Who wrote the Torah?

a reply to: Utnapisjtim

it also means ruddy/red skinned, which is spot on for these guys. second row.

a reply to: undo

Though I don't agree with your Atum-Adam theory, I'm far more disposed towards the red-skinned part. Do you have a source for it somewhere? Adam is supposed to have had a red complexion. If I'm not mistaken I read somewhere that Europeans all share genes from one man with red skin who lived about 6000 years ago. It was in Norwegian, and as far as I can remember it was based on sound research.

ETA: Are you saying Atum means Red-skinned?

a reply to: Utnapisjtim


'adam

to be red, red

(Qal) ruddy (of Nazarites)

(Pual)

to be rubbed red

dyed red

reddened

(Hiphil)

to cause to show red

to glare

to emit (show) redness

(Hithpael)

to redden

to grow red

to look red

link
'adam

what i'm saying is the specific Atum who created the various races from various other Atum, was red-skinned. the various other atum were not necessarily red-skinned themselves. but the red part stuck to the descripton for several reasons, one of them being the clay of creation being red. adam was formed from the clay, etc.

a reply to: undo

Cool! Like I said, adama is the Hebrew name for red ochre, which is a colour pigment made from a type of clay Adam was made from. If you want to freak out your village, buy a few pounds of red ochre pigment and throw it into your river up-stream. It goes red like blood. We used to do it in the brooks as kids. Great for painting too, it's water soluble and durable. It was popular in cave-art. It's basically a mix of rust and clay.

a reply to: undo

I went back and reread your first one, and the part about Atum being Adam, well, it's a long stretch, but it makes sense, I like it. Hermes says that Atum is the Great God of the Universe(s) and Man, and he is either one. For as the Cosmos is the materialised thoughts of Atum, Man is his image and a container for his Nous, consciousness or awareness, the Spirit of God. We can see Atum by studying the Cosmos and Atum can do the same exercise with us, for we are inspired by the Cosmos and the Atum we see through it.

Atum is probably the word that became Atom, which in Greek means uncuttable or undividable. The word for the basic unists of stuff that makes up the whole universe and us. Every atom in my body was created in the furnaces of the stars.

ETA: I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the plural part. First the -im plural suffix only applies to Hebrew, and that's not all. For eventhough words like Elohim and Adam are plural words, they are treated like singular grammatically. There is, however, an allusion of plurality here. God because he created everything. Man because there are many men, or hu-men if you like Diversity of perfected species and concepts, laws and constants, Elohim means lit. 'God of Forces'.

a reply to: Utnapisjtim

no they aren't usually treated singularly. there's only one instance that i know of, where elohim is in the singular royal we voice and even that is conjoined by a second elohim reference that goes right back into plurality. i am not sure why the egyptians had atum as singular, but since my theory suggests that atum is the singular creator of life, using multiple templates of other atum to create the human atum from, it still works.

let me put it this way. the first time adam is mentioned in gene-ISIS, it's males and females named adam, being created, not just one male. however, they must not have been procreators yet, as the pain in childbirth and all that, doesn't come along until they begin to procreate and eve is given a name that means mother. she was the first procreative female adam, in the singular sense and the plural sense. not only that, the original words that are used in the verses there can be either singular or plural. there's no other indicator outside the use of the "m" ending at that point in the timeline, that the word is a plural.

i think where the biggest confusion arises is knowing when the text goes from speaking generally about everybody, to just talking about the family tree of what is to become known as the house of judah, specifically.

if you haven't read it yet, get a gander

So What Exactly is an Elohim?

oh and as an aside, this thought crossed my mind in a funny sort of way:

notice how many of the gods of egypt are often said to be self-created?
for example, wiki says of Atum:

"In the Heliopolitan creation myth, Atum was considered to be the first god, having created himself"

this is an example of a couple of millenia of variations in languages and cultural meanderings -- Atum creates Atum (remember i said, the adam were named after their creator(s)?

/wiggles eyebrows. hehe

originally posted by: undo
the son who went to egypt, was ham -- and ham is the etymology for khem (egypt). i think he (actually "they", as the m designates ham is a plural word) was returning to egypt, not going there for the first time.
elohim and alulim are also plural words (designated by the "m" at the end), so how do we get a singular creator? easy. a singular adam/atum/alulim/elohim in the royal "we" voice, created the plural adam, males and females, from multiple adam/atum/elohim/alulim templates.

