This ain't helping me get to sleep, that's for sure!

[kateorman]

Nodding off while listening to an extremely interesting Podcast on Biblical Hebrew. Earlier was poking around in GB thread about the sex or gender of God, in which various people said God was a bodyless spirit, wouldn't be limited by gender, etc. And yet, God has all these other human characteristics - he's got a face, he breathes, he speaks, he

Comments

[th_esaurus]

A fun atheist quote on the idea of man-as-made-in-God's image: "God is not only a human creation but [...] God's very virtues have been lent to him by humans--lent in utter forgetfulness of the loan." (I suppose it depends on the kind of faith one ascribes to, but I don't think that has to be a uniquely atheist POV.)

[kateorman]

That's great! I found the movie review from whence it cometh. That is some strange shit.

[th_esaurus]

It's a really good book.

[antikythera]

From an ignorant outside perspective I would say that if language was the tool God used to create the universe, language must have existed before the universe did and must therefore be a property of God.

Funny, I know that the Bible says God 'spoke' (do all translations say that?) but I had the idea that God was just willing things into existence and that 'speaking' was a metaphor for what God was actually doing. The idea of bringing something into existence through words just hammers home how powerful God is, that God can do all this stuff without lifting a finger. A la peanut butter sandwiches!

Possibly related but more likely not: does the bit about Babel go into much more detail about languages, other than starting with everyone being of one speech and then ending with people speaking different tongues and being scattered around the world?

[lonely_otter]

This gets into that very tricky stuff about the Logos and the idea that language is, to use an awkward analogy, the algorithm through which God differentiates the World from Himself and defines its parts. That very first few verses of "Genesis,"in which God keeps saying "Let there be" and then there is, is much later than the rest of "Genesis," probably from the so-called priestly revisions which were late enough to have some Greek ideas (which the idea of the Logos is)floating around in them, though the specific Logos reference is in the Gospel of John

[kateorman]

I'm glad to have the input of a member of the clergy. :)

There's a ripping book about Mesopotamian religion "The Treasures of Darkness", which describes how the gods changed over time from being natural forces to a bureaucracy which mirrored civilisation, with a king, various offices, and so on. Society functions because the king gives orders and people obey them; what he (or his representative says), goes. So it makes sense that, for example, Marduk proves himself worthy of ruling the gods by creating and destroying objects purely by vocal command. By this model, language is a human quality which has been projected onto God.

I must read more about the Logos. My word of the week is "hypostasis". :)

[kateorman]

A la peanut butter sandwiches!

I want the Biblical Hebrew for that. Might have to subtitute tahini for the peanut butter.

Babel's in Genesis 11:1-8 - there's no more detail about the languages, alas.