title: Petroleum jelly

text: Earlier in 2015, German consumer watchdog Stiftung Warentest analyzed cosmetics containing mineral oils. It found high concentrations of Mineral Oil Aromatic Hydrocarbons (MOAH) and even polyaromatics in products containing mineral oils. Vaseline products contained the most MOAH of all tested cosmetics (up to 9%). Based on the 2015 results, Stiftung Warentest warns not to use Vaseline or any product that is based on mineral oils for lip care.


title: Heron

text: The herons are long-legged, long-necked, freshwater and coastal birds in the family Ardeidae, with 72 recognised species, some of which are referred to as egrets or bitterns rather than herons. Members of the genera "Botaurus" and "Ixobrychus" are referred to as bitterns, and, together with the zigzag heron, or zigzag bittern, in the monotypic genus "Zebrilus", form a monophyletic group within the Ardeidae. Egrets do not form a biologically distinct group from herons, and tend to be named differently because they are mainly white or have decorative plumes in breeding plumage. Herons, by evolutionary adaptation, have long beaks.


title: Heron

text: The classification of the individual heron/egret species is fraught with difficulty, and no clear consensus exists about the correct placement of many species into either of the two major genera, "Ardea" and "Egretta". Similarly, the relationships of the genera in the family are not completely resolved. However, one species formerly considered to constitute a separate monotypic family, the Cochlearidae or the boat-billed heron, is now regarded as a member of the Ardeidae.


title: Heron

text: Although herons resemble birds in some other families, such as the storks, ibises, spoonbills, and cranes, they differ from these in flying with their necks retracted, not outstretched. They are also one of the bird groups that have powder down. Some members of this group nest colonially in trees, while others, notably the bitterns, use reed beds. A group of them is called a "siege."


title: Heron

text: The herons are medium- to large-sized birds with long legs and necks. They exhibit very little sexual dimorphism in size. The smallest species is usually considered the dwarf bittern, which measures in length, although all the species in the genus "Ixobrychus" are small and many broadly overlap in size. The largest species of heron is the goliath heron, which stands up to tall. The necks are able to kink in an S-shape, due to the modified shape of the cervical vertebrae, of which they have 20–21. The neck can retract and extend and is retracted during flight, unlike most other long-necked birds. The neck is longer in the day herons than the night herons and bitterns. The legs are long and strong and in almost every species are unfeathered from the lower part of the tibia (the exception is the zigzag heron). In flight, the legs and feet are held backwards. The feet of herons have long, thin toes, with three forward pointing ones and one pointing backwards.


title: Heron

text: The bill is generally long and harpoon-like. It can vary from extremely fine, as in the agami heron, to thick as in the grey heron. The most atypical bill is owned by the boat-billed heron, which has a broad, thick bill. The bill and other bare parts of the body are usually yellow, black, or brown in colour, although this can vary during the breeding season. The wings are broad and long, exhibiting 10 or 11 primary feathers (the boat-billed heron has only nine), 15–20 secondaries, and 12 rectrices (10 in the bitterns). The feathers of the herons are soft and the plumage is usually blue, black, brown, grey, or white, and can often be strikingly complex. Amongst the day herons, little sexual dimorphism in plumage is seen (except in the pond-herons); differences between the sexes are the rule for the night herons and smaller bitterns. Many species also have different colour morphs. In the Pacific reef heron, both dark and light colour morphs exist, and the percentage of each morph varies geographically. White morphs only occur in areas with coral beaches.


title: Heron

text: The herons are a widespread family with a cosmopolitan distribution. They exist on all continents except Antarctica and are present in most habitats except the coldest extremes of the Arctic, extremely high mountains, and the driest deserts. Almost all species are associated with water; they are essentially non-swimming waterbirds that feed on the margins of lakes, rivers, swamps, ponds, and the sea. They are predominantly found in lowland areas, although some species live in alpine areas, and the majority of species occur in the tropics.


title: Heron

text: The herons are a highly mobile family, with most species being at least partially migratory; for example, the grey heron is mostly sedentary in Britain, but mostly migratory in Scandinavia. Birds are particularly inclined to disperse widely after breeding, but before the annual migration, where the species is colonial, searching out new feeding areas and reducing the pressures on feeding grounds near the colony. The migration typically occurs at night, usually as individuals or in small groups.


title: Heron

text: The herons and bitterns are carnivorous. The members of this family are mostly associated with wetlands and water and feed on a variety of live aquatic prey. Their diet includes a wide variety of aquatic animals, including fish, reptiles, amphibians, crustaceans, molluscs, and aquatic insects. Individual species may be generalists or specialize in certain prey types, such as the yellow-crowned night heron, which specializes in crustaceans, particularly crabs. Many species also opportunistically take larger prey, including birds and bird eggs, rodents, and more rarely carrion. Even more rarely, herons eating acorns, peas, and grains have been reported, but most vegetable matter consumed is accidental.


title: Heron

text: The most common hunting technique is for the bird to sit motionless on the edge of or standing in shallow water and to wait until prey comes within range. Birds may either do this from an upright posture, giving them a wider field of view for seeing prey or from a crouched position, which is more cryptic and means the bill is closer to the prey when it is located. Having seen prey, the head is moved from side to side, so that the heron can calculate the position of the prey in the water and compensate for refraction, and then the bill is used to spear the prey.


title: Heron

text: In addition to sitting and waiting, herons may feed more actively. They may walk slowly, around or less than 60 paces a minute, snatching prey when it is observed. Other active feeding behaviours include foot stirring and probing, where the feet are used to flush out hidden prey. The wings may be used to frighten prey (or possibly attract it to shade) or to reduce glare; the most extreme example of this is exhibited by the black heron, which forms a full canopy with its wings over its body.


title: Heron

text: Some species of heron, such as the little egret and grey heron, have been documented using bait to lure prey to within striking distance. Herons may use items already in place, or actively add items to the water to attract fish such as the banded killifish. Items used may be man-made, such as bread; alternatively, striated herons in the Amazon have been watched repeatedly dropping seeds, insects, flowers, and leaves into the water to catch fish.


title: Heron

text: Three species, the black-headed heron, whistling heron, and especially the cattle egret, are less tied to watery environments and may feed far away from water. Cattle egrets improve their foraging success by following large grazing animals, catching insects flushed by their movement. One study found that the success rate of prey capture increased 3.6 times over solitary foraging.


title: Heron

text: While the family exhibits a range of breeding strategies, overall, the herons are monogamous and mostly colonial. Most day herons and night herons are colonial, or partly colonial depending on circumstances, whereas the bitterns and tiger herons are mostly solitary nesters. Colonies may contain several species, as well as other species of waterbirds. In a study of little egrets and cattle egrets in India, the majority of the colonies surveyed contained both species. Nesting is seasonal in temperate species; in tropical species, it may be seasonal (often coinciding with the rainy season) or year-round. Even in year-round breeders, nesting intensity varies throughout the year. Tropical herons typically have only one breeding season per year, unlike some other tropical birds which may raise up to three broods a year.


title: Heron

text: Courtship usually takes part on the nest. Males arrive first and begin the building of the nest, where they display to attract females. During courtship, the male employs a stretch display and uses erectile neck feathers; the neck area may swell. The female risks an aggressive attack if she approaches too soon and may have to wait up to four days. In colonial species, displays involve visual cues, which can include adopting postures or ritual displays, whereas in solitary species, auditory cues, such as the deep booming of the bitterns, are important. The exception to this is the boat-billed heron, which pairs up away from the nesting site. Having paired, they continue to build the nest in almost all species, although in the little bittern and least bittern, only the male works on the nest.


title: Heron

text: Some ornithologists have reported observing female herons attaching themselves to impotent mates, then seeking sexual gratification elsewhere.


title: Heron

text: The nests of herons are usually found near or above water. Although the nests of a few species have been found on the ground where suitable trees or shrubs are unavailable, they are typically placed in vegetation. Trees are used by many species, and here they may be placed high up from the ground, whereas species living in reed beds may nest very close to the ground.


title: Heron

text: Generally, herons lay between three and seven eggs. Larger clutches are reported in the smaller bitterns and more rarely some of the larger day herons, and single-egg clutches are reported for some of the tiger herons. Clutch size varies by latitude within species, with individuals in temperate climates laying more eggs than tropical ones. On the whole, the eggs are glossy blue or white, with the exception being the large bitterns, which lay olive-brown eggs.


title: Heron

text: The word "heron" first appeared in the English language around 1300, originating from Old French "hairon, eron" (12th century), earlier" hairo "(11th century), from Frankish "haigiro" or from Proto-Germanic "*haigrô", "*hraigrô".


title: Heron

text: Herons are also known as "shitepokes" , or euphemistically as "shikepokes" or "shypokes". "Webster's Dictionary" suggests that herons were given this name because of their habit of defecating when flushed.


title: Heron

text: The 1971 "Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary" describes the use of "shitepoke" for the small green heron of North America ("Butorides virescens") as originating in the United States, citing a published example from 1853. The "OED" also observes that "shiterow" or "shederow" are terms used for herons, and also applied as derogatory terms meaning a "thin, weakly person". This name for a heron is found in a list of game birds in a royal decree of James VI (1566–1625) of Scotland. The "OED" speculates that "shiterow" is a corruption of "shiteheron".


title: Heron

text: Another former name was "heronshaw" or "hernshaw", derived from Old French "heronçeau". Corrupted to "handsaw", this name appears in Shakespeare's "Hamlet". A possible further corruption took place in the Norfolk Broads, where the heron is often referred to as a "harnser".


