The glorious imagination

The amazing verb δοκεω (dokeo) describes the familiar mental exercise of invoking images in one's mind that are relevant to observable reality but are themselves not part of it; to derive a unique and imaginary picture from the churning currents of one's mind like a fish from water. The ability to imagine and to bring the imagined into the realm of reality makes mankind unique in the animal world. It's the foundation of all analysis, all planning and all hope, and subsequently an important element of Biblical theology.

In the classics our verb δοκεω (dokeo) mostly means to think in the sense of to suppose, imagine, conceive of or figure; to get something into one's head (Matthew 3:9, John 16:3). It frequently relates to dreams or visions, in which imaginary beings encroach upon the defenseless dreamer (Mark 6:49, Acts 12:9).

Our verb may describe the formation of an opinion about someone or something (hence the "fishers of men"; compare Matthew 4:19 to 1 Corinthians 6:2-3 — hence perhaps also the enigmatic fish-men of the Sumerians called Apkallu). As such our verb came to denote to have a reputation (to be reputed). This describes most often, but not necessarily, a good reputation, and unless said otherwise, the general phrase "men of reputation" or "the reputed" describe famous men; men of an implied "good" reputation (Mark 10:42, Galatians 2:2-9; in 1 Corinthians 12:22, Paul speaks of "famous" body parts). It also needs to be remembered that the Biblical cultures were based on a wisdom tradition in which even entertainment had to do with learning and solving problems (Judges 14:12, 1 Kings 10:1). In those days, "people of fame" were not movie stars and tennis players but rather people of exceptional intellectual prowess; people of truth and convention.

Our verb may simply mean to occur to, or to cross one's mind, but with the implication of it being the one that got picked to act upon (Luke 1:3, Acts 15:28); not necessarily a "good" idea in an ethical sense but rather the one fished up from one's mental ocean and incorporated into the machinery of one's actions (Matthew 17:25). As such it may mean "to act according to one's good humor" even when there might be little good about it (Hebrews 12:10).

Our verb is often added to a statement to emphasize that a private opinion was offered: "it seems to me" or "I find" (Acts 26:9, 1 Corinthians 5:9) or negatively, "I don't think so" (Luke 17:9). Occasionally it expresses resolve, and occasionally it flat out means to pretend (Luke 8:18, James 1:26). More often our verb expresses an imposed similarity: something seems like something else (say, a nice Paul seeming like a mean Paul; 2 Corinthians 10:9), or it describes something confused with something else; something misconstrued (John 11:13, 13:29, 20:15), or perhaps something rightly construed (1 Corinthians 11:16, 12:22).

In Luke 19:11 our verb is used to describe how the words of one person may cause fish to come to the surface in the mind of another person — Jesus was close to Jerusalem, and yes, he told the parable in order to have the audience form an internal image of the immediate kingdom.

The verb δοκεω (dokeo) occurs 63 times in the New Testament, see full concordance, and from it derive:

The noun δοξα (doxa) obviously relates to our verb δοκεω (dokeo), meaning to imagine or image-form, but it's unclear how. A more regular nominal derivation would be δογμα (dogma), meaning "an imagining" or rather "an accepted opinion" (see above), or even the unused but common noun δοκησις (dokesis), and its rarer variant δοκευς, meaning opinion, fancy, or even apparition or something's appearance (as potentially opposed to something's reality).

Although classical writers used our nouns δοξα (doxa) and δογμα (dogma) sometimes as synonyms, the need for and origin of this baffling form δοξα (doxa) is obscure. Some creative scholars even suggest that it might have been formed after a pre- (or extra-) Greek word and rather grafted upon our root instead that it formed from it naturally. If that is so, it must express a very persistent concept; something which name was so all-telling that it resisted the natural evolution of language and migrated intact from an old into a new one.

The earliest Bible translators, who were tasked with interpreting the vastly complex Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, used δοξα (doxa) to represent the word כבוד (kabud), which described a quality of YHWH as his Shekinah filled the tabernacle first and later the temple (Exodus 24:17, 1 Kings 8:11). Later Latin translators swapped the Greek doxa for the Latin gloria, which is a word of equal mysterious origin and thus obscure meaning. Modern scholars believe that gloria has to do with a root that means "to hear" (cognate with κλεος, kleos, fame, renown) and gloria would mean "renown" or "fame." This suggests that the Latin translators followed the vein of the verb δοκεω (dokeo) that deals with reputation, and particularly an assumed good reputation.

