Saturday, June 26, 2010

God and Allah







1 comment:

Moulton said...

"God" (like "King") is a title that defines a role that a figure plays in a given culture or belief system.

The deity of the Old Testament had a name, as revealed to Moses in the well-known Burning Bush Story in Exodus.

Since Exodus was written in the Hebrew language, one has to turn to the original text to learn the name that the deity of the Old Testament reveals to Moses.

In the Hebrew it's eheyah asher eheyah which literally translates into English as "will be who/what will be." (Note that in Hebrew, a verb can be used without explicitly including the subject of the sentence; the subject is to be understood or inferred from context.)

In the first English translation (the King James Bible), the above phrase was rendered as "I am that I am" (rather than the future tense of "to be").

A better translation would simply be the gerund, "Becoming."

So, in the New Testament, Yeshua (Jesus) is said to be the "Son of God" which simply means that he instantiates the Next Generation of Becoming.

Whether one belongs to an organized religion or not, we can all consider ourselves to be engaged in the current Process of Becoming.

It's not really a strictly religious point of view. It's just stating the obvious -- that whether we appreciate it or not, we are all ineluctably engaged (for better or for worse) in the Process of Becoming.

I rather like the Italian version of the Name: Que Sera, Sera (whatever will be, will be).