/یکشنبه نخل/

یکشنبه نخل یا عید شعانین یا عید سعانین عیدی مسیحی در یکشنبهٔ قبل از عید پاک و شروع هفته مقدس است. این عید، نماد ورود عیسی به اورشلیم، در تمام اناجیل اربعه ذکر شده‌است (مرقس ۱۱:۱–۱۱، متی ۲۱:۱–۱۱، لوقا:۱۹:۲۸–۴۴، یوحنا ۱۲:۱۲–۱۹). علت نام‌گذاری نخل بر آن این است که هنگام ورود عیسی به اورشلیم مردم با شاخه‌های نخل به استقبال وی رفتند.

عیسی در بازگشت پیروزمندانه به اورشلیم در یکشنبه پیش‌از عید پاک، به‌جای اسب که نماد پادشاهان بود، سوار بر الاغ، نماد صلح وارد شهر شد.^[۱][۲]

/Ash Wednesday/

Ash Wednesday is a holy day of prayer and fasting in many Western Christian denominations. It is preceded by Shrove Tuesday and falls on the first day of Lent^[2] (the six weeks of penitence before Easter). It is observed by Catholics in the Roman Rite, Lutherans, Moravians, Anglicans, Methodists, Nazarenes, as well as by some churches in the Reformed tradition (including certain Congregationalist, Continental Reformed, and Presbyterian churches).^[3]

As it is the first day of Lent, many Christians begin Ash Wednesday by marking a Lenten calendar, praying a Lenten daily devotional, and making a Lenten sacrifice that they will not partake of until the arrival of Eastertide.^[4][5]

Many Christians attend special church services, at which churchgoers receive ash on their foreheads. Ash Wednesday derives its name from this practice, which is accompanied by the words, "Repent, and believe in the Gospel" or the dictum "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."^[6] The ashes are prepared by burning palm leaves from the previous year's Palm Sunday celebrations.^[7]

Ash Wednesday is observed by numerous denominations within Western Christianity.^[8] Roman Rite Roman Catholics observe it,^{[note 1]} along with certain Protestants like Lutherans, Anglicans,^[8] some Reformed churches,^[11][12] some Baptists,^[13] Methodists (including Nazarenes and Wesleyans),^[14][15] the Evangelical Covenant Church,^[16] and some Mennonites.^[17][18] The Moravian Church^[19][20] and Metropolitan Community Churches observe Ash Wednesday.^[21] Churches in the United Protestant tradition, such as the Church of North India and United Church of Canada honour Ash Wednesday too.^[22] Some Independent Catholics,^[23][24] and the Community of Christ also observe it.^[25]

Reformed churches have historically not observed Ash Wednesday, nor Lent in general, due to the Reformed regulative principle of worship.^[26][27][28] Nevertheless, some churches in the Reformed tradition do observe Lent today, although often as a voluntary observance.^[29] The Reformed Church in America, for example, describes Ash Wednesday as a day "focused on prayer, fasting, and repentance."^[3] The liturgy for Ash Wednesday thus contains the following "Invitation to Observe a Lenten Discipline" read by the presider:^[30]

We begin this holy season by acknowledging our need for repentance and our need for the love and forgiveness shown to us in Jesus Christ. I invite you, therefore, in the name of Christ, to observe a Holy Lent, by self-examination and penitence, by prayer and fasting, by practicing works of love, and by reading and reflecting on God's Holy Word.^[30]

The Eastern Orthodox Church does not, in general, observe Ash Wednesday; instead, Orthodox Great Lent begins on Clean Monday.^[31] There are, however, a relatively small number of Orthodox Christians who follow the Western Rite; these do observe Ash Wednesday, although often on a different day from the previously mentioned denominations, as its date is determined from the Orthodox calculation of Pascha, which may be as much as a month later than the Western observance of Easter.

Many Lent-observing denominations emphasize making a Lenten sacrifice, as well as fasting and abstinence during the season of Lent, particularly on Ash Wednesday. The First Council of Nicaea spoke of Lent as a period of fasting for forty days in advance of Easter, although it is unclear whether the prescribed fast applied to all Christians, or specifically to new Christians preparing to be baptized.^[32][33] Whatever the Council's original intent, this forty-day fast came into wide practice throughout the church.^[34]

