• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Interviewing Myself

I Am Hugh

Researcher
Q: What is God?

A:
God is an English word first used by the pagans and later adopted by the Christians when they sent missionaries to places where English was spoken. From the Hebrew word el and variations thereof, the root of meaning "mighty/strong" and the Greek theos. A god is anything or anyone a person or persons venerate. It could be a simple piece of rock or wood, a ruler, or idol. Supernatural, natural, literal, figurative, physical, spiritual. The Bible includes many gods, some of them mortal men like Moses, the judges, Pharaohs, Roman rulers (Zeus), or Jesus. Also, Dagon, Molech, Ashtoreth, Marduk, Satan, etc. (Exodus 4:16; 7:1; Psalm 82:1, 6; John 10:34-35; Isaiah 9:6; Psalm 8:5; 1 Samuel 5:7; 1 Kings 11:5; Daniel 1:2; 2 Corinthians 4:4) If a person picks up a stick and says it is their God, then it is their God. It literally exists. It is a solid object in the natural world. But a god doesn't have to literally exist to be a God. Frodo, for example, or the Shinto Amaterasu.

Q: What is Religion?

A:
To me religion means a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance. That could be a specific belief, faith or worship paradigm, or more specifically, a theistic belief in the supernatural gods, of the Bible or elsewhere, but also atheistic belief systems. It's a formalized veneration usually involving repetition.

Q: What is Spirituality?

A:
Spirit means invisible (to us) active force producing visible results. Wind, for example (Exodus 10:13; John 3:8), breath (Habakkuk 1:19; Revelation 13:15), impelled mental inclination (Numbers 27:18; John 13:21) i.e. mean spirited, break the spirit of the horse, spirit beings (1 Kings 22:21; Acts 23:9) but can also be things like electricity and pathogens or tradition, emotion, etc. The English words pneumatic and pneumonia come from the Greek word for spirit, pneuma. Spirituality can be supernatural or natural.

Q: Is the Bible infallible?

A:
No, the Bible is the imperfect, fallible translation of the perfect, infallible word of Jehovah God. Biblical study means, basically, the study of what the Bible says. Theology is the study of gods, and so is basically what the Bible or other theistic texts means. Perception is what you personally think or see and perspective is what you or others think and see. A balanced perspective includes other perceptions. So, we interpret what the Bible says in translation and means in interpretation. It was very important for those who God spoke to through angels or prophets, through his Logos or Word, to get it right so that we would have a chance to interpret it accurately. Sometimes we mess it up and one way we do that is through either bias in translation (John 1:1; 1 John 5:7, 8) or misinterpretation becoming tradition or dogma.

At John 1:1, for example, the Greek word theos is a singular predicate noun occurring before the verb and is not preceded by the definite article. This is an anarthrous theos. The God with whom the Word, or Logos, was originally is designated here by the Greek expression ho theos, that is, theos preceded by the definite article ho. This is an articular theos. The articular construction of the noun points to an identity, a personality, whereas a singular anarthrous predicate noun preceding the verb points to a quality about someone. John was saying that the Word or Logos was "a god" or "divine" or "godlike" rather than that he was the God with whom he was.

There are many cases of a singular anarthrous predicate noun preceding the verb, such as in Mark 6:49; 11:32; John 4:19; 6:70; 8:44; 9:17; 10:1, 13, 33; 12:6. Where "a" or "an" is inserted "an apparition" or "a spirit" or "a liar" or "a prophet" or "a god."

In the article "Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns: Mark 15:39 and John 1:1," published in the Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 92, Philadelphia, 1973, p. 85, Philip B. Harner said about John 1:1: "with an anarthrous predicate preceding the verb, are primarily qualitative in meaning. They indicate that the logos has the nature of theos. There is no basis for regarding the predicate theos as definite." On p. 87 of his article Harner concluded: "In John 1:1 I think that the qualitative force of the predicate is so prominent that the noun cannot be regarded as definite." (Source)

At 1 John 5:7 they just added the trinitarian concept in some Bibles and others they leave it out. It's a spurious addition.

Another interesting example is the Eighteen Emendations of the Sopherim or Tiqqun soferim also see this. That's where the Hebrew copyists (Sopherim) objected to what the scripture actually said and so changed it.

Q: Why so much division in religious thinking and Abrahamic religions?

A:
Mostly dogma and ideology. There isn't anything wrong with religious interpretation, theology, or even ideology, the science of ideas. It's only when interpretation, belief or tradition becomes dogma, unquestionable, shoved down someone else's throat. Insistent. Our beliefs become a part of us and when challenged it is perceived as a personal attack. I refer to that sort of thing above in Is the Bible infallible? Theology, perception, perspective.
 
Last edited:
Top