Personal Spiritual Advice available: Uncover, recover, discover your own personal secret in writing, perhaps, to one you trust, riting with your companions in the way, writhing for joy, righting your mistakes and wrighting all you can to create a new world NOW...
"G O D"
Faithfully Transcribed, Introduced & Supplemented with Notes
By His Only Son
DCH, MRP, STP, PhD, AFPhys (ITEC), DSc (hc), otherwise known as Shivananda
Preliminary LibrArian emeritusI+N The Neith Network
First Terrestrial Edition + Great Britain 1990
Copyright © Colin James Hamer 1990
All Rights Reserved.
"IF YOU WANT TO WRITE A BOOK - ANY BOOK… A PARTICULAR KIND OF BOOK, SAY 'a very particular kind of book', OR 'a special book', 'a very special book', PERHAPS EVEN 'a very, very special book' - THE SORT OF SPECIAL BOOK, IN FACT, THAT YOU FEEL SURE IS GOING TO TURN OUT TO BE NOT ONLY A SPECIAL, BUT A VERY SPECIAL AND, INDEED, A MOST SPECIAL SORT OF SPECIAL BOOK, IN OTHER WORDS, AN EXTRAORDINARY AND UNUSUAL BOOK OF SUCH A PECULIAR AND UNEXPECTED KIND AS TO BE REGARDED BY THE VAST MAJORITY OF YOUR READERS AS BEING 'almost certainly the most extraordinary and fascinating book to have been published in this country since the invention of printing', THEN ALL YOU HAVE TO DO," I reminded myself in a MEMO I once jotted down in a private note-book I used to keep when I was living on Earth, "IS TO PUT EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO SAY DOWN ON PAPER, ONE WORD AT A TIME, NEATLY AND CAREFULLY, PRINTING ALL THE WORDS CLEARLY," just as my son is doing for me now, "SPACING THEM OUT PROPERLY IN ORDERLY LINES, STARTING OUT FROM THE TOP AND WORKING HOUR WAY DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF EACH PAGE, SO THAT YOU FILL UP YOUR PREVIOUSLY EMPTY BOOK A PAGE AT A TIME, COMMENCING FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE BOOK, SPELLING ALL YOUR CHOSEN WORDS CORRECTLY, AND PUNCTUATING THEM SUITABLY INTO PHRASES AND SENTENCES, SET OUT CONVENIENTLY IN SEPARATE PARAGRAPHS THAT FLOW ON, ONE AFTER ANOTHER, AND ARRANGED INTO AN APPROPRIATE NUMBER OF CHAPTERS."
If I were writing that MEMO to myself today, I would probably include a few extra WORDS about the need to have a reasonable margin on both the left-hand and the right-hand side of the front and back of each page, as well as a small amount of space left free at the top and bottom all the way through the BOOK, with, of course, NUMBERS on each page, so that you, the reader, can find your way easily and without difficulty to the page you want to read next.
All the same, the MEMO as it stands is pretty much what I want to say, or rather, to have written for me to begin with. Mind you, I am only quoting it from memory. My son is writing it down truthfully and without any frills or trimmings, just as I am now dictating it to him, but if you do ever happen to come across a copy of the original, if, indeed, there still is such a thing, you may find that a few WORDS have been altered - perhaps for the better, perhaps not…
I always try to be truthful, but memory plays strange tricks on all of us at times. I personally have noticed, for instance, that I often remember my life on Earth as a much happier and pleasanter time than it seemed to me to sometimes be when I was actually living it the first time round.
You, dear reader, may possibly find that fact interesting; I mention it only in passing, since it isn't directly connected with what this BOOK is going to be all about, but I did just want to mention it.
There are no lies in this BOOK. It is all true. Every WORD of it.
Colin is simply recording and setting down everything that I have said, and just as I have said it, and I am a very honest man.
I never told a 'lie' during the entire course of the time I lived on Earth, and I certainly have not the slightest intention of starting to tell any 'lies' now. No. Very definitely not. Not even one.
Telling 'lies' is a very harmful and most detestable, vile, bad habit, and I recommend you, dear reader, also always to tell 'The Truth', avoiding even the smallest deliberate fit just as if it were a barge-pole.
There will also be no wasting of God's gift of precious time in this BOOK. No idle prattle. No thoughtless stilly pranks. No pointless fooling about. No unhealthy sorts of fun and games. And very definitely no nonsense.
This is an important and serious BOOK. All that I want to tell you, I shall express in "words", and Colin will write down in WORDS that are simple, direct and straightforward.
In short, we shall, between us, do our very best to ensure at all times that you, dear reader, need do no more than relax and enjoy yourself, as you read.
So, by all means rest your head back comfortably against a cushion, and savour the taste of each WORD as you feast your eyes on this precious BOOK we have prepared for you.
Where will you begin?
Some readers like to take a peep at the end of a BOOK before looking at anything else, while others prefer to make a start on a new BOOK by reading a few pages somewhere in the middle of it, but from a writer's point of view, the beginning of a BOOK is almost always the section you are supposed to read first.
More often than not, a BOOK begins with its TITLE.
If you ever happen to read BOOKS in certain foreign languages such as, for example, ARABIC, you may find that the TITLE has been printed somewhere on the outside of that part of the cover of the entire book which is uppermost, when the book itself is still closed, and when the open side edges of the paper pages are one the left-hand side.
