"God" is just a very old name for "existence".
Didn't know that, thanks. Any source/hint to dig in?
Yes, but only in german.
https://homepage.univie.ac.at/Erwin.Bader/Schoepfung_zeitlich.htmlBased on an alternative translation of JHWH (Jahweh) as "I am" or "i am here (to be)".
Imho, this is also the most logical translation.
It spins around the philosophic question of origin: which was first? existence or the creator? can a creator exist without existence?
No time now to review and untangle yet another one of these, but that’s flatly implausible.
By a verbal trick, Christians converted the generic term for a class of deities to a proper noun naming a singular deity, in multiple languages: First the Latin
deus (cognate of Sanskrit
devá), then eventually the English
god—in Old English, so generic a word that it was originally a
neuter noun distinguishable from masculine
goda and feminine
gyden! Whereas if you want to know the origins of the word, it is not sensible to analyze it as a name for a singular entity.
As a precaution, I must mention that attempts to relate Hebrew to Indo-European languages are mere hokum, usually peddled by Christian evangelists—often, but not always by those of the type who claim to be descended from the mythical Lost Tribes of Israel. Hebrew is from a completely different language family; and there is no evidence that the different language families share any common ancestor.
The word
god, like German
Gott, descends from Proto-Germanic, ultimately Proto-Indo-European roots antedating the Bible, and certainly from a time long before the polytheistic speakers of such languages ever read the Book of Exodus. It seems the current theory amongst actual etymologists is that it descends from a PIE root meaning ‘to invoke’ (as by ritual), although the history of the word is obscure and somewhat vexed; a competing theory is that it descends from the root ‘to pour’ (in reference to a sacrificial libation).
N.b. that the Ten Commandments include a decree that “thou shalt have no other gods before me”, apparently a vestige from the Jewish change from polytheism to henotheism (
i.e., a belief in one superior deity, above and against other existing deities; observe the god-invoking magic competition of Moses with the Egyptian priests, or the similar challenge of Elijah to the priests of Ba’al, or the Bible’s multiple prohibitions against “Asherah poles” in reference to the worship of a Semitic goddess). That antedates the further change to monotheism (
i.e., a belief that only one deity exists).
Contemporary Judaism has a cultural sensitivity (not quite a law, at least not according to most Jewish authorities) about writing the word “God”, often rendered as “G-d” or in various other forms, as a secondary effect of the Jewish law against writing the Tetragrammaton anywhere that it may potentially be defaced. Compare and contrast the
kosher law against eating meat with milk, a protection against potentially coming too close to violating the negative
mitzvah against boiling a kid in its mother’s milk.
The Christian deity is not actually monotheistic in the Jewish sense. In concept, it copies the Zoroastrian
Ahura Mazda (a good god embattled by an evil god/devil) mashed together with the Hindu concept of a trinity, the concept of a divine son (here probably from Mithraism), the mortal incarnation of a god (various sources), plus a few other things. The Jewish monotheism is closer to the Stoics’
animus mundi, and probably therefrom derived. The notion that an angel could rebel against an absolute supreme being is, of course, illogical; accordingly, the Jewish Satan is also quite different than the Christian Satan. The only real linkages between Judaism and Christianity are that (a) Christianity started as a religion of heretical Jews in the Second Century’s equivalent of New Age cults, and (b) Christianity takes the Jewish Bible as its Old Testament. In particular, the Christian concept of a messiah (one-third of a three-in-one deity) is totally foreign to the Jewish concept of a messiah (a Jewish king, perforce only human, bearing an ancient title that was held by historical Jewish kings—and even granted by the Jews to one Gentile, Cyrus the Great), and is not therefrom derived.
(Side note: The word “christ” (χριστός) is a calque of Hebrew “messiah” (משיח). It is a title, not a name, wherefore educated Christians typically refer to “Jesus, the Christ”, not “Jesus Christ”.)
The foregoing fact-check is dashed out almost wholly off the top of my head, and with the objective detachment of a quite irreligious observer of human affairs. I have no faith to sell you, except for
the One True Revelation of the god of Bitcoin.
