The God and gods: History behind the origin of these words

By: Dr. P. R. Palodhi In present English usages implied senses of the word God' and gods' have remained inconsistent and continue to vary depending upon religious view point of respective user. Fallacies around these words are not recent developments, rather have been inherited from the antique past of religions history. Like other languages of recent origin, English is a product of linguistic development that has long history behind from the time of ancient picture writing to present writing of alphabets. Present day usages of God' and gods' are adopted English versions of the archaic words that originally came in the scriptures of Prophetic religion and in the mythologies of Pagan traditions. And ambiguous usages of these words could be traced from the time when Semites in Mesopotamia began to develop cuneiform alphabet' from the remotely ancient pictorial of the pre-Adamic generations. Initially the whole earth was of one language and of one speech; which also continued with Adamic race up to early post Flood world -- until the language was confounded during the time of Babel (Genesis 11. 1-9). Archaeologists could trace out small clay tokens as symbolic recording system from around 8000 BC, but writing did not develop until around 3000 BC (Denise) [1]. Modern investigations [2] uncovered that the development of writing' took place following the cultural symbiosis between the Semitic Akkadians and the pagan Sumerians in southern Mesopotamia, the cradle of human civilization. The Semites used to live side by side with the mysterious races of the Sumerians who arrived there from eastern mountains around 4000 BC. The name Semite' originated from Prophet Noah's son Shem; and in post Flood world, God restricted successive Prophetic traditions within Semitic lineage descending from Shem. But many among the Semites evidently were drifted from Prophetic religion and served the cause of ancient Paganism. The Sumerians' on the other hand are of unknown ethnic origin, especially known for their pagan gods and goddesses and their mythological archives. As we turn to the great flourishing period of the Sumerian city-states the Semitic Akkadians were living on the Arabic peninsula; they migrated from north and came in increasing conflict with the Sumerian city-state and in 2340 BC, the great Akkadian military leader, Sargon, is said to have conquered Sumer and built an Akkadian empire stretching over most of the Sumerian city-states. Following conflicts and co-existence between Sumerians and Semites, a great civilization began in the region between 2700 BC and 500 BC that produced some of the first forms of writing, a set of laws, and studies in mathematics, astronomy, and other sciences. Our probe could begin only after the earliest written materials could appear in textual form. Scientific linguistics discovered that: as opposed to enigmatic language of the Sumerians, the Akkadians spoke in distinct Semitic languages. And Sumerians had their own writing system (agglutinating language like Finnish and Japanese in which words are composed by stringing forms' together). But the Semitic languages (and also Indo-European) are inflecting languages where the basic element (the root) of the word may change. Many legacies of Sumerian paganism had profound impact in the modern alphabetic languages which have been developed afterwards by the combined efforts of Semites and the emerging Aryans of the new world. The Semites being originated from Prophet Noah were familiar to language of

Prophetic tradition, while the early Aryans rather denied Prophetic guidance', and were more affiliated to gods and goddesses of ancient Paganism. Hence, to investigate the history behind origins of the words God' and gods' we must have the basic understandings of: 1. The Sumero-Akkadian divine world from where come the first discernible textual records of the ancient practices. 2. How the very concepts of God' and gods' vary in Prophetic tradition (accepts revealed guidance of God) of Semites, and Pagan traditions (deny God's revelation) of early Sumerians and later Aryans? A. SUMERO-AKKADIAN DIVINE WORLD: John Heise's [3] Akkadian language' (Chapter 2) has thrown lights upon it: [[The Mesopotamian view on the supernatural is an inextricable mixture of Sumerian and Akkadian origin, influenced by an unknown substrate population. Most Sumerian literature is written by Akkadian speakers when Sumerian was an extinct language. The religious ideas evolved in time and since most texts are dated in the 2nd and 1st millennium, it is not always clear how 2nd millennium views represent 3rd millennium opinions.

