"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: 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 the earth."
(Genesis 1.27 KJV)
Here, God referes to 'us' or 'our.' Without some implication for trinity or its original form how could the plural forms appear?
Trinity
Satt, I would imagine that the Genesis verse to which you refer was written by someone who believed that there was more than one god. Possibly he thought there was one god more powerful than the others.
There are many references to "other gods" in the early Old Testament books that are written in such a way that it sounds like the writer believes that such gods exist.
One example: Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Hazlitt..
A speculation ought to be confirmed through intricate text critiques, to be persuasive.
(In my case, the texts are authorized ones, at least. The form I referred to is also seen in the JPS version.)
As we now know, there were numerous authors of the Hebrew Bible and some of them were women.
Biblical Text
Satt, I do not question that you are quoting from an authorized text. The text of the Old Testament is well established.
The questions are: Who wrote it; why did they write it; and when was it written?
In the case of the topic I brought up, the question is when did monotheism first appear in the Bible? To the best of my knowledge the first incontrovertible statement that there was but one god occurs in Isaiah 44:6 "I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god."
Aside from one gloss in Deut. 4, I am inclined to think that all the writers of the first five books believed in the existence of other gods besides the Hebrew god.
Quote: "Isaiah 44:6 "I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god." Who is Isaiah, and when did he live relative to the time of Christ? c.i.
gods
Hazlitt's reference to "Thou shall have no other gods besides me," and Cicerone Imposter's reference to "I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god." are read by me very liberally. My interpretation has them telling us that there is ONLY REALITY (that mysterious ultimate again). Thou shall create no worlds other than that which IS. All myths, ideologies, fantasies, fundamentalist theologies must be seen--and enjoyed--for what they are; and whatever functions they may serve they do not compare with, and should not be substituted for Reality; to do so is spiritual "insanity." And all attempts to describe or define this mysterious Ultimate Reality amount to the creation of substitutions. We cannot grasp and encompass Reality with our minds. We cannot shrink the entire universe (both quantitatively and qualitatively speaking) to the size of our puny brains. Islam's refusal to depict God in images is consistent with this principle. Not being a scholar of Islam I cannot say.
C.I.
The prophet Isaiah was the author of the book called by his name. The son of Amoz and a scion of the royal line, he was called to the prophetic office in his youth, toward the close of the reign of Uzziah (Azariah, 790-739 B.C.), during the coregency of Jothan. This would place the call between the years 750 and 739 B.C. His term of ministry continued for at least 60 years, spanning the reigns of Uzziah, Jothan, Ahaz, and Hezekiah (Isaiah 1:1). The fact that Isaiah never mentions Manasseh, whose reign began in 686 B.C., and that he was "one of the first to fall" in Manasseh's massacre of those who remained loyal to God;2 Kings 21:16, implies that his ministry terminated soon after the death of Hezekiah in 686 B.C. If so, it must have begun not later than about 745 B.C. It is probable that the prophetic messages of Isaiah 1-5 were given between the years 745 and 739, probably during the last year of Uzziah's reign but prior to the vision of Isaiah 6. It was while Isaiah contemplated relinquishing his prophetic mission, in view of the resistance he knew he would encounter (Jeremiah 20:7-9), that he beheld this vision of divine glory and in it found encouragement and confirmation of the divine commission already entrusted to him.
My point here is that the description of Genesis is already consistent with the concept of trinity. Trinity can be thought as an elaboration..
husker, Thanks for the history lesson. My interest in history always leaned towards Egyptian over any other, but it also has a sprinkling of bible history in it. When my sister and I visited Egypt last year, we visited Coptic Cairo, the old christian bastion in the city, and visited the church where the Holy Family supposedly escaped to and stayed. c.i.
Date of the writing of Isaiah
The dates that Husker gives for the life of Isaiah are pretty much standard. However, in a discussion of this kind it should be noted that current scholarship, except for that of fundamentalist Christians, take a somewhat different view of the actual writing of the book.
Isaiah (active 742-687 aprox) himself is the probable writer of chapters 1 thru 39.
Chapters 39 thru 66 are usually attributed to at least two and sometimes more writers. Chapters 40 thru 55 were almost certainly written soon before the fall of Babylon to Cyrus in 539 BC by the Second Isaiah. The Third Isaiah wrote chapters 56 thru 66 between 530 and 510 BC.
The dates are arrived at by study of the text and, among other things, paying attention to the dates of events referred to. Setting aside all questions of variation in style and kind of message, in order to ascribe the later chapters to the First Isaiah, one must assume that he (or she, New Haven) had knowledge of the future. Of course, this does not present a problem to the fundamentalist, but secular scholars do not assume that writers of documents have such knowledge.
Hazlitt, It seems that the first Isaiah lived to be about 75 years old according to the dates of his writings. Does this agree with the average lifespans of the time? c.i.
C.I, I'm sure that would have been beyond the normal lifespan of the time.
That's exactly my thoughts. I wonder how accurate any of that historical information can be. c.i.
Re: gods
JLNobody wrote:Hazlitt's reference to "Thou shall have no other gods besides me," and Cicerone Imposter's reference to "I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god." are read by me very liberally. My interpretation has them telling us that there is ONLY REALITY (that mysterious ultimate again). Thou shall create no worlds other than that which IS. All myths, ideologies, fantasies, fundamentalist theologies must be seen--and enjoyed--for what they are; and whatever functions they may serve they do not compare with, and should not be substituted for Reality; to do so is spiritual "insanity." And all attempts to describe or define this mysterious Ultimate Reality amount to the creation of substitutions. We cannot grasp and encompass Reality with our minds. We cannot shrink the entire universe (both quantitatively and qualitatively speaking) to the size of our puny brains. Islam's refusal to depict God in images is consistent with this principle. Not being a scholar of Islam I cannot say.
JL, You have given a beautiful contemporary interpretation to these verses. I was a fundamentalist Christian for about seven years in my young adulthood, and it took years to grow out of it. I can tell you that I cast a cold eye on the text of the Bible, but I must say that the ideas you present breathe meaning into those verses; even though, I'm sure it is not the meaning intended by the original writers. Couched in such language as you suggest, the spiritually minded skeptic (sadly, I continually find myself thinking in such contradictory terms) may find substance in old concepts. Thanks--as usual.
Even though Euclid's Elements can be seen critically from the text critique view point, the contents conceived have their own value.
Pythagoras' theorem has its own value irrespective of the knowledge about who found the theorem (probably much older than Pythagoras).
Contents conveyed through texts are much more important for human sprits than the acompanying tradition or legend, though latter is interesting.
One can denounce the legende about Pythagoras, for example. But the theorem connected with his name is immortal.
Pedantic talks are good for passtime, I do not deny the enjoyment from them. They cannot affect the greatness of concepts or the spiritual entity transmitted through texts.
