Gil Hamilton wrote:Angels are officially genderless.
As defined by whom?
The answer is that Paul thought girls were icky.
Paul was actually a real feminist progressive for his time (what with thinking that marital fidelity should be required of both wife
and husband, and so forth), in both a Graeco-Roman and a Jewish context. However, this only accentuates the fact that even his views are generally considered mysogynistic by the present-day Western secular establishment.
Besides, there is no reason for God to not appear as Alanis Morissette. It really doesn't contradict anything for God to have that ability, particularly since that is part of the interplay of the story; IE that God appears to you in your own conception. Not that as a comatose person, God was male. Rufus also insisted he was a man to Bethany. That's their conception of God. However, that was Bethany's big moment, so God took that form. After all, Bartleby, Serendipity, and Rufus have no need; no angel or dominion or dude that hangs out with God alot could fail to recognize (though, of course, Jay did, which prompted the Chris Rock "KNEEL, STUPID!" line). That's one of the underlying themes of the movie, God is whereever you find it.
As mentioned, I never saw the film, but was merely commenting on the Christianity of the themes (as described by posters here, and in a wiki article).
The Dark wrote:Beta Israel, depending on which origin story you believe, may fit.
Possibly; I do not know the traditions there well enough to say.
Literalists believe God is male. Moderate and liberal theologians are familiar the the fact that similar to many Romance languages, the masculine gender in both Hebrew and Greek is used with unknown/unknowable gender, in addition to known male gender.
Yes, which is why I said "most" and "traditionally". The favoured modern liberal interpretation is naturally that of an inclusive, genderless deity that everyone can relate to as much as possible. However, such a view has not been widely acknowledged in the past. The original God of the Old and New Testament of the Bible is consistently portrayed with masculine, as opposed to feminine, attributes - many of them, scholars claim today, borrowed directly from Canaanite gods such as El or Ba'al. In Christian and most Jewish* tradition, Jehovah has been very much God The Father, the Lord of Hosts.
Although we usually speak of G-d in masculine terms, there are times when we refer to G-d using feminine terms. The Shechinah, the manifestation of G-d's presence that fills the universe, is conceived of in feminine terms, and the word Shechinah is a feminine word." (from
here)
Yes, I know. And similarly in the Hebrew wisdom traditions God's Wisdom was described with female personifications (which concept later, in Hellenistic Jewish and Christian thought, mutated into what is nowadays called the Holy Ghost). Yet these are personifications or attributes of the Lord's powers, not manifestations of the "person" God Himself. He is always described as male in mainstream historical Judaism and Christianity (except, arguably, if one argues, as some Gnostics and early Christians did, that the Holy Ghost, which is part of the Trinity, is female). The notion that God is genderless is, as I understand it, a comparatively recent phenomenon.
*That I am aware of, at least, as based on the
Tanakh. I know that in the
Kabbalah there are a lot of . . . odd . . . ideas, and not just about the nature of the Divine itself.