using Logos to free thought from where it can get trapped?

by quietlyleaving 6 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  quietlyleaving

  I've decided to learn the greek alphabet and to try and make sense of new testament greek (beginning with the gospel of John). I expect this to be a long but fun process and this link seems like a good place to start (if you have any better suggestions please share)

  http://www.greek-language.com/alphabet/

  Re the title of this topic - I was very pleased to learn that the word Logos (john1:1) can also mean "idea or thought" (from strong's concordance at Free Bible Tools). So in one sense I wondered at the possiblity of extrapolating that the "Word" as "light shining in the darkness and the darkness has not overpowered it", can be seen to mean that we can use thinking to free thinking but with difficulty as the resultant acts would mean venturing into the dark and also being unrecognizable (John1:10)

  So it is in this sort of spirit that I intend to read John. Anyone care to join me? - and please feel free to disagree

  Also I don't mean to denude the "Word" of its divine/religious/mythological significance at all as I intend to take all meaning engendering on board.
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  quietlyleaving

  first four letters

  edit - lotsa red crosses (I have some errands to do but will be back soon) where is everybody?

  Lower Case Upper Case Name Traditional English Transliteration Modern Greek Pronunciation Reconstructed Classical Pronunciation (before 300 BC/BCE) Alpha a a as in father a as in father Beta b v as in vote b as in boat Gamma g g as in go, but before vowels such as iota and epsilon, y as in yet, and before gamma, kappa, xi, or chi, n as in sing g as in go, but before gamma, kappa, xi, or chi, n as in sing Delta d th as in then (but not thin); contrast theta below d as in dog E-psilon e e as in set e as in set
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  Narkissos

  Congrats! It's fun indeed if you keep it so, and playing is one of the best ways to learn (languages, at least) :)

  You might be interested in the following old thread (also in 'rambling' mode, mostly): http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/bible/99593/1/And-the-Word-was-with-God

  The logos in many of its senses (language, thinking, reason etc.) has a strange relationship with "everything" (panta) -- as much as with "God"; both it is and is not...
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  quietlyleaving

  thanks narkissos for replying.

  the link is a very interesting thread and will take time to digest. Ross, jgnat, abbadon ...

  The point about antagonism caught my eye and it reminded me of Freud's wound. Also in the mythological trinity of the known the knower and the unknown, antagonisms would play an important role just as it does in chemistry and physics so why not in the christian trinity (please take this in the spirit of rambling as I don't mean to be sacriligious)

  The logos in many of its senses (language, thinking, reason etc.) has a strange relationship with "everything" (panta) -- as much as with "God"; both it is and is not...

  I'm not sure I understood you above. Do you mean that in the sense of differentiating objectively there is necessarily a subjective element? Things don't exist as things in themselves but as parts of their surroundings and as forms of their own constituent parts and as forms of what they can reconstitute - lol - and of course their value or significance also changes accordingly
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  Narkissos

  I wasn't clear but I'm afraid it is not very easy to explain.

  In the Johannine Prologue the logos is both identified with and distinct from God; AND both identified with and distinct from everything.

  Now if we turn to a broader definition of logos (beyond a strictly theological, mythological or even philosophical one, at least beyond the particular sense it can be restricted to as a technical term in a particular system, e.g. Stoic or Christian): logos as language-thinking-mind-reason has the same kind of paradoxical and antagonistic relationship with everything, real or imaginary -- including "gods".

  It is "real" -- spoken and thought in time (the time to speak, the time to think, the immemorial time to develop a particular language and a culture), constructed and written in space (the space of individual bodies and brains relating to each other within language communities which depend on particular geographical, social, political, economical settings, the space of cave walls and stones and ostraca and books and computer screens). And at the same time (and place) it assumes a very unreal exteriority to everything which allows it to embrace, name, analyse, explain and change "real" things as well as to "create" imaginary ones (myths, legends, fictions). It is "reality" folding itself as it were to reflect and mean itself and thus irresistibly becoming more than itself -- hence also more than real. The fold being the logos itself -- both real and unreal as it were.

  Incidentally "fold" is another translation of kolpos -- the "bosom" where the logos, as monogenès theos, "is" -- or "is not"? -- in the Johannine Prologue: the "nowhere" (now here?) between the being of "God" and the becoming of "everything".

  Sorry, but you asked for it :)
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  quietlyleaving

  very horizon expanding

  we're off to get some novelty sightseeing done today - going where the spirit takes us in our capital
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  tjmu81

  Any brothers or sisters from Turks and Caicos that can tell me how the weather is and about hall ... family going next week