title: Heron

text: Analyses of the skeleton, mainly the skull, suggested that the Ardeidae could be split into a diurnal and a crepuscular/nocturnal group which included the bitterns. From DNA studies and skeletal analyses focusing more on bones of body and limbs, this grouping has been revealed as incorrect. Rather, the similarities in skull morphology reflect convergent evolution to cope with the different challenges of daytime and nighttime feeding. Today, it is believed that three major groups can be distinguished, which are:


title: Heron

text: The night herons could warrant separation as subfamily Nycticoracinae, as it was traditionally done. However, the position of some genera (e.g. "Butorides" or "Syrigma") is unclear at the moment, and molecular studies have until now suffered from a small number of studied taxa. Especially, the relationships among the subfamily Ardeinae are very badly resolved. The arrangement presented here should be considered provisional.


title: Heron

text: A 2008 study suggests that this family belongs to the Pelecaniformes. In response to these findings, the International Ornithological Congress recently reclassified Ardeidae and their sister taxa Threskiornithidae under the order Pelecaniformes instead of the previous order of Ciconiiformes.


title: Heron

text: Other prehistoric and fossil species are included in the respective genus accounts. In addition, "Proherodius" is a disputed fossil which was variously considered a heron or one of the extinct long-legged waterfowl, the Presbyornithidae. It is only known from a sternum; a tarsometatarsus assigned to it actually belongs to the paleognath "Lithornis vulturinus".


title: Permaculture

text: Permaculture is an approach to land management and settlement design that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems. It includes a set of design principles derived using whole-systems thinking. It applies these principles in fields such as regenerative agriculture, town planning, rewilding, and community resilience. Permaculture originally came from "permanent agriculture", but was later adjusted to mean "permanent culture", incorporating social aspects. The term was coined in 1978 by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, who formulated the concept in opposition to modern industrialized methods instead adopting a more traditional or "natural" approach to agriculture.


title: Permaculture

text: Permaculture has many branches including ecological design, ecological engineering, regenerative design, environmental design, and construction. It also includes integrated water resources management, sustainable architecture, and regenerative and self-maintained habitat and agricultural systems modeled from natural ecosystems.


title: Permaculture

text: Permaculture uses creative design processes based on whole-systems thinking, considering all materials and energies in flow that affect or are affected by proposed changes. In practical terms it means that before, for example, modifying overland water flow, one fully considers both upstream and downstream effects in the short and long terms. Or, when looking at a "problem", such as brushy vegetation, one considers how removing or altering it will affect soil and wildlife, and how these interacting forces would evolve over time and space.


title: Permaculture

text: Permaculture has been criticised as being poorly defined and unscientific. Critics have pushed for less reliance on anecdote and extrapolation from ecological first principles, in favor of peer-reviewed research to substantiate productivity claims and to clarify methodology. Peter Harper from the Centre for Alternative Technology suggests that most of what passes for permaculture has no relevance to real problems.


title: Permaculture

text: In 1929, Joseph Russell Smith appended King's antecedent term as the subtitle for "Tree Crops: A Permanent Agriculture", which he wrote in response to widespread deforestation, plow agriculture, and erosion in the eastern mountains and hill regions of the USA. He proposed the planting of tree fruits and nuts as human and animal food crops that could stabilize watersheds and restore soil health. Smith saw the world as an inter-related whole and suggested mixed systems of trees with understory crops. This book inspired individuals such as Toyohiko Kagawa who pioneered forest farming in Japan in the 1930s. Tanaka in turn inspired the agricultural extension agent, Masanobu Fukuoka, whose later writings on natural farming influenced the growth of the permaculture movement.


title: Permaculture

text: George Washington Carver developed what can now be called permaculture practices, the rotation of particular crops to restore nitrogen to the soil and repair damaged Southern farm land, in his work at Tuskegee Institute, beginning 1896 until his death in 1947.


title: Permaculture

text: In his 1964 book "Water for Every Farm", the Australian agronomist and engineer P. A. Yeomans advanced a definition of permanent agriculture as one that can be sustained indefinitely. Yeomans introduced both an observation-based approach to land use in Australia in the 1940s and in the 1950s the Keyline Design as a way of managing the supply and distribution of water in semi-arid regions. Other early influences include Stewart Brand's works, Ruth Stout and Esther Deans, who pioneered no-dig gardening, and Masanobu Fukuoka who, in the late 1930s in Japan, began advocating no-till orchards and gardens and natural farming.


title: Permaculture

text: In the late 1960s, Bill Mollison, senior lecturer in Environmental Psychology at University of Tasmania, and David Holmgren, graduate student at the then Tasmanian College of Advanced Education started developing ideas about stable agricultural systems on the southern Australian island of Tasmania. Their recognition of the unsustainable nature of modern industrialized methods and their inspiration from Tasmanian Aboriginal and other traditional practises were critical to their formulation of permaculture. In their view, industrialized methods were highly dependent on non-renewable resources, and were additionally poisoning land and water, reducing biodiversity, and removing billions of tons of topsoil from previously fertile landscapes. They responded with permaculture. This term was first made public with the publication of their 1978 book "Permaculture One".


title: Permaculture

text: Following the publication of "Permaculture One", Mollison responded to widespread enthusiasm for the work by traveling and teaching a three-week program that became known as the Permaculture Design Course. It addressed the application of permaculture design to growing in major climatic and soil conditions, to the use of renewable energy and natural building methods, and to "invisible structures" of human society. He found ready audiences in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Britain, and Europe, and from 1985 also reached the Indian subcontinent and southern Africa. Students of Mollison's Permaculture Design Course (PDC) included Max Lindegger, Lea Harrison, Robyn Francis, and Geoff Lawton in Australia, Tom Ward, Dave Jacke, Michael Pilarski, and Dan Hemenway in the USA, Andrew Langford in Britain, and Declan Kennedy and Margrit Kennedy in Europe. By the early 1980s, the concept had broadened from agricultural systems towards sustainable human habitats and at the 1st Intl. Permaculture Convergence, a gathering of graduates of the PDC held in Australia, the curriculum was formalized and its format shortened to two weeks. After "Permaculture One", Mollison further refined and developed the ideas while designing hundreds of properties. This led to the 1988 publication of his global reference work, "Permaculture: A Designers Manual". Mollison lectured in over 80 countries and taught the PDC to hundreds of students. Mollison encouraged graduates to become teachers and set up their own institutes and demonstration sites. Critics suggest that this success weakened permaculture's social aspirations of moving away from industrial social forms. They argue that the self-help model (akin to franchising) has had the effect of creating market-focused social relationships that the originators initially opposed.


title: Permaculture

text: In the 1990s, the permaculture movement spread throughout Asia, Africa, and the Americas. In Hong Kong, the Asian Institute of Sustainable Architecture (AISA) was established. The Mesoamerican Permaculture Institute (IMAP) flourished in Guatemala. The Permaculture Institute of El Salvador is another example.


title: Permaculture

text: Mollison's 1988 formulation of the third ethic was restated by Holmgren in 2002 as "Set limits to consumption and reproduction, and redistribute surplus" and is elsewhere condensed to ""share the surplus"".


title: Permaculture

text: Permaculture emphasizes patterns of landscape, function, and species assemblies. It determines where these elements should be placed so they can provide maximum benefit to the local environment. Permaculture maximizes useful connections between components and synergy of the final design. The focus of permaculture, therefore, is not on individual elements, but rather on the relationships among them. Properly done, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Permaculture seeks to minimize waste, human labor, and energy input and maximize benefits through synergy.


title: Permaculture

text: Permaculture design is founded in replicating or imitating natural patterns found in ecosystems because these solutions have emerged through evolution over thousands of years and have proven to be effective. As a result, the implementation of permaculture design will vary widely depending on the region of the Earth it is located in. Because permaculture's implementation is so localized and place specific, scientific literature for the field is lacking or not always applicable. Design principles derive from the science of systems ecology and the study of pre-industrial examples of sustainable land use. Permaculture draws from disciplines including organic farming, agroforestry, integrated farming, sustainable development, physics, meteorology, sociology, anthropology, biochemistry, engineering, and applied ecology.


title: Permaculture

text: Holmgren articulated twelve permaculture design principles in his "Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability":


title: Permaculture

text: Layers are a tool used to design sustainable ecosystems that directly benefit humans. A mature ecosystem has many relationships between its constituent parts such as trees, understory, ground cover, soil, fungi, insects, and animals. Because plants grow to different heights, a diverse community of organisms can occupy a relatively small space, each at a different layer. Forests offer seven basic layers, although there can be many more, such as fungi.


title: Permaculture

text: A guild is a mutually beneficial group of species that form a part of the larger ecosystem. Within a guild each species provides a unique set of diverse services that work in harmony. Guilds include compatible animals, insects, and plants that form symbiotic relationships which produce healthier plants and ecosystems as well as useful resources for humans. Plants may be grown for food production, drawing nutrients from deep in the soil through tap roots, balancing nitrogen levels in the soil (legumes), for attracting beneficial insects to the garden, and repelling undesirable insects or pests. There are several types of guilds, such as community function guilds, mutual support guilds, and resource partitioning guilds.


title: Permaculture

text: The edge effect in ecology is the effect of juxtaposing contrasting environments in an ecosystem. Permaculturists argue that where differing systems meet can become highly productive and offer useful connections. An example of this is a coast. Where land and sea meet is a rich area that meets a disproportionate percentage of human and animal needs. This idea is reflected in permacultural designs by using spirals in herb gardens, or creating ponds that have wavy undulating shorelines rather than a simple circle or oval (thereby increasing the amount of edge for a given area).


title: Permaculture

text: Zones intelligently organize design elements in a human environment based on the frequency of human use and plant or animal needs. Frequently manipulated or harvested elements of the design are located close to the house in zones 1 and 2. Manipulated elements located further away are used less frequently. Zones are numbered from 0 to 5 based on positioning.


title: Permaculture

text: A core theme of permaculture is the idea of "people care". Seeking prosperity begins within a local community or culture that can apply the tenets of permaculture to sustain an environment that supports them and vice versa. This is in stark contrast to typical modern industrialized societies, where locality and generational knowledge is often overlooked in the pursuit of wealth or other forms of societal leverage.


