God: an etymological conjecture

[PrinceMyshkin]

God created language
last of all and we might wonder
why. Was it because words
mattered less than mangoes,
aardvarks, tribes
or tribal enmity?

Was there no love
before there was language?
No mother, father,
daughter, son
before we had the words
to designate them?

I think not, or rather,
I think we cannot know.
God, after all, has ninety-names
and none.

[everyadventure]

An interesting question. But one that you seem to have rendered moot in the first stanza, when you speculate that language was possibly less important than enmity. If enmity exists, or was created before language, it stands to reason that conversely, love also existed before language, does it not?

A little confused on the reasoning...

[PrinceMyshkin]

An interesting question. But one that you seem to have rendered moot in the first stanza, when you speculate that language was possibly less important than enmity. If enmity exists, or was created before language, it stands to reason that conversely, love also existed before language, does it not?

A little confused on the reasoning...

I didn't mean to be weighing the relative importance of things and the names for them, but just enjoyed the metaphysical speculation that the creator (any creator) would likely have made the thing, concept, &c first and, almost as an after-thought, named it. Whereas - although this is nowhere touched on in the poem - we often get hung up on what is the right name by which to call this or that. In the manner of thinking of some of us, it isn't a mynah-bird (much less a or the "Supreme Being") until/unless I say that it is...

[Bar22do]

Well some say the world was created with Word, the reality resulted from naming... (in this perspective language would have priority over everything else), but of course one could spend one's entire life to try and understand what Word means, especially if researched/contemplated upon from its root D B R (opening - polarity - organisation) meanings.
Best regards, Bar

[jajdude]

This one has a lot of substance and surely will stir up more responses. Some wise person said "the word is not the thing" and gave a good example of a hungry man being unsatisfied by a description of food. Yet it seems to me that when we speak of more abstract things, things that have no physical reality, we get more lost in words and argue more about their meanings. Is anything more abstract than "God" and is anything more argued over? It seems your writing can provoke some philosophical debate, I suppose.

[YesNo]

I was reading some overviews of postmodernism. If I understand what they said, and there's a good chance I don't, it seems we need language to see "love" or "mangoes". It is not that they don't exist, it is just that there is no way to know them objectively.

I assume that would be the same for any other species. I hear elephants have a more complicated language than we originally imagined.

Anyway, interesting questions you raise.

[Jerrybaldy]

You and your frivilous poetry, Prince :D

I read recently that 93% of communication is non verbal. So we are only dealing with 7% here, so its no wonder the great maker left it until last. I imagine he wanted to shout at some fellow to put the beer down as it was a Sunday (or a Saturday) and then realised beer and days and absolutely everything was nameless so threw in language so that we could also go to war with words. Anyway, a beer by any other name or errmmm, no name, would taste as sweet.
regards J#II
BTW What happened to that beach ball?

[PrinceMyshkin]

Many thanks Jajdude, YesNo and

Bar:

Well some say the world was created with Word, the reality resulted from naming... (in this perspective language would have priority over everything else), but of course one could spend one's entire life to try and understand what Word means, especially if researched/contemplated upon from its root D B R (opening - polarity - organisation) meanings.


Well, I wouldn't trust my Ivrit to get me safely across a busy street any longer but does not the root DBR also yield the word for "thing" or "matter" as in ayn davar?


You and your frivilous poetry, Prince :D

I read recently that 93% of communication is non verbal. So we are only dealing with 7% here, so its no wonder the great maker left it until last. I imagine he wanted to shout at some fellow to put the beer down as it was a Sunday (or a Saturday) and then realised beer and days and absolutely everything was nameless so threw in language so that we could also go to war with words. Anyway, a beer by any other name or errmmm, no name, would taste as sweet.
regards J#II
BTW What happened to that beach ball?

The beach ball, your Baldness, is back in your locker, where it belongs, under some rather damp, almost mildewed gym clothes.

[AuntShecky]

Well, Prince, your title is a ponderous mouthful, but your poem is characteristically succinct. There are several literary precedents to the theme of your piece:
John 1:1 (King James or Douay version)
and Paradise Lost, VIII, 336ff and this exquisite
sonnet (http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/224/) by Robert Frost.