If, next time you have a chance of doing so, you take a look inside a book of this kind, you will notice that when the book is in that position, the pages with the largest NUMBERS printed on them are those which are closest to the bottom cover, while those with the smallest NUMBERS are closest to the top cover, the one which the TITLE printed on it.
Books printed in England also nearly always have the TITLE on the outside of the front cover, and the pages inside so arranged that those with the smallest NUMBERS come near the front, while those with the largest NUMBERS are towards the back - but the difference is that, when you put a closed English book down flat on a table in front of you in such a way that you can read its TITLE on the outside of its front cover, you will almost always find the open side edges of its paper pages are then on the right-hand side of it.
That, in fact, is also how this book has been arranged.
The TITLE is on the outside of the front cover, the inside of which has been left blank.
The inside of the back cover has also been left empty, and there is a completely blank two-sided page, called an end-paper, immediately next to the inside of both the front and back covers. These pages have not been counted in the numbering, and Colin has not charged anything for writing on them, and neither is the publisher paying him any royalties on these particular pages.
The cost of the blank paper has, of course, been included in the price, and so you may feel inclined to agree with me, dear reader, that it would be a great pity to let the empty pages go to waste.
I suggest you use them to jot down your own NAME and ADDRESS as a sign of your ownership of this entire book. That should still leave you with a certain amount of free space for your own private, additional NOTES.
If you started off your reading of this BOOK from the very beginning of it, you will already know that it is called GOD, and that it was written by a chap named LEVI HAMER - I almost asked my son, "Colin", to write - WRITTEN BY SOMEBODY NAMED LEVI HAMER - but that would no longer be really true; I myself no longer have a body.
That, indeed, is why I find myself in the unavoidable necessity of having to dictate this BOOK, which I would have very much preferred to have written for you myself, to my son, and to rely on him to set it all out neatly and properly.
I am still allowed to call myself by my spoken name: "Levi Hamer", but I have never as yet been authorised since my death to attach my written NAME to any documents, or actually to write any WORDS at all. That makes quite a lot of difference, as you will one day find out for yourself.
My written NAME, by the way, is LEVI HAMER.
The first thing you should have seen after opening the front cover and turning over the empty end-paper was the inside title-page 1. That contains much more information than you can find on the cover. If by any chance you missed it, I suggest you read it now.
On the back side of that title-page, page 2, you may notice some very important WORDS that I have not dictated. That is one of the only very few pages in this BOOK that are entirely Colin's work.
I have read them all, and I agree with everything that he says on them - but, to be perfectly honest, I don't think that some parts of them are very original!
This PREFACE, on the other hand, is all my own work. What you are here reading is, in other WORDS, a faithful visible equivalent of all the precise "words" of a spoken "Preface" I have dictated.
This early part of any BOOK is ually the least interesting, and quite a few readers like to skip over it, although I personally think that is very often rather a pity. They don't know how much they are missing!
By the way, it is called a preface, a pre-face, because it precedes or comes before the main portion of the BOOK, in this case, in fact, of the entire remainder of this BOOK, which is from now on going to be entirely about "God".
To remind both myself and you that "God" is our topic, I have, therefore, also arranged for "G 0 D" to be printed at the top of every single page.
GOD because you are seeing the WORD for yourself, but also enclosed in inverted commas, because I want you to image that you can in addition to reading the written WORD also at least almost hear me whispering the "word", "G o d", to you myself as you read, coming, perhaps, from a position just a little higher than the top of your own head, and from a small distance behind your right shoulder.
There are also two reasons for puting "G O D" instead of simply "GOD".
The first of these is that, not being myself any longer able to breathe oxygen, my voice is not as strong as it used to be - not that I was ever in the habit of shouting, a thing, in fact, which I very rarely did, perhaps less than half a dozen times in my entire life on Earth.
The " " part of "G O D" is meant to suggest a certain quietness and unhurriedness of delivery in my speech nowadays, when I actually say "God". Modesty, I suppose is mainly what it is. "God" is a very important "word", a "word" not to be trifled with, a "word" it is never wise to pronounce too lightly - even though, as I have just explained, my own pronunciation of it is at present very, very light indeed!
My second reason for using G O D and not just GOD is, however, much more important. As noted at the foot of every single page, what you have in your hands is A BOOK Issued Posthumously And With Authority.
No, that is not quite right. What you have in your hands is simply a cardboard and paper book, the real BOOK consists of the WORDS printed.
There are, so far as I know, no mistakes in it at all, certainly no deliberate mistakes - but there are some very important gaps.
If you want to know which things I have left out on purpose, I don't want to disappoint you, but I am not going to tell you.
That is a conundrum you must puzzle out for yourself. Think of this BOOK as being, if you like, a bit of a mystery!
I have, you will probably be glad to know, now almost reached the end of this long enough, although still comparatively speaking, fairly short PREFACE.
So, if you still want to know what comes next, your best plan is to turn to the next page, and to read the TABLE OF CONTENTS for yourself.
by Colin Hamer
My father, who is in heaven, has
authorised me to write this BOOK and to arrange for the printed book
to be made publicly available in whatever way can most conveniently
be arranged.
