Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Clouseau · 10-07-2007, 03:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlackWodin

God sending his own Son

That is metaphor for 'God manifested himself in a certain manner'. 'Son' does not mean 'offspring' in this case, any more than it meant the same in 'Son of Man'.

Amedeo · 10-07-2007, 05:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlackWodin

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amedeo

... In the Bible, neither the Elohim nor Yahweh had children,

The Bible disagrees with you:

John 1:14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

Rom 8:3 For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh

Gal 4:4 But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amedeo

... nor did they create angels (or Gabrie'El, Satana'El, Micha'El or other ministers of El, the male god), the nephilim, or talking serpents. ...

The Bible disagrees with you:

John 1:3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

1Cor 8:6 But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.

Eph 3:9 And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ:

Col 1:16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him

Heb 1:2 Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds

Jesus quoted scripture.

John 8:58 Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.

John 5:45 Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust

Ex 3:14 And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

Jesus spoke scripture.

I was talking about the Hebrew Bible. At any rate, the Son that is spoken in the Gospels is never identified as a son of the Elohim or of Yahweh. The evangelists use the neutral Greek term THEOS with the connotation of Creator. I don't think that the evangelist ever read or knew about Genesis 1 and 2.

And, to repeat: In one evangelical account, God begot a (human) son through Mary. In another account, the [personified] Word of God was incarnated in a human body, wherefore Jesus IS both a god and a man, not the son of God.

Jesus might say that he was before Abraham, but the Hebrew Bible never mentions that as a fact.

Amedeo · 10-07-2007, 06:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlackWodin

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amedeo

What do I make of this? First of all, there is a WRONG translation into English. The Biblical texts use the word ELOHIM, which means GODS. The translation is intententionally made that way so that the Elohim of Genesis-1 will not appear for what they are, namely the supreme gods of Canaan. Falsifiers of the text refuse to admit that -- as the text shows -- the Elohim created Man in THEIR own image: one male and one female. These Canaanite Gods had children. In one non-Bliblical account [See Ugarit and Ebla tablets], Yahweh was one of the sons of the Elohim. But this is another story.

In the Bible, neither the Elohim nor Yahweh had children, nor did they create angels (or Gabrie'El, Satana'El, Micha'El or other ministers of El, the male god), the nephilim, or talking serpents. All the Biblical references to gods (other than the ones in Genesis1-2), the sons of gods, the angels or archangels, the nephilism (giants), the evils spirits, the desease causing spirits, etc., come from pre-Biblical sources. Indeed, all such stories and Genesis-2 come from the Caucasian/Indo-European background of the Hebrews, whereas Genesis-1 and other occasional tales come from the Arab [Semitic] background of the Hebrews. [In other posts I explained the etymologies of the two Biblical deities and of the two ethnicities which merged so as to constitute the Hebrew people, which eventually became Abraham's Israel, headed by El, and then the Moses-reformed Israel, headed by Yahweh, and the eventual split between Judaea (after Moses) and "Israel" [Galilee] (after Abraham). Jesus was a Galilean and his God was El, and, in the words of some of our contemporaries, an anti-Semite!

The finally redacted or Hebrew Bible was written down mainly from the standpoint of the Judaeans. (It does not include any of the Galilean/Essene scriptures in the last couple of centuries B.C.... as the Bible was safeguarded in Yahweh's temple in Jerusalem (Judaea). Notice the canonical blank between the 3rd century B.C. and 70 A.D. or thereafter..... Yah stopped communicating with the Judaeans -- for those who believe that the Bible is the word of God or Theos (a convenient English or Greek word which obliterates the distinction between El and Yah). The temple of Galilee was destroyed much earlier than the one in Judea.

