Us

[nobspeople]

So as to not sidetrack the 'dominion' thread, who are the 'us' in the below:
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."
For discussion:
If there was only one god before creation (as many claim), who is the 'us' being referred to here?
Does god see itself in the plural?
Was jesus there with god?
Were there other gods there at the same time?
Or, if you like, how do YOU justify the 'us' here, in this quote?

[theophile]

I agree that the children of God are part of the 'us', but they are also the product of a prior union of spirit and matter (for lack of better term) that constitutes a more original 'us' that we lose sight of if we focus only on the children of God and stop with that.

They are just like Jesus, who was the product of spirit (God) and matter (Mary) coming together.

In Genesis 1, Mary = the deep. A womb-like structure present from the beginning with God. Everything else - the children of God included - flow from this original union / 'us'...

Otherwise all you have is asexual reproduction on God's part. No marriage. No original "man and woman" that humankind is made in the image of.

What reason do you have that the author of Genesis 1 had something like this in view?

Isn't it all in the story? ... Let me parse it out a bit.

In Gen 1:2 you literally have the spirit of God hovering over the deep and its waters. These two are never created in Gen 1 (or else show me where). They are two distinct and separate beings, one spiritual and the other matter. No known relationship between them. So that's one reason to think that these two (God and the deep) are the original pair.

Then when God first speaks in Gen 1:3, who is it that you think God is speaking to? The darkness? The empty, and formless earth that we later learn is all mixed up in the waters of the deep anyways and as such is part of it? There is good reason to think that God is speaking to the surface of the deep that God is hovering over. And that those first words are the beginning of a more active relationship between them...

In subsequent verses, the fruits of that partnership grow - light, the heavens, the sun and moon, the earth, living creatures... Up until Gen 1:27 when God makes humankind "in God's own image... male and female." This is the next reason, since it means there must be an original male and female that humankind is made in the image of. Looking back over the text (see above) leads straight to the deep and Gen 1:2...

Then there are the symbolic reasons. Like the deep/waters itself. I don't want to go all Dan Brown here, but sounds like a womb, right? Something to receive the Word (/Spirit) of God and bring forth life?

Or there is what would have been a far more obvious connection to the original reader between Tehom (the deep) and Tiamat, per what I said before... 'The deep' would have sparked images of a female goddess when it entered the Hebrew imagination, which makes my argument a lot more real... i.e., they would have recognized the deep as a female goddess type, and as a natural pair for the more masculine (spiritual) Word.

Anyways, let me know anything you think sounds crazy here, but it's all in the text, either literally or a pretty safe leap.

[theophile]

This of course raises questions such as how did Tehom come about in the first place, but it's not really surprising to find similarities between the two myths.

Genesis starts with the letter 'B'. That means something. It means it's not the actual beginning. I think we just have to assume that tehom / the deep always was. That her waters have always been churning with God knows what.

[William]

[Replying to theophile in post #11]

'The deep' would have sparked images of a female goddess when it entered the Hebrew imagination, which makes my argument a lot more real... i.e., they would have recognized the deep as a female goddess type, and as a natural pair for the more masculine (spiritual) Word.

This may even have been the result of visions - reminiscent of Astral-based stories, of which there are many being added to each day in the now.

The wordless experiences of such visions leave the ones having the experiences to interpret these into a language they and others understand, even as this process obscures the reality of the vision - pictures painting a thousand words where millions of words might do a more adequate job, but where much of what is experienced re the visions is beyond the words of the language being used in the times it was used.

Just as "In the beginning God spoke" is referring to the effect of a sound which created light...sound and speech go together but the vision didn't actually include a being speaking - just the effect - and the effect was attributed to being caused by sound, and sound then attributed to voicing something - thus "God spoke light into existence" = the same thing as seeing a vision of the Big Bang and translating that vision into something others might understand in the telling of it.

[tam]

Peace to you,

So as to not sidetrack the 'dominion' thread, who are the 'us' in the below:
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."
For discussion:
If there was only one god before creation (as many claim), who is the 'us' being referred to here?
Does god see itself in the plural?
Was jesus there with god?
Were there other gods there at the same time?
Or, if you like, how do YOU justify the 'us' here, in this quote?

The 'us' is God and His Son. God is speaking to His Son (to Christ).

