Images, names and words of God

[Mithrae]

As a theist-leaning agnostic, there are still some things from ancient Hebrew religious tradition which I find quite interesting or even profound, at least in concept. For example in the story of how Jacob got the name Israel, after wrestling with God Jacob asks for his name and is rebuffed (Genesis 32), and eventually in the story of the burning bush when Moses asks God what his name is the answer is simply "I am who I am" (Exodus 3), offered as an explanation for the divine 'name' Yahweh. Similarly in the ten commandments and elsewhere we see prohibitions against both using any kind of image to represent God and against misusing the name Yahweh (Exodus 20). As with images and names, associating God with words or commands falsely was treated as deadly serious: "any prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, or who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speakthat prophet shall die" (Deuteronomy 18).

Real or not, the idea of a creator god is one of the grandest and loftiest things we could ever try to conceive, and as such can have incredible power over individuals and societies at large. The idea of God can and has been used as the basis for people
- selling all their possessions to give to the poor, or
- slaughtering neighbouring peoples down to the last woman and child, or
- devoting their lives to fighting injustices and oppression, or
- sacrificing their own children in offering or appeasement, or
- committing mass suicide to be closer to God....
At the same time however, if God actually does exist, how could our tiny brains come even remotely close to comprehending her? Genesis 1 claims that humans were created in the image of God, but surely we have pretty good reasons for suspecting that most if not everything that humans have said since then has been more a case of creating God in our own image, or at best bringing him down to our own meagre level of understanding!

The prohibition of images and coyness surrounding the 'name' of God may well have been intended (at least at some point in the development of the Torah) to offset that inclination; to at least mitigate people's tendency of bringing God down to our level and thinking that we know what he is like. If so that seems like a very wise idea to me. It hasn't been very successful of course: The Tanakh records that use of images in worship was more or less commonplace throughout pre-exilic history, and Christians for the most part have been more than happy to portray God as a big old man in the sky extending a fleshy appendage down to Adam. Ancient Jews invented all kinds of different names for God which Christians have upheld, and some Christian sects even make the supposed 'name' of God one of their key points of focus.

The most miserable failure however hasn't been in the area of assigning images or names, but in assigning words and commands to God; that is where the real consequences are to be found, the sacrifices and bigotry and oppression and wars and genocides. And the good things too, the uplifting or inspiring things; but what good things do we really need taught to us as commands from God? According to the apostle Paul, only one thing; "the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself"" (Galatians 5). The apostle John agreed; "Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love" (1 John 4). Hillel the Elder - the grandfather of Paul's purported mentor Gamaliel and an older contemporary of Jesus - reportedly put it a little differently but more clearly "That which you hate do not do to your fellow, this is the whole of the law; the rest is commentary, go and learn." And of course in his own, positive formulation of the golden rule, Jesus is reported as saying "In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets" (Matthew 7).

What do we really need beyond those words, even for those convinced that God is watching and judging their every move? Or more to the point, what is the threshold of certainty or evidence we should require before assigning words or commands to God? That passage in Deuteronomy 18 offers one disqualifying criterion - if a 'prophet' says things which aren't true then they are not speaking for God - but it seems that many Christians and Jews don't bother applying that standard even in the most blatant cases, such as Ezekiel's false predictions that Nebuchadnezzar would conquer Egypt and destroy Tyre for all time (Ez. 26-29, notably 29:18 where the 'prophet' even admits his own failure!). It seems that religious believers are happy to assign words to God even when they are brazenly and obviously false, as this and plenty of other biblical examples show. But even if that were not the case, surely the low bar of just avoiding disqualifiers like obviously false claims would not be enough to be confident that a command comes from God.


Given what a serious issue some passages in the Torah treat it to assign images, names and words to God - and that of these, assigning words to God can and historically has had the most devastating real-world consequences, by far - surely anyone with even a smidgeon of respect for the reality or even just the idea of God would demand a very high bar before assigning words to him!

> If you believe (contrary to Paul, John etc.) that we need something more from God than "love one another," what kind of proof do you require before taking that deadly serious step of publicly assigning words to him?

> If we see people assigning words to God based on flimsy pretexts - even such vile accusations as genocides and eternal torture - does that tell us anything about their respect for God, relative to human institutions and traditions?

> Do the Hebrew or Christian canons suggest any other way of seeking or receiving guidance from God?

[JehovahsWitness]

...Deuteronomy 18, I take it that you accept this as a genuine revelation from God?

I accept everything written in the bible as a genuine revelation from God. I accept comments and conclusions proposed by individuals about the content of the bible on a case by case basis.




