Posts Tagged ‘attempt’

17th of May Saint Martyr Nikolay Sofiiski (Nikolas of Sofia) – Bulgarian Martyr Confessor saint from the XV century

Friday, May 21st, 2021

Saint Confessor Nikolay Sofijski (Nikolay of Sofia) Short Biography

 

saint_Nikolay-of-Sofia-icon-on-the-entrance-of-his-Church-in-capital-of-Bulgaria-Sofia

St. Nikolay (Nicolas) of Sofia has been born in Ioannina (city now in territory of Greece). He was a pious and with his honorable craft of shoemaking going through the stormy sea of life. When he arrived in Sofia (Serdica / Sredetz), one of the main cities of the Ottoman Empire of that time, a long remain of the glorious past when even the righteous emperor Constantine The great was considering to set as a capital of the Eastern empire either Constantinople today's Istanbul in Turkey or Sofia (Fortress of Serdika).

When Nikolay came to Sofia, he was immediately recognized by the Turkish authorities and rich people of the city  and to have him part of their "nobel" turkish society and enrich the city ruleship, the Turkish tried to push Nikolay to accept Islam. 
Once a time Turkish invited Nikolay, put a somniferous herb in his offered drink and once he fall asleep without his knowledge they have circumcised him according to Islamic tradition observance. 
Once awaken Nikolay realised what has been done to him and fall in a deep regret and mourned over the abuse of his body which according the Christian faith is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Once he started appearing on the streets of Sofia, Turkish immediately invited him to attend the mosque considering him already a muslim due to the circumcision ritual commited on him. 
He firmly rejected the offer publicly, considering himself a Christian as he never publicly resigned his Christian faith and never ever wanted to be muslim and never ever has attended another temple apart from the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church he belonged to.
Facing the rejection, the powerful of the day turks cannot believe their eyes as they already thought Nikolay accepted the fact he is already a muslim, not understanding that for a Christian the temporary flesh is nothing but a temporary hut and the Spiritual and Eternal Soul and The Spirit of God which enlightens it as well as the Eternal Kingdom of Heaven is everything. The turks thouhgt over it fleshly, thinking that having a sign of circumcision already puts a person belonging to his faith, not knowing that the the first desciples of Christ, the most holy apostles as belonging to the Jewish faith had their circumcision themselves, and this circumcision never ever hindered their faith in the Resurrected Messiah Jesus Christ.

Immediately facing the rejecting the Turks, arrested him as a traitor of their faith and put him into a harsh torments.

Saint_Nikolay_Sofijski-living-and-martyrdom-scenes-icon-painting

Saint_Nikolay_Sofijski-martyrdom-scenes-icon-painting

Combined icon with the living of saint Nikolay of Sofia

Putting him on trial In the local court, the judge announced his opinion that Nikolay doesn't hold a fault, neither against Islam neither against the claimants.
Nevertheless the crowd put Nikolay outside of Sofia (in a similar way the Jews resurrected Christ outside of the city of Jerusalem) in Sofia's near region called "Yuch Bunar", translated from Turkish as the  ("The Tree Wells"), there they stoned to death on 17th of May year 1555 A.D., (the stoning a transgressor of the Islamic law, tradition is still followed by some countries even today, for example I heard similar cases do happen still in Saudi Arabia for sinners against islamic law).

Saint_Bulgarian_Christian_martyr_Nikolay-Sofiiski-year-1555AD-commemorated-17-th-of-May

Saint Nikolay icon in his traditional Bulgarian clothes wear (Nosia)
holding his shoemaking instrument

His holy body has been moved to the graveyear called (Търница) Térnitza and has been burned – and the dust has been scattered through the four directions of the world North, East, South, West following islamic tradition and in attempt to completely irradicate the memory of the saint in the relatives and the living Christians of that time.  Even though due to the request of Matey Gramatik (Mathew the Gramatik – translated as Chronicler / Annalist), a boy managed to collect little burned part remains of the relics and a pious christian, secretly made a burial prayer for his Soul (Опело – called Opelo in the Slavonic Eastern Orthodox Church) according to the Christian tradition and buried him with honor.

saint_Nikolay-new-of-Sofia-sv_nikolay_novi
 

Soon after the martyrdom of saint Nikolay the New, the Metropolitan of Sredetz Iakov (Jacob), announced the canonization of st. Nikolay on a specially summoned for the consideration of saintship of St. Nikolay, a Local Church Metropolitan Council. Jacob received parts from holy relics (parts of the skull and the bones) of st. Nikolay, that has been secretly kept by a faithful Christians till then and placed the new received saint relics and placed them together in the ark (coffin) with the incorruptable holy relics of Saint King Stephan Milutin at that time located in Church of St. Archangel Michaelsee my previous article pilgrimage to the incorruptable Holy relics of Saint Stephan Milutin in Cathedral Saint Nedelya, Sofia Bulgaria. Later parts of the holy relics has been housed in in a Wood maden Church.

 

The grave of saint Nikolay of Sofia is one of the few known graves of Bulgarian saints. Today, it is situated in the city center of Sofia capital city of Bulgaria in the district "Три кладенци" / "The Three Wells". Three hundred meters from there (in the tiny park like garden between the streets of "Pirotska" and "Opalchenska") lays a Beatiful Majestic Church, dedicated to the Holy Martyr st. Nikolay Sofijski. The Church of Saint Nicolas of Sofia is one of the biggest Cathedral Churches in Bulgaria (it is second by size in city of Sofia). The Temple has been rised following a project of architecture created by Anton Tornyov after the Liberation of Bulgarian following the Russian/Bulgarian-Turkish war on 3-rd of December 1900. Church saint Nikolay Sofijski has been consecrated by Metropolitan Partenij (Parthenius of Sofia was a senior Bulgarian clergyman and church figure, Metropolitan of Sofia from 1892 to 1918. Metropolitan Parthenius is an exceptional clergyman who has left a lasting mark in the history of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.).

Church-of-Saint_Nikolay-Sofijski-Cyrkva_Sv_Nikolaj_Sofijski

Church of Saint Nikolay of Sofia in Sofia Bulgaria (corner of street "Opalchenska" and "Pirotska").


Church-of-saint-Nikolay-of-Sofia-internal-view-Church-icons-and-architecture-decoration

Church Nikolay Sofijski view to Iconostasis Church interior

Saint-Nikolay-of-Sofia-Church-dome-Christ

Church dome paintings of St. Nikolay Sofijski

Saint-Nikolay-of-Sofia-Church-Iconostasis-icons

Iconostasis of the Church (notice the beatiful flower forms curved wood)

In the beginning of XXth century in 1870s on the exact place of the grave of the saint has been built a small chapel in his memoriam. It is situated in a small yard on today's Street of "Tzar Simeon / King Simeon" it is opened for pilgrim visitors everyday in the early afternoon every working day. 
Chapel-with-grave-of-Saint-Nikolay-of-Sofia-1
The Chapel entrance door 

Chapel-with-grave-of-Saint-Nikolay-of-Sofia-2

A Heavenly beauty roman like chapel

Chapel_paraklis_sv_Nikolaj_Sofijski_novi

The Chapel on the grave of Saint Nikolas of Sofia, built on the place called "Terniza" (Tzar Simeon Street), where on 17-th of May, year 1555 A.D. where remains of the saint has been burned by turks – photo by Martin Mitov (C) 

Chapel-with-grave-of-Saint-Nikolay-of-Sofia-3

The Grave of Saint Nikolay of Sofia (View to Alter dedicated to the matryr saint)


The holy relics of Saint Nikolay the new are now preserved in his Church  and are brought for veneration by believers and pilgrims on each 16 and 17 of May and sometimes in a Church feasts of a higher importance.

