Just a few observations that popped up as I read through
your page:
"God of Men" does not equal "God of Masculinity".
That is an unwarranted over-interpretaion.
The plural of Áss is Æsir (AEsir).
Tívar is used as a term for gods in various places,
e.g. Grímnismál 5, Hymiskviða 4, Haustlöng 1, 3,
Þrymskviða 14, Baldurs draumar 1, Vafþrúðnismál
38, 42, Hávamál 159.
Shy father is, a hope, simply a typo ;-)
"Goþ" (sic) is spelled "goð" using normalized orthography.
Divinity, yes, - also Deity.
I don't think the concept "collective plural" is logical.
The term "collective" is used in ON grammar, when a singular
word is used to refer to a plurality, e.g. eik (sing) "oak",
eikr (pl) "oaks", but eiki (sing collective) "oaks".
"Uncountable substance" is ridiculous. The word "goð" is
quite an ordinary neuter noun, which simply happens to look
the same in the plural nominative. The word declines
goð-goð-goði-goðs in the singular, goð-goð-goðum-goða
in the plural. There is nothing mysterious about it,
it does not refer to a realm, it always refers to a
"personality". The theological ideas in this paragraph
are far removed from any linguistic reality. Who is this
Green anyway? Sounds like a theosophist to me - shades
of Madame Blavatsky....
"The collective Council of the Ásir is itself a Divine
Entity" is a nonsensical statement, at least in terms
of the Old Germanic/Norse pantheon.
Although it is an interesting intellectual exercise to
differentiate the various terms, tívar, regin, bönd, etc.
like this, it would be a dangerous mistake to imagine
that the terms were strictly differentiated. It can even
be stated with complete assurance that all these terms were
no more than vague synonyms of each other as used in Old
Icelandic poetry. In many (or most) cases the poet would
simply pick the term that suited the metrical structures
he was working with. Examples:
Bdr 1: Senn vóru æsir ('æsir' alliterates with 'allir')
allir á þingi
...
...
ok um þat réðu ('tívar' fullfils a need for a long
ríkir tívar vowel + a short vowel, and 'æsir'
has already been used ...)
Hvm 159: telja tíva fyrir (alliteration: telja-tíva)
Vþm 38: segðu þat it tíunda (alliteration: tíunda-tíva)
alls þú tíva rök
Vþm 42: segðu þat it tólfta (alliteration: tólfta-tíva)
hví þú tíva rök
Grm 4: unz um rjúfask regin (alliteration: rjúfask-regin)
Grm 5: tívar at tannfé (alliteration: tívar at tannfé)
There are dozen, if not hundreds of such examples.
Kveðja
Eysteinn
--- In norse_course@..., "Steven T. Hatton" <hattons@...> wrote:
> I'm not sure how this mail will come through. This is the first
time
> I've used Mozilla to attach a webpage, so I apologize if it causes
> problems.
>
> I've been trying to summarize Green's chapter on Germanic religious
> termonology. I'm wondering what others who have more knowledge of
the
> subject think of what I have so far.
>
> Note: I am trying to follow the Enlightenment era practice of
> capitalizing terms related to the Divine, though this is not always
> easy. If my capitalization seems a bit awkward, please keep this
in mind.
>
> Note: Please don't get hung up on the Mitra-Varuna issue. That is
not
> due to Green, and is a subject best handled elsewhere.
>
> <http://members.bellatlantic.net/~hattons/norse/germanic-terms.html>