Re God & Good; are these terms in any way related? And if so, how?
I had an interesting chat with uncle Terry today. During our conversation he suggested – well, asserted, more accurately – that God means Good. And that that this idea stands for all the Abrahamic religions.
I have heard this said before, of course. Esp’ back when I was moving in Christian circles. But it’s not an idea I’ve often encountered since I left religion.
And I’ve always suspected – so far without bothering to look into the matter – that it’s a mistaken assumption. Based, initially perhaps, on what art historian Norman Rosenthal rather pompously and portentously (as is the way with too many art critics) calls ‘morphological resonance’. Or, in plain English, the two words look so similar, they must be related. Right?
Wrong!
I thought I’d simply ‘google’ the phrase ‘God etymology’, and did so. And I subsequently read perhaps four of five articles or essays on the topic. I’m linking two of those here, that I think are short and simple enough to make easily digestible reading:
And then there’s this, which is Wikipedia’s entry on the etymology and definitions of the word god/God.
What these folk, linked to above, who delve into the history and archaeology of words and language – call it etymology or philology, or whatever – have discovered, is that the roots of these words are obscure and unrelated.
And in tracing these deeply buried roots of meaning, they unearth concepts almost wholly alien to those embraced by the kind of idea embodied in the image at the top of this post. That idea seems to stem from and thrive in our very current need to soothe and calm ourselves in a busy modern world.
The needs addressed by our distant ancestors, and the consequent evolution of these terms – and I’m primarily taking about ‘god’ now (not good) – ironically address that same need – to help us cope with life’s adversities – but from a radically different viewpoint: one of placating higher powers, because they (note the plural) fill us with fear.
So god(s) were powers or entities, capricious if not outright hostile, we tried to placate with worship, offering libations, for example.
And it transpires that one of the strongest contenders re the origin of the term ‘god’ (at this time both plural and gender neutral; the evolution into a singular male deity being a much more recent development in the conception of ‘higher powers’ than are the roots of the word god) is, or rather are ‘god means either “the one invoked” or “the one libated”!
And those murky roots are located more in an ancient polytheistic soil of fear and incomprehension than in the self-soothing modern day platitude ‘god is good’.