The universe basically is seen as a stratification of two or three layers. Usually it consists of 'heaven' (Sumerian an, Akkadian am) and 'earth' (Sumerian ki, Akkadian erSetum.The symbol for 'heaven' AN has evolved from a pictographic representation of a star. Heaven is thus the upper level of the universe all that is 'high' or 'elevated', and apparently associated with the celestial sphere. Anthropomorphic gods: The supernatural universe is populated with divine beings: gods and demons. They are portrayed in an anthropomorphic way as superior humans, imaging the ruling class of society. They are, however, more powerful, freed from human miseries and mishaps and they live endless lives. The Sumerian word for 'god' is dingir, Akkadian ilu: [ dingir.dingir = il ( is long u) 'the gods']. The sign to represent this, is the same as AN 'heaven', and also used as a determinative (classifier) attached to the name of the deity to indicate his/her divine nature. In transcription the sign is represented with a d from dingir in superscript, like dEnlil. It is not pronounced. Deities live in a temple, Sum. , Akkadian btum, which is also the word for 'house'. In the temple they are represented by a sculpture. Some deities have in addition a representation on the celestial sphere by a constellation or a star. Gods have human appearance, they have a body, they need food, want to be washed and dressed; want to travel, carry weapons etc. Each god has a well defined character, representing the scale of human characters. They may be ill-tempered, aggressive, cheerful, clever, just, ambitious, skillful, merciful and graceful, etc. Some are better disposed to mankind than others. Male and female gods: A god is either male or female. The Sumerian language does not have gender as noun class, so sometimes the gender is unknown of some older deities, or may change according to tradition. Gods can have all kinds of attitudes associated with gender. Their behaviour reflects the patriarchal society. They have spouses (Akkadian a atum, 'wife') and created offspring which in one tradition may be different from another, depending on which epic one reads. Often the family relationship is purposely altered to

reflect a change in status of the god. A goddess may be a sister of a god in one tradition and be his spouse in another (later) tradition; it doesn't necessarily mean that the god married his sister. Gods can have concubines, they can rape (even the supreme god Enlil raped the goddess who eventually became his wife Ninlil), they may seduce and sometimes dispose of their lovers in the most awful ways. Epithets: In the texts divine names (and royal names) are often accompanied by an expression giving a quality, attribute or a significant appellation, called epithet. Epithets form a fixed connection with the personal name. When the god Enlil is mentioned for the first time in a text, one writes e.g. 'Enlil, Lord of heaven and earth' as his standard epithet, identifying him as the chief god. Shama is the Sun god, but in most texts his dominant quality is Shama bl dnim 'lord of justice' Syncretism: in general is the synthesis of cultural elements. In the religious sphere it results in the equation, identification or unification of deities in the different cultures. This happens in all cultures with polytheism. One is with respect to religion very tolerant and recognizes one's own deity in the pantheon of other nations. To mention a simple example: Jupiter (Lat. Iuppiter), the Roman supreme god (probably himself taken from the Etruscans) is by syncretism identified with the Greek supreme god Zeus (in fact, the Romans took almost the entire Greek pantheon and mythology, but used Roman names). The Greeks themselves interpreted whenever possible an Eastern deity with an existing Greek deity. This particular form of syncretism is called with a Latin term interpretatio graeca. E.g. the Greeks identified the Akkadian supreme god Anu with the Greek supreme god Zeus. In a similar way there is an interpretatio hurritica of the Hittite pantheon etc. In the Sumero-Semitic syncretism of the third millennium the process of identification (unification) of deities had already taken place before the majority of records were written. Numerous God Lists exist of the type an = Anum. So we are not well informed about the exact difference between these deities. The largest number of gods however, has Sumerian names. Often syncretism is the result of political changes. Originally each city has its own pantheon but when dominated by another city analogous gods unify into one. The strongest personality absorbs the weaker ones, at most keeping their names and epithets (see e.g. the goddess Inanna/Ishtar). In this way the number of gods decreased considerably in the course of time.]]

B. GOD - IN PROPHETIC TRADITION OF THE SEMITES: For the adherents of Prophetic religion' it is a blasphemy to invoke Almighty Creator except the Names' which Creator Himself has revealed in tongues of the Prophets of respective traditions. Hence there is a cognitive harmony in Names' and various aspects of God's revelation in Semitic traditions. Which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.' (Bible: Acts, 3: 21) The very early dialect of Semitic alphabets (in cuneiform) were all consonantal except that three of them indicated the type of vowel occurring after aleph, whether a, i [or, e], or u. From aleph proceeds the name of God. The archaic Semitic root of the name of the Creator God could be traced as EA-El from the deciphered archives of ancient Near East. At the Temple of EA at Ur cuneiform clay tablet writes: EA creates man Work in his Eridu fruit-tree garden. Babylonian version of Noah