Each 17-th of May in Sofia it is a tradition for clirics (clergy) to gather together with pilgrims and layman for a Lithia with the holy relics of saint Nikolay from the Church to the chapel, and for the following two days 18, 19th of May his holy relics are publicly displayed for veneration.

Sofia's mediaval historian and clergyman deacon Matey Gramatik (upmentioned), was a comtemporary of the saint and eyewitness of his martyrdom and death, soon after wrote his Church service and Biography (Saint Living). Today the original manuscript is preserved in the the Library of the church "St. Martyr Nikolai Novi Sofiyski" in Sofia.

Let by the holy prayers of Saint Nikolay Sofijski our homeland Bulgaria is given peace prosperity in The Hope, Faith and Love and every Good and firmness in the True faith given by Christ the Holy Eastern Orthodox faith. Let by his Holy prayers God gives peace and love to everyone in the world and grant, repentance for us the lost and spiritually poor and "fatherless" children of the 21st century.

Stop SSH Bruteforce authentication attempt Attacks with fail2ban

Monday, July 6th, 2020

Fail2ban stop restrict ssh bruteforce authentication attempt attacks

Most of webmasters today have some kind of SSH console remote access to the server and the OpenSSH Secure Shell service is usually not filtered for specific Networks but fully accessbible on the internet. This is especially true for home brew Linux Web servers as well as small to mid sized websites and blogs hosted on a cheap dedicated servers hosted in UK2 / Contabo RackSpace etc.

Brute force password guess attack tools such as Hydra and a distributed password dictionary files have been circulating quite for a while and if the attacker has enough time as well as a solid dictionary base, as well as some kind of relatively weak password you can expect that sooner or later some of the local UNIX accounts can be breaked and the script kiddie can get access to your server and make quickly a havoc, if he is lucky enough to be able to exploit some local vulnerability and get root access …

If you're a sysadmin that has to manage the Linux server and you do a routine log reading on the machine, you will soon get annoyed of the ever growing amount of different users, that are trying to login unsucessfully to the SSH (TCP port 22) service filling up the logs with junk and filling up disk space for nothing as well as consuming some CPU and Memory resources for nothing, you will need some easy  solution to make brute force attacks from an IP get filtered after few unsuccessful login attempts.
 

The common way to protect SSH would then be to ban an IP address from logging in if there are too many failed login attempts based on an automatic firewall inclusion of any IP that tried to unsuccessfully login lets say 5 or 10 reoccuring times.

In Linux there is a toll called “fail2ban” (F2B) used to limit brute force authentication attempts.

F2B works with minimal configuration and besides being capable of protecting the SSH service, it can be set to protect a lot of other Server applications like;

 Apache / NGINX Web Servers with PHP / Mail Servers (Exim, Postfix, Qmail, Sendmail), POP3 IMAP / AUTH services (Dovecot, Courier, Cyrus), DNS Bind servers, MySQL DBs, Monitoring tools such as Nagios, FTP servers (ProFTPD / PureFTP), Proxy servers (Squid), WordPress sites (wp-login) brute force attacks, Web Mail services (Horde / Roundcube / OpenWebmail), jabber servers etc.

To get a better overview below is F2B package description:
 

linux:~# apt-cache show fail2ban|grep -i description-en -A 21
Description-en: ban hosts that cause multiple authentication errors
 Fail2ban monitors log files (e.g. /var/log/auth.log,
 /var/log/apache/access.log) and temporarily or persistently bans
 failure-prone addresses by updating existing firewall rules.  Fail2ban
 allows easy specification of different actions to be taken such as to ban
 an IP using iptables or hostsdeny rules, or simply to send a notification
 email.
 .
 By default, it comes with filter expressions for various services
 (sshd, apache, qmail, proftpd, sasl etc.) but configuration can be
 easily extended for monitoring any other text file.  All filters and
 actions are given in the config files, thus fail2ban can be adopted
 to be used with a variety of files and firewalls.  Following recommends
 are listed:
 .
  – iptables/nftables — default installation uses iptables for banning.
    nftables is also suported. You most probably need it
  – whois — used by a number of *mail-whois* actions to send notification
    emails with whois information about attacker hosts. Unless you will use
    those you don't need whois
  – python3-pyinotify — unless you monitor services logs via systemd, you
    need pyinotify for efficient monitoring for log files changes

 

Using fail2ban is easy as there is a multitude of preexisting filters and actions (that gets triggered on a filter match) already written by different people usually found in /etc/fail2ban/filter.d an /etc/fail2ban/action.d.
as well as custom action / filter / jails is easy to do.
Fail2ban is available as a standard distro RPM / DEB package
on most modern versions of Ubuntu (16.04 and later), Debian, Mint and CentOS 7, OpenSuSE, Fedora etc.
 

1. Install Fail2ban package


– On Deb based distros do the usual:

 

linux:~# apt update
linux:~# apt install –yes fail2ban


On RPM distros Fedora / CentOS / SuSE etc.
 

linux:~# sudo yum -y install epel-release
linux:~# sudo yum -y install fail2ban

 

2. Enable fail2ban ban rules for SSH failed authentication filtering

 

Create the file /etc/fail2ban/jail.local :
 

# cat > /etc/fail2ban/jail.local


Paste below content:
 

[DEFAULT]
# Ban hosts for one hour:
bantime = 360
# Override /etc/fail2ban/jail.d/00-firewalld.conf:
banaction = iptables-multiport

 

[sshd]
enabled = true
maxretry = 10
findtime = 43200
# ban for 1 day
bantime = 3600
# ban for 1 day
#bantime = 86400

 

This config will ban for 1 day any IP that tries to access more than 10 unsuccesful times sshd daemon.
This works through IPTABLES indicated by config banaction = iptables-multiport config making fail2ban to automatically add a new iptables block rule valid for 1 day.

To close the file press CTRL + D simulanesly

  • maxretry controls the maximum number of allowed retries.
  • findtime specifies the time window (in seconds) which should be considered for banning an IP. (43200 seconds is 12 hours)
  • bantime specifies the time window (in seconds) for which the IP address will be banned (86400 seconds is 24 hours).

If SSH listens to a different port from 22 on the machine, you can specify the port number with  port = <port_number>  in this file.

 

3. Start fail2ban service


Either use the /etc/init.d/fail2ban start script or systemd systemctl
 

linux:~# systemctl enable fail2ban
linux:~# systemctl restart fail2ban

 

4. Fail2ban operational principle in short


Fail2ban uses Filters, Actions And Jails:

Filtersspecify certain patterns of text that Fail2ban should recognize in log files.
Actionsare things Fail2ban can do once a filter is matched.
Jailstell Fail2ban to match a filter on some logs. When the number of matches goes beyond a certain limit specified in the jail, Fail2ban takes an action specified in the jail.

If still wonder what is Fail2ban jail? Each configured jail tells fail2ban to look at system logs and take actions against attacks on a configured service, in our case OpenSSH service.
 