JW

[Mithrae]

Five days later and by my rough count so far only a single Christian, Jew or Muslim has responded to the thread at all (albeit without actually answering any of the three main questions posed in the OP). Could it be that the people of the Book have no good answer for the level of proof they require before publicly assigning words to God? And perhaps more pressingly, that they have no good answer for the implied disrespect against God of doing so arbitrarily or based on flimsy pretexts and traditions?

As for the third question, the bible itself states explicitly (however dubiously) in several different passages that under the new covenant which Jesus supposedly ushered in "I will put my laws in their minds, and write them on their hearts... they shall not teach one another or say to each other, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest" (Hebrews 8, quoting Jeremiah 31). Maybe the people of the Book just never got around to reading that part, and still think that they must turn to the teachings of Moses or Matthew or Muhammad in order to know God and his laws? Or maybe they just don't believe those words.

[JehovahsWitness]

Could it be that the people of the Book have no good answer for the level of proof they require before publicly assigning words to God?

Believers do not assign words to God. To assign means "to give someone a particular job or duty". Nobody claims to be giving words a job .... possibly word you are thinking of is "attribute" (regard something as being caused by) or claim their words come from God ie to claim they are communicating divine revelation.

Anyone can publicly "attribute" words to God if they so choose (if they are lying God will deal with them his own time). The Mosaic law mandated punishment for anyone that claimed to be a Prophet but failed to do so in the [1]name of YAHWEH/Jehovah . If his words failed to come true he could be dismissed as a false prophet.

Today what level of proof people reqiure to be convinced as to the source of what they hear as individuals is up to them. In that religious people are no different from the none religious. [2] Biblically, If someone claims to be writing or speaking divine revelation then what they say would prove true, its as simple as that.

... they have no good answer for the implied disrespect against God of doing so arbitrarily or based on flimsy pretexts and traditions?

It is disrepectful of anyone to deliberately attribute to someone words they did not say. Lying about someone is fundamentally disrepectful because it misrepresents their words, actions or intentions. I do not understand what you mean by "they have no good answer " . Believers are not expected have a good answer for {quote} "publicly assigning words to God" because the don't do that (see above). Believers simply expected to defend their faith ie explain why they do or do not believe any given claim (see above [1] , [2] for criteria)


JW

[Mithrae]

Could it be that the people of the Book have no good answer for the level of proof they require before publicly assigning words to God?

Believers do not assign words to God. To assign means "to give someone a particular job or duty". Nobody claims to be giving words a job .... possibly word you are thinking of is "attribute" (regard something as being caused by) or claim their words come from God ie to claim they are communicating divine revelation.

Thankyou, Webster, but maybe you should have checked your own publication first: "assign verb.... 3: to fix or specify in correspondence or relationship; "assign counsel to the defendant" "assign a value to the variable" "Though assigned male at birth"" Also might be an idea to be careful about your own writing before trying to nitpick another's, rather than missing whole words like above

Anyone can publicly "attribute" words to God if they so choose (if they are lying God will deal with them his own time). The Mosaic law mandated punishment for anyone that claimed to be a Prophet but failed to do so in the [1]name of YAHWEH/Jehovah . If his words failed to come true he could be dismissed as a false prophet.

This verse was quoted in the OP, and mandates death both for "any prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, or who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak." Obviously most parts of the bible (psalms, histories, legends, epistles, gospels) do not claim or imply themselves to be words from God, but many Christians presume to know better than the authors themselves.

Today what level of proof people reqiure to be convinced as to the source of what they hear as individuals is up to them. In that religious people are no different from the none religious. [2] Biblically, If someone claims to be writing or speaking divine revelation then what they say would prove true, its as simple as that.

Like the repeated reassuring promises by John that Jesus would return "soon," to readers in Asia whose great-grandchildren's flesh turned to dust thousands of years ago? Or as highlighted in the OP, predictions by Ezekiel that Tyre (current pop. ~230,000 and "one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world") would be plundered and destroyed by Nebuchadnezzer and "never be rebuilt"?

... they have no good answer for the implied disrespect against God of doing so arbitrarily or based on flimsy pretexts and traditions?