title: Permaculture

text: "The tragic reality is that very few sustainable systems are designed or applied by those who hold power, and the reason for this is obvious and simple: to let people arrange their own food, energy and shelter is to lose economic and political control over them. We should cease to look to power structures, hierarchical systems, or governments to help us, and devise ways to help ourselves." - Bill Mollison


title: Permaculture

text: Agroforestry uses the interactive benefits from combining trees and shrubs with crops or livestock. It combines agricultural and forestry technologies to create more diverse, productive, profitable, healthy and sustainable land-use systems. Trees or shrubs are intentionally used within agricultural systems, or non-timber forest products are cultured in forest settings.


title: Permaculture

text: Forest gardening/food forests involve systems designed to mimic natural forests. Forest gardens, like other permaculture designs, incorporate processes and relationships that the designers understand to be valuable in natural ecosystems.


title: Permaculture

text: Proponents of forest gardens include Graham Bell, Patrick Whitefield, Dave Jacke, Eric Toensmeier and Geoff Lawton. Bell started building his forest garden in 1991 and wrote "The Permaculture Garden" in 1995, Whitefield wrote the book "How to Make a Forest Garden" in 2002, Jacke and Toensmeier co-authored the two volume book set "Edible Forest Gardening" in 2005, and Lawton presented the film "Establishing a Food Forest" in 2008.


title: Permaculture

text: Tree Gardens, such as Kandyan tree gardens, in South and Southeast Asia, are often hundreds of years old. It is not evident whether they came from agroforestry or permaculture. Many studies of these systems, especially those that predate the term permaculture, consider these systems to be forms of agroforestry.


title: Permaculture

text: The fundamental element of suburban and urban permaculture is the efficient utilization of space. Maximizing the space for food production and minimizing wasted space is important. "Wildfire" journal suggests using methods such as the keyhole garden to address this issue of space. Neighbors can also collaborate with each other to increase the scale of transformation. Sites such as recreation centers, neighborhood associations, city programs, faith groups, and schools can become part of a larger social and economic movement. Columbia, an ecovillage in Portland, Oregon, consisting of 37 apartment condominiums, influenced surrounding neighbors to implement similar green-minded principles of permaculture, including front-yard gardens. Suburban permaculture sites such as one in Eugene, Oregon, include rainwater catchment, edible landscaping, removing paved driveways, turning a garage into living space, changing a south side patio into passive solar, aesthetic features, detached structures.


title: Permaculture

text: Transforming vacant lots in suburban and urban settings is a common practice of creating community-managed agriculture or farm sites. However, some of these farm sites are perceived by local authorities as temporary or informal solutions to the vacant lot rather than as permanent fixtures of the city. This threatens the fundamental principal of permaculture: "permanence". For example, Los Angeles' South Central Farm (1994–2006), which was one of the largest urban gardens in the United States, was bulldozed with approval from property owner Ralph Horowitz, despite large-scale protest from the community who had developed deep bonds with the site.


title: Permaculture

text: The possibilities and challenges for developing suburban or urban permaculture differ greatly as a result of how the built environment is designed and property is treated in particular areas of the world. For example, a study comparing the built environment in Jaisalmer, India, and Los Angeles, United States, concluded that the American planned city is ecologically disastrous:


title: Permaculture

text: the application of universal rules regarding setbacks from roads and property lines systematically creates unused and purposeless space as an integral part of the built landscape, well beyond the classic image of the vacant lot. ... Because these spaces are created in accordance with a general pattern, rather than responding to any local need or desire, many if not most are underutilized, unproductive, and generally maintained as ecologically disastrous lawns by unenthusiastic owners. In this broadest understanding of wasted land, the concept is opened to reveal how our system of urban design gives rise to a ubiquitous pattern of land that, while not usually conceived as vacant, is in fact largely without ecological or social value.


title: Permaculture

text: Hügelkultur is the practice of burying wood to increase soil water retention. The porous structure of wood acts like a sponge when decomposing underground. During the rainy season, sufficient buried wood can absorb enough water to sustain crops through the dry season. This technique is a traditional practice that has been developed over centuries in Europe and has been recently adopted by permaculturalists. The Hügelkultur technique can be implemented through building mounds on the ground as well as in raised garden beds. In raised beds, the practice "imitates natural nutrient cycling found in wood decomposition and the high water-holding capacities of organic detritus, while also improving bed structure and drainage properties." This is done by placing wood material (e.g. logs and sticks) in the bottom of the bed before piling organic soil and compost on top. A study comparing the water retention capacities of Hügel raised beds to non-Hügel beds determined that Hügel beds are both lower maintenance and more efficient in the long term by requiring less irrigation.


title: Permaculture

text: Vermicomposting is a common practice in permaculture. The practice involves using earthworms, such as red wigglers, to break down green and brown waste. The worms produce worm castings, which can be used to organically fertilize the garden. Worms are also introduced to garden beds, helping to aerate the soil and improve water retention. Worms may multiply quickly if provided conditions are ideal. For example, a permaculture farm in Cuba began with 9 tiger worms in 2001 and 15 years later had a population of over 500,000. The worm castings are particularly useful as part of a seed starting mix and regular fertilizer. Worm castings are reportedly more successful than conventional compost for seed starting.


title: Permaculture

text: Natural building involves using a range of building systems and materials that apply permaculture principles. The focus is on durability and the use of minimally processed, plentiful, or renewable resources, as well as those that, while recycled or salvaged, produce healthy living environments and maintain indoor air quality. For example, cement, a common building material, emits carbon dioxide and is harmful to the environment while natural building works with the environment, using materials that are biodegradable, such as cob, adobe, rammed earth (unburnt clay), and straw bale (which insulates as well as modern synthetic materials).


title: Permaculture

text: Natural building attempts to lessen environmental impacts of buildings without sacrificing comfort, health, or aesthetics. Natural building employs abundantly available natural materials (e.g., clay, rock, sand, straw, wood, reeds), and draws heavily on traditional architectural strategies found in various climates. Building compactly and minimizing the ecological footprint is common, as are on-site handling of energy acquisition, on-site water capture, alternate sewage treatment, and water reuse. Most materials are sourced regionally, locally, or even on-site. Roofing coverings often include sod or 'living roofs', thatch, and wooden shakes or shingles. Rubble trench foundations are popular, as they do not require concrete. Likewise, dry-stacked or lime mortared stem walls are common. Natural builders also regularly combine wall systems in a single building, making the best use of for example each material's thermal or water-resistant properties.


title: Permaculture

text: Rainwater harvesting is the accumulation and storage of rainwater for reuse before it runs off or reaches the aquifer. It has been used to provide drinking water, water for livestock, and water for irrigation, as well as other typical uses. Rainwater collected from the roofs of houses and local institutions can make an important contribution to the availability of drinking water. It can supplement the water table and increase urban greenery. Water collected from the ground, sometimes from areas which are specially prepared for this purpose, is called stormwater harvesting.


title: Permaculture

text: Greywater is wastewater generated from domestic activities such as laundry, dishwashing, and bathing, which can be recycled for uses such as landscape irrigation and constructed wetlands. Greywater is largely sterile, but not potable (drinkable). Greywater differs from water from sewage or blackwater that contains human or animal waste. A permaculture approach to blackwater is composting through a process known as humanure; a portmanteau of human and manure. The methane in humanure can be collected and used similar to natural gas as a fuel, such as for heating or cooking, and is commonly referred to as biogas. Biogas can be harvested from human waste and the remainder used as humanure. The simplest forms of humanure include a composting toilet or an outhouse or dry bog surrounded by trees that are heavy feeders that can be coppiced for wood fuel. This process eliminates the use of a plumbed toilet.


title: Permaculture

text: Domesticated animals are often incorporated into site design. Animals are a critical component of any sustainable ecosystem. Research indicates that without animals' contribution, ecological integrity is diminished or lost. Activities that contribute to the system include: foraging to cycle nutrients, clearing fallen fruit, weed maintenance, spreading seeds, and pest maintenance. Nutrients are cycled by animals, transformed from their less digestible form (such as grass or twigs) into more nutrient-dense manure.


title: Permaculture

text: Multiple animals can contribute, including cows, goats, chickens, geese, turkey, rabbits, and worms. An example is chickens who can be used to scratch over the soil, thus breaking down the topsoil and using fecal matter as manure. Factors such as timing and habits are critical. For example, animals require much more daily attention than plants.


title: Permaculture

text: Mulch is a protective cover placed over soil. Mulch material includes stones, leaves, cardboard, wood chips, and gravel, although in permaculture mulches of organic material are preferred because they perform more functions. These include absorbing rainfall, reducing evaporation, providing nutrients, increasing soil organic matter, creating habitat for soil organisms, suppressing weed growth and seed germination, moderating diurnal temperature swings, protecting against frost, and reducing erosion. Sheet mulching is a gardening technique that attempts to mimic natural forest processes. Sheet mulching mimics the leaf cover that is found on forest floors. When deployed properly and in combination with other permaculture principles, it can generate healthy, productive, and low-maintenance ecosystems.


title: Permaculture

text: Sheet mulch serves as a "nutrient bank," storing nutrients contained in organic matter and slowly making these nutrients available to plants as the organic matter slowly and naturally breaks down. It also improves the soil by attracting and feeding earthworms, slaters and many other soil micro-organisms, as well as adding humus. Earthworms "till" the soil, and their worm castings are among the best fertilizers and soil conditioners. Sheet mulching can be used to reduce or eliminate non-desired plants by starving them of light and can surpass herbicide or other methods of control.