5. Blocking repeated unsuccessful password authentication attempts for longer periods


If more than number of failed ssh logins happen to occur (lets say 35 reoccuring ones in /var/log/auth.log (the debian failed ssh login file) or /var/log/secure (redhat distros failed ssh log file).
You will perhaps want to permanently block this IP for 3 days or so, here is how:
 

banaction = iptables-multiport
maxretry  = 35
findtime  = 259200
bantime   = 608400
enabled   = true
filter    = sshd

 

Add this to [sshlongterm] section to make it finally look like this:
 

[sshlongterm]
port      = ssh
logpath   = %(sshd_log)s
banaction = iptables-multiport
maxretry  = 35
findtime  = 259200
bantime   = 608400
enabled   = true
filter    = sshd


Of course to load new config restart fail2ban
 

# /etc/init.d/fail2ban restart


Default jail as well as the sshlongterm jail should now work together. Short term attacks will be handled by the default jail under [sshd], and the long term attacks handled by our own second jail [sshlongterm].
 

6. Checking which intruders were blocked by fail2ban


Fail2ban creates a separate chain f2b-sshd to which it adds each blocked IP for the period of time preset in the config, to list it:

linux:~# /sbin/iptables -L f2b-sshd
Chain f2b-sshd (1 references)
target     prot opt source               destination         
REJECT     all  —  165.22.2.95          anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
REJECT     all  —  ec2-13-250-58-46.ap-southeast-1.compute.amazonaws.com  anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
REJECT     all  —  cable200-116-3-133.epm.net.co  anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
REJECT     all  —  mail.antracite.org   anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
REJECT     all  —  139.59.57.2          anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
REJECT     all  —  111.68.98.152.pern.pk  anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
REJECT     all  —  216.126.59.61        anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
REJECT     all  —  104.248.4.138        anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
REJECT     all  —  210.211.119.10       anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
REJECT     all  —  85.204.118.13        anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
REJECT     all  —  broadband.actcorp.in  anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
REJECT     all  —  104.236.33.155       anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
REJECT     all  —  114.ip-167-114-114.net  anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
REJECT     all  —  142.162.194.168.rfc6598.dynamic.copelfibra.com.br  anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
REJECT     all  —  server.domain.cl     anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
REJECT     all  —  ip202.ip-51-68-251.eu  anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
REJECT     all  —  188.166.185.157      anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
REJECT     all  —  93.49.11.206         anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
RETURN     all  —  anywhere             anywhere            

 

Conclusion


What we have seen here is how to make fail2ban protect Internet firewall unrestricted SSHD Service to filter out 1337 skript kiddie 'hackers' out of your machine. With a bit of tuning could not only break the occasional SSH Brute Force bot scanners that craw the new but could even mitigate massive big botnet initiated brute force attacks to servers.
Of course fail2ban is not a panacea and to make sure you won't get hacked one days better make sure to only allow access to SSH service only for a certain IP addresses or IP address ranges that are of your own PCs.

Christ is Risen Eastern Orthodox Resurrection Paschal Greeting in Different Languages

Friday, April 24th, 2020

Resurrection-of-Christ-holy-orthodox-icon-Voskresenie-Hristovo

Happy Easter to All Orthodox Christians worldwide ! 
We are the the bright week –  this is the week after The Feast of Feasts Resurrection of Christ. This year in 2020, we Orthodox Christians celebrated this feast on 19th, 20th and 21st of April. The celebrations of the Feast of Christians and the Paschal joy continues for the whole week, so I found some time to quickly blog to share the Joy of the Resurrection of the Savior Jesus Christ who has freed all People from the Fear of the Death by Manifestating Death has been overtaken by Life Eternally.
Earlier years, I've blogged shortly on the Christ is risen in many languages. But this time I decided to extend my previous blog by adding some more details on which are the Member Churches consisting the Christ body of Holy Orthodoxy, What is the Creed of Faith (Symbol of Faith) difference Between Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics and why we're not catholics and do celebrate Easter on a different date from Roman Catholics. Finally I will post the Paschal Greeting translated to as many languages I could find.

In the Eastern Orthodox Christian world which is the True Church of Christ consists of 15 National Churches each traced back to the Holy Apostles of Christ, each of Churches is in eucharistic Communion with the other. 

Canonical Orthodox Christ Churches as of year 2020 are the following:

1. Orthodox Church of Constantinople
2. Orthodox Church of Alexandria
3. Orthodox Church of Antiochia
4. Jerusalem Patriarchal Orthodox Church
5. Bulgarian Orthodox Church
6. Georgian Orthodox Church
7. Serbian Orthodox Church
8. Russian Orthodox Church
9. Romanian Orthodox Church
10. Orthodox Church of Cyprus (archibishopship)
11. Greek Orthodox Church
12. Albanian Orthodox Church
13. Polish Orthodox Church
14. Orthodox Church of Chech Lands and Slovakia
15. American Orthodox Church


Historically Christ Church was one before the Great Schism that was perhaps the greatest tragedy of mankind after Christ's Crucifix it occured in 1054 A.D. About this saddening events, the manuscripts and contemporary saints says with this terrible event, the whole world shaked its basis. The result of the Bulla brought by Pope's messangers in Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople in the Holy Alter of the Church putting in document of official schism and the Church of the east condeming the Western Church Cuhrch action headed by the pope due to the false Creed of faith inclusion legallized by the pope with the so called 'Filioque' word formula that changed the original agreement of Church fathers decisions on the First Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 381 A.D. (which by the way puts Anathemas on anyone who dares to change the Creed of Faith as well change by the Popes in the well known ancient Baptism Formulas like oilment (receving the sign of the holy spirit during baptism).

The historical number of Orthodox Churche dioceses were much more numerous but with the time and the hardships this are the only ones that left as official Churches, many dioceses were destroyed by the Muslims Conquests and Roman Catholics orders like the Jesuits whose fight against orthodoxy has been severe in their attempt to make the whole world to turn to the pope, this is very well known by the many remains of Uniates around Europe, especially in nowadays Ukraine. There is a lot of nations like Chechz and Hungarians whose for many centuries confessed orthodoxy but due to the economic relations with the West and the converion of their rulers (princes / Kings) etc. to Roman Catholicism has gradually converted their Eastern Churches to Roman Catholics.

The origional Nicean Creed (Nicea-Constantinople) creed of faith reads as this:

Nicean Creed of Faith ( Agreed on 381 Anno Dommini in Emperor Constantine City of Byzantine Empire Constantinople)

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds (æons), Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;

by whom all things were made;

who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary, and was made man;

he was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried, and the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father;

from thence he shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead. ;

whose kingdom shall have no end.

* And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the prophets.

In one Holy Catholic and apostolic Church; we acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

The Western Church head Bishop the Pope and local priests due to some historical regions of Spain and other parts of Western Europe's aim to fight heresies included the word Latin word Filioque in above translated text (Word which is translated as "And from the Son") in above starred line 'And in te Holy Ghost, The Lord Giver of Life who proceedeth from the Father' become 'And in the Holy Ghost, The Lord Giver of Life who proceedeth from the Father (Filioque) = and from the Son.' this was acceptable for the Eastern Churches until the moment when this Confession of Faith has been legalized for the Whole Western Church with a decree so called pope 'Bulla' with which it become the official confession of faith for the whole Catholic Church. The Eastern Church of course was following the accepted Canon rules from the first Ecumenical Council in 381 A.D. and rejected to accept the definition of the Pope at first in the Face of Saint Patriarch Photios I of Constantinople (year 810 –  893) and become official in 1054 by the rule of Pope Leo whose legates tried to claim Headship of the Pope over the whole Church and questioned the title of the Constantinople Ecumenical Patriarch Michael I Cerularius.
Along with the chages of the Creed of Faith the West, the years during centuries VII and IX centuries has already put a lot of differences in the East and West Church along doctrinal, theological, linguistic, political, and geographical lines so the split was a reflection of all this. The Latin Church was much more power hungry and more progressive for its time and authoritarian, trying to combine the Worldly power with the Spiritual one given by the line of Apostoles from Christ Ceasaris-Papism, where the Eastern Church was governed in the ancient model of the Worldly power in face of Eastern Roman empire Emperor and the Patriarch who was a governor of the Spiritual power. The schism was worsened also by the many Latins raids in the Eastern Empire Christian brothers and the sacking of Constantinople in 8-13 April year 1204. Of course both Wester and Eastern Roman Empire had an appetite for a conquest over the other and often this has lead the secular rulers on both sides to try to manipulate activities of the spiritual leaders of both to work for their interests, but the schism would never occur if the spiritual establishment of the Church which are the Holy Canons (decision of the Ecumenical Councils) were not breached by the Western Church.
One of this breaches of the Ancient canons is the Celebration of Eastern Pascha which says the Christian Pascha should never coincide with Jewish Pascha. However in the Western Church this rule was breached and nowadays The Eastern (The Day of the Resurrection of Christ) in the Roman Catholic Church (Western Church) coincides most of the years with Jewish Pascha (both Roman Catholics and the executors of Christ who never accepted him the Jews celebrate together … a sad fact).

Nowadays most of the Ancient Churches of the East together with the Eastern Orthodox Churches, who are confessing the Faith of Christ such as it was handed by the Saint Fathers has a very specific ancient way of confession of faith similar to the Creed of Faith which was a very common short ancient way to confess the faith when two Christians met it is perhaps originating from the times of the Heresies in the 1st century right after the Christ Crucifix, when the pupil of Christ used it to confirm the Glorious and unexplainable Miracle of the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the Death in Real Body in the 3rd day from the Grave in the Cave where his body was buried.

Resurrection-of-Christ-Anastasis-Greek-orthodox-icon

The Greeting Formula is the well known in the Eastern Orthodox Churches such as in Bulgaria / Greece / Russia / Serbia etc. Christ is Risen.
On every easter Almost everyone in the Orthodox Christian Countires greats everyone else both in homes on the street at work or anywhere relatives friends and even unfamiliar people who has to do business deeds with the immersely joyful greeting.

ХРИСТОС ВОСКРЕСЕ / CHRIST IS RISEN !!!!! !!!

Then the greeted Person answers back

ВОЙСТИНУ ВОСКРЕСЕ / TRULY HE IS RISEN (INDEED HE IS RISEN) !!!!!!!!

In the Orthodox Churches, believers do greet themselves with this heartful joyful greeting for the whole 40 days after the Feast of Resurrection of Christ.

In Russia, Ukrain, Belarus and the surrounding Slavonic lands there is this tradition that the greeting is repeated 3 times as an interaction between person A and person B, for example.

Person A (3 times) greets:
ХРИСТОС ВОСКРЕСЕ = CHRIST IS RISEN !!!
Person B (3 times) answers:
ВОЙСТИНУ ВОСКРЕСЕ = TRULY HE IS RISEN !!!

Resurrection-of-Christ-Velikden-orthodox-holy-icon

Below is a good list with Paschal Resurrection Greeting in multiple languages, for those who has curious polyglot minds who want to learn few words in different languages.

Indo-European languages

Greek: Χριστὸς ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη! (Khristós anésti! Alithós anésti!)

Voskresenie-Gospoda-Nashego-Iisusa-Hrista-Mosaic

Slavic languages

Church Slavonic: Хрїсто́съ воскре́се! Вои́стинꙋ воскре́се! (Xristósŭ voskrése! Voístinu voskrése!)

Belarusian: Хрыстос уваскрос! Сапраўды ўваскрос! (Chrystos uvaskros! Sapraŭdy ŭvaskros!)

Bulgarian: Христос воскресе! Воистину воскресе! (Khristos voskrese! Voistinu voskrese!), as if in Church Slavonic; Христос възкресе! Наистина възкресе! (Khristos vâzkrese! Naistina vâzkrese!) in Modern Bulgarian

Croatian: Krist uskrsnu! Uistinu uskrsnu!

: Kristus vstal z mrtvých! Vpravdě vstal z mrtvých!

Macedonian: Христос воскресе! Навистина воскресе! (Hristos voskrese! Navistina voskrese!), traditional; or Христос воскресна! Навистина воскресна! (Hristos voskresna! Navistina voskresna!)

Polish: Chrystus zmartwychwstał! Prawdziwie zmartwychwstał!

Russian: Христос воскрес(-е)! Воистину воскрес(-е)! (Khristos voskres(-е)! Voistinu voskres(-е)!) (the version with -e is in Church Slavonic, one without it is in modern Russian; both are widely used)

Rusyn: Хрістос воскрес! Воістину воскрес! (Hristos voskres! Voistynu voskres!)

Serbian: Христос васкрсе! Ваистину васкрсе! (Hristos vaskrse! Vaistinu vaskrse!) or Христос воскресе! Ваистину воскресе! (Hristos voskrese! Vaistinu voskrese!)

Slovak: Kristus vstal z mŕtvych! Skutočne vstal (z mŕtvych)! (though the Church Slavonic version is more often used)

Slovene: Kristus je vstal! Zares je vstal!

Ukrainian: Христос воскрес! Воістину воскрес! (Khrystos voskres! Voistynu voskres!)

Tosk Albanian: Krishti u ngjall! Vërtet u ngjall!

Armenian

Western Armenian: Քրիստոս յարեա՜ւ ի մեռելոց: Օրհնեա՜լ է Յարութիւնն Քրիստոսի: (Krisdos haryav i merelotz! Orhnyal e Haroutyunen Krisdosi!)

eastern dialect, Քրիստոս հարյա՜վ ի մեռելոց: Օրհնյա՜լ է Հարությունը Քրիստոսի: (Khristos haryav i merelotz! Orhnyal e Harouthyoune Khristosi!); literally "Christ is risen! Blessed is the resurrection of Christ!")
 

Christus-Resurrexit-Latin-icon-Christ_Resurrection

 

Germanic languages

 

Anglic languages

Scots: Christ has ryssyn! Hech aye, he his ain sel!

English: Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Or Christ is risen! Truly, he is risen!

Old English: Crist is ārisen! Hē is sōþlīċe ārisen!

Middle English: Crist is arisen! Arisen he sothe!

Danish: Kristus er opstanden! Sandelig Han er Opstanden!

West Frisian: Kristus is opstien! Wis is er opstien!

German: Christus ist auferstanden! Er ist wahrhaft auferstanden! or Der Herr ist auferstanden! Er ist wahrhaftig auferstanden!

Icelandic: Kristur er upprisinn! Hann er sannarlega upprisinn!

Faroese: Kristus er upprisin! Hann er sanniliga upprisin!

Low Franconian languages

Dutch: Christus is opgestaan! Hij is waarlijk opgestaan! (Netherlands) or Christus is verrezen! Hij is waarlijk verrezen! (Belgium)

Afrikaans: Christus het opgestaan! Hy het waarlik opgestaan!

Norwegian

Bokmål: Kristus er oppstanden! Han er sannelig oppstanden!