(i.e. Pir-Napishtim) was worshipper of AE/EA. On the other hand, li is listed at the head of many pantheons; for the Canaanites, Eli (or IL) was the supreme God, the father of mankind and all creatures (Kugel, p. 423) [4]. Semitic root 'lh is found to be related as: Arabic ilh, Aramaic 'alh, 'elh, and Hebrew 'elah. Thus various cognates of EA-EL in different traditions suggest that God's sacred names that we get now as YAHWEH-ELOHIM of Hebrew Bible or ALLAH of Arabic Qur'an are in fact traditional continuity of Prophetic traditions of the Semites. Semites though are credited with giving the world its first alphabet', but it is again derived from language of the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians that used pre-human modes of pictorial expressions (e.g. star'/'fish') to denote their gods, demigods and heroes as well as the Creator God. And such syncretism naturally reappeared when Semites began to develop alphabets depending upon pictograms of the Pagan Sumerians. They had to find expressions for both Creator God' as well as innumerable pagan deities' of ancient world which people worshipped by glorifying them with the 'epithets of God' ancestrally known to every generation. Hence, in their language el' was used as both a generic word for any god and the special name or title of a particular god, or in the monotheistic sense of God. In northwest Semitic usage l was both a generic word for any "god" and the special name or title of a particular god, or in the monotheistic sense of God (Smith, 2001, p.135) [5]. Thus Semitic l (written aleph-lamed, i.e. )stands for "deity", and it is also a generic word for God in the Semitic languages, viz. Aramaic elah, Arabic ilah, Akkadian ilu. Wikipedia informs: The word El was found at the top of a list of gods as the Ancient of Gods or the Father of all Gods, in the ruins of the Royal Library of the Ebla civilization, in the archaeological site of Tell Mardikh in Syria dated to 2300 BC. He may have been a desert god at some point, as the myths say that he had two wives and built a sanctuary with them and his new children in the desert. El had fathered many gods, but most important were Hadad, Yam, and Mot' [see: EL (deity) Wikipedia].

C. DERIVATION OF PAGAN GOD-HOODS BY ASSOCIATING THE CREATOR GOD: John Heise's extensive investigations showed how concept of God was multiplied in pictorial and cuneiform writings to create myths of pagan god-hoods. It goes to inform that: in Sumerian divine world, the god-hood is found to be shared (as appeared both in pictures on Kudurru's boundary stones, mid 2nd millennium BC and also in the texts). In the hierarchy of Sumerian deities Anum and Enlil are first in the list, followed by Enki, some name of mother goddess and three astral gods Sin (Moon), Samash (Sun), and the goddess Ishtar (Venus). The picture of Anum and Enlil carry ten pair of horns, the same emblem for both of them, showing their equal high rank. In some texts (like in the prologue of the Codex Hammurabi) Anum is the king of gods' and Enlil is the Lord of heaven and earth.' But in later myths Anum shares the title king of heaven and earth' with Enlil. On the other hand, Semitic notion of God becomes apparent in the temple of EA at Ur, where clay tablet informs that: Pir-Napishtim (Babylonian version of Noah) was worshipper of AE/EA. But as we focus our attention to EA and ENLIL in Sumerian mythology of different times, despite all syncretism the concept of a Creator God is very much implied in the genitive, predicative, and other constructions of these names (Limet 1968: 126 f) [6]. After Semites conquered Sumerians, name of their God (incurred from Prophetic tradition) added a new dimension in later myths of Pagan god-hoods. Many among the Semites succumb to deeprooted Paganism of ancient generations. Scholars have noted that the cunning Sumerian god Enki's (bl nmeqi' Lord of cunning/skill') conversion to Ea and various equations with El (at Ugarit) and

possibly Yah (at Ebla) in the Canaanite 'ilhm pantheon etc has taken place under influence of pagan Semites. This fancy repeatedly appeared when the priests of Babylon re-edited the incantations originally composed for the Ea; occasionally Enki becoming the half brother of Enlil in some myths, and turned into Ea in even later myths. Thus Enki afterwards was known as Ea in Akkadian and Babylonian mythologies. Scholars posit that syncretism could be established (perhaps by the pagan Semites) because in Sumerian E-A means "the house of water"; in Mesopotamian Enki myths it is aya (Ea) and not ehyeh (Yahweh) of Bible (Ex 3:13-14). (Huffmon, 1965)[7] Claims that Semitic origin of Ea and may be a derivation from the West-Semitic root *hyy meaning "life" [8], in this case used for "spring", "running water." It has been suggested that this (EA) was originally the name for the shrine to the God at Eridu; Gwendolyn Leick (1996, p. 37) [9] on Enki's assimilation with Ea/Ayya: "Ancient Babylonian scribes derived it from Sumerian E.a, 'house of the water'. In the texts from the Old Sumerian and Sargonic periods Ea/Ayya occurs mainly in Akkadian personal names. The pronunciation Ea (Ay-a) is attested since the Ur III period. The original character of this god is impossible to assess because of his syncretism with the Sumerian god Enki, which probably occurred as early as the Sargonic period. Ea's functions in the Babylonian and Assyrian tradition are therefore essentially the same as Enki's. He is a water god (bel naqbi, 'lord of the Spring') a creator (ban kullat, 'creator of everything') a god of wisdom (bel uzni, 'lord of wisdom'), the supreme master of magic (mash.mash ilani, 'incantation specialist of the gods'), the protector of craftsmen and artisans."

