felix dakat wrote:In Genesis 1 humankind is made in the image of Elohim.MagsJ wrote:If Yahweh was not a creator god, then what is he bestowed with having done, to be so revered? I don’t know much at all about Judaism, but I know about the Kabbalah.. due to it’s increased popularity in recent decades.
The Image of God (Hebrew: צֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים, romanized: tzelem Elohim; Latin: Imago Dei) is a concept and theological doctrine in Judaism, Christianity, and Sufism of Islam, which asserts that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God.
This goes with my research and current thinking, that man, is descended from god, who was also (hu)man, meaning.. modern man, but I’m more intrigued by the period of time between then and prior, of the time when primitive man suddenly became sentient homosapien man and the prior gods to then were much more than men.
Per Wikipedia in the Hebrew Bible, elohim (Hebrew: אֱלֹהִים [(ʔ)eloˈ(h)im]) sometimes refers to a single deity,particularly (but not always) the God of Israel, at other times it refers to deities in the plural.26 And G-d said, Let Us make man in Our tzelem, after Our demut: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon ha’aretz (the earth).
27 So G-d created humankind in His own tzelem, in the tzelem Elohim (image of G-d) created He him; zachar (male) and nekevah (female) created He them.
As with all mythology, the inexhaustible richness of the symbolic narrative lies in its capacity to generate multiple meanings. [polysemy]. The creation and Garden of Eden stories certainly instantiate this phenomenon. Thus, the Gnostics saw the OT God as the evil demiurge. Theosophy identified Elohim with the Archons, evil spiritual beings who wish to deny the human race knowledge and immortality. And yet, the principle that humans contain the Divine image, was transmogrified by Enlightenment writers into the principle that people are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights". Wholism attempts to transcend the dichotomous thinking implied in the literal adherence to a single interpretation without denying that some interpretations may be better than[i.e. more complete than] others.
The point where the Semites and Indos parted ways, and also parted religiously too.. in indifference, over their differences.
The New Testament always reminds me of a soap opera.. drama, drama, drama, and men at the whim of womens’ whims.