God = He ?

[oldbadger]

Why is it that God is usually referenced as He or Him?

I find bestowing a human quality on God as a bad thing. Do you?

Well...... I think of God as 'She', because, being a Deist, the closest entity to God which I can recognise is 'all things natural', so for me, God is Mother Nature' = 'She'.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

Church attendance is higher among fatherless people? I have attended more than one church in my life on a regular basis and never noticed that, nor have I ever heard such a thing. Who is the source?

I haven't noticed that when I went to Church. I read it over what five years ago. I knew one person a neighbor actually who literally told me that she can only depend on God's love because no one else can provide the same kind of love that God gives. She says that we can't trust other people to love us the way God loves us.

While there are many who say God is a father to them, they say He is more of a father than their father is given they believe the Father is their Savior while their biological father, is well, nothing compared.

I never agreed to that line of thinking. My mother saved my life. Without my mother to show me gratitude, I would not know any concept of God.

 

[Sultan Of Swing]

I'd say Mother would be the best term for Him because a Father can not create.

I've never heard of a mother creating a baby without a father...

A baby is created in it's Mother's rather than Father's womb. Mother's have maternal instinct to their children. If God is a Mother, the connection between Mother and Child would make more sense. In some cultures, the Mother is the source of taking care of the family--the active one. While the Father is passive.

And fathers have a paternal instinct. In some cultures the father is the one who provides for the family, the head of the family. Do we just pick the culture we like?

 

[Unveiled Artist]

Actually, I was raised by one parent, my mother. Since only mother's give birth to children, that mother has a bond with that child that no one else has. It's not just maternal. The father has a bond by creating the child (so does the mother of course); she also has a bond by giving birth to him/her too.

Being raised with one parent, I see more the Mother as the provider rather than the father. That, and some cultures the emphasis is on the female. Eye for eye thing.

Not everyone with one parent sees it the same as I do of course. My mother saved my life.

True. Father's have paternal instinct. For some reason the Mother and her baby has more ties than the act of creation.

I've never heard of a mother creating a baby without a father...


And fathers have a paternal instinct. In some cultures the father is the one who provides for the family, the head of the family. Do we just pick the culture we like?

 

[Baladas]

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]

I am amazed by how few people know this, and by how long it took me to learn it. I thought that the Monotheistic tradition was started by Ahkenaten though - when he cast down the Egyptian pantheon in favor of Aten alone.

 

[Ingledsva]

God is a Father to us.

He is beyond such notions as gender, and yet in order that we best understand God in the means we can, He is a Father and we reference Him as such.

And if God created the world, perhaps we may find many ordinary "human" qualities are in fact divine qualities or images.

God is also described in female terms in the Bible, however, in patriarchal culture, we will always see - HE.

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[BilliardsBall]

"He" is not embedded in the Hebrew text but is the natural translation in English, going back quite some time. It is still appropriate to use sample persons in hypotheticals and say, "Now suppose he" rather than the more awkward "Now suppose him or her" or the equally awkward alternating him and her... but the kicker is so you would have a hint when HE came to Earth to die for sin and rise again. Whoever trusts Jesus receives eternal life.

 

[Ingledsva]

"He" is not embedded in the Hebrew text but is the natural translation in English, going back quite some time. It is still appropriate to use sample persons in hypotheticals and say, "Now suppose he" rather than the more awkward "Now suppose him or her" or the equally awkward alternating him and her... but the kicker is so you would have a hint when HE came to Earth to die for sin and rise again. Whoever trusts Jesus receives eternal life.

The Bible does NOT say Jesus is God, nor does Jesus teach that he is God.

There is NO trinity God idea in the Bible, nor does Jesus teach that he is part of a trinity.

He was claiming to be the Messiah, a special, awaited, Promised One, sent from God, to wrap things up, and bring about the end and Final Judgment.


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[outhouse]

He was claiming to be the Messiah

I don't even think he viewed himself as a messiah. That is my opinion.

 

[Ingledsva]

And you are probably correct.

However the writers have him referring himself to Tanakh Messiah verses.

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[outhouse]

And you are probably correct.

However the writers have him referring himself to Tanakh Messiah verses.

*

Oh definitely. I think Hellenist in the Diaspora viewed him that way.

But not Aramaic Galileans as he did not fulfill the more traditional role. Again no proof, just opinion.

 

[Ingledsva]

Oh definitely. I think Hellenist in the Diaspora viewed him that way.

But not Aramaic Galileans as he did not fulfill the more traditional role. Again no proof, just opinion.

I agree. And Jesus did not fulfill their prophecies.

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[LegionOnomaMoi]

God used to be a fat chick way back in the olden days.

