Quote Originally Posted by Mikawa Ossan
Sorry if this is anal, but wouldn't 外神 be an outside or foreign god, and not a divine foreigner? I mean, the only reason 外人 means foreigners (as in people) is because of the second kanji, am I wrong?
There hardly any difference between "outside god" and "divine foreigner".

First of all, there is hardly difference between 'outside' and 'foreign', as "foreign" comes from Latin "foras", which means "outside". My Oxford Dictionary also gives for defnition of foreign : "coming or introduced from outside".

Then, a "divine person" or "godly person" could basically be considered as a god. The most common way of representing god(s) in any religion is the human form. So we could say that the word "god" generally includes the meaning of "person". Therefore : a foreign/outside god = a foreign/ouside divine person = a divine foreign person = divine foreigner.

Sorry if that was too mathematical. foreign foreign

I wouldn't worry too much about the strictness of the meaning of kanji compound. It is in the nature of kanji not to distinguish between gender (male/female), number (singular/plural), function (subject/object) and word class (noun/adjective/adverb/verb). So, a kanji like 神 can mean 'god' (masc.sing.), 'gods' (masc. pl.), 'goddess' (fem.sing.), 'goddesses' (fem.pl.), while 上 can mean 'up' (adv.), 'above' (prep./adv.), 'rise/raise' (verb), 'top' (noun/adj.). The compound 上神 can thus mean "rising god", "god from above", "top god", or any alternative with gods, goddess, and goddesses. As for the function, it gets interesting with kanji that have several meaning. For instance, 着 means both "wear" (noun/verb) or 'cloth', but also "arrive" or "arrival". So 上着 could theoretically mean 'top wear','raised cloth', 'rising cloth' (whatever that means), 'arrive at the top', 'top arrival(s)', 'rise in arrivals', etc.