"I would know Thee, Unknown
Though who grips deep in my soul,
wandering through my life like a storm,
Thou inconceivable, my kin!
I would know Thee, even serve Thee."
Nietzsche at twenty years old
"As to gods, I have no way of knowing either that they exist or do not exist, or what they are like."
Protagoras ( 5th C. BCE)
"Silence is the language of god, all else is poor translation."
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī (Persian Sufi Mystic) aka Rumi
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
The Apostle Paul according to Acts 17:23 ( "Now I am going to proclaim" what follows is poor translation to quote Rumi.)
The Tenets of Gnosticism:
"As we have seen, Gnostic Christians maintained that in the beginning there was only One. This One God was totally spirit, totally perfect, incapable of description, beyond attributes and qualities. This God is not only unknown to humans; he is unknowable. The Gnostic texts do not explain why he is unknowable, except to suggest that he is so "other" that explanations—which require making something unknown known by comparing it to something else—simply cannot work. "
Bart Ehrman
Though who grips deep in my soul,
wandering through my life like a storm,
Thou inconceivable, my kin!
I would know Thee, even serve Thee."
Nietzsche at twenty years old
"As to gods, I have no way of knowing either that they exist or do not exist, or what they are like."
Protagoras ( 5th C. BCE)
"Silence is the language of god, all else is poor translation."
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī (Persian Sufi Mystic) aka Rumi
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
The Apostle Paul according to Acts 17:23 ( "Now I am going to proclaim" what follows is poor translation to quote Rumi.)
The Tenets of Gnosticism:
"As we have seen, Gnostic Christians maintained that in the beginning there was only One. This One God was totally spirit, totally perfect, incapable of description, beyond attributes and qualities. This God is not only unknown to humans; he is unknowable. The Gnostic texts do not explain why he is unknowable, except to suggest that he is so "other" that explanations—which require making something unknown known by comparing it to something else—simply cannot work. "
Bart Ehrman
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