D. USAGE OF WORD GOD' AFTER ADVENT OF MODERN ALPHABETS: The words God' and god' are significant development in modern religion; enquiry of which requires more than just a passing concern. Modern investigations found [10] that development of alphabet from pictograms took place in Sinaitic world when Egyptian-trained West Semitic scribes devised a writing system of their own language at the end of Hyksos rule (c. 1730-1580 BC). How the ancient Semites begin to crack the enigma of pre-historic pictorials is like a fairy tale story. Amidst expressions of multifold pagan confusions, the chief morphological character of Semitic languages is the stable retention of consonants and variability of vowels. (e.g. ktb = to write, has ktab = he wrote, katib = writer, kitb = book). Fully alphabetic writing came into being via interactions between Semites and Aryans when the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet around 1100-800 BC, and regularized the marking of vowels. Fully alphabetic writing came into being when the Greek Aryans adopted the Semitic alphabet around 1100-800 BC. Both Greek and English are the versions of Aryan languages, the product of linguistic evolution following the consequences of cultural syncretism between proto-Aryan paganism (incurred from pre-Adamic tradition) and Semitic monotheism (rooted in Revelations to Prophets after Noah'). The Semitic tradition of Prophets usually adheres to revealed words'. But this is not the case with others. The larger section of the burgeoning population of new world's Aryans and also many Semites continued with the ways of ancient Paganism that tend to erase the borderline between religion's sacred and profane by trying to bring the Prophetic and Pagan religions under common platform. During the third century the practice of using allegory to interpret the Holy Scriptures had already begun in Europe; this Hellenizing of "God's Word" had started with neo-Platonism and the teachings Origen of Alexandria down south of the Med in Egypt which began to drift Christianity from Prophetic ways to Pagan waywardness. As the Aryan languages begin to dominate we find that in scriptures the English

word God' has replaced the Names which Almighty Creator revealed to the chosen Prophets of humanity. The exact beginning of the word English God' is unknown. It is rather a relatively new European origin not found in original Semitic tradition of God (i.e. Judeo-Christian or Islamic scriptures) written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic. The word God' has its cognates in old Teutonic form: Gudo, or Dutch: Goode, or German: Goot, orHebrew: Guwd, etc, (means that which is worshipped). Its earliest documented historical use could be traced in the "BEOWULF" the oldest poem in English language and the earliest European vernacular epic preserved in a single manuscript (Cotton Vittellius A XV) which is pre-Christian, having no hidden or implicit link with Trinitarian theology or medieval editing. Beowulf relates pre-Christian events of the generations before the birth of Prophet Muhammad; it glorifies God and rejects and ridicules Paganism as work of devil. The epic hero Beowulf a brave, humble man of God engaged in constant combat with diabolical forces of evil and destruction. www.odinic-rite.org/AcornHollow/2009/09/ traces-of-the-odinic-in-the-"god"-of-beowulf/ : [In the original language of Beowulf, are god, wyrd, metod, wealdend, drihten, and lif-frea. By learning this small set of words, we can see in many ways the presence of pre-Christian deities in Beowulf. We must remember that the version of Beowulf to which we have access was written during a period of "dual faith" in England. Recorded in West Saxon in what is now called the Cotton Vitellius A. xv manuscript, the Beowulf story we have dates to sometime between 521 and 1026 CE (Slade 2009). During this period, the church still needed to assimilate with the indigenous cultures existing in this area because they found they could not dominate by brute force alone. Documentation in other manuscripts indicates that Odinic practices continued during this window of time in England. One notable example is the practice of King Raedwald, who "set up altars to Christ and to the devil side by side" after his conversion to Christianity and before his death circa 625 CE (Mitchell 1995). It is also important to note that charms referring to gods such as Woden and Erce were recorded by monks during this same period. Karen Louise Jolly offers excellent examples of such attempts at cultural assimilation in Popular Religion in Late Anglo-Saxon England- Elf Charms in Context (1996). A more general overview of the long and arduous process by which the church infiltrated Germanic cultures can be found in James C. Russell's The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity (1994).] http://www.bibleanswerstand.org/God.htm: [Family Word Finder' writes (p. 7) on the historical development of our Modern English language: "English belongs to the Indo-European family of languages, which consists of about 100 related tongues, all descended from prehistoric language of a pastoral, bronze working, horse breeding people, the Aryans, who inhabited the steppes of Central Asia about 4500 B.C. Scholars refer to their language at this stage as proto-Indo-European, or simply Indo-European." The following information on the origin of the word god' will help to understand why we use it in our vernacular: The English word God is identical with the Anglo-Saxon word for "good," and therefore it is believed that the name God refers to the divine goodness. [See Oehler's Theol. of Old Test.; Strong's and Young's concordances. (From New Unger's Bible Dictionary; originally published by Moody Press of Chicago, Illinois. Copyright (C) 1988.) Since our English language has its origin from Indo-European influence, our understanding of the meaning of the word for "God" (from the Biblical Hebrew and Greek languages) is obviously