But that would mean that the term "glory of the Lord" described what fans collectively thought of God, and that the religious convictions of the fans filled the temple rather than something intrinsic to God.

The Greek language had specifically reserved words that expressed enthusiasm or breathless adulation, and Hebrew did too, and neither δοξα (doxa) nor כבוד (kabud) were among them. What pre-Christian theologians still remembered is that the Living God is not like pagan deities and has no need for endless praise and homage, but rather wants compassion, composure, responsible behavior and an unflinching reverence for truthfulness (Micah 6:8, Hosea 6:6, Galatians 6:7, John 4:24).

Who is this king of glory?

Most of our popular Christian imagery and theology stem from the Roman ideal of God being the emperor: very glorious and very distant. After Julius Caesar had been deified and his adopted son Octavian became the first Emperor Augustus (meaning Glorious One), the latter became known as son of god, the first born and savior or the world, the king of kings and lord of lords. These familiar phrases all stem from Roman Imperial Theology, and were utilized by Paul to demonstrate that in natural reality they did not apply to some distant emperor but rather to Jesus of Nazareth. The Constantinian church had little to do with Jesus of Nazareth and more with the Caesar of Rome (read our article on the name Mary), and it was subsequently in the obvious interest of the medieval church that their flocks didn't read the Bible so as to be tempted to reflect upon the lunacy of the formal ecclesiastical model.

Entirely due to the zeal of early Christian gurus, who confused the Creator with what they understood about the Caesar, the words gloria and doxa were vacated of their original meaning and began to assume their spectacular modern wow!-meanings, which is the same as saying that the daunting term "deoxyribonucleic acid" means "yodelayheeho". Fortunately we're not in the middle ages anymore.

The Creator is of course not in some distant heaven but present at every spatial point of the universe the way a third dimension is separate from but present at every point of a two dimensional plane. His attributes and character can be clearly observed by looking at nature (Romans 1:20), by anyone with eyes in their head, and without diffidence or timidity (Isaiah 1:18, 40:11). The formal Word of God underlies every element and process in the universe (John 1:3, Colossians 1:16-17). And since we are natural creatures, made from the natural dust of the earth (Genesis 2:7), the Word upon which the universe runs is also not in some distant heaven but in our own bodies, hearts and minds (Deuteronomy 30:14, Jeremiah 31:33, Matthew 28:20, Luke 17:21, John 14:20, 2 Corinthians 3:3).

Time is not the stage upon which the universe evolves, but a function of the universe. In other words: the universe didn't begin in a point in time, but time began at a point in the universe (namely at the point at which particles were stable and could bind to others and thus retain data). This means that the "cause" of the universe happens not in some distant past, but outside of time and is as much related to the distant past as to the distant future and the very now. The cause of time caused all of time, and the direction of the cause of time stands perpendicular upon the axis of time. The unity of the singularity was never compromised, and God not merely pushes forth the singular universe at one end, he also pulls forth the singular universe from the other end (this is what Chaos Theory calls an attractor). The nature of God includes the condition of sub-zero entropy prior to the Big Bang, and the condition of transfinite entropy at the end of all evolution. God is both more primitive than primal energy, and he is more advanced than the whole interlinked bustle of humankind throughout the ages and those to come.

Imagine all the people

The word כבוד (kabud), which the Septuagint replaces with our word δοξα (doxa), means impression. It comes from a verb that describes what a heavy boulder would do to soft earth, and appears to express much the same action as our Greek verb δοκεω (dokeo), meaning to image-form. It's what happens when lots of pixels work together to create a picture, or when lots of starlings create a flying jelly-fish, or when lots of saints form the image of the eternal Creator (relate Hebrews 1:2-3 to Galatians 3:26, John 14:20 and Hebrews 12:1; also see our article on the adjective αγιος, hagios, meaning "holy" or rather "causing to converge").