(I have already had violent reactions -- not refutations -- of the thesis about the two ethnicities of the Hebrews. At any rate, should you feel like reacting violently, too, just remember that, even according to the Bible, the Hebrews/Israelites/Jews appear on the historical scene as the sons of Shem. Noah's first son was the founder of the Ionian [Greek] nations. The Hamites are actually different breeds of nations, and so on and so forth. All the stories, including the Flood, before the founding of nations, pertain to the "history" of mankind, not of the Hebrews. However, they are highly selected, in view of the history of the Shemites. So, for example, the first chapters of the Book of Genesis do not include the best Greek account of the Genesis of the world, or the real history of mankind prior to agriculture. So, the Adam family starts out with people expert in shepherding and agriculture. (It's the story of the Tower of Babel, that gives a hint of that fact, that at a point of history there was a "confusion" or commingling of languages, which, I would say, where proto-Greek and proto-Arabic, one result being the Hebrew language.)

The hypothesis of the two-ethnicities of the Hebrews has been laid out. Look for evidence in the gods (etymology and their Modus Operandi), the common language, and the diverse racial physiognomies of one people. They are not the proto-humans, and the so-called Semitic language is not the one that God and Adam used to converse... in case anyone should seriously believe that the Bible is the real history of the world.

In Judaism, it is known that God has more than one name. 500 is the approx number. From what I have learnt, "Yaweh or Jehovah is the bastardization of Yod Heh Vav Heh." This is the normal name for Christians, but Jews will pronouce it Adonai, Our Lord... "No attempt is made to pronouce the true name of God. The Hellenistic Jews called it the Tetragrammaton as do many people today."
Whilst Judaism has changed from Pharisical to Rabbinical, it's not much different than it was 2,000 years ago.

There is quite a popular video giving the outline of this viewpoint, cirucluating the YouTube - is that where you get your ideas?

The TRUTH is that YHVH and El are not two seperate beings...but one. Not many, but a single. Just like I am a father and a hudband and a brother - seperate roles - one person.

* Quotes in italic have been taken from a response given by a Rabinical Student (Lady Garnet Rose) regarding this topic on another forum.

Many things are held in Judaism [rabbinical theology] which are not in the Hebrew Bible. There is only one word in the Bible that corresponds to "god," and that is EL. The term Elohim means "gods' but is used also as the adjective "divine, as when they speak of Yahweh elohim. El is also the God of the Galileans, Jesus included, who is quoted in Aramaic, "Eloi, Eloi,..." [= O god, O God...]

Of course, there are hundreds of epithets of God [Most Holy,....], but they are not synonyms of "god".

The tetragram or four-letter word, which is transcribed into Yahweh, consists of 4 consonants, since the pre-Greek alphabet excluded vowels. I have heard rabbis pronouncing the name as "yahweh". Actually there is a shorter name, Y, which is transcribed as Yah, Yoh, Yeh, an Yuh, just as it occurs in compound words: YOsef, YAcob, YEshua, YEHUdah, and in extra-Biblical names: Yerushalayim (Jerusalem), Yoveh (Jove), etc.

It is true that usually rabbis, instead or reading the tetragrammon, substitute the word Adonai (which means Lord), and English Bible render "yahweh" as "Lord," but this is not a translation. Yah means neither God not Lord, and some rabbis have fabricated a meaning for that name. They don't know what it means, as it is one very ancient Indo-European word which is attested in some languages besides Hebrew. (El is the equivalent of al-Elah, The God, contracted into Allah, from a Semitic language.)

The Elohim or El in particular, and Yah, are quite distinct gods. El is a divine magician who made things appear by naming them; Yah is a divine artisan {architect and sculptor} who molded the world into what it is. Their names do not mean "creator." (El connotes Power; Yah/Yoh or Yous connotes Justice or Righteouness.) [When a psalmist speaks of the father of righteouness, he may as well use the Latin word, "jupiter" < juspiter < jous-pater .]

I do my own etymological investigations.

Apsu · 10-07-2007, 09:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magdlyn

In other words, when fleshly humans get to be 120 yrs old, I will withdraw my spirit from them, ie: they will die.

No big mystery, just a way of answering the question, why do we die?

Ahh, thank you for explaining that. I'll step out of the conversation now as I see my question was simple and irrelavant to this very interesting thread. I'll continue to read though

BlackWodin · 10-08-2007, 09:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magdlyn

Another "name of God" is El Shaddai. This is commonly translated as God Almighty. The original Hebrew tells us Shaddai is taken from the Hebrew word for breast, rendering El Shaddai as Breasted Goddess. This El Shaddai invariably falls in texts referring to fertility-- check it out.