different. When the King James Version of the Bible (KJV) was translated in A.D. 1611, the translators used the words common to European people. Instead of translating a word properly, by using the Hebrew or Greek meaning, the translators replaced the true meaning of the Scriptural words with words common to their London English vernacular.] Wikipedia God (words): [The earliest uses of the word God in Germanic writing is often cited to be in the Gothic Bible or Wulfila Bible, which is the Christian Bible as translated by Wulfila (a.k.a. Bishop Ulfilas) into the Gothic language spoken by the Eastern Germanic, or Gothic Tribes. The oldest part of the Gothic Bible, contained in the Codex Argenteus, is estimated to be from the fourth century. During the fourth century, the Goths were converted to Christianity, largely through the efforts of Bishop Ulfilas, who translated the Bible into the Gothic language in Nicopolis ad Istrum in today's northern Bulgaria. The words guda and gu were used for God in the Gothic Bible'.] Eventually the word God' (and not god') as Creator - became acceptable to the believers' as long as its sense is not distorted by the pagan notions. At present we come across two words in English: God' and god' the same three words are in frequent use, but conveys two diagonally opposite meanings depending on the start of the word with capital G' or small g'. To believers, God means the omnipotent Creator of the heavens and earth as well as the pre-human gods and goddesses and modern man. And god means any deity whom followers of non-Prophetic tradition worship by equating with the Creator God. Bible and Qur'an repeatedly warned mankind about the false gods of ancient Paganism existence of which has been corroborated by plethora of myths all over the world. But the legacies of ancient Paganism have continued in our modern world under various pretexts which abstain from distinguishing between God' and god' and thereby promote confusions about the very idea' of God.

[Republished from my publication: http://www.articlesbase.com/religion-articles/the-god-and-godshistory-behind-origin-of-these-words-5842293.html]

References: 1. Denise Schmandt-Besserat, 1992, vol.1, Before writing'. From counting to cuneiform. 2. Gelb, I.J. 1952, A Study of writing: the foundations of grammatology', Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd; and many other authors corroborated this. 3. John Heise, Akkadian language' (http//www.sron.nl/~jheise/akkadian/bronze_age.html) 4. Kugel, James L (2007). How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now, Simon and Schuster. 5. Smith, Mark S. (2001). The origins of biblical monotheism: Israel's polytheistic background and the Ugaritic texts, Oxford University Press US. p. 135] 6. Limet, Henry, (1968), L'Anthroponymie sumerienne dans les documents de la 3e dynasttie d' Ur. (Bibliotheque de la Faculte de Philosophie et Lettres de l'Universite de Liege, 180). Paris 7. Huffmon, Herbert B. (1965), Amorite Personal Names in the Mari Texts: A Structural and Lexical Study'. (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins Press)

8. In proto-Sinaitic inscriptions at old Negev we find: [The Tree of Life' icon projects the conception of Yah as the life and light of the world and the simple but powerful representation on Har Karkom is hard to discount as a commemoration of the bush that burned but was not consumed before the eyes of Moses (Exodus 3:12)'.] (From: Nahal `Avedat Site Near 22: Harris/Hone, 1a; April 1997) 9. "Ea." Gwendolyn Leick. A Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Mythology. London. Routledge. 1991, 1996, 1998), p. 40. "Enki." Gwendolyn Leick. A Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Mythology. London. Routledge. 10. Asko Parpola, 1997. Deciphering the Indus Script, pp. 34-39, (Cambridge Univ. Press); [see also The Guinness Book of Records.]