It's not the animal that pulls the ox cart
A guy at church told me that in Hebrew, the word for tree is “trail shade” עץ. Instead of it being a symbol for a tree it was a functional definition. It’s more like: this is what a tree does. Clever, beautiful, and resourceful.
So next, I wanted to know what other words would be. More specifically, I wanted to know what the symbol for God was, and I went down a rabbit hole I didn’t expect.
So one of the names of God is “El” or something like that. It’s not exactly a name, and Yahweh is used more commonly. But “el” is in words like Israel, Daniel, Gabriel, Michael, etc. It’s been like that even in ancient Hebrew. Take יִשְׂרָאֵל. You see the א? That letter is the aleph. It exists in the other “el” words too. Israel means “Wrestles with God”. How beautiful. How poetic. Imagine being Jewish and pointing to your country on a map and they ask what the name means — and you’re sort of embarrassed. You don’t wanna say it. Every country likes to believe that God is on their side, but to admit to being disobedient is a little embarrassing.
Some names that have the “el” in them:
Michael: “Who is like God?”
Daniel: “God’s Judgement”
Gabriel: “Strength of God”
Israel: “one who has struggled with God”
So far it’s beautiful, but it’s gonna get weird.
The ancient symbol that is now the aleph א used to be something quite different. It used to be a picture of an ox.
Now, I don’t know anything about animals. I knew an ox had horns and it was related to cows. So now I was looking into cattle terminology.
Intact adult male: bull
An adult female that has had a baby: cow
Adult female before she’s had a baby: heifer
Young cattle: calves
Castrated adult male: steer
A castrated used for drafting: ox
An ox is a castrated bull? Now an ox isn’t always castrated (according to Wikipedia), but still. Why is the word “god” associated in any way to a castrated bull? In Modern Hebrew, this “aleph” isn’t pronounced. The word for Yahweh also isn’t said out loud. Instead, another word like Adonai is used. In the Old Testament, spotless calves are sacrificed, Cain kills his “better” brother Abel. In Genesis, God warns that his spirit will not always strive with man. In the New Testament, Christ’s mission is to be killed and resurrected. There’s an obsession with bad things happening to good people and good things happening to bad people. For example, God being on the side of Israel, a nation that has trouble believing in its own God.
The letter א is the same as the Phoenician letter 𐤀. The Hebrews and Phoenicians lived in the same area. The languages in that part of the world had a lot of similarities. This symbol was rotated to become the Greek letter “A”.
In Modern Hebrew, you don’t pronounce the aleph. You just stop breathing for a bit mid-speech. It’s kind of like how British people say the word “British”. It’s the glottal stop.
In the New Testament, Christ says “I am the Alpha and the Omega”. The “A” is the “alpha” in Greek. This puts a new twist on the phrase “alpha male”.
As I thought about this whole thing, I think I figured it out. What moves the ox cart is not the ox, but the missing testicles. God’s presence is intricately linked to his apparent non-existence. If gravity is the invisible force that keeps planes on the ground, “god” is the invisible force that allows planes and rockets to propel themselves upward.
Imagine you discover that you can create something new not by adding, but by the removal of something essential, namely, the jewels. And hence, the sacrificial of the perfect lamb, circumcision, and even child sacrifice.