Re: J. T. Who was GOD talking to?

Re: J. T. Who was GOD talking to?
Posted by: Dale Baranowski
Date: Sun Aug 26, 2007 4:01 pm ((PDT))

Dear Gang,

I don't often get the time to catch up on the postings until well
after they've been posted on the Hornet's Nest List, and it's
difficult finding time to respond, but this one caught my eye and
may be able squeeze the time to provide insight in to the discussion
of the verse: " .... And GOD ("Eloheem") said 'let US make man in
OUR image and after OUR likeness...' "

There's no need to go back to ancient Sumerian texts for an
understanding of this passage nor does one need to use an
Christological interpretation.

What is needed is to simply realize that the Hebrew Bible (the "Old
Testament", as Christians call it) was written in Hebrew and that
there are always problems when translating one language into
another. There are peculiarities in every language that are either
impossible to translate or come off in looking strange when even the
best, most honest and most sincere scholars take up the task.
Translating is made much more complicated or even impossible when
words and ideas of significance originate from a different culture
and especially when separated by 2-3,000 years. The Italians have a
catchy expression "Traduttori-Traditori." which means "Translators
are traitors" for even they were aware that no matter how well of a
translation one can produce it's always a far cry from the words and
ideas in the original language.

This issue regarding Gen. 1:26 where it says "... And GOD said 'let
US make man in OUR image and after OUR likeness..." is accurate
from a literal standpoint but comes off looking strange in English
as many read the translation and thought it portrays God as a
plurality. This issue partly centers on the apparent plural suffix
that is attached to the Hebrew word for "God." That Hebrew seems
to have a masculine-plural form which is a suffix of "-eem". For
example: the word for dog is "kelev" while the word for dogs
is "klaveem" and the Hebrew word for bottle is "bakbook" so the
plural for that is "bakbookeem". Then there is one of the words used
to denote God which is "Eloheem" and in this verse it would appear
that the suffix -"eem" is in the plural form. Now those with only
know a smattering of Hebrew (or those who have a certain agenda to
promote) see the -eem-ending on Eloheem and assume that it is the
word for God and so the -eem suffix also indicates a plurality, so
from this they reason that God is a plurality of some sort. This is
not the case. For though the -eem ending is often used to denote a
plural, the word "eloheem" is an exception to this rule as it is not
a word for God specifically, but rather it's used to denote some
person or some being with great power. For the most part, in the
Hebrew Bible the word "eloheem" is used to denote God Himself but it
is not used exclusively as a noun indicating God, but rather it's a
word that denotes 'a being of great power' even though those with
great power are occasionally human beings. Exodus 7:1 illustrates
this concept as this was an occasion where God was speaking to Moses
and said to him: "See, I have made you as if a god unto Pharaoh"
(RSV). That's the way the translators render it, (except that
the "as if" part was added by the translator) and rightly so, but
realize that the literal reading of that verse is "See, I have made
you an ELOHEEM unto Pharaoh." God said that he made Moses
an "eloheem" -- but wait, if that word really means "God" and the - eem suffix really denotes a plurality then it should have meant that
Moses was to become not only a god but, by the logic that this "eem"
suffix indicates plurality, so with this logic it should be rendered
as gods (plural!) in Pharaoh's eyes! But from even a cursory
reading of the Hebrew Bible never says that Pharaoh thought of Moses
as God nor did he think Moses as having a developed an exact
clone. The truth is that the Hebrew uses "eloheem" for human
beings of great power and that included God as well as humans, and
in some translations of the Hebrew Scriptures the translators
sometimes render "eloheem" into "judges" .

To make this issue more complicated, Hebrew grammar has a rule where
the verbs and their objects must agree in matters of singularity or
plurality. So where the object of a verb is singular, so must the
verb be singular and where the verb is plural so must it's object be
plural. For example, in Hebrew one would correctly say "She go to
the store" and "we goes to the store." In English the same thing
applies but only in reverse. We say "She (singular object) goes
(plural verb?) to the store." And: "We (plural object) go
(singular verb?) to the store." The same principle applies but
it's reversed in English. (My wife is an English teacher and
Israelis being to learn English have a hard time getting used to
this reverse verb-object agreement. The keep falling back to the
more logical structure found in Hebrew and tend to say "They goes to
the store" and "she go to the store.' Because it's much more logical
as well as habitual to carry on a verb-object agreement with
them.) So when this verse is translated "...let US make man in OUR
image and after OUR likeness" there's simply a grammatical feature
expressing itself that has been awkwardly translated. If one reads
is fluent in Hebrew and understands the conventions of the language
and the grammatical forms God does not come off as a plurality in
this verse, it's only because this verse doesn't come off well in
translation under the best of circumstances.

Ok, so the reader will no doubt be curious as to how this verse can
be understood in ways that do not suggest that God is a plurality.
Well, Judaism has a number of ways to understand this verse, some
more esoteric than others, but one basic way to understand this
verse is to not take it literally but rather see it as a literary
devise. To understand it this way, notice what God created up to
that point in the narrative. The Hebrew Bible says that the earth
and the universe was put into place by that stage, but what is not
explicitly mentioned is that angels were also created, but they were
created before our physical universe was created. So it this verse
is figuratively understood as God talking to both the angels as well
as physical universe and saying that man should be created in both
their image(s). Fact is that's what happened. Man was created in
the image of the angels, in the sense that angels are wholly
spiritual beings, while the physical universe is wholly based upon
matter. So mankind is a combination of these two features of the
created universe, part spiritual and part physical. The next few
verses it says God then created man is His own image, well that
means that He gave us features similar to Himself which neither the
angels nor the physical universe possess. He gave us an intellect,
as well as a moral sense as well as free will. So this verse is
seen couched in a literary devise that tells that mankind is
composed of spirituality, physicality, intellect and free will. It
does not have to be taken literally, it does not have to be
understood with Christological overtones, in fact taking this verse
literally leads to more problems than it's worth.