title: Permaculture

text: Grazing is blamed for much destruction. However, when grazing is modeled after nature, it can have the opposite effect. Cell grazing is a system of grazing in which herds or flocks are regularly and systematically moved to fresh range with the intent to maximize forage quality and quantity. Sepp Holzer and Joel Salatin have shown how grazing can start ecological succession or prepare ground for planting. Allan Savory's holistic management technique has been likened to "a permaculture approach to rangeland management". One variation is conservation grazing, where the primary purpose of the animals is to benefit the environment and the animals are not necessarily used for meat, milk or fiber. Sheep can replace lawn mowers. Goats and sheep can eat invasive plants.


title: Permaculture

text: Keyline design is a technique for maximizing the beneficial use of water resources. It was developed in Australia by farmer and engineer P. A. Yeomans. "Keyline" refers to a contour line extending in both directions from a keypoint. Plowing above and below the keyline provides a watercourse that directs water away from a purely downhill course to reduce erosion and encourage infiltration. It is used in designing drainage systems.


title: Permaculture

text: Some proponents of permaculture advocate heavily restricted pruning. Holzer used the method in connection with Hügelkultur berms. He has grown fruiting trees at altitudes (approximately ) far above their normal altitude, temperature, and snow load ranges. The Hügelkultur berms kept or generated enough heat to allow the roots to survive during alpine winter conditions. The point of having unpruned branches, he notes, was that the longer (more naturally formed) branches bend over under the snow load until they touched the ground, thus forming a natural arch against snow loads that would break a shorter, pruned, branch.


title: Permaculture

text: Masanobu Fukuoka, as part of early experiments on his family farm in Japan, experimented with no-pruning methods, noting that he ended up killing many fruit trees by simply letting them go, which made them become convoluted and tangled, and thus unhealthy. He learned that this is the difference between natural-form trees and previously-pruned fruit trees. He concluded that trees should be raised entirely without pruning, allowing them to form healthy and efficient natural branch patterns. This reflects the Tao-philosophy of Wú wéi translated in part as no-action (against nature). He interpreted this as no unnecessary pruning, nature farming or "do-nothing" farming, of fruit trees, distinct from non-intervention or literal no-pruning. He ultimately achieved yields comparable to or exceeding standard/intensive practices of using pruning and chemical fertilisation.


title: Permaculture

text: Permaculture derives its origin from agriculture, although the same principles, especially its foundational ethics, can also be applied to mariculture, particularly seaweed farming. An example is Marine Permaculture wherein artificial upwelling of cold, deep ocean water is induced. When attachment substrate is provided in association with such an upwelling, and kelp sporophytes are present, a kelp forest ecosystem can be established (kelp needs the cool temperatures and abundant dissolved macronutrients present in such an environment). Microalgae proliferate as well. Marine forest habitat is beneficial for many fish species, and the kelp is a renewable resource for food, animal feed, medicines and various other commercial products. It is also a powerful tool for carbon fixation.


title: Permaculture

text: The upwelling can be powered by renewable energy on location. Vertical mixing has been reduced due to ocean stratification effects associated with climate change. The Permian Mass Extinction was thought to have been brought on by such ocean warming, stratification, deoxygenation, anoxia, and subsequent extinction of 96% of all marine species. Reduced vertical mixing and marine heatwaves have decimated seaweed ecosystems in many areas. Marine permaculture mitigates this by restoring some vertical mixing and preserves these important ecosystems. By preserving and regenerating habitat offshore on a platform, marine permaculture employs natural processes to regenerate marine life.


title: Permaculture

text: Trademark and copyright disputes surround the word "permaculture." Mollison's books claimed on the copyright page, "The contents of this book and the word PERMACULTURE are copyright." Eventually Mollison acknowledged that he was mistaken and that no copyright protection existed.


title: Permaculture

text: In 2000, Mollison's U.S.-based Permaculture Institute sought a service mark for the word "permaculture" when used in educational services such as conducting classes, seminars, or workshops. The service mark would have allowed Mollison and his two institutes to set enforceable guidelines regarding how permaculture could be taught and who could teach it, particularly with relation to the PDC, despite the fact that he had been certifying teachers since 1993. This attempt failed and was abandoned in 2001. Mollison's application for trademarks in Australia for the terms "Permaculture Design Course" and "Permaculture Design" was withdrawn in 2003. In 2009 he sought a trademark for "Permaculture: A Designers' Manual" and "Introduction to Permaculture", the names of two of his books. These applications were withdrawn in 2011. Australia has never authorized a trademark for the word "permaculture".


title: Permaculture

text: Permaculture has been criticised as being poorly defined and unscientific. Critics have pushed for less reliance on anecdote and extrapolation from ecological first principles, in favor of peer-reviewed research to substantiate productivity claims and to clarify methodology. Peter Harper from the Centre for Alternative Technology suggests that most of what passes for permaculture has no relevance to real problems.


title: Permaculture

text: Defenders respond that permaculture is not yet a mainstream scientific tradition and lacks the resources of mainstream industrial agriculture. Ferguson and Lovell point out that permaculturalists rarely engage with mainstream research in agroecology, agroforestry, or ecological engineering, and claim that mainstream science has an elitist or pro-corporate bias.


title: Permaculture

text: In his books "Sustainable Freshwater Aquaculture" and "Farming in Ponds and Dams", Nick Romanowski expresses the view that the presentation of aquaculture in Bill Mollison's books is unrealistic and misleading.


title: Permaculture

text: Greg Williams argues that forests cannot be more productive than farmland because the net productivity of forests declines as they mature due to ecological succession. Permaculture proponents respond that this is true only when comparing data between woodland forest and climax vegetation, but not when comparing farmland vegetation against a woodland forest. For example, ecological succession generally results in rising productivity until it reaches the "woodland state" (67% tree cover), before declining until "full maturity".


title: House of Pain

text: House of Pain was an American hip-hop trio that released three albums in the 1990s. The group consisted of DJ Lethal, Danny Boy, and Everlast. The group's name is a reference to the H. G. Wells novel "The Island of Dr. Moreau", a reference carried further by the naming of their 2011 tour "He Who Breaks the Law". The group is best known for its 1992 hit single "Jump Around", which reached number 3 in their native United States of America, number 6 in Ireland and number 8 in the United Kingdom. The group broke up in 1996 due to what Everlast described as a toxic environment fueled by Danny Boy's drug addiction. Lead rapper Everlast eventually went on to pursue a solo career as a Blues Rock artist and member of the supergroup La Coka Nostra which also featured DJ Lethal. House of Pain reunited briefly in 2010 for a world tour.


title: House of Pain

text: In 1990, Daniel O'Connor (Danny Boy O'Connor) got together with fellow rapper Erik Schrody (Everlast) who had just released a rap album called "Forever Everlasting" (1990), that didn't have much success. O'Connor knew Schrody when he went to William Howard Taft High School in Woodland Hills, California (1984–1986), and various hip hop events they attended in their teens. Both of Irish American descent, they decided to make a hip hop group with this identity. While hanging out at O'Connor's home, Schrody noticed a cassette with the title "House of Pain", which was a demo of a Punk group O'Connor tried to put together. Schrody really liked the name and felt they should re-use as their name. Schrody brought in his former DJ Leor Diamant (DJ Lethal), who actually of Latvian descent, and House of pain was created. Schrody would become the lead rapper, while O'Connor acted as the hype man, second emcee, art director and the graphic artist of the group. After they recorded a demo, for which O'Connor designed the cover, that created a bidding war among labels. The label they chose was Tommy Boy Records, who credits O'Connor's art work to have initially caught their attention.


title: House of Pain

text: In 1992, they released their debut album "House of Pain", subtitled "Fine Malt Lyrics." Their first single "Jump Around" was a major hit. In the United States, it peaked at number 3 on the "Billboard" Hot 100, while reaching number 5 on the Hot Rap Songs, 13 on Rhythmic Top 40, 1 on Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales, number 17 on the "Billboard" Dance Club Songs, and is certified platinum. The song was produced by Lawrence Muggerud (DJ Muggs) and performed by Schrody. Both Muggerud and Schrody explain that song came about shortly after they both met. Muggerud who had a beat he had submitted to various artist, eventually invited Schrody to give it a try. Schrody wrote lyrics in his driveway and being influenced by dance hall singer Shabba Ranks part of the lyrics were “Jump around, if you love freedom. Jump around, if you love culture”, which Muggerud suggest to trim down to "Jump Around". While re-working his lyrics, Muggerud came up with the iconic horn that accompany the song. Their second single "Shamrocks and Shenanigans (Boom Shalock Lock Boom)", it peaked at 65 on the "Billboard" Hot 100, 75 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, 14 on the Dance Club Songs, and 74 on Radio Songs. The album peaked at 14 on the "Billboard" 200, 14 on the U.S. "Billboard" Top Current Albums, 16 on the U.S. "Billboard" Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, 14 on the U.S. "Billboard" Top Album Sales, and is certified platinum.


title: House of Pain

text: In 1993, they were among the rap artists who had cameo roles in Ted Demme's film "Who's the Man?". For this project they provided a theme song by the same name, which was also used as a single for the soundtrack and their subsequent album. It rose to number 97 on the "Billboard" Hot 100, 77 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks, and 10 on the US "Billboard" Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales. Also that year, they participated together with Helmet, along with several other rap acts, on the 1993 rap rock collaborative "Judgment Night" film soundtrack.


title: House of Pain

text: In 1994, they released "Same as It Ever Was". The album peaked at 12 equally on the "Billboard" 200, the U.S. "Billboard" Top Current Albums, the U.S. "Billboard" Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, the U.S. "Billboard" Top Album Sales, and is certified gold. "AllMusic" gave it four out five stars. Matt Carlson of "The Michigan Daily" found the album quite good and noted "the music is laid back with some heavy driving forces underlying and strengthening it". J.D. Constantine of "The Baltimore Sun" did not like album and found it monotonous and unimaginative. Roger Catlin of the "Hartford Courant" said that while finding the continuity monotonous it's "hard and compelling" as well as a "strong outing". Andrew Love of "The Ocala Star-Banner" gave it four stars saying "this is a band that has definitely progressed over the course of one album". Music critic Robert Christgau, who did not like their previous and subsequent album, gave it an A- and described it as "the hardest hip hop of the year".


