[Buddha-l] G-d damn it [was: Ethics and the four way test]

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Mon, 2005-03-14 at 11:45 +0100, Benito Carral wrote:

> if you ask an orthodox Jew, he will tell you that the ten
> commandments come from G-d and that he follows them
> just because that reason.

This is a digression, but one of my former colleagues at McGill was a
professor in Jewish Studies; she is now at Harvard. She once said to me
it drove her crazy when Jewish students wrote "G-d", because she felt it
betrayed a deep ignorance of Jewish tradition. The only word for which a
Jew is not supposed to PRONOUNCE the vowels is the name YHWH. But the
English word "God" is not YHWH, nor is it even a translation of that
name. Besides, the prohibition concerning YHWH is against pronunciation,
not writing, so it makes no sense at all to eviscerate the word "God".
So not only is there no prohibition against writing out the English word
"God" (or the Spanish word "Dios" instead of "D--s" or the French "Dieu"
instead of "D---"), but it is actually a blasphemy to treat any word as
being the equivalent in sacredness to YHWH (which, can be written but
not pronounced). Thus have I heard from an authority who probably knew.
Mind you, this authority was a woman, so Benito's statement "if you ask
an orthodox Jew, he will tell you..." may still be correct. It just goes
to show, if you ever want to hear anything sensible, then for G-d's
sake, never ask a man.

When I was in Religious Studies at McGill, I had a number of Jewish
students (not orthodox ones, just ignorant ones) who would even use the
hyphen when writing about Hindu g-ds or native American g-ds. Eu Weh,
eh? It always made me a little annoyed that these people did not extend
the same courtesy to the B-ddh- or even to V-shn- or to the various Hopi
k-ts-n-s.

Yours in the celebration of vowels,
R-ch-rd

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico