Johnny California

Is "primitive" necessarily a loaded word? I'll have to reach for my dictionary, I thought it simply meant, "a long-ass time ago when we were less sophisticated." Here's a good definition:

 

http://www.answers.com/topic/primitive

You don't consider "less sophisticated" to be loaded? Certainly, considering many of our scientific approaches, philosphies and politicial systems emerged with the Greeks & Romans AND considering that India is still polytheistic, it would be hard to say they were less sophisticate.

Elohim is used as both a singular and plural - usually singular when referring to God and plural when God and others refer to other gods and powerful beings in the Old Testament. The word root goes back to Eloah (a god - member of the family of El), BUT the Hebrews themselves, at least from Moses on, were generally monotheistic - and it seems likely that even if they believed in the existence of other gods at one time, they did not worship any others.

Elohim says us? Sorry?

I don't think that the Hebrew translation uses the word "Elohim" for "us". It uses the word "Elohim" for "God" and the hebrew word for "us" when God says "let US make man." It doesn't say "let Elohim make man." The Canaanites were polytheists in the same area as the early Hebrews, but I don't think they were all hebrew.

Elohim:

 

Could it be that the word is so ambiguous, means so many things, and has so many uses, that the Genesis writer(s) simply said, "Well, I know this sometimes means this, but right now I think it means singular monotheistic God." In which case, why is it translated as "us" in so many versions of the Bible? Is it a mistake? According to that wiki entry, it seems translating the word relies on the context of the word.

 

I e-mailed a friend of mine about this, by the way, who is a rabbinical scholar.

I don't think the "Us" in "Let us make man" is "Elohim." Elohim says "let us" (not "let 'Elohim').

And Elohim can be considered and is often considered to be one of the names of God or a word representing God, BUT it likely came from the polytheistic Canaanite plural for Eloah (a god) in which Elohim means gods. In Canaan, El was the head of a family of gods.

I'm not really that familiar with Pagels famous work on Gnosticism. However, her Gospel of Thomas presents a very positive view of early Christians and Christianity in general. I don't think there is any more validity to gnosticism than Christianity - it's definitely attractive to PK Dick fans - but I think that the human character of Jesus was definitely downplayed for a more divine prophetic figure in the selection of the texts of the New Testament.

John, I'm still having a bit of trouble swallowing your take on the "us" in Genesis. Maybe it's because I don't spak Hebrew, and am misjudging the weight of words in Hebrew scripture. Follow me. I'm the priest in charge of setting down the Genesis story. I may suspect that our Hebrew God was at one point thought to be several gods, perhaps when my people were more primitive. At any rate, I know now that our people believe there is one God, so I begin putting down his story. But I put "us" in there. Why did I do that? Won't Yehuda the Chronicler come to me and say, "This is a typo, that's supposed to say 'I.'" What am I going to then tell Yehuda? "Well, I sneaked that in there to reflect the polytheistic origins of YHWH. I'm sure no one will mind."

 

Your thoughts?

Not at all. It wasn't like these stories were not being told before they were written down. Obviously, these stories were being told before there even was such a thing as writing. Therefore, the wording is pretty much set before you copy them down. If everyone and their grandmother knows what God said in the Garden of Eden - they were still a part of the religious tradition and practice long before the Torah was set in text - then the priests can't simply change the dialogue and expect everyone to go along with it.

The actual "word of God" would be much harder to "improve" when collecting the stories in one volume, AND even among the devout priests, there would probably be a great deal of resistance. This was at a time when everyone accepted the existance of One God and didn't really see any problems in the wording. Also, obviously, they probably had a definite understanding of why God was saying "Us" and why Elohim, the plural form, was being used. They didn't write that down though.

And you can't really say that polytheism is more primitive - All the great civilizations of antiquity were polytheist. However, you do hit upon an important point - the nature of God in Judaic religions (including Christianity and Islam) never changes, but the human perception of the divine definitely transforms over time.

NIGHTWATCH? Lately, I've started to like DAYWATCH better. Both movies fit together so well that it is hard to see how they could ever do a DUSKWATCH.

Also, you could take a look at a lot of Anime: VAMPIRE HUNTER D, HELLSING, KARAS etc.

And I'd include the Russian NIGHTWATCH and DAYWATCH films in the same category.

Those are quite entertaining.

"Free Will" is a bit of an illusion based upon the fact we can't really see the unbalanced nature of our choices. Flannery O'Connor, a Catholic writer, once said that free will is not one will, it is many wills conflicting in one man.

If we look at every choice a person consciously makes, we'll probably find a reason, conscious and unconscious, for that choice. The choices may seem equal to the person making them, but in reality, there is probably some factor out of the individual's control that impells him toward a particular action. The choices are not truly balanced.

In the end, we did not create ourselves or the tendencies inherent in our physiology, and, for the most part, we simply encountered not by choice, the experiences that formed our personalities. For that reason, though we can live by the idea that we have free will, it is only a human truth, not an absolute one, and our choices will always be bound by factors out of our conscious control.

On the other hand, just because there is no real free will does not mean that the world or the universe is predestined. That's a false argument that is often put forth.

I haven't read Ian Banks. What are his best?

Are you including CRYPTONOMICON? Yes, by far, that was my favorite. The rest haven't quite caught on.

Currently, I'm reading Tim Powers' DECLARE which has a lot in common with the style of CRYPTONOMICON, I think. Not Powers' best book - the characters aren't nearly as intriguing as in THE STRESS OF HER REGARD or ON STRANGER TIDES - but the presentation of historical espionage detail as well as the conception of the Jinn/Fallen Angels is enough to keep me reading.

Personally, I think that if my concept of the afterlife were that it was a bad place, regardless of what I had done in life, I would kill my boss, sack the city, set myself up as kingpin, and go out in a flash.

Or you'd do whatever it took to put death off for as long as possible.

But, you know what, I am not that well read on mythology to argue. I thought Hades in particular was not necessarily a place of suffering but, in its earliest carnation, a gray place of dull listlessness and inactivity, kind of like being nearly asleep for all time. Hades doesn't test creation or actively challenge humanity; he only wants to keep what is rightfully his.

Just to be clear, Hades was the God, not the place, and the place was very similar to the underworld in Gilgamesh. When Odysseus goes to the underworld to meet his fellow soldiers from the Trojan war, they are definitely not happy - death is depicted as a very negative state of existence and these are heroes. Then you have those punished for all eternity like Sisyphus and Prometheus. The only thing that made death bearable was that you drank the waters of Styx to forget ever being alive.

In Greek mythology, the Titans (now in Tartarus) were those who challenged the Gods. Also, a big distinction is that there is no sense of God as the father. Zeus is the ruler, not the parent. Men were created by Prometheus the Titan who suffers a torment similar to eternal crucifiction for aiding us in opposition to the will of Zeus by bringing us fire. There is no need for a devil since the gods can fill both roles, good and evil to man.

Prometheus was pinned to a rock and has a bird of prey daily tearing his liver from his side. It regrows every night. Images of Jesus crucified with a wound in his side certainly resonate with the Prometheus myth. Ironically, Loki, another trickster god like Prometheus but an enemy of mankind's, also ended up pinned beneath the earth where a serpent spits poison in his eyes until the coming of the end of the world.

I'd say HELLBOY is most directly in this genre. CONSTANTINE really can't claim to be a movie like ANGEL HEART, THE OMEN or EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE. Or even THE SEVENTH SEAL or THE RAPTURE. It's not really a horror movie about the apocalypse or demonic possession. It's a fantasy action movie that uses (and abuses) those themes. Clive Barker's LORD OF ILLUSION as well as the b-movies WARLOCK and THE PROPHECY series are in the same vein, I'd say.

PROPHECY even has a rebellious Gabriel (Chris Walken) seeking to bring about an early apocalypse.

Heck, CONSTANTINE was really trying to be something of a stylish HARRY POTTER for adults (semi-adults).

 

It would be a somewhat frightening point of view if Christianity never took root and the religion of the Greeks and Romans remained until today. Imagine generally the same churchgoing practices but instead of the Garden of Eden story, in Sunday school, we are taught that God castrated his father and consigned him to Hell.

 

Perhaps I'm missing something but God letting his son get flayed and nailed to a piece of wood doesnt seem that much less frightening.

That's a good point, BUT he did bring him back from the dead to make up for it.

Ahhh, I was looking at Genesis 2.

 

Well, very interesting point, that! It would make sense that humankind conceptualized all the root gods in prehistory along the same lines, fulfilling the same functions, specific to that culture, and I see what you mean about the interplay. Very interesting. Are you quite commited to your statement that the death realm is frequently in opposition to the other realms? I'm thinking in the Greek mythology, wasn't Hades quite it's own thing, not really an active opponent (unless you wanted to get someone out of there once they'd gone down).

