> Hi Darwi. :-) Let me ask you, If Paul is a messiah, does that make him a
> god? [I'm trying to figure this out for the other discussion thread.]
Darwi wrote:
[Let me quote wikipedia:
"Messiah (Hebrew: ????????, Standard Masía? Tiberian Masîª?; Aramaic:
?????, Aramaic/Syriac: ???????, M?sî?a; Arabic: ???????, al-Masi?)
Literally, Messiah means "The Anointed (One)", typically someone
anointed with holy anointing oil. Figuratively, anointing is done to
signify being chosen for a task; so, Messiah means "The Chosen (One)",
particularly someone divinely chosen.
In Jewish messianic tradition and eschatology, Messiah refers to a
future Jewish King from the Davidic line, who will be and rule the
Jewish people during the Messianic Age. In Standard Hebrew, The
Messiah is often referred to as ??? ?????, Méle? ha-Masía? (in the
Tiberian vocalization pronounced Méle? hamMasîª?), literally meaning
"the Anointed King." "
The problem with the 'god' notion comes from Christianity, since Jesus
is considered to be a God and a Messiah. But that part can easily be
disregarded by the fact that Paul has human father. I do not believe
that F. Herbert would be interested so much to describe the messiah as
much as effect that cult of messiah has on human societies.
Therefore I can conclude that Paul is not a god."]
Tony replied:
Thank you for this information. If I understand this issue correctly, if
one ascribes to the Jewish definition of Messiah, one someone be the
Messiah, and be merely "a king" and not God. And you're probably correct
in
describing Frank Herbert's intentions with respect to Paul. However, for
the purposes of the discussion thread below ("Gods of Dune") I'm
interested
in identifying all the various gods identified in the Dune Chronicles.
According to this perspective, we should note that Paul was considered to
be
a god. For example, in Dune Messiah Paul declares in reference to
himself:
"When godhead is given, that's the one thing the so-called god no longer
controls."
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