Wednesday, 30 October 2013

searching for god and power

The Hebrew or Jewish commentators of the 5th century BCE constructed a god from the ruling political system, the Persian Empire. Such systems by tradition accorded peace and prosperity.

In Job, an extremely interesting document, god resides in a court surrounded by acolytes. God and Satan discuss the faithfulness or holiness of Job, the most holy and faithful of humans. They have a bet to see how faithful to god Job actually is and Job is then afflicted by all manner of disasters. He asks advice of a series of acquaintences who provide various theories for his misfortunes, including of course that he must have sinned (disobeyed god) at some point. These learned men meet with swift ends. This god does not like men to think, in the same way that autocrates disapprove of ideas. Now throughout this story god's nature changes, clearly the result of more than one writer.

The story ends frightenly with god declaring that reason is useless in trying to understand his actions. God is power, and that is it. God does things through whim like any ancient or modern potentate. God in fact is little more than a spoilt child.

'That is all ye know, and all ye need to know.'

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