I'm just trying to catch up on the most recent line of discussion. So, this is the first thing that jumped out at me. 'm' does not designate a plural word. It is specifically 'im,' pronounced 'eem' that indicates a masculine plural, yud-mem. Ham does not have the y sound preceding the m, so plural is not indicated.

It is true that elohim is plural, because it ends in im, eem, which is what actually indicates a plural, and more specifically a masculine plural. Though elohim is a masculine plural word, its root word is eloah, which is a feminine singular.

Nonetheless, I am always interested in parallels between different cultures and system, and so the idea of equating things like atum and Adam is interesting. And that the Torah may be a sort of key which unites different systems.

a reply to: undo

Please notice the following: The first words of Genesis in Hebrew transliterated into English; "Bereshyt bara Elohim at..." To illustrate what I am addressing by saying Elohim is "treated as singular grammatically", I will translate it in present tense rather than the past tense and use Gods to illustrate through nonsense, a similar function in English: "In the beginning Gods creates..." Now, pay close attention to the -s suffix in 'creates' there, 'creates' is singular. Similarly the verb for 'create' in Hebrew here, 'Bara' is singular, and not plural as would be the case if Elohim was merely a plural word. In Hebrew the verb 'bara' is only used with God as the subject, and is always singular, because the proper name Elohim is 'pluralis excellentiae' making it singular eventhough it is a plural word:

en.wikipedia.org...

Hebrew distinguishes grammatical number by endings in nouns, verbs and adjectives. A grammatical phenomenon occurs with a small number of Hebrew nouns, such as elohim "great god" and behemoth "giant beast" where a grammatically redundant plural ending -im (usually masculine plural) or -oth (usually feminine plural) is attached to a noun, but the noun nevertheless continues to take singular verbs and adjectives.

a reply to: TheJourney

there must be more than one way to indicate plural with just "m" then because adam is a plural.

originally posted by: Utnapisjtim
a reply to: undo

Please notice the following: The first words of Genesis in Hebrew transliterated into English; "Bereshyt bara Elohim at..." To illustrate what I am addressing by saying Elohim is "treated as singular grammatically", I will translate it in present tense rather than the past tense to utilise a similar function in English: "In the beginning Elohim creates..." Now, pay close attention to the -s suffix in 'creates' there. Similarly the verb for 'create' in Hebrew here, 'Bara' is singular, and not plural as would be the case if Elohim was merely a plural word. In Hebrew the verb 'bara' is only used with God as the subject, and is always singular, because the proper name Elohim is 'pluralis excellentiae' making it singular eventhough it is a plural word:

en.wikipedia.org...

Hebrew distinguishes grammatical number by endings in nouns, verbs and adjectives. A grammatical phenomenon occurs with a small number of Hebrew nouns, such as elohim "great god" and behemoth "giant beast" where a grammatically redundant plural ending -im (usually masculine plural) or -oth (usually feminine plural) is attached to a noun, but the noun nevertheless continues to take singular verbs and adjectives.

So what would bara be if plural was indicated? I know a bit of Hebrew, from when I studied it before when I wanted to convert to Judaism. But, I don't know. Do you?

originally posted by: undo
a reply to: TheJourney

there must be more than one way to indicate plural with just "m" then because adam is a plural.

There are two ways to indicate plural, im if masculine, oth if feminine. Where are you getting the idea that Adam is plural?

originally posted by: undo
if you haven't read it yet, get a gander

Nah, I have cats, ganders and cats don't go together well

I recommend the book "The Early History of God" by Mark S. Smith for getting an overview of the different pantheons involved in early Hebrew culture, language and literature. Extremely thoroughly referenced.

originally posted by: undo
notice how many of the gods of egypt are often said to be self-created?

