102-399: Theophany ( Ancient Greek : θεοφάνεια , romanized : theopháneia , lit. 'appearance of a deity') is an encounter with a deity that manifests in an observable and tangible form. It is often confused with other types of encounters with a deity, but these interactions are not considered theophanies unless the deity reveals itself in a visible form. Traditionally,
204-496: A Canaanite myth in which God creates the world by vanquishing the water deities: "Awake, awake! ... It was you that hacked Rahab in pieces, that pierced the Dragon! It was you that dried up the Sea, the waters of the great Deep, that made the abysses of the Sea a road that the redeemed might walk..." The first creation account is divided into seven days during which God creates light (day 1);
306-537: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in
408-552: A "forceful, theophanic voice" calling them to undertake reforms. These letters were published in a compilation entitled Summons of the Lord of Hosts in 2002. The JBS article described Bahá’u’lláh's "Theophanology" as "progressivist". He claimed "spiritual Authority" in these letters in which he warned western leaders of the dangers facing humanity should they choose to not act on His Guidance. Human religious lore includes ancient literary recordings of deities appearing to animals. Usually,
510-684: A Theology without a Theophany is both dry and difficult to defend. We want an avatar, i.e. a 'descent' of God in human form". A 1991 article in the Journal of Bahá’í Studies (JBS), described "Bahá’í theophanology" as "acceptance of the Prophet, or 'Manifestation of God,' who speaks on behalf of God." The author explained that Bahá’u’lláh wrote a series of epistles in the 1860s to kings and rulers, including Pope Pius IX , Napoleon III , Tsar Alexander II of Russia , Queen Victoria , and Naser al-Din Shah Qajar , in
612-459: A firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.' 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. On day two, God creates the firmament ( rāqîa ), which is named šamayim ( ' sky ' or ' heaven ' ), to divide
714-695: A king, God has merely to speak for things to happen. On day one, God creates light and separates the light from the darkness. Then he names them. God therefore creates time. Creation by speech is not found in Mesopotamian mythology, but it is present in some ancient Egyptian creation myths . While some Egyptian accounts have a god creating the world by sneezing or masturbating, the Memphite Theology has Ptah create by speech. In Genesis, creative acts begin with speech and are finalized with naming. This has parallels in other ancient Near Eastern cultures. In
816-472: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and
918-463: A large measure of local autonomy within the empire, but required the local authorities to produce a single law code accepted by the entire community. According to this theory, there were two powerful groups in the community, the priestly families who controlled the Temple, and the landowning families who made up the "elders," which were in conflict over many issues. Each had its own "history of origins," but
1020-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in
1122-443: A literary bridge at Genesis 2:4 , "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created." This echoes the first line of Genesis 1, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth", and is reversed in the next phrase, "...in the day that the L ORD God made the earth and the heavens". This verse is one of ten "generations" ( Hebrew : תולדות toledot ) phrases used throughout Genesis, which provide
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#17328547409871224-702: A literary structure to the book. They normally function as headings to what comes after, but the position of this, the first of the series, has been the subject of much debate. The overlapping stories of Genesis 1 and 2 are usually regarded as contradictory but also complementary, with the first (the Priestly story) concerned with the creation of the entire cosmos while the second (the Jahwist story) focuses on man as moral agent and cultivator of his environment. Comparative mythology provides historical and cross-cultural perspectives for Jewish mythology . Both sources behind
1326-499: A more "scientific" model as imagined by Greek philosophers, according to which the Earth was a sphere at the centre of concentric shells of celestial spheres containing the Sun, Moon, stars and planets. The idea that God created the world out of nothing ( creatio ex nihilo ) has become central today to Islam, Christianity, and Judaism – indeed, the medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides felt it
1428-581: A number of Greek sites and festivals. At Delphi , the Theophania (Θεοφάνια) was an annual festival in spring celebrating the return of Apollo from his winter quarters in Hyperborea . The culmination of the festival was a display of an image of the gods, usually hidden in the sanctuary , to worshippers. The most well-known theophany is in the Bhagavad Gita , one chapter of the larger epic of Mahabharata . On