Even in Greek Mythology, the ruler of the underworld (Hades was a "nickname" for the God of the underworld and meant "Hidden One," Pluto was another nickname "Wealthy One" - his actual name was unknown and even his nicknames were left generally unspoken since he was considered antagonistic to humanity) was often portrayed as an outsider and in the case of Persephone, for example, was put in opposition to the Olympians and the will of Zeus. You could claim in the case of the Greeks that the titans led by Chronos who were consigned to the feiry underworld of Tartarus correspond most directly to the Devil and his fallen angels.

It would be a somewhat frightening point of view if Christianity never took root and the religion of the Greeks and Romans remained until today. Imagine generally the same churchgoing practices but instead of the Garden of Eden story, in Sunday school, we are taught that God castrated his father and consigned him to Hell. (Chronos/Saturn, by the way, was much more predisposed to humanity and gave birth to the Golden Age of immortal humans impervious to suffering).

Also, the Underworld in most mythologies (that did not have reincarnation) was usually a place of suffering (or at least very uncomfortable) except for certain realms (not really in the underworld) that were reserved for exemplary people.

At the same time, the conception of the Devil as a fallen angel is a particularly Christian point of view. The Kabbalistic Jews, as attested in the Book of Job, see Satan as an angel loyal to God whose function is to test creation and prove its worthiness. The Moslems don't see Shaitan (Iblis) as an angel at all - instead he is the primary member of the race of the Jinn (Genies) who were created long before Adam from the same smokeless fire used to create mankind. They are considered to have free will and the same moral capabilities as mankind - unlike Angels, they can refuse the will of God. When Allah commanded all creatures to bow before Man, Iblis refused and was thus cast from God's presence. As a result, the Jinn became dedicated to impeding mankind's passage along the "straight path" to Allah.

It should be noted that Mohammed was called the prophet for both the Arabs and the Jinn. From an Islamic perspective, Iblis, the devil, has the ability to repent and obtain Allah's forgiveness. Also, it's worth noting that in Islam the final determination of all soul's is entirely up to God whether they repent or not.

Genesis 1:26 -

26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

If a priest truly believed that he was writing down the words of God, then it would be daunting and probably seen as blasphemous to change the dialogue that has been passed down orally, and that everyone would know, despite the intent to present a monotheistic diety.

My point was that the function of the individual gods matches a cooperative relationship. When Anu wanted something done, Enlil did it for him. And that the polytheistic religions have a history of dividing domains into threes - sky, earth, water with the underworld (death) in opposition to them all as a sort of metaphorical counterweight.

This also corresponds to a mind, body, soul view of the spiritual "image" of man or the "life" of man in opposition to his death.

The "us" could refer to a celestial body that also includes angels and other entities, methinks.

That is one explanation, and in Job God has an Entourage of which Satan is a part - he's certainly welcome in God's presence - but the idea doesn't fully explain God's actual words in Genesis from the moment he creates Man "let US" create a man "in OUR image."

First, there is no indication in the Bible that angels can create life. Secondly, nowhere is it indicated that angels are made in the image of God. Finally, there is no indication that mankind was made in the image of angels either. In fact, angels seem capable of taking on many forms.

The person God talks to lives in God's realm, and also has His creative power and exists in the image or likeness of God (and Man for that matter). No angel, no man, no created being in heaven or on earth could possibly fit these criteria.

Essentially, I think the simplest explanation is that this is a holdover from the Polytheistic times. In Sumerian religion, there was the Supreme Being Anu (heaven), his primary agent Enlil (sky also Bel Marduk - Earth in other religions)) and a third being Enki (water -Ea) that governed the Earth. These each had feminine counterparts and there was another being in the underworld of the dead.

Another interesting idea is the plurality of God as in the Trinity. In fact, you can sort of see a kind of Trinity forming in ancient middle eastern polytheism dividing itself into stationary contemplation (Father-Anu), active works (Son-Enlil-Bel Marduk) and a liquid moderator (Holy Spirit - Enki - Ea) with the underlord (Satan-Ereshkigal) set opposite and often in opposition.

Obviously, these characters have a lot in common with Hindu dieties and Greek dieties. From a particular point of view, it could appear that all the first forms of all the Gods of Mankind emerged during the species' prehistoric period in the Middle East and on the coast of the Mediterranean just before the development of the first civilizations.

That sounds like the basis for a Tim Powers novel.

My point was that the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" is quite different from the "Tree of Knowledge." The latter usually implies that intelligence itself was a transgression against God. And often I see this as a bias against scientific learning.

The natures of both trees as metaphors for human development makes up a large part of both spiritual and philosophical scholarship. If, as some Kabbalists do, you look at God as a process, an activity - the driving force of the universe, rather than an individual entity, then perhaps it is the interplay between good and evil actions that composes the divine supreme being. In Job, God claims that all Good AND all Evil come from Him, and the idea that one being could contain both was novel at the time and central to the creation of a truly monotheistic religion.

