Alejandro
Active Member
Well, you could actually take the whole notion a lot farther than this. Assuming that a certain deity condescends to speak to you in whichever language you best understand, haven't you ever wondered in what accent s\he would speak it, or if s\he could/would speak to you in slang? Would the deity be street enough to speak the language of the street, with all its inflections and nuances? At any rate the question presupposes that the gods speak a certain language or languages, with the same limitations and parameters which restrict human speech and its cultural considerations. And if this is the case then the answer to the question is possibly Yes or No.
>>Yes, they need translators, because French gods, or Inuit gods, or Zulu gods, speak only French, Inuit, and Zulu, etc., or at least not all members of the pantheon in question are that well-versed in Kiswahili, Lakota, Mandarin, or the other roughly 6,000 modern tongues of humankind.
>>No, they ain't need no translator, yaw, because, included in each divinity's microprocessor, is the really nifty ability to automatically learn and speak both his/her own language as well as any other form of communication anyone could ever invent on earth or in heaven.
In most ancient mythologies and religions, however, though the gods may not necessarily be omniscient or omnipotent, they certainly do transcend pretty much every aspect of human existence, including human thought and speech. So I presume that the Greeks and the Romans, who were quite liberal with their syncretism, when they freely identified their own gods with those of the various nations and peoples they encountered beyond their immediate cultural reference-frame, took it is a natural given that if Zeus was Amūn and Amūn was Zeus, then he could speak and understand both Greek and Egyptian well enough, or if Venus Caelestis was Tabiti and Tabiti was Venus Caelestis, then she could most likely think and dream in both Latin and Scythian. The Greeks and Romans shared a myth in which Hermes/Mercurius invented the first human languages and somehow bestowed them upon humankind some time after the Flood of Deucalion, which reminds of the story of the Tower of Babel in the Book of Genesis. It seems that it would have taken a degree of open-mindedness and humility on the part of any of these peoples, however, to imagine that if the gods did have a native language, it was not necessarily Greek, Latin, Egyptian or Scythian. Considering how language, like all other aspects of human culture, is in a constant state of flux, would anyone (back then) have considered that the gods' language, if they did have their own native language (or if among themselves they spoke any language in even remotely the same way we understand this concept as humans), was perhaps subject to the same changes over time as our own languages are?
>>Yes, they need translators, because French gods, or Inuit gods, or Zulu gods, speak only French, Inuit, and Zulu, etc., or at least not all members of the pantheon in question are that well-versed in Kiswahili, Lakota, Mandarin, or the other roughly 6,000 modern tongues of humankind.
>>No, they ain't need no translator, yaw, because, included in each divinity's microprocessor, is the really nifty ability to automatically learn and speak both his/her own language as well as any other form of communication anyone could ever invent on earth or in heaven.
In most ancient mythologies and religions, however, though the gods may not necessarily be omniscient or omnipotent, they certainly do transcend pretty much every aspect of human existence, including human thought and speech. So I presume that the Greeks and the Romans, who were quite liberal with their syncretism, when they freely identified their own gods with those of the various nations and peoples they encountered beyond their immediate cultural reference-frame, took it is a natural given that if Zeus was Amūn and Amūn was Zeus, then he could speak and understand both Greek and Egyptian well enough, or if Venus Caelestis was Tabiti and Tabiti was Venus Caelestis, then she could most likely think and dream in both Latin and Scythian. The Greeks and Romans shared a myth in which Hermes/Mercurius invented the first human languages and somehow bestowed them upon humankind some time after the Flood of Deucalion, which reminds of the story of the Tower of Babel in the Book of Genesis. It seems that it would have taken a degree of open-mindedness and humility on the part of any of these peoples, however, to imagine that if the gods did have a native language, it was not necessarily Greek, Latin, Egyptian or Scythian. Considering how language, like all other aspects of human culture, is in a constant state of flux, would anyone (back then) have considered that the gods' language, if they did have their own native language (or if among themselves they spoke any language in even remotely the same way we understand this concept as humans), was perhaps subject to the same changes over time as our own languages are?