It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
originally posted by: Disturbinatti
a reply to: Itisnowagain
Now you are a Kabbalist?
originally posted by: Disturbinatti
God is what can't be seen but is omnipresent.
Created all but is uncreated.
Allah ...is the Arabic word for God in Abrahamic religions. In the English language, the word traditionally refers to God in Islam.[3][4][5] The word is thought to be derived by contraction from al-ilāh, which means "the god", and is related to El and Elohim, the Hebrew words for God.[6][7]
Cognates of the name "Allāh" exist in other Semitic languages, including Hebrew and Aramaic.[19] The corresponding Aramaic form is Elah (אלה), but its emphatic state is Elaha (אלהא). It is written as ܐܠܗܐ (ʼĔlāhā) in Biblical Aramaic and ܐܲܠܵܗܵܐ (ʼAlâhâ) in Syriac as used by the Assyrian Church, both meaning simply "God".
originally posted by: whereislogic
originally posted by: Utnapisjtim
The supposed name of God is Heb. אלהים «Elohim».
No, that's not a name, that's just saying "God" in Hebrew.
Just like "Allah", the Arabic word for "God" isn't a name. And neither is the Hebrew word for "name" (hashem) a name.
And neither is the Hebrew word for "lord" a name (or the English words for that matter, none of these words are God's distinctive personal name).
originally posted by: Itisnowagain
originally posted by: Utnapisjtim
Generally these stories tell us that Yam was the god of water, oceans, rivers and seas, and was a sort of anthropomorphism of water and oceans, so his temper and personality reflected his personality as anything from calm and innocent like a lamb, just to suddenly transform into a furious monster threatening to destroy all living things with massive floods. El was Yam's father and together they fought side by side as enemies of Baal who was the Old Testament Devil, I bet you have at least heard of the latter.
In Genesis 1 God is awfully concerned with water, busy dividing and moving about seas and waters and Elohim even relates to the cosmos as oceans. To top this, water in all shapes and forms was the traditional domain of Yam in the eyes of the Semitic population living in Canaan and the area in and around today's Palestine/Israel, back in the days when Genesis was supposed to have been written.
God is not a person.
God is all that is.
God is the ocean and what appears is the ocean waving.
The waving makes the ocean appear as if it is not one but many.
The belief is that there is a you separate from 'other things' - but the you that appears is just a wave appearing in the one ocean. There is only the ocean - there is only what is. There is only the only - that is, whatever actually is.
Importance of the Name. Many modern scholars and Bible translators advocate following the tradition of eliminating the distinctive name of God. They not only claim that its uncertain pronunciation justifies such a course but also hold that the supremacy and uniqueness of the true God make unnecessary his having a particular name. Such a view receives no support from the inspired Scriptures, either those of pre-Christian times or those of the Christian Greek Scriptures.
The Tetragrammaton occurs 6,828 times in the Hebrew text printed in Biblia Hebraica and Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. In the Hebrew Scriptures the New World Translation contains the divine name 6,973 times, because the translators took into account, among other things, the fact that in some places the scribes had replaced the divine name with ʼAdho·naiʹ or ʼElo·himʹ. (See NW appendix, pp. 1561, 1562.) The very frequency of the appearance of the name attests to its importance to the Bible’s Author, whose name it is. Its use throughout the Scriptures far outnumbers that of any of the titles, such as “Sovereign Lord” or “God,” applied to him.
Noteworthy, also, is the importance given to names themselves in the Hebrew Scriptures and among Semitic peoples. Professor G. T. Manley points out: “A study of the word ‘name’ in the O[ld] T[estament] reveals how much it means in Hebrew. The name is no mere label, but is significant of the real personality of him to whom it belongs. . . . When a person puts his ‘name’ upon a thing or another person the latter comes under his influence and protection.”—New Bible Dictionary, edited by J. D. Douglas, 1985, p. 430; compare Everyman’s Talmud, by A. Cohen, 1949, p. 24; Ge 27:36; 1Sa 25:25; Ps 20:1; Pr 22:1; see NAME.
“God” and “Father” not distinctive. The title “God” is neither personal nor distinctive (one can even make a god of his belly; Php 3:19). In the Hebrew Scriptures the same word (ʼElo·himʹ) is applied to Jehovah, the true God, and also to false gods, such as the Philistine god Dagon (Jg 16:23, 24; 1Sa 5:7) and the Assyrian god Nisroch. (2Ki 19:37) For a Hebrew to tell a Philistine or an Assyrian that he worshiped “God [ʼElo·himʹ]” would obviously not have sufficed to identify the Person to whom his worship went.
In its articles on Jehovah, The Imperial Bible-Dictionary nicely illustrates the difference between ʼElo·himʹ (God) and Jehovah. Of the name Jehovah, it says: “It is everywhere a proper name, denoting the personal God and him only; whereas Elohim partakes more of the character of a common noun, denoting usually, indeed, but not necessarily nor uniformly, the Supreme. . . . The Hebrew may say the Elohim, the true God, in opposition to all false gods; but he never says the Jehovah, for Jehovah is the name of the true God only. He says again and again my God . . . ; but never my Jehovah, for when he says my God, he means Jehovah. He speaks of the God of Israel, but never of the Jehovah of Israel, for there is no other Jehovah. He speaks of the living God, but never of the living Jehovah, for he cannot conceive of Jehovah as other than living.”—Edited by P. Fairbairn, London, 1874, Vol. I, p. 856.
The same is true of the Greek term for God, The·osʹ. It was applied alike to the true God and to such pagan gods as Zeus and Hermes (Roman Jupiter and Mercury). (Compare Ac 14:11-15.) Presenting the true situation are Paul’s words at 1 Corinthians 8:4-6: “For even though there are those who are called ‘gods,’ whether in heaven or on earth, just as there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords,’ there is actually to us one God the Father, out of whom all things are, and we for him.” The belief in numerous gods, which makes essential that the true God be distinguished from such, has continued even into this 21st century.