Artaxerxes IArtaxerxes I (ˌɑrtəˈzɜrksiːz, 𐎠𐎼𐎫𐎧𐏁𐏂𐎠 ; Ἀρταξέρξης) was the fifth King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, from 465 to December 424 BC. He was the third son of Xerxes I. He may have been the "Artasyrus" mentioned by Herodotus as being a satrap of the royal satrapy of Bactria. In Greek sources he is also surnamed "long-handed" (μακρόχειρ Makrókheir; Longimanus), allegedly because his right hand was longer than his left. Artaxerxes was probably born in the reign of his grandfather Darius I, to the emperor's son and heir, Xerxes I.
HamantashA hamantash (pl. hamantashen; also spelled hamantasch, hamantaschen; המן־טאַש homentash, pl. המן־טאַשן homentashn, 'Haman pockets') is an Ashkenazi Jewish triangular filled-pocket pastry associated with the Jewish holiday of Purim. The name refers to Haman, the villain in the Purim story. In Hebrew, hamantashen are also known as אוזני המן (oznei Haman), meaning "Haman's ears". "Haman's ears" also refers to a Sephardic Purim pastry, "Orejas de Haman", thought to originate in Spain and Italy, that is made by frying twisted or rolled strips of dough.
Protocanonical booksThe protocanonical books are those books of the Old Testament that are also included in the Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh) and that came to be considered canonical during the formational period of orthodox Christianity. The Old Testament is entirely rejected by some forms of Gnosticism, but the Hebrew Bible was adhered to even more tightly by Jewish Christians than Gentile Christians. The term protocanonical is often used to contrast these books to the deuterocanonical books or apocrypha, which "were sometimes doubted" by some in the early church, and are considered non-canonical by most Protestants.
CleromancyCleromancy is a form of sortition (casting of lots) in which an outcome is determined by means that normally would be considered random, such as the rolling of dice (astragalomancy), but that are sometimes believed to reveal the will of a deity. In ancient Rome fortunes were told through the casting of lots or sortes. Casting of lots (gōral, klē̂ros) is mentioned 47 times in the Bible. Some examples in the Hebrew Bible of the casting of lots as a means of determining God's will: In the Book of Leviticus , God commanded Moses, "And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the , and the other lot for the scapegoat.
Talent (measurement)The talent (Ancient Greek: τάλαντον, talanton, Latin talentum) was a unit of weight used in the ancient world, often used for weighing gold and silver, but also mentioned in connection with other metals, ivory, and frankincense. In Homer's poems, it is always used of gold and is thought to have been quite a small weight of about , approximately the same as the later gold stater coin or Persian daric. In later times in Greece, it represented a much larger weight, approximately 3000 times as much: an Attic talent was approximately .
