Talk:God and gender

message: A couple of days ago, I deleted a very long, discursive and irrelevant quote from a self-published novelist called Fady Bahig that appeared on this page. What do you know, I turn up today and it has found its way back in thanks to some unregistered user! I've reverted the page to remove the quotation again. If anyone sees very long quotations from this random person sneaking back in, could they please remove them? Wikipedia isn't an advertising forum. Thank you! -- TinaSparkle 15:59, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Spam

message: I've copyedited, NPOVed and cleaned up large parts of this article, and converted it from essay-style text into encyclopedic text, and edited it down to a manageable length - all as per Wikipedia policy. There is still an awful lot to be done, especially in the "Translating the names of God into English" section, which is far too long, too wordy, too filled with quotes and generally like someone's essay on the subject rather than an encyclopedia article. Interesting though much of this material may be, it is not relevant, and is inappropriate in an encyclopedia article. 
There is a great deal still to be done to make this article readable, clear, unbiased and informative. I would encourage everyone to read Wikipedia's guide to writing great articles (click through the Help links) and not pad this piece out with lots of extraneous detail which will confuse and discourage the general reader. -- TinaSparkle 19:41, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Extensive cleanup

message: Not all Christians believe in genderless God; in fact, the maleness of God the Father and God the Son are beliefs that have influenced Christianity profoundly throughout its existence, from denounciations of heresies which suggest women should or even have been priests or bishops, historic debates on whether women had souls or were less in the image of God and more like animals, to restrictions on women's role in church, marriage and family life.  I think most contemporary lay Christians and some theologians might disagree with current statemnt "In Christianity, God is believed to be intrinsically sexless." SC 04:00, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You are correct.  off of the internet (in the real world) I have rarely met a Christian with this view.  Most Christians historically have viewed God as male; I suspect that most Christians alive today still do, even if that isn't what their chuch officially teaches.  I've personally met Christians who told me that "God is a man", and their reasoning is that Jesus was a man, and that Jesus was God incarnate.  This is not some very rare view; it is quite mainstream, and the article needs to represent the majority view as such. RK 14:27, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

text: I can understand how one could believe that God was male; perhaps one was influenced by parents, art, or some other medium. But HOW could they actually believe that God was female? There has never been an ounce of proof from a mainstream writing or other medium (that I know of, unless one considers polytheistic religion, but that isn't Christianity) that has ever depicted God as a female. I could, of course, be mistaken...Robinson0120 08:05, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Christianity and genderless God

message: I think the point should be expressed more clearly/prominently on the page that some Christians believe that God is simply beyond gender identification.  Genderless is not exactly equivalent to being transcendent beyond gender.  All of our languages, even the ancient ones, are limited in their ability to express this, and God generally springs out of any conceptual box that we mortals try to put Him/Her/It/Them/*/ in.  It is important to acknowledge that the traditional view of a masculine God strongly shaped church history.  It did, and that is a fact.  However, while God is not changing, our understanding of Him (for lack of a better term) is.  
My opinion, we probably shouldn't make such a big deal out of it, and worry instead about following the chief command issued by God, namely "Love your neighbor as yourself." Sr.Wombat 02:19, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not sexless, "Transcendent" 

message: Almost every last word of the christianity section is dedicated to the heterodox views of God's gender. That's quite insufficient. Thanatosimii 01:45, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Major addition needed

message: I removed the following from the text:
:They are an image of Elohim. The plural word for God (Elohim) and the words "let us .." reflect not only the idea of God surrounded by a heavenly court but also the notion of God as combining all the characteristics of the male and female gods in the Canaanite pantheon which Yahweh transcends, yet includes.     
The "-iym" ending, in Hebrew the word Elohiym is plural, and not to be confused with the dual endings of mayim (water) and chayyim (Life). These are one substance, but with a certain fluidity demanding terminology expressing this. The water has no one true surface - its form is ever changing face. In "Chayyim", we are dealing with a Hebrew concept of more than one type of life combined. Had this been the only need for an other than singular ending for "Elohiym", the dual "-im", not the true plural "-iym" would have been employed. We cannot attribute to this word any singularity of form in the Hebrew Bible. When not referring to GOD, it is always plural. But no Hebrew saw GOD as alike to HIS creation. - thus the term "ELOHIYM", as reserved for divine reference, though coupled with singular verbs (though not always), is used not to denote one person but more than one displaying perfect unity. The word Elohim is not the only plural noun used for GOD in the Tanakh. When people read this word in the Bible as singular, they are creating a presumptious warping of historical religious nomenclature.  The word elohim  had an origin that gave it a straightforward plural grammatical form, whatever post-Biblical Israelites have since thought of this word.
The Encyclopedia Judaica has this to say, however, in the article "Names of God".
:In reference to Israel's "God" it is used extremely often-more than 2,000 times - and often with the article, ha-elohim, "the (true) God." Occasionally, the plural form elohim, even when used of the God of Israel, is construed with a plural verb or adjective (e.g., Gen. 20: 13; 35:7; Ex. 32:4, 8; II Sam. 7:23; Ps. 58: 12), especially in the expression elohim hayyim, "the living God."
:In the vast majority of cases, however, the plural form is treated as if it were a noun in the singular. The odd fact that Hebrew uses a plural noun to designate the sole God of Israel has been explained in various ways.  It is not to be understood as a remnant of the polytheism of Abraham's ancestors, or hardly as a "plural of majesty" - if there is such a thing in Hebrew.  Some scholars take it as a plural that expresses an abstract idea (e.g., zekunim, "old age"; neurim, "time of youth"), so that Elohim would really mean "the Divinity."
:More likely, however, it came from Canaanite usage; the early Israelites would have taken over elohim as a singular noun just as they made their own the rest of the Canaanite language.  In the Tell-el-Amarna Letters Pharaoh is often addressed as "my gods [ilaniya] the sun-god."  In the ancient Near East of the second half of the second millennium B.C.E. there was a certain trend toward quasi-monotheism, and any god could be given the attributes of any other god, so that an individual god could be addressed as elohai, "my gods" or adonai, "my lords." The early Israelites felt no inconsistency in referring to their sole God in these terms.
:Encyclopedia Judaica, Keter Publishing
:: Nonetheless, even if the term "Elohim" is now singular in Hebrew, it may well have once been plural; otherwise, there would really have been no reason for keeping it in a quasi-plural form. Also, there was likely a period in which some Hebrew-speakers and Israelites agreed with their Canaanite neighbors' polytheism, and used "Elohim" in the plural, while other Hebrew-speakers were monotheistic, and used the word out of general habit.  Otherwise, there'd be no reason for prophets to be constantly hooting down their fellow Israelites for idolatry. Rickyrab 04:08, 15 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Although it may once have been plural, it seems never to have functioned this way in the Israelite religion and in rabbinic Judaism.  Within these groups all evidence shows that it has always been understood as singular. RK 14:27, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

text: In the places where female gender is used, the word is mophologically archaic (see Elohim).
On page "Elohim" there is absolutely nothing about morphological archaism, but there was some linguistically-incorrect information about "Eloah" being feminine in form which I have removed (see Talk:Elohim).  The page Elohim is in desperate need of a major overhaul in any case. AnonMoos 02:32, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Elohim problems

message: I really don't understand what the following passage is supposed to mean:
:In the places where female gender is used, the word is mophologically archaic (see Elohim).
On page "Elohim" there is absolutely nothing about morphological archaism, but there was some linguistically-incorrect information about "Eloah" being feminine in form which I have removed (see Talk:Elohim).  The page Elohim is in desperate need of a major overhaul in any case. AnonMoos 02:32, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Further Elohim problems

message: This paragraph is not very well written. Forgiveable; not everyone is a native speaker of English. I will try to improve it, but it may lose accuracy.
:In Quran God is always mentioned as "He" ( i.e if u read Quran u will think that God has a male gender) But as Islam bleieves that God has no gender so the research has done on it .As the Arabic Scholars say that in arabic the female gender also reffer to plural and only male gender is singular so God is reffered as "He" male gender because Islam Bleieve that God is One i.e singular.
Evertype 09:57, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  God in Islam "Arabic" Quran - paragraph problematic at best 

message: I recommend AGAINST merging the Hebrew Scripture section with Judaism since the Hebrew scriptures are used by both Christianity and Judaism-- otherwise it would appear that Christianity in general does not use th Hebrew Scriptures.Lil'dummy 13:00, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point, though the Christianity section already makes that point where it is relevant. Readers who know it already do not need it featured, readers who don't cannot conclude it mearly from layout, but need explicit mention of it. And, as said, that already exists where it is relevant. Alastair Haines 18:51, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hebrew Scripture merge with Judaism? 

message: Just reporting that, as promised, with one week's notice, I've deleted several unsourced sentences I know to be false (and can cite references to prove it). The next step, as previously mentioned is to remove unsourced material I know to be true, but tangential to the topic of the article. This will be done in one week, again as mentioned previously. At this point it looks like it will result in the deletion of a couple of sections that will have no material left. I will also be merging what remains and is relevant in The Hebrew scriptures section into the Judaism section -- namely one simile from Isaiah. Alastair Haines 06:48, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: More likely, the impression given by separating the Hebrew scriptures from Judaism and Christianity would be that these communities go beyond the scriptures associated with them. That is to say, separate sections would suggest: the Hebrew scriptures say X, Judaism says X + Y, and Christianity says X + Y + Z. The relationship of Christianity to the Hebrew scriptures is explicit in the Christianity section, as it needs to be, because we cannot assume readers know this already, nor that they can infer it from the way we partition the text. If the partition is understood the way you suggest, a reader could also wrongly infer that Sikhism and Hinduism are associated with the Hebrew scriptures. Another good reason for the merger, good point. Alastair Haines 02:54, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Clean-up stage 2

message: I re-wrote much of the very weasel-wordy content.  There is still much that could be done in relation genderless-God-branches of Christianity. Justin Satyr 02:47, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Christianity Update 

message: Qohelet is a feminine noun in Hebrew, best known to Bible readers in translation as the title of the book of Ecclesiastes. Although the noun inflects like other feminine nouns, masculine forms of words relating to it are used in the Hebrew text. At the end of the book we are told that Qohelet was a "wise man". This is just one of many examples that demonstrate that the grammatical class of a noun in Hebrew doesn't tell us much about how the ancient Jews perceived the real gender of the persons denoted by nouns of either class. Pronouns and adjectives tell us more, but even these can be problematic. Alastair Haines 15:30, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Qohelet 

message: Half of this article is about the gender of God.  The other half is about gender in general in the Bible.  Can we split this into two articles, say Gender of God (currently a redirect) and Gender in Bible translation? --Alynna 14:58, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: A very excellent suggestion imo, Alynna. When I have a little time, I will seek to put your idea into practice. Even better though, if would help, or at least cheer from the sidelines were you to do this yourself. Alastair Haines 14:21, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Propose split