26-12-2010, 03:55 AM
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by taoistscholar
It has come to recent attention that the bible explains of two "entities" under the title "God".
One is present throughout the first page and a half or so of the bible under the title "God", as "God" is the name we have translated from the original writings.
However, in addition the remaning thousand and more pages of the bible speak of a LORD God as oppose to the God mentioned in the opening.
I was curious as to what all of you, the spiritual community make of this dichotomy.
Is it a result of many different authors being responsible for the bible's creation?
or, is it so that LORD GOD and God are two very different entities? (God being the nurturing divinity and LORD GOD being the vengeful, punishing, wrathful, jealous ruler)
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Hi there,
First off, the word אלהים (generally rendered 'God') is actually a concretized abstract plural which just means "divinity" in general. Thus, the 'God' of the first chapters of Genesis (Elohim) is merely referred to as being a divine being.
Then we have יהוה אלהים (LORD God). As you can see, this phrase includes the word 'elohim' and is thus referring to the LORD (YHWH being his name) as a divine being. One might translate יהוה אלהים аs "Yahweh, the divine one".
The two different uses of the phrases are, as you have suggested, the result of two different authors or redactors of the Biblical text. In this specific case, they are generally called the Elohist and the Jahwist redactors/authors.
I do not think in this case we are to understand LORD God as distinct from God, for the word 'God' in the Hebrew texts refers to a divine being. It's just the case that the divine being mentioned in Genesis 1 isn't actually given a name, as in Genesis 2.4ff.
Zenith
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