david@ssc-vax.UUCP (David Norris) (12/08/83)
Dave Sherman: > Judaism tends to view G-d as male, but in fact G-d is of course > neither male or female. 1) What? No supporting arguments? Surely you don't expect anybody to take this at face value. What makes you believe this? 2) Why do you (and others) use the name G-d, instead of God? -- expecting a serious response, -- Dave Norris -- uw-beaver!ssc-vax!david
smb@ulysses.UUCP (12/09/83)
Jewish tradition strongly discourages writing the name of the Deity. It is forbidden to destroy any paper on which the name is written (though different rules apply to disks and CRTs, I'm told -- Dave, wanna post the full explanation you mailed me?); consequently, it is traditional to write G-d instead. Similar circumlocutions apply to speech. As for why it is "obvious" that the Deity is neither male nor female -- surely you jest. If you assume an incorporeal Deity -- as most modern religions do -- then the concepts of X and Y chromosomes, eggs, sperm, etc., don't apply.
dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Sherman) (12/11/83)
From: david@ssc-vax.UUCP (David Norris) Dave Sherman: > Judaism tends to view G-d as male, but in fact G-d is of course > neither male or female. 1) What? No supporting arguments? Surely you don't expect anybody to take this at face value. What makes you believe this? 2) Why do you (and others) use the name G-d, instead of God? 1. Male-ness and female-ness are physical characteristics which pertain to humans and animals. By definition, G-d is totally outside the human-animal realm. Conventional physical definitions of gender can hardly be appropriate. 2. The word G-d is a translation of a Hebrew word which is considered holy and, when written, should not be destroyed. Even though this is just a translation, many people still feel that the English form should not be written in a contect where it is known it will be destroyed. Since some people on Usenet read news on hardcopy terminals and/or by sending it to a line printer, writing the word out in full will almost certainly cause it to be destroyed. Last summer I consulted an Orthodox rabbi on this point and posted an article to the net which summarized the rules regarding digital storage and transmission of holy words in the context of Usenet. If anyone's interested I can mail you the summary, or repost it to the net. Dave Sherman Toronto -- {allegra,cornell,decvax,ihnp4,linus,utzoo}!utcsrgv!dave
decot@cwruecmp.UUCP (Dave Decot) (12/12/83)
Certainly "G-d" is a name of the "Deity" in question, just as much as "God" is, just as much as "Yahweh" or the Hebrew calligraphy for it is. A name is a name, it has the same referential power if everyone understands what you mean, no matter how you spell it. Why any god in His right mind would resist being directly quoted or discussed is beyond me. Dave Decot decvax!cwruecmp!decot (Decot.Case@rand-relay)
smb@ulysses.UUCP (12/13/83)
Dave Decot has a good point about names. But he's looking at it from a more modern perspective. Many primitive cultures believe that "true names" bear great power; the ancient Hebrew culture was certainly one. The best examples can be found by studying Kabbalistic literature -- there are many stories about the tremendous power of Words and Names. Another example is in the Book of Revelations; the business about the number of the beast being 666 almost certainly refers to gematria -- the Kabbalistic practice of converting a name to a numerical equivalent. Thus, 666 is in some sense equivalent to whoever the "beast" is, most likely Nero.
rigney@uokvax.UUCP (12/14/83)
#R:ssc-vax:-66200:uokvax:8300021:000:384
uokvax!rigney Dec 12 18:44:00 1983
(I know I'm going to regret this but...)
Or perhaps the name is spelled G-d for the same reason
people on the net writing about a certain operating system often
spell it as Un*x, to avoid the trademark notice? :-)
Male or female needn't be only in terms of X and Y
chromosomes; in French, I believe everything has a gender.
Carl
..!ctvax!uokvax!rigneyavi@pegasus.UUCP (12/14/83)
The first block of Dave Sherman's message was truncated, so I am not sure
what he said about the writing of "G-ds" name. Historically, once a name is
used long enough as a substitute for THE NAME, then it becomes holy and
imbued with the same spirit as the first one. To not offend anyone, I will
put hyphens in all the names I will mention.
Originally, the four letter word used to describe G-d was Y-H-W-H which is
all consonants. You have to guess where the vowels would be, or which
consonants can be pronounced like vowels. Some people have mistakenly
decided to pronounce this as Y-a-h-w-e-h or J-e-h-o-v-a-h, but I don't
believe that anyone really knows how to pronounce it. When this word is read
by Orthodox jews from a Torah, it is pronounced as A-d-o-n-a-i, which means
"My L-rd" and has the same vowels that normally are supposed to accompany
the four-letter name (thats another story. Hebrew can have all types of
diacritical marks above, below, after and within the letters that specify the
vowel that accompanies the consonant as well as the inflection of that part
of the word and how it is trilled and ......)
Anyway, to get back to the story, the A-d-o-n-a-I version has become sacred,
and is not to be profaned. So, when you are not actually using the
substitute name in a prayer or the equivalent -- such as when you are just
telling someone else which blessing they have to make, the word is replaced
by "H-a-s-h-e-m", which is Hebrew for "THE NAME". Of course, by now, even
that has holy overtones.
I am not sure why Jews would consider the word "G-O-D" written in other
languages to be holy. However, there are other Hebrew words for G-d that are
deliberately pronounced wrong, such as ELOKIM instead of E-l-o-h-i-m. I
personally have no major problem with such names. I reccommend the story
"The nine billion names of G-d" by Arthur C. Clarke.
### ##### # # Avi
# # # #
# # ###
# # #
###### #
###### ## ##### ## Gross
# # # # #
# # # # ##
# # # # # #
#### # # # #
(read from right to left, of course)
Not afraid to sign my name,
--
-=> Avi E. Gross @ AT&T Information Systems Laboratories (201) 576-6241
suggested paths: [ihnp4, allegra, cbosg, utcsstat, hogpc, ...]!pegasus!avimmc@zeppo.UUCP (12/15/83)
#R:ssc-vax:-66200:zeppo:24000003:000:1160 zeppo!mmc Dec 15 10:27:00 1983 In the Hebrew language, all nouns have gender (either masculine or feminine). However, some nouns can have either gender--the Bible has several examples of this. Moreover, there are irregularities in which nouns with feminine forms are grammatically masculine, and vice versa. Typically, the names of God are treated as nouns of masculine gender. However, one should not confuse gender with sex. In my experience and to my knowledge, God is not referred to in Jewish religious writings as a <male person> (as opposed to an <entity whose names are grammatically masculine>), except in analogies and poetic imagery. Traditional Jewish teachings (e.g., Maimonides' writings) emphasize that such such figures of speech are not to be taken literally: a fundamental principle of traditional Judaism as I understand it is that God is not a "body" (corporeal entity, if you like), nor does God have even the "form of a body". This principle is expressed in precisely these terms in the daily liturgy. Expressions such as "the hand of God", "the voice of God", etc., are to be taken as human reactions to human experiences or conceptions of God. Mark Chodrow