While starting a Lenten sacrifice on Ash Wednesday (e.g. giving up watching television), it is customary to pray for strength to keep it through the whole season of Lent; many often wish others for doing so as well, e.g. "May God bless your Lenten sacrifice."^[35] In many places, Christians historically abstained from food for a whole day until the evening, and at sunset, Western Christians traditionally broke the Lenten fast, which is often known as the Black Fast.^[36][37] In India and Pakistan, many Christians continue this practice of fasting until sunset on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, with some fasting in this manner throughout the whole season of Lent.^[38] After attending a worship service (often on Wednesday evenings), it is common for Christians of various denominations that celebrate Lent to break that day's Lenten fast together through a communal Lenten supper, which is held in the church's parish hall.^[39]

In the Roman Catholic Church, Ash Wednesday is observed by fasting, abstinence from meat (which begins at age 14 according to canon law 1252^[40]), and repentance. On Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, Roman Catholics between the ages of 18 and 59 (whose health enables them to fast) are permitted to consume one full meal, along with two smaller meals, which together should not equal the full meal. Some Catholics will go beyond the minimum obligations put forth by the Church and undertake a complete fast or a bread and water fast until sunset. Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are also days of abstinence from meat (mammals and fowl), as are all Fridays during Lent.^[41] Some Roman Catholics continue fasting throughout Lent, as was the Church's traditional requirement,^[42] concluding only after the celebration of the Easter Vigil. Where the Ambrosian Rite is observed, the day of fasting and abstinence is postponed to the first Friday in the Ambrosian Lent, nine days later.^[43]

A number of Lutheran parishes teach communicants to fast on Ash Wednesday, with some parishioners choosing to continue doing so throughout the entire season of Lent, especially on Good Friday.^{[44][45][46][47]} One Lutheran congregation's A Handbook for the Discipline of Lent recommends that the faithful "Fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday with only one simple meal during the day, usually without meat".^[48]

In the Church of England, and throughout much of the Worldwide Anglican Communion, the entire forty days of Lent are designated days of fasting, while the Fridays are also designated as days of abstinence in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.^[49] Saint Augustine's Prayer Book, a resource for Anglo-Catholics, defines "Fasting" as "usually meaning not more than a light breakfast, one full meal, and one half meal, on the forty days of Lent."^[50] The same text defines abstinence as refraining from flesh meat on all Fridays of the Church Year, except for those during Christmastide.^[50]

Various manners of placing the ashes on worshippers' heads are in use within the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, the two most common being to use the ashes to make a cross on the forehead and sprinkling the ashes over the crown of the head. Originally, the ashes were strewn over men's heads, but, probably because women had their heads covered in church, were placed on the foreheads of women.^[69] In the Catholic Church the manner of imposing ashes depends largely on local custom, since no fixed rule has been laid down.^[64] Although the account of Ælfric of Eynsham shows that in about the year 1000 the ashes were "strewn" on the head,^[70] the marking of the forehead is the method that now prevails in English-speaking countries and is the only one envisaged in the Occasional Offices of the Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea, a publication described as "noticeably Anglo-Catholic in character".^[71] In its ritual of "Blessing of Ashes", this states that "the ashes are blessed at the beginning of the Eucharist; and after they have been blessed they are placed on the forehead of the clergy and people."^[71] The Ash Wednesday ritual of the Church of England, Mother Church of the Anglican Communion, contains "The Imposition of Ashes" in its Ash Wednesday liturgy.^[72] On Ash Wednesday, the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, traditionally takes part in a penitential procession from the Church of Saint Anselm to the Basilica of Santa Sabina, where, in accordance with the custom in Italy and many other countries, ashes are sprinkled on his head, not smudged on his forehead, and he places ashes on the heads of others in the same way.^[73]

/CYCLOPS/

/ Cyclopes/

A cyclops (meaning ‘circle-eyed’) is a one-eyed giant first appearing in the mythology of ancient Greece. The Greeks believed that there was an entire race of cyclopes who lived in a faraway land without law and order. Homer, in his Iliad, describes the Cyclopes as pastoral but savage, typical of the strange creatures the Greeks created to represent foreign societies not regarded as civilised as themselves. The Cyclopes are not without talents, though, and are credited with manufacturing the thunderbolts which Zeus used as a terrible throwing weapon and as the builders of gigantic fortification walls such as those still seen at Mycenaean sites today. The most famous cyclops is Polyphemus, who captured the Greek hero Odysseus and his men only for them to escape by blinding the poor giant. Cyclopes, and particularly the Odysseus story, were popular and enduring subjects in all forms of Greek and Roman art.  

Hesiod (c. 700 BCE), writing in his Theogony, tells us that the Cyclopes were the children of Earth (Gaia) and Sky (Ouranos/Uranus), making them the generation before the Olympian gods. The Cyclopes were thought to dwell in a faraway land of unknown location or name where there were no laws. There these giant creatures lived a simple pastoral existence herding sheep and goats and living in caves.

