title: Andrea Palladio

text: Palladio died on 19 August 1580, not long after the work was begun. It was completed, with a number of modifications, by Vincenzo Scamozzi and inaugurated in 1584 with a performance of the tragedy "Oedipus Rex" by Sophocles.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: Very little is known of Palladio's personal life. Documents show that he received a dowry in April 1534 from the family of his wife, Allegradonna, the daughter of a carpenter. They had four sons: Leonida, Marcantonio, Orazio and Silla, and a daughter, Zenobia. Two of the sons, Leonida and Orzzio, died during a short period in 1572, greatly affecting their father. He died on 19 August 1580 at either Vicenza or Maser, and was buried in the church of Santa Corona in Vicenza. In 1844, a new tomb was built in a chapel dedicated to him in that cemetery.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: Although all of his buildings are found in relatively small corner of Italy, they had an influence far beyond. They particularly inspired neoclassical architects in Britain and in the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries. While he designed churches and urban palaces, his plans for villas and country houses were particularly admired and copied.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: His books with their detailed illustrations and plans were especially influential. His first book, "L'Antichida di Roma" ("Antiquities of Rome") was published in 1554. He then made architectural drawings to illustrate a book by his patron, Daniele Barbaro, a commentary on Vitruvius. His most famous work was "I quattro libri dell'architettura" ("The Four Books of Architecture"), published in 1570, which set out rules others could follow. The first book includes studies of decorative styles, classical orders, and materials. He illustrated a rich variety of columns, arcades, pediments, pilasters and other details which were soon adapted and copied. The second book included Palladio's town and country house designs and classical reconstructions. The third book had bridge and basilica designs, city planning designs, and classical halls. The fourth book included information on the reconstruction of ancient Roman temples. The books were translated into many languages, and went through many editions, well into the eighteenth and nineteenth century.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: Palladio's style inspired several works by Claude Nicolas Ledoux in France, including the Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans, begun in 1775. In Germany, Johann von Goethe in his "Italian Journey" described Palladio as a genius, declaring that his unfinished Convent of Santa Maria della Carità was the most perfect existing work of architecture. The German architects David Gilly and his son Friedrich Gilly were also admirers of Palladio, and constructed palaces for the German Emperor Frederick-William III in the style, including the Paretz Palace. Friedrich Gilly's work, the National Theatre in Berlin (1798), built for Frederick the Great. Most of his buildings were destroyed during World War II.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: Palladio's work was especially popular in England, where the villa style was adapted for country houses. The first English architect to adapt Palladio's work was Inigo Jones, who made a long trip to Vicenza and returned full of Palladian ideas. His first major work in the style was the Queen's House at Greenwich (1616–1635), modelled after Palladio's villas.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: Wilton House is another adaptation of Palladio's villa plans. It had a particularly famous feature, the Palladio Bridge, designed around 1736. The bridge was extremely popular, and copies were made for other houses, including Stowe House. Another variation, the Marble Bridge, was made for Empress Catherine the Great of Russia for her gardens at Tsarskoe Selo near Saint Petersburg, Russia.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: Other English architects, including Elizabeth Wilbraham, and Christopher Wren also embraced the Palladian style. Another English admirer was the architect, Richard Boyle, 4th Earl of Cork, also known as Lord Burlington, who, with William Kent, designed Chiswick House. The Italian-born Giacomo Leoni also constructed Palladian houses in England.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: The influence of Palladio also reached to the United States, where the architecture and symbols of the Roman Republic were adapted for the architecture and institutions of the newly independent nation. The Massachusetts governor and architect Thomas Dawes also admired the style, and used it when rebuilding Harvard Hall at Harvard University in 1766. Palladio's villas inspired Monticello, the residence of the third U.S. President, Thomas Jefferson, himself an architect. Jefferson organized a competition for the first United States Capitol building. It was won by William Thornton with a design inspired in part Palladio and La Rotonda. The One Hundred Eleventh Congress of the United States of America called him the "Father of American Architecture" (Congressional Resolution no. 259 of 6 December 2010). His influence can also be seen in American plantation buildings.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: More than 330 of Palladio's original drawings and sketches still survive in the collections of the Royal Institute of British Architects, most of which originally were owned by Inigo Jones. Jones collected a significant number of these on his Grand Tour of 1613–1614, while some were a gift from Henry Wotton. The Center for Palladian Studies in America, Inc., a nonprofit membership organization, was founded in 1979 to research and promote understanding of Palladio's influence in the architecture of the United States.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: Palladio is known as one of the most influential architects in Western architecture. His architectural works have "been valued for centuries as the quintessence of High Renaissance calm and harmony".


title: Andrea Palladio

text: The basic elements of Italian Renaissance architecture, including Doric columns, lintels, cornices, loggias, pediments and domes had already been used in the 15th century or earlier, before Palladio. They had been skilfully brought together by Brunelleschi in the Pazzi Chapel (1420) and the Medici-Riccardi Palace (1444–1449). At the beginning of the High Renaissance in the early 16th century, Bramante used these elements together in the Tempietto in Rome (1502), which combined a dome and a central plan based on a Greek Cross. The architect Baldassare Peruzzi had introduced the first Renaissance suburban villas, based on a Roman model and surrounded by gardens. The Farnese Palace in Rome (1530–1580) by Sangallo introduced a new kind of Renaissance palace, with monumental blocks, ornate cornices, lateral wings and multiple stairways. Michelangelo had made a plan for a central dome at Saint Peter's Basilica and added a new loggia to the facade of the Farnese Palace. All of these plans already existed before Palladio; his contribution was to refine, simplify, and use them in innovative ways.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: The style of Palladio employed a classical repertoire of elements in new ways. He clearly expressed the function of each part of the building by its form, particularly elevating giving precedence to the "piano nobile", the ceremonial floor, of his villas and palaces. As much as possible he simplified the forms, as he did at Villa Capra "La Rotonda", surrounding a circular dome and interior with perfectly square facades, and placing the building pedestal to be more visible and more dramatic.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: Palladio was inspired by classical Roman architecture, but he did not slavishly imitate it. He chose elements and assembled them in innovative ways appropriate to the site and function of the building. His buildings were very often placed on pedestals, raise them up and make them more visible, and so they could offer a view. The villas very often had loggias, covered arcades or walkways on the outside of upper levels, which gave a view of the scenery or city below, and also gave variety to the facade. When he designed his rustic villas and suburban villas, he paid particular attention to the site, integrating them as much as possible into nature, either by sites on hilltops or looking out at gardens or rivers.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: The Sarlian window, or Venetian window, also known as a Palladian window, was another common feature of his style, which he used both for windows and the arches of the loggias of his buildings. It consists of an arched window flanked by two smaller square windows, divided by two columns or pilasters and often topped by a small entablature and by a small circular window or hole, called an oculus. These particular features originally appeared in the triumphal arches of Rome, and had been used in the earlier Renaissance by Bramante, but Palladio used them in novel ways, particularly in the facade of the Basilica Palladiana and in the Villa Pojana. They also became a common feature of later Palladian buildings in England and elsewhere.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: In his later work, particularly the Palazzo Valmarana and the Palazzo del Capitaniato in Vicenza, his style became more ornate and more decorative, with more sculptural decoration on the facade, tending toward Mannerism. His buildings in this period were examples of the transition beginning to what would become Baroque architecture.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: Palladio's architecture was not dependent on expensive materials, which must have been an advantage to his more financially pressed clients. Many of his buildings are of brick covered with stucco. Stuccoed brickwork was always used in his villa designs in order to give the appearance of a classical Roman structure.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: His success as an architect is based not only on the beauty of his work, but also for its harmony with the culture of his time. His success and influence came from the integration of extraordinary aesthetic quality with expressive characteristics that resonated with his clients' social aspirations. His buildings served to communicate, visually, their place in the social order of their culture. This powerful integration of beauty and the physical representation of social meanings is apparent in three major building types: the urban palazzo, the agricultural villa, and the church.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: Relative to his trips to Rome, Palladio developed three main palace types by 1556. In 1550, the Palazzo Chiericati was completed. The proportions for the building were based on musical ratios for adjacent rooms. The building was centralized by a tripartite division of a series of columns or colonnades. In 1552, the Palazzo Porto located in Vicenza was rebuilt incorporating the Roman Renaissance element for façades. A colonnade of Corinthian columns surrounded a main court. The Palazzo Antonini in Udine, constructed in 1556, had a centralized hall with four columns and service spaces placed relatively toward one side. He used styles of incorporating the six columns, supported by pediments, into the walls as part of the façade. This technique had been applied in his villa designs as well. Palladio experimented with the plan of the Palazzo Porto by incorporating it into the Palazzo Thiene. It was an earlier project from 1545 to 1550 and remained uncompleted due to elaborate elevations in his designs. He used Mannerist elements such as stucco surface reliefs and large columns, often extending two stories high.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: In his urban structures he developed a new improved version of the typical early Renaissance palazzo (exemplified by the Palazzo Strozzi). Adapting a new urban palazzo type created by Bramante in the House of Raphael, Palladio found a powerful expression of the importance of the owner and his social position. The main living quarters of the owner on the second level were clearly distinguished in importance by use of a pedimented classical portico, centered and raised above the subsidiary and utilitarian ground level (illustrated in the Palazzo Porto and the Palazzo Valmarana). The tallness of the portico was achieved by incorporating the owner's sleeping quarters on the third level, within a giant two-story classical colonnade, a motif adapted from Michelangelo's Capitoline buildings in Rome. The elevated main floor level became known as the "piano nobile", and is still referred to as the "first floor" in Europe.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: Palladio also established an influential new building format for the agricultural villas of the Venetian aristocracy. Palladio's approach to his villa designs was not relative to his experience in Rome. His designs were based on practicality and employed few reliefs. He consolidated the various stand-alone farm outbuildings into a single impressive structure, arranged as a highly organized whole, dominated by a strong centre and symmetrical side wings, as illustrated at Villa Barbaro. In the project of the Villa Barbaro, Palladio most likely was also engaged in the interior decoration. Alongside the painter Paolo Veronese, he invented the complex and sophisticated illusionistic landscape paintings that cover the walls of various rooms.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: The Villa Capra "La Rotonda" of 1552, outside Vicenza, was constructed as a summer house with views from all four sides. The plan has centralized circular halls with wings and porticos expanding on all four sides. Palladio began to implement the classical temple front into his design of façades for villas. He felt that to make an entry appear grand, the Roman temple front would be the most suitable style. The Palladian villa configuration often consists of a centralized block raised on an elevated podium, accessed by grand steps, and flanked by lower service wings, as at Villa Foscari and Villa Badoer. This format, with the quarters of the owners at the elevated centre of their own world, found resonance as a prototype for Italian villas and later for the country estates of the British nobility (such as Lord Burlington's Chiswick House, Vanbrugh's Blenheim, Walpole's Houghton Hall, and Adam's Kedleston Hall and Paxton House in Scotland). His villas were used by a capitalist gentry who developed an interest in agriculture and land. The configuration was a perfect architectural expression of their world view, clearly expressing their perceived position in the social order of the times. His influence was extended worldwide into the British colonies.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: Palladio developed his own prototype for the plan of the villas that was flexible to moderate in scale and function. The Palladian villa format was easily adapted for a democratic world view, as may be seen at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and his arrangement for the University of Virginia. It also may be seen applied as recently as 1940 in Pope's National Gallery in Washington D.C., where the public entry to the world of high culture occupies the exalted centre position. The rustication of exposed basement walls of Victorian residences is a late remnant of the Palladian format, clearly expressed as a podium for the main living space for the family.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: Similarly, Palladio created a new configuration for the design of Catholic churches that established two interlocking architectural orders, each clearly articulated, yet delineating a hierarchy of a larger order overriding a lesser order. This idea was in direct coincidence with the rising acceptance of the theological ideas of St. Thomas Aquinas, who postulated the notion of two worlds existing simultaneously: the divine world of faith, and the earthly world of humans. Palladio created an architecture which made a visual statement communicating the idea of two superimposed systems, as illustrated at San Francesco della Vigna. In a time when religious dominance in Western culture was threatened by the rising power of science and secular humanists, this architecture found great favor with the Catholic Church as a clear statement of the proper relationship of the earthly and the spiritual worlds.