1530-543: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment
1632-449: A repetitious structure of divine fiat and fulfillment, then the statement "And there was evening and there was morning, the [ n ] day," for each of the six days of creation. In each of the first three days there is an act of division: day one divides the darkness from light , day two the "waters above" from the "waters below", and day three the sea from the land. In each of the next three days these divisions are populated: day four populates
1734-671: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek , and Koine may be classified as Ancient Greek in a wider sense. There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek
1836-460: A series of statements of what did not exist at the moment when creation began; Enuma Elish has a spring (in the sea) as the point where creation begins, paralleling the spring (on the land – Genesis 2 is notable for being a "dry" creation story) in Genesis 2:6 that "watered the whole face of the ground"; in both myths, Yahweh/the gods first create a man to serve him/them, then animals and vegetation. At
1938-514: A single God whose power is uncontested and who brings order out of chaos. Creation takes place over six days. The creative acts are arranged so that the first three days set up the environments necessary for the creations of the last three days to thrive. For example, God creates light on the first day and the light-producing heavenly bodies on the fourth day. Each day follows a similar literary pattern: Verse 31 sums up all of creation with, "God saw every thing that He had made, and, indeed, it
2040-609: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c. 300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as
2142-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and
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#17328547409872244-457: Is a critique of the Mesopotamian theology of creation: Genesis affirms monotheism and denies polytheism . Scholarly writings frequently refer to Genesis as myth, a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is in contrast to more vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead,
2346-556: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of
2448-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected
2550-478: Is also seen in the Genesis flood narrative , where God uses wind to make the waters subside in Genesis 8:1. In Enuma Elish , the storm god Marduk defeats Tiamat with his wind. While stories of a cosmic battle prior to creation were familiar to ancient Israelites (see above ) , there is no such battle in Genesis 1 though the text includes the primeval ocean and references to God's wind. Instead, Genesis 1 depicts
2652-417: Is ambiguous and can be translated in other ways. The NRSV translates verses 1 and 2 as, "In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void ..." This translation suggests that earth, in some way, already existed when God began his creative activity. Biblical scholars John Day and David Toshio Tsumura argue that Genesis 1:1 describes the initial creation of
2754-644: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to
2856-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in
2958-764: Is given dominion over the animals. Eve , the first woman, is created from Adam's rib as his companion. The first major comprehensive draft of the Pentateuch is thought to have been composed in the late 7th or the 6th century BCE (the Jahwist source) and was later expanded by other authors (the Priestly source ) into a work much alike to Genesis as known today. The authors of the text were influenced by Mesopotamian mythology and ancient near eastern cosmology , and borrowed several themes from them, adapting and integrating them with their unique belief in one God . The combined narrative
3060-480: Is largely from the Jahwist source (J), commonly dated to the 10th or 9th centuries BCE. The two stories were combined, but there is currently no scholarly consensus on when the narrative reached its final form. A common hypothesis among biblical scholars today is that the first major comprehensive narrative of the Pentateuch was composed in the 7th or 6th centuries BCE. A sizeable minority of scholars believe that
3162-638: Is mentioned 35 times, "heaven/firmament" and "earth" 21 times each, and the phrases "and it was so" and "God saw that it was good" occur 7 times each. The cosmos created in Genesis 1 bears a striking resemblance to the Tabernacle in Exodus 35–40 , which was the prototype of the Temple in Jerusalem and the focus of priestly worship of Yahweh ; for this reason, and because other Middle Eastern creation stories also climax with
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3264-538: Is no complete combat myth preserved in the Bible. However, there are fragmentary allusions to such a myth in Isaiah 27:1 , Isaiah 51:9–10 , Job 26:12–13 . These passages describe how God defeated the forces of chaos. These forces are personified as sea monsters . These monsters are variously named Yam (Sea), Nahar (River), Leviathan (Coiled One), Rahab (Arrogant One), and Tannin (Dragon). Psalm 74 and Isaiah 51 recall