title: House of Pain

text: In 1996, they released "Truth Crushed to Earth Shall Rise Again". The album peaked at 47 on the "Billboard" 200, 47 on the U.S. "Billboard" Top Current Albums, 31 on the U.S. "Billboard" Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, and 47 on the U.S. "Billboard" Top Album Sales. At the release party, Schrody decided to breakup the group. Sputnikmusic wrote that "the trio’s most rounded, consistent & memorable LP is grossly under-appreciated." Dave Ferman of the "Fort Worth Star-Telegram" gave it one star and a half, calling it a "woeful mess". Steve Juon of "RapReviews" gave it a seven out of ten. "AllMusic" music gave it two point five stars out of five.


title: House of Pain

text: From then on, the members continued their separate careers. Schrody achieved multi-platinum solo fame in 1998 with his album "Whitey Ford Sings the Blues," where he developed a style that blended rap with acoustic guitar, as well as singing.


title: House of Pain

text: In late 2004, the creation of the rap supergroup La Coka Nostra started when O'Connor was mentoring young artists. He took notice of two up and comers which included George Carroll (Slaine) and brought them to meet his former DJ from House of Pain, Leor Diamant, who at the time was working on a compilation album and championing a new artist as well. They decided to make a group and asked O'Connor to become a member as a hype man and art director. After accepting, O'Connor felt that there was a void and asked experienced rapper William Braunstein (Ill Bill) to join. The group's name came about, when O'Connor teased Carroll and Braunstein with that nickname, after they both had a night out. The group started releasing music on MySpace, and went viral. Eventually, O'Connor received a letter from former House of Pain colleague Erik Schrody, who asked if he could join. By 2006, the group consisted of O'Connor, Carroll, Diamant, Braunstein, and Schrody.


title: House of Pain

text: In 2009, La Coka Nostra released "A Brand You Can Trust" was released on July 14, 2009, on Suburban Noize Records. It sold over 500,000 units. "AllMusic" gave four out of five stars. Andrew Kameka of "HipHopDX" wrote that "the album is a mostly solid effort and exactly what someone would expect from a supergroup of like-minded members known for high-energy music". Adam Kennedy of the "BBC" while praising some the moments of the album said "it’s a tantalising parting taste of potential capabilities, yet until they improve a customer satisfaction hit rate that barely troubles one in three tunes here". Steve Juon of "RapReviews" gave it a seven out of ten. "Sputnikmusic" described it as "a disjointed effort, but still pretty decent in and of itself and gave it three point five out of five. Thomas Quinlan of "Exclaim!" said "La Coka Nostra are an interesting collection of collaborators that live up to the hype".


title: House of Pain

text: On March 2, 2012, it was announced that Schrody would be leaving La Coka Nostra due to his daughter's medical issues, while O'Connor and Diamant pursued two more project with the group "Masters of the Dark Arts" (2012) and "To Thine Own Self Be True" (2016).


title: House of Pain

text: House of Pain reunited at a private event held by UFC president Dana White in Boston on St. Patrick's Day 2009. It was officially announced on August 10, 2010, that House of Pain had reunited and performed their first "official" show in a decade at the second annual Epicenter music festival in Fontana, California, on September 25, 2010. Though Diamant is still a member of the group, he did not join them on their 2011 reunion tour due to prior obligations with Limp Bizkit. In April–May 2011 House of Pain attended the Groovin' the Moo touring festival in Australia, and also performed at Scotland's T in the Park festival on July 9, 2011, as well as Sonisphere UK Festival on July 12 of the same year.


title: House of Pain

text: House of Pain reunited in 2017 for a 25th Anniversary Tour. The tour included shows in DC, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, and California.


title: House of Pain

text: Between reunions and projects together, Schrody continues with his solo career, while Diamant still works with Limp Bizkit, and in 2019 O'Connor opened The Outsiders House Museum dedicated to both the novel and the film "The Outsiders".


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: The New Testament provides two accounts of the genealogy of Jesus, one in the Gospel of Matthew and another in the Gospel of Luke. Matthew starts with Abraham, while Luke begins with Adam. The lists are identical between Abraham and David, but differ radically from that point. Matthew has twenty-seven generations from David to Joseph, whereas Luke has forty-two, with almost no overlap between the names on the two lists. Notably, the two accounts also disagree on who Joseph's father was: Matthew says he was Jacob, while Luke says he was Heli.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Traditional Christian scholars (starting with Africanus and Eusebius) have put forward various theories that seek to explain why the lineages are so different, such as that Matthew's account follows the lineage of Joseph, while Luke's follows the lineage of Mary, although both start with Jesus and then go to Joseph, not Mary. Some modern critical scholars like Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan state that both genealogies are inventions, intended to bring the Messianic claims into conformity with Jewish criteria.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: – begins the Gospel with "A record of the origin of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham: Abraham begot Isaac..." and continues on until "... Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ."


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Matthew emphasizes, right from the beginning, Jesus' title "Christ"—the Greek rendering of the Hebrew title "Messiah"—meaning "anointed", in the sense of an anointed king. Jesus is presented as the long-awaited Messiah, who was expected to be a descendant of King David. Matthew begins by calling Jesus "the son of David", indicating his royal origin, and also "son of Abraham", indicating that he was an Israelite; both are stock phrases, in which "son" means "descendant", calling to mind the promises God made to David and to Abraham.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Matthew's introductory title (, "book of generations") has been interpreted in various ways, but most likely is simply a title for the genealogy that follows, echoing the Septuagint use of the same phrase for genealogies.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Matthew's genealogy is considerably more complex than Luke's. It is overtly schematic, organized into three sets of fourteen, each of a distinct character:


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: The total of 42 generations is achieved only by omitting several names, so the choice of three sets of fourteen seems deliberate. Various explanations have been suggested: fourteen is twice seven, symbolizing perfection and covenant, and is also the gematria (numerical value) of the name "David".


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: The rendering into Greek of Hebrew names in this genealogy is mostly in accord with the Septuagint, but there are a few peculiarities. The form "Asaph" seems to identify King Asa with the psalmist Asaph. Likewise, some see the form "Amos" for King Amon as suggesting the prophet Amos, though the Septuagint does have this form. Both may simply be assimilations to more familiar names. More interesting, though, are the unique forms "Boes" (Boaz, LXX "Boos") and "Rachab" (Rahab, LXX "Raab").


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Three consecutive kings of Judah are omitted: Ahaziah, Jehoash, and Amaziah. These three kings are seen as especially wicked, from the cursed line of Ahab through his daughter Athaliah to the third and fourth generation. The author could have omitted them to create a second set of fourteen.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Another omitted king is Jehoiakim, the father of Jeconiah, also known as Jehoiachin. In Greek the names are even more similar, both being sometimes called "Joachim". When Matthew says, "Josiah begot Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the exile," he appears to conflate the two, because Jehoiakim, not Jeconiah, had brothers, but the exile was in the time of Jeconiah. While some see this as a mistake, others argue that the omission was once again deliberate, ensuring that the kings after David spanned exactly fourteen generations.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: The final group also contains fourteen generations. If Josiah's son was intended as Jehoiakim, then Jeconiah could be counted separately after the exile. Some authors proposed that Matthew's original text had one Joseph as the of Mary, who then married another man of the same name.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Fourteen generations span the time from Jeconiah, born about 616 BC, to Jesus, born circa 4 BC. The average generation gap would be around forty-four years. However, in the Old Testament, there are even wider gaps between generations. Also, we do not see any instances of papponymic naming patterns, where children are named after their grandparents, which was a common custom throughout this period. This may indicate that Matthew has telescoped this segment by collapsing such repetitions.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: In the Gospel of Luke, the genealogy appears at the beginning of the public life of Jesus. This version is in ascending order from Joseph to Adam. After telling of the baptism of Jesus, states, "Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was "[the son]" of Heli, ..." (3:23) and continues on until "Adam, which was "[the son]" of God." (3:38) The Greek text of Luke's Gospel does not use the word "son" in the genealogy after "son of Joseph". Robertson notes that, in the Greek, "Luke has the article "tou" repeating "uiou" (Son) except before Joseph".


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: This genealogy descends from the Davidic line through Nathan, who is an otherwise little-known son of David, mentioned briefly in the Old Testament.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: In the ancestry of David, Luke agrees completely with the Old Testament. Cainan is included between Arphaxad and Shelah, following the Septuagint text (though not included in the Masoretic Text followed by most modern Bibles).