There was a time when this statement and the interpretation of the figurine in your picture as a goddess (even the goddess) was more or less universally accepted. That began to crumble with two publications in 1968 and 1969 (by Peter Ucko and Andrew Fleming, respectively). Ucko's monograph was longer, more technical, and less inflammatory, while Fleming's paper was titled "The Myth of the Mother-Goddess". Virtually all of the scholarship connecting symbols and figurines to prehistoric goddess worship was either by or based on the work of Dr. Marija Gimbutas. Some of her most ardent attackers were other feminist archaeologists who wanted their work taken seriously (including criticisms of gender bias in the literature) and were stymied by Gimbutas, whom they could be written off as equivalent too. Other feminist scholars have also weighed in, most notably Cynthia Eller's The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future. Currently, the consensus position is reversed from that held before Ucko and Fleming. There was almost certainly no "goddess worship" of the type described in Gimbutas' work, in feminist spiritual publications from those like Starhawk of Z. Budapest, in more popular feminist historiography such as Merlin Stone's When God was a Women, etc. Most of the figurines taken to be representations of a fertility/mother goddess were re-examined (beginning, actually, all the way back to Ucko's work), and it was found that rather than being pregnant as had been speculated they were simply "fat". The "venus" in the picture you posted is one of many "Venuses" Gimbutas uncovered and archived:
"Though they are customarily classed together, the Venuses are not all alike. Some are clothed, others naked; they are carved in a variety of materials, including bone, stone, and mammoth ivory; and though generally small, they vary in size from 3.7 centimeters to as much as 40 centimeters. From the time they were first discovered, Paleolithic Venuses were classified as "fertility fetishes" or "goddess figurines." This basic interpretation of Paleolithic Venuses—that they are religious in character and concerned, with fertility—has been remarkably persistent among archaeologists, though it has been losing ground over the past few decades as feminist archaeologists have critiqued it...The most conspicuous problem with regarding the Paleolithic Venuses as symbols of fertility is that they rarely show signs of pregnancy, childbirth, or lactation"
Eller, C. (2000). The myth of matriarchal prehistory: Why an invented past won't give women a future. Beacon Press.

They could have been dolls, representations of goddesses, even implements of magic. We don't know. What we do know is that there isn't any evidence for and much evidence against the idea that there was ever a time "when god was a women". Monotheism is extremely rare in general (basically all monotheistic religions are directly or indirectly indebted to Judaism, which didn't begin as a monotheistic religion), and the idea of monotheistic goddess worship in prehistory wasn't just based on interpreting virtually every shape as somehow a representation of the divine feminine (triangles, circles, lines, etc.) but interpreting cross-culturally masculine symbols as feminine (e.g., the bull as representing the womb and fallopian tubes rather than the symbol of masculinity it represented in cultures across the Near-East and Mediterranean).

 

[outhouse]

What we do know is that there isn't any evidence for and much evidence against the idea that there was ever a time "when god was a women".

Have you read Karen Armstrong's book on god? She has Asherah as a primary deity in a henotheistic/polytheistic culture in early Judaism for some period of time.


Do you know her specific sources? or can you refute her claims?

So the vid I posted she was not accurate ? It would not surprise me, ive caught small mistakes from her in the past.

 

[outhouse]

We don't know.

Agreed.


I have a pretty good guess myself. A deity to help protect the mother and child through childbirth.

Mortality rates were what 1 in 4? for childbirth or higher. Quite a common killer where a deity would really be needed.

I don't buy goddess either.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Have you read Karen Armstrong's book on god?

Which one? A History of God, The Battle for God, or The Case for God? I haven't read The Battle for God but I've read the other two.

She has Asherah as a primary deity in a henotheistic/polytheistic culture in early Judaism for some period of time.

The first problem we run into here is the relationship between El and YHWH. In the Jewish literature of the OT, the two are equated, but they were not originally the same entity (in fact, we find evidence that Yahweh was incorporated differently into different city-states via inscriptions and similar evidence for e.g., "Yahweh of Teman"), which fits naturally into the local nature of religious practice in the ancient world. There are precious few references to Asherah in the Jewish literature and so much of Armstrong's (and many others') thesis rests upon the assumption of unification and on a few single "lines" of epigraphy relating YHWH (lyhwh) to w'srth/wl'srth. As for the unification problem:
"The only possible conclusion to this is that the divine name or title—be it Asherah, Baal or Yahweh—can give us no kind of certainty that we are dealing with the 'same god or goddess', not even within what we see as the same culture or the same historical context. Atheophoric name—for example, 'Abdi-Asirta'—need not be referring to the same goddess in two neighbouring cultures, and there is no possible way of ascertaining that the same theophoric name borne by two people living in the same city at the same time is indeed referring to the same god or goddess."

