What Was The Name Of The God Of Jesus?

[mwc]

The OT has YHWH's littered throughout but it doesn't appear at all in the NT. Jesus never once names his god or "father." He hints at it but that's about all (the god of so and so, etc.). Was the language incapable of rendering the name so people using the LXX were stuck with the generic "God" (theos?)? Was the name of their god effectively unknown to them?

 

Any info/pointers would be appreciated.

 

mwc

[Callyn]

Wasn't the name of god lost? The Jews didn't say it so the forgot what it was when the temple got destroyed for the first time since it was the only plce where it was written down in full. If Jesus was who he claimed to be, I'm sure he would have known it but he wouldn't have said it because it was a sin. Of course, Jesus wasn't who he claimed to be if he existed at all.

[Open_Minded]

The OT has YHWH's littered throughout but it doesn't appear at all in the NT. Jesus never once names his god or "father." He hints at it but that's about all (the god of so and so, etc.). Was the language incapable of rendering the name so people using the LXX were stuck with the generic "God" (theos?)? Was the name of their god effectively unknown to them?

 

Any info/pointers would be appreciated.

 

MWC - you may want to check out the following link: http://www.uufrankfurt.de/words020113.htm

 

Or check out the work of Neil Douglas-Klotz in general.

 

Following is an excerpt from the site I linked to:

 

And that set me to wondering. What word would Jesus of Nazareth, speaking Aramaic, have used to refer to God? What's the word in Aramaic for "god"?

 

Well, a book, The Hidden Gospel by Neil Douglas-Klotz, has come into my hands with the answer. The word is Alaha.

 

So the feared word "Allah" would have been closer to Jesus' word than the "God" word which the missionary insisted be used.

 

And in the same book I learn that Alaha means unity....

 

 

My own experiences with trying to learn another language have pointed out to me how bound to a culture a language is - how often I "can't say that" in the other language, but have to use an approximation. So, I'm not surprised to learn from Neil Douglas-Klotz that in Aramaic, and Hebrew too, there is only one preposition for the idea of "within" and for "among" - for matters of the interior, emotional life; and of the exterior, social community; it's the same word. In a language like that, how I would think about the "selves" within me is connected with how I think about friends, enemies, neighbors.

 

As it is, my languages and cultures are very influenced by Greek thinking that divides up human life into lots of little cubbyholes: mind, body, psyche, spirit and emotions. Semitic languages don't divide reality the same way. The words about the subconscious self are connected to those of the communal self - "they imply a continuum between what we call spirit and body, not a division," according to Douglas-Klotz.

 

In The Hidden Gospel (written by Douglas-Klotz) are many examples of what the folks listening to Jesus' words in Aramaic would have heard - what the associations the words would have had for them.

 

As an example, the first line of the prayer often called the Lords Prayer or Our Father is given in the King James version as "Our Father which art in heaven."

 

Depending upon the listener's experience, that could be heard as "Our all-powerful, authoritarian, vengeful, judgmental, aloof old man with a white beard, who is far off in a place with gold-paved streets lined with mansions and peopled by harp-playing angles."

 

According to Douglas-Klotz, the hearers of Jesus' words, "Abwoon d'bashmaya," because of the associations of those words, and because of the Semitic view of the universe and each person's place in it, could have heard them as

 

"O Thou, the One from whom Breath enters being in all radiant forms."

 

Or "Oh Parent of the universe, from your deep interior comes the next wave of shining light."

 

Or "O fruitful, nurturing Life-giver! Your sound rings everywhere throughout the cosmos."

 

Or since father and mother are not separate words in Aramaic: "Father-Mother who births Unity, You vibrate life into form in each new instant."

[NotBlinded]

O_M,

 

ILWYT

 

[Grandpa Harley]

The OT has YHWH's littered throughout but it doesn't appear at all in the NT. Jesus never once names his god or "father." He hints at it but that's about all (the god of so and so, etc.). Was the language incapable of rendering the name so people using the LXX were stuck with the generic "God" (theos?)? Was the name of their god effectively unknown to them?

 

Any info/pointers would be appreciated.

 

MWC - you may want to check out the following link: http://www.uufrankfurt.de/words020113.htm

 

Or check out the work of Neil Douglas-Klotz in general.

 

Following is an excerpt from the site I linked to:

 

And that set me to wondering. What word would Jesus of Nazareth, speaking Aramaic, have used to refer to God? What's the word in Aramaic for "god"?

 

Well, a book, The Hidden Gospel by Neil Douglas-Klotz, has come into my hands with the answer. The word is Alaha.

 

So the feared word "Allah" would have been closer to Jesus' word than the "God" word which the missionary insisted be used.

 

And in the same book I learn that Alaha means unity....