Hesiod names three cyclopes as Brontes (Thunder), Steropes (Lightning), and Arges (Bright). This group would go on to father more of their kind although the trio was later killed by Apollo in revenge for Zeus’ murder of his son Asclepius, the demigod and master of medicine. The ghosts of the three were said to haunt the Mount Etna volcano on Sicily. Indeed, many local Greek traditions associated cyclopes with volcanoes, perhaps because their craters were reminiscent of the cyclopes’ one eye, often described in ancient literature as ‘burning.’ Hesiod also makes the Cyclopes master craftsmen and assistants to the god Hephaistos, himself the ultimate blacksmith and ingenious inventor (and sometimes-resident within Mt. Etna). 

The Cyclopes seem to have been a guild of Early Helladic bronzesmiths. Cyclops means ‘ring-eyed’, and they are likely to have been tattooed with concentric rings on the forehead, in honour of the sun, the source of their furnace fires…The Cyclopes were one-eyed also in the sense that smiths often shade one eye with a patch against flying sparks.

Hesiod describes the Cyclopes as having ‘very violent hearts’ (139-140), making them typical of other fantastic creatures in Greek mythology such as the centaurs which represent lawlessness and who are subject to the chaotic forces that an absence of reason brings. Living in isolation, the Cyclopes live solitary and insular lives; they have no government, society or sense of community – deficiencies that civilised Greeks thought abominable.

Perhaps not surprisingly, due to their status as lawless monstrosities rather than gods, the Cyclopes did not play very much part in Greek religion. There was one place where the one-eyed giants were worshipped, though, that was the Isthmus of Corinth, perhaps because of a connection with Poseidon, often seen as the father of the cyclops Polyphemus (see below). The Isthmian Games were held here every two years in honour of Poseidon, and there was an altar which received sacrifices for the Cyclopes.

The Cyclopes helped the Olympian gods led by Zeus to defeat the Titans in their ten-year battle, known as the Titanomachy, for control of the universe. The Cyclopes, in gratitude for their release after Uranus had imprisoned them in Tartarus for unruly behaviour, made the thunderbolts that Zeus used as a weapon to strike down his enemies. Victims hit by Zeus’ well-aimed thunderbolts included Asclepius when Zeus considered that his medical skills had become so wonderful that he was a threat to the eternal division between humanity and the gods. The Cyclopes also made the helmet of Hades which made the wearer invisible, the trident of Poseidon, and the silver bow of Artemis.

The most famous encounter between humans and a cyclops was during the long voyage home from the Trojan War endured by the hero Odysseus. The story is recounted most famously in the Odyssey by Homer. Mid-journey at an unknown location, the hero stops at an island for supplies. Unfortunately, the island was also inhabited by the cyclops Polyphemus, the son of the nymph Thoosa and Poseidon, and the giant took a distinct fancy to the travelling Greeks. Trapping them in his cave by blocking the entrance with a huge boulder only a giant could move, he swiftly ate two as an appetizer and then later a couple more of the hapless travellers.

Seeing the gravity of the situation, Odysseus, known for his intelligence and quick wits, developed a cunning plan of escape. Tempting Polyphemus with wine until the cyclops was drunk, the hero ordered his men to turn Polyphemus’ olive-wood staff into a spike, this they then hardened in a fire and then used it to blind the cyclops while he slept. Unable to see and understandably livid at his treatment, Polyphemus tried to catch the still trapped travellers by feeling his sheep as they left the cave for their grazing. Odysseus then instructed his men to tie themselves to the bellies of the sheep whilst he chose a ram for the purpose, and thus they escaped to continue their voyage. However, the cyclops, after unsuccessfully hurling a boulder to try and smash the fastly-disappearing Greek ship, cursed Odysseus, predicting the loss of his men, a wearisome voyage home, and disaster when he finally arrived there. Calling on the help of his father Poseidon, Polyphemos ensured that it would be many a storm and ten long years before Odysseus reached Ithaca.

/Cyclopes/

In Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, the Cyclopes (/saɪˈkloʊpiːz/ sy-KLOH-peez; Greek: Κύκλωπες, Kýklōpes, "Circle-eyes" or "Round-eyes";[1] singular Cyclops /ˈsaɪklɒps/ SY-klops; Κύκλωψ, Kýklōps) are giant one-eyed creatures.[2] Three groups of Cyclopes can be distinguished. In Hesiod's Theogony, the Cyclopes are the three brothers Brontes, Steropes, and Arges, who made for Zeus his weapon the thunderbolt. In Homer's Odyssey, they are an uncivilized group of shepherds, the brethren of Polyphemus encountered by Odysseus. Cyclopes were also famous as the builders of the Cyclopean walls of Mycenae and Tiryns.

