If you try to picture the God of the Tanakh (the Old
Testament to Christians), chances are you’ll picture someone like the God of
Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam,
zooming in on his cloud of heavenly host, reaching out to zap Adam with the
spark of life. Jehovah is a god on the move: creating the earth, destroying the
earth, parting seas, sending plagues and smiting the wicked.
“Gods of ancient Greece,” though, evokes the Elgin marbles, Winged Victory and red figure vases; ox-eyed Hera, charm-fashioner Aphrodite, Zeus who hurls thunder, Artemis of the golden distaff. While in the Bible humans yearn for God’s presence, it’s better to stay far from the Olympians. Mortals are liable to be turned into a tree or burst into flames. Every romance results in conception and every interaction ends catastrophe.
But 
somehow ancient Greece feels
familiar; the modes of thought, the values, the motivations, even the clichés:
you’ll stumble across “one swallow does not make a summer” reading Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics (I.1098a18). It’s actually jarring to realize these same
guys are out there fighting with spears and sacrificing cows.
somehow ancient Greece feels
familiar; the modes of thought, the values, the motivations, even the clichés:
you’ll stumble across “one swallow does not make a summer” reading Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics (I.1098a18). It’s actually jarring to realize these same
guys are out there fighting with spears and sacrificing cows.
To really study the Tanakh is to find yourself a stranger in
a strange land, among birthrights, dietary laws, circumcision, family idols,
camels, narrative discontinuity, and a surprising amount of straight-up lying.
It’s also the story of nomads, a people on the move: we cover 400 years of
slavery in just a few verses, but the Jews wander through hundreds of pages in
the desert. How many other books have so many maps just to keep track of the
main characters?
The Hebrew language reflects this primacy of action:
adjectives and adverbs are minimal, and verb tenses are few: something is
either done or not. But there are many shades of action active, passive,
intensive, causative, reflexive, and character is often revealed in action--for example, pious Abraham serving his heavenly guests.
You’d think an action-defined God would be the one closest
to our action-oriented hearts, but I think the “Make no graven image” rule
actually distances God from us highly visual humans. We always want something we can see: a saint, some lambs, a baby in a manger. Even in the temple, we have a grumpy Moses
looking down from his stained glass window. It’s a paradox that we are made in
the image of a God who doesn’t have
an image. As the poet said, "just wanna see his face."
Really, really enjoyed this post =) It gave me something to chew on, and I'd never thought about how the language itself makes Jehovah an action oriented God, but its a cool idea. And I think you're right. I always found the "I am" description horribly vague. Tell them that "I am"...well, okay then. I think the closest anyone gets is seeing the glory of God and that isn't well described either. I'm not sure this is along the same thread or not (because sometimes I fail to connect all my dots when expressing myself), but I always thought of the "spirit of the Lord" in the Old Testament as the Incredible Hulk, he's kinda actiony too with his rending of lions and slaying of thousands. Anyway, great post!
ReplyDeleteI'm Jewish, but sorta agnostically so. Anyhow, I remember a man at temple once said, "If you don't believe in God, add an "o." I loved that, the idea that "Goodness says" thou shalt not do this or that.
ReplyDeleteI've repeated the story to others. Most people also turn God into Good, but I'll never forget one woman turned God into Go Do. Which is every bit as important and essential. If there is a God, he or she is not in the text, but in the extra we bring to it.
Actually, I probably should have said "if there is a God, he or she is not in the text, but in the extra we bring from it."
ReplyDelete