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Augustine notes that the count of generations in the Book of Luke is 77, a number symbolizing the forgiveness of all sins. This count also agrees with the seventy generations from Enoch set forth in the Book of Enoch, which Luke probably knew. Though Luke never counts the generations as Matthew does, it appears he also followed hebdomadic principle of working in sevens. However, Irenaeus counts only 72 generations from Adam.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: The reading "son of Aminadab, son of Aram", from the Old Testament is well attested. The Nestle-Aland critical edition, considered the best authority by most modern scholars, accepts the variant "son of Aminadab, son of Admin, son of Arni", counting the 76 generations from Adam rather than God.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Luke's qualification "as was supposed" () avoids stating that Jesus was actually a son of Joseph, since his virgin birth is affirmed in the same gospel. Some view that "as was supposed of Joseph" regards Luke as calling Jesus a son of Eli—meaning that Heli (, Heli) was the maternal grandfather of Jesus, with Luke tracing the ancestry of Jesus through Mary. Therefore, per Adam Clarke (1817), John Wesley, John Kitto and others the expression "Joseph, [ ] of Heli", without the word "son" being present in the Greek, indicates that "Joseph, of Heli" is to be read "Joseph, [son-in-law] of Heli". This view is strongly supported by the classical Jewish Rabbinical records, which state that Mary was the daughter of "Eli." This is also supported by the Jewish tradition of patrilineality that "the family of the mother is not called a family," further indicating that Luke is referencing Mary's genealogy (that, by marriage to Mary, Joseph was the son of Heli). There are, however, other interpretations of how this qualification relates to the rest of the genealogy. Some see the remainder as the true genealogy of Joseph, despite the different genealogy given in Matthew.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: The following table is a side-by-side comparison of Matthew's and Luke's genealogies. Converging sections are shown with a green (and yellow) background, and diverging sections are shown with a red background.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: The Church Fathers held that both accounts are true. In his book "An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith", John Damascene argues that Heli of the tribe of Nathan died childless, and Jacob of the tribe of Solomon took his wife and raised up seed to his brother and begat Joseph, in accordance with scripture, namely, yibbum (the mitzvah that a man must marry his brother's childless widow); Joseph, therefore, is by nature the son of Jacob, of the line of Solomon, but by law he is the son of Heli of the line of Nathan.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Modern scholarship tends to see the genealogies of Jesus as theological constructs rather than factual history: family pedigrees would not usually have been available for non-priestly families, and the contradictions between the two lists are seen as clear evidence that these were not based on genealogical records. Additionally, the use of titles such as 'Son of God' and 'Son of David' are seen as evidence that they do not come from the earliest Gospel traditions. Raymond E. Brown says the genealogies "tell us nothing certain about his grandparents or his great-grand-parents". Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan contend that both genealogies are inventions to support Messianic claims.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Gundry suggests the series of unknown names in Matthew connecting Joseph's grandfather to Zerubbabel as an outright fabrication, produced by collecting and then modifying various names from 1 Chronicles. Sivertsen sees Luke's as artificially pieced together out of oral traditions. The pre-exilic series "Levi, Simeon, Judah, Joseph" consists of the names of tribal patriarchs, far more common after the exile than before, while the name "Mattathias" and its variants begin at least three suspiciously similar segments. Kuhn likewise suggests that the two series "Jesus–Mattathias" (77–63) and "Jesus–Mattatha" (49–37) are duplicates.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: The contradictions between the lists have been used to question the accuracy of the gospel accounts since ancient times, and several early Christian authors responded to this. Augustine, for example, attempted on several occasions to refute every criticism, not only because the Manichaeans in his day were using the differences to attack Christianity, but also because he himself had seen them in his youth as cause for doubting the veracity of the Gospels. His explanation for the different names given for Joseph's father is that Joseph had a biological father and an adoptive father, and that one of the gospels traces the genealogy through the adoptive father in order to draw parallels between Joseph and Jesus (both having an adoptive father) and as a metaphor for God's relationship with humankind, in the sense that God "adopted" human beings as his children.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: One common explanation for the divergence is that Matthew is recording the actual legal genealogy of Jesus through Joseph, according to Jewish custom, whereas Luke, writing for a Gentile audience, gives the actual biological genealogy of Jesus through Mary. This argument is problematic, however, because both trace their genealogy through Joseph. Eusebius of Caesarea, on the other hand, affirmed the interpretation of Africanus that Luke's genealogy is of Joseph (not of Mary), who was the natural son of Jacob, though legally of Eli who was the uterine brother of Jacob.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: The earliest tradition that explains the divergence of Joseph's lineages involves the law of levirate marriage. A woman whose husband died without issue was bound by law to be married to her husband's brother, and the first-born son of a "Yibbum" was reckoned and registered as the son of the deceased brother (Deuteronomy 25:5 sqq.). Sextus Julius Africanus, in his 3rd-century "Epistle to Aristides", reports a tradition that Joseph was born from just such a levirate marriage. According to this report, Joseph's natural father was Jacob son of Matthan, as given in Matthew, while his legal father was Eli son of Melchi ("sic"), as given in Luke.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: It has been questioned, however, whether levirate marriages actually occurred among uterine brothers; they are expressly excluded in the Halakhah Beth Hillel but permitted by Shammai. According to Jesuit theologian Anthony Maas, the question proposed to Jesus by the Sadducees in all three Synoptic Gospels regarding a woman with seven levirate husbands suggests that this law was observed at the time of Christ.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: A common explanation among theologians is that Luke's genealogy is of Mary, with Eli being her father, while Matthew's describes the genealogy of Joseph.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Luke's text says that Jesus was "a son, as was supposed, of Joseph, of Eli" (υἱός, ὡς ἐνομίζετο, Ἰωσὴφ, τοῦ Ἠλὶ.) The qualification has traditionally been understood as acknowledgment of the virgin birth, but some instead see a parenthetical expression: "a son (as was supposed of Joseph) of Eli." In this interpretation, Jesus is called a son of Eli because Eli was his maternal grandfather, his nearest male ancestor. A variation on this idea is to explain "Joseph son of Eli" as meaning a son-in-law, perhaps even an adoptive heir to Eli through his only daughter Mary. An example of the Old Testament use of such an expression is Jair, who is called "Jair son of Manasseh" but was actually son of Manasseh's granddaughter. In any case, the argument goes, it is natural for the evangelist, acknowledging the unique case of the virgin birth, to give the maternal genealogy of Jesus, while expressing it a bit awkwardly in the traditional patrilinear style.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: According to R. A. Torrey, the reason Mary is not implicitly mentioned by name is because the ancient Hebrews never permitted the name of a woman to enter the genealogical tables, but inserted her husband as the son of him who was, in reality, but his father-in-law.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Lightfoot sees confirmation in an obscure passage of the Talmud, which, as he reads it, refers to "Mary daughter of Eli"; however, both the identity of this Mary and the reading are doubtful. Patristic tradition, on the contrary, consistently identifies Mary's father as Joachim. It has been suggested that "Eli" is short for "Eliakim", which in the Old Testament is an alternate name of Jehoiakim, for whom Joachim is named.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: The theory is consistent with early traditions ascribing a Davidic ancestry to Mary. It also aligns with Luke's greater focus on Mary, in contrast to Matthew's focus on Joseph's perspective. On the other hand, there is no explicit indication whatsoever, either in the Gospel or in any early tradition, that the genealogy is Mary's.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: A Jewish tradition ascribing a Davidic ancestry to Mary is recorded in the "Doctrina Jacobi" (written in 634), in which a Tiberian rabbi mocks the Christian veneration of Mary by recounting her genealogy according to the tradition of the Jews of Tiberias:


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Why do Christians extol Mary so highly, calling her nobler than the Cherubim, incomparably greater than the Seraphim, raised above the heavens, purer than the very rays of the sun? For she was a woman, of the race of David, born to Anne her mother and Joachim her father, who was son of Panther. Panther and Melchi were brothers, sons of Levi, of the stock of Nathan, whose father was David of the tribe of Judah.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: A century later, John of Damascus and others report similar information, only inserting an extra generation, "Barpanther" (Aramaic for "son of Panther", thus indicating a misunderstood Aramaic source). A certain prince Andronicus later found the same polemic in a book belonging to a rabbi named Elijah.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: The claim that Luke gives Mary's genealogy is mentioned in a single extant 5th century text, in which pseudo-Hilary cites it as an opinion held by many, though not himself. This claim was revived by Annius of Viterbo in 1498 and quickly grew in popularity.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Modern scholars discount this approach: Raymond E. Brown called it a "pious deduction"; and Joachim Gnilka "the desperation of embarrassment".


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Jewish law is relevant to these matters. It differs radically on such issues from Roman law, but is what applied within Jewish society and the state of Judea, and was the only one that Jesus himself explicitly acknowledged as binding and authoritative, as recorded in Matt. 23:1-3. It does not accept maternal ancestry as applying to lineage claims, which go through the father alone.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: A minority view holds that while Luke gives the genealogy of Joseph, Matthew gives the genealogy of Mary. A few ancient authorities seem to offer this interpretation. Although the Greek text as it stands is plainly against it, it has been proposed that in the original text Matthew had one Joseph as Mary's father and another as her husband. This neatly explains not only why Matthew's genealogy differs from Luke's, but also why Matthew counts fourteen generations rather than thirteen. Blair sees the various extant versions as the predictable result of copyists repeatedly attempting to correct an apparent mistake. Others, including Victor Paul Wierwille, argue that here the Aramaic original of Matthew used the word "gowra" (which could mean "father"), which, in the absence of vowel markings, was read by the Greek translator as "gura" ("husband"). In any case, an early understanding that Matthew traced Mary's genealogy would explain why the contradiction between Matthew and Luke apparently escaped notice until the 3rd century.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Although most accounts ascribing the Luke genealogy to Mary's line do not include a levirate marriage this is added by the above sources. Each of these texts then goes on to describe, just as in Julius Africanus (but omitting the name of Estha), how Melchi was related to Joseph through a levirate marriage.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Bede assumed that Julius Africanus was mistaken and corrected "Melchi" to "Matthat". Since papponymics were common in this period, however, it would not be surprising if Matthat were also named Melchi after his grandfather.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Controversy has surrounded the name "Panther", mentioned above, because of a charge that Jesus' father was a soldier named Pantera. Celsus mentions this in his writing, "The True Word", where he is quoted by Origen in Book 1:32. "But let us now return to where the Jew is introduced, speaking of the mother of Jesus, and saying that "when she was pregnant she was turned out of doors by the carpenter to whom she had been betrothed, as having been guilty of adultery, and that she bore a child to a certain soldier named Panthera." Epiphanius, in refutation of Celsus, writes that Joseph and Cleopas were sons of "Jacob, surnamed Panther."