In Cyclops, the fifth-century BC play by Euripides, a chorus of satyrs offers comic relief based on the encounter of Odysseus and Polyphemus. The third-century BC poet Callimachus makes the Hesiodic Cyclopes the assistants of smith-god Hephaestus; as does Virgil in the Latin epic Aeneid, where he seems to equate the Hesiodic and Homeric Cyclopes.

From at least the fifth century BC, Cyclopes have been associated with the island of Sicily and the volcanic Aeolian Islands.

Three groups of Cyclopes can be distinguished: the Hesiodic, the Homeric and the wall-builders.[3] In Hesiod's Theogony, the Cyclopes are the three brothers: Brontes, Steropes, and Arges, sons of Uranus and Gaia, who made for Zeus his characteristic weapon, the thunderbolt. In Homer's Odyssey, the Cyclopes are an uncivilized group of shepherds, one of whom, Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon, is encountered by Odysseus. Cyclopes were also said to have been the builders of the Cyclopean walls of Mycenae and Tiryns.[4] A scholiast, quoting the fifth-century BC historian Hellanicus, tells us that, in addition to the Hesiodic Cyclopes (whom the scholiast describes as "the gods themselves"), and the Homeric Cyclopes, there was a third group of Cyclopes: the builders of the walls of Mycenae.[5]

Hesiod, in the Theogony (c. 700 BC), described three Cyclopes: Brontes, Steropes, and Arges, who were the sons of Uranus (Sky) and Gaia (Earth), and the brothers of the Titans and Hundred-Handers, and who had a single eye set in the middle of their foreheads.[6] They made for Zeus his all-powerful thunderbolt, and in so doing, the Cyclopes played a key role in the Greek succession myth, which told how the Titan Cronus overthrew his father Uranus, and how in turn Zeus overthrew Cronus and his fellow Titans, and how Zeus was eventually established as the final and permanent ruler of the cosmos.[7] The names that Hesiod gives them: Arges (Bright), Brontes (Thunder), and Steropes (Lightning), reflect their fundamental role as thunderbolt makers.[8] As early as the late seventh-century BC, the Cyclopes could be used by the Spartan poet Tyrtaeus to epitomize extraordinary size and strength.[9]

According to the accounts of Hesiod and mythographer Apollodorus, the Cyclopes had been imprisoned by their father Uranus.[10] Zeus later freed the Cyclopes, and they repaid him by giving him the thunderbolt.[11] The Cyclopes provided for Hesiod, and other theogony-writers, a convenient source of heavenly weaponry, since the smith-god Hephaestus—who would eventually take over that role—had not yet been born.[12] According to Apollodorus, the Cyclopes also provided Poseidon with his trident and Hades with his cap of invisibility,[13] and the gods used these weapons to defeat the Titans.

Although the primordial Cyclopes of the Theogony were presumably immortal (as were their brothers the Titans), the sixth-century BC Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, has them being killed by Apollo.[14] Later sources tell us why: Apollo's son Asclepius had been killed by Zeus' thunderbolt, and Apollo killed the Cyclopes, the makers of the thunderbolt, in revenge.[15] According to a scholiast on Euripides' Alcestis, the fifth-century BC mythographer Pherecydes supplied the same motive, but said that Apollo, rather than killing the Cyclopes, killed their sons (one of whom he named Aortes) instead.[16] No other source mentions any offspring of the Cyclopes.[17] A Pindar fragment suggests that Zeus himself killed the Cyclopes to prevent them from making thunderbolts for anyone else.[18]

The Cyclopes' prowess as craftsmen is stressed by Hesiod who says "strength and force and contrivances were in their works."[19] Being such skilled craftsmen of great size and strength, later poets, beginning with the third-century BC poet Callimachus, imagine these Cyclopes, the primordial makers of Zeus' thunderbolt, becoming the assistants of the smith-god Hephaestus, at his forge in Sicily, underneath Mount Etna, or perhaps the nearby Aeolian Islands.[20] In his Hymn to Artemis, Callimachus has the Cyclopes on the Aeolian island of Lipari, working "at the anvils of Hephaestus", make the bows and arrows used by Apollo and Artemis.[21] The first-century BC Latin poet Virgil, in his epic Aeneid, has the Cyclopes: "Brontes and Steropes and bare-limbed Pyracmon"[22] toil under the direction of Vulcan (Hephaestus), in caves underneath Mount Etna and the Aeolian islands.[23] Virgil describes the Cyclopes, in Vulcan's smithy forging iron, making a thunderbolt, a chariot for Mars, and Pallas's Aegis, with Vulcan interrupting their work to command the Cyclopes to fashion arms for Aeneas.[24] The later Latin poet Ovid also has the Hesiodic Cyclopes Brontes and Steropes (along with a third Cyclops named Acmonides), work at forges in Sicilian caves.[25]

According to a Hellenistic astral myth, the Cyclopes were the builders of the first altar. The myth was a catasterism, which explained how the constellation the Altar (Ara) came to be in the heavens. According to the myth, the Cyclopes built an altar upon which Zeus and the other gods swore alliance before their war with the Titans. After their victory, "the gods placed the altar in the sky in commemoration", and thus began the practice, according to the myth, of men swearing oaths upon altars "as a guarantee of their good faith".[26]

According to the second-century geographer Pausanias, there was a sanctuary called the "altar of the Cyclopes" on the Isthmus of Corinth at a place sacred to Poseidon, where sacrifices were offered to the Cyclopes.[27] There is no evidence for any other cult associated with the Cyclopes.[28] According to a version of the story in the Iliad scholia (found nowhere else), when Zeus swallowed Metis, she was pregnant with Athena by the Cyclops Brontes.[29]

Although described by Hesiod as "having very violent hearts" (ὑπέρβιον ἦτορ ἔχοντας),[30] and while their extraordinary size and strength would have made them capable of great violence, there is no indication of the Hesiodic Cyclopes having behaved in any other way than as dutiful servants of the gods.[31]

In an episode of Homer's Odyssey (c. 700 BC), the hero Odysseus encounters the Cyclops Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon, a one-eyed man-eating giant who lives with his fellow Cyclopes in a distant land.[33] The relationship between these Cyclopes and Hesiod's Cyclopes is unclear.[34] Homer described a very different group of Cyclopes, than the skilled and subservient craftsman of Hesiod.[35] Homer's Cyclopes live in the "world of men" rather than among the gods, as they presumably do in the Theogony.[36] The Homeric Cyclopes are presented as uncivilized shepherds, who live in caves, savages with no regard for Zeus. They have no knowledge of agriculture, ships or craft. They live apart and lack any laws.[37]

The fifth-century BC playwright Euripides also told the story of Odysseus' encounter with Polyphemus in his satyr play Cyclops. Euripides' Cyclopes, like Homer's, are uncultured cave-dwelling shepherds. They have no agriculture, no wine, and live on milk, cheese and the meat of sheep. They live solitary lives, and have no government. They are inhospitable to strangers, slaughtering and eating all who come to their land.[38] While Homer does not say if the other Cyclopes are like Polyphemus in their appearance and parentage, Euripides makes it explicit, calling the Cyclopes "Poseidon's one-eyed sons".[39] And while Homer is vague as to their location, Euripides locates the land of the Cyclopes on the island of Sicily near Mount Etna.[40]

Cyclopes were also said to have been the builders of the so-called 'Cyclopean' walls of Mycenae, Tiryns, and Argos.[42] Although they can be seen as being distinct, the Cyclopean wall-builders share several features with the Hesiodic Cyclopes: both groups are craftsmen of supernatural skill, possessing enormous strength, who lived in primordial times.[43] These builder Cyclopes were apparently used to explain the construction of the stupendous walls at Mycenae and Tiryns, composed of massive stones that seemed too large and heavy to have been moved by ordinary men.[44]

These master builders were famous in antiquity from at least the fifth century BC onwards.[45] The poet Pindar has Heracles driving the cattle of Geryon through the "Cyclopean portal" of the Tirynian king Eurystheus.[46] The mythographer Pherecydes says that Perseus brought the Cyclopes with him from Seriphos to Argos, presumably to build the walls of Mycenae.[47] Proetus, the mythical king of ancient Argos, was said to have brought a group of seven Cyclopes from Lycia to build the walls of Tiryns.[48]

The late fifth and early fourth-century BC comic poet Nicophon wrote a play called either Cheirogastores or Encheirogastores (Hands-to-Mouth), which is thought to have been about these Cyclopean wall-builders.[49] Ancient lexicographers explained the title as meaning "those who feed themselves by manual labour", and, according to Eustathius of Thessalonica, the word was used to describe the Cyclopean wall-builders, while "hands-to-mouth" was one of the three kinds of Cyclopes distinguished by scholia to Aelius Aristides.[50] Similarly, possibly deriving from Nicophon's comedy, the first-century Greek geographer Strabo says these Cyclopes were called "Bellyhands" (gasterocheiras) because they earned their food by working with their hands.[51]