3366-558: Is no trace of the resistance to the reduction of chaos to order (Greek: theomachy , lit. "God-fighting"), all of which mark the Mesopotamian creation accounts. The gods in Enuma Elish are amoral , they have limited powers, and they create humans to be their slaves . In Genesis 1, however, God is all powerful. He creates humans in the divine image, and cares for their wellbeing, and gives them dominion over every living thing. Enuma Elish has also left traces on Genesis 2. Both begin with
3468-519: Is referred to as " Elohim " (the Hebrew generic word for " god "), whereas in the second story, he is referred to with a composite divine name; " L ORD God". Traditional or evangelical scholars such as Collins explain this as a single author's variation in style in order to, for example, emphasize the unity and transcendence of "God" in the first narrative, who created the heavens and the earth by himself. Critical scholars such as Richard Elliot Friedman , on
3570-608: Is the Mi'raj , the Prophet's ascent into Heaven. He speaks to the Holy Spirit (Gabriel), sometimes called "a night journey from Mecca through Jerusalem." Hamza ibn Ali ibn Ahmad is considered the founder of the Druze and the primary author of the Druze manuscripts, he proclaimed that God had become human and taken the form of man, al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah . al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah is an important figure in
3672-543: Is used to describe the desert wilderness. Bohu has no known meaning, although it appears to be related to the Arabic word bahiya ("to be empty"), and was apparently coined to rhyme with and reinforce tohu . The phrase appears also in Jeremiah 4:23 where the prophet warns Israel that rebellion against God will lead to the return of darkness and chaos, "as if the earth had been 'uncreated'". Verse 2 continues, " darkness
3774-570: The ruach of God [Elohim] moved upon the face of the waters." There are several options for translating the Hebrew word ruach ( רוּחַ ). It could mean "breath", "wind", or "spirit" in different contexts. The traditional translation is "spirit of God". In the Hebrew Bible, the spirit of God is understood to be an extension of God's power. The term is analogous to saying the "hand of the Lord" ( 2 Kings 3:15 ). Historically, Christian theologians supported "spirit" as it provided biblical support for
3876-454: The Druze faith whose eponymous founder ad-Darazi proclaimed him as the incarnation of God in 1018. The Baháʼí Faith believes that God is manifest in the prophets . The "Manifestation of God" is a concept that refers to prophets like Zoroaster , Gautama Buddha , Abraham , Moses , Jesus , Muhammad , the Báb , and Baháʼu'lláh . The Manifestations of God are a series of personages who reflect
3978-733: The First Book of Nephi and concluded that the Theophanies in the Bible and the Book of Mormon have much in common. And being thus overcome with the Spirit, he was carried away in a Vision, even that he saw the Heavens open, and he thought he saw God sitting upon his Throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels in the attitude of singing and praising their God. And it came to pass that he saw One descending out of
4080-745: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect
4182-471: The New Testament . Adaptions to his hypothesis in current evangelical research and intercollegiate debate describe these manifestations as the post-incarnate Christ (yet to be published), as though in being a divine human capable of time travel He could foretell his later incarnation as having already lived it. The term Christophany has also been coined to identify post-incarnate appearances of Christ in both
Theophany - Misplaced Pages Continue
4284-514: The Torah and biblical scholars call the Pentateuch), is "a composite work, the product of many hands and periods." The creation narrative consists of two separate accounts, drawn from different sources. The first account, in Genesis 1:1–2:3, is from what scholars call the Priestly source (P), largely dated to the 6th century BCE. The second account, which is older and takes up the rest of Genesis 2,
4386-500: The creative word : "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" ( John 1:1 ). When the Jews came into contact with Greek thought, there followed a major reinterpretation of the underlying cosmology of the Genesis narrative. The biblical authors conceived the cosmos as a flat disc-shaped Earth in the centre, an underworld for the dead below, and heaven above. Below
4488-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)
4590-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):
4692-490: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from
4794-559: The Biblical passages led Christian scholars to understand Theophany as an unambiguous Manifestation of God to man. Otherwise, the more general term hierophany is used. Some modern evangelical Christian Bible commentators, such as Ron Rhodes, interpret "the angel of the Lord", who appears in several places throughout the Old Testament, to be the pre-incarnate Christ , which is Jesus before his manifestation into human form, as described in
