Hi all!
Twells posted:
What exactly is it a metaphor for?
What is any metaphor for? To help convey an idea. the value of a metaphor is the idea it conveys, not its literal meaning.
The descriptions in scripture and intertestamental literature seem way to detailed to be "poetic".
I don't think so. Some of the most beautiful poetic images I know of are from scripture. My favorite is Job 38:29.
Out of whose womb came the ice?
I just
love that!
there is evidence in scripture of various powers within God with their own personalities in reference to the way he interacted with man.
We would respectfully disagree that there is any such evidence.
We dont consider it scripture either but what they do tell us however is how the Jews of the period viewed God.
They tell us how
some Jews may have viewed God, views that, as the exclusion of the books from the Tanakh proves, were deemed heretical.
And of course we differ here.
We seem to (amicably, I hope!) differ alot!
I think to say that intertestamental writings (and Biblical) that did personify Wisdom and others that equated the Son of Man with God equally and sharing His throne, written my monotheistic Jews as being a just blatant corruption by pagan ideas is a way, way to simplistic view.
I don't know that it would be "a blatant corruption by pagan ideas", as much as some Jews may have absorbed certain pagan ideas, by a kind of cultural osmosis, from the pagan cultures around them. (No offense, but we would argue that the whole story of Jesus dying & rising again is nothing but just such an osmotic absorbtion of the pagan myth of the dying god, i.e.Osiris and Tammuz, for example.
I think the question for them was not so much "What God is" but "Who God Is". Christianity took this and clarified it with Gods final revelation to man about Himself.
Again (no offense!), we might claim that early Christians found the Jewish concept of an incorporeal God who cannot be imaged, too difficult to grasp. Thus they made him human and gave him a physical body (and a form which could be depicted).
Be well & be in touch!
ssv
