Deus vs Theos vs God vs Allah vs Yahweh

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ProVobis

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I hope this is the right forum for this but I ran across this website

wahiduddin.net/words/name_god.htm

An excerpt:
Oddly, the exact history of the word God is unknown. The word God is a relatively new European invention, which was never used in any of the ancient Judaeo-Christian scripture manuscripts that were written in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek or Latin.
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According to the best efforts of linguists and researchers, the root of the present word God is the Sanskrit word hu which means to call upon, invoke, implore…
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Now if this were true, shouldn’t the word God be replaced in the English language? Yahweh was dropped, yet a Sanskrit word is kept? Sanskrit words are used in Transcendental Meditation and I was told one of the reasons the Church frowns on the practice is because the ceremony surrounding the issuance of Sanskrit mantras represents some worship of a false god. Or was I told incorrectly?

I guess it all comes down to what’s false and what’s true? Our terminology and etymology must mean something.
 
Wikipedia is not wrong here.

To sum it briefly, the word God is old. It’s changed meaning, spelling and pronounciation over the centuries, but it’s ancient. Second, it’s wrong to say that the root of the word God comes from Sanskrit. Sanskrit and the other Indo-European languages share a common ancestor, but the European branches didn’t contact the Indian branches until much later.
 
ProVobis said:
I hope this is the right forum for this but I ran across this website

wahiduddin.net/words/name_god.htm

An excerpt:

Now if this were true, shouldn’t the word God be replaced in the English language? Yahweh was dropped, yet a Sanskrit word is kept? Sanskrit words are used in Transcendental Meditation and I was told one of the reasons the Church frowns on the practice is because the ceremony surrounding the issuance of Sanskrit mantras represents some worship of a false god. Or was I told incorrectly?

I guess it all comes down to what’s false and what’s true? Our terminology and etymology must mean something.
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I don’t know if God is a Sanskrit Word (but I will take Nooj’s answer in your case), but we shouldn’t call him by name. At most, we should replace “God” with “El”, which is what is originally written in many places the word God is found in the OT.
 
Our Father,
Who art in heaven,
hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come;
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. Amen.
 
Pieman333272 said:
I don’t know if God is a Sanskrit Word (but I will take Nooj’s answer in your case), but we shouldn’t call him by name. At most, we should replace “God” with “El”, which is what is originally written in many places the word God is found in the OT.
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As in “Eli, Eli, lema sabacthani”?

That seems reasonable to me.
 
"Actually, El Shaddai (Hebrew: אל שדי‎) is one of the Judaic names of God. El Shaddai is translated as God Almighty. (wiki: El Shaddai)

Leonard Nimoy created the Vulcan hand salute from the priestly blessing he peeked at at his Orthodox synagoge he attended as a child:

"In his autobiography I Am Not Spock, Nimoy wrote that he based it on the Priestly Blessing performed by Jewish Kohanim with both hands, thumb to thumb in this same position, representing the Hebrew letter Shin (ש), which has three upward strokes similar to the position of the thumb and fingers in the salute.

The letter Shin here stands for Shaddai, meaning “Almighty (God)”. Nimoy wrote that when he was a child, his grandfather took him to an Orthodox synagogue. There he saw the blessing performed and was very impressed by it." (wiki: Vulcan Hand Salute)"

For a picture of the hand positions used by priests daily in the Priestly Blessing prayer by Jews since the Temple Period see:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_salute

amazon.co.uk/tag/religion/forum?cdThread=Tx1TBA2WP099HZH
 
Priestly Blessing Prayer from Numbers 6:

In Numbers 6, the Lord instructed Moses to have Aaron and his sons bless the children of Israel with this special prayer. It is also known as The Benediction. The prayer is often said at the close of a Christian church service to pronounce a blessing upon the congregation, or in a wedding ceremony to bless the bride and groom.

A Priestly Blessing

Numbers 6:24-26

The LORD bless you and keep you;
The LORD make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The LORD lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.