I have to think awhile about your philosophical stance. As you may have guessed over the years, yours fooly is of the "Old School" of philosophy that maintains that language precedes thought. Thought is different from consciousness, in that the latter can experience sensations such as pain, pleasure, hunger, etc. without having words to express them. Think of infants -- they don't really "think" but as they develop, they begin to grasp basic concepts such as"up, down, hello, bye-bye, Dada, Mama" by first recognizing the words and then later saying the words themselves. So the ability to think, I believe, appears with words and later refines itself with larger vocabularies to express its thoughts.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I have to think awhile about your philosophical stance. As you may have guessed over the years, yours fooly is of the "Old School" of philosophy that maintains that language precedes thought.

My conjecture, however, had to do with the sequence of things and words. Let's wait and see how Bar (or any other Hebrew-speaker) responds to my query whether the Hebrew for "word" and for "thing/matter" originate in the same root.

Of course there might be some merriment to be had in wondering how 'God' could create a mango or an elephant's eye (as the beloved musical comedy song has it) without using or creating the word for either of them. And "dust"! How would one make dust without language?

[Bar22do]

My conjecture, however, had to do with the sequence of things and words. Let's wait and see how Bar (or any other Hebrew-speaker) responds to my query whether the Hebrew for "word" and for "thing/matter" originate in the same root.

Of course there might be some merriment to be had in wondering how 'God' could create a mango or an elephant's eye (as the beloved musical comedy song has it) without using or creating the word for either of them. And "dust"! How would one make dust without language?

It's the same root indeed, though "thing" in Hebrew and in English have different dimensions. Actually, and sorry for these terrible oversimplifications, WORD is a creative power, while SAFA (language) (containing PE "mouth" in English, air passage) sculptures the matter, forms the reality... hence the importance of man's connection with THOUGHT and consequent accurate (or wrong) NAMING of the reality and the consequences therein (here lies man's relative freedom and certainly the responsibility)...

[Hawkman]

I’m afraid I find the premise of some of these arguments flawed. It is certainly possible to conceive of a thing and then create it to do whatever it is supposed to do, or even just be, without having a name for it. In human terms we give a thing a name just so we can classify it and communicate the idea of it to other people who have never seen it.

As I remember, In Genesis G-d or the creator is not credited with having named the world or even the heavens, although he is said to have come up with names for day, night, sky, land, and seas. And as he is quoted as saying, “Let there be…” various things, it must be assumed that he already had some kind of language, so He obviously didn’t create language last. He apparently had a word for waters because he chose a new name for them.

Regardless of the importance of the Hebrew relationship with the creator, Hebrew wasn’t the first language spoken on Earth, although It may be assumed that the creator’s intimate relationship with his chosen people may give them something of a claim to “inside information” about his intentions and actions at the time that everything started down here.

As man went forth and multiplied after the fall, he seems to have busied himself with creating all sorts of languages. G-d doesn’t seem to have approved, hence the fate of the Tower of Babel.

Words certainly have power, though, They can start wars, and hurt the ones we love, as well as communicate good ideas – and bad ones.

Live and be well - H

[Bar22do]

Hawk, Adam was the one in charge of naming creatures and things in his original surroundings. Naming is endowing with being. There is a saying "if you can someone by his/her name, he/she wakes into awareness."
Now Hebrew isn't the first language for sure, but it has very ancient clear connections that become reliable (though still relative, goes without saying) keys to understanding whatever is graspable, or to ever broaden the scope of perception and increase the ability to process that perception.
The Bible is written by men, with their limitations (even the great Moses).
"Let there be.." is a deep concept with an unthinkable power in it.

But who is great enough for these things (devarim) anyway...

[Hawkman]

Sweet Bar, The greatest power is that of imagination, indeed, conception, in all its meanings. You'll get no argument from me that divine conception is the greatest creative power in the multiverse.

Live and be well. H

[Bar22do]

You can't pretend to even KNOW that, hawk. it's only what you were taught, right?
what's the "divine"? what's "conception"? what/who "is not"? what is "is" (this verb doesn't exist in Hebrew), how to draw the line between creative imagination and its caricature, fantasy (if not falsity, etc.)

