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Why do we use “He” for God(Second question)

By: admin

The Second Question 

I read your answer about my question, I am sorry to say it was not completely to my satisfaction, or the answer was presented in such a way that I was unable to grab it. Anyhow, I understand the logic behind the answer. But what other arguments you can provide?

Please answer.

Reply

I am sorry if I could not make my point clear in the first instance. I am glad that you did let me know about it. Lets try again:

In most of the languages, especially the eastern languages, including Urdu, Arabic and Hebrew, genders are normally ascribed to different words in three ways: Firstly, when the words refer to observable living organisms, like man, woman, dog, tigress etc. we assign male or female gender words, (whenever we want to differentiate between the genders) according to the actual gender of the living organism; Secondly, in case of physical things and abstract concepts, although these things and concepts do not have any gender, the words used for these concepts are normally not neuter, and therefore for a male word, we ascribe the male gender and vice versa. For example: In the Urdu language, the word ‘kursi’ (chair) is a female word and therefore we use female gender for this word, and the word ‘dard’ (pain) is a male word and therefore we use male genders while referring to this word. These are unreal and purely linguistic genders; Thirdly, we ascribe genders according to our concepts about a particular thing. A country has traditionally been referred to, in the female gender, although obviously a country does not have any gender. The traditional concept in this case is that of the “motherland”. The Germans, on the other hand, while referring to Germany use male pronouns. The reason: the Germans, in contrast to other cultures have the concept of the “fatherland”. In the same manner, male genders have been used for God, because of the traditional concept about God as the father figure. Another example can be that of Angels. Because the Arabs traditionally had the concept of female angels, the word in Arabic for angels is a female word. On the other hand, in other languages like Urdu, English etc. we use male gender word for angels.

Besides the first kind of gender words, that is those assigned on the actual gender of the observable living organism, all other gender words are unreal and are either based on the linguistic structure of a language or on the traditional and historical concepts regarding the nouns in question.

As should be quite clear, male gender words for God belong to the third category of words; obviously this usage, like that of the female gender words for countries, has nothing to do with the actual gender of God (or that of the country).

I hope my answer would be more comprehensible this time. In case anything requires further elaboration, please do not hesitate in letting me know.

UIUK team

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