In the main TEXT of each of the following
CHAPTERS I shall, therefore, as Levi has already explained, simply be
writing down a series of WORDS, each of which corresponds to a "word"
in a series of sounds he has produced, and I have heard, which have
the same meanings as their written equivalents, when these latter are
used with the senses which I am here attributing to them.
Thus, although this is, unfortunately,
not a tape-recording of his now discarnate voice, I am reproducing
his meaning for you as faithfully as is possible in the written- for
merel medium, adding and subtracting nothing from the various
statements which he has very kindly made to me.
Nevertheless, a few of the things he has
said to seem to me, from time to time, to call for at least a few
more WORDS of explanation. In order to ensure that these WORDS of my
own do not get confused with my father's own utterances, I have kept
them quite separate from the main TEXT.
They are the NOTES you will very
occasionally come across at the foot of a page.
Creativity House,
Exeter.
26 June 1990.
Whenever you read G O D, GOD or GOD - for merely changing the size of the WORD or the style of the LETTERS makes not one scrap of difference to what I am telling you now, you are reading the most important WORD in the ENGLISH DICTIONARY.
You may find this a bit hard to believe at first, and I personally must admit that it also took me quite a long time to cotteon on to this supremely vital and never to be forgotten fact.
GOD is, for example, for some strange and to me still unaccountable reason not part of the TITLE printed on the outside of the front cover of my own dictionary, which Colin has in front of him at this very moment, as he writes.
The TITLE of my dictionary is THE BRITISH EMPIRE UNIVERSITIES MODERN ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED DICTIONARY, and my copy is also called the DAILY DISPATCH EDITION. At least, that is the TITLE printed on the outside of the front cover.
The full TITLE looks much more impressive, and you will find it easily enough, if ever you are fortunate enough to get hold of a copy of this valuable book, because it is printed right at the top of page i.
This is the full TITLE. No, I mustn't say that! The full TITLE isn't This!
The full TITLE is SPECIAL DAILY DISPATCH EDITION OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE UNIVERSITIES MODERN ENGLISH DICTIONARY CONTAINING ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR AND IN MONOCHROME, MAPS IN COLOUR, AND THE LATEST CENSUS, WITH A REFERENCE LIBRARY & TREASURY OF FACTS - REVISED AFTER THE BEST AND LATEST AUTHORITIES ON LANGUAGE, UNDER THE CHIEF EDITORSHIP OF THE REVEREND EDWARD D. PRICE, EDITOR OF HAZELL'S ANNUAL CYCLOPÆDIA (1886-91), THE STUDENT'S IMPERIAL DICTIONARY (1904), THE PEARL CYCLOPÆDIA OF UNIVERSAL INFORMATION (1892), HAYDN'S DICTIONARY OF DATES (1904 EDITION), AND W. G. HARTOG, M.A., LITT.D, F.R.S.L.
Have you noticed anything unusual about that TITLE?
I spotted it right away, GOD isn't mentioned!
Quite apart from GOD not being part of the TITLE of this book, the Reverend Edward D. Price, whose own title and style of address is meant to tell us that he is himself a man of God, doesn't even take the trouble to mention that GOD is contained in his book.
Instead, he uses up no fewer than twenty-two WORDS in telling us about illustrations, maps, a census, a so called library, and a treasury of facts!
Moreover, GOD is also not mentioned in the Introduction, addressed to every man, woman and child in the British Empire, which occupies the whole of page iii of the 1924 edition of this book.
The numbering of the pages, or to be more exact, the lettering and numbering of the pages in this dictionary is also, to say the least, rather peculiar.
It begins like this: *a, followed by three pages without any numbers at all, followed by i, ii, iia, iib, iic, iid.
After that, it runs on consecutively from iii - lxxx.
Then, and only then, come pages 1 - 1007, the last of which is immediately followed by page 1154*.
There are, moreover, no numbers at all on the many coloured pages of quite interesting and helpful illustrations which are to be found here and there throughout the book!
Only part of this mystery is cleared up by a NOTE that has been printed at the bottom of page 1154*, and which says THIS INCLUDES THE 84 PAGES PRECEDING THE DICTIONARY PROPER, ALSO THE COLOUR AND MONOTONE ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS, WHICH AMOUNT IN ALL TO I42 PAGES, MAKING A GRAND TOTAL OF 1154 PAGES.
The Reverend Edward D. Price obviously knew quite a lot about WORDS when he lived on Earth, but he wasn't very good at counting at the time he wrote that particular SENTENCE.
He reckoned up the unnumbered pages of maps and other illustrations quite correctly, but without, I think, counting a special piece of printed tissue paper that comes immediately after page 688, and although he didn't forget to include pages iia, iib, iic and iid in his final count, he left out the very first four pages of the book, the advertisement pages about the Daily Dispatch: page *a and the three unnumbered pages immediately following it.
I must admit, that did set me wondering…
Suppose the Reverend Price was feeling tired. Editing a dictionary, especially an important dictionary like this MODERN ENGLISH DICTIONARY, may have put a bit of a strain on his memory?
If so, perhaps it was only natural that by the time he reached the end of the very last page of this rather long book, he should seem to have completely forgotten, at least for the moment, the very first four pages of it, those most important advertisements which would indeed, help to pay some of the quite considerable expenses involved in producing this extremely valuable work of reference.
