If you say they had symbols for nature and they used pictures of human forms to depict various aspects of nature it doesn't answer the question.
If you look at the Christian cross you can say it symbolizes the crucifixion of Christ. You can see the cross on churches, necklaces etc. and many of them don't have a figure of Jesus on them just the cross. Yet the cross symbolizes Jesus having been executed by being nailed to it. It is symbolic of particular person not just an execution device that was used to execute many different people.
That symbolism alone doesn't tell you if the person is an atheist of not. If they say that Jesus was the son of God and he rose from the dead that tells you the person was not an atheist but technically the crucifixion alone doesn't tell you that.
Hypothetically an atheist could use a cross symbol and say it symbolized Jesus a man who was executed but he was not the son of God and there was no resurrection.
The symbol is traditionally used by believers but technically the symbol alone doesn't specify belief, just by tradition. It is part of a story which could be about the death of a prophet who was an ordinary human or it could about an incarnation of God.
If there is a sculpture of a God one person could say "this represents a philosophical concept of ours" But another person could say "this is a sculpture of real God that exists. It may not look exactly like the God but this God is a conscious deity that has particular mental attributes and we need to take heed of this and pray and respect this deity otherwise there could be negative consequences"
wikipedia:
quote:
To the Egyptians, the sun represented light, warmth, and growth. This made the sun deity very important, as the sun was seen as the ruler of all that he created. The sun disk was either seen as the body or eye of Ra. Ra was the father of Shu and Tefnut, whom he created by his own power. Shu was the god of the wind, and Tefnut was the goddess of the rain.
^ So were the Egyptians atheists who would have explained they made up these gods to comment on nature, they don't really exist?
A Muslim would say God, aka Allah exists and you need to take heed because he is running the universe and wants you to behave in certain ways.
Comparatively an atheist might come up with a superhero who symbolized some natural force "Wind man" but they would say "No there is no real Wind Man I just came up with that to teach people about the wind"
So were the Egyptians atheists?
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-------------------- It's not my burden to disabuse the ignorant of their wrong opinions Posts: 2699 | From: New York | Registered: Jun 2015
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-------------------- It's not my burden to disabuse the ignorant of their wrong opinions Posts: 2699 | From: New York | Registered: Jun 2015
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quote:Originally posted by Elmaestro: Is water dry? Where boats intended for flight? Do lightbulbs darken a room? Where a polytheistic population atheist?
posted
No, but there’s a long list God’s the Aegyptians used to describe and explain nature.
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Why Do You Believe In God? Dr. Yosef Ben Jochannan
During his career in the 1980s, Ben-Jochannan was well known for leading guided tours to the Nile Valley. Ben-Jochannan's 15-day trips to Egypt, billed as “Dr. Ben's Alkebu-Lan Educational Tours,” using what he said was an ancient name for Africa, typically ran three times a summer, shuttling as many as 200 people to Africa per season.
Ben-Jochannan earned the respect of a later generation of black intellectuals ____________________________________
Dr. Ben is probably best known for the educational tours he conducted beginning approximately in 1950s to modern day Egypt.
Dr. Ben is founder and high priest in the Craft of Amen-Ra and holds the title/rank of 360° Grand Master in the Craft of Amen-Ra as well as a former student of the author of “Stolen Legacy”, George G.M. James.
VIDEO
Ancient Egyptian Freemasonry - Part 1 - Dr. Yosef ben-Jochannan.flv
posted
This is a troll thread and it shouldnt be in the Egyptology section
Posts: 8804 | From: The fear of his majesty had entered their hearts, they were powerless | Registered: Nov 2007
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quote:Originally posted by -Just Call Me Jari-: This is a troll thread and it shouldnt be in the Egyptology section
You're the troll and ignorant
quote:Originally posted by Doug M: within these "schools of thought(toth)", the "gods" were simply symbols or archetypes representing these "intelligent" principles in nature and creation.
quote: Originally posted by Doug M: nowhere did I say that the universe is divine or a divine construct.
Dr. Ben who was very influential in the 80s and 90s in the black community regarding Egypt is regarded by some as an atheist and posted a lecture of his in regard to that. Asar Imhotep who writes book and posts here is associated with a group called the Amun Ra Squad comprised of several people who do very good research on Egypt and the Egypt language and the head of this group regards Dr. Ben highly and call himself a "real black atheist."