title: Andrea Palladio

text: Aside from Palladio's designs, his publications further contributed to Palladianism. During the second half of his life, Palladio published many books on architecture, most famously, "I quattro libri dell'architettura" ("The Four Books of Architecture", Venice, 1570).


title: Scottish Deerhound

text: The Scottish Deerhound, or simply the Deerhound, is a large breed of sighthound, once bred to hunt the red deer by coursing. In outward appearance, the Scottish Deerhound is similar to the Greyhound, but larger and more heavily boned with a rough-coat.


title: Scottish Deerhound

text: The Hilton of Cadboll Stone dates from around 1,200 years ago, and depicts at the bottom of the panel a deer that is being chased by two large dogs and two armed horsemen. However, systematic zooarchaeology and genetics have yet to show any connection between those symbolic representations of dog types and the modern breed, which only became widely known as the "Scottish Deerhound" related to English regional greyhounds, such as the Highland greyhound in the early 19th century. The Deerhound was in earlier times believed to be descended from old Gaelic hounds, and therefore closely related to the Irish Wolfhound, it was in fact the major foundation breed in the late 19th century of the modern Irish Wolfhound.


title: Scottish Deerhound

text: The Deerhound was bred to hunt red deer by coursing and deer-stalking until the end of the 19th century. With modern rifles and smaller deer-forests, slower tracking dogs were preferred to fast and far-running Deerhounds. In coursing deer, a single Deerhound or a pair was brought as close as possible to red deer, then released to run one of them down by speed, which if successful would happen within a few minutes — rarely were there successful sustained chases.


title: Scottish Deerhound

text: With the eventual demise of the clan systems in Scotland, these hunting dogs became sporting animals for landowners and the nobility, but were also bred and hunted with by common folk when feasible. As fast and silent hunters they made quick work of any game the size of a hare or larger and were highly regarded by nobility and poachers alike. One of the most precarious times in the breed's history seems to have been towards the end of the nineteenth century, when many of the large Scottish estates were split into small estates for sporting purposes, and few then kept Deerhounds. The new fashion was for stalking and shooting, which required only a tracking dog to follow the wounded animal, using a collie or similar breed. Although a few estates still employed Deerhounds for their original work, the breed was left in the hands of a few enthusiasts who made them a show breed.


title: Scottish Deerhound

text: Teddy Roosevelt wrote that some Canadian and American hunters used "the greyhound, whether the smooth-haired, or the rough-coated Scotch deer-hound" on the wolf and deer Dr. Q van Hummell also remarks on his Deerhound pack being used on timber wolves and coyotes.


title: Scottish Deerhound

text: In Australia, Deerhounds and their cross-breeds such as the Kangaroo Dog have historically been used to hunt the kangaroo as well as wild boar, modern descriptions of such hunts with Deerhounds on kangaroo and emu have been recorded by Kenneth Cassels.


title: Scottish Deerhound

text: In outward appearance, the Scottish Deerhound is similar to the Greyhound, but larger and more heavily boned. However, Deerhounds have a number of characteristics that set them apart. While not as fast as a Greyhound on a smooth, firm surface, once the going gets rough or heavy they can outrun a Greyhound. The environment in which they worked, the cool, often wet, and hilly Scottish Highland glens, contributed to the larger, rough-coated appearance of the breed. The Deerhound is closely related to the Irish wolfhound and was a contributor to that breed when it was created at the end of the 19th century.


title: Scottish Deerhound

text: The Scottish Deerhound resembles a rough-coated greyhound. It is however, larger in size and bone. Minimum desirable height at withers of males is 30 inches (75–80 cm) or more, weight ; height of females from upwards, weight from . It is one of the tallest sighthounds, with a harsh long coat and mane, somewhat softer beard and moustache, and softer hair on breast and belly. It has small, dark "rose" ears which are soft and folded back against the head unless held semi-erect in excitement.


title: Scottish Deerhound

text: The harsh, wiry coat in modern dogs is only seen in self-coloured various shades of gray (blue-gray is preferred). Historically, Deerhounds also could be seen with true brindle, yellow, and red fawn coats, or combinations as recorded in the now oldest & most original breed standard, that of the AKC. 19th century Scottish paintings tend to indicate these colours were associated with a wire haired coat, but, with show breeders preferring a dark, longer coat, these genes now appear to be lost. A white chest and toes are allowed, and a slight white tip to the tail; a white blaze on the head or a white collar are not accepted.


title: Scottish Deerhound

text: The head is long, skull flat, with little stop and a tapering muzzle. The eyes are dark, dark brown or hazel in colour. The teeth should form a level, complete scissor bite. The long straight or curved tail, well covered with hair, should almost reach the ground.


title: Scottish Deerhound

text: The Scottish Deerhound is gentle and extremely friendly. The breed is famed for being docile and eager to please, with a bearing of gentle dignity. It is however a true sighthound which has been selected for generations to pursue game; consequently, most Deerhounds will be eager to chase.


title: Scottish Deerhound

text: The Deerhound needs considerable exercise when young to develop properly and to maintain its health and condition. That does not mean it needs a large house to live in; however it should have regular access to free exercise in a large fenced or otherwise "safe" area. Deerhounds should not be raised with access only to leash walking (or any form of "forced" exercise) or a small yard, this would be detrimental to their health and development as their bones grow very quickly and the young dogs need to play and rest according to their instincts.


title: Scottish Deerhound

text: Young Deerhounds can sometimes, depending on the individual, be quite destructive especially when they are not given sufficient exercise; however, the average adult Deerhound may want to spend most of the day stretched out on the floor or a couch, sleeping. They do require a stimulus, preferably another Deerhound, and a large area to exercise properly and frequently. They are gentle and docile indoors and are generally good around company and children. However, due to their size, they require supervision with young children.


title: Scottish Deerhound

text: Longevity for this breed, according to a US health survey, is 8.4 years for males and 8.9 years for females, and a UK survey puts the average at 8.3 and median at 8.6. The serious health issues in the breed include cardiomyopathy; osteosarcoma; bloat; stomach or splenic torsion, called Gastric dilatation volvulus; and cystinuria. See current health studies.


title: Scottish Deerhound

text: Like other sighthounds, deerhounds have unique anatomical and physiological features likely due to intentional selection for hunting by speed and sight. Laboratory studies have established reference intervals for haematology and serum biochemical profiles in Deerhounds, some of which are shared by all sighthounds, and some of which may be unique to this breed.


title: Kylie Minogue albums discography

text: Australian singer Kylie Minogue has released fifteen studio albums, thirteen compilation albums, nine live albums, ten extended plays (EP), eleven remix albums and two box sets. With estimated career sales of over 80 million albums worldwide as of July 2020, Minogue is recognized as the highest-selling female Australian recording artist of all time. Referred as the “Princess of Pop” by various media outlets, she has scored seven number-one albums on the ARIA Albums Chart, the most for any female Australian artist. In the United Kingdom, she holds the record for being the first woman to score a number 1 on the Official Albums Chart in five consecutive decades, from the 1980s to the 2020s.


title: Kylie Minogue albums discography

text: Minogue signed a recording contract with Mushroom Records in early 1987, and released her self-titled debut album the following year. Written and produced by Stock Aitken Waterman, the album was distributed in the UK by Waterman's own label, PWL Records. The album spent six weeks at number one on the UK Albums Chart, eventually became the fifth highest-selling album of the decade. It has sold over 5 million copies worldwide. Her second album, "Enjoy Yourself" (1989) debuted at number one in the UK and became the sixth best-selling album of the year. She subsequently released "Rhythm of Love" (1990) and "Let's Get to It" (1991), both reached the top 20 in the UK and Australia. Her final release under PWL Records, "Greatest Hits" (1992), was her third number-one entry in the UK.