"Even so," I said to myself at the time, "surely the Reverend Editor in Chief cannot have forgotten, not even just for a single moment, the NAME of his own Commander-in-Chief, the NAME, GOD!"
Feeling quite flummoxed, I turned to the CONTENTS page vi and vii, but I didn't have very much luck there either.
According to this list of CONTENTS, the dictionary contains CHRISTIAN NAMES OF MEN on page 895, and CHRISTIAN NAMES OF WOMEN on page 901.
The men's NAMES listed include GODARD, GODFREY and GODWIN, but not GOD and, incidentally, not JESUS or CHRIST either, even though both GOD and CHRIST are mentioned, and are, indeed, mentioned quite often in the explanations of the other NAMES in both lists.
I needn't quote all the instances I came across, but I think I ought to mention a few of them:
What do these quotations tell you?
That is not for me to say.
The questions they raised in my mind were these -
Number one. At the time he compiled these lists, did the Reverend Price deny that the man called JESUS CHRIST was a real man? Or did he simply want to say that JESUS and CHRIST are not, at least in the ordinary and generally accepted sense, CHRISTIAN NAMES?
Secondly. If GOD is not a CHRISTIAN NAME, why not? And what is GOD?
Hoping for further INFORMATION, I persevered with my reading.
The first helpful STATEMENT I came across was one on page xi made by Foster Watson, M.A., D.Litt., at that time Emeritus Professor of Education in the University College of Wales.
According to this expert, BY A DICTIONARY OR LEXICON IS UNDERSTOOD, ORDINARILY, A COLLECTION OR CATALOGUE OF ALL THE WORDS OF A LANGUAGE WITH THEIR SIGNIFICATIONS, THE WORDS BEING ARRANGED ACCORDING TO THE ALPHABETICAL ORDER OF THE FIRST LETTER WITH WHICH THEY BEGIN.
If what Professor Watson has written is correct, only pages 1 - 800 of my dictionary properly belong between its covers, and the remaining pages are not a dictionary at all, but part of something else.
In other words, despite its having been described as a DICTIONARY, my dictionary ought really to have been called A REFERENCE BOOK. For that, in fact, is what it is, and a very useful reference book, too, as I have found.
GOD is scarcely mentioned in the rest of the reference-section that comes before the start of the dictionary proper.
On page xlix Ritchie Girvan, M.A., who was in those days in charge of the Department of English and Teutonic Philology, and lecturer on English Language in the University of Glasgow, referred to three phrases containing GOD, viz.: GOD HELP US, GOD PUNISH YOU, and PLEASE GOD.
You won't find another reference after that until page lv, where Professor Walter Ripman, M.A., Chief Inspector of Schools to the University of London, quoted the WORDS from the TEXT of a "Sermon" preached by Hugh Latimer in 1549:
THEY [THE PREACHERS] HAVE GREAT LABOURES, AND THEREFORE THEY OUGHT TO HAVE GOOD LIVINGES, THAT THEY MAYE COMODIOUSLY FEADE THEYR FLOCKE, FOR THE PREACHYNGE OF THE WORDE OF GOD VNTO THE PEOPLE IS CALLED MEATE, FCRIPTURE CALLETH IT MEAT, NOT STRAUBERIES, THAT COME BUT ONCE A YEARE AND TARY NOT LONGE, BUT ARE FONE GONE; BUT IT IS MEAT. IT IS NO DEYNTIES. THE PEOPLE MUSTE HAUE MEATE THAT MUSTE BE FEMILIER AND CONTINUALL. AND DAYLY GEUEN VNTO THEM TO FEDE VPON.
The spelling in that, I believe, interesting quotation is that used in the sixteenth century.
You can also find the NAME of Christ, but spelled CRIST in the opening paragraph of the article by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, then King Edward VII Professor of English Literature in the University of Cambridge, which begins on page lxvii, and GOD is printed on page lxviii as part of the TEXT of a fourteenth-century piece by Laurence Minot:
And that is all!
Only five instances of GOD in the entire course of no fewer than ninety-one introductory pages!
Nevertheless, I remain quite unrepentant in my own opinion; I still maintain GOD is the most important WORD in the ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
You can almost certainly find all the evidence you need somewhere in the pages of any good English dictionary, and in my own dictionary the main fourteen references can be read on page 359:
I haven't given you the details of the entries about GODOWN, GODROOM, GODWINIA and GODWIT, because I suspect those WORDS just happen to look similar to GOD because of their SPELLING. They don't really seem to be directly connected words at all.
I do, however, strongly advise you to read those fourteen definitions I have just quoted slowly and carefully to yourself several times over.
Do it now. Take your time, because this really is tremendously important.
And next, but only when you are ready, turn over to the next page and read on.
It is my firm opinion that definitions numbers 1, 3 and 10 are, for present purposes, the ones to concentrate your attention on.
Since, according to page 237 of the very same dictionary, DEITY is a NOUN that means A GOD, GODDESS OR PERSON WORSHIPPED AS A DIVINE BEING; GOD; JEHOVAH; THE CHARACTER, NATURE, OR ATTRIBUTES OF GOD; THE GODHEAD, while, according to page 481, MANHOOD is a NOUN equivalent to HUMAN NATURE; MANLINESS, I feel fairly confident that you will agree with me that, according to these various DEFINITIONS, either a MAN or a WOMAN can be a GOD, but a MAN is not allowed to be a GODDESS.