There have been man people under the influence of Dr, Yosef Ben-Jochannan who see the Egyptian gods as symbolic of natural forces rather than actual beings, deities who interact with or are conscious of the behavior of humans.
Scientists talk about nature and some are atheists. The word "nature" to many is not synonymous to "god" .
This is above your head and you don't know the influences on the Kemet movement of which Dr Ben was the most influential.
”Africans had a religion in Ancient Egypt …there were two types of religion in the world: supernatural religions or theistic religions. And then you have natural religions or atheistic religions. A lot of people have an idea that if a man is an atheist, that is: if he doesn’t believe in a personal god, he’s an irreligious person. That’s not true. The Africans had an atheistic type of religion and they were a deeply religious people. Because they believed that man not only has a body, but he also has a mind, soul or spirit…if you went to temple in ancient Egypt and you told the priest that you wanted Horus the Egyptian Christ to save your soul, he would tell you to not to waste his time. Horus, Osiris, Isis or nobody else was going to save your soul, except you.”
Dr. John G. Jackson
quote:
‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘mama, dear mama. The first time I opened my eyes there was a black woman putting a nipple from her breast in my mouth to sustain me, having to sustain me for ten months in her womb….’ That’s the sign. That was god. The god I knew. The other one is belief. Belief! And belief isn’t a fact. Belief is a hope. Belief is faith. Belief may not happen. But Mama did. And so… the man she pointed out to me that stood there was also a part of that. Thus mama, daddy and I are the Trinity. The Holy Trinity.” -Dr. Yosef Ben Jochannan,
During his career in the 1980s, Ben-Jochannan was well known for leading guided tours to the Nile Valley. Ben-Jochannan's 15-day trips to Egypt, billed as “Dr. Ben's Alkebu-Lan Educational Tours,” using what he said was an ancient name for Africa, typically ran three times a summer, shuttling as many as 200 people to Africa per season.
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posted
I have heard people say a lot " the Egyptians god were not gods that the Egyptains believed rally existed. They were symbols they used to describe real forces in nature"
That is said a lot and it's atheism although people don't like to admit it
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1 a : a lack of belief or a strong disbelief in the existence of a god or any gods b : a philosophical or religious position characterized by disbelief in the existence of a god or any gods
_______________________________________________
Therefore if the Egyptians did not believe in a god or any gods but they viewed the neters as fictional characters they made up to symbolize nature in order to comment on it they are atheists.
Comparatively if you ask a Muslim or Christian if God or Allah is real or is it just a character they made up to illustrate philosophy they are going to say hell no, God is real
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posted
The key concept to a belief in God, or any belief at all is "belief".
The great pyramid builders lacked the word "belief" in their vocabulary. They even lacked words like "thought" and "idea".
This reflects a profound and fundamental difference in the way they thought and reflects the simple truism that they did not experience thought in the same way we do.
The reality is "gods" were parts of grammar. They were ancient understanding of how reality operated and what it looked like. A "god" was a natural phenomenon and in aggregate (ennead) they were reality itself which they called "amun". More technically an "ennead" were the identifiable variables in an equation.
We missed this for a very simple reason. All human knowledge was contained within Ancient Language and this language was becoming so complex fewer and fewer people could speak it at all. A pidgin form of the language was used by most people that was like modern languages. When Ancient Language collapsed there was no science by which it could be understood. Egyptologists made the same errors of translation that later Egyptians made.
In a very real way even "atheism" is a belief and specifically a belief there is no "God" (or gods). So the ancients could not have been atheists either. Indeed, their thought processes were so alien to ours and our word meanings so ephemeral, it would be very difficult to exactly apply any modern words, labels, or titles to them. They were not only not atheists but they were not not atheists and a great number of our words could be put in the place of "atheist".
-------------------- Men fear the pyramid, time fears man. Posts: 393 | From: NW Indiana, US of A | Registered: Aug 2006
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posted
I made this thread because I have heard people say over and over again "the gods of Egypt symbolized the forces of nature"
That is different from saying the gods control nature.
