Analytic bouts. Hah. Sounds like a bad illness that never really goes away, just strikes for periods of time until it passes. "Not this week, honey, I've got another bout of analysis..."
Or maybe, "my analysis is acting up this week..."
Ahem.
Yeah, I think Islam has the ninety-nine names of God, though these are titles more than 'names' per se. Sort of like the eighty-something titles carried by Queen Elizabeth, but her actual name is Elizabeth (plus forty other first names because imperial families seem to collect these, but whatever).
However, the residential biblical/hebrew scholar in the house says to clarify that the YHVH issues are an urban (suburban?) legend. The actual disagreement is between YHVH and Elohim, which is why there are two Genesis stories. One has the name YHVH as its main character, while the other calls its main character El, which is an import from the Babylonian. (Elohim means 'lord' but it comes from the Babylonian 'El' or 'Al' which means god.)
That entire thing is a remnant of the political issues sparked when the exiled Jews returned from slavery in Babylonia. They'd had two or three generations, roughly, to... kinda, well, deviate from the original, seeing how they were mostly doing it from memory. (And, too, that a lot of Babylonian concepts and perceptions crept in, as well.) So when they returned, the Jews who took them in were all like, "what the hell are you people doing, and who told you this was 'real' Judiasm?" So naturally the returned exiles were all about arguing that they, in fact, had stayed on the 'truth' path while those folks in the backwater were all wrong, blah blah blah.
Basically, a lot of politics and the upshot is that the Judaic canonical texts ended up being settled at that point, since it was either everyone agrees on one set or they schism into two separate religions. Sometimes you can see where they compromised -- like the two version of the creation story in the same freaking book -- and other places you can identify by word-choice and cultural-context whether it was a text posited/supported by the home-Jews versus that supported/presented by the return-Jews.
It's a really fascinating area of study, I think, and especially because these political battles from two thousand plus years ago still have impact today, moreso with the growing subculture in the West to take the bible literally... and the Old Testament is just as rife with these politically-caused contradictions as the New Testament, really. Go ahead! Ask me which books in the bible are forgeries! Wah.
Okay. That was probably WAY more info than you wanted, but... sorry, my bad, my analysis is acting up this week. Anyone got any advil? A sledgehammer, maybe?
no subject
Date: 24 Nov 2008 07:39 pm (UTC)Or maybe, "my analysis is acting up this week..."
Ahem.
Yeah, I think Islam has the ninety-nine names of God, though these are titles more than 'names' per se. Sort of like the eighty-something titles carried by Queen Elizabeth, but her actual name is Elizabeth (plus forty other first names because imperial families seem to collect these, but whatever).
However, the residential biblical/hebrew scholar in the house says to clarify that the YHVH issues are an urban (suburban?) legend. The actual disagreement is between YHVH and Elohim, which is why there are two Genesis stories. One has the name YHVH as its main character, while the other calls its main character El, which is an import from the Babylonian. (Elohim means 'lord' but it comes from the Babylonian 'El' or 'Al' which means god.)
That entire thing is a remnant of the political issues sparked when the exiled Jews returned from slavery in Babylonia. They'd had two or three generations, roughly, to... kinda, well, deviate from the original, seeing how they were mostly doing it from memory. (And, too, that a lot of Babylonian concepts and perceptions crept in, as well.) So when they returned, the Jews who took them in were all like, "what the hell are you people doing, and who told you this was 'real' Judiasm?" So naturally the returned exiles were all about arguing that they, in fact, had stayed on the 'truth' path while those folks in the backwater were all wrong, blah blah blah.
Basically, a lot of politics and the upshot is that the Judaic canonical texts ended up being settled at that point, since it was either everyone agrees on one set or they schism into two separate religions. Sometimes you can see where they compromised -- like the two version of the creation story in the same freaking book -- and other places you can identify by word-choice and cultural-context whether it was a text posited/supported by the home-Jews versus that supported/presented by the return-Jews.
It's a really fascinating area of study, I think, and especially because these political battles from two thousand plus years ago still have impact today, moreso with the growing subculture in the West to take the bible literally... and the Old Testament is just as rife with these politically-caused contradictions as the New Testament, really. Go ahead! Ask me which books in the bible are forgeries! Wah.
Okay. That was probably WAY more info than you wanted, but... sorry, my bad, my analysis is acting up this week. Anyone got any advil? A sledgehammer, maybe?