Good question, but please read what the original language in the Hebrew Bible has to say.
Interesting read, and it shows you can use the Bible to prove anything you want, provided you believe it is real in the first place.
Darron, that sums it up pretty well.
Although this was interesting and its probably not bible dependent.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/13/opinion/is-god-transgender.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region®ion=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT;.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region&_r=0 ... Why would the Bible do this? These aren’t typos. In the ancient world, well-expressed gender fluidity was the mark of a civilized person. Such a person was considered more “godlike." In Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, the gods were thought of as gender-fluid, and human beings were considered reflections of the gods. The Israelite ideal of the “nursing king" seems to have been based on a real person: a woman by the name of Hatshepsut who, after the death of her husband, Thutmose II, donned a false beard and ascended the throne to become one of Egypt’s greatest pharaohs. The Israelites took the transgender trope from their surrounding cultures and wove it into their own sacred scripture. The four-Hebrew-letter name of God, which scholars refer to as the Tetragrammaton, YHWH, was probably not pronounced “Jehovah" or “Yahweh," as some have guessed. The Israelite priests would have read the letters in reverse as Hu/Hi — in other words, the hidden name of God was Hebrew for “He/She." ...Well if I were going to invent a god He/She makes a lot of sense. But then I really like women, so a female God makes sense also. A Petty Lord, now that certainly doesn't make any sense for any true God.
Well, we know the God of Abraham did miraculous things with “rods”, and was concerned with snakes, and made Balaam’s “ass” speak and more than once arranged “flows” from “rocks.” But I don’t know that we can infer anything regarding his gender from such things.
Interesting read, and it shows you can use the Bible to prove anything you want, provided you believe it is real in the first place.I don't think it shows that at all. These are actual words actually written thousands of years ago and there was an actual culture then, and here's the really hard part to get; that culture was different than ours. The question "was god transgender" doesn't fit our paradigm, but you can easily translate it, something like; did ancient Mesopotamian people acknowledge a range of sexual identities and how did they view those identities? If the answer is, NO, men was men and gals was gals, then fine, but if it's something else, this culture doesn't get to claim "tradition" as a reason for its views.
Good points, Lausten. I should have thought this through before posting my knee jerk reaction. The rabbi brought up some very relevant points about how ancient cultures viewed gender identity, and how modern culture ignores their values.
Thanks for reconsidering DarronS. Kinda my personal crusade. I’m not sure if it’s really worth the effort, or just that I invested a certain amount of time in Bible study when I thought it might be real, and now I want that to have some value. I do think religion is a key ingredient to figuring out how we can survive as a species. I’m listening to an interview with the guy who started “Invite an Atheist to Church”. He tries to articulate something about how to listen to those we disagree with, and how to choose who to partner with, knowing very few people will agree with us on everything. Religion, at its core, is the antithesis of that, it’s “agree with me on the important things” first, then “I’ll consider working with you” on minor stuff, like this whole food and air deal.
I’d like to discuss this with some evangelical cousins of mine, several of whom are vehemently against gay rights, but they unfriended me on Facebook over the Kentucky county clerk last year. Maybe I’ll post this on FB and see what kind of responses I get from my remaining friends.
Interesting read, and it shows you can use the Bible to prove anything you want, provided you believe it is real in the first place.I don't think it shows that at all. These are actual words actually written thousands of years ago and there was an actual culture then, and here's the really hard part to get; that culture was different than ours. The question "was god transgender" doesn't fit our paradigm, but you can easily translate it, something like; did ancient Mesopotamian people acknowledge a range of sexual identities and how did they view those identities? If the answer is, NO, men was men and gals was gals, then fine, but if it's something else, this culture doesn't get to claim "tradition" as a reason for its views.True except that these "actual words" are in reality most likely copies of copies of copies of... including the so-called original language bible this rabbi says he was reading. I'm only an armchair scholar in the matter, but from what I've learned the real experts, ancient texts should only be read for their broad ideas. Word by word analysis is rough at best. But your main point is a good one - we have to be careful not to attribute our current views on cultures of the distant past. A good example of this is that most of the gospels weren't written by a person with the name associated with them. They were mostly likely written by a group of people who associated the name of someone they respected with the work. To us this seems illegal, but that's just us ascribing notions of intellectual property, copyright, etc. onto them.