Therefore somebody might say they didn't really believe in gods with human like behavior they just had their artists come up with these gods as a teaching tool about nature. That could be regarded as atheist
That word scares some people and they don't want to deal with it
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: I made this thread because I have heard people say over and over again "the gods of Egypt symbolized the forces of nature"
That is different from saying the gods control nature.
I agree, but I would phrase it differently. The gods each represented an aspect of nature. "Shu" was "inertia" and the closest translation we can get for "tefnut" would be "The natural phenomenon of the normal force". But even this misses the reality because ancient words can't really be translated at all. The best shorthand approximation for shu and tefnut are "upward" and "downward".
When they said things like "the earth is high under the sky by means of the arms of tefnut" they meant it literally. It was "downward" operating at a distance that lifted the stones and the dead king. The boat that flew up and alit was driven by the boat in which osiris in his name of seker sat to tow the earth by means of balance.
Ancient Language is difficult for us because we each had to learn a new way to think in order to learn modern language. Ancient Language is simply incompatible with all modern languages. It is formatted differently and meaning is expressed in context rather than through statement.
-------------------- Men fear the pyramid, time fears man. Posts: 393 | From: NW Indiana, US of A | Registered: Aug 2006
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: I made this thread because I have heard people say over and over again "the gods of Egypt symbolized the forces of nature"
That is different from saying the gods control nature.
Therefore somebody might say they didn't really believe in gods with human like behavior they just had their artists come up with these gods as a teaching tool about nature. That could be regarded as atheist
That word scares some people and they don't want to deal with it
What is what I figured you meant and why I didn't think you were trolling
Posts: 1254 | From: howdy | Registered: Mar 2014
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posted
^ thank you, that is because you know about the Conscious Community in NY and these other fools are unaware
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posted
It doesn't follow that if a tradition sees nature's forces as gods, it indicates that tradition is atheist. Thor symbolizing thunder or the other way around doesn't mean there is no actual belief in Thor as a deity.
Can the OP give some examples of people treating nature's forces as gods, without actually thinking they're gods? I think no one does that, except maybe as a figure of speech. People don't just wake up one day and start playing around with their religion. People get killed playing around with religion. And atheism was a hard-fought freedom in modern times. Atheism requires revolutions and societal change of the type we don't see in ancient Egypt. Until I see some examples this is a weird thread to me. Any thread starting with "I've heard people say" is suspect.
Ancient travelers to ancient Egypt describe them as a religious people. No need for "I heard people say".
quote:They are religious excessively beyond all other men, and with regard to this they have customs as follows: they drink from cups of bronze and rinse them out every day, and not some only do this but all: they wear garments of linen always newly washed, and this they make a special point of practice: they circumcise themselves for the sake of cleanliness, preferring to be clean rather than comely.
quote:Originally posted by Swenet: It doesn't follow that if a tradition sees nature's forces as gods, it indicates that tradition is atheist. Thor symbolizing thunder or the other way around doesn't mean there is no actual belief in Thor as a deity.
Can the OP give some examples of people treating nature's forces as gods, without actually thinking they're gods? I think no one does that, except maybe as a figure of speech. People don't just wake up one day and start playing around with their religion. People get killed playing around with religion. And atheism was a hard-fought freedom in modern times. Atheism requires revolutions and societal change of the type we don't see in ancient Egypt. Until I see some examples this is a weird thread to me. Any thread starting with "I've heard people say" is suspect.
Find the John G Jackson, quote I quoted earlier
______________________
John Glover Jackson, background
John Glover Jackson (April 1, 1907 – October 13, 1993) was an American Pan-Africanist historian, lecturer, teacher and writer. He promoted ideas of Afrocentrism, and Jesus Christ in comparative mythology.
From 1930 onwards, Jackson became associated with a number of Pan-African historians, activists and writers, including Hubert Harrison, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, John Henrik Clarke, Willis Nathaniel Huggins and Joel Augustus Rogers. He also authored a number of books on African history, promoting a Pan-African and Afrocentrist view
quote:Originally posted by Doug M: within these "schools of thought(toth)", the "gods" were simply symbols or archetypes representing these "intelligent" principles in nature and creation.
I raised the question "Were the ancient Egyptians Atheists? "
due to remarks like the above
If the gods of the Egyptians " were simply symbols" that means that you don't necessarily have to believe they were real beings. That would have to be clarified, hence my question
A symbol of wind could be created by artists as a human-like being in order to teach people about nature or science They could understand it as fictional
Or alternatively they could believe that the god was real and could be responsive to human behavior, prayers or offerings
rather than merely have a celebration of something like a good harvest
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Therefore, in the original "mysticism" of Greece and Egypt or the East, divine intervention did not always mean that "god" literally came down and formed humans out of clay (even though in some cases it did). It meant that the laws of nature were the "hidden language" of the gods and that all of the universe was a physical reflection of the "hidden mind" of god. And thus all branches of math and science were intertwined with the cosmologies and "mysticism" of cognitive thought.
However, Christian doctrine is based on the literal acceptance of Christ as a flesh and blood creature for the purpose defining the "divine word" of the Bible as the basis for secular law and authority. Therefore, the symbolic and "mystical" aspects were downplayed in terms of how Christianity was taught to the masses as a form of blind obedience to Christ (and Christian based secular authority).
^^ here again he's talking about symbolism and
"god" did not always mean that "god" literally came down and formed humans out of clay "
he's got god in "quotes" that is an issue right there
and is suggesting something wasn't literal.
Scientists can talk about Nature all day and not mention god.
Therefore when somebody says in some ancient culture "the forces of nature were symbolized by these gods'
That doesn't tell you if they thought these gods were real beings with human like thoughts and behavior ( but superior) who controlled nature
OR... if they viewed nature in the same way a mainstream stream scientist might describe things like mountains, cows, gravity, tides, wind, heat molecules, cells
But unlike the mainstream scientists the Egyptians expressed these thing artistically while understanding understood the gods were fictional anthropomorphized symbols used for celebrations and as teaching tools for natural science concepts
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posted
While conceptions of "divinity" or "higher power" might vary from culture to culture, declaring ancient Egyptian society to be fundamentally atheistic would be misleading since the word "atheism" has very different connotations from what the Egyptians were doing. If the various neteru in the Egyptian belief system were simply symbols of natural forces, they sure invested a lot of time, energy, and resources in venerating and placating these forces. Who the hell builds a temple to the sun and observes rituals to appease it if they don't consider it to possess a humanlike intelligence? The whole point of a god is that they're supposed to be intelligent like people.
Furthermore, consider that the Greeks would have presumably referred to the Egyptian entities by the word "theos", which has carried over into modern Western conceptions of divinity (hence the word theology, for instance). I am not aware of any evidence of the Egyptians correcting their Greek contemporaries for translating "neteru" into "theos". It is as if the two concepts were analogous enough to translate well between the cultures.
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: I made this thread because I have heard people say over and over again "the gods of Egypt symbolized the forces of nature"
That is different from saying the gods control nature.
Therefore somebody might say they didn't really believe in gods with human like behavior they just had their artists come up with these gods as a teaching tool about nature. That could be regarded as atheist
That word scares some people and they don't want to deal with it
you're confused fam... No one is afraid of atheism.
look here: "Therefore somebody might say they didn't really believe in gods with human like behavior" -is human like behavior a requirement for a diety?
"they just had their artists come up with these gods as a teaching tool about nature." -This to my knowledge is not true.
There are many aspects of theology that you're dropping because the Aegyptians gods aren't 1:1 with western gods in concept, which is the problem. This is the same reason why people get so confused when other traditions or religion partake in "worship" of idols and other life forms.
A crocodile can represent protection and adaptability.. you pray and perform rituals in respect to the crocodile/sobek etc to gain said attributes.
This simply isn't an example of athiesm.
Their gods were very real, the personifications of them might not be. I can represent an Atom by drawing a human-like character and say "he is the smallest being in the universe yet omnipresent." I can pray to Atom every Wednesday for the ability to be whole or someshit.
Are you telling me that just becasue my god isn't exactly Man and IS a scientific or Natural reality that I have no god?
If in the beginning I want to pray to the sun because My people realized that through the sun all Life on earth (as we know it) functions then the sun is a Deity... It's very simple.
It's the modern concepts of god which spans from self Idolization that treads closer to atheism to be fair. it's as if the fear of god is required for your god to be legitimate... that a god likes and desires worship... like humans do.. It's backwards and contorts our perception of religion in general.
