Elohim
Elohim
A common name of God in the Hebrew Bible is Elohim (אלהים, ʾĕlōhīm), the plural of אֱלוֹהַּ (Eloha). When Elohim refers to God in the Hebrew Bible, singular verbs are used. The word is identical to elohim meaning gods and is cognate to the 'lhm found in Ugaritic, where it is used for the pantheon of Canaanite gods, the children of El and conventionally vocalized as "Elohim" although the original Ugaritic vowels are unknown. When the Hebrew Bible uses elohim not in reference to God, it is plural (for example, Exodus 20:2). There are a few other such uses in Hebrew, for example Behemoth. In Modern Hebrew, the singular word ba'alim ('owner') looks plural, but likewise takes a singular verb.
A number of scholars have traced the etymology to the Semitic root *yl, 'to be first, powerful', despite some difficulties with this view.[44] Elohim is thus the plural construct 'powers'. Hebrew grammar allows for this form to mean "He is the Power (singular) over powers (plural)", just as the word Ba'alim means 'owner' (see above). "He is lord (singular) even over any of those things that he owns that are lordly (plural)".
Theologians who dispute this claim cite the hypothesis that plurals of majesty came about in more modern times. Richard Toporoski, a classics scholar, asserts that plurals of majesty first appeared in the reign of Diocletian (CE 284–305).[45] Indeed, Gesenius states in his book Hebrew Grammar the following:[46]
The Jewish grammarians call such plurals ... plur. virium or virtutum; later grammarians call them plur. excellentiae, magnitudinis, or plur. maiestaticus. This last name may have been suggested by the we used by kings when speaking of themselves (compare 1 Maccabees 10:19 and 11:31); and the plural used by God in Genesis 1:26 and 11:7; Isaiah 6:8 has been incorrectly explained in this way. It is, however, either communicative (including the attendant angels: so at all events in Isaiah 6:8 and Genesis 3:22), or according to others, an indication of the fullness of power and might implied. It is best explained as a plural of self-deliberation. The use of the plural as a form of respectful address is quite foreign to Hebrew.
Mark S. Smith has cited the use of plural as possible evidence to suggest an evolution in the formation of early Jewish conceptions of monotheism, wherein references to "the gods" (plural) in earlier accounts of verbal tradition became either interpreted as multiple aspects of a single monotheistic God at the time of writing, or subsumed under a form of monolatry, wherein the god(s) of a certain city would be accepted after the fact as a reference to the God of Israel and the plural deliberately dropped.[47]
The plural form ending in -im can also be understood as denoting abstraction, as in the Hebrew words chayyim (חיים, 'life') or betulim (בתולים, 'virginity'). If understood this way, Elohim means 'divinity' or 'deity'. The word chayyim is similarly syntactically singular when used as a name but syntactically plural otherwise. In many of the passages in which elohim occurs in the Bible, it refers to non-Israelite deities, or in some instances to powerful men or judges, and even angels (Exodus 21:6, Psalms 8:5) as a simple plural in those instances.
The Tetragrammaton (YHWH), the main Hebrew name of God inscribed on the page of a Sephardic manuscript of the Hebrew Bible (1385)
4 Sources
Other plural-singulars in biblical Hebrew
See also
- Anunnaki
- Henotheism § Canaanite religion and Yahwism
- Elyon
- Genesis creation narrative
- Monolatry § In ancient Israel
- Names of God
- Theophory in the Bible
- Allahumma
This article is about the Hebrew word. For other uses, see Elohim (disambiguation).
Elohim (Hebrew: אֱלֹהִים, romanized: ʾĔlōhīm [(ʔ)eloˈ(h)im]) is a Hebrew word meaning "gods" or "godhood". Although the word is plural in form, in the Hebrew Bible it most often takes singular verbal or pronominal agreement and refers to a single deity, particularly but not always the God of Judaism. In other verses it takes plural agreement and refers to gods in the plural.
Elohim in Hebrew script. The letters are, right-to-left: aleph-lamed-he-yud-mem.
Morphologically, the word is the plural form of the word אֱלוֹהַּ (ʾĔlōah) and related to el. It is cognate to the word ʾl-h-m which is found in Ugaritic, where it is used as the pantheon for Canaanite gods, the children of El, and conventionally vocalized as "Elohim". Most uses of the term Elohim in the later Hebrew text imply a view that is at least monolatrist at the time of writing, and such usage (in the singular), as a proper title for Deity, is distinct from generic usage as elohim, "gods" (plural, simple noun).
Rabbinic scholar Maimonides wrote that Elohim "Divinity" and elohim "gods" are commonly understood to be homonyms. One modern theory suggests that the notion of divinity underwent radical changes in the early period of Israelite identity and development of Ancient Hebrew religion. In this view, the ambiguity of the term elohim is the result of such changes, cast in terms of "vertical translatability", i.e. the re-interpretation of the gods of the earliest recalled period as the national god of monolatrism as it emerged in the 7th to 6th century BCE in the Kingdom of Judah and during the Babylonian captivity, and further in terms of monotheism by the emergence of Rabbinical Judaism in the 2nd century CE. Another theory, building on an idea by Gesenius, argues that even before Hebrew became a distinct language, the plural elohim had both a plural meaning of "gods" and an abstract meaning of "godhood" or "divinity", much as the plural of "father", avot, can mean either "fathers" or "fatherhood". Elohim then came to be used so frequently in reference to specific deities, both male and female, domestic and foreign (for instance, the goddess of the Sidonians in 1 Kings 11:33), that it came to be concretized from meaning "divinity" to meaning "deity", though still occasionally used adjectivally as "divine".