Nynorsk: Kristus er oppstaden! Han er sanneleg oppstaden!

Swedish: Kristus är uppstånden! Han är sannerligen uppstånden!

Italic languages

Latin: Christus resurrexit! Resurrexit vere!

Romance languages

Aromanian: Hristolu anyie! Di alihea anyie!

Resurrection-of-Christ-Coptic-christian-icon

Catalan: Crist ha ressuscitat! Veritablement ha ressuscitat!

French: Le Christ est ressuscité ! En vérité il est ressuscité! Or Le Christ est ressuscité ! Vraiment il est ressuscité !

Galician: Cristo resucitou! De verdade resucitou!

Italian: Cristo è risorto! È veramente risorto!

Portuguese: Cristo ressuscitou! Em verdade ressuscitou! or Cristo ressuscitou! Ressuscitou verdadeiramente!

Arpitan: Lo Crist es ressuscitat! En veritat es ressuscitat!

Romanian: Hristos a înviat! Adevărat a înviat!

Romansh: Cristo es rinaschieu! In varded, el es rinaschieu!

Sardinian: Cristu est resuscitadu! Aberu est resuscitadu!

Sicilian: Cristu arrivisciutu esti! Pibbiru arrivisciutu esti!

Spanish: ¡Cristo resucitó! ¡En verdad resucitó!

Walloon: Li Crist a raviké! Il a raviké podbon!

Baltic languages

Latvian: Kristus (ir) augšāmcēlies! Patiesi (viņš ir) augšāmcēlies!

Lithuanian: Kristus prisikėlė! Tikrai prisikėlė!
 

Celtic languages

Goidelic languages

Old Irish: Asréracht Críst! Asréracht Hé-som co dearb!

Irish: Tá Críost éirithe! Go deimhin, tá sé éirithe!

Manx: Taw Creest Ereen! Taw Shay Ereen Guhdyne!

Scottish Gaelic: Tha Crìosd air èiridh! Gu dearbh, tha e air èiridh!

 

Brythonic languages

 

Breton:Dassoret eo Krist! E wirionez dassoret eo!

Cornish: Thew Creest dassorez! En weer thewa dassorez!

Welsh: Atgyfododd Crist! Yn wir atgyfododd!

Indo-Iranian languages

Ossetian:Чырысти райгас! Æцæгæй райгас! Or бæлвырд райгас! (Ḱyrysti rajgas! Æcægæj rajgas or bælvyrd rajgas!)

Persian: مسیح برخاسته است! به راستی برخاسته است!‎ (Masih barkhaste ast! Be rasti barkhaste ast!)

Hindi: येसु मसीह ज़िन्दा हो गया है! हाँ यक़ीनन, वोह ज़िन्दा हो गय یسوع مسیح زندہ ہو گیا ہے! ہاں یقیناً، وہ زندہ ہو گیا ہے!‎ (Yesu Masīh zindā ho gayā hai! Hā̃ yaqīnan, voh zindā ho gayā hai!)

Marathi: Yeshu Khrist uthla ahe! Kharokhar uthla ahe!

Abkhazian: Kyrsa Dybzaheit! Itzzabyrgny Dybzaheit!
 

Jesus-Christ-Resurrected-arabic-coptic-icon

Afro-Asiatic languages

 

Semitic languages

 

Standard Arabic: المسيح قام! حقا قام!‎ (al-Masīḥ qām! Ḥaqqan qām!) or المسيح قام! بالحقيقة قام! (al-Masīḥ qām! Bi-l-ḥaqīqati qām!)

Aramaic languages

 

Classical Syriac: ܡܫܝܚܐ ܩܡ! ܫܪܝܪܐܝܬ ܩܡ!‎ (Mshiḥa qām! sharīrāīth qām! or Mshiḥo Qom! Shariroith Qom!)

Assyrian Neo-Aramaic: ܡܫܝܚܐ ܩܡܠܗ! ܒܗܩܘܬܐ ܩܡܠܗ!‎ (Mshikha qimlih! bhāqota qimlih!)

Turoyo: ܡܫܝܚܐ ܩܝܡ! ܫܪܥܪܐܝܬ ܩܝܡ!‎ (Mshiḥo qāyem! Shariroith qāyem!)

 

East African languages

 

Tigrinya: Christos tensiou! Bahake tensiou!

Amharic: Kristos Tenestwal! Bergit Tenestwal!

Hebrew: המשיח קם! באמת קם!‎ (Hameshiach qam! Be'emet qam!)

Maltese: Kristu qam! Huwa qam tassew! or Kristu qam mill-mewt! Huwa qam tassew!

Egyptian

Coptic: (Pi'Christos aftonf! Khen oumetmi aftonf!)

Judeo-Berber: Lmasih yahye-d ger lmeytin! Stidet yahye-d ger lmeytin!


Dravidian languages

Tamil: கிறிஸ்து உயிர்த்தெழுந்தார், மெய்யாகவே அவர் உயிர்த்தெழுந்தார்.

Malayalam: ക്രിസ്തു ഉയിര്ത്തെഴുന്നേറ്റു! തീര്ച്ചയായും ഉയിര്ത്തെഴുന്നേറ്റു! (Christu uyirthezhunnettu! Theerchayayum uyirthezhunnettu!)
 

Eskimo–Aleut languages

Aleut: Kristusaaq Aglagikuk! Angangulakan Aglagikuk!

Pacific Gulf Yupik: Kristusaq ungwektaq! Pichinuq ungwektaq!

Central Yupik: Kristuussaaq unguirtuq! Ilumun unguirtuq!

Mayan languages

Tzotzil: Icha'kuxi Kajvaltik Kristo! Ta melel icha'kuxi!

Tzeltal: Cha'kuxaj Kajwaltik Kristo! Ta melel cha'kuxaj!

Christ-resurrection-Anastasis

 

Austronesian languages

Malayo-Polynesian

Batak: Tuhan nunga hehe! Tutu do ibana hehe!

Carolinian: Lios a melau sefal! Meipung, a mahan sefal!

Cebuano: Nabanhaw Si Kristo! Nabanhaw gayud!

Waray: Hi Kristo nabanwaw! Matuod nga Hiya nabanhaw!

Chamorro: La'la'i i Kristo! Magahet na luma'la' i Kristo!

Fijian: Na Karisito tucake tale! Io sa tucake tale!

Filipino: Nabuhay muli Si Kristo! Nabuhay talaga!

Hawaiian: Ua ala hou ʻo Kristo! Ua ala ʻiʻo nō ʻo Ia!

Indonesian: Kristus telah bangkit! Dia benar-benar telah bangkit!

Kapampangan: Y Kristû sinûbli yáng mèbié! Sinûbli ya pin mèbié!

Malagasy: Nitsangana tamin'ny maty i Kristy! Nitsangana marina tokoa izy!

Cook Islands Māori: Kuo toetu’u ‘ae Eiki! ‘Io kuo toetu’u mo’oni!

 Austroasiatic languages: Mon-Khmer

: Preah Christ mean preah choan rous leong vinh! trung mean preah choan rous leong vinh men!

 Vietnamese

: Chúa Ki-tô đã sống lại! Ngài đã sống lại thật!

 Thai

Thai: พระคริสต์เป็นขึ้นจากความตาย! or พระคริสต์ทรงกลับคืนพระชนม์ชีพ!

Basque

Basque: Cristo Berbiztua! Benetan Berbiztua!