As for Yahweh and his Asherah:
"Thus, the interpretation of the words lyhwh... wl'srth as "by Yahweh... and by his asherah" is in keeping with attested Hebrew usage, whereas "by Yahweh... and by his Asherah" lacks any clear analogy in Hebrew. It is therefore best to give preference to the former interpretation."
Emerton, J. A. (1999). " Yahweh and his Asherah": the goddess or her symbol?. Vetus Testamentum, 49(3), 315-337.


We can see quite clearly that YHWH did become a single deity regardless of where one was, because for one thing the bulk of YHWH worshippers were at one point in Egypt and many remained in the diaspora even after the fall of the Babylonian empire. We can't say this for Asherah, still less directly relate this name/title to the Ugaritic "consort" of El (Athirat).

In the oldest Jewish literature we find references to Asherah as an object, not an entity (Deut. 16:21). For King and those who argue that this reflects an historical cultic worship of Asherah, while for a great many others it presents more of a puzzle than anything else. Whether or not the tree is a symbol for Asherah or not, one can't then conclude (although one can suggest) that the passage somehow refers to a growing polemic of a henotheistic Judaism. Apart from anything else, if we understand the tree or pole to be a symbol of the Asherah cult, then the line implies that it may be placed elsewhere instead of stating it banning it altogether.

Even if the line demonstrates an elevated YHWH on the road to being a monotheistic deity, we are still left with the problem of the extent to which any Asherah cult was already anachronistic. It was typical for deities to be adapted for local use and after conquest to be incorporated into a new pantheon or erased. YHWH is the exception: instead of the eradication of his worship, its incorporation into Babylonian or other Near-Eastern or Mesopotamian pantheon, or a blending as with Zeus/Jupiter, we find instead the emergence of monotheism.

Do you know her specific sources? or can you refute her claims?

I know her sources, but there are some claims she makes I agree with and many others I don't. Can you be more specific?

So the vid I posted she was not accurate ?

No. Although that isn't all her fault.

 

[roger1440]

There was a time when this statement and the interpretation of the figurine in your picture as a goddess (even the goddess) was more or less universally accepted. That began to crumble with two publications in 1968 and 1969 (by Peter Ucko and Andrew Fleming, respectively). Ucko's monograph was longer, more technical, and less inflammatory, while Fleming's paper was titled "The Myth of the Mother-Goddess". Virtually all of the scholarship connecting symbols and figurines to prehistoric goddess worship was either by or based on the work of Dr. Marija Gimbutas. Some of her most ardent attackers were other feminist archaeologists who wanted their work taken seriously (including criticisms of gender bias in the literature) and were stymied by Gimbutas, whom they could be written off as equivalent too. Other feminist scholars have also weighed in, most notably Cynthia Eller's The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future. Currently, the consensus position is reversed from that held before Ucko and Fleming. There was almost certainly no "goddess worship" of the type described in Gimbutas' work, in feminist spiritual publications from those like Starhawk of Z. Budapest, in more popular feminist historiography such as Merlin Stone's When God was a Women, etc. Most of the figurines taken to be representations of a fertility/mother goddess were re-examined (beginning, actually, all the way back to Ucko's work), and it was found that rather than being pregnant as had been speculated they were simply "fat". The "venus" in the picture you posted is one of many "Venuses" Gimbutas uncovered and archived:
"Though they are customarily classed together, the Venuses are not all alike. Some are clothed, others naked; they are carved in a variety of materials, including bone, stone, and mammoth ivory; and though generally small, they vary in size from 3.7 centimeters to as much as 40 centimeters. From the time they were first discovered, Paleolithic Venuses were classified as "fertility fetishes" or "goddess figurines." This basic interpretation of Paleolithic Venuses—that they are religious in character and concerned, with fertility—has been remarkably persistent among archaeologists, though it has been losing ground over the past few decades as feminist archaeologists have critiqued it...The most conspicuous problem with regarding the Paleolithic Venuses as symbols of fertility is that they rarely show signs of pregnancy, childbirth, or lactation"
Eller, C. (2000). The myth of matriarchal prehistory: Why an invented past won't give women a future. Beacon Press.

They could have been dolls, representations of goddesses, even implements of magic. We don't know. What we do know is that there isn't any evidence for and much evidence against the idea that there was ever a time "when god was a women". Monotheism is extremely rare in general (basically all monotheistic religions are directly or indirectly indebted to Judaism, which didn't begin as a monotheistic religion), and the idea of monotheistic goddess worship in prehistory wasn't just based on interpreting virtually every shape as somehow a representation of the divine feminine (triangles, circles, lines, etc.) but interpreting cross-culturally masculine symbols as feminine (e.g., the bull as representing the womb and fallopian tubes rather than the symbol of masculinity it represented in cultures across the Near-East and Mediterranean).

