which "god"? If you are referring to the unknowable numinous that some consider to be the xian "god" then I would have to say that "god" transcends gender yet has qualities of both.
many people back then did not know "god" all they knew was their own egoism projected into the heavens.
Xander
So was there a question in there? Or just a rhetorical springboard into your rant against Jews, Christians and their forebearers?
If you can penetrate no deaper than that into these writings, then perhaps you are blinded by your own prejudices.
You're right. God doesn't reproduce, therefore gender doesn't apply. Though you have to refer to Him as something, and I think It would be a little disrespectful, it sounds almost like he is inferior. Though if someone wanted to say Her instead of Him, I would have no problem with that. Ever see the movie Dogma?
"See? I told you She was a girl!"
Well if you looked at it historicly, males are the dominate gender and there for god has to be a male. YOu know, lead by example. That could be it.
I think I'm trying to say that God himself would have objected against the fact that he is portrait (spelling ok?) as a man to mankind.
quote:
Is God a male or a female? Why is he portrait in the bible as a male?
This question makes it clear to me that the bible was written by people who didn't know what they were talking about.
They knew what they were talking about, but most people today don't. They didn't think of 'God' the same way most modern Christians do (and they dind't think in all of these deep philosophical ways). Their God was a physical being that lived in a physical place ('Heaven'). Their God came down to communicate with people, and was apparently in a male form when he did so. He would then go back up into Heaven.
Keep in mind that these people came right after more ancient civilizations. Specifically, they came right after Sumeria, Assyria, Babylon, and in the same general area as well. These were the descendants of older civilization and knowledge.
In the Bible God is supposed to have said, "I am what I am," but a double-meaning (which the Sumerians were famous for, btw, espeically in sacred or divine documents) essentially means "I am Ea," or the Sumerian Enki.
So theres a possible explanation.
You're ignoring a more important question: Is god a dolphin or a monkey?
quote:
Originally posted by jc84corvette
Well if you looked at it historicly, males are the dominate gender and there for god has to be a male. YOu know, lead by example. That could be it.
I think you are forgetting about the pre Judeo-Christian era. Before that, women were revered and looked at as closer to God because they were the life givers.
--Kerri
from what i know of the hebrew language (which is little, btw. i'm no scholar in this area), *everything* is talked about in either a masculine or feminine tense. and since males were "dominant" in the culture, it made more sense to use that set of pronouns (or perhaps it was because he made man in His image and woman after man. *shrugs*)
~kakkarot
God is neither male nor female. He chose to reveal himself as male (the Father, the Son, etc.) for whatever reason, but there are times when female attributes are used of him (a mother hen protecting her young).
So this good and awesome God helped men in making the women feel less important than them? Doesn't God support emancipation?
I am not aware that God helped make women feel less important than men. Nearly every society since the dawn of time has been patriarchal, regardless of what the Bible may or may not say, but that does not mean that women were necessarily considered unequal. Of course God supports emancipation, that is essentially what the gospel message is about.
God is spirit; neither male nor female. He is referred to as male, because the male was first....the female came from the male.
This doesn't make women inferior to men; they are equal. In the spiritual chain of command, women are to obey their husbands, and husbands to obey the Lord.
The male is always one step, humanly speaking only, above the woman.
Couldn't he be both? He only created bolth genders.
Do you really think that if there is a god, it has a penis and/or vagina? I've heard god's nonphysical therefore wouldnt have either. Besides we all know that god is a dolphin instead of a monkey.
I think what you said is bius Bevis.
Is God a male or a female? Why is he portrait in the bible as a male?
This question makes it clear to me that the bible was written by people who didn't know what they were talking about. If there is a God I think we can all agree that he or she has to have no gender or two genders because. God never lived on earth and never had to reproduce physically. He would not look like us.
But why is he than portrait as a man? The people who wrote the bible and portrait him as a man were short-sighted. Men were supreme in those days and that's why God is a man. If they were really intellectual they should have known better. They should have known that men and women are equal. How can one live by a book that is written by these people? They forgot one of the most fundamental things: everyone is equal. Think about that.