Sarcasm is too strong a word, Sir - and personal, which, not knowing you, I wouldn't use.
Just a poor attempt at witticism.
While I've got you on the line, though, you may be able to assist me with some vocab.
This is the first time I've discussed this in public, but now's as good a time as any to declare something.
I'm working on a re-interpretation of the Rig Veda and the Iliad regarding the concept of the gods.
It is my belief that our early ancestors considered the gods to be phenomenal. There were to types of this phenomenalism.
1 was the heavenly and earthly bodies
2 was the "spiritual" phenomena of things like love and wisdom. These things couldn't be seen themselves, but the effects of them could be, and so were real forces.
I don't believe that our early ancestors believed in a man in the sun, etc.
but spoke of the sun itself,eg.
It wasn't until much later that the gods came to be represented in human form and believed in as personifications. 1,700 years of Christian worship make us conceive "God" as a man.
The Cosmophenomenological (the name of this renewed understanding) concept of "God" and the "gods" is one of purely physical actions or reactions.
The process of decay from belief in a physical universe to a really nutty idea of men floating physically or spiritually around in the sky was this:
In communicating these "scientific" observations our ancestors used metaphors. Over time and with the emergence of a priestly and scholarly(in our sense) class, some original meaning was lost and the metaphors themselves became the objects of worship. This together with changes in meanings of words ended up becoming the botched and meaningless interpretation of the Rig Veda, eg. which we have today.
The process for understanding the Rig Veda as it is meant to be understood, the scientific and spiritual (in the community sense) education and inheritance for a people, is this;
when reading the Rig Veda, do not use the Indian names but the concrete equivalents in English, or your native language. So use fire (not Fire) not Agni, etc and think of how a fire behaves. Also contemplate fire as, heavenly fire,ie the Sun.
And use "it" for the pronouns. The pronouns are only masculine or feminine to agree with the nouns, of course, and, I submit that the deities were not thought of in gender terms, until later.
Try to use the literal meaning of words rather than their later designations. For instance, Skt, "purohita" is used in Rig Veda 1,1, supposedly as chief or domestic priest. But I considered it in apposition to Agni, as "first put", so we have, "I praise fire, which was put first" (in creation,ie the oldest element) and so on.
You'll get a very different meaning from the texts. Some of them seem difficult/impossible, however, and this may be due to priestly/scholarly corruptions over thousands of years, and also the later the hymns the more the metaphors themselves take precedence as objects of worship, as well as original meanings being lost.
This goes far beyond Max Mueller who never contemplated this, and far beyond what is thought of as nature worship. ie, not little men and women in the trees and sea, etc but the trees and sea themselves.
So the vocab help I need is in the original meaning of some words, if we know them. One is "yaj". I'm not happy with its meaning, "sacrifice" and wondered if you could assist here and with Gk., "hag-". Also, of course, accents are very important, though not perhaps law.
I've made this Cosmophenomenology a religion, though there are few members, so far. But I believe it has enormous potential for the understanding of religion.
Another related question, since I don't speak Hebrew (oy vey!); can we say Yahweh of Jehovah is related to Dyaus, etc?
Regards,
John
tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
> I know of course that the demonstrative *so was an uninflected
> particle. Because if it weren't, then back in the good old days
> where PIE didn't have so many cases, it would have had an
accusative
> *som.
>
> Hm!
>
> I wonder if it's outside the limits of the possible that PIE
> *som "the same" has changed its semantics from "that one" (acc.),
eg
> as a consequence of its use in reflexive statements?
>
> Then, poor *so, after having had its accusative hijacked for other
> purposes would have had no other option but to enter in a
suppletive
> paradigm with *to-
>
>
> ('som' (*sm.- ?) is used as a relative pronoun, esp in the acc.,
in
> Danish)
>
>
Torsten
>
>
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Bromios King <bromiosking@...>
wrote:
> Perhaps you are right, Sir.
>
> Perhaps our people were so excessively polite that the
demonstrative was really the indefinite, "one".
>
> Regards,
> John
>
>
Perhaps I smell a whiff of sarcasm? Demonstratives are devalued all
the time, 'The' used to be a demonstrative.
Torsten
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