Posts: 1781 | From: New York | Registered: Jul 2016
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A crocodile can represent protection and adaptability.. you pray and perform rituals in respect to the crocodile/sobek etc to gain said attributes.
So the Egyptians believed that the gods would hear their prayers and give them their attributes?
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: [QUOTE]Originally posted by Elmaestro:
A crocodile can represent protection and adaptability.. you pray and perform rituals in respect to the crocodile/sobek etc to gain said attributes.
So the Egyptians believed that the gods would hear their prayers and give them their attributes?
hmm...Do you not understand what was said?
there's a difference between granting and representing. there's a difference between embodying and receiving.
one again I ask... is human like behavior a requirement for a deity?
..just in case you don't get it the short answer is a No. To your question and mine.
Posts: 1781 | From: New York | Registered: Jul 2016
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A crocodile can represent protection and adaptability.. you pray and perform rituals in respect to the crocodile/sobek etc to gain said attributes.
So the Egyptians believed that the gods would hear their prayers and give them their attributes?
hmm...Do you not understand what was said?
there's a difference between granting and representing. there's a difference between embodying and receiving.
one again I ask... is human like behavior a requirement for a deity?
..just in case you don't get it the short answer is a No. To your question and mine.
So they believed there were gods controlling rain or wind etc. but there was no way of communicating with these gods.
So then a "god" of this type is not something that responds to prayers, offerings or sacrifices.
It is not a god in the sense of god as Jews, Christians and Muslim describe.
It means the exact same thing as "nature" or some particular thing "rain" or "wind" but they are just using a god's name instead of "nature" or "rain "or "wind"
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Tukuler
multidisciplinary Black Scholar
Member # 19944
posted
I double co-sign T-hotep's observations.
Do atheist offer sacrifice? Do atheist praise and worship? Do atheist strive for ressurection?
Osiris is exactly where the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim concept of a god demanding 'morality' complete with judgement reward or punishment after death originates.
Nor is the Jew/Xtian/Muslim god idea really any different than the 'Orisha' Hindu, etc., god ideas. Aren't Orisha the same as god and saints? Won't the Hindu believe you a fool if you think Gonesh is really an elephanantgod not a representation of a divine attribute?
The Hebrews were sure their god whipped all other gods asses starting with the gods of Egypt? Two late Egyptian authors wrote the Egyptian response to the 'Exodus' story. They complained about Osarsiph's (Moses) disruption of normal Egyptian worship.
Early Egyptian authors thought their gods were angry or let them down when the Aamu took over Lower Egypt. Later they adopted some Aamu gods into the Egyptian pantheon, Qadesh, Reshef, Mekal, etc.
A crocodile can represent protection and adaptability.. you pray and perform rituals in respect to the crocodile/sobek etc to gain said attributes.
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,:
So the Egyptians believed that the gods would hear their prayers and give them their attributes?
.
quote:Originally posted by Elmaestro:
..just in case you don't get it the short answer is a No.
there's a difference between granting and representing. there's a difference between embodying and receiving.
quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: Won't the Hindu believe you a fool if you think Gonesh is really an elephanantgod not a representation of a divine attribute?
wikipedia
Ganesha Devotees believe that if Ganesha is propitiated, he grants success, prosperity and protection against adversity
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quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: I double co-sign T-hotep's observations.
Do atheist offer sacrifice? Do atheist praise and worship? Do atheist strive for ressurection?
Early Egyptian authors thought their gods were angry or let them down when the Aamu took over Lower Egypt. Later they adopted some Aamu gods into the Egyptian pantheon, Qadesh, Reshef, Mekal, etc.
The problem is mistranslation.
Not only do no words exist in Ancient Language denoting thought but there are very few words suggesting religion and it appears each of these words is mistranslated. Words like "pray" do not exist, nor does "sacrifice" or "worship".
Instead we have words like "priest" that would more accurately be translated as "scientist", "temple" that would more accurately be "place where a god exists", and "magic" that is really metaphysics.
They simply lacked the language to invent, hold, or express superstition. Without the language there can be no superstition, no magic, and no religion. They could not be religious nor atheistic because they lacked all belief and expressed themselves in tautology.