In Greek translations of ancient Egyptian literature, the word for 'self-created' is 'autogenes'. In the case of Jesus and NT literature, a variant is used, 'monogenes', often translated 'only begotten'. It does however mean 'created from one'.

a reply to: TheJourney

Indeed. The Torah is one of the most remarkable books in the world, and together with a few other books it resembles a spark of Heaven, eternal mystical knowledge of the divine.

originally posted by: TheJourney

originally posted by: Utnapisjtim
a reply to: undo

Please notice the following: The first words of Genesis in Hebrew transliterated into English; "Bereshyt bara Elohim at..." To illustrate what I am addressing by saying Elohim is "treated as singular grammatically", I will translate it in present tense rather than the past tense to utilise a similar function in English: "In the beginning Elohim creates..." Now, pay close attention to the -s suffix in 'creates' there. Similarly the verb for 'create' in Hebrew here, 'Bara' is singular, and not plural as would be the case if Elohim was merely a plural word. In Hebrew the verb 'bara' is only used with God as the subject, and is always singular, because the proper name Elohim is 'pluralis excellentiae' making it singular eventhough it is a plural word:

en.wikipedia.org...

Hebrew distinguishes grammatical number by endings in nouns, verbs and adjectives. A grammatical phenomenon occurs with a small number of Hebrew nouns, such as elohim "great god" and behemoth "giant beast" where a grammatically redundant plural ending -im (usually masculine plural) or -oth (usually feminine plural) is attached to a noun, but the noun nevertheless continues to take singular verbs and adjectives.

So what would bara be if plural was indicated? I know a bit of Hebrew, from when I studied it before when I wanted to convert to Judaism. But, I don't know. Do you?

Bara is never written in plural to my knowledge, and is only used with God as subject, so it's an impossible question to answer. Had Elohim been a regular plural noun another, plural, verb would have been used, if I'm not mistaken. Besides, Hebrew grammar is something I should learn a lot more of before getting into discussions like this. So please, if you have a better answer to your own question, or if I'm totally wrong here, I would love to read and learn

ETA Understanding Hebrew grammar and verb formation and stuff like genus and numerus in particular can be a test of patience and I never really understood it. See en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: Utnapisjtim

you mean the royal "we" form? oh i agree that's indicated in the creation of the adam male and female passage. however, i think the idea it is constantly the royal we, is incorrect, unless that royal we indicates other gods are in agreement, THEN, sure, it's the royal we with the we being here represented as a body composed of multiple gods, agreeing in unison on an action or topic. did you read the link regarding the meaning of elohim? it applies to other gods, to the dearly departed, and so on.

i watched a really good video on WHAT created the universe. mechanically, the universe was created by super massive black holes. now if the elohim came to be associated with black holes, it makes sense that it would be said that the elohim as black holes, created the universe.

but i'd like to offer an even more perplexing issue regarding the opening verses of genesis. in the second verse it says the earth became tohu and bohu (void and desolate). well, it was translated to say the earth WAS tohu and bohu, but the word there doesn't translate to WAS, it does however, translate to BECOME. the correct tense for the passage, of the word become is not "was", it's BECAME. so that means the second verse of the bible is not talking about the creation of the earth, but later in the timeline, when something happens to make the earth become tohu and bohu and the creation of the lifeforms and so forth, is actually a RE-creation. here is where the elohim/atum that the adam are copied from, comes in. they were the prior lifeforms on this planet before a massive cataclysm that wiped out their civilizations. as a result, i think the noah's flood story is a double layered affair, having evidence of both a massive cataclysm that required evacuation of its lifeforms, perhaps as part of a dna bank, and a not so massive cataclysm that resulted in saving the royal barnyards.

a reply to: Utnapisjtim

(the little numbers are strongs numbers that are clickable at the link (see below), and give you the original hebrew, and its root etymology

Gen 1:26

And God H430 said, H559 Let us make H6213 man H120 in our image, H6754 after our likeness: H1823 and let them have dominion H7287 over the fish H1710 of the sea, H3220 and over the fowl H5775 of the air, H8064 and over the cattle, H929 and over all the earth, H776 and over every creeping thing H7431 that creepeth H7430 upon the earth. H776


Gen 1:27

So God H430 created H1254 man H120 in his own image, H6754 in the image H6754 of God H430 created H1254 he him; male H2145 and female H5347 created H1254 he them.


LINK
---------

That stuff is LOADED with plurals, such as "Let US" make "MAN" (as a species plural sense/ the original hebrew is adam) in "OUR" image. the interesting thing there is that the word image, can be translated as singular or plural. it's from the word "tselem"

so what it should be translated to say is, let us make the adam race in our images