sojourner
Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
God is also referenced as a mother, as well.
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
God = He ?
- Thread starter Rex
- Start date
sojourner
Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
Thank you.
Bullpuckie.
^ This.
outhouse
Atheistically
No. Humans have been redefining him since he was created, so its no surprise he has human qualities.
Because his origins in Canaanite mythology factually started in a family of deities. El was the father deity who created all other deities. He had a wife Asherah, and they had sons Baal and Yahweh. In war times people would rally around their warrior deity Yahweh. In times of peace people would go back to the other deities, even Asherah had a long period of being a prime deity in these different and diverse cultures that would become Judaism. It was not until roughly 800 BC that we see some cultures giving all Els attributes to Yahweh including his wife Asherah. 622 BC we see King Josiah who was a loyal Yahwist instituting a political change to strict devotion to Yahweh alone. This was the birth of monotheism. At this time not everyone was on board with the one god concept despite all the religious books being compiled and edited into one version that represented one deity alone. It took another 200-400 years for the people as a whole to become monotheistic as a whole.
History of ancient Israel and Judah - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Israelite monotheism evolved gradually out of pre-existing beliefs and practices of the ancient world.[76] The religion of the Israelites of Iron Age I, like the Canaanite faith from which it evolved[77] and other ancient Near Eastern religions, was based on a cult of ancestors and worship of family gods (the "gods of the fathers").[78] Its major deities were not numerous – El, Asherah, and Yahweh, with Baal as a fourth god, and perhaps Shamash (the sun) in the early period.[79] By the time of the early Hebrew kings, El and Yahweh had become fused and Asherah did not continue as a separate state cult,[79] although she continued to be popular at a community level until Persian times.[80] Yahweh, later the national god of both Israel and Judah, seems to have originated in Edom and Midian in southern Canaan and may have been brought north to Israel by the Kenites and Midianites at an early stage.[81] After the monarchy emerged at the beginning of Iron Age II, kings promoted their family god, Yahweh, as the god of the kingdom, but beyond the royal court, religion continued to be both polytheistic and family-centered as it was also for other societies in the ancient Near East.[82]
outhouse
Atheistically
"this" only represents a later view of orthodox Judaism that rebuilt itself after the fall of the temple.
It takes no consideration to early Judaism for over a thousand year period, your purposely leaving blank from what I see as personal cultural bias, ignoring the ethnogenisis of the Israelite cultures. 1200 BC to 200 BC
The only way this can be explained with credibility is to look at how the characters/deities were defined in specific blocks of time which you ignore completely. A teacher grades and F for incomplete work.
We need to look at 1200 BC to 1000 BC then 1000 BC to 800 BC then 800 BC to 622 BC and then from the fall of the temple to roughly 200-400 BC, long before we get into how Judaism rebuilt itself and yours and Levites definition applies only to Judaism ignoring the Christian definition.
But thanks for playing.
Maybe we could later include how Christians changed the definition of god from the one in cultural Judaism.
outhouse
Atheistically
Your missing the point.
This is not really a "what" question as much as it is a "when" question, and "by who" question.
He who is doing the defining as people ALL define the concept different today, the way they did in the past.
Judaism will not define the concept completely because they have personal opinion. Same for any religion.
Only the unbiased opinion can give us a more clear picture of the constant evolution and change of the definition by different groups and cultures.
Levite
Higher and Higher
That's nonsense, of course. The linguistics are what they are. We can't ignore that just because some people want to completely conflate the legitimate linguistic issue into the also legitimate issue of dealing with the unresolved problems of patriarchal or androcentric origins in halachah or whatnot, resulting in an erroneous notion that the linguistic gender used for God in Hebrew was assigned and maintained because of some conscious desire to literalize masculinity in God.
We use terms like avinu malkenu (our father our king) because they are traditional, and poetic, and many people relate to them. And as I always say to my congregants, if you don't relate to terms like that because they are phrased in the masculine, then feel free to switch them into the feminine. There's nothing wrong with addressing God as imenu malkatenu (our mother our queen) if that works better for you.
And, I suppose if even that still results in a bee in your bonnet, then go to some experimental shul where they create their own "liturgy" or use quasi-liturgical poetry instead, like Marcia Falk's Book of Blessings.
The traditional liturgy is just that. Traditional. It represents the finest liturgical poetry of the past 2000 years. And these days, most liberal siddurim (prayerbooks) offer supplemental readings and alternative texts for people who can't be bothered or don't know how to wrestle with the traditional liturgy and adapt it for their own needs on the fly.
Honestly, I can't conceive of why you would care about what's in the traditional liturgy, anyhow. You hate anything traditional, and you don't believe in a personal God. I would've figured you would have long sinced replaced davening with reading interspersed passages from Walt Whitman and Stephen Hawking.
Servant_of_the_One1
Well-Known Member
Allah is not man, neither woman, neither is any creature or anything equal to Him. He is the First and the Last.
So, it could be that She is the First and Last, whatever that means.
Correct?
Ciao
- viole
Servant_of_the_One1
Well-Known Member
Is it really a man's world?
What is the frequency of shoes/dress shops vs. electronics/car shops in an average town?
Ciao
- viole
Blackmarch
W'rkncacntr
because those who have see God describe what they see. those who hear him use how he describes himself to them. I find it interesting that there were ancient jews that believed God was married. (now whether or not they were part of the people that were condemned by the prophets or not, isn't known yet.)
I do not find bestowing a human quality on him a bad thing... biblically speaking humans are poor copies of him.
outhouse
Atheistically
Because that is not how the god concepts mythology evolved. It originated from a family of deities, with father ,son, wife and brother.