Food in the Pentateuch Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Food in the Pentateuch - Essay Example It is difficult for us in a modern society with such variety of choices and convenience associated with our consumption of food to fully appreciate the day-to-day labor that was required just to get enough food to stay alive in these ancient societies. For many in ancient civilizations, hunger and starvation were only a drought or a poor harvest away. A lack of medicine for herds of animals meant the spread of disease meant flocks could be decimated in a short span of time. These precarious circumstances mad food an especially powerful subject to use symbolically. The recognition that God’s pleasure or displeasure could be measured by good or bad harvests links the earthly need for physical sustenance to the divine nature of God. In many ways, food is the perfect medium to use for symbolic teaching of great spiritual truths. From the very beginning of creation, food has been used as a symbol of the forbidden and the allowable, the sacred and the profane. The Garden of Eden, created for the first man and woman to inhabit was a place brimming with food and fruit of all sorts. Adam and Eve were invited by God to partake of any fruit they wished, save one. Adam in this sense is portrayed as a sort of farmer without labor. Fruit was produced spontaneously in the garden as a symbol of Gods immense goodness and his love for the creatures of the creation. The guidance given to the first man and woman were to live freely in the garden and to avoid only the fruit of the tree that would give Adam and Eve knowledge of good and bad. Without the partaking of this so-called forbidden fruit, Adam and Even would have dwelt eternally in a state of close association with God. However, their existence would have been one without growth and without true free will. They would have remained as obedient children, never underst anding the true nature of obedience or

Scientific advances on Cloning Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Scientific advances on Cloning - Research Paper Example The Scottish scientist Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute, along with his colleagues, announced on February 23, 1996 they had cloned a sheep by using a ground-technique. The method involved transplanting genetic matter from an adult sheep into a hollowed-out egg, an egg that had its nucleus removed. â€Å"The researchers fused the adult udder cell with an (egg) that was ready to be fertilized, but taken from a different sheep. The scientists had previously removed the nucleus from the (egg) using an electrical current to fuse it with the udder cell.† (Barnes, 2012). This sequence instigated cell division. The resulting embryo was then implanted into another sheep who acted as the surrogate-mother. The secret to this method’s success was making the nucleus of the donor’s udder cell â€Å"silent† so it would quit performing as it was originally intended and then reprogrammed it to act as an embryonic cell. That embryo would become Dolly; a sheep with three à ¢â‚¬Å"mothers† involved but only related biologically to the one that donated an udder cell. Consequently, Dolly is an exact genetic reproduction of the donor-cell sheep.Previous cloning experiments that used embryonic cells created a being that was the identical offspring of two parents instead of being an exact genetic duplicate of just one adult. Science successful copied a mammal from one parent for the first time. For nearly half a century, the system of relocating a nucleus from a somatic egg cell using nuclei from non-human embryonic cell continued. It was demonstrated that, in theory, up until the birth of Dolly that genetic material contained in somatic cells could maintain the potential to guide development of a healthy and fertile adult mammal. Scientists had thought once cellular differentiation materializes, this procedure would be reversible, able to change into another type of cell. However, until Dolly was born, the ability to do so was unproved. â€Å"The dem onstration that nuclei from cells derived from an adult animal could be reprogrammed, or that the full genetic complement of such a cell could be reactivated well into the chronological life of the cell, is what sets the results of this experiment apart from prior work† (Di Bernadino, 1997). From the mid-‘80’s scientists frequently cloned mammals, specifically cattle and sheep, from embryonic cells but the cloning of Dolly was the first time an animal developed to maturity by using a somatic cell nucleus from a single animal. This innovative method of cloning included three new developments: â€Å"