[firefangled]

In Carlos Castaneda's amazing 13 volumes of his apprenticeship with a Yaqui Indian sorcerer, he mentions a practice of sorcerers called not-doing and another called stoping the world. The art of both practices was to perceive the world once again without allowing language to limit the world (read cosmos). To do this one had to stop one's "internal dialog."

Seems you are getting into the quantum world when you start speaking of things vs the name for things. Mere observation changes the world, naming must do so even more. Naming parses the world and thus diminishes its power at the same time it allows us to extrapolate and communicate with ourselves and others.

In the creation myth about Eden, the animals were made and then named. I've always thought this set up the Fall by diminishing the world as perceived by the first people. We have been trying to get that original pure perception back throughout history by various means and we always fail in spite of what our parsing shows us. With quantum mechanics we are virtually able to infinitely parse the universe and yet it remains a mystery within the most sophisticated and inclusive language we have come to develop— mathematics.

I don't believe knowing is naming necessarily. There are certainly different ways to know something. So, I don't agree with the poem's conclusion. I would agree we cannot think about what you propose without entering into a tautological arguement. Your poem is your Schroedinger's Cat.

What I like about your poem is that it says in 62 words (one hyphenated) what I have taken several paragraphs to think about it.

Keep writing, Jerry!

[jajdude]

I read recently that 93% of communication is non verbal. So we are only dealing with 7% here..

Don't say "only 7%". It's a very important 7% as far as making social contact and getting to know people goes. It's like having 100 bills: 93 of them are $1 bills and the other 7 are $10 or even $100 bills. If you do not speak the same language as another, that 93% will usually not mean much.

[blank|verse]

An intriguing poem, Prince, that answers its own hypothetical questions, if somewhat questionably.

I suppose it depends on definitions, but surely you're not suggesting that there can be sons and daughters without mothers and fathers? How else did they arrive in the world - did the stork bring them? :)

And 'etymology' is the study of the derivation of individual words, not how language came into being, so I would question your use of the word in the title; it reads like the poem is going to be a study of the derivation of the word 'God', which is not what the poem is about.

Still, thought- and comment-provoking as always!

[PrinceMyshkin]

Thank you, Hawkman Jajdude, Bar, B|V and Firefangled for, in some cases, pointing out fundamental errors in my thinking and in several cases putting forward provocative philosophical speculations of your own.

Regarding Hawkman's assertion that God simultaneously named & created light, I fall back on the tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear it: if God commands that light be created but there is no one in the universe to hear, comprehend and comply... can his utterance be other than a fantasy? At what point or in what manner does it become extrapolated reality? Extrapolated into what?

[Haunted]

I would like to believe that God created man and woman and they in turn created words to romance each other. But wait till they break up. Suddenly their vocabulary grows expontentially. Just a theory.

[Hawkman]

Hi Prince, Well depending, of course on one's personal theology, and assuming that the Word of G-d has the power of creation, the evidence would seem to be all around us! However, I understand that the voice of G-d is supposed to be too terrible for mere mortals like man to hear at first hand and I am led to believe that he therefore addresses groups or individuals through a third party. I can't remember precisely but isn't there supposed to be an Angel or serephim or something, called Metatron? who acts as the voice of the creator? I confess that I can't remember exactly if it is recorded when G-d created the various choirs of angels and superior beings, but I had always assumed that they were around when the world was made, so if this is indeed the case, they'd have witnessed the event!

I fully concede, however, that I may be in error in my assumptions. If not, though, my argument gains wieght :)

Thanks for the interesting lines of speculation.

Live and be well - H

[Delta40]

I'm terrible at engaging in discussion which requires informed thought, Prince. I think your musings here are food for thought. I have never known the order in which God did stuff and to create language last sounds to me like a good thing when contrasted with nature itself. Who would ruin such a work of art with words?

[deryk]

If God has so many names, does that weaken the meaning or strengthen it? Did he name himself first, or after he created the beings to provide those names? To me it's just a pleasant Ouroboros. But a brilliant one at that!