I hope that you don't mind me saying so, but I do find that situation at least a trifle unfair.
Be that as it may, I think you will also agree that the GOD I am writing about in this CHAPTER is not AN OCCUPANT OF THE UPPER GALLERY OF A THEATRE - not, at any rate, unless you stretch a point rather a long way, and choose to maintain that, just because William Shakespeare wrote of the entire WORLD as being a STAGE, it is also quite fair and reasonable to think of the other PLANETS, together with the SUN, MOON, and all the STARS as being arranged around the STAGE of our… no, sorry, your EARTH in ascending tiers, with GOD occupying her, or his, or its, or possibly even their own special home, HEAVEN, at the very top.
And speaking from my present vantage-point, I can see various objections to that sort of theory, which was, in any case, already regarded as being rather out-of-date and old-fashioned when I was still quite a young lad.
I don't want to labour the point, or to bore you with too many explanations, but it does seem to me to be as plain as a pike-staff that such an arrangement would completely destroy even the least semblance of alphabetical order!
I am also quite convinced that the GOD I am here writing about is not an IDOL; A PERSON OR THING DEIFIED OR HONOURED TO EXCESS.
There is obviously nothing at all excessive in allowing only five mentions of GOD in ninety-one pages, especially if you also take into account the fact that IT occurs no less than six times on page *a alone!
Hence, dear r eader, and this is the vital conclusion to the whole of this present CHAPTER, it follows as clearly as night the day - and I must leave you to work that one out as best you can! - that GOD is THE SUPREME DEITY, AND SELF-EXISTENT CREATOR OR UPHOLDER OF THE UNIVERSE and A SUPERNATURAL BEING CONCEIVED OF AS POSSESSING DIVINE POWERS OR ATTRIBUTES.
Just think of it - there, tucked away quite unobtrusively, three lines from the bottom of the left-hand column of page 359 of my copy of THE BRITISH EMPIRE UNIVERSITIES MODERN ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED DICTIONARY, you can find GOD!
Such modesty and humility makes even the hay and straw accommodation in the original stable at Bethlehem seem quite luxurious by comparison.
The English poet, William Blake, did some of his own printing, as I remember. He once wrote some words about holding INFINITY IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND. (Did he also own a dictionary?) I began to wonder.
After all, it already stands written that THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD, and VERSE 7 of CHAPTER 20 of the BOOK OF EXODUS reads YOU SHALL NOT UTTER THE NAME OF YAHWEH YOUR GOD TO MISUSE IT, FOR YAHWEH WILL NOT LEAVE UNPUNISHED THE MAN WHO UTTERS HIS NAME TO MISUSE IT.
(Was that, perhaps, the key to the explanation of why GOD is only mentioned five times in the first ninety-one pages?)
I felt it was important to find out.
But then another thought struck me.
"Steady on there, Levi," I said to myself, "there's got to be something not quite right about that there quotation from the TEN COMMANDMENTS; Moses or his secretary seems to have got himself into a bit of a muddle!"
I mean to say, there is obviously no need at all to issue a COMMANDMENT prohibiting people to "utter" THE NAME OF YAHWEH, since nobody could ever possibly "utter" YAHWEH, which the JERUSALEM BIBLE uses instead of the JEHOVAH favoured by the Reverend Price.
Why not?
The answer is simple. What one "utters" is neither JEHOVAH nor YAHWEH, but "Jehovah" or "Yahweh", and I think it is high time we turned our attention to that extremely simple, and yet most useful distinction.
"Language" CONSISTS OF "sounds", NOT OF LETTERS. "Languages" MAY EXIST FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS BEFORE THEY ARE WRITTEN DOWN. LETTERS ARE MERELY SYMBOLS, OFTEN VERY INADEQUATE, WHICH REPRESENT "sounds".
That quotation also comes from THE MODERN ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED DICTIONARY, where you can find it on page xxxiii, which contains part of the TEXT of an article written by Henry Cecil Kennedy Wyld, B.Litt. Oxon., when he was Professor of English Language and Philology in the University of Liverpool.
I purchased my own personal copy of this dictionary as soon as it was first published in 1924, and I have never regretted paying the full price for it.
In fact, I was immediately struck by the remarkably high quality of this most useful work of reference, and so, although I have never been, in the material sense of those words, 'a rich man ', I actually bought not just one copy of this dictionary, but two - one for myself, the other as a present for my wife, Edna.
You will appreciate the importance of this right away, I am sure.
GOD was not only to be found three lines from the bottom of the left-hand column of page 359 of my copy of this wonderful dictionary, but GOD also occupied what at first glance seemed to be an identical position in Edna Hamer's copy of the same book.
In actual fact, of course, Edna's dictionary is not the same as mine at all; it is an entirely different copy - that is why I had to pay twice the price in order to acquire this pair of matching volumes.
The binding and printing of Edna's dictionary looks just the same as the binding and printing of my dictionary, but the paper is different.
The WORD, SAME means IDENTICAL IN KIND OR DEGREE; EXACTLY ALIKE - but it does not always mean NUMERICALLY IDENTICAL, although it sometimes does.
My wife's and my dictionaries can be described as identical or exactly alike in kind, but not numerically.