Speaking of the Word (who is Christ), in John 1:

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome[a] it..

And,

9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.

(note also that Christ is the Light)

Another verse which shows that Christ was there in the 'beginning', that God was speaking to Christ are Paul's words here (1 Corinth 8):


For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many so-called gods and lords), 6yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we exist. And there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we exist.

ALL things... from God, through Christ.


Peace again to you,
your servant and a slave of Christ,
tammy

[brunumb]

...and given the theory that all the planets of the Sol system originally were parts of Sols wholeness which fragmented into planets and moons...one can fill in the gaps...

What theory is that. From what I understand, the opposite happened. The matter in the accretion disc condensed to form the sun while the planets, moons and numerous other bodies were simply formed from the residual material.

[William]

[Replying to brunumb in post #15]

Well theories come and go brunumb - and it doesn't matter in the context I am speaking of - the universe is all the same thing...

[cms]

There are 3 separate accounts of creation in Genesis.
One of the accounts may have been written by someone who believed in multiple Gods.
The writer could be taking God's attributes and referring to them as separate spirits or persons, such as the personification of wisdom.
It could be just a problem with translation since Gen. 1 verse 27 goes on to say that God made man in his own image. In the image of God created he him, male and female created he them.

[Miles]

[Replying to nobspeople in post #1]

The deep is God's 'partner' in creation. See Genesis 1:2. The deep is already there with God from the beginning. God hovers over her waters.

This concept / character tends to go unrecognized in its importance. You could argue as some have (see Catherine Keller's Face of the Deep) that she has been sidelined / ignored by centuries of patriarchal theology.

Also note that the deep (Hebrew tehom) is a clear reference to Tiamat (they share the same etymology). Tiamat was the dragon / chaos / sea goddess in the Enuma Elish. A main point of Genesis 1 (contrary to contemporary cosmologies) is that tehom / Tiamat is not destroyed to enable creation. Again, she is partnered with.

Hence, "Let us". And furthermore, the image of this "Us" that we are made in: man and woman.

God's girlfriend, in a sense?

Yup.

.........................
......................... source


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[theophile]

There are 3 separate accounts of creation in Genesis.
One of the accounts may have been written by someone who believed in multiple Gods.
The writer could be taking God's attributes and referring to them as separate spirits or persons, such as the personification of wisdom.
It could be just a problem with translation since Gen. 1 verse 27 goes on to say that God made man in his own image. In the image of God created he him, male and female created he them.

The real reason there is an English 'Us' in Genesis 1 is that 'God' in the original Hebrew is 'Elohim' (versus what we tend to see in subsequent scriptures, 'Yahweh'.

'Elohim' is grammatically plural in form. So it's the grammatical structure that indicates something polytheistic going on.

But you're right, the grammatical form does shift to the masculine singular here, even though it remains the plural 'Elohim' speaking.

It's one of those mysteries that makes the bible so open to interpretation (and therefore so interesting to engage)

[Difflugia]

The real reason there is an English 'Us' in Genesis 1 is that 'God' in the original Hebrew is 'Elohim' (versus what we tend to see in subsequent scriptures, 'Yahweh'.

'Elohim' is grammatically plural in form. So it's the grammatical structure that indicates something polytheistic going on.

It's not that simple. In general, when Elohim is used to mean "God," it gets singular verbs and when it means "gods," it gets plural verbs. There's a similar thing going on with the definite article "the elohim" means "the gods" rather than "(the) God." There are places where interpreters want to claim exceptions to these to preserve pure monotheism, but deviations (like the "us") are rare enough that they can't just be dismissed as artifacts of grammar.

Another similar verse is Genesis 20:13. Abraham is making excuses to Abimelech about how he didn't really lie when he said that Sarah was his sister. It's usually translated something like this (WEB):

When God caused me to wander from my father’s house, I said to her, ‘This is your kindness which you shall show to me. Everywhere that we go, say of me, “He is my brother.”’”

Grammatically, though, it begins with, "When the gods caused me to wander," because the verb "caused" refers to a plural subject, "gods." It seems to me that Abraham is just being polite (he is speaking to a polytheist king, after all), but many commentators have trouble with the idea that Abraham would even pay lip-service to multiple gods. This leads to explanations like Abraham meaning that God's angels were causing him to wander or similar.