Japanese

Japanese: ハリストス復活!実に復活! (Harisutosu fukkatsu! Jitsu ni fukkatsu!)

 Korean

Korean 그리스도 부활하셨네! 참으로 부활하셨네! (Geuriseudo buhwalhasyeonne! Chameuro buhwalhasyeonne!)

 Na-Dené languages

Athabaskan languages

Navajo: Christ daaztsą́ą́dę́ę́ʼ náádiidzáá! Tʼáá aaníí daaztsą́ą́dę́ę́ʼ náádiidzáá!

Tlingit: Xristos Kuxwoo-digoot! Xegaa-kux Kuxwoo-digoot!

Niger–Congo languages

: Kristo Ajukkide! Kweli Ajukkide!

Swahili: Kristo Amefufuka! Amefufuka kweli kweli!

Gikuyu: Kristo ni muriuku! Ni muriuku nema!

Quechuan languages

Quechua: Cristo causarimpunña! Ciertopuni causarimpunña!

Mongolic languages

Classical Mongolian: Есүс дахин амилсан, Тэр үнэхээр амилсан! (Yesus dahin amilsan, ter uneheer amilsan)

Turkic languages

Turkish: Mesih dirildi! Hakikaten dirildi!

Uyghur: ‫ئەيسا تىرىلدى! ھەقىقەتىنلا تىرىلدى!‬‎ (Əysa tirildi! Ⱨəⱪiⱪətinla tirildi!)

Azerbaijani: Məsih dirildi! Həqiqətən dirildi!

Chuvash: Христос чĕрĕлнĕ! Чăн чĕрĕлнĕ! (Hristos čĕrĕlnĕ! Čyn čĕrĕlnĕ!)

Khakas: Христос тірілді! Сыннаң тірілді! (Hristos tíríldí! Sınnañ tíríldí!)

Uzbek: Масих тирилди! Хақиқатдан тирилди! (Masih tirildi! Haqiqatdan tirildi!)

Sino-Tibetan languages

Chinese: 基督復活了!他確實復活了! (Jīdū fùhuó-le! Tā quèshí fùhuó-le!) or 耶穌復活了,真的他復活了! (Yēsū fùhuó-le, Zhēnde tā fùhuó-le!)

Uralic languages

Estonian: Kristus on üles tõusnud! Tõesti on üles tõusnud!

Finnish: Kristus nousi kuolleista! Totisesti nousi!

Hungarian: Krisztus feltámadt! Valóban feltámadt!

Karelian: Hristos nouzi kuollielois! Tovessah nouzi!

Glorious-Resurrection-of-Jesus-Christ-icon

Constructed languages

International auxiliary languages

Esperanto: Kristo leviĝis! Vere Li leviĝis!

Ido: Kristo riviveskabas! Ya Il rivivesakabas!

Interlingua: Christo ha resurgite! Vermente ille ha resurgite! or Christo ha resurrecte! Vermente ille ha resurrecte!

Quenya: (Hristo Ortane! Anwave Ortanes!)

Klingon: Hu'ta' QISt! Hu'bejta'!

 

The Athonite Monks in Holy Mount Athos serves an All Night Vigil prayer to God to stop Coronavirus COVID-19 epidemic

Saturday, March 28th, 2020

Holy-Mount-Athos-call-for-prayer-for-delivery-of-the-terrible-Coronavirus-COVID-19-All-monasteries-pray-all-night-for-healing-of-mankind

In the Eastern Orthodox World to which my homeland Bulgaria belongs is deeply saddened and worried about the all time worsening situation with the New Worldwide pandemics which caused suffering and death to already thousands of people. We the Orthodox Christians have the rule that if you can't manage a problem you have to pray God to fix the problem and repent and try to fix what is at your power. This is exactly what pushed the Monks from Biggest on Earth Monk Republic situated on an Island near Greece the Holy Mount Athos to create a All Monasteries Night Vigil for concillation of the The God the Holy Trinity – The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit with the mankind who has done a terrible deeds over the last 30 years against Gods well known law. 

All kind of well known and prohibited sins about which the Holy Church, The Saint Writtings, Church Tradition and The Holy Bible warned us would cause a mass suffering, deaths and a havoc, that their unfollowing will bring. As the warnings and signs given by God to mankind in the form of various Cataclysms especially visible in Italy over the last few years and in virtually all countries has been ignored and the attention of the people was falsely led to material stuff and for the never ending consumer needs by the spiritually highly blind mankind, well it is not strange the payback for the Godlessness of mankind is at hand with the quickly spreading new infectious disease codenamed Coronavirus COVID-19.

Of course atheists reject that and they are giving the result of the Coronavirus to Biological Warfare / animal origin or simply a human hygiene breach, but nomatter that for anyone that has the desire to see it, it is clear that what is happening is one of the many God's mercies to mankind. 

As over the centuries many times we were send the Lord, other misfortunes wars and epidemics as an attempt to save us and bring up our eyes out of the material things which are doomed to be gone one day to the Heavenly and All time lasting spiritual things.
Since the boom of the COVID-19 pandemics, Monks from Holy Mount Athos has made a Call to all Orthodox Christians world wide from All the Holy Eastern Orthodox country 14 Churches and every Orthodox Christian on Earth to read every day at 21:00 o'clock psalms and a special prayers to The well Known helper in Epidemics and Deadly diaseses Saint Haralambos (Св. Харалампий) / Saint Charalampos of Magnesia on the Maeander (Greek city in Ionia so called Asia Minor).

Saint-Haralampij-Saint-Charalambos-Freska_ot_Sv._Ilija_vo_Melnica_11-1

and the Mother of God (Theotokos) called Acathist to Panagia ( Всецарица ) Pantanassa – a miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary from the holy and great Monastery of Vatopedi, Mount Athos, Greece depicting the Theotokos enthroned and holding her son Lord Jesus Christ.

PanagiaPantanassa-Vsecarica-Miracle-making-icon-Holy-Mounth-Athos-Vatopedi-convent

As the result of this Pandemics would be a prison like state for humanity economics and a decay of civillization as we know it and the clear realization of the Monks on Holy Athos whose spiritual seeing has been widely open to see the things happening on earth such as they're and the overall late temptations within the Church and the actions of some of the Hierarchs that are trying to destroy the unity and love we had for the last 2020 years …

The athonites today decided to pray all night long continuously as they do on a Big Christian feasts such as Resurrection, Nativity and Dormition etc. (which by the way for the Athos island are relatively common but all monasteries all Night vigil together is unique and only happened in most harsh times in human history, where full spiritual backup was necessery).


In each and every monastery just like in every Holy Liturgy served we pray for the inceasingly praying for the sick with Coronavirus, the lonely, the suffering the hungry, the saddened, people in pay for our parents, grandma, grandpas, sons daughters all Nations the God-fearing governmental powers and us the childs of the Holy Eastern Orthodox Church.
 

This prayer is to be streamed straight from the Monasteries is to be streamed online for everyone who can to be unite to become part of the prayer by listening it and secretly repeating deep in his heart the prayer that is said to be giving the highest goods on earth, the so called Jesus Prayer.

This prayer is very simple and the long version os if consists of the words "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Blessed God, have mercy of me the sinner!".
The shorter one is simply "Lord Jesus Christ Have mercy on me", and the shortest one is "Lord Have Mercy".
Monks on Athos depending on their nationality repeat "Lord Have Mercy, Lord Have Mercy, Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me …" in Greek Bulgarian, Romanian, Serbian, Greek, Georgian, Russian etc. praying for themselves and benefitting from the spiritual well of Eternity spreading this Grace through themselves for the world.