Although that fairly elementary truth may already seem quite obvious to you, dear reader, it also happens that it marks out an important difference between DICTIONARIES and GOD.
There is only one God!
Please take another look at the WORDS I quoted from that article by Professor Henry Cecil Kennedy Wyld:
"Language" CONSISTS OF "sounds", NOT OF LETTERS. "Languages" MAY EXIST FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS BEFORE THEY ARE WRITTEN DOWN. LETTERS ARE MERELY SYMBOLS, OFTEN VERY INADEQUATE, WHICH REPRESENT "sounds".
According to the dictionary of which that article is an important part, a SYMBOL is AN EMBLEM OR SIGN REPRESENTING SOMETHING ELSE.
Now, just suppose for the time being that the total number of currently available, individual copies of reliable English dictionaries existing in the world is, say, 300,000,000…
The WORDS, DICTIONARY and GOD will each of them have been printed out not less than 300,000,000 times and, indeed, as is already clear from our ealier discussion, will in all probability each of them have been printed out something like 2,000,000,000 times or more.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that although, in that hypothesis, there exist 300,000,000 English dictionaries, there will still only be one God.
Remember, too, that English is not the only language used by human beings who live on Earth.
I have already mentioned Arabic, Greek and Hebrew, but there are also hundreds of other languages, and they almost all of them have dictionaries to go with them!
I don't think we need bother to spend too much time trying to puzzle out just how many 'dictionaries' there are all together.
It is enough if you just pause for a moment, and imagine that you are looking at a sort of mountain-heap of them - English dictionaries, French dictionaries, German dictionaries, dictionaries in Itialian, in Spanish, and in Russian, Persian and Aramaic dictionaries, Hebrew dictionaries, dictionaries of Chinese, Japanese, Finnish and Hungarian, and… I leave you to complete the list for yourself.
There cannot possibly be less than 1,000,000,000,000 'dictionaries' on planet Earth, and each one of these contains at least once either the WORD, GOD, or else its equivalent in another LANGUAGE!
I needn't take you right through the list, but here are a few examples.
Instead of the ENGLISH WORD, GOD, French people use DIEU, Germans use GOTT, Italians use DIO, Romany Gypsies use DUVEL - which, incidentally, is also their equivalent for DEVIL! - and the Latin word is DEUS.
The Greek WORD is rather harder to read; it is THEOS [in the 1990 edition not 5 Latin but 4 Greek characters].
According to Professor Henry Cecil Kennedy Wyld, if we are to take his WORDS seriously, as I believe we must, GOD, DIEU, GOTT, DIO, DUVEL, DEUS, THEOS, and so forth, do not themselves mean 'God' directly, and they do not symbolise 'God'.
The visible written WORDS: GOD, DIEU, GOTT, DIO, DUVEL, DEUS, and THEOS are, according to his opinion, SYMBOLS of the audible "words": "God", "dieu", "Gott", "dio", "duvel", "deus", and "theos".
Not to complicate matters unnecessarily, let's confine our attention, for the time being at any rate, to the to us already familiar aural-oral sign, the "English word" for which GOD is a symbol, the glottal and dental monosyllabic "word", "God".
Two differences between GOD and "God" are obvious right away, as soon as we take the trouble to stop and think about this apparently simple, but in actual fact quite complex situation.
In the first place, GOD usually made of ink although, less frequently, GOD can be made of paint or lead-pencil or wax-crayon, while "God" is always made of air containing oxygen, even in those cases when that "word" is being pronounced, not by a living, or even a dead human being, but by, for example, the loud-speaker attached to a tae-recorder or else by a computer-operated-voice-synthesizer, since, while loud-speakers and voice-synthesizers don't need to breathe oxygen, the human beings listening to them almost always do so - I say "almost always", instead of "always" because, of cousre, I myself am still quite definitely very much a human being, but I can nowadays survive quite easily without oxygen.
Secondly, the same WORD can be read out aloud as a "word" several times over. A particularly relevant example here is what members of the Orthodox Church call the "Jesus" prayer.
This consists of saying aloud, but only just, in a very quiet whisper to oneself, continually, hundred and even thousands of times over and over gain: "Jesus", "Jesus", "Jesus", "Jesus", "Jesus", "Jesus", "Jesus", and so on.
But if you, dear reader, wish to develop the pious habit of reciting that beautiful prayer, and find it a bit difficult to remember the words at first, you don't actually have to carry a large and bulky volume about with you, filled with the TEXT: JESUS, JESUS, JESUS, JESUS, JESUS, JESUS, and so on for pages and pages.
All you need to do is to write down the NAME, JESUS, once, and then you can read out aloud, as we say, the same "word", "Jesus", over and over again, as many times as you like.
Did you notice that last expression I just used?
I said you can say 'the same "word"' several times over.
Experts on language will also tell you that the "word", "God" is 'really the same' as the "word", "dieu", or as the "word", "Gott", and so forth.
We still seem to be faced with quite a bit of a mystery.
Even granting that Professor Henry Cecil Kennedy Wyld is correct, when he maintains that WORDS are SYMBOLS for "words", so that GOD is a SYMBOL for "God", DIEU is a SYMBOL for "dieu", and GOTT is a SYMBOL for "Gott", a few problems remain to be tackled.
