God…an empty word?
I agree that the word god in the English language has become or has been an empty word, but if one were to reflect back to the original word in the Hebraic scriptures one would find that the word God has meaning — In fact the word God was commanded not to be used in a mundane way with the effect of taking on an empty meaning and to make it empty in speech and render the word God useless. How did the word god enter into the bible anyway? How do we get the word god from the actual Hebrew word for god which is Elohim, there is no similarity? God in Greek is Theos, Latin is Deus connected with Zeus and dies meaning day (bright), can be traced back to the Sanskrit word Deva or dev which corresponds with the Latin deus which means bright. An interesting thing to note is that Plato in the Crytalus 397 says the word theos (which is now used in the bible) comes from the word thein meaning to run, from the running (thein) nature of the sun, moon and stars. Socrates says, “I suspect that the sun, moon, earth, stars, and heaven, which are still the Gods of many barbarians, were the only Gods known to the aboriginal Hellenes. Seeing that they were always moving and running, from their running nature they were called Gods or runners (θεοὺς, θέοντας); and when men became acquainted with the other Gods, they proceeded to apply the same name to them all. Do you think that likely?”
So it seems to imply that the word theos has to do with the worship of the heavenly bodies such as the sun, moon and stars. We are seeing this take on Christianity today with the movie Zeitgeist which indicates that all religion is actually the worship of the Sun – who gives life to all beings and is played out in different mythical forms in the stories of man from ancient times.
The word god or gott was used among the Teutonic tribes where the word Gott was surname for their god Odin, the name of their highest god and it is also used in Sanskrit as the word ghuta which means to invoke and is an epithet of Indra. So we have gone from elohim to theos from theos to deus from deus to gott and from gott to god.
So what about the word elohim? Doesn’t it have a meaning or is Hegel right there is no power in the name?
Actually, the word elohim is thought to derive from the idea of power or fear/reverence from the words alih or alah meaning to terrify or perplex –
Whatever and wherever the word comes from seems to make no difference to Hegel, he posits that only at the end of the proposition does the emptiness of the word become actual knowledge — And?
We speak in tongues around here and gain some insight through speech that expresses words, how else are we supposed to get an idea of what something means without being told or to experience it for oneself that is the power of God – this is not to negate the idea that one cannot come to the knowledge of the true God without words in my opinion.