A prayer - well over 2500 years old. 👍
 
It seems like you were told wrong. There is nothing inherently wrong with the Sanskrit language; its use was widespread in India and continues to this day in its descendants, such as Hindi and Urdu. Many common words in the English language have roots in Sanskrit, such as ‘brother’ and ‘pundit.’ Sanskrit is a member of the Indo-European family of languages; it is related to Greek and Latin, it has a very structured grammar, and in fact it was the focus of the work of many excellent early grammarians. Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī is a well-known and celebrated work of scholarship.
 
Elizium23 said:
It seems like you were told wrong. There is nothing inherently wrong with the Sanskrit language; its use was widespread in India and continues to this day in its descendants, such as Hindi and Urdu. Many common words in the English language have roots in Sanskrit, such as ‘brother’ and ‘pundit.’ Sanskrit is a member of the Indo-European family of languages; it is related to Greek and Latin, it has a very structured grammar, and in fact it was the focus of the work of many excellent early grammarians. Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī is a well-known and celebrated work of scholarship.
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Thanks. I needed to hear that. 😉
 
Elizium23 said:
It seems like you were told wrong. There is nothing inherently wrong with the Sanskrit language; its use was widespread in India and continues to this day in its descendants, such as Hindi and Urdu. Many common words in the English language have roots in Sanskrit, such as ‘brother’ and ‘pundit.’ Sanskrit is a member of the Indo-European family of languages; it is related to Greek and Latin, it has a very structured grammar, and in fact it was the focus of the work of many excellent early grammarians. Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī is a well-known and celebrated work of scholarship.
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English words don’t have a root in Sanskrit. They share cognates, as Indo-European languages tend to do. Latin - pater, Greek - πατήρ, Sanskrit - pitṛ, German - vater. That doesn’t mean Latin, Greek and German took the word from Sanskrit, it means that they all took the same word from their ancestor, which is Proto-Indo-European.
 
So is/are Deus, Theos, God, Allah, Yahweh, El(i) all one and the same? Or does each language have its own understanding of and perhaps its own Deity?
 
ProVobis said:
So is/are Deus, Theos, God, Allah, Yahweh, El(i) all one and the same? Or does each language have its own understanding of and perhaps its own Deity?
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YHWH is supposed to be the proper name of God, like Ellen is the proper name of someone called Ellen. So YHWH is different from the rest, but the rest all mean the same thing surely - god.
 
Nooj said:
YHWH is supposed to be the proper name of God, like Ellen is the proper name of someone called Ellen. So YHWH is different from the rest, but the rest all mean the same thing surely - god.
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Ok, then let me throw in a wrinkle here. How about Zeus and Jupiter? How can we tell these were not true Deity unless someone tells us they are part of Mythology? They actually made us read this stuff when I attended Catholic high school.
 
ProVobis said:
So is/are Deus, Theos, God, Allah, Yahweh, El(i) all one and the same? Or does each language have its own understanding of and perhaps its own Deity?
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They all have the same Referent in their respective language. We English-speakers may legitimately call the Deity “God” for the same reasons it’s okay to read & quote the Bible in English translation, rather than Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek. And w/r/t Sanskrit, no pagan religion holds owner’s rights to any language–one may praise our Lord in the language of the Vedas, of the Koran, of the TIbetan Book of the Dead–He is the Word itself, and all tongues are fair game for praising Him in.
 
Nooj said:
YHWH is supposed to be the proper name of God, like Ellen is the proper name of someone called Ellen. So YHWH is different from the rest, but the rest all mean the same thing surely - god.
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Here’s what I have a problem with, though. Zeus and Jupiter are also translated into the English language as “god,” albeit with a small “g.”
Le_Cracquere said:
They all have the same Referent in their respective language. We English-speakers may legitimately call the Deity “God” for the same reasons it’s okay to read & quote the Bible in English translation, rather than Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek. And w/r/t Sanskrit, no pagan religion holds owner’s rights to any language–one may praise our Lord in the language of the Vedas, of the Koran, of the TIbetan Book of the Dead–He is the Word itself, and all tongues are fair game for praising Him in.
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But doesn’t Sanskrit also have words for false gods as well? How do we know we translated the Word itself without qualifications such as God of Abraham, for example?
 
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