'elohim - honorific plural or multiple personality?

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leejosepho
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01 May 2011, 9:10 am

Philologos wrote:
What's his line?

Will the real God please stand up?

I first learned much from Zola Levitt, and he used to talk about his fellows Jews occasionally wondering just which Christian version of "God" the Christian missionaries might really want all of them to actually consider?!

And then, a cross-over artist back in the '70s used to sing this:

"With all of the gods in this world today,
"how can I know to which one to pray?
"All of these 'saviours' is wreckin' my head,
"so will the real Messiah please just raise from the dead?!"
(Tim Briggs)

My favorite from him, however, was this:

"Well now the founder of a college named 'ORU' ...
"He's healed a whole lot of people -- he could probably heal you ...
"Well, I respect this man for his real high morals ...
"... but who'd wanna go and name a baby 'Oral'?!"
(refrain)
"Oh now, but that's alright.
"Yeah, that's alright.
"Well yes: Mama, that's alright with me!"


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Awesomelyglorious
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01 May 2011, 9:29 am

Philologos wrote:
Oh. Awesome!

By any chance, do you relate PRECISELY the same way to everybody in your life? Well, I do not. Nor do I believe God does - and if there is anything the available tradition says it is that he treats us as individuals.

Clearly he does not relate as senior professor to my wife, nor to most others I know. But he [knowing and having designed and made me] comes to me in that mode, and we havbe some good seminars.

Actually.... it ends up being pretty close. It isn't as if there is this huge divergence people perceive in my behavior.

Even further though.... it really just doesn't seem to be his mode of engagement. Christians didn't start off as an intellectual movement, and there are even signs of Christians being anti-intellectual, such as destruction of scientific writings and an identification of the early Christians as the uneducated and how they needed to avoid the conceits of philosophy in the Bible. Judaism is not known for having a rich intellectual culture before it being taken into Western civilization either. There was no uniquely Jewish philosophy that could stand up to Greek influence, or anything like that, even though a being with the trait that they give seminars and loves solving problems, would undoubtedly share it with those who he originally chose to love, and given that God's nature is unchanging.

I mean, I know you'll say "Well, I experience this" and many people experience bigfoot. The issue pretty simple: give me a sign that God historically gives a damn. If there is no real sign, doesn't the idea that this is just a projection make MORE sense than that this is really God? After all, God's personality doesn't change, and people don't arbitrarily hide large portions of themselves, so if God has changed in your perception, then it is more likely that you have become different, not that God has.



techstepgenr8tion
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01 May 2011, 10:39 am

ruveyn wrote:
This is all speculation You need a backward going time machine.

ruveyn

Lol, you think that would really help?

If God's like JK Rauling and we're like Harry Potter - to go forward and backward in time all we'd find are the bindings of the book, publishing pages, etc.. The fairy dust and magic is likely in a glass next to the book on a cafe table somewhere.


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Philologos
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01 May 2011, 8:54 pm

ruveyn - apart from the fact that the precise and complete character of God is NOT in fact my topic so much as the range of conceptions and perceived relationships from the human side,
HOW would a time machine tell us anything about an extratemporal entity?

AG - I have spoken aside to your total misapprehension; although I should say you are wrong on the isue of intellectuality unless you gerrymander your definitions - which I should trust you would not choose - my alleged relationship with what I claim to perceive as divine entity [whether or not I be misguided] is not at all what any reasonable observfer woulds define as intellectual.

You bark up the wrong botanical specimen.



Awesomelyglorious
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01 May 2011, 11:38 pm

Philologos wrote:
AG - I have spoken aside to your total misapprehension; although I should say you are wrong on the isue of intellectuality unless you gerrymander your definitions - which I should trust you would not choose - my alleged relationship with what I claim to perceive as divine entity [whether or not I be misguided] is not at all what any reasonable observfer woulds define as intellectual.

You bark up the wrong botanical specimen.

Philologos.... I don't think I am more likely to gerrymander definitions than you are... I dunno, it's you have a lot of odd aversions to labels that I would not have. For example... I really get the feeling that you hate the term "intellectual", but I do not, and professors are generally considered "intellectuals" by definition. We can get into details... but.... a lot seems intellectually oriented there.



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02 May 2011, 8:43 am

I have a particular history which affects my language usage as yours does yours.

It is like the recent to me extremely strange use of "hippies" in a way makes little sense to one who lived through the 60s in touch with hippies though not one of them.'
'
To you, "intellectual" is, it would seem, a value neutral term.

Me - in the times and places I walked through "intellectuals" were sophomoric pipe smokers with corduroy jackets with elbow patches, blandly pronouncing spitback platitudes about Lit Crit and politics, with lots of indoctrination and little learning. I cringed - and still do - every time someone miscalled me "intellectual". I am a scholar, I am, and a scientist, not one of THEM.

Come to think on it, the other guy's use of "hippie" is very close to what I hear in "intellectual".

Anyway:

Of course God does not interact with most as a fellow scholar, anymore than Professor Higbie discusses Platonism with his neighbour. But God, Professor Higbie and I have had some very stimulating chats. Higbie is a historian, but God and I do not hold that against him - has some very solid ideas and I am looking into his proposal about Mohenjo-Daro.



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02 May 2011, 9:18 am

As in the sentence,

"Chomsky is an intellectual but Philologos is a linguist."