Perhaps implicit in the dichotomy between the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (or Knowledge of "the Nature of God") is the fear that if mankind obtained immortality then they could eventually master the "God force -" that God would eventually serve man and man would be as gods. Of course, the real teachings central to understand this were probably kept hidden as a form of Freemasonry or Kabbalism and not easily discovered or understood by outsiders.

Note: that God doesn't say "The man has now become like ME, knowing good and evil." He says "like one of us." This may simply be the King James imperial diction, BUT even then, he would say "like us."

That is a much more attractive perspective, especially to people facing death (their own or of loved ones), than the idea that there is no purpose to this suffering or that it is being inflicted by a cruel and uncaring divine parent.

This is exactly why Karl Marx called religion the "opiate of the masses" - it relieves suffering, while doing nothing to change the causes of suffering.

 

To me, as an atheist, knowing that a lot of suffering in the world not only has no purpose, but is also avoidable, fuels my desire to change things. I'm not saying anyone here is guilty of this, but I feel that saying that the suffering of (for instance) starving people in the third world has some higher purpose, is monstrous. Especially given the fact that those people are starving because of very human policies.

At the same time, history (and the world today) is filled with religiously motivated people and religious organizations who've dedicated their lives to caring for the ill, preventing suffering, improving the standards of living around the world. Very few truly devout people think that they don't have to do anything about the wrongs of the world because that must be what God wants; many, if not most, see it as their religious duty to address these ills, and athiests are just as likely to ignore the world's troubles as are the nominally religious. It's just as attractive to become apathetic in the face of a meaningless universe where your actions can have no real consequences or make any sort of lasting impact.

In fact, getting back to mythology, to me that's the whole purpose of the Garden story: it instructs us that as long as we were to stay in a state of bliss without knowledge, we would live in a robot-like harmony with nature, but because we have intellect, there is a price to pay, and that price is responsibility.

Actually, it's "knowledge of good and evil" - Adam and Eve were intelligent. It is interesting to see the differences between Western Catholic and Eastern Orthodox viewpoints. There is no Pauline Doctrine of original sin in the Eastern Church; whereas Catholics see Jesus' sacrifice as washing away the sin to prepare for a return to Eden, the Orthodox seek a more perfect union with God and see Eden as an imperfect state between the creator and his children.

It's considerably better than many movies in the genre (see COVENANT... actually DON'T see it, for the love of God!) and with the uproar over Christianity in this country, any big mainstream movie is going to be more than a little watered down when it comes to the religious stuff. For me, the part I hate the most is that Constantine saves the world, but I can see why they went for it.

Essentially, it was a pastiche or mishmash of the Exorcist and Omen movies and Los Angeles "sin city" film noir. If they are already going in that direction, then really they should have been a lot more scathingly satirical rather than going for the unecessarily uplifting ending. God, as a sort of character in the movie, simply gets off too easily in the story.

I mean, the movie starts with an Exorcism and during John's explanation to Angela about God and the Devil's blance/wager I'm wondering how possession is in any way keeping with the pledge not to directly interfere with humans and why John and not Angels are confronting the demons who do it.

I also dont hold it on as high regards as i did at first two viewings, but there are some certain aspects of the film which have been still striking the chord for me perfectly, at least from a standalone, respectively the films own backgroundical viewpoint.

Though im trying not to watch it often again, i fear i might change my mind.

Its a bit empty/inane, thats because.

I really like the vision of Hell.

I really don't like how all the angel half-breeds just stood around while the demons blatantly broke the treaty. Or that Lucifer had no idea what was going on either. It seems to contradict the omnipresent "cold war" aspect of the story. If young Constantine could see demons then he could obviously appeal to the aid of angels as well.

Really, that part is what really makes the character absolutely NOT the John Constantine of the books. It's a much better view of the character that there are only demons in his life because he's chosen to traffic with them and now he's damned for it (the whole suicide/mortal sin angle is too forced).

That said, had they committed to a lot of the implications of the story's background (the absentee God and the rules of the afterlife) and left any hint of the comic book out of the story, it could have been an averagely good Exorcist rip-off.

Oddly, around the same time I first saw Constantine, I also saw FRAILTY and THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE. Both dealt with the same themes brought up in the blockbuster but with much more depth, imagination and at less than a tenth of the cost.

Now, how do they know that Elohim and YHWH are two different gods from a polytheistic time and not different names for the same god or different interpretive names for the same root figure?

