ended an ancient dispensation."[10] The ox-cart suggests a longer voyage, rather than a local journey, perhaps linking Gordias/Midas with an attested origin-myth in Macedon, of which Alexander is most likely to have been aware.[11] Based on the myth, the new dynasty was not immemorially ancient, but had widely remembered origins in a local, but non-priestly "outsider" class, represented by Greek reports equally as an eponymouspeasant "Gordias"[12] or the locally-attested, authentically Phrygian "Midas"[13] in his ox-cart.[14] Other Greek myths legitimize dynasties by right of conquest (compareCadmus), but the legitimizing oracle stressed in this myth suggests that the previous dynasty were a race of priest-kings allied to the unidentified oracle deity."

If someone out there can do this, I really would like to know, because I would like to know HOW you did it!!!  In life, however, just because you can do a thing doesn't give you the right to do it.  Here is a prime example....

Acts, Chapter 8


  9  But there was a certain man, Simon by name, who used to practice sorcery in the city, and amazed the people of Samaria, making himself out to be some great one,  10 to whom they all listened, from the least to the greatest, saying, “This man is that great power of God.”  11 They listened to him, because for a long time he had amazed them with his sorceries.  12 But when they believed Philip preaching good news concerning the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.  13 Simon himself also believed. Being baptized, he continued with Philip. Seeing signs and great miracles occurring, he was amazed. 


  14  Now when the apostles who were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them,  15 who, when they had come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit;  16 for as yet he had fallen on none of them. They had only been baptized in the name of Christ Jesus.  17 Then they laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.  18 Now when Simon saw that the Holy Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money,  19 saying, “Give me also this power, that whomever I lay my hands on may receive the Holy Spirit.”  20 But Peter said to him, “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money!  21 You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart isn’t right before God.  22 Repent therefore of this, your wickedness, and ask God if perhaps the thought of your heart may be forgiven you.  23 For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bondage of iniquity.” 

  24  Simon answered, “Pray for me to the Lord, that none of the things which you have spoken happen to me.” 

  25  They therefore, when they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, returned to Jerusalem, and preached the Good News to many villages of the Samaritans.


Simon, the magician did not want to glorify God, he wanted to glorify himself.  When it comes to Christianity attitude is paramount.  Doing a good thing (like the giving of the Holy Spirit, mentioned above) doesn't necessarily give you the RIGHT TO DO IT.  Notice that Peter and John had to be sent for in order to do this.  This is a good lesson for us all and something to be remembered.  We all have limitations as well as strengths  even when it comes to Christian works.  So, don't envy what someone else can do; work with the gifts that God has given you and BE HAPPY ABOUT IT!!! 


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