title: Kylie Minogue albums discography

text: During her years under Deconstruction Records, Minogue released the self-titled album in 1994 and "Impossible Princess" in 1997. Both albums peaked inside the top ten in the UK and Australia. After moving to Parlophone in 1999, she earned her first number-one album in her home country with "Light Years" (2000). Minogue scored the best-selling album of her career with "Fever" (2001), which sold over 6 million copies worldwide as of May 2008. It was the thirtieth best-selling album globally in 2002, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. Her next releases under Parlophone were studio albums "Body Language" (2003) and "X" (2007), as well as the greatest hits album "Ultimate Kylie" (2004)—all reached platinum status in Australia and the UK. In 2010, "Aphrodite" debuted at number one in the UK, making Minogue the first female artist to have number one albums in four consecutive decades. In 2012, Minogue released the greatest hits album "The Best of Kylie Minogue" and the orchestral album "The Abbey Road Sessions" to celebrate her twenty-fifth year in the music industry.


title: Kylie Minogue albums discography

text: Released during her short-lived contract with entertainment company Roc Nation, "Kiss Me Once" (2014) became her fourth number-one album in Australia. Minogue collaborated with record producers Fernando Garibay and Giorgio Moroder in two experimental EPs, "Sleepwalker" (2014) and "Kylie and Garibay" (2015), before releasing her final record under Parlophone—the Christmas album "Kylie Christmas" (2015). The album was re-released in the following year with additional tracks, retitled "Kylie Christmas: Snow Queen Edition". In 2017, Minogue signed a global recording contract with BMG Rights Management and a joint-deal with Mushroom Music Labels in distributing her albums in Australia and New Zealand. Her subsequent releases under BMG were studio albums "Golden" (2018) and "Disco" (2020), as well as the compilation album "" (2019)—all debuted at number one in both Australia and the UK. "Golden" and "Disco" are among the fastest-selling vinyl albums of the century in the UK, according to the Official Charts Company in March 2021.


title: Srikanth Kidambi

text: Srikanth Kidambi (born 7 February 1993) is an Indian badminton player. A former world no. 1, Kidambi was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian award, in 2018. and the Arjuna award in 2015. In 2021, he became the first Indian to reach the World Championship final in the men's singles discipline.


title: Srikanth Kidambi

text: Srikanth Nammalwar Kidambi was born in Ravulapalem, Andhra Pradesh on 7 February 1993 to a Telugu family. His father, KVS Krishna, is a landlord, and his mother Radha is a house-wife. His older brother K. Nandagopal is also a badminton player and junior national champion with his brother. They used to live in the same house until 2008 and then Srikanth moved to the Gopichand Academy for continuing his practice.


title: Srikanth Kidambi

text: In the 2011 Commonwealth Youth Games in the Isle of Man, Kidambi won the bronze medal in men's doubles and silver in mixed doubles. He also emerged as the winner in the singles and doubles category at the All India Junior International Badminton Championship held in Pune.


title: Srikanth Kidambi

text: In 2012, Kidambi overcame the then Junior World Champion Zulfadli Zulkiffli of Malaysia in the Maldives International Challenge to claim the men's singles title.


title: Srikanth Kidambi

text: In the Thailand Open Grand Prix Gold event, Kidambi won the men's singles title, beating then world number eight and local favorite Boonsak Ponsana in straight games. In the same year, Kidambi beat reigning champion and Olympian Parupalli Kashyap in the All India Senior National Championships in Delhi to claim his first senior national title. He was also part of the Awadhe Warriors team that finished second in the Indian Badminton League, 2013.


title: Srikanth Kidambi

text: Kidambi finished runner up at the 2014 India Open Grand Prix Gold event in Lucknow and was a quarterfinalist in the 2014 Malaysian Open. He was part of the Indian badminton contingent that reached the semi-finals of the mixed team event at the Commonwealth Games 2014 in Glasgow. He also reached the quarter-finals of the men's singles event in the same tournament.


title: Srikanth Kidambi

text: Kidambi became the first Indian man to win gold at the 2015 Swiss Open Grand Prix Gold by defeating Viktor Axelsen 21–15, 12–21, 21–14. During the same year, he also won the India Open Super Series title by defeating Viktor Axelsen in the final.


title: Srikanth Kidambi

text: Kidambi reached the semifinal in the Malaysia Masters, where he lost to Iskandar Zulkarnain Zainuddin of Malaysia in January. The following week, he won the Syed Modi International Badminton Championships Grand Prix Gold title, defeating Huang Yuxiang 21–13, 14–21, 21–14 in the final. At the 2016 South Asian Games, he won two gold medals, in men's team and men's singles, defeating Prannoy Kumar in the singles final. At the 2016 Badminton Asia Team Championship, although his team lost in the semifinal, he remained undefeated.


title: Srikanth Kidambi

text: In the 2016 Rio Olympics, the World No. 11 Kidambi entered the Round of 16 of the men's singles by beating Lino Muñoz and Henri Hurskainen. He went on to beat World No. 5 Jan Ø. Jørgensen 21–19, 21–19 to reach the quarterfinals, but was defeated by Lin Dan by a score of 6–21, 21–11, and 18–21.


title: Srikanth Kidambi

text: Kidambi and Sai Praneeth created history when they became the first ever Indian pair to enter the finals of a ranking event in Badminton. Both hailing from Hyderabad and being coached by Pullela Gopichand, it was Sai Praneeth who prevailed 17–21, 21–17, 21–12 eventually to clinch the Singapore Super Series title.


title: Srikanth Kidambi

text: Kidambi won the Indonesia Super Series beating Japan's Kazumasa Sakai 21–11, 21–19, thereby becoming the first ever Indian male player to do so. He went on to win the Australian Super Series beating China's Chen Long 22–20, 21–16 in the final, setting an Indian record for entering three consecutive Super Series Finals. At the World Championships, he was defeated in the quarter-final by South Korea's Son Wan-Ho in straight games. At the next Super Series, the Denmark, he won the title defeating Lee Hyun-il of Korea 21–10, 21–5 in the final. Following his good run, Kidambi became the fourth player ever to win four Super Series titles in a year, after he won the French Super Series that followed, defeating Japan's Kenta Nishimoto 21–14, 21–13 in the final. In the process, he equalled the record held by Lee Chong Wei, Lin Dan, and Chen Long. Following the victory, he reached his career-best world ranking of 2.


title: Srikanth Kidambi

text: Kidambi started 2018 at the India Open as the second seed. He was defeated in the second round by Iskandar Zulkarnain Zainuddin who had qualified from the qualifiers. He also lost in the second round at the All England Open to Chinese player Huang Yuxiang in three games. At the Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Kidambi was more successful, winning a gold in the mixed team event, and a silver in the singles event. He achieved the world number 1 ranking for a week during this period. Kidambi lost to Liew Daren 18-21,18-21 at the world championships pre-quarters. Kidambi had a disappointing 2018 Asian Games where in singles he lost in 1st round to Wong Wing Ki 21-23,19-21 and in the team event after defeating Maldives 3-0 in the 1st round his team suffered a loss to Indonesia in quarterfinals.


title: Srikanth Kidambi

text: Kidambi represented his country at the South Asian Games in Nepal, and won the gold medal in the team event.


title: Srikanth Kidambi

text: In 2021, Kidambi reached the finals of World championships becoming the first Indian male badminton player to do so. He lost the final to Loh Kean Yew to win the silver medal.


title: Srikanth Kidambi

text: Kidambi was part of the Indian men's team for Thomas Cup 2022. The team went on to win the Thomas Cup by beating Indonesia 3-0 in the final, with Kidambi winning his match against Jonatan Christie.


title: Srikanth Kidambi

text: The BWF World Tour, which was announced on 19 March 2017 and implemented in 2018, is a series of elite badminton tournaments sanctioned by the Badminton World Federation (BWF). The BWF World Tours are divided into levels of World Tour Finals, Super 1000, Super 750, Super 500, Super 300 (part of the HSBC World Tour), and the BWF Tour Super 100.


title: Srikanth Kidambi

text: The BWF Superseries, which was launched on 14 December 2006 and implemented in 2007, is a series of elite badminton tournaments, sanctioned by the Badminton World Federation (BWF). BWF Superseries levels are Superseries and Superseries Premier. A season of Superseries consists of twelve tournaments around the world that have been introduced since 2011. Successful players are invited to the Superseries Finals, which are held at the end of each year.


title: Srikanth Kidambi

text: The BWF Grand Prix had two levels, the BWF Grand Prix and Grand Prix Gold. It was a series of badminton tournaments sanctioned by the Badminton World Federation (BWF) which was held from 2007 to 2017.


title: Srikanth Kidambi

text: Record against Year-end Finals finalists, World Championships semi finalists, and Olympic quarter finalists. Accurate as of 6 November 2022.


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression is a 1997 book by Stéphane Courtois, Andrzej Paczkowski, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Margolin, and several other European academics documenting a history of political repression by communist states, including genocides, extrajudicial executions, deportations, and deaths in labor camps and artificially created famines. The book was originally published in France as "Le Livre noir du communisme: Crimes, terreur, répression" by Éditions Robert Laffont. In the United States, it was published by Harvard University Press, with a foreword by Martin Malia. The German edition, published by Piper Verlag, includes a chapter written by Joachim Gauck. The introduction was written by Courtois. Historian François Furet was originally slated to write the introduction, but he died before being able to do so.


