Why 'Gott' did not mean Yahweh or the God of the Bible.
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What does 'Gott' mean and how was the term used in Germany in the past?
Since "NS Christians" often believe that when historical figures speak of Gott, they necessarily mean the Christian god Yahweh/Jesus, here is a brief explanation what Gott actually means.
Etymology of Gott/God and the historical use of the term in the context of German culture:
Quote from Jacob Grimm (linguist, philologist, jurist, and folklorist):
"In all Teutonic tongues the Supreme Being has always with one consent been called by the general name God. The dialectic varieties are: Gothic guΓΎ, Anglo Saxon, Old Saxon, Old Frisian god, Old High German cot, Old Norse goΓ°, Swedish, Danish gud, Mittelhochdeutsch got and others." from "Deutsche Mythologie" by J. Grimm (1835)
The term "Godan" was the name used for Odin amongst the pre-ChristianΒ Langobards. GodanΒ was shortened to God over time and was retained by the Germanic peoples as the name of the supreme deity, in lieu of the Latin wordΒ DeusΒ used by the Latin speaking Christian church after conversion to Christianity.
The German "Gott" itself is cognate with the Gothic wordΒ guΓΎΒ for a pagan idol, presumably a wooden statue of the kind paraded byΒ WinguricΒ on a chariot when he challenged the Gothic Christians to worship the tribal gods. It became the word for the Christian God in theΒ Gothic BibleΒ with itsΒ grammatical genderΒ changed from neuter to masculine only in the new sense.
What is meant when great Germans of the past such as Ludwig van Beethoven, Goethe and Schiller spoke about God? None of them believed in Christ. By God, they all meant the Supreme Being.
Etymology: God = "libation" or "invocation" (within the context of the rituals of Germanic paganism) In the original Biblical texts of the Old and New Testament (all written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek) there is not a single sentence where God is mentioned! This is important to understand as it reveals well the priestly deception that is Christianity.
The idea that God means yahweh/Christ is an invention of medieval monks. In their Germanic translations of the Bible, which were made from Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic and Latin texts, the monks used the very ancient term God/Gott for the supreme deity to describe with it the foreign and imported deity of Christianity.
What was once a term used only for deities of Germanic tribal societies and for ritual acts associated with the Supreme Being has now become a term for a universal god who is supposedly the supreme being of all people in the world regardless of tribal affiliation, language and customs.
Christianity's assertion that there is one God for all peoples regardless of ancestry is proto-communism (Christianity wants to make all people equal and believes in the equality of souls in the afterlife) In order to make the new religion understandable, medieval monks had to use terms and concepts from the old pagan religion. Here lies the great deception of the Middle Ages. The already familiar divine was now equated with the foreign deity Jesus. We can see the extent of this medieval deception in early Gospel texts from Northern Europe such as the Heliand.
However, the term Gott already had its meaning many thousands of years before Christianity. For ages, people have associated it with something that is completely unrelated to Christ and the Bible. When the ancient Teutons heard about Christianity for the first time, the monks sold them the new faith using terms from the old pagan faith. When they heard about Jesus for the first time the monks called him God. What was understood when God was mentioned?
The English/German God/Gott trace back to Proto-Germanic *gudΔ
with roots in the Proto-Indo-European *Η΅Κ°u-tΓ³-m, the concept of invocation or something that is called upon.
Meaning of God according to various linguistic studies: Langobardic:Β Godan (in use during the Iron Age and Early Medieval Period)
Proto-Germanic:Β *Η₯uΔΓ‘naz, wΕdanaz, wΕΔinazΒ (Iron Age)
Proto-Germanic:Β *gudΔ
Β (Iron Age)
Proto-Indo-EuropeanΒ neuterΒ passive perfect participle:Β *Η΅Κ°u-tΓ³-mΒ (in use Late Neolithic and Bronze Age)
From a rootΒ *Η΅Κ°ew-Β "to pour, libate" (the idea survives in the Dutch verbΒ gieten, meaning "to pour") or from a rootΒ *Η΅Κ°aw-Β (*Η΅Κ°ewh2-) "to call, to invoke".
In ancient Heathenry most likely "one to whom sacrifices are made."
TheΒ pre-ChristianΒ meaning of the Germanic term God:
in the "pouring" case: "libation" or "that which is libated upon,Β idol" β or in the "invoke" case: "invocation, prayer" β or, as WatkinsΒ opines in the light ofΒ GreekΒ ΟΟ
ΟΞ· Ξ³Ξ±ΞΉΞ±Β "poured earth" meaning "tumulus", "the Germanic form may have referred in the first instance to the spirit immanent in a burial mound".
It's quite amusing that every time Christians talk about God, they automatically talk about pagan rituals and about a pagan deity without realizing it. While It is true that historically, since the Middle Ages, the vast majority of people when they spoke of God actually meant Yahweh/Christ with it, it is also important to emphasize that this is far from always the case!
When Beethoven, HΓΆlderlin, Goethe, Schiller, Hitler, Friedrich 2 of Prussia, Ludendorff and countless others talk about God, they do not mean the Christian god but the Supreme Being. A pantheistic understanding of God.
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Jacob Grimm - Deutsche Mythologie
Karl Sell - Die Religion unserer Klassiker: Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Goethe
Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm - Deutsches WΓΆrterbuch
Schiller und das Christentum
Oxford English Dictionary
Paul the Deacon - History of the Lombards. Translated by Foulke, William Dudley
Kroonen, Guus - Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic
Green, Dennis Howard - Language and History in the Early Germanic World
Watkins, Calvert - The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.