You'd have to ask the scholars, archeologists and historians studying the ancient semitic religions about that. I'm under the impression that the subject of the names of dieties is very complicated. Apparently, Elohim is also considered plural in Hebrew ("Gods").

"And the Gods said, 'Let the be Light.'"

Most of this probably refers to the proto-Semitic pantheons.

I saw the movie again the other night. My girlfriend is Thai and she enjoys looking at Keanu Reeves. It's not a very good movie, of course, and last night I was seeing even worse things about it, but it was interesting seeing her completely non-Christian viewpoint as she watched it. Apparently, if you don't believe anything in the movie really matters, that it is entirely fantasy, then it's much more enjoyable.

On the other hand, my favorite stories in HELLBLAZER have been the ones where you sorta thought they could be true.

Very interesting! I'm sure untangling the chronology is a big mess and I wonder where scholars are at in terms of a general consensus. Either way, this does no harm to my faith, as I feel this falls easily into the realm of mythology, which, in my view, is divinely inspired.

 

Hey, wanna hear something else freaky? There was a theory recently that said DNA may be transmitted by light and that the origin of the universe may have happened through the first transmission of light, which gives "Let there be light" an interesting weight. *shrug* As I said, nothing scientific here.

It makes sense that sunlight would be the energetic driver for any chemical reactions on earth, though.

Here's a good article on the development of the creation myths in Judaism:

In the beginning... Doug Linder

In the beginning, about 3,000 years ago*, Jewish desert dwellers in what is present-day southern Israel told a story around campfires about the creation of the first man and first woman. The story they told, and passed on to generations of future desert dwellers, described a pre-creation scene much like the desert landscape in which they daily struggled for existence. From the dry desert dust the Creator forms a man and breaths life into him, and then places him in a beautiful oasis-like garden, abundant with fruits. The Creator takes a personal interest in this first man, and sets about trying to find him a suitable companion. When none of the creatures He first forms provides the man the comfort He had hoped, the Creator makes the first woman. Everything goes well for a spell, in the story told in the desert, but then the Creator is disobeyed and bad things start to happen.

 

Four or five centuries later, five-hundred-plus miles to the east in what is most likely present-day Iraq, a remarkable Jewish writer—whose name we do not know—set about the ambitious task of constructing a primary history of his people. Evil Merodach reigned in this dark time of Jewish exile, around 560 B.C., and the writer hoped that his history would help his people endure their many trials.

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The writer [apparently] believed that his story would not be complete without an explanation of how things--the sun, the earth, the seas—and life--plants, animals, and humans--came to be. For good measure, the writer decided to include two such explanations. He did so even though the two stories contradicted each other on several points.

 

The priest opened his history with a creation story that might be his own, or one of his priestly contemporaries. The Creator in this story is impersonal, almost force-like. The pre-creation setting is a watery chaos. Creation takes place over six days.

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Later, of course, commentators noted that it was not possible for both creation stories to be literal history, but writing a literal history was never the priest’s goal anyway. How could anyone not see the contradictions? Most obviously, the order of creation is different in the two stories. In the six-day creation story, the order of creation is plants, birds and fish, mammals and reptiles, and finally man to reign over all created before him, while in the Adam and Eve story, the creation order is reversed, with man coming first, then plants and animals. The two creation stories also have different narrative rhythms, different settings, and different names for God. In the six-day story, the creation of humanity occurs through a single act and the creator, seeming more cosmic than human-like, is present only through a series of commands. In the Adam and Eve story, on the other hand, man and woman are created through two separate acts and God is present in a hands-on, intimate way.

These parts are particularly interesting since they reach back into the Polytheistic beginnings of a Monotheistic religion:

To accomplish his mission, he acquired at least two pre-existing writings on Jewish history. The prior writings came from different places and different times. One set of writings used the Canaanite term, “Elohim,” as the name of the creator god. A second set of writings, more ancient than the first, used a Judean term, “YHWH” (translated “Jehovah” in English), to describe its deity

 

The priest wove the two texts together, trying to avoid repetition and altering them where necessary to avoid blatant inconsistencies. The priest confronted an additional problem: the two texts originally reflected views about two different gods in a time of polytheism, but by the time he compiled his history, belief in a single god had become prevalent among Jews. The priest, therefore, sought to remove passages supporting the polytheism of an earlier age—and, except for a few hints here and there, he succeeded.

Rushkoff's Vertigo series TESTAMENT, I believe, returns to a more Chaldean view of a Polytheistic Semitic diety in its exploration of the power of the Judaic myths and religion to effect social and individual transformation.