I have investigated this - Shaddai being plural of Shad = Powerful, the root is Shadad destroyer.

It means that he is Almighty, not breasted.

* information from a discussion with Rabinical student; aka Lady Garnet Rose.

xaxxat · 10-08-2007, 09:49 AM

Maybe it was about the Annunaki, those freewheeling bikers from space...

Clouseau · 10-08-2007, 09:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlackWodin

It means that he is Almighty, not breasted.

The Arabic root, if appropriate, means 'power', so yes, the usual translation of 'Almighty' makes sense. But the name is very ancient and shrouded in mystery, as they say, and no firm conclusion has been reached. It's possible that variant meanings existed. An ancient votive inscription shows the name meaning a good deity, and this seems to be the most appropriate meaning in the OT, where the name is often used when someone is being blessed.

Toto · 10-08-2007, 11:32 AM

Names_of_God_in_Judaism#Shaddai

Quote:

In the Septuagint and other early translations Shaddai was translated with words meaning "Almighty". The root word "shadad" (שדד) means "to overpower" or "to destroy". This would give Shaddai the meaning of "destroyer" as one of the aspects of God. Thus it is essentially an epithet. Harriet Lutzky has presented evidence that Shaddai was an attribute of a Semitic goddess, linking the epithet with Hebrew šad "breast" as "the one of the Breast", as Asherah at Ugarit is "the one of the Womb".[9]

Another theory is that Shaddai is a derivation of a Semitic stem that appears in the Akkadian shadû ("mountain") and shaddā`û or shaddû`a ("mountain-dweller"), one of the names of Amurru. This theory was popularized by W. F. Albright but was somewhat weakened when it was noticed that the doubling of the medial d is first documented only in the Neo-Assyrian period. However, the doubling in Hebrew might possibly be secondary. In this theory God is seen as inhabiting a mythical holy mountain, a concept not unknown in ancient West Asian mythology (see El), and also evident in the Syriac Christian writings of Ephrem the Syrian, who places Eden on an inaccessible mountaintop.

An alternative view proposed by Albright is that the name is connected to shadayim which means "breasts" in Hebrew. It may thus be connected to the notion of God’s fertility and blessings of the human race. In several instances it is connected with fruitfulness: "May God Almighty [El Shaddai] bless you and make you fruitful and increase your numbers…" (Gen. 28:3). "I am God Almighty [El Shaddai]: be fruitful and increase in number" (Gen. 35:11). "By the Almighty [El Shaddai] who will bless you with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies beneath, blessings of the breasts [shadayim] and of the womb [racham]" (Gen. 49:25).

"Shadday as a Goddess Epithet" by Harriet Lutzky Vetus Testamentum

xaxxat · 10-08-2007, 11:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlackWodin

Quote:

Originally Posted by Magdlyn

Another "name of God" is El Shaddai. This is commonly translated as God Almighty. The original Hebrew tells us Shaddai is taken from the Hebrew word for breast, rendering El Shaddai as Breasted Goddess. This El Shaddai invariably falls in texts referring to fertility-- check it out.

I have investigated this - Shaddai being plural of Shad = Powerful, the root is Shadad destroyer.

It means that he is Almighty, not breasted.

* information from a discussion with Rabinical student; aka Lady Garnet Rose.

Ah, but isn't there a verse somewhere that says Yahweh takes someone to his breast and "suckles" him?

Dang if i know where it is though...

Stephen T-B · 10-08-2007, 12:59 PM

You're not thinking of Abraham's breast, are you?

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10-08-2007, 09:49 AM	#46
xaxxat Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Space Station 33 Posts: 2,543	Maybe it was about the Annunaki, those freewheeling bikers from space...

10-08-2007, 12:59 PM	#50
Stephen T-B Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Leeds, UK Posts: 5,878	You're not thinking of Abraham's breast, are you?

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