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: "The Black Book of Communism" has been translated into numerous languages, sold millions of copies, and is considered one of the most influential and controversial books written about the history of communism in the 20th century, in particular the history of the Soviet Union and other state socialist regimes. The work was praised by a broad range of popular-press publications and historians, while academic press and specialist reviews were more critical or mixed for some historical innacuracies, and Werth's chapter stood out as a positive; the introduction by Courtois was especially criticized, including by three of the main contributors, both for comparing communism to Nazism and inflating the numbers of victims, as well as manipulation of numbers and coming to an overall count of victims. The book's title was chosen to echo "The Black Book of Soviet Jewry", a documentary record of Nazi atrocities in the Eastern Front, written by Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman for the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during World War II.


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: The authors use the term "communism" to mean Leninist and Marxist–Leninist communism, i.e. the actually existing communist regimes and "real socialism" of the 20th century; they distinguish it from small-c communism, which has existed for millennia, while capital-c Communism began in 1917 with the Bolshevik Revolution, which Stéphane Courtois describes as a coup.


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: The introduction, written by Courtois, was the main source of controversy, and was acknowledged by Martin Malia in his foreword. Courtois writes that "Communist regimes turned mass crime into a full-blown system of government" and are responsible for a greater number of deaths than Nazism or any other political system. Courtois says that "Communism, the defining characteristic of the 'short twentieth century' that began in Sarajevo in 1914 and ended in Moscow in 1991, finds itself at center states in the story. Communism predated fascism and Nazism, outlived both, and left its mark on four continents." Courtois goes on to explain what is meant by the term "Communism" in the book. According to Courtois, "[w]e must make a distinction between the doctrine of communism and its practice. As a political philosophy, communism has existed for centuries, even millennia." Citing Plato's "Republic" and Thomas More as communist examples of what he terms "utopian philosophy", Courtois states that "the Communism that concerns us does not exist in the transcendent sphere of ideas. This Communism is altogether real; it has existed at key moments of history and in particular countries, brought to life by its famous leaders", citing Fidel Castro, Jacques Duclos, Vladimir Lenin, Georges Marchais, Ho Chi Minh, Joseph Stalin, and Maurice Thorez as examples of the latter.


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: Courtois writes that "[r]egardless of the role that theoretical communist doctrines may have played in the practice of real Communism before 1917", it was what he terms "flesh-and-blood Communism" which "imposed wholesale repression, culminating in a state-sponsored reign of terror." Courtois then asks whether the ideology itself is "blameless", stating that "[t]here will always be some nitpickers who maintain that actual Communism has nothing in common with theoretical communism" and that "it would be absurd to claim that doctrines expounded prior to Jesus Christ, during the Renaissance, or even in the nineteenth century were responsible for the events that took place in the twentieth century." Quoting Ignazio Silone ("Revolutions, like trees, are recognized by the fruit they bear"), Courtois says that "[i]t was not without reason" that the Bolsheviks, whose party was called the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, renamed it as the Russian Communist Party, called themselves "Communists", and erected monuments to honor Tommaso Campanella and Thomas More. Courtois claims that "the crimes of Communism have yet to receive a fair and just assessment from both historical and moral viewpoints."


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: In his foreword to the English-language and American edition, Malia states that "Communism has been the great story of the twentieth century" and "it had come to rule a third of mankind and seemed poised to advance indefinitely. For seven decades it haunted world politics, polarizing opinion between those who saw it as the socialist end of history and those who considered it history's most vital tyranny." According to Malia, "more than eighty years after 1917, probing examination of the Big Questions raised by the Marxist-Leninist phenomenon has hardly begun" and that "a serious historiography was precluded in Soviet Russia by the regime's mandatory ideology", further stating that "scholarly investigation of Communism has until recently fallen disproportionately to Westerns." Malia writes that ""The Black Book" offers us the first attempt to determine, overall, the actual magnitude of what occurred, by systematically detailing Leninism's 'crimes, terror, and repression' from Russia in 1917 to Afghanistan in 1989." Malia also argues against what he terms "the fable of 'good Lenin/bad Stalin'", stating that there never was a "benign, initial phase of Communism before some mytical 'wrong turn' threw it off track", claiming that Lenin expected and wanted from the start a civil war "to crush all 'class enemies'; and this war, principally against the peasants, continued with only short pauses until 1953." Malia further says that the Red Terror "cannot be explained as the prolongation of prerevolutionary political cultures", but rather as "a deliberate policy of the new revolutionary order; and its scope and inhumanity far exceeded anything in the national past." Malia laments that "'Positivist' social scientists ... have averred that moral questions are irrelevant to understanding the past" and criticizes this perspective by arguing that it "reduces politics and ideology everywhere to anthropology."


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: According to Malia, there is a "basic problem" in Western historiography of Communism which he describes as "the conceptual poverty of the Western empirical effort." Malia states that "[t]his poverty flows from the premise that Communism can be understood, in an aseptic and value-free mode, as the pure product of social process", faulting that "researches have endlessly insisted that the October Revolution was a workers' revolt and not a Party coup d'état, when it was obviously the latter riding piggyback on the former." According to Malia, "the central issue in Communist history is not the Party's ephemeral worker 'base'; it is what the intelligentsia victors of October later did with their permanent coup d'etat, and so far this has scarcely been explored." Malia then goes on to describe "two fantasies holding out the promise of a better Soviet socialism than the one the Bolsheviks actually built." The first one is "the 'Bukharin alternative' to Stalin" which Malia describes as "a thesis that purports to offer a nonviolent, market road to socialism—that is, Marx's "integral" socialism, which necessitates the full suppression of private property, profit, and the market." The second one "purports to find the impetus behind Stalin's 'revolution from above' of 1929–1933 in a 'cultural revolution' from below by Party activists and workers against the 'bourgeois' specialists dear to Bukharin, a revolution ultimately leading to massive upward mobility from the factory bench." Malia writes that "perhaps a moral, rather than a social, approach to the Communist phenomenon can yield a truer understanding for the much-investigated Soviet social process claimed victims on a scale that has never aroused a scholarly curiosity at all proportionate to the magnitude of the disaster."


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: According to the introduction, the number of people killed by the Communist governments amounts to more than 94 million. The statistics of victims include deaths through executions, man-made hunger, famine, war, deportations, and forced labor. The breakdown of the number of deaths is given as follows:


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: This and other communist death tolls have been criticized by various historians and scholars. Any attempt to estimate a total number of killings under communist regimes depends greatly on definitions, ranging from a low of 10–20 millions to as high as 110 millions. Criticism of some of the estimates is mostly focused on three aspects, namely that the estimates were based on sparse and incomplete data when significant errors are inevitable, that the figures were skewed to higher possible values, and that those dying at war and victims of civil wars, Holodomor, and other famines under Communist regimes should not be counted.


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: Historian Andrzej Paczkowski wrote that "[s]ome critics complained that Courtois was 'hunting' for the highest possible number of victims, which led him, as J. Arch Getty wrote in the "Atlantic Monthly", to include 'every possible death just to run up the score.' To an extent, the charge is valid. Courtois and other contributors to the volume equate the people shot, hanged, or killed in prisons or the camps with those who were victims of calculated political famines (in the Chinese and Soviet cases), or who otherwise starved for lack of food or died for lack of drugs." Based on the results of their studies, Courtois estimated the total number of the victims at between 65 and 93 million, an unjustified and unclear sum according to Margolin and Werth. In particular, Margolin, who authored the book's chapter on Vietnam, stated that "he has never mentioned a million deaths in Vietnam"; Margolin likened Courtois's effort to "militant political activity, indeed, that of a prosecutor amassing charges in the service of a cause, that of a global condemnation of the Communist phenomenon as an essentially criminal phenomenon." Historians Jean-Jacques Becker and J. Arch Getty criticized Courtois for failing to draw a distinction between victims of neglect and famine and victims of "intentional murder." Regarding these questions, historian Alexander Dallin wrote that moral, legal, or political judgments hardly depend on the number of victims. Getty criticized Malia as a "specialist on the 19th century who has never done original research on the Soviet era."


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: In "The Devil in History", political scientist Vladimir Tismăneanu wrote: "Speaking of the number of victims under communist regimes (between 85 and 100 million) and comparing this horrible figure to number of people who perished under or because of Nazism (25 million), Courtois decided to downplay a few crucial facts. In this respect, some of his critics were not wrong. First, as an expansionist global phenomenon, Communism lasted between 1917 and the time of the completion of "The Black Book" (think of North Korea, China, Cuba, Vietnam, where it is still alive, if not well). [Nazism] lasted between 1933 and 1945. Second, we simply do not know what the price in terms of victims of Nazism would have been had Hitler won the war. The logical hypothesis is that not only Jews and Gypsies but also millions of Slavs and other 'racially unfit' individuals would have been destined to death."


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: On 12 November 1997, the then-Prime Minister of France and Socialist Lionel Jospin responded to the book's claims and declared to the National Assembly that "the Revolution of 1917 was one of the great events of the century. ... And if the [French Communist Party (PCF)] had taken so long to denounce Stalinism, it had done so anyway." Jospin added that "the PCF had learned the lessons from its history. It is represented in my government and I'm proud of it." In a 21 November 1997 interview with "Die Zeit", Courtois stated: "In my opinion, there is nothing exceptional about the Nazi genocide against the Jews." Historian Amir Weiner wrote: "The comparison with Nazism is inevitable. It is merited on the grounds of the mutual commitment to social engineering through violent means; the ensuing demographic, psychological, and ethical implications; and, not least, the fact that both systems constantly scrutinized one another. Unfortunately, the authors of the "Black Book" reduce the comparison to body counting, charging communists with killing nearly 100 million people and the Nazis, 25 million. At best, this approach is ahistorical and demeaning."