Number one. Since GOD, DIEU and GOTT are, very obviously, not 'the same', what on Earth can possibly be the meaning of any person's saying that "God" is 'really the same' as "dieu" and "Gott"?
Number two. If ALL THE WORDS we write are merely SYMBOLS of "all the words" we speak and hear, what precisely are the "symbols" that SYMBOLS 'symbolise'?
In my opinion, these are two very important questions. Instead of saying anything more about them at this stage, I shall give you some time to think over them for yourself, but just in case you find any of them helpful, here are all the definitions from my own dictionary about SYMBOL and related WORDS:
SYMBOL (NOUN), AN EMBLEM OR SIGN REPRESENTING SOMETHING ELSE; TYPE; MARK OR CHARACTER USED AS AN ABBREVIATION; A CREED.
SYMBOLIC (ADJECTIVE), PERTAINING TO, SERVING AS, OR OF THE NATURE OF, A SYMBOL; SYMBOLICS (NOUN PLURAL), THE STUDY OF CREEDS. SYMBOLICAL: (ADVERB) SYMBOLICALLY.
SYMBOLISE, SYMBOLIZE (VERB TRANSITIVE), TO REPRESENT BY A SYMBOL; (VERB INTRANSITIVE), TO HAVE A TYPICAL RESEMBLANCE; TO AGREE WITH.
SYMBOLISM (NOUN), THE USE OF, OR THE BEING REPRESENTED BY, SYMBOLS; SCIENCE OF CREEDS.
CREED (NOUN), A BRIEF STATEMENT OF BELIEF.
Both Colin and I believe that all the WORDS in the Bible are true.
That is part of our creed, which we can express by saying "we believe that all the WORDS in the Bible are true," and which we can also symbolize by writing "WE BELIEVE THAT ALL THE WORDS IN THE BIBLE ARE TRUE."
You, of course, must make up your own mind about that.
As I have mentioned already, every WORD in this BOOK is true, too.
But, so far as you are concerned, that isn't the end of the matter, because, even if you truly believe that I believe that all the WORDS in the Bible are true, you yourself are not automatically also bound to believe that the Bible is true…
You might, for instance, suppose that I am telling the truth, but that God is a liar!
However, I don't think a supposition of that sort would be a good idea.
Alternatively, of course, you could suppose that when God was arranging for the Bible to be written, even though God never told any lies, one or more of the human beings who wrote God's WORDS down for him made some mistakes, as a result, for instance, of failing to catch properly the exact sound of God's "words", which are, as I have explained, what God's WORDS primarily and directly stand for and symbolize.
Like your "words" and my "words", God's "words" are 'breath', 'air in meaningful movement'.
One special NAME for God's "words" is, therefore, the HOLY SPIRIT.
If I were God, what would I want to say next?
"Hold on!" you say. "Don't get carried away with yourself! You're not 'God', so kindly remember your place, and keep to it."
I am remembering my place all right. I remember it perfectly well. I have just reached the beginning of CHAPTER THREE.
At least, I had just reached the beginning of it, but now I am almost a quarter of the way down the first page of it.
So, here we are, well into CHAPTER THREE of what I have already promised you is going to be an important and serious BOOK, and you may be beginning to wonder if I am ever actually going to get down to brass tacks, to come right out with it, and to tell you something really worth knowing about God.
That's a very good question, I must admit, but precisely because it is a very good question, it also deserves to be given a good answer, and what I want do do here and now is to give you the very best answer I can.
In order to do that, it will, I think, be best to begin at 'the beginning'.
"The beginning?!" you exclaim, horrified and dismayed at the thought of going back to page 1, or even, if you now decide to skip over the TITLE, the PREFACE, the TABLE OF CONTENTS and my son's INTRODUCTION, page 10.
But I am not refrring now to THE BEGINNING of this BOOK; what I am talking about is 'the beginning of the world', and most of what I have to say is concerned with some of the still not generally known details of what exactly happened, just before it all started.
The Bible already tells you more than enough for you to be going on with about what happened after 'the beginning', and lots of scientists have, if I may be permitted to use that expression, stuck their necks out, and have made quite a lot of statements about 'the beginning'.
I don't know whether you are 'a scientist' or not? I am not.
I have worked at various sorts of jobs in my time. I have been a milkman, a water-supply booster-station attendant, an Air-Raid-Prevention warden, an overlooker in a textile-weaving factory, a runner of errands for a stationery supply-shop, a tapper-of-wheels in a railway-yard, a rivetter in a factory producing aeroplane propellers, and I also saw active service as a private soldier in the Lancashire Regiment of the King's Army during the First World War, but I have never, never been 'a scientist'.
Nobody has ever called me "a scientist".
And I have never claimed to be A SCIENTIST.
I used to think that was a very great pity, but now I am no longer quite so sure.
Please let me explain.
In 'the beginning' there was, according to a very large number of the best and most highly qualified 'scientists', something they call "an explosion".
What, you may ask, caused that 'explosion'?
Interesting question, don't you think?
Perhaps now you can see what I'm driving at.
Just bear with me for a moment, and allow me to re-phrase that earlier question.
Instead of asking yourself, "what caused that explosion?" - What about asking yourself, "who caused that explosion?"
If "God" is your 'answer', let me ask you this - Why on Earth should God want to cause an explosion?