-------------------- Men fear the pyramid, time fears man. Posts: 393 | From: NW Indiana, US of A | Registered: Aug 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Tukuler: Do atheist strive for ressurection?
"Resurrection" as a word doesn't exist either but I didn't note it because the way we read the Pyramid Texts the concept seems to permeate the words.
But this is merely misinterpretation. Where we see "resurrection" they were actually describing "transmogrification" where the dead king became the pyramid and stopped being a mummy when his body was cremated in the "iskn".
We misapprehend, misinterpret, and mistranslate every single word and the entire culture. We have turned these people into primitive and superstitious versions of ourselves when they were nothing at all like us. We simply can't imagine that they didn't think like us so we read things into their words that don't exist including modern vocabulary that did not exist.
-------------------- Men fear the pyramid, time fears man. Posts: 393 | From: NW Indiana, US of A | Registered: Aug 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Elmaestro: you're confused fam... No one is afraid of atheism.
look here: "Therefore somebody might say they didn't really believe in gods with human like behavior" -is human like behavior a requirement for a diety?
"they just had their artists come up with these gods as a teaching tool about nature." -This to my knowledge is not true.
There are many aspects of theology that you're dropping because the Aegyptians gods aren't 1:1 with western gods in concept, which is the problem. This is the same reason why people get so confused when other traditions or religion partake in "worship" of idols and other life forms.
A crocodile can represent protection and adaptability.. you pray and perform rituals in respect to the crocodile/sobek etc to gain said attributes.
This simply isn't an example of athiesm.
Their gods were very real, the personifications of them might not be. I can represent an Atom by drawing a human-like character and say "he is the smallest being in the universe yet omnipresent." I can pray to Atom every Wednesday for the ability to be whole or someshit.
Are you telling me that just becasue my god isn't exactly Man and IS a scientific or Natural reality that I have no god?
If in the beginning I want to pray to the sun because My people realized that through the sun all Life on earth (as we know it) functions then the sun is a Deity... It's very simple.
It's the modern concepts of god which spans from self Idolization that treads closer to atheism to be fair. it's as if the fear of god is required for your god to be legitimate... that a god likes and desires worship... like humans do.. It's backwards and contorts our perception of religion in general.
You are missing why people fear atheism. Death. Death has a greater sting with a nature based religion than a magic base religion.
Posts: 1254 | From: howdy | Registered: Mar 2014
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quote:Originally posted by Yatunde Lisa: no, nature is god and gods are nature.
Let’s look at the etymology of the word god. And what I will dissect here, is still the basics.
The word god stems from a Germanic pantheon, which is a pagan Germanic deity by itself. The initial pronunciation was most likely Wod from Woden (godan / Odin).
God is a derived from Gott (gutt). Gott is how it is written in German. In proto-Germanic the word is “guthan”. This became guth in Irish (meaning voice, vote). Another derivative is gotha, meaning high society/ aristocracy! This is translates into “elite, jet set” etc... while aristocracy is derived from Greek (aristokratíā, “the rule of the best”), from ἄριστος (áristos, “best, noblest”) + -κρατίᾱ (-kratíā), from κράτος (krátos, “power, rule”).
This became the Old Irish guth, from Proto-Celtic *gutus, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰuHtus, from *ǵʰewH- (“to call on, invoke”). And the Proto Scottish Gaelic “guthan”, hence “gothic”.
All these words were still use interchangeable in the old codex (books) by first converts from / to Gnosticism.
Noun
aristocracy (countable and uncountable, plural aristocracies)
The nobility, or the hereditary ruling class.
1791, Thomas Paine, Rights of Man: That, then, which is called aristocracy in some countries and nobility in others arose out of the governments founded upon conquest.
Government by such a class, or a state with such a government A class of people considered (not normally universally) superior to others.
The Goths (Gothic: Gut-þiuda; Latin: Gothi) were an East Germanic people, two of whose branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire through the long series of Gothic Wars and in the emergence of Medieval Europe. The Goths dominated a vast area, which at its peak under the Germanic king Ermanaric and his sub-king Athanaric possibly extended all the way from the Danube to the Don, and from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea. The Goths spoke the Gothic language, one of the extinct East Germanic languages. It was last spoken in Crimea in the 18th century by the Crimean Goths.