 

 

My own experiences with trying to learn another language have pointed out to me how bound to a culture a language is - how often I "can't say that" in the other language, but have to use an approximation. So, I'm not surprised to learn from Neil Douglas-Klotz that in Aramaic, and Hebrew too, there is only one preposition for the idea of "within" and for "among" - for matters of the interior, emotional life; and of the exterior, social community; it's the same word. In a language like that, how I would think about the "selves" within me is connected with how I think about friends, enemies, neighbors.

 

As it is, my languages and cultures are very influenced by Greek thinking that divides up human life into lots of little cubbyholes: mind, body, psyche, spirit and emotions. Semitic languages don't divide reality the same way. The words about the subconscious self are connected to those of the communal self - "they imply a continuum between what we call spirit and body, not a division," according to Douglas-Klotz.

 

In The Hidden Gospel (written by Douglas-Klotz) are many examples of what the folks listening to Jesus' words in Aramaic would have heard - what the associations the words would have had for them.

 

As an example, the first line of the prayer often called the Lords Prayer or Our Father is given in the King James version as "Our Father which art in heaven."

 

Depending upon the listener's experience, that could be heard as "Our all-powerful, authoritarian, vengeful, judgmental, aloof old man with a white beard, who is far off in a place with gold-paved streets lined with mansions and peopled by harp-playing angles."

 

According to Douglas-Klotz, the hearers of Jesus' words, "Abwoon d'bashmaya," because of the associations of those words, and because of the Semitic view of the universe and each person's place in it, could have heard them as

 

"O Thou, the One from whom Breath enters being in all radiant forms."

 

Or "Oh Parent of the universe, from your deep interior comes the next wave of shining light."

 

Or "O fruitful, nurturing Life-giver! Your sound rings everywhere throughout the cosmos."

 

Or since father and mother are not separate words in Aramaic: "Father-Mother who births Unity, You vibrate life into form in each new instant."

One of the best damn posts since my Freak Show and I rolled into town...

[Open_Minded]

O_M,

 

ILWYT

 

.....

 

One of the best damn posts since my Freak Show and I rolled into town...

 

 

AWWWW .... shucks.... now ya' all.... are mak'n me blush......

 

Thanks you guys.

[mwc]

Thanks for the pointer O_M, I'll definitely give it a look.

 

It would appear that to read anything that wasn't in Hebrew the odds of knowing the name of this god was right around zero. So, with such a vague message, in essence, it was the person on the receiving end of the message who really decided whom this god was.

 

mwc

[Open_Minded]

Thanks for the pointer O_M, I'll definitely give it a look.

 

It would appear that to read anything that wasn't in Hebrew the odds of knowing the name of this god was right around zero. So, with such a vague message, in essence, it was the person on the receiving end of the message who really decided whom this god was.

 

mwc

 

I'm sure you'll enjoy Neil Douglas-Klotz and his work.

 

About "knowing the name of this god" - ---- with Neil Douglas-Klotz you'll find that he uses the Aramaic language to explore early Christian thinking. What culture did Jesus and his followers grow up in? How did they view the world? How did the language of Aramaic impact their understanding of God and the world?

 

It isn't so much about "reading anything that wasn't in Hebrew". The earliest followers of Christ lived in an oral culture. The stories of Christ were handed down orally before they were put into writing. The name of God was part of an oral culture before being part of a written culture.

 

The one thing that I learned is that (unlike English and Greek) Aramaic does not have the same tendancy to catagorize things in clear and concrete ways. One word in Aramaic can have 4-5 or more meanings. And when a listener heard that word - all meanings were taken into account. The word Jesus would have used for God, "Alaha", also meant unity.

 

The word Jesus would have used for "sin" also had strong conotations of something being "unripe" - not quite ready for full fruition. So, to the Aramic culture "sin" did not mean what it means to us today. "Sin" was more akin to being "unfullfilled", "not quite ready for the picking", "unripe".

 

What amazes me is that many fundies LOVE to say they are "true followers" of Christ because they try to closely approximate the culture and rules and living of the earliest Jesus followers. They take all of Paul's writings literally on the way that women should live and the place they have in the community - because that is how the earliest Christians lived. But these same Christians would be horrified at the work of Neil Douglas-Klotz who studies how the earliest followers of Christ would have talked and thought.

[Grandpa Harley]

I can recommend his audio books too.

[Lycorth]

Makes you wonder where was the proofreader during all this? Apparently, editors weren't invented yet.

[Grandpa Harley]

In terms of the NT, professional scribes really weren't involved until after Nicea

[Lycorth]

In terms of the NT, professional scribes really weren't involved until after Nicea

 

Yeah, and the quality of the literature is evident. Today, I don't even think fanfiction.net would have accepted it