It is disrepectful of anyone to deliberately attribute to someone words they did not say. Lying about someone is fundamentally disrepectful because it misrepresents their words, actions or intentions. I do not understand what you mean by "they have no good answer " . Believers are not expected have a good answer for {quote} "publicly assigning words to God" because the don't do that (see above). Believers simply expected to defend their faith ie explain why they do or do not believe any given claim (see above [1] , [2] for criteria)

Your criteria had already been proven false or disingenuous on three counts, both in the OP and subsequent posts:
1 - Most of the bible doesn't meet that extremely low bar of being given in the name of God, claiming to be his words, yet you and many other Christians still presume to make that claim
2 - Some biblical passages (including among the few parts which do claim to be revealed by God) fail to meet the similarly low bar of proving to be true, or even not being blatantly false
3 - Words which do meet those two simple criteria of being given in the name of God and not being proven false are nevertheless routinely summarily rejected by Christians and yourself, such as the prophecy earlier in the thread "Yahweh says that the position outlined in the OP is correct."

It's hard to say what qualifies as "deliberately" misattributing words to someone, but doing so under false pretexts - as seems to be the case if those two criteria are claimed as the reason for accepting "everything written in the bible as a genuine revelation from God" - may well be a good starting point.

[JehovahsWitness]

Believers simply expected to defend their faith ie explain why they do or do not believe any given claim (see above [1] , [2] for criteria)

Your criteria had already been proven false or disingenuous on three counts, both in the OP and subsequent posts:

They are not my criteria, I didnt write the bible. Criteria cannot be "proven false", they are simply standards. Standards are what they are, if you think they are inadequate, you are welcome to write your own.

The people who claimed be Prophets died many millenia ago. If they lied they have stood stand before their Maker or simply sleep with king and pauper. Either way, what's the gripe, they're dead.

:
1 - Most of the bible doesn't meet that extremely low bar of being given in the name of God, claiming to be his words, ...

If you believe most of the bible canon fails to meet its own internal standards, be my guest .... reject it!

:
1 - ....being given in the name of God, claiming to be his words, yet you and many other Christians still presume to make that claim

What claim? If by "make that cllaim" you mean I claim divine revelation, I claim to be a Prophet I claim to be speaking inspired expressions from, God, that is simply not true. You are wrong.

If you mean I claim to believe the expressions in the bible (as recorded by those Prophets and bible writers of old ) are of divine origin, yes I do claim that.


Do you have a problem with that?


JW

[JehovahsWitness]

3 - Words which do meet those two simple criteria of being given in the name of God and not being proven false are nevertheless routinely summarily rejected by Christians and yourself ....

I can't speak for anyone but myself but I assure you I dont reject anything in the bible. I might rejects a few things in this forum though...

.. such as the prophecy earlier in the thread "Yahweh says that the position outlined in the OP is correct."

He did ? He said that did he?

It's hard to say what qualifies as "deliberately" misattributing words to someone, but doing so under false pretexts - as seems to be the case if those two criteria are claimed as the reason for accepting "everything written in the bible as a genuine revelation from God" - may well be a good starting point.

I'll give a dollar and a beer to anyone that can explain the above.






JW

[Mithrae]

It's hard to say what qualifies as "deliberately" misattributing words to someone, but doing so under false pretexts - as seems to be the case if those two criteria are claimed as the reason for accepting "everything written in the bible as a genuine revelation from God" - may well be a good starting point.

I'll give a dollar and a beer to anyone that can explain the above.

In cases like this I often find it's helpful to try reading the sentence without the parenthetical clause. Attributing words to someone under false pretexts may be a good starting point to qualify for "deliberately" misattributing words to them. You said in your post, "It is disrepectful of anyone to deliberately attribute to someone words they did not say. Lying about someone is fundamentally disrepectful because it misrepresents their words, actions or intentions."

So for example suppose I were to say that Gandhi orchestrated multiple genocides and spent year after year and decade after decade torturing criminals in his sense of 'justice,' and my basis for doing so was written documents to that effect penned by other people. I insist that they must have been dictated or approved by Gandhi if [1] they were written by his known close associates and [2] they were written in Hindi. But most of the collection I'm referring to was written by people with no connection to Gandhi, and some key parts were written in English; and furthermore, there are other documents by his known close associates written in Hindi which I don't accept as dictated or approved by him. Obviously my 'reasons' or criteria for attributing those words and actions to Gandhi are false pretexts at best. Would you say that I am showing respect for Gandhi by maintaining those claims about him?

Believers simply expected to defend their faith ie explain why they do or do not believe any given claim (see above [1] , [2] for criteria)

Your criteria had already been proven false or disingenuous on three counts, both in the OP and subsequent posts:

They are not my criteria, I didnt write the bible. Criteria cannot be "proven false", they are simply standards. Standards are what they are, if you think they are inadequate, you are welcome to write your own.

