Well rather than have this thread drift off into a multitude of unrelated sub-threads, it would likely be best to start new ones, that way the rest of qatar's readers can follow them too. But it's up to you folks.
The answer to your question, which should nip this sub-thread off pretty quickly is inherent in the different nouns used in to two sentences of mine that you quoted. The first refers to "souls" while the second refers to "people". As a general rule, each person has one soul. ;-) But not all souls "have" one people. ;-) What we call "people" or a "person" in the singular, is in fact the living combination of a body and a soul. If you are dead, or as in this case yet-unborn, your soul will still exist, but you will be rather immaterial, and rather lacking in the Body Department.
So the two million, refer to the physical head-count, of the living flesh-and-blood people who were present, as derived from the Torah sources (the Torah actually refers to some 600,000 men (Exodus 12:37). Typically in such "counts" "men" refers to those aged 20 and up). The present 14 million is also a body-count. The number of souls present at Sinai, on the other hand, is not at all a body count, but rather refers to some sort of disembodied presence, and would more likely be in the order of a minimum of 30-50 million, for all Jews that have lived until the present. So I see no conflict at all.
It's cool to know that Islam and Christianity together, at 54 percent, are over half of the world. I had always thought that most of the world were idolaters of some kind. Although, I must say their number look strange considering that in India there are over 800,000 million Hindus alone, and I wonder what type of numbers they use for China which is "officially" Atheist (Yes, I saw their comments on China).
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timeasmymeasure
The Show MUST go on
Date: 2005-06-13 09:37 pm (UTC)The answer to your question, which should nip this sub-thread off pretty quickly is inherent in the different nouns used in to two sentences of mine that you quoted. The first refers to "souls" while the second refers to "people". As a general rule, each person has one soul. ;-) But not all souls "have" one people. ;-) What we call "people" or a "person" in the singular, is in fact the living combination of a body and a soul. If you are dead, or as in this case yet-unborn, your soul will still exist, but you will be rather immaterial, and rather lacking in the Body Department.
So the two million, refer to the physical head-count, of the living flesh-and-blood people who were present, as derived from the Torah sources (the Torah actually refers to some 600,000 men (Exodus 12:37). Typically in such "counts" "men" refers to those aged 20 and up). The present 14 million is also a body-count. The number of souls present at Sinai, on the other hand, is not at all a body count, but rather refers to some sort of disembodied presence, and would more likely be in the order of a minimum of 30-50 million, for all Jews that have lived until the present. So I see no conflict at all.
It's cool to know that Islam and Christianity together, at 54 percent, are over half of the world. I had always thought that most of the world were idolaters of some kind. Although, I must say their number look strange considering that in India there are over 800,000 million Hindus alone, and I wonder what type of numbers they use for China which is "officially" Atheist (Yes, I saw their comments on China).