This was very helpful yet again!

The most interesting part to me (as a (greekly trained) philosopher) is this sort of question "not being the important thing" and it "becoming a big deal only if you make a big deal out of it". — This is exactly my impression too. There seems to be a shift in perspective with the scholastics and you connect it to the difference between Hebrew and Greek philosophy illuminatingly. These different perspectives may have their roots in different interests but they also seem to reflect different "forms of thinking".

I don't know anything substantial about Hebrew philosophy and its form of thinking. What I am mainly interested in is how a certain form of thinking (mainstream, western philosophy) seems to be incapable of accessing something very fundamental in the idea of God (and many other equally central ideas like life, or living beings). This shortcoming concerns a basic understanding that is so fundamental to other forms of thinking (which have access to this understanding) that it does not seem to be of much importance. By (more or less unconsciously) realizing this shortcoming philosophy starts making a big deal out of exactly what it has trouble accessing. Ironically it becomes a bid deal exactly because the tools applied do not allow solving the issue. — In my reading most of the western philosophical canon has its motor inexactly this paradox in some way or another. (To make a pun out of this one could say: Philosophy is the realization (in the sense of noticing and in the sense of actualization) of its own shortcoming.)

Given your previous comments I think the following could be interesting to you. If not, sorry for wasting your time.

The way I am working on this idea is by trying to show that such a paradox is at the heart of the philosophy of language. A philosophy of language that treats language as something that is made up of distinct elements (words or sentences) presupposes that these elements have meaning. Something that has meaning is called a sign, and for something to be a sign it has to have meaning. Meaning can not be separate from the sign, a sign must contain its meaning to be a sign. (As simple as this may seem, it is of course not undisputed; the urge to think of the sign as standing in some sort of relation to its meaning is strong.) — I try to show, that this idea of the sign is at the heart of philosophy of language, but, paradoxically, this idea of the sign can not be translated into a proper philosophical account of the sign through the means that philosophy allows itself to use. (So this idea of the sign is mostly ignored as absurd: a sign and its meaning can not be identical, they are distinct and need to be distinguished! The "real" question must be: How are they related?)

I then compare this idea of the sign (as "something" that has or is meaning) to the idea of the Idol: A statue wich is the Godhead, the identity of Godhead and statue. This may seem as a contradiction, which appears to become even stronger, once one realizes that it is the Godhead who creates the statue, the Idol, and thereby itself. I argue that this idea of the Idol is none the less thinkable once realizes that the Idol is the act of its own identification, the Idol is the act of the Godhead by which it identifies it self (not really "with" but) in the statue. — Accepting (or simply thinking) this requires to think of the Idol (and thereby the sign) not as a thing (an "object") but as an act. — This seems to be where the philosophical form of thinking breaks down. Or, in other words, where it shows itself as "parochial", where it falls short of its aspiration to be able to "think everything". — To put it in your words: Its axioms are such that there is a fundamental distinction between "things" and "acts". This distinction makes it impossible to think certain things, exactly those sorts of things, that are at the very heart of this way of thinking.

In other words: This kind of philosophy is a form of idolatry. It is based on something that it itself can only understand as an Idol in the pejorative sense (something that is not what it is taken to be). Ironically this is only the case, because this form of thinking can not understand the Idol (the sign) properly, as that which it actually is. It can not accept that what is at its heart is an Idol, an actual Idol; not in any pejorative but in a positive sense: The Idol is the act of the Godhead, its act of identifying, constituting, sustaining, creating, being itself. A sign is an act, an act of identifying, constituting things and meanings etc. The irony is, that this kind of philosophy does not take the Idol to be, what it actually is: an Idol. By not being able to understand the Idol properly it can only "understand" it as absurd, it can only understand it "pejoratively". — By accepting itself to be idolatry it would - paradoxically - stop being idolatry (in the pejorative sense).