The people who claimed be Prophets died many millenia ago. If they lied they have stood stand before their Maker or simply sleep with king and pauper. Either way, what's the gripe, they're dead.

They are the criteria you have chosen to promote. The claim they are the criteria for believing everything in the bible to be genuine revelations from God certainly can be proven false or disingenuous, and has been, since most of the bible doesn't meet those criteria and other things which do meet them are nevertheless rejected. The people claiming divine revelation in Genesis or Chronicles or Matthew (which the authors themselves never presumed to make) are not dead - as far as I can tell, you for one are alive and well - and my gripe with that claim is pretty much along the same lines as those who say that Obama was born in Kenya. Or now that I've added it in, the gripe I would have with the Gandhi scenario above, though that doesn't really offer a comparison for the real-world consequences of bibliolatry like birtherism does. Some Christians and Jews and Muslims believe that they have an incentive to promote warfare in the Middle East or even globally on the basis of their supposedly-divine apocalyptic scriptures!

:
1 - Most of the bible doesn't meet that extremely low bar of being given in the name of God, claiming to be his words, ...

If you believe most of the bible canon fails to meet its own internal standards, be my guest .... reject it!

:
1 - ....being given in the name of God, claiming to be his words, yet you and many other Christians still presume to make that claim

What claim? If by "make that cllaim" you mean I claim divine revelation, I claim to be a Prophet I claim to be speaking inspired expressions from, God, that is simply not true. You are wrong.

If you mean I claim to believe the expressions in the bible (as recorded by those Prophets and bible writers of old ) are of divine origin, yes I do claim that.

That's like saying "I'm not claiming to be a prophet or soothsayer, I merely believe the portents shown by these entrails." If Genesis itself makes no claim to divine revelation, which it obviously doesn't, then using it as your basis for received revelation is a prophetic presumption on your part, not the authors'.

It may be that there are some few parts of the bible which actually do meet the meagre criteria of being given in the name of God and not being obviously false. As we've seen, by those criteria Genesis and so on are not divine revelation at all, while Ezekiel and John were false prophets - and obviously so was Jesus, if we accept Matt. 10:23 and 16:28 as accurate records of his words - but maybe the likes of Jeremiah or Hosea managed to stay vague enough that their content hasn't been proven false? I don't know, off the top of my head. But with the criteria themselves being so dubious, and bible-believers evidently so reluctant to apply them with any degree of consistency or rigour, I'm not sure it matters anyway.

[JehovahsWitness]

It's hard to say what qualifies as "deliberately" misattributing words to someone, but doing so under false pretexts - as seems to be the case if those two criteria are claimed as the reason for accepting "everything written in the bible as a genuine revelation from God" - may well be a good starting point.

I'll give a dollar and a beer to anyone that can explain the above.

In cases like this I often find it's helpful to try reading the sentence without the parenthetical clause. Attributing words to someone under false pretexts may be a good starting point to qualify for "deliberately" misattributing words to them.

You get the dollar but not the beer. I often advise my students not to write sentences that are a paragraph long. Anyway, yes I would agree "deliberately" misattributing words to people is bad.

JW

[JehovahsWitness]

The people claiming divine revelation in Genesis or Chronicles or Matthew (which the authors themselves never presumed to make) are not dead - as far as I can tell, you for one are alive and well ...

So all the excessive verbage aside, you are basically unhappy people like myself believe the bible (all the books in the bible canon) is the word of God. Does that about sum up your point?

[bjs1]

> If you believe (contrary to Paul, John etc.) that we need something more from God than "love one another," what kind of proof do you require before taking that deadly serious step of publicly assigning words to him?

Personally, I like the way that synoptic Gospels put this. When asked what the greatest commandment is, Jesus said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

However, I dont think that the synoptic gospel writers, or Paul and John for that matter, presented this is the only things we need to know from God. All of these writers wrote quite a bit more, and (if the accounts are true) Jesus taught quite a bit more than just that one commandment. Jesus himself considered it the second commandment, not the first and greatest commandment. So it seems that all these writers believed that we need more from God than just "love one another."

> Do the Hebrew or Christian canons suggest any other way of seeking or receiving guidance from God?

They teach that we can gain guidance from God by directly asking God for guidance.

James 1:5
If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.



There seems to be an important theme of God giving guidance directly to those who ask Him.

Psalm 32:8
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.

John 14:26
But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.



The Cannon also suggest that we can seek guidance by looking at the whole of the Cannon instead of just a few lines.

2 Timothy 3:16-17: "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."