Is YHWH Alive?

[DepricatedZero]

Most creation myths involve characters who are obviously alive, such as Prometheus or Izanagi, that created humanity. Their birth is described in some fashion, whether they were born from divine principals or are the third generation of elder gods, they were clearly living entities within their mythos.

YHWH is not. Without apocrypha, YHWH is without origin. In fact, from what I can tell, this is the only example of an originless existence, one in which something came from nothing. So is YHWH a living being within his own mythos, or just a force of wild creation and destruction?

And if YHWH is not alive, does not act on purpose, then what are the odds that it would have randomly created humans?

 

[mirandansa]

Most creation myths involve characters who are obviously alive, such as Prometheus or Izanagi, that created humanity. Their birth is described in some fashion, whether they were born from divine principals or are the third generation of elder gods, they were clearly living entities within their mythos.

YHWH is not. Without apocrypha, YHWH is without origin. In fact, from what I can tell, this is the only example of an originless existence, one in which something came from nothing. So is YHWH a living being within his own mythos, or just a force of wild creation and destruction?

To the extent that YHWH fathered a son between a woman, he had some interest in his own reproduction, which is an important trait of a living being.

On another note, a living being itself can represent "creation & destruction", as in metabolism: catabolism breaks down things to harvest energy; anabolism uses energy to construct things. So we could imagine YHWH as a living being representing the cosmic creative/anabolic and destructive/catabolic forces that determine the course of the physical universe that would be his cosmic body. But that's not taking into account his cogitating mind (his plan, his moral standard, etc.) alleged by most Christians, let alone his craving for being worshipped.

And if YHWH is not alive, does not act on purpose, then what are the odds that it would have randomly created humans?

Unthinkable.

 

[lrkun]

I did some research on this in the past. There are things which I recall from the other side. Maybe you'll find it interesting.

YHVH - the symbols stand for the four elements. Fire, water, earth, and air. The elements of creation. -Kabalah.

If that is the simple version of YHVh. Then, maybe this god is the table of elements.

On the side of science, we've yet to define YHVH. However, if I am allowed to assume the above definition, then I can conclude that YHVH is not alive, because the elements is not alive.

An interesting thing to experiment with this is that maybe we can create life via this experiment. And if it does not produce such, then YHVH is also a lie. Atleast, if we do an experiment it'd be more conclusive rather than thinking about it.


Reminds me of AVATAR the last bender animated series. Hehehe.

 

[Anachronous Rex]

I'm not sure if Kabalah can be trusted on such matters of interpretation, it's a relatively new sect.

 

[lrkun]

I'm not sure if Kabalah can be trusted on such matters of interpretation, it's a relatively new sect.

I see. Do you have suggestions with respect to putting a definition for YHWH /YHVH?

 

[Anachronous Rex]

I'm not sure if Kabalah can be trusted on such matters of interpretation, it's a relatively new sect.

I see. Do you have suggestions with respect to putting a definition for YHWH /YHVH?

He seems to me quite clearly a tribal/city god in his original intent. Many of the surrounding settlements would have a specific god as 'their' god (not dissimilar to Athena in Athens), YHWH seems to have been one of these. Indeed, I remember reading somewhere that he was originally envisioned as a giant bull.

Obviously YHWH expanded beyond that role, perhaps on account of the commandment that his followers should have no other god before him.

 

[lrkun]

He seems to me quite clearly a tribal/city god in his original intent. Many of the surrounding settlements would have a specific god as 'their' god (not dissimilar to Athena in Athens), YHWH seems to have been one of these. Indeed, I remember reading somewhere that he was originally envisioned as a giant bull.

Obviously YHWH expanded beyond that role, perhaps on account of the commandment that his followers should have no other god before him.

Let me use your statement as a premise. If that is the case, then prayers to YHVH will work only if one is in Israel, or atleast within the areas of the myth. Therefore, the reason why Christians are having problems is that they are praying in the wrong place.

Statements like, your god has no power over me in this area now makes sense. Hehe.

Consequently, assuming gods or spirits exists, the japanese has a better way at seeing it, I mean, they pray and give thanks to the god of the place. (shintoism)

Of course, being an atheist, I have yet to see an observable evidence for the supernatural. It makes me ponder if an idea is in itself can be classified as alive.

 

[mirandansa]

I did some research on this in the past. There are things which I recall from the other side. Maybe you'll find it interesting.

YHVH - the symbols stand for the four elements. Fire, water, earth, and air. The elements of creation. -Kabalah.

Here's my take:

×™ Y (Yudh, 10)
-- Ten Divine utterances through which the world was created; ten things created on the first day; ten things created at dusk at the end of the first Friday; ten generations from Adam to Noah and from Noah to Abraham; ten Commandments, etc. :arrow: The Infinite Point
-- The smallest letter --> easy to overlook (idiom: "tip of the Yud"). :arrow: God is hard to find

×” H (He, 5)
-- 1. interrogative prefix e.g. Yadata "You knew" --> Hayadata? "Did you know?"
-- 2. orientative suffix e.g. Yerushalayim "Jerusalem" --> Yerushalaymah "towards Jerusalem"
-- 3. determiner/preposition e.g. yeled "a boy" --> hayeled "the boy"
:arrow: Questioning God (1), orienting to God (2), identifying God (3)

ו W/V (Vav, 6)
-- Vav Hachibur ("bringing together") connecting words of a sentence. :arrow: joining parts into a universe
-- Vav Hahipuch ("inversion") indicating consequence of actions and reverses the tense of the verb following it: yomar "he will say" --> vayomar "he said"; ahavtah "you loved" --> ve'ahavtah "you will love" :arrow: transcending time

×” H (He, 5)
-- H also stands for HaShem, השם, "The Name", a way of expressing YHWH without actually uttering it :arrow: find God, but don't call it by name

 

[mirandansa]

Consequently, assuming gods or spirits exists, the japanese has a better way at seeing it, I mean, they pray and give thanks to the god of the place. (shintoism)

I opine that's because they are more interested in the atmosphere specific to each place and event rather than in some unitary divisive metaphysics. They observe the Buddhist Bon Festival in July, the Christian Christmas in December, the Shinto Hatsumode in January, etc. No adherence to one single belief system (except for serious believers, that is).

Shinto has something similar to a Christian Baptism, called Miyamairi. But the deities to which the gratitude for a baby's birth is expressed is not singular and are specific to the place of the birth, hence the deities' generic name 産土神 (Ubunokami), literraly "birth-land-god". And the Japanese mostly don't see these deities in the same way as Christians see YHWH. For them, Gods are more immanent to the experience of the world, and they don't feel the need for some rigorous technical theology like the ones Christians are fond of in order to prove something that is "outside the universe". They just enjoy the "flavours" of the ideas and don't take it too seriously. This is evidenced statistically. According to the World Values Survey, Japan is the highest in the world in "Rational-Secular Values":

It makes me ponder if an idea is in itself can be classified as alive.

I think it can. Ideas are memetic and can be "selfish".

Of course, being an atheist, I have yet to see an observable evidence for the supernatural.

I've seen atheists with supernatural beliefs and theists with naturalistic mindsets. I too have yet to see an observable evidence for the supernatural, and on that account i'm simply a naturalist.

 

[lrkun]

Do you think the link provides random noise or valid patterns with respect to the topic YHVH?

http://www.fivedoves.com/shema/YHVHShema1.htm

The above link talks about YHVH as encoded in the start of david. I think it's seeing patterns in meaningless noise, but what do you think?

 

[mirandansa]

Do you think the link provides random noise or valid patterns with respect to the topic YHVH?

http://www.fivedoves.com/shema/YHVHShema1.htm

The above link talks about YHVH as encoded in the start of david. I think it's seeing patterns in meaningless noise, but what do you think?

I'm bad at math. I don't understand much of that page.

However, i have some idea concerning the relation between the term "YHVH" and the Star of David. And a bit of it is pertinent to some number mentioned on that page.

To begin with, the Star of David represents a hexagon:

Hexagons can be found in nature:

Molecules

Snowflakes at a smaller scale

Snowflakes at a larger scale

Bee nest.

Turtle carapace

Naturally formed basalt columns

Even on a planetary scale:

Here's the hexagon found on Saturn's north pole:

This pattern is ubiquitous in fluid dynamics and can be recreated in lab:

A hexagon is an extremely productive polygon. It's in a cube

, in a octahedron

, in a dodecahedron

, and so on. You get a hexagon in any geometrical shape, and you get everything from a hexagon:





The Seed of Life is one of the hexagonal compositions:

In the 13th century, a French Cabalist group succeeded in dividing the entire Hebrew alphabet into an order using the Seed of Life:

The Hebrew W/V in "YHVH" represents 6, the number of hexagon ("V = 6 = hexagon = life"?). V also has two aforementioned grammatical binding functions ("Bring life together"?).

Other biblical implications:

The complete Flower also contains the three dimensional metatron cube ("Metatron" being the name of an angel in Judaism), holding all the Platonic solids:

It also gives this:

, the Phoenician alphabet,

, which is the ancestor of the four major phoneme-based alphabets -- the Greek, the Hebrew, the Arabic, and the Latin

The Seed of Life is what we get by splitting the first hexagon by 1/2, the first two Fibonacci numbers (1 1 2 3 5 8...). Taken three-dimensionally, this makes 6 spheres. When we further shrink these spheres by 2/3 -- the next two Fibonacci numbers --, we get 19 spheres:

This is the so-called Flower of Life, which is in an octahedral formation

, which is half of the shape of the pyramids

Egypt

Mexico

China

Japan

including the ones in Cydonia, Mars, (placed on a Fibonacci spiral)

.

, and the Flower of Life is drawn on the wall of Temple of Osiris at Abydo, Egypt

(It's dated to be as varying as between 2nd century CE and 10,500 BCE. Some claim these are drawn in red ochre; others claim these are burned into the rock.)

, as well as in Turkey

, in India

, in China

a Fu Dog or "the Guardian of Knowledge" with its paw on a globe representing the Flower of Life

, in Japan

a Buddha's hand supporting the Flower of Life

, in Scotland

, in Bulgaria

, and so on.

It has been reported that Jupiter's massive winds are generated from deep within the interior as indicated in the following computer model:

, the pattern of which corresponds to this:

Jupiter's Great Red Spot, a persistent anticyclonic storm, is located 22,° south of the equator.

Neptune showed the same pattern with the Dark Spot (which is now disappeared):

Mars' Olympus Mons, the tallest known volcano in the Solar System, is located 18,° north:

I also hear that the sun spots are most active around those latitudes:

Also located around those latitudes are the aforementioned pyramids on the Earth (e.g. the Teotihuacan Valley of Mexico 19,°) as well as several of the most active volcanos (e.g. Kilauea of Hawaii 19,° (whose volume of erupted material is large enough to pave a road across the world three times), Yasur of Vanuatu 19,°, Piton de la Fournaise of Indian Ocean 21,°) and tropical cyclones:

The Flower of Life can also be created with 27 spheres in a cube configuration. And 27 is the sum of the total of the 8 categories discussed on the page you mentioned.

The next Fibonacci sequence, 3/5, connects the octahedral and cube geometries (i.e. Metatron's cube):

This way, we can divide the original one hexagon indefinitely without ever exceeding the original boundary. In this sense, a hexagon represents infinity. More detail here.

The Tree of Life -- the symbol of the esoteric Judaism or the Kabbalah -- is also what we get from the Seed of Life, with ten sephirots:

So, the number 10 -- i.e. the "Y" in "YHVH" -- represents the 10th sephirot Malkhut, the 10th emanation (attribute) through which God reveals itself. And i've shown how various phenomena and objects revolve around this basic hexagonal geometry represented by "V" or 6.

Interestingly, in the figure, the 11th is omitted amid the other sephirots.

In String Theory, the number of dimensions are considered to be 10 or 11. 11 also happens to be the number of steps to draw a hexagon:

What about "H", 5? Maybe this:








This is the kind of argument for God i hope to see in future from Christians and Muslims. Currently, they are generally still stuck with the literal idea of "a guy in the sky".

 

[dav37777777]

no i dont think he is alive

 

[masterjedijared]

The thing is that Yahweh derives from older ancient Semitic religions. Whatever happened to make the particular group of Semites monotheistic (it probably happened over time rather than a specific cultural movement) the character's polytheistic origins are obfuscated. It would follow that by the time the two Creation Myths in the OT (much later; when in Babylon) came about the culture completely forgot the mythical genealogy and it's entirely possible that the writers of the Creation Myths would want to ignore this anyway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaanite_religion

 

[DepricatedZero]

Mirandansa: HOLY FUCK. That stuff is cool. I actually have a Flower of Life pendant I wear as part of a costume for a larp...

Whatever happened to make the particular group of Semites monotheistic (it probably happened over time rather than a specific cultural movement) the character's polytheistic origins are obfuscated.

My theory is this, tell me what you think:

Yahweh is a War God. He raged against the rest of his pantheon and killed them all.

 

[masterjedijared]

I think what would more accurate in terms of the anthropology would be that some portion of those long-ago Semites didn't want to worship the Hero deity (Baal/Marduk) instead of the pantheon's chief deity anymore. These promoters of the chief deity won out over time and/or attrition until a time came that they could re-imagine their religion as monotheism.

Another similar possibility could be that the portion of this group who was all about Baal/Marduk was somehow wiped out more completely by enemies. There was alot of "my god is obviously better if I win at battle" mentality.

I'm not saying that Yahweh couldn't have killed off the other characters of his mythologies but there are no texts to support that as far as I know. It seems more plausible that the evolution of that semitic group's beliefs lay in its own religious movements or encounters with enemies/rival cultures.

What I think is absolutely ironic is that the Jews spent so much time to be a monotheistic group and rid themselves of their Hero deity, Baal/Marduk, that Christianity has gone and put a Hero deity back into the mix with some inane nonsense about Jesus and Yahweh being the same deity. Some sects of Xianity have also re-appropriated the queen bit by plopping Mary as said queen. Its like Xianity went out of it's way to revive the polytheistic nature of semitic religion, got 'caught with it's hand in the cookie jar' and has been trying to rationalize the single-yet-many god crap ever since.

 

[TheFlyingBastard]

hexagons everywhere!

Damnit, I just knew the Jews were responsible for climate change!

 

[masterjedijared]

Apparently they've been messing up other worlds and even the sun too!
:shock:

 

[mirandansa]

hexagons everywhere!

Damnit, I just knew the Jews were responsible for climate change!

That's not what mirandansa wrote and implied.

 

[lrkun]

A good question to ponder is this. If it all started with YHVH, how did it became the Jesus myth?

 

[masterjedijared]

From what I can remember of my courses, the Jesus myths is more akin to Greek religion and Hellenistic mystery cults. The early Gnostic schools of thought of the Jesus movement seem to support this.

Basically, Jewish culture was a tad in turmoil for about a hundred years before and during the Roman Empire. There were dozens if not hundreds of 'messianic' claims and just about as many figures at the center of these claims. I think its more than probable that the Jesus one was simply the most appealing the the greatest common denominator. The myths incorporate elements from strictly Greek figures such as Asclepius (and another itinerant healer that I forget his name of atm) as well as very popular mystery cults. Unlike the more popular cults of the time the Jesus one doesn't seem to have needed money (initially) to participate.

I personally doubt the figure Jesus ever centered on an actual person. It seems that if there wasn't a 'real' Jesus then the cult could much more easily spread since there wouldn't be any facts to muddy up the cult's message. Secondly, I also have a suspicion that the whole enterprise was the entire fabrication of Paul (Saul). His are the earliest writings and he is the single most responsible person for spreading the cult's influence in the first century CE. I'm not sure of anyone in academia also holds this idea but it seems a little too plausible in my opinion.