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Two Talmudic-era texts referring to a "Jesus, son of Pantera (Pandera)" are Tosefta Hullin 2:22f: "Jacob… came to heal him in the name of Jesus son of Pantera" and Qohelet Rabbah 1:8(3): "Jacob… came to heal him in the name of Jesus son of Pandera" and some editions of the Jerusalem Talmud also specifically name Jesus as the son of Pandera: Jerusalem Abodah Zarah 2:2/7: "someone… whispered to him in the name of Jesus son of Pandera"; Jerusalem Shabboth 14:4/8: "someone… whispered to him in the name of Jesus son of Pandera"; Jerusalem Abodah Zarah 2:2/12: "Jacob… came to heal him. He said to him: we will speak to you in the name of Jesus son of Pandera"; Jerusalem Shabboth 14:4/13: "Jacob… came in the name of Jesus Pandera to heal him". Because some editions of the Jerusalem Talmud do not contain the name Jesus in these passages the association is disputed.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: One of the traditional explanations is that Matthew traces not a genealogy in the modern biological sense, but a record of legal inheritance showing the succession of Jesus in the royal line.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: According to this theory, Matthew's immediate goal is therefore not David, but Jeconiah, and in his final group of fourteen, he may freely jump to a maternal grandfather, skip generations, or perhaps even follow an adoptive lineage in order to get there. Attempts have been made to reconstruct Matthew's route, from the seminal work of Lord Hervey to Masson's recent work, but all are necessarily highly speculative.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: As a starting point, one of Joseph's two fathers could be by simple adoption, as Augustine suggests, or more likely the special adoption by a father-in-law with no sons, or could be a maternal grandfather. On the other hand, the resemblance between "Matthan" and "Matthat" suggests they are the same man (in which case Jacob and Eli are either identical or full brothers involved in a levirate marriage), and Matthew's departure from Luke at that point can only be to follow legal line of inheritance, perhaps through a maternal grandfather. Such reasoning could further explain what has happened with Zerubbabel and Shealtiel.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: A key difficulty with these explanations, however, is that there is no adoption in Jewish law, which of course is the relevant legal tradition even according to Jesus (Matt. 23:1–3), not the Roman legal tradition. If Joseph is not the biological father, his lineage does not apply to Jesus, and there is no provision available within Jewish law for this to be altered. One's natural father is always one's father. Nor is inheritance of lineage claims even possible through one's mother, in Jewish law.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: The genealogies in Luke and Matthew appear to briefly converge at Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, though they differ both above Shealtiel and below Zerubbabel. This is also the point where Matthew departs from the Old Testament record.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: In the Old Testament, Zerubbabel was a hero who led the Jews back from Babylon about 520 BC, governed Judah, and rebuilt the temple. Several times he is called a son of Shealtiel. He appears once in the genealogies in the "Book of Chronicles", where his descendants are traced for several generations, but the passage has a number of difficulties. While the Septuagint text here gives his father as Shealtiel, the Masoretic text instead substitutes Shealtiel's brother Pedaiah—both sons of King Jeconiah, according to the passage. Some, accepting the Masoretic reading, suppose that Pedaiah begot a son for Shealtiel through a levirate marriage, but most scholars now accept the Septuagint reading as original, in agreement with Matthew and all other accounts.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: The appearance of Zerubbabel and Shealtiel in Luke may be no more than a coincidence of names ("Zerubbabel", at least, is a very common Babylonian name). Shealtiel is given a completely different ancestry, and Zerubbabel a different son. Furthermore, interpolation between known dates would put the birth of Luke's Shealtiel at the very time when the celebrated Zerubbabel led the Jews back from Babylon. Thus, it is likely that Luke's Shealtiel and Zerubbabel were distinct from, and perhaps even named after, Matthew's.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: If they are the same, as many insist, then the question arises of how Shealtiel, like Joseph, could have two fathers. Yet another complex levirate marriage has often been invoked. Richard Bauckham, however, argues for the authenticity of Luke alone. In this view, the genealogy in "Chronicles" is a late addition grafting Zerubbabel onto the lineage of his predecessors, and Matthew has simply followed the royal succession. In fact, Bauckham says, Zerubbabel's legitimacy hinged on descending from David through Nathan rather than through the prophetically cursed ruling line.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: The name "Rhesa", given in Luke as the son of Zerubbabel, is usually seen as the Aramaic word "rēʾšāʾ", meaning "head" or "prince". It might well befit a son of Zerubbabel, but some see the name as a misplaced title of Zerubbabel himself. If so, the next generation in Luke, Joanan, might be Hananiah in "Chronicles". Subsequent names in Luke, as well as Matthew's next name Abiud, cannot be identified in "Chronicles" on more than a speculative basis.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: By the time of Jesus, it was already commonly understood that several prophecies in the Old Testament promised a Messiah descended from King David. Thus, in tracing the Davidic ancestry of Jesus, the Gospels aim to show that these messianic prophecies are fulfilled in him.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: The prophecy of Nathan—understood as foretelling a son of God who would inherit the throne of his ancestor David and reign forever—is quoted in Hebrews and strongly alluded to in Luke's account of the Annunciation. Likewise, the Psalms record God's promise to establish the seed of David on his throne forever, while Isaiah and Jeremiah speak of the coming reign of a righteous king of the house of David.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: David's ancestors are also understood as progenitors of the Messiah in several prophecies. Isaiah's description of the branch or root of Jesse is cited twice by Paul as a promise of the Christ.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: More controversial are the prophecies on the Messiah's relation, or lack thereof, to certain of David's descendants:


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: The promise to Solomon and Jeconiah's curse, if applicable, argue against Matthew. Yet evidently Matthew didn't find his respective genealogy incompatible with these prophecies.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Matthew also presents the virgin birth of Jesus as fulfillment of , which he quotes. Matthew apparently quotes the ancient Septuagint translation of the verse, which renders the Hebrew word "almah" as "virgin" in Greek.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Matthew inserts four women into the long list of men. The women are included early in the genealogy—Tamar, Rachab, Ruth, and "the wife of Uriah" (Bathsheba). Why Matthew chose to include these particular women, while passing over others such as the matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah, has been much discussed.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: There may be a common thread among these four women, to which Matthew wishes to draw attention. He sees God working through Tamar's seduction of her father-in-law, through the collusion of Rahab the harlot with Joshua's spies, through Ruth the Moabite's unexpected marriage with Boaz, and through David and Bathsheba's adultery.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible suggests that the common thread between all of these women is that they have associations with Gentiles. Rahab was a prostitute in Canaan, Bathsheba was married to a Hittite, Ruth resided in Moab, and Tamar had a name of Hebrew origin. The women's nationalities are not necessarily mentioned. The suggestion is that Matthew may be preparing the reader for the inclusion of the Gentiles in Christ's mission. Others point out an apparent element of sinfulness: Rahab was a prostitute, Tamar posed as a prostitute to seduce Judah, Bathsheba was an adulteress, and Ruth is sometimes seen as seducing Boaz—thus Matthew emphasizes God's grace in response to sin. Still others point out their unusual, even scandalous, unions—preparing the reader for what will be said about Mary. None of these explanations, however, adequately befits all four women.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Nolland suggests simply that these were all the known women attached to David's genealogy in the Book of Ruth.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Luke states that Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, was a "relative" (Greek syggenēs, συγγενής) of Mary, and that Elizabeth was descended from Aaron, of the tribe of Levi. Whether she was an aunt, a cousin, or a more distant relation cannot be determined from the word. Some, such as Gregory Nazianzen, have inferred from this that Mary herself was also a Levite descended from Aaron, and thus kingly and priestly lineages were united in Jesus. Others, such as Thomas Aquinas, have argued that the relationship was on the maternal side; that Mary's father was from Judah, Mary's mother from Levi. Modern scholars like Raymond Brown (1973) and Géza Vermes (2005) suggest that the relationship between Mary and Elizabeth is simply an invention of Luke.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: These two Gospels declare that Jesus was begotten not by Joseph, but by the power of the Holy Spirit while Mary was still a virgin, in fulfillment of prophecy. Thus, in mainstream Christianity, Jesus is regarded as being literally the "only begotten son" of God, while Joseph is regarded as his adoptive father.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Matthew immediately follows the genealogy of Jesus with: "This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit".


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Likewise, Luke tells of the Annunciation: "How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?" The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God."


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: The question then arises, why do both gospels seem to trace the genealogy of Jesus through Joseph, when they deny that he is his biological father? Augustine considers it a sufficient answer that Joseph was the father of Jesus by adoption, his legal father, through whom he could rightfully claim descent from David.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Tertullian, on the other hand, argues that Jesus must have descended from David by blood through his mother Mary. He sees Biblical support in Paul's statement that Jesus was "born of a descendant of David according to the flesh". Affirmations of Mary's Davidic ancestry are found early and often.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: The Ebionites, a sect who denied the virgin birth, used a gospel which, according to Epiphanius, was a recension of Matthew that omitted the genealogy and infancy narrative. These differences reflect the Ebionites' awareness of Jewish law (halakhah) relating to lineage inheritance, adoption, and the status of ancestry claims through the mother.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: The Qurʼan upholds the virgin birth of Jesus (ʻĪsā) and thus considers his genealogy only through Mary (Maryam), without mentioning Joseph.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: Mary is very highly regarded in the Qurʼan, the nineteenth sura being named for her. She is called a daughter of ʻImrān, whose family is the subject of the third sura. The same Mary (Maryam) is also called a sister of Aaron (Hārūn) in one place, and although this is often seen as an anachronistic conflation with the Old Testament Miriam (having the same name), who was sister to Aaron (Hārūn) and daughter to Amram (ʻImrān), the phrase is probably not to be understood literally.