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: Many observers have rejected Courtois' numerical and moral comparison of communism to Nazism in the introduction, the claim made in the book that "a lot of what they describe 'crimes, terror, and repression' has somehow been kept from the general public", According to Werth, there was still a qualitative difference between communism and Nazism, stating: "Death camps did not exist in the Soviet Union." On 21 September 2000, Werth further told "Le Monde": "The more you compare Communism and Nazism, the more the differences are obvious." Weiner wrote that "[w]hen Stalin's successors opened the gates of the Gulag, they allowed 3 million inmates to return home. When the Allies liberated the Nazi death camps, they found thousands of human skeletons barely alive awaiting what they knew to be inevitable execution." Historian Ronald Grigor Suny remarked that Courtois' comparison of 100 million victims of Communism to 25 million victims of Nazism leaves out "most of the 40-60,000,000 lives lost in the Second World War, for which arguably Hitler and not Stalin was principally responsible." Alongside philosopher Scott Sehon, anthropologist and postsocialist gender studies scholar Kristen Ghodsee commented that Courtois' death toll estimate for Nazism "conveniently" excludes those killed in World War II.


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: At least one scholar in "Le Monde" denounced the introduction, the main source of controversy, as antisemitic, and other critics also denounced it as antisemitic, a charge Malia disagreed with. In the "Nature, Society, and Thought" academic journal, Marxist philosopher Robert Steigerwald wrote: "The book's main thesis reads thus: our century's fundamental crime was not the Holocaust, but rather the existence of Communism. Through the manipulation of numbers—only twenty-five million human lives fell victim to Hitler, one hundred million to Communism worldwide—the impression is created that Communism is four times worse than fascism and that the Holocaust was not a uniquely evil crime."


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: Jacques Sémelin writes that Courtois and Margolin "view class genocide as the equivalent to racial genocide." Alongside Michael Mann, they contributed to "the debates on comparisons between Nazism and communism", with Sémelin describing this as a theory also developed in "The Black Book of Communism". Margolin, along with Werth, addressed this comparison in a response printed in "Le Monde"; rather than "indistinguishable evils", they emphasized a marked distinction in ideology. Courtois responded in the same newspaper with an essay in 1997. Werth compared the idea to ascribe all crimes committed by Communist states to communism with the idea to "throw in the face of a liberal the crimes committed in all the countries that claimed to be liberal." According to historian Andrzej Paczkowski, only Courtois made the comparison between Communism and Nazism, while the other sections of the book "are, in effect, narrowly focused monographs, which do not pretend to offer overarching explanations." Paczkowski wonders whether it can be applied "the same standard of judgment to, on the one hand, an ideology that was destructive at its core, that openly planned genocide, and that had an agenda of aggression against all neighboring (and not just neighboring) states, and, on the other hand, an ideology that seemed clearly the opposite, that was based on the secular desire of humanity to achieve equality and social justice, and that promised a great leap of forward into freedom", and states that while a good question, it is hardly new and inappropriate because "The Black Book of Communism" is not "about communism as an ideology or even about communism as a state-building phenomenon."


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: In a 2001 article for "Human Rights Review", Vladimir Tismăneanu stated that while "[a]nalytical distinctions between them are certainly important, and sometimes Courtois does not emphasize them sufficiently", their "commonality in terms of complete contempt for the bourgeois state of law, human rights, and the universality of humankind regardless of spurious race and class distinctions is in my view beyond doubt." Tismăneanu said that in making this comparison, Courtois was drawing on Vasily Grossman's earlier explorations of the same theme in "Life and Fate" and "Forever Flowing". In 2012, Tismăneanu wrote that "in the case of communism one can identify an inner dynamic that could and did in fact contrast the original promises to the sordidly criminal practices. In other words, there was a possible search for reforms, and even for socialism with a human face, within the communist world, but such a thing would have been unthinkable under Nazism. The chasm between theory and practice, or at least between the moral-humanist Marxian (or socialist) creed, and the Leninist, Stalinist (or Maoist, or Khmer Rouge) experiments was more than an intellectual fantasy."


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: Courtois considers Communism and Nazism to be distinct yet comparable totalitarian systems, stating that Communist regimes have killed "approximately 100 million people in contrast to the approximately 25 million victims of the Nazis." Courtois claims that Nazi Germany's methods of mass extermination were adopted from Soviet methods. As an example, Courtois cites the Nazi "SS" official Rudolf Höss who organized the infamous extermination camp, Auschwitz concentration camp, writing: "The Reich Security Head Office issued to the commandants a full collection of reports concerning the Russian concentration camps. These described in great detail the conditions in, and organization of, the Russian camps, as supplied by former prisoners who had managed to escape. Great emphasis was placed on the fact that the Russians, by their massive employment of forced labor, had destroyed whole peoples." His remarks and comparisons were deemed by critics to be antisemitic. A report by the Wiesel Commission criticized the comparison of Gulag victims with Jewish Holocaust victims as an attempt at Holocaust trivialization. Courtois defended himself from the charges by citing the Russian-Jewish writer Vasily Grossman, who compared the deaths of kulaks' children to those of Jewish children who were put in the gas chambers.


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: Courtois states that the Soviet crimes against peoples living in the Caucasus and of large social groups in the Soviet Union could be called "genocide" and were not very much different from similar policies by the Nazi Party. For Courtois, both Communist and Nazi systems deemed "a part of humanity unworthy of existence. The difference is that the Communist model is based on the class system, the Nazi model on race and territory." Courtois writes: "Here, the genocide of a 'class' may well be tantamount to the genocide of a "race"—the deliberate starvation of a child of a Ukrainian kulak as a result of the famine caused by Stalin's regime 'is equal to' the starvation of a Jewish child in the Warsaw ghetto as a result of the famine caused by the Nazi regime. According to Courtois, "the intransigent facts demonstrate that Communist regimes have victimized approximately 100 million people in contrast to the approximately 25 million of the Nazis." Courtois further says that "the Jewish genocide became a byword for modern barbarism, the epitome of twentieth-century mass terror. ... More recently, a single-minded focus on the Jewish genocide in an attempt to characterize the Holocaust as a unique atrocity has also prevented the assessment of other episodes of comparable magnitude in the Communist world. After all, it seems scarcely plausible that the victors who had helped bring about the destruction of a genocidal apparatus might themselves have put the very same methods into practice. When faced with this paradox, people generally preferred to bury their heads in sand."


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: Malia strongly agrees with Courtois, describing it as "a 'tragedy of planetary dimensions' ..., with a grand total of victims variously estimated by contributors to the volume at between 85 million and 100 million" and stating that what he terms the "full power of the shock" was "delivered by the unavoidable comparison of this sum with that for Nazism, which at an estimated 25 million turns out to be distinctly less murderous than Communism." According to Malia, "[t]he shocking dimensions of the Communist tragedy" are "hardly news to any serious student of twentieth-century history, at least when the different Leninist regimes are taken individually."


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: Malia mentions Courtois' argument that since Nuremberg jurisprudence (Nuremberg Trials) is incorporated into French law, the "class genocide" of Communism can be equated with the "race genocide" of Nazism and categorized as a crime against humanity. He states that Courtois raised the point of how Western intellectuals, Communist sympathizers and apologists for Communist leaders were complicit in Communist crimes, and that they only rejected them "discreetly and in silence." According to Malia, the French right has been tainted by its association with the Nazi Vichy regime, whereas "'knowing the truth about the U.S.S.R.' has never been an academic matter" until the time the book was published. Malia then cites the example of the Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin, who was in need of Communist votes to gain a parliamentary majority. While the non-Gaullist right cited the book to attack the Jospin government "for harboring allies with an unrepented 'criminal past'", the Gaullists "remained awkwardly in place."


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: Malia writes that the "ultimate distinguishing characteristic" of Nazism is the Holocaust which, according to Malia, is considered as historically unique. He laments that "Hitler and Nazism are now a constant presence in Western print and on Western television", while "Stalin and Communism materialize only sporadically", with the status of former Communists carrying no stigma. Malia also laments a double standard in de-Nazification and de-Stalinization, citing former Austrian president Kurt Waldheim, who "was ostracized worldwide once his Nazi past was uncovered", while the same treatment was not applied to Communists, with Communist monuments still standing in the former Communist states.


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: Malia cites the liberal "Le Monde" as arguing that "it is illegitimate to speak of a single Communist movement from Phnom Penh to Paris. Rather, the rampage of the Khmer Rouge is like the ethnic massacres of third-world Rwanda, or the 'rural' Communism of Asia is radically different from the 'urban' Communism of Europe; or Asian Communism is really only anticolonial nationalism", further stating that "conflating sociologically diverse movements" is "merely a stratagem to obtain a higher body count against Communism, and thus against all the left." He criticizes this as "Eurocentric condescension." Malia cites the conservative "Le Figaro", summarizing its response as "spurning reductionist sociology as a device to exculpate Communism", that "Marxist-Leninist regimes are cast in the same ideological and organizational mold throughout the world", and that "this pertinent point also had its admonitory subtext: that socialists of whatever stripe cannot be trusted to resist their ever-present demons on the far left (those popular fronts were no accident after all)."


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: Malia writes that by reducing politics and ideology to anthropology, it "assure[s] us that contrary to Hannah Arendt, the 'Nazi/Soviet similarities' are insufficient to make denunciation a specifically 'totalitarian' phenomenon." He criticizes this argument by stating that "the difference between Nazi/Communist systems and Western ones is 'not qualitative but quantitative.' By implication, therefore, singling out Communist and Nazi terror in order to equate them becomes Cold War slander—the ideological subtext, as it happens, of twenty-five years of 'revisionist,' social-reductionist Sovietology." He further criticizes it by making the point that "this fact-for-fact's sake approach suggests that there is nothing specifically Communist about Communist terror—and, it would seem, nothing particularly Nazi about Nazi terror either." He states that "the bloody Soviet experiment is banalized in one great gray anthropological blur; and the Soviet Union is transmogrified into just another country in just another age, neither more nor less evil than any other regime going", and dismisses this as "obviously nonsense." For Malia, "the problem of moral judgment" is "inseparable from any real understanding of the past" and "from being human."