The challenge with our noun δοξα (doxa) is that it is a very common word in Greek philosophical literature but clearly not constructed via common grammatical rules of derivation. It's possibly of foreign origin but obviously related to our verb δοκεω (dokeo) and noun δογμα (dogma). In other words, the noun δοξα (doxa) relates to δογμα (dogma) the way the French word imagination relates to our English word "imagination." Both obviously relate to the verb to imagine, but if we would sprinkle our speech with the occasional French imagination we deliberately indicate that while we indeed simply mean "making a mental image" we also mix in something exotic that relates to spicy cheeses and red wine.

Here at Abarim Publications we suspect that our word δοξα (doxa) celebrates mankind's amazing powers of willful reflection and ability to deliberately generate reality out of initially imagined things — not merely to image fairies, monsters and what danger might lurk around the next corner but to imagine entire new worlds and set course for them: a mankind without countries to declare superior (Romans 2:11), without religions to fight over (Revelation 21:22), but living as one in a world without greed and hunger. To most of us, this is not hard to do, and many of us have made the small changes in our lives that will one day add up to mankind's most significant collective course correction: away from the slavery of modern capitalism and onto the New Jerusalem (Galatians 4:26, Revelation 21:2).

There's nothing unreal about imagination. Imagination is to human reality what complex numbers are to geometry and what path integral formulation is to quantum mechanics. Imagination is the very principle by which the entire universe is called into being. Or in other words: our reality exists in God's imagination, and God's reality exists in ours (John 17:1). God is love (1 John 4:8) and since he made us in his own image (Genesis 1:26), we love because he loves us first (1 John 4:19). In that same way, our amazing ability to imagine stems from God imagining us first.

It's been often cheered that "love is all you need" but when Israel left the house of bondage that Egypt was, the Lord placed an angel ahead of their column that would lead them to their Promised Land (Exodus 23:20-22). Read our article on the noun αγγελος (aggelos) for a closer look at the relationship between imagination and angels.

The noun δοκος (dokos) describes the main carrier beam of either the roof or floor of a building. This word obviously comes from the idea that this item "accepts" the roof or floor, but the clear kinship with the verb δοκεω (dokeo), meaning to imagine or to mentally accept, allows for striking wordplay, or rather: commentary on the workings on man's mind.

Throughout the Bible, dry land (γη, et) is a dominant and obvious metaphor for certainty (mental footing: knowledge, skills, wisdom), whereas the sea represents uncertainty but potential, rivers represent culture and economy and rain represents instruction (the noun מורה, moreh means both rain and teacher and is closely related to the familiar word Torah). The Bible also casually mentions "waters under the earth" (Exodus 20:4, Deuteronomy 4:18, 5:8), which was in modern times gleefully dismissed as primitive mythology until Pierre Janet came up with the concept of the subconscious (and Freud made it hip not long after).

The word for "speck of dust" that sat famously lodged in the eye of one's brother comes from a verb that means to be dry. But besides being some literal flake, this item also represented a tiny little bit of information that had recently struck this man (and which also probably made his eyes water: see Ecclesiastes 1:18). The one who offered to remove this tiny speck had himself a δοκος (dokos) in his eye, which in English makes for a rather comical image but which in Greek speaks of the foundation of an entire system of belief.

Any belief, methodology or religion will always get in the way of one's clear vision, and when one wants to enter the temple of the Living God and behold unimaginable things, he'd better leave his preconceived beliefs at the door. Nobody needs help in this regard, anyway. All human eyes are by nature wholly capable of flushing any little speck out and away.

Our noun is used 6 times, see full concordance, all in the context of the helpful brother.

The verb δεχομαι (dechomai) means to accept something offered or suggested (Matthew 11:14, Mark 10:15, Luke 8:13), to receive something or someone sent (Matthew 10:14), or to engage with something (Luke 16:6). This verb is closely related to the verb δοκεω (dokeo; see above), meaning to figure, find or imagine (hence the noun δοξα, doxa, traditionally interpreted as "glory" but probably more accurately: imagination or image-formation) and both stem from the widely attested Proto-Indo-European root dek-, meaning to take or accept.

Our verb δεχομαι (dechomai) is used a mere 58 times in the New Testament, see full concordance, but is also used in the following array of derivations: