Nimrod (Namrud)

29 Rabi'ul Thani

Mengikut satu riwayat, dia adalah Namrud anak Cush anak Ham anak Nuh (cicit nabi Nuh). Terdapat dua pendapat mengenai makna namanya : 1) pemburu handalan 2) si tolol. Orang-orang Yahud dan Nasara mempercayai bahawa dia adalah pengasas bandar Babylon atau Babil. Babil ada disebut dalam surah al-Baqarah ayat 102:

"...Mereka mengajarkan sihir kepada manusia dan apa yang diturunkan kepada dua orang malaikat di negeri BABIL..."

Babylon bukanlah bandar yang pertama dibina selepas banjir besar zaman nabi Nuh. Sebenarnya dalam kisah-kisah ambiya, diceritakan mengenai dua bandar (dan dua kaum) yang telah dimusnahkan oleh ALLAH sebelum kisah Nimrod dan Babil lagi iaitu kaum Ad di kawasan Yaman sekarang dan kaum Thamud di Midian (Jordan sekarang). Ad dan Thamud adalah rujukan kepada nama-nama manusia dari keturunan Sam.

Nimrod juga dipercayai merupakan manusia pertama yang menggelarkan dirinya sebagai raja diatas muka bumi. Dari dia jugalah bermulanya falsafah bahawa raja adalah wakil pemerintahan tuhan di bumi (divine rule on earth). Nimrod juga adalah raja yang dimaksudkan dalam al-Qur'an sebagai raja yang berhujah dan seterusnya memerintahkan nabi Ibrahim (bapa kepada agama-agama samawi: Yahud, Nasara & Islam) dibakar (al-Baqarah:258).

Dalam Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry karangan Albert G. Mackey M.D.(rank 33 degree; rank tertinggi dalam Freemason) , penerbitnya Masonic History Company New York & London yang diterbitkan pada tahun 1914 , Nimrod dianggap dalam Freemasons sebagai pengasas kepada falsafah dan budaya Freemasons. Lagi mengenai Freemasons akan disentuh dalam catatan-catatan akan datang insyaALLAH.

Dalam masa pemerintahannya, Nimrod telah memerintahkan rakyatnya membina satu menara yang tinggi yang dikenali sebagai menara Babil (Tower of Babel). Dalam Genesis, diceritakan bahawa menara ini dibina kerana manusia ingin bersemuka dengan tuhan dan mengarahkanNya (nau'zubILLAH) supaya tidak campur tangan dalam urusan-urusan manusia.

Di Israel hari ini, nama Nimrod merupakan nama yang termasyhur diberi kepada bayi-bayi yang baru lahir. Artikle dibawah adalah petikan dari wikipedia.

A secular hero in Israel

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (April 2007)

The main founders and leaders of Zionism in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century were mostly non-religious, sometimes anti-religious. Zionist thinkers, historians and writers reinterpreted the whole of Jewish history (including, and especially, the Bible) from a secular nationalist viewpoint considerably different from and sometimes diametrically opposite to the religious Jewish tradition.

Specifically, the search went on for past historical or mythical figures who could be depicted as National Heroes, such as those which inspired the European national movements of the 19th Century. Those fitting the role were often placed on pedestals even when Jewish tradition frowned upon or strongly condemned them (for example King Omri of ancient Israel, which the Bible describes as an evil idolater but which Zionists approved of as a victorious warrior king and the founder of a strong dynasty).

Sculptor Yitzhak Danziger, who was born in Germany and emigrated to the then British Mandate of Palestine, created his statue "Nimrod" in 1938-1939 .

The "Nimrod" statue [6] is 90 centimetres high and made of Red Nubian Sandstone imported from Petra in Jordan. It depicts Nimrod as a naked hunter, uncircumcised, carrying a bow and with a hawk on his shoulder. The style shows the influence of Ancient Egyptian statues. (See Hebrew website with a photo [7])

The unveiling of the statue caused a scandal. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem which had commissioned Danziger's statue was not happy with the result and religious circles made strong protests.

Within a few years, however, the statue was universally acclaimed as a major masterpiece of Israeli art, and has noticeably influenced and inspired the work of later sculptors, painters, writers and poets up to the present.

The Nimrod Statue was also taken up as the emblem of a cultural-political movement known as "The Cannanites" which advocated the shrugging off of the Jewish religious tradition, cutting off relations with Diaspora Jews and their culture, and adopt in its place a "Hebrew Identity" based on ancient Semitic heroic myths - such as Nimrod's. Though never gaining mass support, the movement had a considerable influence on Israeli intellectuals in the 1940s and early 1950s.

One tangible lasting result is that "Nimrod" has become a fairly common male name in present-day Israel. In the 1940s, bestowing it upon a newborn child was something of political statement. In the present generation, however, it is taken simply as a name like any other (as English-speaking parents giving their child the name "George" do not necessarily spend much thought on the legendary dragon-slaying saint who bore that name).