Plautdietsch Noun
Gott m (plural Jetta) god Proper noun
Gott m God
This became the Noun
guth m (genitive singular gutha or gotha, nominative plural guthanna or gothanna or gotha)
“voice, vote”.
From there we get to words like guthán m (genitive singular gutháin, nominative plural gutháin) telephone (guthán póca). How does this explain? In Greek methodology and mythology god is invisible. Via tele-phone you can hear the voice not see the person talking to you.
guth m (genitive singular gutha, plural guthan)
Voice Derived terms
aon-ghuthach
guthach - voiced
guth fulangach - passive voice
guth spreigeach - active voice
neo-ghuthach - voiceless
Etymology
From Old High German got, from Proto-Germanic *gudą, from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰutós. Compare Dutch and English god, Danish gud, Gothic 𐌲𐌿𐌸 (guþ). The word was neuter in Old High German.
German Proper noun Edit GOtt m (genitive GOttes) (obsolete) Alternative letter-case form of Gott (“God (Christian deity)”) [fell out of use around 1800]
Older derivatives go to Nordic methology and worship of Nordic deity’s and the PIE (Proto Indo European):
god (n.) Old English god "supreme being, deity; the Christian God; image of a god; godlike person," from Proto-Germanic *guthan (source also of Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Dutch god, Old High German got, German Gott, Old Norse guð, Gothic guþ), from PIE *ghut- "that which is invoked" (source also of Old Church Slavonic zovo "to call," Sanskrit huta- "invoked," an epithet of Indra), from root *gheu(e)- "to call, invoke."
But some trace it to PIE *ghu-to- "poured," from root *gheu- "to pour, pour a libation" (source of Greek khein "to pour," also in the phrase khute gaia "poured earth," referring to a burial mound; see found (v.2)). "Given the Greek facts, the Germanic form may have referred in the first instance to the spirit immanent in a burial mound" [Watkins].
The root-meaning of the name (from Gothic root gheu; Sanskrit hub or emu, "to invoke or to sacrifice to") is either "the one invoked" or "the one sacrificed to."
From different Indo-Germanic roots (div, "to shine" or "give light"; thes in thessasthai "to implore") come the Indo-Iranian deva, Sanskrit dyaus (gen. divas), Latin deus, Greek theos, Irish and Gaelic dia, all of which are generic names; also Greek Zeus (gen. Dios, Latin Jupiter (jovpater), Old Teutonic Tiu or Tiw (surviving in Tuesday), Latin Janus, Diana, and other proper names of pagan deities.
Posts: 22234 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: Were the ancient Egyptians Atheists?
They ancient Egyptians were animist, just like other African communities.
“The Book of Gates” and “Tutankhamen, Amenism, Atenism and Egyptian monotheism, with hieroglyphic texts of hymns to Amen and Aten”, by E. A. Wallis Budge
Posts: 22234 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: [qb] Were the ancient Egyptians Atheists?
They ancient Egyptians were animist, just like other African communities.
what is your definition of animist?
this search
"egyptians were polytheistic"
yields over 18,000 results on google
However this search
"egyptians were animists" yields only 3
and
"egyptians were animistic" yields only 6
___________________________
It's a weak showing and the sources aren't strong.
If you look at a lot of the Egyptian gods some are in animal form tending to but many are in human form
Posts: 42921 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: [qb] Were the ancient Egyptians Atheists?
They ancient Egyptians were animist, just like other African communities.
what is your definition of animist?
this search
"egyptians were polytheistic"
yields over 18,000 results on google
However this search
"egyptians were animists" yields only 3
and
"egyptians were animistic" yields only 6
___________________________
It's a weak showing and the sources aren't strong.
If you look at a lot of the Egyptian gods some are in animal form tending to but many are in human form
That’s your problem.
I posted this along.
“The Book of Gates” and “Tutankhamen, Amenism, Atenism and Egyptian monotheism, with hieroglyphic texts of hymns to Amen and Aten”, by E. A. Wallis Budge
Posts: 22234 | From: האם אינכם כילדי הכרית אלי בני ישראל | Registered: Nov 2010
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