Y-H-W-H is God; besides him there is nothing.

indeed, the metaphysical concept of ain as complete nothingness is a concept that wasn't really around until the middle ages. it's just a word that means something like "none".

not sure what translation you're using. my copy says,

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אַתָּה הָרְאֵתָ לָדַעַת, כִּי יְהוָה הוּא הָאֱלֹהִים: אֵין עוֹד, מִלְּבַדּוֹ

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note the words that come after אֵין. in that context, it's not appropriate to translate אֵין as "nothing" particularly because you're leaving out two words: עוֹד "other", and מִלְּבַדּוֹ "apart from/beside him". most notably עוֹד because you could conceivably read אין מלבדו as "nothing apart from him". but עוֹד tells us that it's talking about אלהים, because, "יְהוָה הוּא הָאֱלֹהִים".make sense?Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.

the text says, "you were shown (it) to know, for yahweh he is the god, there is none other besides him." or something to that that extent.the issue is that eliyahu has latched onto the word ain here (bolded above) because you can use it mean "nothingness". i was arguing that this is inappropriate based on its grammatical context, notably that there are words that follow it. it's in construct (a grammatical pair) with the next word, owd, so it should read as a whole phrase, "none-other" or "no-other", and "no-thing".

i agree. i disagree. and i like hamlet. it just doesn't have the cultural impact the bible does. and you have to remember that you're reading the biblical texts through several layers of filters: an editor's filter, a redactor's filter, a canonization filter, a translation filter, and a filter bades on cultural conceptions and bias. if you can cut through all of that, some of the source material truly interesting, and exceptionally well written.for instance, the poetic aspects tend not to come across in translation. repetition of words and concepts seems redundant, bad writing english. in hebrew, the repetition is more like rhyming, and authors will frequently choose different words that sound alike. some texts, like J, are exceptionally witty and full of wordplay that shakespeare would have surely appreciated.Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.Edited by arachnophilia, : grammars

right, except that it's not saying אין מלבד יהוה אלהים "there is nothing besides yahweh god", it says, יהוה הוא האלהים "yahweh, he is the the god" with אין עוד clearly referring back to האלהים. that is, "yahweh is god; there are no other gods".in fact, you could probably even quibble about the meaning of מלבדו in the social and historical context: are there other gods, but none are "beside" yahweh in rank? are there other gods, but none should be "beside" yahweh in the eyes of israel? or does the text mean that there is only one god?because when you skip ahead a bit and look at the septuagint (because the masoretic makes no sense for this verse) of deuteronomy 32:8-9, it says,

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ὅτε διεμέριζεν ὁ ὕψιστος ἔθνη ὡς διέσπειρεν υἱοὺς Αδαμ ἔστησεν ὅρια ἐθνῶν κατὰ ἀριθμὸν ἀγγέλων θεοῦ. καὶ ἐγενήθη μερὶς κυρίου λαὸς αὐτοῦ Ιακωβ σχοίνισμα κληρονομίας αὐτοῦ Ισραηλ

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and that seems to imply that κυρίου ("the lord" or יהוה) is only one of the sons of the most high god (עליון), and that israel/jacob was his division.so i might argue that the author of detueronomy didn't even think that yahweh was the only god.Edited by arachnophilia, : no smileys dammit

don't tell him that, he'll resort to bigger letters and colors.