Christ-healing-the-paralytic-eastern-orthodox-christian-icon

Lets not forget that the Holy Bible and The experience from the Church history and tradition, tells us about multiple epidemics such as Black Death who were destroyed by many miracles for the humility and prayers of the saintly man and the merfiness of Christ and his Holy Mother The Holy Theotoks Virgin Mary and numerous Saints. 

It is in the Church tradition in this heavy times of pestilence to make Lithia (Holy Cross Procession, Procession with Miracle making icons, Holy relics from saints) has been used to put an end to the diseases and the God's grace which has been attarcted for the faith of People and their timely repentance stopped the diseases, this can be checked in multiple ancient manuscripts and history books, written by various historions.

Also the story of the paralytic, the blindly born, the lepper, the deaf and innumerous other sick people is found in the Bible and we read that they were easily healed by the savior, so we need to come back to our faith, which we have changed with the Friday lustful enjoyment meet in Discos, Caffeterias, Bars Cinema, Theather and kind of spiritually unhealthy and most of time unusuable activities from the perspective of the Eternal Soul

Perhaps it is not a coincidence that this difficult for every living soul situation happened exactly during the time of the Great Lent in which the whole Church is praying to God for forgiveness of the multitude of sins done since the last year Lent time …

Let us pray that this terrible disease who is physically separating us, do on the contrary unite us and bring us spiritual-growth, Knowledge of God, turning out from the sinful habits, thoughts and deeds to do what is pleasant good and wonderful as the Bible says and which has been the ultimate reason why we Human were created in the Beginning.

Lord Jesus Christ son of the Blessed God have mercy on us the Sinners !!!! Lord Jesus Save and Heal the Sick, protect the Healthy, give us repentance, give us your love and strenght, forgive us our terrible sins, be with us always until the End of Ages and in all Eternity !

Amen

 

Make picture transparent with the Gimp on Linux

Tuesday, November 16th, 2010

GIMP Logo make picture transparent with GIMP on GNU / Linux
I’m trying to learn some basic design this days as an attempt to fill my huge missing gap of knowledge in graphic processing.
I’ve always been not too good with visual stuff and always been focused on the command line and console, however since
some time design started being quite interesting thing to me and I found it quite handy and challenging to learn some basic designing.

I’m not really a Windows guy and thus my Photoshop skills are next to zero.
Since The Gimp is the substitute for Photoshopfor Linux users and I had a task for one of the websites I’m developing to make some pictures for the website transparent, therefore I had to learn how to make pictures transparent with The Gimp
After some reading online and some experimenting with GIMP it appeared to me it’s very easy to actually make pictures transparent with the GIMP.
So I’ve come with a small article here on how to make image or a picture transparent with Gimp in simple steps in order to help people who are trying to achieve the same easy task:

1. Open Gimp and place your mouse cursor on the picture

Here, Press the 2nd or 3rd mouse button to show menu.

2. Select Layer -> Transperancy -> Alpha to Selection

In that menu select Select Layer -> Transprerancy -> Alpha to Selection

Gimp Alpha to Selection Menu

3. Use Fuzzy Select Tool and select the picture background

Gimp fuzzy select background

4. From Gimp Window pane main menu choose the Clear option

Edit -> Clear (Delete)
gimp edit clear menu

That’s all now your picture background should be removed if some parts of the picture still needs to be purged just follow the above step and remove them.
I should say I thought making picture transparent with GIMP would be a more complex task than it really was, quite nice one more step in my development as a designer 🙂

Merge (convert) multiple PDF files into one single PDF – Generate one pdf from many on Linux / Windows and Mac

Wednesday, August 6th, 2014

merge-convert-many-pdf-files-to-single-one-generate-one-pdf-from-many-pdf-files-linux-windows-mac-pdftk-logo
I was looking for English Orthodox Bible translation of the Old Testament (Septuagint Version) and found such divided in many pdf files. I wanted to create a common (single) PDF from all the separate Old Testamental Book files in order to put it online as it might be convenient for English native speakers to download and later read offline on their computers the Old Testament Orthodox version Holy Bible.

Before I explain how I did it I will make a short turn to explain few things about Septuagint, as this is probably interesting stuff, you might not know.

Septuagint (also referred as LXX or the Alexandrian Canon) – Is Translation of the Hebrew Bible and some related text in Koine Greek) by legendary 70 Jewish scholars as early as the 2nd century BC. Just for those interested in Christianity it is curious fact that the number of Old Testament books are different among Protestant, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians, whether the number of New Testament books are the same in Catholics, Protestant and Orthodox.

So How Many books are in Roman Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Old Testament Holy Bible?

The Old Testament in Orthodox Holy Bible version has 50 (where Slavonic versions of the bible include also +2 More which are the  Edras books), whether protestant Holy Bible includes only 39 books in old testament and Roman Catholics has 46 old testamental books in there bibles. The reason why Protestants choose to have less books (only 39) is some of the books in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Church are Apocryphal are referred to as the Apocryphal, or Deuterocanonical books this doesn't mean that the extra 8 Books in Orthodox Bibles are not God Inspired, this means, they don't have the historic authenticity as the early Church accepted canonicals.

The Orthodox Church accepted the Septuagint LXX as divinely inspired to be used in Church.

Now back to how I managed to merge (convert) multiple PDF files into single PDF on my Debian Linux home router.

My first attempt was with ImageMagick's convert (in the same manner as I used to generate PDF files from pictures earlier), e.g.:
 

convert intro.pdf genesis.pdf exodus.pdf leviticus.pdf numbers.pdf deuteronomy.pdf … SINGLE-FILE.PDF

I waited for convertion to complete quite long but it seemed looping so finally after 7 minutes I stopped it and decided to try with something else and, after quick search I found pdftk.

pdftk has plenty of functions and is great for anyone who needs to do Merge / Split Update / Encrypt / Repair corrupted PDFs on Linux:

 apt-cache show pdftk |grep -i desc -A 17
Description: tool for manipulating PDF documents
 If PDF is electronic paper, then pdftk is an electronic stapler-remover,
 hole-punch, binder, secret-decoder-ring, and X-Ray-glasses. Pdftk is a
 simple tool for doing everyday things with PDF documents. Keep one in the
 top drawer of your desktop and use it to:
  – Merge PDF documents
  – Split PDF pages into a new document
  – Decrypt input as necessary (password required)
  – Encrypt output as desired
  – Fill PDF Forms with FDF Data and/or Flatten Forms
  – Apply a Background Watermark
  – Report PDF on metrics, including metadata and bookmarks
  – Update PDF Metadata
  – Attach Files to PDF Pages or the PDF Document
  – Unpack PDF Attachments
  – Burst a PDF document into single pages
  – Uncompress and re-compress page streams
  – Repair corrupted PDF (where possible)

To install pdftk on Debian Linux Lenny / Wheezy:

apt-get install –yes pdftk

After installed to convert a number of separate PDF files into single (merged) PDF file:
 

pdftk file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf cat output single-merged-pdf-file.pdf

 

