Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>]

Hi,

I extend Yigal's fine comments below.

Quoting Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>:

> Dear Eva,
>
> The Hebrew word for "father" is actually "Ab", which is totally masculine in
> form. If anything, one should wonder why "Em" - "mother" - does not have a
> typically feminine suffix. And like you wrote, the plural "Abot" has a
> feminine ending. "Aba" is Aramaic and usually ends with an Aleph, not
> feminine at all.
>
> As far as God's gender - the world of ancient Israel and its surroundings
> was purely patriarchal and male-dominated. Thus God is described as
> "Father", "King" etc. To a certain extent, this is human society creating
> God in its own image. While theology is not the topic of this list, I doubt
> that any present-day Jewish or Christian theologian would deny, that a God
> who is without physical form is neither male or female - or maybe is both.

Indeed, this is perhaps in stark contrast to, for example, Babylonian  
gods who usually come in male and female pairs. Now, this is  
definitely mankind making their gods in their own image. I suppose the  
most common pair is Mother Earth and Father Sky. We still refer to  
'mother nature' to this day in the English language. But I guess this  
is one of the traces of our pagan druidic celtic roots that managed  
survive the process of Christianisation.

The masculine figure of Father Sky is so dominant in many ancient  
religions that many have tried, with limited success, to paint Elohim  
as Father Sky. Such arguments generally draw on accounts of the use of  
natural elements to carry out judgement. However, those that consider  
such derivations, in general, fail to consider that polytheistic ideas  
of a Father Sky could have come about from an originally universally  
accepted monotheistic religion (even if there were only 2 people in  
the world of that time).

The thing is that the idea of an almighty single god was quite an  
alien concept to most civilisations in the time of the patriarchs.  
Most people of neighbouring nations believed in gods and godesses of  
one sort or another. And believed that the offspring came about in the  
usual way.

It is true that we generally speak about Yhwh as 'he' even though he  
is clearly without gender and yet, as Yigal points out, could be  
considered as both as he was in no need of a godess wife to create men  
and angels. But it is clearly quite right that we and the prophets  
call him he and not she, Father and not Mother, King and not Queen.

The acts of many reverant and holy women have been recorded for our  
benefit. But to the best of my recollection I don't remember any one  
of them ever suggesting we should call Yhwh 'she', 'mother' or  
'queen'. On the contrary they always showed their godly devotion  
through submissiveness.

James Christian

> Yigal Levin
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
> [mailto:b-hebrew-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of
> thebodyofjesusthenazoraion AT juno.com
> Sent: Friday, May 15, 2009 5:46 PM
> To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] b-hebrew tAba'
>
>
>  tAba' fathers/ Some masculine plural nouns look feminine:
>
> Why can't fathers be parents or male and female? In Gen. it tells us that
> male and female were created in the Image of Elohim.
> So why is Elohim not understood as male and female?
>
> Eva Ritsema
>
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