Common among the Venus figurines or so called “dolls”, all are women, no girls, boys or men “dolls”. All or most of the “dolls” are of fat women with large breasts. No “dolls” of animals. Not one single doll of a cute cuddly bunny wabbit or any other animal a child would have an affinity for. These “dolls” would have taken a lot of time and effort to create; therefore they must have had great value. How do dolls evolve from Venus figurines to Raggedy Ann Dolls? You would think it would have gone in the other direction. One doll is painstakingly made into art; the other is thrown together with old rags. I guess the ancients just had to much free time on their hands.

 

[Ingledsva]

There was a time when this statement and the interpretation of the figurine in your picture as a goddess (even the goddess) was more or less universally accepted. That began to crumble with two publications in 1968 and 1969 (by Peter Ucko and Andrew Fleming, respectively). Ucko's monograph was longer, more technical, and less inflammatory, while Fleming's paper was titled "The Myth of the Mother-Goddess". Virtually all of the scholarship connecting symbols and figurines to prehistoric goddess worship was either by or based on the work of Dr. Marija Gimbutas. Some of her most ardent attackers were other feminist archaeologists who wanted their work taken seriously (including criticisms of gender bias in the literature) and were stymied by Gimbutas, whom they could be written off as equivalent too. Other feminist scholars have also weighed in, most notably Cynthia Eller's The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future. Currently, the consensus position is reversed from that held before Ucko and Fleming. There was almost certainly no "goddess worship" of the type described in Gimbutas' work, in feminist spiritual publications from those like Starhawk of Z. Budapest, in more popular feminist historiography such as Merlin Stone's When God was a Women, etc. Most of the figurines taken to be representations of a fertility/mother goddess were re-examined (beginning, actually, all the way back to Ucko's work), and it was found that rather than being pregnant as had been speculated they were simply "fat". The "venus" in the picture you posted is one of many "Venuses" Gimbutas uncovered and archived:
"Though they are customarily classed together, the Venuses are not all alike. Some are clothed, others naked; they are carved in a variety of materials, including bone, stone, and mammoth ivory; and though generally small, they vary in size from 3.7 centimeters to as much as 40 centimeters. From the time they were first discovered, Paleolithic Venuses were classified as "fertility fetishes" or "goddess figurines." This basic interpretation of Paleolithic Venuses—that they are religious in character and concerned, with fertility—has been remarkably persistent among archaeologists, though it has been losing ground over the past few decades as feminist archaeologists have critiqued it...The most conspicuous problem with regarding the Paleolithic Venuses as symbols of fertility is that they rarely show signs of pregnancy, childbirth, or lactation"
Eller, C. (2000). The myth of matriarchal prehistory: Why an invented past won't give women a future. Beacon Press.

They could have been dolls, representations of goddesses, even implements of magic. We don't know. What we do know is that there isn't any evidence for and much evidence against the idea that there was ever a time "when god was a women". Monotheism is extremely rare in general (basically all monotheistic religions are directly or indirectly indebted to Judaism, which didn't begin as a monotheistic religion), and the idea of monotheistic goddess worship in prehistory wasn't just based on interpreting virtually every shape as somehow a representation of the divine feminine (triangles, circles, lines, etc.) but interpreting cross-culturally masculine symbols as feminine (e.g., the bull as representing the womb and fallopian tubes rather than the symbol of masculinity it represented in cultures across the Near-East and Mediterranean).

Even the Bible tells us the WHOLE WORLD worshiped the GODDESS.

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[LegionOnomaMoi]

Even the Bible tells us the WHOLE WORLD worshiped the GODDESS.*

1) It doesn't
2) Even if it did, it wouldn't matter. It's the bible, not a mathematical proof.

 

[Ingledsva]

Common among the Venus figurines or so called “dolls”, all are women, no girls, boys or men “dolls”. All or most of the “dolls” are of fat women with large breasts. No “dolls” of animals. Not one single doll of a cute cuddly bunny wabbit or any other animal a child would have an affinity for. These “dolls” would have taken a lot of time and effort to create; therefore they must have had great value. How do dolls evolve from Venus figurines to Raggedy Ann Dolls? You would think it would have gone in the other direction. One doll is painstakingly made into art; the other is thrown together with old rags. I guess the ancients just had to much free time on their hands.

Yep, plus thousands of Goddess statues have been found in Israel alone, and hundreds of the ones found were still in their shrines. So - we know they were Goddesses.


*

So Goddesses.