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: Malia asks "What of the moral equivalence of Communism and Nazism?" Malia writes that "[a]fter fifty years of debate, it is clear that no matter what the hard facts are, degrees of totalitarian evil will be measured as much in terms of present politics as in terms of past realities" and that "we will always encounter a double standard as long as there exist a left and a right", which he "roughly define[s] as the priority of compassionate egalitarianism for the one, and as the primacy of prudential order for the other." Malia states that "[s]ince neither principle can be applied absolutely without destroying society, the modern world lives in perpetual tension between the irresistible pressure for equality and the functional necessity of hierarchy." For Malia, it is "this syndrome" which "gives the permanent qualitative advantage to Communism over Nazism in any evaluation of their quantitative atrocities. For the Communist projects, in origin, claimed commitment to universalistic and egalitarian goals, whereas the Nazi projects offered only unabashed national egoism", causing their practices to be "comparable" and their "moral auras" to be "antithetical."


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: According to this argument, "[a] moral man can have 'no enemies to the left,' a perspective in which undue insistence on Communist crime only 'plays into the hands of the right'—if, indeed, any anticommunism is not simply a mask for antiliberalism." Malia cites "Le Monde" as deeming "The Black Book of Communism" "inopportune because equating Communism with Nazism removed the 'last barriers to legitimating the extreme right,' that is, Le Pen." While stating it is true that "Le Pen's party and similar hate-mongering, xenophobic movements elsewhere in Europe represents an alarming new phenomenon that properly concerns all liberal democrats", Malia writes that in no way does it follow that "Communism's criminal past should be ignored or minimized." Malia writes that "the persistence of such sophistry is precisely why "The Black Book" is so opportune", much like Courtois' reasoning for writing the book that "the crimes of Communism have yet to receive a fair and just assessment from both historical and moral viewpoints."


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: About "The Black Book of Communism", Courtois further says: "This book is one of the first attempts to study Communism with a focus on its criminal dimensions, in both the central regions of Communist rule and the farthest reaches of the globe. Some will say that most of these crimes were actions conducted in accordance with a system of law that was enforced by the regimes' official institutions, which were recognized internationally and whose heads of state continued to be welcomed with open arms. But was this not the case with Nazism as well? The crimes we shall expose are to be judged not by the standards of Communist regimes, but by the unwritten code of natural laws of humanity." Courtois states that "[t]he legal ramification of crimes committed by a specific country were first confronted in 1945 at the Nuremberg Tribunal, which was organized by the Allies to consider the atrocities committed by the Nazis." Courtois writes that "[a]n examination of all the crimes committed by the Leninist/Stalinist regime, and in the Communist world as a whole, reveals crimes that fit into each of these three categories", namely crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, and war crimes.


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: The German edition contains an additional chapter on the Soviet-backed Communist regime in East Germany titled "Die Aufarbeitung des Sozialismus in der DDR" ("The Processing of Socialism in the GDR"). It consists of two subchapters, namely "Politische Verbrechen in der DDR" ("Political Crimes in the GDR") by Ehrhart Neubert and "Vom schwierigen Umgang mit der Wahrnehmung" ("On the Difficulty of Handling Perceptions") by Joachim Gauck.


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: According to historian Jon Wiener, "The Black Book of Communism" "received both praise and criticism, and the book was especially controversial in France because it was published during the 1997 trial of Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon for crimes against humanity for his role in the deportation of Jews from Bourdeaux to Hitler's death camps. Papon's lawyers introduced the book as evidence for the defense." The "Black Book of Communism" has been especially influential in Eastern Europe, where it was uncritically embraced by prominent politicians and intellectuals—many of these intellectuals popularized it using terminology and concepts popular with the radical right. According to political scientist Stanley Hoffmann, "[t]his gigantic volume, the sum of works of 11 historians, social scientists, and journalists, is less important for the content, but for the social storm it has provoked in France. ... What Werth and some of his colleagues object to is 'the manipulation of the figures of the numbers of people killed' (Courtois talks of almost 100 million, including 65 million in China); 'the use of shock formulas, the juxtaposition of histories aimed at asserting the comparability and, next, the identities of fascism, and Nazism, and communism.' Indeed, Courtois would have been far more effective if he had shown more restraint."


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: Historian Tony Judt wrote that "[t]he myth of the well-intentioned founders—the good czar Lenin betrayed by his evil heirs—has been laid to rest for good. No one will any longer be able to claim ignorance or uncertainty about the criminal nature of Communism." Political scientist Vladimir Tismăneanu, whose work focuses on Eastern Europe, stated that "the "Black Book of Communism" succeeds in demonstrating ... that Communism in its Leninist version (and, one must recognize, this has been the only successful application of the original dogma) was from the very outset inimical to the values of individual rights and human freedom." Historian Jolanta Pekacz said that the "archival revelations of "The Black Book" collapse the myth of a benign, initial phase of communism before it was diverted from the right path by circumstances." Political scientist Robert Legvold summarized the authors as charging that Communism was a criminal system, while others such as Werth gave more nuanced views, and stated that "despite Courtois' brave attempt in the conclusion, however, the authors fail to answer their own central question: Why did communism, when in power, start and stay so murderous?" Historian Andrzej Paczkowski cited the numerous critiques, including it being called "a crudely anticommunist, anti-Semitic work", and agreed that "excessive moralizing makes objective analysis of the past difficult—and perhaps impossible", and the book has weaknesses but wrote that it has had two positive effects, among them stirring a debate about the implementation of totalitarian ideologies and "an exhaustive balance sheet about one aspect of the worldwide phenomenon of communism." According to honorary professor David J. Galloway, ""The Black Book" provides an excellent survey of scholarship on the Soviet system and the systems of other communist states", and said that this emphasis is valuable.


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: "The Black Book of Communism" received praise in many publications in the United Kingdom and the United States, including the "East Valley Tribune", "Evening Standard", "Foreign Affairs", "Insight on the News", "Kirkus Reviews", "Library Journal", "The New Republic", "The New York Times", "The New York Times Book Review", "National Review", "Orlando Sentinel", "Publishers Weekly", "Salon", "The Saturday Evening Post", "The Times Literary Supplement", "The Tribune", "The Wall Street Journal", "The Washington Post Book World", "The Washington Times", and "The Weekly Standard". Philosopher Alan Ryan wrote that "[t]o the extent that the book has a literary style, it is that of the recording angel; this is the body count of a colossal, wholly failed social, economic, political and psychological experiment. It is a criminal indictment, and it rightly reads like one." Ryan stated that the authors do not astonish their readers, "dramatize the sufferings of the victims of Communism", or focus on quarrels over exact numbers of victims, affirming that there is no serious moral difference between the lower and higher estimated numbers. Speaking of the relative immorality of Communism and Nazism, Ryan said that the "body count tips the scales against Communism", but that if the "intrinsic evil of the entire project" is considered, Nazism is still worse because it was exterminationist.


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: Historian Jacques Julliard and philosopher Jean-François Revel also praised the book. Revel devoted several chapters of "Last Exit to Utopia: The Survival of Socialism in a Post-Soviet Era", against "Big Government", to responding to criticism against "The Black Book of Communism". In the book, Revel criticizes the imputation to capitalism as an economic system of crimes that in his view would not belong to it, such as those of colonialism, slavery, and the Nazi regime, while socialism as an economic system is not held responsible for the crimes of Communist regimes. Revel states that there has never been a democratic or pluralist government that falls under the Marxist–Leninist field of "real socialism", or such a system without totalitarianism, a single-party regime, and political persecution. Revel considers collectivism and statism inextricably linked to forced labor and slavery.


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: Whereas chapters of the book that describe the events in separate Communist states were praised for the most part, some generalizations made by Courtois in the introduction to the book became a subject of criticism both on scholarly and political grounds. Moreover, three of the book's main contributors (Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Margolin, and Nicolas Werth) publicly disassociated themselves from Stéphane Courtois' statements in the introduction and criticized his editorial conduct. Margolin and Werth felt that Courtois was "obsessed" with arriving at a total of 100 million killed which resulted in "sloppy and biased scholarship", faulted him for exaggerating death tolls in specific countries, and rejected the comparison between Communism and Nazism. Based on the results of their studies, Courtois estimated the total number of the victims at between 65 and 93 million, an unjustified and unclear sum according to Margolin and Werth. In particular, Margolin, who authored the book's chapter on Vietnam, stated that "he has never mentioned a million deaths in Vietnam"; Margolin likened Courtois's effort to "militant political activity, indeed, that of a prosecutor amassing charges in the service of a cause, that of a global condemnation of the Communist phenomenon as an essentially criminal phenomenon." Historians Jean-Jacques Becker and J. Arch Getty criticized Courtois for failing to draw a distinction between victims of neglect and famine and victims of "intentional murder." Regarding these questions, historian Alexander Dallin wrote that moral, legal, or political judgments hardly depend on the number of victims. Getty criticized Martin Malia as a "specialist on the 19th century who has never done original research on the Soviet era." At least one scholar in "Le Monde" denounced the introduction, the main source of controversy, as antisemitic, and other critics also denounced it as antisemitic, a charge Malia disagreed with.


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: Many observers have rejected Courtois' numerical and moral comparison of Communism to Nazism in the introduction. According to Werth, there was still a qualitative difference between Communism and Nazism, stating: "Death camps did not exist in the Soviet Union." On 21 September 2000, Werth further told "Le Monde": "The more you compare Communism and Nazism, the more the differences are obvious." In a critical review, historian Amir Weiner wrote that "[w]hen Stalin's successors opened the gates of the Gulag, they allowed 3 million inmates to return home. When the Allies liberated the Nazi death camps, they found thousands of human skeletons barely alive awaiting what they knew to be inevitable execution." Historian Ronald Grigor Suny remarked that Courtois' comparison of 100 million victims of Communism to 25 million victims of Nazism leaves out "most of the 40-60,000,000 lives lost in the Second World War, for which arguably Hitler and not Stalin was principally responsible." Anthropologist Kristen Ghodsee and philosopher Scott Sehon remarked that Courtois' death toll estimate for Nazism "conveniently" excludes those killed in World War II. A report by the Wiesel Commission criticized the comparison of Gulag victims with Jewish Holocaust victims as an attempt at Holocaust trivialization. Some reviewers rejected the claim made in the book that "a lot of what they describe 'crimes, terror, and repression' has somehow been kept from the general public", and questioned "[w]hether all these cases, from Hungary to Afghanistan, have a single essence and thus deserve to be lumped together—just because they are labeled Marxist or communist—is a question the authors scarcely discuss."


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: Historians Jens Mecklenburg and Wolfgang Wippermann wrote that a connection between the events in Pol Pot's Cambodia and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union are far from evident and that Pol Pot's study of Marxism in Paris is insufficient for connecting radical Soviet industrialism and the Khmer Rouge's murderous anti-urbanism under the same category. Historian Michael David-Fox criticized the figures as well as the idea to combine loosely connected events under a single category of Communist death toll, blaming Courtois for their manipulation and deliberate inflation which are presented to advocate the idea that Communism was a greater evil than Nazism. In particular, David-Fox criticized the idea to connect the deaths with some "generic Communism" concept, defined down to the common denominator of party movements founded by intellectuals. David-Fox also described "Malia's comparison and rhetorical equation of erstwhile social-history revisionists in the Soviet field with David Irving and other Holocaust deniers" as "a quintessentially ideological move." Historian Peter Kenez criticized the chapter written by Nicholas Werth, arguing that "Werth can also be an extremely careless historian. He gives the number of Bolsheviks in October 1917 as 2,000, which is a ridiculous underestimate. He quotes from a letter of Lenin to Alexander Shliapnikov and gives the date as 17 October 1917; the letter could hardly have originated at that time, since in it Lenin talks about the need to defeat the Tsarist government, and turn the war into a civil conflict. He gives credit to the Austro-Hungarian rather than the German army for the conquest of Poland in 1915. He describes the Provisional Government as 'elected'. He incorrectly writes that the peasant rebels during the civil war did more harm to the Reds than to the Whites, and so on." Historian Michael Ellman stated that the book's estimate of "at least 500,000" deaths during the Soviet famine of 1946–1947 "is formulated in an extremely conservative way, since the actual number of victims was much larger", with 1,000,000–1,500,000 excess deaths. Historians such as Hiroaki Kuromiya and Mark Tauger challenged the authors' thesis that the famine of 1933 was largely artificial and genocidal. According to journalist Gilles Perrault, the book ignores the effect of international factors, including military interventions, invasions, sanctions, and coups, on the Communist experience.


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: Historian Noam Chomsky criticized the book and its reception as one-sided by outlining economist Amartya Sen's research on hunger, which revealed that while India's democratic institutions largely prevented famines, its excess of preventable mortality over China, potentially attributable to the latter's more equal distribution of medical and social resources, was nonetheless close to 4 million people per year for non-famine years. Chomsky wrote that "Supposing we now apply the methodology of the "Black Book" to India, the democratic capitalist 'experiment' has caused more deaths than in the entire history of Communism everywhere since 1917. Over 100 million deaths by 1979, and tens of millions more since, in India alone." "Le Siècle des communismes", a collective work of twenty academics, was a response to both François Furet's "Le passé d'une Illusion" and Stéphane Courtois' "The Black Book of Communism". It broke communism down into series of discrete movements, with mixed positive and negative results. "The Black Book of Communism" prompted the publication of several other "black books" which argued that similar chronicles of violence and death tolls can be constructed from an examination of capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism.


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: Reflecting on "The Black Book of Communism" in the "Human Rights Review", sociologist John Torpey wrote: "In view of "The Black Book"s relatively scanty scholarly contribution, it is hard to read the book in other than political terms. In this regard, "The Black Book" may be seen as an effort to legitimize the claims to memorialization and reparations of those who suffered under Communism. Such claims have become high stakes in an era that frequently rewards those who can demonstrate that they, too, have been victimized in the past." In a 2001 article for "The Journal of American History", professor of history Shane J. Maddock wrote: "Since its publication in France in 1997, "The Black Book of Communism" has played a dual role, both chronicling the crimes of various Communist regimes and also serving as a text that reveals the shifting status of Marxism in the aftermath of the Cold War. Much of the controversy that has surrounded the book has focused on Stephane Courtois's introduction, in which he argues that communism represents a greater evil than Nazism, largely based on Marxism-Leninism's heftier death tally." In "The Criminalisation of Communism in the European Political Space after the Cold War" (2018), political scientist Laure Neumayer states that the book has played a major role in what she terms the criminalization of Communism in the European political space in the post Cold War-era. According to Neumayer, "by making criminality the very essence of communism, by explicitly equating the 'race genocide' of Nazism with the 'class genocide' of Communism in connection with the Ukrainian Great Famine of 1932–1933, the "Black Book of Communism" contributed to legitimising the equivalence of Nazi and Communist crimes. The book figures prominently in the 'spaces of the anti-communist cause' comparably structured in the former satellite countries, which are a major source of the discourse criminalising the Socialist period."


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: In a 2005 "International History Review" article, historian Donald Reid states that "The Black Book of Communism" opened the way to a new anti-communism, quoting fellow historian Marc Lazar as saying that "just as the intense relationship of the French with their national history created the conditions for the Vichy syndrome, their intense relationship with the Communist project could have similar consequences for the national psyche", and that Courtois, Lazar's former collaborator, believes French intellectuals have never "done their mourning of revolutionary ideology and of Leninism." A 2019 review for "The American Historical Review" about "The Cambridge History of Communism" said: "Unlike the cardboard cutouts of Communist leadership presented in ideologically charged studies like "The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression" (1997), these essays are both nuanced and balanced, presenting Lenin and Stalin as human leaders driven as much by realpolitik and personal histories and events as by Communist ideology." In a 2019 Africa Check article, Naphtali Khumalo said that the 100 million estimate from "The Black Book of Communism" "is still up for debate by historians, political scientists and economists. It's not an easy claim to fact-check, and is ultimately a matter of opinion." In 2020, political scientist Valentin Behr "et al." wrote that "the book was a turning point in the emergence of a consensual historical narrative across the former East-West divide as it enabled the formation of a revamped pan-European anti-communist movement." In a 2021 editorial in the eco-socialist journal "Capitalism Nature Socialism", Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro "et al". describe "The Black Book of Communism" as "a 1997 propaganda volume that suits a more recent China-bashing campaign, where the Communist Party of China is purposefully conflated with communism. Just like anarchism should not be confused with chaos and terrorism, communism should not be confused, like those on the Right do, with the state socialist regimes, which are to be rigorously critiqued but should nonetheless be considered part of it, rather than denying any family resemblances with communism, like some on the Left do." According to Engel-Di Mauro "et al.", the 100 million estimate popularized by "The Black Book of Communism" is used as an anti-communist trope to dismiss any criticism of capitalism and support for socialism.


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: The "Black Book of Communism" was followed by the publication in 2002 of a series entitled "Du passé faisons table rase! Histoire et mémoire du communisme en Europe" with the same imprint. The first edition included the subtitle ""The Black Book of Communism" has not said everything." Like the first effort, this second work was edited by Courtois. The book focused on the history of Communism in Eastern Europe. Several translations of the book were marketed as the second volume of "The Black Book of Communism", titled "Das Schwarzbuch of Kommunismus 2. Das schwere Erbe der Ideologie", "Chernata kniga na komunizma 2. chast", and "Il libro del nero comunismo europeo".


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: "Le Siècle des communismes", a collective work of twenty academics, was a response to both François Furet's "Le passé d'une Illusion" and "The Black Book of Communism". It broke communism down into series of discrete movements, with mixed positive and negative results. "The Black Book of Communism" prompted the publication of several other "black books" which argued that similar chronicles of violence and death tolls can be constructed from an examination of capitalism and colonialism.


title: The Black Book of Communism

text: In 2007, Courtois edited Éditions Larousse's "Dictionnaire du communisme". In 2008, Courtois took part to the writing of "The Black Book of the French Revolution", a similar work of historical revisionism which proved to be controversial like "The Black Book of Communism" and received mostly negative reviews from both the press and historians. Courtois went back to its proposed link between the French Revolution and the October Revolution.


title: Chronology of the Bible

text: The chronology of the Bible is an elaborate system of lifespans, 'generations', and other means by which the Masoretic Hebrew Bible (the text of the Bible most commonly in use today) measures the passage of events from the creation to around 164 BCE (the year of the re-dedication of the Second Temple). It was theological in intent, not historical in the modern sense, and functions as an implied prophecy whose key lies in the identification of the final event. The passage of time is measured initially by adding the ages of the Patriarchs at the birth of their firstborn sons, later through express statements, and later still by the synchronised reigns of the kings of Israel and Judah.


title: Chronology of the Bible

text: The chronology is highly schematic, marking out a world cycle of 4,000 years. The Exodus takes place in the year Anno Mundi 2666, exactly two thirds of the way through the four thousand years; the construction of Solomon's Temple is commenced 480 years, or 12 generations of 40 years each, after that; and 430 years pass between the building of Solomon's Temple and its destruction during the siege of Jerusalem. The 50 years between the destruction of the Temple and the "Decree of Cyrus" and end of the Babylonian Exile, added to the 430 years for which the Temple stood, produces another symmetrical period of 480 years. The 374 years between the Edict of Cyrus and the re-dedication of the Second Temple by the Maccabees complete the 4,000 year cycle.


title: Chronology of the Bible

text: As recently as the 17th–18th century, the Archbishop of Armagh James Ussher (term 1625–1656), and scholars of the stature of Isaac Newton (1642–1727) believed that dating creation was knowable from the Bible. Today, the Genesis creation narrative has long since vanished from serious cosmology, the Patriarchs and the Exodus are no longer included in most serious histories of ancient Israel, and it is almost universally accepted that the Book of Joshua and the Book of Judges have little historical value. Even the United Monarchy is questioned, and although scholars continue to advance proposals for reconciling the chronology of the Books of Kings, there is "little consensus on acceptable methods of dealing with conflicting data."


title: Chronology of the Bible

text: During the centuries that Hebrew Bible canon developed, theological chronologies emerged at different composition stages, although scholars have advanced various theories to identify these stages and their schematizations of time. These chronologies include:


title: Chronology of the Bible

text: The Masoretic Text is the basis of modern Jewish and Christian bibles. While difficulties with biblical texts make it impossible to reach sure conclusions, perhaps the most widely held hypothesis is that it embodies an overall scheme of 4,000 years (a "great year") taking the re-dedication of the Temple by the Maccabees in 164 BCE as its end-point. Two motives may have led to this: first, there was a common idea at the time of the Maccabees that human history followed the plan of a divine "week" of seven "days" each lasting a thousand years; and second, a 4,000 year history (even longer in the Septuagint version) would establish the antiquity of the Jews against their pagan neighbours. The following table summarises the Masoretic chronology from the creation of the world in Anno Mundi (Year of the World) 1 to its endpoint in AM 4000:


title: Chronology of the Bible

text: The canonical text of the Hebrew Bible is called the Masoretic Text, a text preserved by Jewish rabbis from early in the 7th and 10th centuries CE. There are, however, two other major texts, the Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch. The Septuagint is a Koine Greek translation of the original Biblical Hebrew holy books. It is estimated that the first five books of the Septuagint, known as the Torah or Pentateuch, were translated in the mid-3rd century BCE and the remaining texts were translated in the 2nd century BCE. It mostly agrees with the Masoretic Text, but not in its chronology.


title: Chronology of the Bible

text: The Samaritan text is preserved by the Samaritan community. This community dates from some time in the last few centuries BCE—just when is disputed—and, like the Septuagint, their Bible differs markedly from the Masoretic Text in its chronology. Modern scholars do not regard the Masoretic Text as superior to the other two—the Masoretic is sometimes clearly wrong, as when it says that Saul began to reign at one year of age and reigned for two years. More relevantly, all three texts have a clear purpose, which is not to record history so much as to bring the narrative to a point which represents the culmination of history. In the Samaritan Pentateuch, the genealogies and narratives were shaped to ensure a chronology of 3000 years from creation to the Israelite settlement of Canaan. Northcote reports this as the "Proto-SP chronology," as designated by John Skinner (1910), and he speculates that this chronology may have been extended to put the rebuilding of the Second Temple at an even AM 3900, after three 1,300-year phases. In the Septuagint version of the Pentateuch the Israelite chronology extends 4,777 years from creation to the finishing of the Second Temple, as witnessed in the Codex Alexandrinus manuscript. This calculation only emerges by supplementing Septuagint with the MT's chronology of kings. There were at least 3 variations of Septuagint chronology; Eusebius used one variation, now favored by Hughes and others. Northcote asserts that the Septuagint calendrical pattern was meant to demonstrate that there were 5,000 years from creation to a contemporaneous Ptolemaic Egypt, .


title: Chronology of the Bible

text: The 2nd century BCE Book of Jubilees begins with the Creation and measures time in years, "weeks" of years (groups of seven years), and jubilees (sevens of sevens), so that the interval from Creation to the settlement of Canaan, for example, is exactly fifty jubilees (2450 years).


title: Chronology of the Bible

text: Dating from the 2nd century CE, and still in common use among Jews, was the Seder Olam Rabbah ("Great Order of the World"), a work tracing the history of the world and the Jews from Creation to the 2nd century CE. It allows 410 years for the duration of the First Temple, 70 years from its destruction to the Second Temple, and 420 years for the duration of the Second Temple, making a total of 900 years for the two temples. This schematic approach to numbers accounts for its most remarkable feature, the fact that it shortens the entire Persian Empire from over two centuries to just 52 years, mirroring the 52 years it gives to the Babylonian exile.


title: Chronology of the Bible

text: The early church father Eusebius (), attempting to place Christ in the chronology, put his birth in AM 5199, and this became the accepted date for the Western Church. As the year AM 6000 (800 CE) approached there was increasing fear that the end of the world was nigh, until the Venerable Bede made his own calculations and found that Christ's birth took place in AM 3592, allowing several more centuries to the end of time.


title: Chronology of the Bible

text: Martin Luther (1483–1546) switched the point of focus from Christ's birth to the Apostolic Council of Acts 15, which he placed in the year AM 4000, believing this marked the moment when the Mosaic Law was abolished and the new age of grace began. This was widely accepted among European Protestants, but in the English-speaking world, Archbishop James Ussher (1581–1656) calculated a date of 4004 BCE for creation; he was not the first to reach this result, but his chronology was so detailed that his dates were incorporated into the margins of English Bibles for the next two hundred years. This popular 4,000 year theological timespan, which ends with the birth of Jesus, differs from the 4,000 timespan later proposed for the Masoretic text alone, which ends with the Temple rededication in 164 BCE.


title: Chronology of the Bible

text: The chronology of the monarchy, unlike that of earlier periods, can be checked against non-biblical sources and seems to be correct in general terms. This raises the prospect that the Books of Kings, linking the Hebrew kings by accession and length of reign ("king X of Judah came to the throne in the "n"th year of king Y of Israel and ruled "n" years"), can be used to reconstruct a chronology for the monarchy, but the task has in fact proven intractably difficult. The problem is that the books contain numerous contradictions: to take just one example, since Rehoboam of Judah and Jeroboam of Israel began to rule at the same time (1 Kings 12), and since Ahaziah of Judah and Joram of Israel were killed at the same time (2 Kings 9:24, 27), the same amount of time should have elapsed in both kingdoms, but the count shows 95 years passing in Judah and 98 in Israel. In short, "[t]he data concerning the synchronisms appeared in hopeless contradiction with the data as to the lengths of reigns."


title: Chronology of the Bible

text: Possibly the most widely followed attempt to reconcile the contradictions has been that proposed by Edwin R. Thiele in his "The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings" (three editions between 1951 and 1983), but his work has been widely criticised for, among other things, introducing "innumerable" co-regencies, constructing a "complex system of calendars", and using "unique" patterns of calculation; as a result his following is largely among scholars "committed ... to a doctrine of scripture's absolute harmony" (the criticism is to be found in Brevard Childs' "Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture"). The weaknesses in Thiele's work have led subsequent scholars to continue to propose chronologies, but, in the words of a recent commentary on Kings, there is "little consensus on acceptable methods of dealing with conflicting data."


title: Chad Michael Collins

text: Chad Michael Collins (born September 22, 1979) is an American actor. He is best known for his leading role in the "Sniper" film series.


title: Chad Michael Collins

text: He graduated from college in New York before moving to Los Angeles. He then started taking acting classes, when he is not acting, he works for a PR firm, JDS.


title: Celtic deities

text: The gods and goddesses of the pre-Christian Celtic peoples are known from a variety of sources, including ancient places of worship, statues, engravings, cult objects and place or personal names. The ancient Celts appear to have had a pantheon of deities comparable to others in Indo-European religion, each linked to aspects of life and the natural world. By a process of syncretism, after the Roman conquest of Celtic areas, these became associated with their Roman equivalents, and their worship continued until Christianization. Pre-Roman Celtic art produced few images of deities, and these are hard to identify, lacking inscriptions, but in the post-conquest period many more images were made, some with inscriptions naming the deity. Most of the specific information we have therefore comes from Latin writers and the archaeology of the post-conquest period. More tentatively, links can be made between ancient Celtic deities and figures in early medieval Irish and Welsh literature, although all these works were produced well after Christianization.


title: Celtic deities

text: The "locus classicus" for the Celtic gods of Gaul is the passage in Julius Caesar's "Commentarii de Bello Gallico" ("The Gallic War", 52–51 BC) in which he names six of them, together with their functions. He says that Mercury was the most honoured of all the gods and many images of him were to be found. Mercury was regarded as the inventor of all the arts, the patron of travellers and of merchants, and the most powerful god in matters of commerce and gain. After him, the Gauls honoured Apollo, who drove away diseases, Mars, who controlled war, Jupiter, who ruled the heavens, and Minerva, who promoted handicrafts. He adds that the Gauls regarded Dis Pater as their ancestor.


title: Celtic deities

text: In characteristic Roman fashion, Caesar does not refer to these figures by their native names but by the names of the Roman gods with which he equated them, a procedure that complicates the task of identifying his Gaulish deities with their counterparts in the insular Celtic literatures. He also presents a neat schematic equation of god and function that is quite foreign to the vernacular literary testimony. Yet, given its limitations, his brief catalog is a valuable witness.


title: Celtic deities

text: The gods named by Caesar are well-attested in the later epigraphic record of Gaul and Britain. Not infrequently, their names are coupled with native Celtic theonyms and epithets, such as Mercury Visucius, Lenus Mars, Jupiter Poeninus, or Sulis Minerva. Unsyncretised theonyms are also widespread, particularly among goddesses such as Sulevia, Sirona, Rosmerta, and Epona. In all, several hundred names containing a Celtic element are attested in Gaul. The majority occur only once, which has led some scholars to conclude that the Celtic gods and their cults were local and tribal rather than national. Supporters of this view cite Lucan's mention of a god called Teutates, which they interpret as "god of the tribe" (it is thought that "teuta-" meant "tribe" in Celtic). The multiplicity of deity names may also be explained otherwise – many, for example, may be simply epithets applied to major deities by widely extended cults.


title: Celtic deities

text: Evidence from the Roman period presents a wide array of gods and goddesses who are represented by images or inscribed dedications. Certain deities were venerated widely across the Celtic world, while others were limited only to a single region or even to a specific locality. Certain local or regional deities might have greater popularity within their spheres than supra-regional deities. For example, in east-central Gaul, the local healing goddess Sequana of present-day Burgundy, was probably more influential in the minds of her local devotees than the Matres, who were worshipped all over Britain, Gaul and the Rhineland.