 

pdftk intro.pdf genesis.pdf exodus.pdf leviticus.pdf numbers.pdf deuteronomy.pdf joshua.pdf judges.pdf ruth.pdf kingdoms_1.pdf kingdoms_2.pdf kingdoms_3.pdf kingdoms_4.pdf paraleipomenon_1.pdf paraleipomenon_2.pdf esdras_1.pdf esdras_2.pdf nehemiah.pdf tobit.pdf judith.pdf esther.pdf maccabees_1.pdf maccabees_2.pdf maccabees_3.pdf psalms.pdf job.pdf proverbs_of_solomon.pdf ecclesiastes.pdf song_of_songs.pdf wisdom_of_solomon.pdf wisdom_of_sirach.pdf hosea.pdf amos.pdf micah.pdf joel.pdf obadiah.pdf jonah.pdf nahum.pdf habbakuk.pdf zephaniah.pdf malachi.pdf isaiah.pdf jeremiah.pdf baruch.pdf lamentations_of_jeremiah.pdf an_epistle_of_jeremiah.pdf ezekiel.pdf daniel.pdf maccabees_4.pdf slavonic_appendix.pdf cat output Orthodox-English-translation-of-Old-Testament-Septuagint.pdf

And Hooray! It worked The resulting share Old Testament (Orthodox) English translation from Septuagint PDF is here

pdftk is also ported for Fedora / CentOS / RHEL etc. (RPM distros), so you to install it there:

yum -y install pdftk

Or if missing in repositories grab the respective pdf and

rpm -ivh pdftk-*yourarch.pdf

PDFtk has also Windows and Mac OS version just in case if you need to script Merging of multiple PDFs to single ones for more check out PDftk Server page homepage here

Russians Celebrate Christmas / Why some Orthodox Christians celebrate Nativity ( Christmas ) on 7th of January

Tuesday, January 7th, 2014

rojdestvo_Iisusa_Hrista_17th-vek-srpska-ikona

Merry Christmas to all Eastern Orthodox Christians!

I wish to all my Russian blog readers Christ's blessings, Wisdom of the 3 Wise man following the star. Humility of Christ for being born in a Cave and love of Mother of God Virgin Mary and Joseph to the incarnated Lord in flesh, Joy of the universe for the Universe rejoiced seing the birth of the savior of us sinful humans!

On 7th of January, the day on which biggest part of Eastern Orthodox Church,- Russian Orthodox Church along with Ukrainian, Macedonian, Croation, Serbian Arabic and part of Greek orthodox Church and Holy Mount Athos celebrate the day of Christ's birth. The original place where the Lord Jesus Christ was born as we read in the Gospels is BethlehemAccording to Church tradition on top of the Cave (known as Grotto) where the savior was born a Church basilica was built around year 333 A.D..

church of nativity bethlehem nowadays palestine - Jesus Christ birth place

The first Church building on top of Nativity Cave begun by Saint Helena, the mother of saint Emperor Constantine.

the_cave_of_nativity-where-Christ-was-born

The Basilica was destroyed a couple of times throughout the 3th, 4th, 5th, 10-th , 14-th and 18-th centuries in attempt to wipe out memory for Christ's birth and futile attempt of early times Roman emperors to destroy christianity.
Today Bethlehem Church is situated on Palestinian territories and place for pilgrimage of both Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians. Its
interior is a very interesting mixture of a classic Orthodox Christian and a Roman Catholic basillica.

Church of the Holy Nativity Christs birth place Bethlehem

There is plenty of confusion and misunderstanding on the topic why bigger part of Christians worldwide celebrate Christmas on 24th against 25th of December and why more than half of Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate on 6th against of 7th of January?

In fact it is interesting fact that in the early Christian one holy apostolic Church, Christmas and Eastern was celebrated many times as this two feasts since beginning of the Church are center of Christian faith. In later times, when Church was already formed as an Eastern and Western Church, there are Church canons on exact date to celebrate Christmas and Eastern following the Julian Calendar (introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC). In later times with development of Science it was found that this calendar was not so precise and another Church calendar was introduced in y. 1582 by Roman Catholic pope Gregory XVIII (Gregorian Calendar named after pope). I will not get into details but from modern science Astronomical point of view Gregorian calendar is more scientifically correct. The Gregorian calendar quickly become in secular life because of its mathematical precision. And by Western Roman Catholic church Influence and desire to be more scientifically correct parts of the Eastern Orthodox Church partly accepted use of the Gregorian Calendar for counting the Church feasts. Because of that many of the feasts in those Eastern Orthodox Churches moved in forward with 13 days like the Romanian and Bulgarian Orthodox Church. However due to Church canon part of the feasts in Eastern Church can't be celebrated according to the Gregorian Calendar dates. Most important feast dates is the Resurrection day (Eastern), which according to Orthodox Church rule has always to be one week after the Jewish Pascha. There are plenty of problems that emerged due to change of acceptance of reformed Church calendar in part of the Eastern Orthodox Church, however what is most important is that the difference doesn't separate Orthodox Christian it just gives us reason to celebrate feast twice 🙂

How to convert UTF-8 encoding files to Windows CP1251 on GNU / Linux

Friday, October 21st, 2011

I needed to convert a file which had a Bulgarian text written in UTF-8 encoding to Windows CP1251 in order to fix a website encoding problems after a move of the website from one physical server to another.

I tried first with enca( detects and convert encoding of text files from one encoding to another).

The exact way I tried to convert was:

linux:~# enca -L bg /home/site/www/includes/utf8_encoded_file.php
...
Unfortunately this attempt to conver was unsucesfully, and the second logical guess was to use iconvConvert encoding of given files from one encoding to another to do the utf8 to cp1251 conversion.
I reached for some help in irc.freenode.net, #varnalab channel and Alex Kuklin helped me, giving me an example command line to do the conversion.
iconv winedows to cp1251 conversion line, he pointed to me was:

linux:~# iconv -f utf8 -t cp1251 < in > out

Further on I adapted Alex’s example to convert my utf8_encoded_file.php encoded Bulgarian characted to CP1251 and used the following commands to convert and create backups of my original UTF8 file:

linux:~# cd /home/site/www/includes
linux:/home/site/www/includes# iconv -f utf8 -t cp1251 < utf8_encoded_file.php in > utf8_encoded_file.php.cp1251
linux:/home/site/www/includes# mv utf8_encoded_file.php utf8_encoded_file.php.bak
linux:/home/site/www/includes# mv utf8_encoded_file.php.cp1251 utf8_encoded_file.php

How to install Skype on 64 bit Ubuntu (amd64) architecture

Sunday, July 17th, 2011

It seems Skype has troubles installing on 64 bit Ubuntu via Ubuntu’s Graphical Package Install manager which in Ubuntu 11.04 is called (Ubuntu Software Center)

During my attempt to take advantage of the nice GUI apt frontend, I encontered the error:
Wrong Architecture amd64

And Skype install failed, as you see in below’s picture (which you might be unable to read since it’s stating the error in Bulgarian 😉

error Ubuntu 11.04 Skype Install error in architecture amd64

The error is quite understandable, since the Skype deb package which tried to install was built for the i386 architecture.
Since the Software Center was not intelligent enough to work around the issue, I finally fixed it myself using the good old apt-get in terminal, like so:

root@ubuntu:~# apt-get install skype
...

apt did not even complain that the package had a different architecture for i386 and installed skype without any errors as well Skype worked immediately even though the arthictural difference.
This is probably because even though it’s a amd64 Ubuntu it has a kernel module loaded to support i386 binaries 😉
Now my sister can enjoy her skype on the shiny Ubuntu 😉