If one wants to promote the notion that God is a plurality from
verse 24 the (faulty) English rendering of God-as-a-plurality lends
support to it quite nicely, however this notion is contradicted a
bit farther down in verse 27 where the simple reading states quite
clearly: "And God (Eloheem) created (singular verb) him: male and
female He created (again, this is a singular verb) him." So if God
in this passage would be a plurality or somehow a multiple this
verse would have had plural verbs for "create" but even in the
English they're rendered in the singular. There are other verses in
the Hebrew Bible that make a nonsense of this idea that God is a
plurality. In Isaiah 44:6 God says "And besides Me there is no
Eloheem ("plural"?) " yet in 44:8 God says "Is there a God (Eloha
= "singular") besides Me?" Ok, so if Eloheem is plural, as many
missionaries claim and Eloha is singular then what is God? Is He a
plurality one verse and a singularity the next? C'mon, such a
doctrine of the plurality of God is contradicted within 2 verses.
Not to mention that there are verses that explicitly contradict idea
of God other than one and a pure singularity as in Is 44:6: "I am
the first and I am the last and besides Me there is no God."

One other thought: It strikes me as odd that Christians are
promoting this notion of God being in the multiple in order to
support their doctrine of a trinity for it seems that to do so will
only backfire in their faces sooner or later. After all, they are
trying to push the idea of a trinity -- as they see it, there is one
God as a singularity somehow subdivided into 3 separate parts.
Well, for them to use Gen 1:26 in this way is kinda dumb, for we all
know that a plurality is too general of an idea to describe their
notion of a trinity. Ya know, in early grade school we were all
taught a plural simply means 2 or more. So by claiming that this
verse shows God as a plurality they are putting forth only a weak
support for a trinity and, at the same time, unwittingly giving a
lot of fuel to polytheist beliefs which say that there are multiple
gods or multiple parts of the godhead! The ancient Persians had
the godhead as a duality with a good god and a bad god and with that
they explained the existence of good and evil. Then there are the
religious that support pantheons such that existed in the
Greco-Roman world as well as in present-day Hinduism. So when Christians
claim Gen 1:26 supports the idea of God as a plurality then it gives
lots more credence to polytheist beliefs than it does to their own
trinity. Is this what Christians really want to do? Is this
smart??

As far as my credentials on the Hebrew language go the above is NOT
just a theoretical understanding of Hebrew. For Hebrew is a daily
part of my life, as I moved here to Israel in 1980 been living here
continuously for the past 27 years (in the Judean Mountains between
Bethlehem and Hebron) and in that time I've become fluent in
Hebrew. It's an extremely logical language, a beautifully DESIGNED
language structured so logically that it's easy to get one's point
across with few words. Writing is without vowels and very concise
besides so English books translated into Hebrew are generally 30-40%
shorter. And when it comes to reading the Bible in Hebrew the
meanings and intentions of the Biblical text can have quite
different from the meanings and nuances than come off in English.
Now and then there are separate nuances within a Bible verse that
are simply impossible to covey in English. Frankly, reading the
Bible in Hebrew is a different world compared to the way the
translators render it into English, and many translators for the
churches do it with a mind to promote their own doctrines and
agendas.

So best regards to all!

Dale Baranowski

Astrology: Fate In The Stars Or In Our DNA?

"Dale: I just heard this: 'One's future is not in the stars but in our DNA.' What is your reaction?"


People have serious misunderstandings about astrology as they think it has to do with event prediction or discerning fate.

Several hundred years back astrology was only about event prediction issues. Astrologers were reputed to be very accurate in predicting events back then and it doesn’t surprise me as society was a lot simpler then. Four hundred years ago, if the astrological forecast was for a major life upheaval in a person then there were not very many ways that this could be expressed. So it was easy to predict the events that were expected to occur. OTOH, our society is now far more complex with so many more options that the upheaval can be expressed in a lot different events. So today we can’t even do what astrologers could do back in the 1600s because society is different. However, the events as they unfold in a person’s life may differ but the psychological impact on the person during the upheaval is far more predictable so for that reason the astrologer should confine his/her predictions to that of the process of change and transformation rather than events.

In any case, astrology was able to predict events at one time but it has never been able to tell of our fate. Event prediction is something that may be done when the astrologer knows a lot about the context of the client’s life and fits the symbols into the context of a person’s life, but as far as discerning fate, NO WAY! Events come and go in a person’s life, while fate is the ultimate destiny and purpose of a person’s life as expressed in the events that we experience. God determines our fate and the planets are great indicators of personality traits in personality dynamics within oneself and between couples, and it can warn of POTENTIAL upheavals in life, but there is not now and never has been a way that astrologers can see the fate of a person.

As far as our future lying in our DNA, that’s about as intelligent as saying that the future of a building lies in its blueprints.