“It ain’t what they call you,
it’s what you answer to.”
W.C. Fields
“Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things,
and not the essence to the names,
since things come first and names afterwards.”
Galileo Galilei
(the honeysuckle in bloom / Julie Cook / 2017)
One thing for certain, I am not an expert.
Meaning…
I am not the go to guru on any one thing.
Oh I may know a good bit about this or that,
but I can’t say definitively that I am an expert.
Let’s take the subject of Language Arts for instance…
I know just enough to get by.
If we look back to the basics…
All the way back to the basic first steps in the study of the Language Arts…
We know that there is a process to learning the building blocks…
those building blocks which guide us to being able to understand writing,
reading and basic conversation….
That whole noun, verb, pronoun, adverb, adjective melange to our communicating.
We first learn that a noun is defined as a person, place or thing.
A bit broad, but it’s a start.
Verbs, they are action packed.
Adverbs help in all things action
while adjectives like to be on the dramatic side…they, for good and bad, describe.
But back to nouns.
We learn that in addition to nouns, there are things known as proper nouns.
As in they refer to one of a kinds, important sorts of things that always have capital letters.
For example, people’s names.
Properly put, I am Julie.
But I am also a woman, a girl or more simply, a female…
as in nouns but just not propers.
So the other day when I was reading a review on a book written by Alec Motyer
the book entitled
Isaiah By the Day
A new Devotional Translation
I was dumbstruck, or perhaps awed is a better assessment,
by a simple observation by Mr Motyer’s….
Which just goes to show us that when we thought we had God all figured out and
fit into our own little various boxes of understanding…
He goes and proclaims to us that there is always another facet to who He is—
far beyond the perimeters of our own limited understanding….
“If we were to ask him [God] ‘What are you?’
he would reply with the noun: I am ‘God’.
If we were to ask him ‘Who are you?’
he would reply with his name ‘Yahweh’.
There are two main nouns meaning God.
The most common is elohim, a plural of ‘amplitude’
indicating that this God possesses all and every divine attribute;
he is totally and completely God.
The other noun is el.
God in his transcendent majesty, glory and strength.
In order to keep you on the ball elohim is always translated ‘God’,
and el is ‘God’ “
Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them,
‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me,
‘What is his name?’
Then what shall I tell them?”
God said to Moses, “I am who I am.
This is what you are to say to the Israelites:
‘I am has sent me to you.’”
Exodus 3:13-14
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