Glad I saved that post then ; ) far too interesting to not be followed up on…
@Meno… yes, very interesting data on the Judaism concept, in a beautifully concise summary by Fixed.
Science have mapped the universe and it does not have my smile.
If we are all a part of the all, that does not mean we all look like each other.
I think that most of the old Kabballists joined the Gnostic Christian sects that seem to have drawn most of the esoteric or mystical thinkers of those days.
I do not think Kabballism ever had much of a following, but it’s thinking, while too complex for most, was rejected for the more easily understood Gnostic sects of that day.
I have read some of their literature but would not switch away from Gnostic Christianity.
Regards
DL
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.
[b]Yahweh, the god of the Israelites, whose name was revealed to Moses as four Hebrew consonants (YHWH) called the tetragrammaton. … Thus, the tetragrammaton became the artificial Latinized name Jehovah (JeHoWaH).
After the Babylonian Exile (6th century BCE), and especially from the 3rd century BCE on, Jews ceased to use the name Yahweh for two reasons. As Judaism became a universal rather than merely local religion, the more common noun Elohim, meaning “God,” tended to replace Yahweh to demonstrate the universal sovereignty of Israel’s God over all others. At the same time, the divine name was increasingly regarded as too sacred to be uttered; it was thus replaced vocally in the synagogue ritual by the Hebrew word Adonai (“My Lord”), which was translated as Kyrios (“Lord”) in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures.[/b]
Once in a while you’ll see a resurgence of some brand of mysticism nonsense which serves to both comfort the individual and distract him from addressing the real, material problems of his existence.
“Feuerbach’s great achievement is… The proof that philosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the alienation of the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned…” - marx
“One has to ‘leave philosophy aside’…, one has to leap out of it and devote oneself like an ordinary man to the study of actuality…. Philosophy and the study of the actual world have the same relation to one another as onanism and sexual love.” - marx
“One of the most difficult tasks confronting philosophers is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world. Language is the immediate actuality of thought. Just as philosophers have given thought an independent existence, so they were bound to make language into an independent realm. This is the secret of philosophical language, in which thoughts in the form of words have their own content. The problem of descending from the world of thoughts to the actual world is turned into the problem of descending from language to life.” - marx
If you agree with Marx, then what are you and Biggus doing on this site?
Because we are insufferable cretins.
Awww… sweet hands-on man. So very eager to be talking with authority about difficult intellectual subjects you’ll gladly admit to not have studied (as reading is for the rich); its more endearing even than it is annoying in the end, as you mean so very well.
Marx was a loser if there ever was one, a stunted imbecile. And he didn’t even mean well!
He merely describes his own utter incompetence at life here.
Weak minds tend to project their own inability to deal with their existence on the rest of the world
I know you think Marx is a strong intellectual but take it from a real thinker dude, he is not.
I’m unable to take offense at any of that, I’m afraid.
In Genesis 1 humankind is made in the image of Elohim.
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.
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.
Who annoyed Fixed? …well that would be Prom.
Religion is simply a vehicle for the dissemination of an approved way for a Nation or Peoples to live their lives by, though we know that that vehicle has been abused and used for wrong-doings, over the centuries.
I can relate to the ‘descending from the world of thought/to the actual world’ dichotomy, but then again, I am a product of a socialist Nation… or it could just be me. 
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.
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.
According to the creation myth of ancient Babylon, the Enuma Elis, the cosmic order is the result of the hero God Marduk defeating Tiamat the engulfing mother Goddess and dragon of chaos and chopping her into pieces.
The Genesis creation story is certainly less violent. However, there seems to be traces of the earlier creation story reflected in Biblical texts like Psalm 74 which says:
Tiamat is ultimately defeated by Marduk, who incapacitates her with his “Evil Wind” and then kills her with an arrow. Marduk splits her in two, creating heaven and earth from her body, the Tigris and Euphrates from her eyes, mist from her spittle, mountains from her breasts and so on. An interesting creation story, if ever I heard one… very creative indeed.
I guess national pride gave rise to the various bible and creation variants, even between neighbouring Nations, as well as the distant…
I must have missed that one in religious studies… good observation and catch, Felix.
biblehub.com/psalms/74-12.htm That’s a lot of bible variants…
A Catholic Bible is a Christian Bible that includes the whole 73-book canon recognized by the Catholic Church, including the deuterocanonical books …most of the quotations from the Old Testament appearing in the New Testament books are from the Septuagint, not the Hebrew scriptures… the Septuagint being the earliest extant Koine Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible, various biblical apocrypha, and deuterocanonical books. There’s a Greek addition, to the standard Catholic bible
At the request of the prussian government, the French shut down Vorwärts (news paper) and exiled marx from France.
News flash: that doesn’t happen to ‘weak’ thinkers. Weak thinkers get ignored, or banned from a philosophy forum.
No but you really just said that. You totally just compared yourself to karl marx. You are aware of that, right? I want to make sure you know what you’re doing.
Right. Surprisingly, although we may reasonably suppose the Hebrew scriptures were originally written in the Hebrew language, the earliest extant manuscript is the Septuagint which is written in Greek koine as you said. So the existing copies of the Hebrew Bible all came after the Septuagint which therefore has greater prima facie authority everything else being equal. The eminent first century Jewish scholar Philo of Alexandria who interpreted the Hebrew Bible in terms of a platonic hermeneutic, relied on the Septuagint almost exclusively. As you correctly noted the New Testament writers did too even though there are apparent anomalies in the text.
It appears that the Greek version was made for Greek-speaking Jews in Egypt in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC and adopted by the early Christian Churches, so the OP is correct when he says that he is not made in god’s image, so we then become curious, in who’s image we really are made in and descend from.
My impression is that the OP implies that the Creator was a demiurge. Such was proposed by Plato. Some ancient gnostics thought that Yahweh was the demiurge. Others propose that Sophia was the demiurge. According to Genesis 1 the Creator was Elohim who created humans in His image or their image depending on how one reads the verse.
I think it’s significant that the book of Genesis has generated so many interpretations. Which interpretation is correct? Can we say with certainty that any is?
The notion that we are created in God’s image does have moral implications. How should we treat someone who bears the image of God? Of course if you think that the Creator was an evil demiurge, the positive moral implication of being created in the image of God is reversed.
During the European American Enlightenment the image of God became identified with reason. God had ordered the universe according to laws that Newton and others had discovered. Every human was thought to have at least the potential to comprehend the lawful order of things by reason and to live accordingly. Shall we discard this interpretation? Does anyone have a better one?
Of course it’s all a kind of mythology which modern science dismisses as pre scientific nonsense. But cognitive science shows that we structure reality in terms of narrative. So storytelling about origins is not going to go away.
If the most accurate interpretation belongs to the authors, Jews saw Eden as where man was elevated and not where he fell. They use the term Original Virtue of man. IOW, both man and god look like winners.
Christians reversed that to Original Sin and make both Yahweh and man look like losers who screwed up.
At the same time, Christians are conflicted as the keep singing that Adams sin was a happy fault and necessary to god’s plan. See their Exsultet hymn.
At the same time Christians, when asked if they would follow Adam’s lead, they say no, which would derail Yahweh’s plan. Too stupid for words that.
Christians are conflicted to the point of idiocy in this issue.
Regards
DL
Gnostic Christians do not read our myths literally and we just invented them to put against the bible when everyone accepted the bible as a myth.
The more recent and stupid literal reading of myths is a modern idiocy and is idol worship.
I hope you can see how intelligent the ancients were as compared to the mental efforts that modern preachers and theists are using with the literal reading of myths.
bigthink.com/videos/what-is-god-2-2
Further.
pbs.org/moyers/journal/03132009/watch.html
Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, “The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it.”
Please listen as to what is said about the literal reading of myths.
"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, “God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning.”
Matt 7;12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
This is how early Gnostic Christians view the transition from reading myths properly to destructive literal reading and idol worship.
youtube.com/watch?v=oR02cia … =PLCBF574D
Regards
DL
Origen introduced the distinction between three meanings of the scripture. Just as human beings consist of body, soul and Spirit so scripture edifies by a literal immoral and a spiritual sense.
First is the somatic, literal or philological sense. Everybody can understand the somatic sense. It’s identical with the literal historical meaning.
Second there’s the psychic or moral sense. This refers to the application of the biblical texts to our situation, it’s existential application to ourselves.
Third is the pneumatic or spiritual sense. There are some cases in which the biblical text has only a mystical meaning. In such cases the mystical meaning coincides with the literal sense.
Ordinarily however the mystical sense has to be distinguished from the literal meaning. The mystical sense is to be found through the allegorical method which entails finding the hidden meaning behind the texts.
Origen understood the spiritual sense to refer to the fate of human souls who have their true home in the Platonic realm of the forms–the archetypes, the world of spiritual realities, compared with which the physical world is only a shadow.