I bet that question has you stumped!
It set me back for quite a time, too.
But now I am in a position to state quite categorically that God did not directly cause the explosion.
I did.
Let me explain to you as simply as I can, and in as few words as possible, exactly how it all happened.
As I have mentioned already, this was all a very, very long time ago, before the present world was created, and just before time began, and so you may be wondering how it is that a simple chap like me, not an educated man, but a person who left school at the age of twelve, can possibly remember the details of an event that took place in such a remote and distant past.
Part of the answer is that I have already told "this story" several times before, although this is the very first time I have plucked up the courage necessary to take that extra step, and to put THE RECORD straight once and for all, by putting THIS STORY down in writing, and arranging to have it published as widely as possible, in order to reveal THE TRUTH.
But even if I had never told my story before, I still couldn't help but remember it. All the details of it are, and this is quite literally true, BURNED INTO MY MEMORY.
What I am going to tell you now is probably best regarded as being a sort of supplement to the Bible.
The WORDS you will be reading very soon complement the TEXT of CHAPTER ONE, VERSE ONE of the BOOK OF GENESIS.
As I have mentioned already, I fully accept that every WORD in the BIBLE is true, but the TEXT still needs to be interpreted, and that's really where this BOOK of mine is likely to come in handy.
Unless I am very much mistaken, and please remember that I am speaking to you now only by kind permission of the very highest authority, most commentators on the BIBLE have slipped up rather badly.
They write as if the Bible kicks off with the words: "In the Beginning 'God' created the Heavens and the Earth."
Perhaps God did, perhaps God didn't… lots of people up here are still arguing that point to this very day.
But what is quite certain and definite, is that that is not what the written WORDS in the ENGLISH TRANSLATION of the original BIBLE are meant to signify! No, not by a long chalk!
What the first verse of the opening chapter of the Book of Genesis actually says is: 'In the Beginning "God" created the Heavens and the Earth.'
Incidentally, when I've finished telling you the details of this story, Colin, who is very patiently writing it all down for you to read, will understand a bit better than before why his mother told him, almost as soon as he was born, to stop creating.
She reckoned I had created more than enough already, but I mustn't anticipate the end of this story.
Mind you, I do appreciate that you too, dear reader, may want to know the ending without too much delay, and so I shall try to be brief.
In the past, when I have told "my story" before, I have told different versions of it, all of them true, of course, but some of them longer than others.
What I call my "revised version" is the shortest, since it misses out those parts of "my story" which show me up in a very poor light.
My "standard version" is much more honest.
When I tell "my story" that way, I really do make a clean breast of things, and I must admit that though telling that particular version of "my story" is always a bit of a painful experience, I also feel much better afterwards, when I have, as they say, got the whole thing off my chest.
Although that is what they say, in actual point of fact it is, of course, not a very accurate way of putting it, since nowadays I don't have a chest to get it off, not having a body at all, if you see what I mean.
anyhow, the story as I am telling it you now is going to be a different version again; it's what I call the "authorised version" of "my story".
In some ways it's just a little bit shorter than my "standard version", because I've been obliged to cut out of it a few rather rude "words" which, having already heard me use them more than once, God has reminded me that I am not authorised to use them again!
I am not, however, saying that to tantalise you, since, dear reader, being human, I do understand your quite natural lingering curiosity as to what were the "words" I used that God found so rude that he decided it was best to advise me not on any account to use them again…
Actually, I've already devised a plan to deal with that.
I've thought up a way of not using the forbidden "words", and at the same time of having Colin write down smething that will enable you adequately to satisfy your curiosity.
Not to keep you on tenter-hooks, here's a sample of what I mean.
"Don't be a f...... idiot!" HE ROARED.
"A wink is as good as a nod," or so "the saying" goes. So, before continuing with the rest of "my story", refraining from any further comment on that tiny sample of how my plan for this BOOK is likely to work out in practice, it only remains for me to tell you that my "authorised version" is in some ways almost bound to work out longer than the "standard version".
To tell you the honest truth, this is, in fact, the very first time in my life, or rather, in my death, that I am telling the "authorised version" of "my story".
Moreover, although you didn't, perhaps, fully appreciate this fact until now, the PREFACE and the two previous CHAPTERS you have read are all part and parcel of the printed TEXT of the "authorised version" I am dictating to my son, and which you are now reading as THE ONLY TRUE AND AUTHORISED VERSION OF LEVI HAMER'S STORY.
So, even if you do happen to feel occasionally that I am laying things on a bit too thick, and at times going on a bit too long for your particular liking, do please bear in mind that there simply is no use at all in your starting to criticise, nor in your blaming me for this state of affairs.
I am performing this task as a man subject to authority.
I am only doing what I have been told to do.
I'm very happy to do it, of course, glad to do it, extremely pleased to be allowed to do it, honoured and privileged to have been accorded the responsibility of doing ot, but, nevertheless, as I say, I am a man subject to authority.
Not one JOT or TITTLE can be omitted from the MAIN TEXT. You must, in other words, be prepared to take the rough with the smooth - but, believe me, I shall at all times be doing my best to give you as smooth and comfortable a ride as possible and, on the whole, I think you'll enjoy what you read. At least, I hope so!
O.K.! I'm glad that much is settled.
Now, let's get on with it!
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