AtD, naming

[Mark Kohut]

Ian writes:
   
   It is odd how things seem to become what we name them, and how the unnamed allures. 
   
  In Pynchon, is Naming a 'reduction of choices", a reification of amorphous, anarchic life....?
   
  Mark

Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:
  I'm no authority, but I believe the earliest recorded monotheism was that of Aton, the solar disk, of Akhenaton in Egypt.  Akhenaton was pharaoh for a brief time during the Hyksos colonization of Egypt during the Second Empire period.  He was very unpopular for turning his back on the ancient gods.  Died of poisoning, I think.  The people who eventually emerged from Egypt as the Hebrews had entered Egypt as a part of the Hyksos invasion several hundred years prior to Akhenaton's failed transcendent experiment.  

The Mosaic books, including Genesis, appear long after the new tribe of Hebrews left Egypt.  To the best of my knowledge, there is no Egyptian record of their having been restrained from leaving, nor of any plagues preceding their departure from Egypt.  In fact, I know of no Egyptian mention of their leaving.  Egypt hosted many people in its long history and always seems to have had a civilizing effect on its visitors.  The Hebrews seem to have walked away with a great idea for a god.

All this has little to do with naming in Wittgenstein, and probably little to do with naming in Pynchon, but perspective can be everything.  It is odd how things seem to become what we name them, and how the unnamed allures.  

  On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 2:03 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
  http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/premo.html

scholars draw on the text of Genesis to conclude the following
controversial ideas about early Hebrew religion:

— Early Hebrew religion was polytheistic; the curious plural form of
the name of God, Elohim rather than El, leads them to believe that the
original Hebrew religion involved several gods. This plural form,
however, can be explained as a "royal" plural. Several other aspects
of the account of Hebrew religion in Genesis also imply a polytheistic
faith.

— The earliest Hebrew religion was animistic, that is, the Hebrews
seemed worship forces of nature that dwelled in natural objects.

— As a result, much of early Hebrew religion had a number of practices
that fall into the category of magic: scapegoat sacrifice and various
forms of imitative magic, all of which are preserved in the text of
Genesis .

— Early Hebrew religion eventually became anthropomorphic, that is,
god or the gods took human forms; in later Hebrew religion, Yahweh
becomes a figure that transcends the human and material worlds.
Individual tribes probably worshipped different gods; there is no
evidence in Genesis that anything like a national God existed in the
time of the patriarchs.
    
  


On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 6:28 AM,  <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
> Not to flog a dead horse [oh hell, why not?], but the name of "God" in Genesis is really "The Gods", I.E. in the beginning, the Jewish church was polytheistic. "In the beginning the Gods created the heavens & earth". Yet another deliberately misdirecting bit of mistranslation.
>  -------------- Original message ----------------------
> David Payne:  1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
>







       
---------------------------------
Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile.  Try it now.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20080508/84988f45/attachment-0001.html>