title: Genealogy of Jesus

text: According to Muslim Scholar Sheikh Ibn Al-Feasy Al-Hanbali, the Quran used "Sister of Aaron" and "Daughter of Amram" for several reasons. One of those is the "relative calling" or "laqb" that is always used in Arabic literature. "Ahmad bin Muhammad bin Hanbal Abu 'Abd Allah al-Shaybani", for instance, is prevalently called "Ibn Hanbal" instead of "Ibn Muhammad". Or, "Muhammad bin Idris ash-Shafi`i" is always called "Imam Al-Shafi'i" instead of "Imam Idris" or "Imam Muhammad". This is how the Arabs refer to famous persons in their daily life. The same applies here; Sister of Aaron refers to "daughter of Aaron's siblings'", and daughter of Amram refers to "direct lineage of Amram" (Amram's descendants). This means that Mary was from the line of Amram, but not of Aaron's generation.


title: Velupillai Prabhakaran

text: Velupillai Prabhakaran (; ; , (26 November 1954 – 18 May 2009) was a Sri Lankan Tamil guerrilla and the founder and leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a militant organization that sought to create an independent Tamil state in the north and east of Sri Lanka, due to the oppression of Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sri Lankan Government. The LTTE waged war in Sri Lanka for more than 25 years, to create an independent state for the Sri Lankan Tamil people.


title: Velupillai Prabhakaran

text: Prabhakaran was the youngest of four children, born in Valvettithurai, on Sri Lanka's Jaffna peninsula's northern coast. Considered the heart of Tamil culture and literature in Sri Lanka, Jaffna was concentrated with growing Tamil nationalism, which called for autonomy for Tamils to protest the discrimination against them by the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lanka government and Sinhalese civilians since Sri Lanka gained independence from Britain in 1948.


title: Velupillai Prabhakaran

text: Founded in 1976, the LTTE came to prominence in 1983 after it ambushed a patrol of the Sri Lanka Army outside Jaffna, resulting in the deaths of 13 soldiers. This ambush, along with the subsequent pogrom that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Tamil civilians, is generally considered the start of the Sri Lankan Civil War. After years of fighting, including the intervention of the Indian Army (IPKF), the conflict was halted after international mediation in 2001. By then, the LTTE, which came to be known as the Tamil Tigers, controlled large swathes of land in the north and east of the country, running a "de facto" state with Prabhakaran as its leader. Peace talks eventually broke down, and the Sri Lanka Army launched a military campaign to defeat the LTTE in 2006.


title: Velupillai Prabhakaran

text: Prabhakaran, who had said, "I would prefer to die in honour rather than being caught alive by the enemy", was killed in fighting with the Sri Lankan Army in May 2009. His son Charles Anthony was also killed in fighting with the Sri Lankan Army, and his wife's and daughter's bodies were reportedly found by the Sri Lankan army; the Sri Lankan government later denied the report. His 12-year-old second son was executed a short time later. Prabhakaran's reported death and the announcement "We have decided to silence our guns. Our only regrets are for the lives lost and that we could not hold out for longer" by Selvarasa Pathmanathan, the Tigers' chief of international relations, brought an end to the armed conflict.


title: Velupillai Prabhakaran

text: A significant figure of Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism, Prabhakaran is often seen as a martyr by Sri Lankan Tamils, but critics have noted that he created one of the most ruthless and sophisticated insurgencies, with many of the tactics he pioneered influencing political militant groups globally. Prabhakaran argued that he chose military means only after observing that nonviolent means were ineffectual and obsolete, especially after Tamil Eelam revolutionary Thileepan's fatal hunger strike in 1987 had no effect. Influenced by prominent Indian nationalists Subhas Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh, who fought the British Empire, Prabhakaran declared that his goal was 'revolutionary socialism and the creation of an egalitarian society'.


title: Velupillai Prabhakaran

text: Velupillai Prabhakaran was born in the northern coastal town of Valvettithurai on 26 November 1954, the youngest of four children, to Thiruvenkadam Velupillai and his wife Vallipuram Parvathy. Thiruvenkadam Velupillai was the District land Officer in the Ceylon Government. He came from an influential and wealthy family who owned and managed the major Hindu temples in Valvettithurai.


title: Velupillai Prabhakaran

text: Angered by the discrimination and violent persecution against Tamil people by successive Sri Lankan governments, Prabhakaran joined the student group "Tamil Youth Front" (TYF) during the standardisation debates. In 1972, he founded the Tamil New Tigers (TNT), a successor to many earlier organizations that protested against the post-colonial political direction of the country, in which the minority Sri Lankan Tamils were pitted against the majority Sinhalese people.


title: Velupillai Prabhakaran

text: In 1975, after becoming heavily involved in the Tamil movement, he carried out the first major political assassination by a Tamil group, killing Alfred Duraiappah, the mayor of Jaffna, shooting him at point-blank range when he was about to enter the Hindu temple at Ponnaalai. The assassination was in response to the killings of Tamils in the 1974 Tamil conference incident, for which Duraiappah was to be blamed for because he backed the then-ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party.


title: Velupillai Prabhakaran

text: In the early 1970s, United Front government of Sirimavo Bandaranaike introduced the Policy of standardisation which made the criteria for university admission lower for the Sinhalese than for the Tamils. Several organizations to counter this act was formed by Tamil students. Prabhakaran aged 15, dropped out of school and got associated with the "Kuttimani-Thangathurai" "group" (which evolved later into TELO) formed by Selvarajah Yogachandran (known as Kuttimani) and Nadarajah Thangathurai who both also hailed from Valvettithurai.


title: Velupillai Prabhakaran

text: Prabhakaran along with Kuttimani, Ponnuthurai Sivakumaran and other prominent rebels joined the "Tamil Manavar Peravai" formed by a student named "Satiyaseelan" in 1970. This group comprised Tamil youth who advocated the rights of students to have fair enrollment. In 1973, Prabhakaran teamed up with "Chetti Thanabalasingam" and with a fraction of the Tamil Manavar Peravai to form the Tamil New Tigers (TNT). Their first notable attack was held at the Duraiappa stadium in Jaffna placing a bomb in an attempt to murder the Jaffna Mayor Alfred Duraiappah. A member of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party who was loyal to Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Duraiappah was seen as a traitor by the Tamil masses. Failing the attempt, Prabhakaran managed to shoot and kill Duraiappah who was on a visit at a Hindu temple at Ponnalai on 27 July 1975.


title: Velupillai Prabhakaran

text: On 5 May 1976, the TNT was renamed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), commonly known as the "Tamil Tigers".


title: Velupillai Prabhakaran

text: The LTTE by the 1980s operated in more attacks against police and military forces. On 23 July 1983, the LTTE ambushed an army patrol and killed 13 Sri Lankan soldiers in Thirunelveli, Sri Lanka. As a response to this were one of the worst government sponsored anti-Tamil riots held (the event known as "Black July") resulting in the destruction of Tamil houses and shops and death of hundreds of Tamils and making over 150 000 Tamils homeless.


title: Velupillai Prabhakaran

text: As a result of the riots were several Tamils joining the LTTE and the LTTE marked the beginning of the Eelam War I. With Prabhakaran being the most wanted man in Sri Lanka, he had said in 1984, “I would prefer to die in honour rather than being caught alive by the enemy.” Prabhakaran held his first speech on 4 August 1987 at the Suthumalai Amman temple in front of over 100 000 people explaining the position of the LTTE. This speech is seen as a historic turning point in the Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism. In the same year, "Asiaweek" compared Prabhakaran to revolutionary Che Guevara, while "Newsweek" called him "the stuff of legend".


title: Velupillai Prabhakaran

text: The LTTE were allegedly involved in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the ex-prime minister of India in 1991, which they denied involvement and alleged the event as an international conspiracy against them. However, in a 2011 interview, Kumaran Pathmanathan, who was the Treasurer of LTTE and its chief arms procurer, apologized to India for Velupillai Prabhakaran's "mistake" of killing former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. He further said Rajiv's assassination was "well planned and done actually with Prabhakaran and (LTTE intelligence chief Pottu Amman). Everyone knows the truth". The TADA Court issued an arrest warrant for plotting of the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. In October 2010 the charges against Prabhakaran were dropped by the TADA Court after the Central Bureau of Investigation filed a report stating that he was dead and the case was closed.


title: Velupillai Prabhakaran

text: Prabhakaran's first and only major press conference was held in Killinochchi on 10 April 2002. It was reported that more than 200 journalists from the local and foreign media attended this event and they had to go through a 10-hour security screening before the event in which Anton Balasingham introduced the LTTE leader as the ""President and Prime" "Minister of Tamil Eelam."" A number of questions were asked about LTTE's commitment towards the erstwhile peace process and Prabhakaran and Dr. Anton Balasingham jointly answered the questions. Repeated questions about his involvement in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination were only answered in a sober note by both Balasingham and Prabhakaran. They called it a "tragic incident" ("Thunbiyal Chambavam", as quoted in Tamil) they requested the press "not to dig into an incident that happened 10 years ago."


title: Velupillai Prabhakaran

text: During the interview, he stated that the right condition has not risen to give up the demand of Tamil Eelam. He further mentioned that "There are three fundamentals. That is Tamil homeland, Tamil nationality and Tamil right to self-determination. These are the fundamental demands of the Tamil people. Once these demands are accepted or a political solution is put forward by recognising these three fundamentals and our people are satisfied with the solutions we will consider giving up the demand for Eelam." He further added that Tamil Eelam was not only the demand of the LTTE but also the demand of the Tamil people.


title: Velupillai Prabhakaran

text: Prabhakaran also answered a number of questions in which he reaffirmed their commitment towards the peace process, quoted "We are sincerely committed to the peace process. It is because we are sincerely committed to peace that we continued a four month cessation of hostilities" was also firm in de-proscription of the LTTE by Sri Lanka and India, "We want the government of India to lift the ban on the LTTE. We will raise the issue at the appropriate time."


title: Velupillai Prabhakaran

text: Prabhakaran also insisted firmly that only de-proscription would bring forth an amenable solution to the ongoing peace process mediated by Norway: "We have informed the government, we have told the Norwegians that de-proscription is a necessary condition for the commencements of talks."