9/3/2023 0 Comments Nile river bible definitionThe holiness of Gish Abay has its origin in both Old and New Testament contexts. The Gish Abay spring in the Lake Tana region in Ethiopia is believed to be the source of the Blue Nile coming from Paradise. The Divine Sources of the Blue and White Niles It will also address seeming paradoxes of religious waters, including why it is ritually and religiously acceptable to pollute holy water and why water may have a greater importance in indigenous traditions and cosmologies when it is not holy compared to world religions’ consecrated or holy water in rituals and devotional practices. By comparing religious belief systems associated with the specific waters at these sources-the sources of the Blue and the White Nile, but also the sources in heaven as rain-the aim of this article is to shed new light on how and why various forms of religious waters shape beliefs and rituals. Oxford Dictionaries define a paradox as “a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement or proposition which when investigated may prove to be well founded or true.” Water in general and religious water in particular may fit well with such a definition, since water is a unique element in the sense that it is always both universal and particular at the same time. Made by Henrik Alfredsson, the Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala. Lastly, the ultimate sources are the rains falling from the sky directing the attention to the divinities and rainmaking practices (Fig. The source of the White Nile, on the other hand, is primarily the outlet of Lake Victoria and hence a historic source, but it is also a hydrological and religious source in the local cosmology. Hence, these different types of sources may not coincide, although the source of the Blue Nile in Ethiopia is both a hydrological source (giving the Blue Nile its longest length), a historic source (being a legendary place visited by explorers throughout the centuries), and a religious source (coming from paradise). Religiously, a source can originate at any place along the river’s course, but most often it is a fountain, a waterfall, or some subterranean source, which may also be a link in one way or another to flows of cosmos in the celestial realms. Historically, there are sources found in the history of ideas or places where specific historic significance has been ascribed. Hydrologically, a source is the remotest spring or discharge point of a river in terms of ultimate length. Since different forms of religious waters can be holy, sacred, and neutral, it is the differences and changing divine powers and consequences that are central in the different water cosmologies, as well as how they have different religious origins or sources defining ritual uses among humans. These river spirits embody particular healers who can solve anything and everything in this and the otherworldly spheres. The water is not holy, but the forces of the waterfalls testify to the powers the river spirits possess. The historic source of the White Nile in Uganda, on the other hand, has a very different character. In practice, this excludes everyone except the devotees belonging to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The source is considered to be exceedingly holy and to have a direct link to heaven, which needs to be protected from defilement. ![]() Gish Abay, or the source of the Blue Nile in Ethiopia, is seen as the direct outflow of the River Gihon from Paradise. Based on empirical fieldworks and participation in rituals, it will also enable theoretical discussions of the role and function of holy water and how various water cosmologies work in broader cultural and societal contexts, and the relation between river and rain ideologies in different hydrological environments. This article will discuss and compare the qualities of the divine waters in the different water cosmologies at the source of the Blue Nile in Ethiopia and at the source of the White Nile in Uganda. While these questions were geographical in the nineteenth century, in the preceding centuries and even millennia they were also religious quests, and the religious dimensions are still fundamental. ![]() Two of the most important which have been discussed since the time of Herodotus, the position of the sources of the Nile and the origin of its annual flood, were solved during the last and at the beginning of the present century. The River Nile has long been a subject of study and veneration.įrom the earliest times the Nile has presented problems upon which men have speculated.
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