4896-612: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs, Genesis 1 The Genesis creation narrative is the creation myth of both Judaism and Christianity , told in the Book of Genesis ch. 1–2. While
4998-518: The Creation to the Flood and its aftermath. The two share numerous plot-details (e.g. the divine garden and the role of the first man in the garden, the creation of the man from a mixture of earth and divine substance, the chance of immortality , etc.), and have a similar overall theme: the gradual clarification of man's relationship with God(s) and animals. Genesis 1–2 reflects ancient ideas about science: in
5100-460: The Earth were the "waters of chaos", the cosmic sea, home to mythic monsters defeated and slain by God; in Exodus 20:4, God warns against making an image "of anything that is in the waters under the earth". There were also waters above the Earth, and so the raqia ( firmament ), a solid bowl, was necessary to keep them from flooding the world. During the Hellenistic period , this was largely replaced by
5202-504: The Genesis creation narrative were influenced by Mesopotamian mythology , borrowing several themes from them but adapting them to their belief in one God , establishing a monotheistic creation in opposition to the polytheistic creation myth of ancient Israel's neighbors. Genesis 1 bears striking similarities and differences with Enuma Elish , the Babylonian creation myth . The myth begins with two primeval entities: Apsu ,
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#17328547409875304-437: The Hebrew bara' , a word used only for God's creative activity; people do not engage in bara' . Walton argues that bara' does not necessarily refer to the creation of matter. In the ancient Near East , "to create" meant assigning roles and functions. The bara' which God performs in Genesis 1 concerns bringing "heaven and earth" from chaos into ordered existence. Day disputes Walton's functional interpretation of
5406-473: The Jewish and Christian tradition is that the account is one comprehensive story modern scholars of biblical criticism identify the account as a composite work made up of two stories drawn from different sources. The first account, in Genesis 1:1–2:3, is from what scholars call the Priestly source (P), largely dated to the 6th century BCE. In this story, Elohim (the Hebrew generic word for " god ") creates
5508-465: The Memphite Theology, the creator god names everything. Similarly, Enuma Elish begins when heaven, earth, and the gods were unnamed. Walton writes, "In this way of thinking, things did not exist unless they were named." According to biblical scholar Nahum Sarna , this similarity is "wholly superficial" because in other ancient narratives creation by speech involves magic : The pronouncement of
5610-607: The Old and New Testaments. 1 Peter 4 (v.6) allows for the interpretation that on the Son's Father-Spirit (as the third member of the trinity fulfilling the unity of various persons as Christ is crowned King of Kings) and being conferred from the cross with the words, "Eloi, Eloi! Lama Sabachtani", was thereby born or separated as the timeless Word (or angel) of God (John 1 and 5) with the character and memory of Christ, even giving permission for creation "Let there be.." ( Genesis 1 ) . This also has been
5712-503: The Persian promise of greatly increased local autonomy for all provided a powerful incentive to cooperate in producing a single text. The creation narrative is made up of two stories, roughly equivalent to the two first chapters of the Book of Genesis (there are no chapter divisions in the original Hebrew text; see " chapters and verses of the Bible "). In the first story, the Creator deity
5814-413: The animals relay the experience to humans using human speech: More recently, science fiction author Philip K. Dick reportedly had a Theophany on 3 February 1974, which would become the basis for his semi- biographic works VALIS (1981) and Radio Free Albemuth (1985). In 1977, Michel Potay testified he witnessed five Theophanies. He published the text he says he received from God in "The Book",
5916-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has
6018-517: The attributes of the divine in the human world, for the progress and advancement of human morals and civilization. In the 1914 publication titled The Reconciliation of Races and Religions , Thomas Kelly Cheyne , FBA (1841–1915), an ordained minister in the Church of England and Oxford University scholar, described Theophany within the context of the Baháʼí Faith . Cheyne wrote, "...one feels that
6120-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in
6222-465: The battlefield of Kurukshetra, the god Krishna gives the famed warrior Arjuna a series of teachings. Arjuna begs for Krishna to reveal his "universal form." Krishna complies and gives Arjuna the spiritual vision, enabling him to see Krishna in the universal form. A number of other theophanies are described in the Mahabharata . First, the god Indra 's appearance to Kunti , with the subsequent birth of
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#17328547409876324-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West
6426-497: The construction of a temple/house for the creator god , Genesis 1 can be interpreted as a description of the construction of the cosmos as God's house, for which the Temple in Jerusalem served as the earthly representative. The opening phrase of Genesis 1:1 is traditionally translated in English as " in the beginning God created". This translation suggests creatio ex nihilo ( ' creation from nothing ' ). The Hebrew, however,
6528-512: The contrary, take this as evidence of multiple authorship. Friedman states that the Jahwist source originally only used the "L ORD " (Yahweh) title, but a later editor added "God" to form the composite name: "It therefore appears to be an effort by the Redactor (R) to soften the transition from the P creation, which uses only 'God' (thirty-five times), to the coming J stories, which use only the name YHWH." The first account ( Genesis 1:1–2:3 ) employs
6630-467: The creation narrative. Day argues that material creation is the "only natural way of taking the text" and that this interpretation was the only one for most of history. Most interpreters consider the phrase "heaven and earth" to be a merism meaning the entire cosmos. Genesis 1:2 describes the earth as "formless and void". This phrase is a translation of the Hebrew tohu wa-bohu ( תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ ). Tohu by itself means "emptiness, futility". It
6732-459: The creation of the material universe. Even so, the doctrine had not yet been fully developed in the early 2nd century AD, although early Christian scholars were beginning to see a tension between the idea of world-formation and the omnipotence of God; by the beginning of the 3rd century this tension was resolved, world-formation was overcome, and creation ex nihilo had become a fundamental tenet of Christian theology. The Genesis narratives are not
6834-493: The darkness and light with Sun, Moon and stars; day five populates seas and skies with fish and fowl; and finally land-based creatures and mankind populate the land. In the second story Yahweh creates Adam , the first man, from dust and places him in the Garden of Eden . There he is given dominion over the animals. Eve , the first woman, is created from Adam's rib as his companion. The primary accounts in each chapter are joined by
6936-611: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of
7038-487: The divine word acted creatively. Its presence or absence is of no importance, for there is no tie between it and God. "Let there be!" or, as the Psalmist echoed it, "He spoke and it was so," [Psalm 33:9] refers not to the utterance of the magic word, but to the expression of the omnipotent, sovereign, unchallengeable will of the absolute, transcendent God to whom all nature is completely subservient. 6 And God said: 'Let there be
7140-418: The earth is a flat disc surrounded by the waters above and the waters below. The firmament is a solid dome that rests on mountains at the edges of the earth. It is transparent, allowing men to see the blue of the waters above with "windows" to allow rain to fall. The sun, moon and stars are underneath the firmament. Deep within the earth is the underworld or Sheol . The earth is supported by pillars sunk into
7242-527: The first eleven chapters of Genesis, also known as the primeval history , can be dated to the 3rd century BCE, based on discontinuities between the contents of the work and other parts of the Hebrew Bible . The "Persian imperial authorisation," which has gained considerable interest, although still controversial, proposes that the Persians , after their conquest of Babylon in 538 BCE, agreed to grant Jerusalem
7344-663: The forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c. 1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c. 1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c. 800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c. 500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been
7446-622: The heavenly bodies and assigns tasks to the gods in maintaining the cosmos. When the gods complain about their work, Marduk creates humans out of the blood of the god Kingu . The grateful gods build a temple for Marduk in Babylon . This is similar to the Baal Cycle , in which the Canaanite god Baal builds himself a cosmic temple over seven days. In both Genesis 1 and Enuma Elish , creation consists of bringing order out of chaos . Before creation, there
7548-487: The heavens and the Earth in six days, then rests on, blesses, and sanctifies the seventh (i.e. the Biblical Sabbath ). The second account, which takes up the rest of Genesis 2, is largely from the Jahwist source (J), commonly dated to the 10th or 9th centuries BCE. In this story, God (now referred to by the personal name Yahweh ) creates Adam , the first man, from dust and places him in the Garden of Eden . There he
7650-433: The hero Arjuna. Near the end of the epic, the god Yama takes the form of a dog to test the compassion of Yudhishthira . Even though Yudhishthira is told he may not enter paradise with such an animal, he refuses to abandon his companion, earning him praise from Dharma. The Torah contains many instances of theophany between Yahweh , the Hebrew god, and the human characters in the stories. Some examples of this are seen in
7752-556: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from
7854-472: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to
7956-461: The male freshwater deity, and Tiamat , the female saltwater deity. The first gods were born from their sexual union. Both Apsu and Tiamat were killed by the younger gods. Marduk , the leader of the gods, builds the world with Tiamat's body, which he splits in two. With one half, he builds a dome-shaped firmament in the sky to hold back Tiamat's upper waters. With the other half, Marduk forms dry land to hold back her lower waters. Marduk then organises
8058-458: The midst of Heaven, and he beheld that his luster was above that of the sun at noon-day. And he also saw twelve others following him, and their brightness did exceed that of the stars in the firmament. And they came down and went forth upon the face of the earth; and the first came and stood before my father, and gave unto him a book, and bade him that he should read. The most important theophany in Islam
8160-499: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which
8262-413: The only biblical creation accounts. The Bible preserves two contrasting models of creation. The first is the " logos " (speech) model, where a supreme God "speaks" dormant matter into existence. Genesis 1 is an example of creation by speech. The second is the " agon " (struggle or combat) model, in which it is God's victory in battle over the monsters of the sea that mark his sovereignty and might. There
8364-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c. 1450 BC ) are in
8466-572: The presence of the Holy Spirit , the third person of the Trinity , at creation. Other interpreters argue for translating ruach as "wind". For example, the NRSV renders it "wind from God". Likewise, the word elohim can sometimes function as a superlative adjective (such as "mighty" or "great"). The phrase ruach elohim may therefore mean "great wind". The connection between wind and watery chaos
8568-421: The right word, like the performance of the right magical actions, is able to, or rather, inevitably must, actualize the potentialities which are inherent in the inert matter. In other words, it implies a mystic bond uniting matter to its manipulator ... Worlds apart is the Genesis concept of creation by divine fiat. Notice how the Bible passes over in absolute silence the nature of the matter—if any—upon which
8670-507: The same time, and as with Genesis 1, the Jewish version has drastically changed its Babylonian model: Eve, for example, seems to fill the role of a mother goddess when, in Genesis 4:1 , she says that she has "created a man with Yahweh", but she is not a divine being like her Babylonian counterpart. Genesis 2 has close parallels with a second Mesopotamian myth, the Atra-Hasis epic – parallels that in fact extend throughout Genesis 2–11 , from
8772-622: The second part of The Revelation of Ares . There are a large number of modern cases which have been rendered into print, film, and otherwise conveyed to broad publics. Some cases have become popular books and media, including: These instances are distinguished from cases in which divine encounters are explicitly considered fictional by the author, a frequent motif in speculative fiction such as in Julian May 's Galactic Milieu Series . Ancient Greek language Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes
8874-612: The sky (day 2); the earth, seas, and vegetation (day 3); the sun and moon (day 4); animals of the air and sea (day 5); and land animals and humans (day 6). God rested from his work on the seventh day of creation, the Sabbath . The use of numbers in ancient texts was often numerological rather than factual – that is, the numbers were used because they held some symbolic value to the author. The number seven, denoting divine completion, permeates Genesis 1: verse 1:1 consists of seven words, verse 1:2 has fourteen, and 2:1–3 has 35 words (5×7); Elohim
8976-498: The stars, the " sons of God ", sang when the corner-stone of creation was laid. 3 And God said: 'Let there be light.' And there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. The process of creation illustrates God's sovereignty and omnipotence . God creates by fiat; things come into existence by divine decree. Like
9078-503: The stories of the burning bush , in Genesis 18, the pillars of clouds and fire , Mount Sinai , Isaiah and Ezekiel , and David . Christians generally recognize the same Old Testament theophanies as the Jews. In addition, there are at least two theophanies mentioned in the New Testament . While some usages refer to the baptisms of Jesus and John the Baptist as "theophanies", scholars discourage such usage. Traditional analysis of
9180-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies
9282-492: The term "theophany" was used to refer to appearances of the gods in ancient Greek and Near Eastern religions. While the Iliad is the earliest source for descriptions of theophanies in classical antiquity , the first description appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh . In Greek religion, there are a few instances of theophany. In historic times, theophanies were rare, but divine or heroic epiphanies were experienced either through dreams or waking visions. Theophanies were reenacted at
9384-476: The traditional interpretation of the earliest Church Fathers as well as the apostle Paul himself, who identifies the rock that was with Moses in the desert, and the speaking burning bush, as being Christ. For a more thorough list of "God Sightings", or Theophanies, see the examples above under " Judaism, Hebrew Bible ." Joseph Smith , the prophet and founder of the Latter Day Saint movement , said that when he
9486-540: The universe, the former writing: "Since the inchoate earth and the heavens in the sense of the air/wind were already in existence in Gen. 1:2, it is most natural to assume that Gen. 1:1 refers to God's creative act in making them." Other scholars such as R. N. Whybray , Christine Hayes , Michael Coogan , Cynthia Chapman, and John H. Walton argue that Genesis 1:1 describes the creation of an ordered universe out of preexisting, chaotic material. The word "created" translates
9588-485: The veracity of a myth is not a defining criterion. Although Orthodox Jews and "fundamentalist Christians" attribute the authorship of Book of Genesis to Moses "as a matter of faith," the Mosaic authorship has been questioned since the 11th century, and has been rejected in scholarship since the 17th century. Scholars of biblical criticism conclude that it, together with the following four books (making up what Jews call
9690-439: The waters. Water was a "primal generative force" in pagan mythologies. In Genesis, however, the primeval ocean possesses no powers and is completely at God's command. Rāqîa is derived from rāqa' , the verb used for the act of beating metal into thin plates. Ancient people throughout the world believed the sky was solid, and the firmament in Genesis 1 was understood to be a solid dome. In ancient near eastern cosmology ,
9792-585: The words of E.A. Speiser , "on the subject of creation biblical tradition aligned itself with the traditional tenets of Babylonian science." The opening words of Genesis 1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth", sum up the belief of the author(s) that Yahweh , the god of Israel, was solely responsible for creation and had no rivals. Later Jewish thinkers, adopting ideas from Greek philosophy , concluded that God's Wisdom , Word and Spirit penetrated all things and gave them unity. Christianity in turn adopted these ideas and identified Jesus with
9894-584: Was 14 years old he was visited by God the Father and Jesus Christ in a grove of trees near his house, a Theophany in answer to his spoken prayer. This " First Vision " is considered to be the founding event of the Latter Day Saint movement. The Book of Mormon describes other hierophanies and Theophanies that occurred in the new world . For example, Blake Ostler analysed the Throne-Theophany of Lehi in
9996-475: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,
10098-406: Was nothing but a cosmic ocean . During creation, a dome-shaped firmament is put in place to hold back the water and make Earth habitable. Both conclude with the creation of a human called "man" and the building of a temple for the god (in Genesis 1, this temple is the entire cosmos). In contrast to Enuma Elish , Genesis 1 is monotheistic. There is no theogony (account of God's origins), and there
10200-475: Was the only concept that the three religions shared – yet it is not found directly in Genesis, nor in the entire Hebrew Bible. According to Walton, the Priestly authors of Genesis 1 were concerned not with the origins of matter (the material which God formed into the habitable cosmos), but with assigning roles so that the Cosmos should function. John Day, however, considers that Genesis 1 clearly provides an account of
10302-500: Was upon the face of the deep ". The word deep translates the Hebrew təhôm ( תְהוֹם ), a primordial ocean . Darkness and təhôm are two further elements of chaos in addition to tohu wa-bohu . In Enuma Elish , the watery deep is personified as the goddess Tiamat , the enemy of Marduk . In Genesis, however, there is no such personification. The elements of chaos are not seen as evil but as indications that God has not begun his creative work. Verse 2 concludes with, "And
10404-471: Was very good". According to biblical scholar R. N. Whybray , "This is the craftsman's assessment of his own work ... It does not necessarily have an ethical connotation: it is not mankind that is said to be 'good', but God's work as craftsman." At the end of the sixth day, when creation is complete, the world is a cosmic temple in which the role of humanity is the worship of God. This parallels Enuma Elish and also echoes Job 38 , where God recalls how
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