Sorry Ben, I have to agree with Adrift on this one. Names, especially Hebrew names, were/are very important. Names are important for the identification, and definition of people, places and things…
Ben: That’s okay. I know how to lose sometimes.
“They shall call his name, Immanu-El (which means, With us is God).” Whether you interpret this contextually to a individual living at the time of the prophet Isaiah, or midrashically to Jesus (Yahshu’a) depends on your particular faith.
Ben: You are right. To interpret Immanuel in the sense of being Jesus, you need faith, because one needs faith for that much. But if you want to use your reason, you can have it straight from the Scriptures as follows: Isaiah 7:14=The virgin shall conceive and bear a son. Amos 5:2= The virgin is Israel. Isaiah 7:15= Butter and honey shall he (the son) eat. Isaiah 7:22=Butter and honey shall everyone eat that is left in the Land. Which Land? The Land of Israel. Who were left in the Land of Israel after the virgin Israel was removed from existence? Judah. Now, you are prepared to read Isaiah 8:8=Judah was left in the Land, whose name is Immanuel. If you remove the patches of your faith from your eyes, and read the quotations above in the sequence I gave them to you, there is no other way to reason.
Therefore, Judah, the Jewish People is Immanuel. The Mediator between God and men.
The point is, names are important, otherwise parents wouldn’t take so much time deciding what to name their new babies…
Ben: Why take so much time to decide on a name, which won’t mean a thing to the person named.
Even if Angels are mere emanations (from God?) they are giving a name, because they are entities onto themselves. Shalom!
Ben: Those names are given by men according to their own convenience.
In a sense, I suppose you could say that the entire created order is an emanation of God. After all, God spoke and the World was. The creative word of God (dabar/logos) is a direct emanation of God.
Ben: You are not too far from the Truth. The whole Word of God was entrusted the Jews through emanations.
There is no mysticism about it.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin has this to say about Spirit…he says (and I am paraphrasing here): “Spirit is matter in its most incendiary state.” However, I would turn it on its head and say that “matter is Spirit in its most dense state…” I wonder if Quantum Physics isn’t saying the same thing?
Ben: Why complicate what is so simple and cause pain in the simple-minded head? Spirit is not matter, neither is matter spirit. There is just one Spirtitual Being, Who is
God. The rest is all emanation, even the names given to concrete things. What makes an emanation is the mystic or spirituality that we attach to it.
Ben: