Talk:Elohim/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Elohim in new Testament

User AnonMoos is removed the following statements from the article without any reasoning!

In the Syriac text of New Testament known as Peshitto the word "ܐܠܗܐ"(Aloha) used in locations that "Elohim" is qouted from Old Testament. Also in some Sacred name Bibles, like The Scriptures 98 the word "Elohim" used in many locations that in the Greek text the word "theos" was used. And Jesus Introduced himself as Son of Elohim.

Please explain why?--Submitter to Truth (talk) 03:27, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I already explained why on your User talk page. First, in terms of Semitic linguistics Aramaic Aloha is cognate with Hebrew Eloah and Arabic Ilah, but it has no plural morphology, so that the most distinctive feature of Hebrew Elohim is missing, and therefore it's extremely difficult to say in what sense Aloha is the "same" as Hebrew Elohim. Second, the New Testament was originally written in Greek. AnonMoos (talk) 10:55, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

My friend, I have not said that Aloha is the "same" as Elohim!!! I have said that in Syriac new testement, in locations that Qouted from Old testement the word Aloha used for the word Elohim!!!! I also added the refrences! same thing happened in English translation. Jouh 1:1 is this in the scriptures translation:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Elohim, and the Word was Elohim.

It's not claiming morphology contact or whatever!--Submitter to Truth (talk) 23:18, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

If Aloha is not the same as Elohim, then what is its specific relevance to this article? If its only relevance is that it's a cross-language cognate of the same proto-Semitic stem (but without sharing the most distinctive special features of Hebrew Elohim), then at best it could be mentioned like Arabic Ilah is mentioned, but not in any way which implies it has a special relationship with Hebrew. Also, if you know almost nothing about morphology (linguistics), then you may not be the best person to significantly alter the sections of this article dealing with the linguistics of the word Elohim...

And "Sacred name Bibles" is a somewhat fringe topic. Among English Bible translations with some degree of mainstream status or scholarly respectability, the American Standard Version rendered the Hebrew Tetragrammaton as "Jehovah" IN THE OLD TESTAMENT ONLY, while the Jerusalem Bible rendered the Hebrew Tetragrammaton as "Yahweh" IN THE OLD TESTAMENT ONLY -- and both verseions have been criticized for this. In none of these Bible translations is Elohim ever used in the New Testament. AnonMoos (talk) 09:27, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

P.S. Bible verse citations are actually not proper Wikipedia references. AnonMoos (talk) 09:27, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

After 3 days and no reply I assume that you agree with me!--Submitter to Truth (talk) 07:16, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Dude, some of us are known to celebrate an annual occasion known as "Christmas" ("What is this Christmas of which you speak?"). AnonMoos (talk) 09:27, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Happy Christmas to you! Aloha is a translation of Hebrew word Elohim in Syriac Peshitta New testament! This is my claim that you seem to have problem with. Also please avoide Personal WP:Attack. If I know morphology or not ,that is only my business! You can mention that in other translations the word "God" is used indeed! But this article is about English word "Elohim" (And not just the Hebrew word "אלהים") and this is important that some Scholars used this word to translate the Greek word "Theos"!--Submitter to Truth (talk) 12:02, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

LKS/TimeDog round 3

It is truely amazing that some individuals believe they have the right to carve-out and fence-off an article (like "the Hebrew word Elohim") and then guard it like a junk-yard dog. It is absolutely clear that this word arose out of a much larger historical and cultural context that is well attested to and this article's attempt to suppress the larger context and other perspectives is anathema to everything Wikipedia stands for. Most of this article should be relegated to a subtopic similar to one in the article "El". This has gone on long enough and Wikipedia needs to step in and take control of this topic. -- TimeDog (talk) 00:57, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the attestation and context for non-Israelite aleph-lamed-he-mem אלהם with plural morphology (which would not necessarily have been pronounced exactly as "Elohim", by the way) were rather fragmentary until after the decipherment of the Ras Shamra Ugaritic tablets starting in 1929 -- and still today, Canaanite אלהם is an obscure footnote in the history of minor long-extinct religions (of interest to rather few outside of a relatively small cadre of Ancient Near East scholars), while Hebrew אלהים is the main word for "God" in the original source document for Judaism and Christianity, which every Bible translator who goes back to the original languages has to directly confront. Israelite religion certainly largely grew out of a Canaanite cultural and linguistic context, but there's little evidence that the unique and distinctive features of the Biblical Hebrew use of the word "Elohim" were copied directly and in detail from any non-Israelite group. If you don't really understand the unique and distinctive features of the use of the word "Elohim" in Biblical Hebrew, then you may not be the best person to propose extensive and thoroughgoing revisions to this article.

For my part, I find it "truely" amazing that people untrained in ancient languages often seem to think that by idle hypothetical abstract speculation they can know things with a certainty that is denied to professional scholars who have devoted a lifetime of work to serious study in the area. People untrained in civil engineering and architecture don't usually have the delusion that they can design a 100-story skyscraper much better than a professional architect or engineer could, and people who have never done any woodworking don't usually assume that they can do a marquetry inlay better than a professional carpenter. But for some reason, some people think that languages and linguistics are somehow different. [1] -- AnonMoos (talk) 08:49, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Anon doesn't want additions to the section which would clarify the plural concept. Nor corroborating biblical evidence of plural.

First I removed your phrase "If Elohim were an ordinary plural word..." because in Hebrew these words really are ordinary. This is why I gave the example of "water" (מים transliteration "mayim"). This example is useful because it gives those who may not be familiar with Hebrew an understanding of how a plural concept becomes and acts like a single entity. Nevertheless, water (and many other words like it) truly are quite ordinary despite what English speakers might think about them. -smpf38

Second, your version of the article adamantly argues that the God of Israel can no way be implicated as being plural in any way. Therefore, you would like to sensor the fact that the God of Israel is in fact implicated as in some way being plural not only by the morphological plural form of elohim, but also elsewhere in the text. Hence, to balance the article I added "While not the same as the plural morphology of Elohim, the God of Israel does appear to be referred to as plural in the use of first-person plural pronouns elsewhere in the text, "Let us create man in our own image, after our own likeness" (Gen 1:26). This is sometimes used as evidence that the plural morphological form of Elohim does indicate plural meaning." -smpf38

Clearly this statement says (ALMOST IN YOUR VERY OWN WORDS TO ME) that this is not the same kind of plural reference to the God of Israel as the plural form Elohim, but instead gives outside evidence of the concept of plural. Why would you want to leave that evidence out of a balanced article? -smpf38

Why would you want to leave out an easy to understand example of a word that is NOT SINGULAR "water" that is used as a singular entity with singular verbs? -smpf38

You say that "These words actually have a dual morphology rather than a plural morphology..." So, would you argue that words with a "dual" morphology are less plural than words with a "plural morphology"? Of course, that isn't the case. Even words with a dual morphology, usually used to indicate words referring to things that come in pairs (like eyes), are often translated as plural into English. These are words with non-singular ending but areused with a singular verb. - smpf38 (March 13th, 2009)

AS for your point THE PHENOMENON OF FIRST PLURAL PRONOUNS IS NOT THE SAME AS THE PHENOMENON OF THE PLURAL MORPHOLOGY OF ELOHIM. That is actually addressed in my addition to the article. "While not the same as the plural morphology of Elohim,..." The point is not that it is the same grammatical phenomenon, but that it is a separate grammatical phenomenon that also indicates plural. I don't see why you have a problem with that. - smpf38 3/13/09—Preceding unsigned comment added by Smpf38 (talk • contribs) 19:46, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

I've discussed in a fair amount of detail on your user talk page why mayim is by no means as fully parallel to Elohim as you assume that it is, and also why the phenomenon of first person plural divine pronouns may very well have a place on the Elohim article page -- but that place is NOT as part of the basic grammatical explanation near the top of the article. Also, the standard accepted account should be presented first, and then subsequently the dissents and disagreements from it can be discussed. Some of the issues you raise might have a place in this article, but you keep trying to add them at an inappropriate place (i.e. the basic grammatical explanation near the top of the article), which is not very useful. AnonMoos (talk) 23:30, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

P.S. Words with plural or dual morphology which at all commonly take singular verb or adjective agreement are really quite out of the ordinary in Biblical Hebrew -- they can be pretty much counted on the fingers of one hand. AnonMoos (talk) 23:33, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

ANON says: "The word Elohim occurs with singular meaning or agreement thousands of times in the text of the Hebrew Old Testament, ..."

Whether it has singular MEANING or not is precisely what is under debate. It is YOUR bias and interpretation that it absolutely must have a singular meaning. Your evidence for this is that the verb agreement is singular. However, your view is easily disproven by plenty of examples and evidence in the Hebrew language. For example, singular verbs are used when talking about eyes or ears (even when clearly referring to more than one eye or year). In other words, singular verbs are used even when the subject acting is not singular in meaning! Your refusal to divulge this information to the readers of this article demonstrates that you have no intention of providing a balanced and full disclosure of the facts.

ANON says: The word Elohim occurs with singular meaning or agreement thousands of times in the text of the Hebrew Old Testament, while first person plural pronouns which some may consider problematic occur pretty much in a handful of passages. So obviously, in most of the occurrences of Elohim in the Bible, there are no first person plural divine pronouns nearby. So it's very difficult to make a reasonable case as to how Elohim would somehow take its meaning from first person plural divine pronouns.

Well fortunately for me, that isn't the case being made by me or anybody else. You insist that Elohim (when referring to the God of Israel) can by no means be understood as having any meaning other than singular. However, we have in the Hebrew texts an entirely different grammatical phenomenon whereby the God of Israel refers to himself with a PLURAL pronoun. It isn't that Elohim "takes its meaning from first person plural divine pronouns" (nice try at a straw man). The idea would be that Elohim can include the idea of more than one Divine being, and therefore used the plural pronoun to refer to themselves. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Smpf38 (talk • contribs) 02:07, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Female / Not Female

"Note that contrary to what is sometimes assumed, the word Eloah (אלוה) is quite definitely not feminine in form in the Hebrew language (and does not have feminine grammatical gender in its occurrences in the Bible). This word ends in a furtivum vowel (i.e. short non-syllabic [a] element which is part of a lowering diphthong) followed by a breathily-pronounced final [h] consonant sound — while feminine Hebrew words which end in "ah" have a fully syllabic [a] vowel which is followed by a silent "h" letter (which changes to a [t] sound in the grammatical "construct state" construction, or if suffixes are added). The pronounced [h] (or he mappiq) of Eloah never alternates with a [t] consonant sound (the way that silent feminine "h" does), and the [a] "furtivum" element in Eloah is actually a late feature of masoretic pronunciation traditions, which wouldn't have existed in the pronunciation of Biblical times."

Eloquent as this text on the pronunciation is, it solves nothing, as both pronunciations would be spelled "ה", and no signs denoting vowels or other pronunciation were used at the time of the earliest manuscript sources from which latter versions of the Old Testament are derived. The interpretation of "Eloah" as female is thus neither confirmed nor debased by this text. 82.176.214.123 (talk) 21:27, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

It sounds like something that should be referrenced. Right now it sounds more like WP:OR. Bytebear (talk) 23:59, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Usage of "WE" in the Quran

The existing text: "a first person plural pronoun ("we") is used in a similar way when the angels are involved in executing the will of God" This incorrect as far as Islamic beliefs are concerned.

Muslims generally believe that "we" is in fact used to denote a single entity in the Arabic in majestic terms (look up "Royal plural" in wikipedia). It has nothing to do with plurality

So when the Quran says "We created the universe", it does not mean angels also created the universe. Worse, when it says "Worship Us", it does not mean Muslims should worship angels too. That would be considered blasphemous to Muslims.

Please either remove this incorrect paragraph, or replace it with something that reflects what Muslims really believe. Thank You!

source: http://en.allexperts.com/q/Islam-947/Qur.htm I can provide more sources if necessary —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.120.139.233 (talk) 01:32, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Dear friend,

Quran never said "Worship us" always said "worship me" or "worship Allah"! Also the first person plural pronoun introduced themselves in this verse:

And there is none of us but has an assigned place(37:164)

Most Muslims said that it is angels that speak but there is others ,just like Shi-a's that claim different! —Preceding unsigned comment added by تسلیم (talk • contribs) 04:14, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. However, I did a simple text search and found the following verse:

"whereupon We responded unto him and removed all the affliction from which he suffered; and We gave him new offspring, doubling their number as an act of grace from Us, and as a reminder unto all who worship Us" (21:84)

It may be that some Muslims have a difference of opinion regarding the meaning of the plural, but I certainly would not say that this is the opinion of "most muslims". This is certainly not the opinion of many of the trusted Muslim scholars. Here is another reference:

http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?cid=1141277502580&pagename=IslamOnline-English-AAbout_Islam%2FAskAboutIslamE%2FAskAboutIslamE

I believe it is in the spirit of Wikipedia to not contain "opinions", therefore I suggest removing the sentence entirely. However, if you feel it is important to keep it, then I suggest also including the opinions of these Muslim scholars. Thank you! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.120.139.233 (talk) 10:58, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry I have seen this discussion after my edit!

I'm agree that not every Muslim scholars confirm that every "We" in Quran is a reference to Angels or beings just like Elohim. And agree to add others opinion. FYI this belief is most belong to Shia Scholars. Just pay attention that same as in the bible that Elohim created human on their image(Gen 1:27)(Gen 3:22), in Quran the same verse that in the article you provided(Qaf 50: 16) indicate that "we" created the human.--تسلیم (talk) 07:17, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

My first question would be what this discussion has got to do with the topic of this article. Please take it to God in Islam. --dab (𒁳) 12:59, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

nrm section

this section obviously attracts cruft. I suggest it would be best to discuss "other stuff known as 'Elohim' in new religious movements" via Elohim (disambiguation), not as part of this topic. --dab (𒁳) 10:36, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Hoffman (2004)

the article claims:

"Hoffman (2004) derives [Elohim] from the common Canaanite word elim, with the mater lectionis heh inserted to distinguish the Israelite God from other gods. He argues that elohim thus patterns with Abram/Abraham and Sarai/Sarah. (Hoffman, Joel M. (2004). In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language. ISBN 0-8147-3654-8.)

Hoffman (2004) is a quotable source, published with NYU. But no page is given, and I have doubts whether this is a misrepresentation. It is impossible to argue that the h was introduced as a peculiarity of Hebrew tradition seeing that the Ugaritic texts have the exact same form centuries earlier. This hypothesis would be plausible if we did not have the Ugaritic form, but knowledge of the Ugaritic form renders it obsolete immediately: if the gods of Ugarit are already known as 'lhm, it is impossible to "distinguish the Israelite God from other gods" by calling him 'lhm instead of 'lm.

If anything, Hoffman's "mater lectionis" hypothesis would need to be transferred to the Ugaritic period, where "the Elohim" 'lhm were the family of El specifically, while 'lm were simply generic "gods". --dab (𒁳) 17:16, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

This searchable link may help: [2]

Dougweller (talk) 17:55, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Micael Heiser has suggested

"Michael Heiser has suggested that verses such as Ps. 82:6 (El in within of Elohim) refer to a "Divine Council" of elohim serving the Creator.[8]" Michael Heiser? Who he? This isn't a suggestion from MR H., it's been around for ages, and is pretty much the mainstream view. Heiser perhaps noted it, but he didn't originate it. PiCo (talk) 03:17, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

El

Please take any discussion of the etymology of el to El (god). Any claim that the word is a loan from Sumerian will need excellent scholarly references. --dab (𒁳) 09:03, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Removed a section on grammar

I removed a long section on grammar because it's so turgid - the idea is to inform readers, not baffle them. The idea can be expressed much more simply. PiCo (talk) 05:01, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

I love your description of the paragraph as turgid (and I agree), but I think the proper approach is to clean it up rather than just blanking the entire thing. As so often, this used to be a useful paragraph, and it was then bloated by random additions from well-meaning but ill-advised contributions. It is unfair to throw out the original good material together with the accretions. --dab (𒁳) 22:23, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Combine with Elohim (Ugarit)?

There's an article Elohim (Ugarit), which IMO could be combined with this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by PiCo (talk • contribs)

There is also el (god). I think all of Elohim (Ugarit), Elohim and Ilah could be merged into that. --dab (𒁳) 09:11, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

How do we get an agreement on that? I doubt very many people are actually interested in this subject. PiCo (talk) 09:28, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

why would we need agreement from people who are not interested in the subject? We can just make up our mind. The question is, would the El (deity) article be swamped by importing the detail currently in this article, or would the merger help with a clean presentation? The El article is currently bloated and needs cleanup anyway. In my opinion, merging all material and cleaning it up will result in a better article, but it will be about one or two hours' work. --dab (𒁳) 09:49, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

So far as I'm concerned you're welcome to go ahead and do this if you wish to put the effort in. PiCo (talk) 10:08, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

I think it would be a mistake. The "further information" links are sufficient. The Ugarit article is about plural deities. This article is about the singular deity in the Bible. Merging them would be a highly POV act. I suggest you seek consensus before considering something like this. - Lisa (talk - contribs) 19:37, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

merging two articles isn't a "pov act", because it doesn't imply the claim that the two topics are identical. It's an editorial decision that doesn't affect the content level.

also, you will note that this article is mostly about the word "Elohim", not about the deity itself. The deity has its own article at God in Judaism. As a word, Biblical Hebrew "Elohim" is nearly identical, if not wholly identical, to Canaanite "Elohim", and it is impossible to discuss one in depth without making extensive reference to the other, so that, as a discussion of a word, this is after all a single topic. --dab (𒁳) 22:26, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

They are not even close to identical. One is plural and the other is singular. It's like saying that the words "lead" (what a leader does) and "lead" (the chemical element) are "nearly identical, if not wholly identical" and put them in the same article. - Lisa (talk - contribs) 03:52, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

False analogy Lisa. Dab is right, the two articles (or three?) need to be combined in order to discuss them properly. PiCo (talk) 11:41, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

This is not wiktionary, where a plural form gets a separate page from a singular form. And no, this is not like saying lead (v.) and lead (n.) is identical, it is like saying read and read are both forms of the verb "read", and our article on reading, past and present, is at Reading (process). Also you are confusing form and meaning. The meaning is certainly different, the Elohim were the sons of El around 1300 BC, and they was the God of Israel by 600 BC. What happened between 1300 and 600 is anyone's guess, and a matter of a coherent exposition, not simple disambiguation. Again, the article on the Old Testament deity itself is at God of Israel, this is not the topic of this article, even thogh there will certainly be wikilinks in both directions.

This word is notable because it is an important testimony of the gradual emergence of monotheism over more than a millennium. We have clear polytheism in 1000 BC, monolatrism in 600 BC and clear monotheism in AD 200, and the word Elohim remains throughout these changes. It is impossible to discuss this transition of we pretend that there were two discrete things, polytheism in the Bronze Age and monotheism in Rabbinical Judaism, without looking at how one grew out of the other. --dab (𒁳) 13:22, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Well put. But I think we need a few more editors making input. Can I suggest that we contact those people who have edited the Talk page in the last 12 months? PiCo (talk) 23:45, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

(Belatedly?) Oppose merger -- first off, we don't even know that the so-called "Elohim (Ugarit)" was really pronounced as Elohim. In any case, it doesn't display the distinctive feature of Hebrew Elohim -- singular meaning accompanied by singular verb and adjective agreement. AnonMoos (talk) 02:26, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. We're not actually doing a vote, just exchanging opinions. I take your point, but this is exactly the kind of thing that a combined article can and should point out (as opposed to the current situation of two articles, where comparisons can't easily be made).PiCo (talk) 02:39, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

well, I did it just to illustrate how the "Ugarit" part is just a very short section. It doesn't shift the focus of the article as a whole. It could even be kept under "Etymology". If we had more material on the Elohim in Ugarit, a split would certainly be an option.

Ugaritic is essentially the predecessor of Hebrew, it's bascically just an earlier stage. Concerns that the pronunciation might have been different don't really strike me as more relevant than concerns that the pronunciation of the Elohist may have differed from that of Judah haNasi. And arguably even the theology of the Elohist was more similar to that of Ugarit than to that of the Mishnah. The Elohist was certainly closer to Ugarit than to the Mishnah chronologically.

Elohim uses the normal plural of the verb when referring to pagan deities, just as in Ugarit. The only change introduced was the quirk that when referring to the God of Israel, the singular verb is used. We have perfect continuity in the general meaning, plus the addition of a specialized meaning. In order to point this out, we need to make reference to Ugarit. Also, we would need references for this, but I could imagine that the singular verb isn't even the Elohist's but was introduced after the development of monotheism, in the 5th century BC redaction of the text. I think it is almost certain that this has been proposed in scholarship, it's just a question of finding the literature. --dab (𒁳) 14:47, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

While the texts found at Ugarit certainly throw some light on what bronze age Canaanite society must have been like, the Ugaritic language is not the direct linguistic precursor to Biblical Hebrew, and there has been considerable debate over whether Ugaritic can properly be spoken of as a "Canaanite language" at all. Furthermore, singular Elohim is found (in the construct state) in the Khirbet Beit Lei inscription, and introducing self-consciously artificial and ideologically-motivated artificial grammatical features consistently throughout a 300,000-word collection of texts is far from being the simple matter which you seem to assume it to be... AnonMoos (talk) 09:40, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I realize this. I am not going to claim the singular is an artificial redaction before I can attribute it to a quotable source, of course. What the article needs to discuss in more detail is the cases of plural agreement in passages where Elohim is the God of Israel. So whatever the chronology of this, the distinction of 'plural: pagan gods, singular: our God' was never absolute. --dab (𒁳) 07:31, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Is this article just going to be about linguistics? How boring. I'd like to follow the history of the word "elohim" from Ugarit (first occurrence so far as I know) to the Arabs, and the concepts of divinity that go with it. These change over time, of course. That. to me, is an article worth reading. But can dab please explain to me just what he sees his expanded article dealing with? PiCo (talk) 10:17, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

In this context, I found this interesting reference to Psalms 82:1. The verse reads literally,

Elohim has taken his place in the council of El, in the midst of the Elohim he holds judgement.

As the verse is from the part of the Pslams that underwent "Elohist redaction" (habitual replacement of YHWH by Elohim in the 4th century BC), it is conjectured that this originally read

Yahweh has taken his place in the council of El, in the midst of the Elohim he holds judgement.

This is a scene taken straight from Ugaritic mythology, with Yahweh = Hadad, as the reference puts it, "a dramatic encounter between Yahweh and the rest of the gods, under the aegis of El". I hope it is clear from this how this article topic essentially concerns the connection of Canaanite (Ugaritic) religion and the development of the Pentateuch. --dab (𒁳) 15:19, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol

In The Lost Symbol (in the epilogue, if I'm correct), Dan Brown refers to Elohim. His hero, Robert Langdon suddonly realizes that Elohim might be a proof of the free-maçon statement "we are all gods". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.246.204.98 (talk) 09:32, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

so? --dab (𒁳) 10:10, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

It is the usual word for "god" in the Hebrew bible

No it is not. Depending on the kind of text you are reading in the bible, you will find other names for god. And if it were: citation needed! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.20.212.151 (talk) 09:08, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, a more correct way of phrasing it would be "it is the word usually translated as 'God' in English Bibles", as 'God' translates 'Elohim', not vice versa. This is a question of the convention used by the translator. The KJV translates Yahweh as "Lord" and Elohim as "God". There may be more recent translations that do other things. --dab (𒁳) 10:08, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

a more correct way of phrasing it would be "it is A word usually translated as 'God' in English Bibles". There are others. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.217.130.9 (talk) 12:30, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Use of singular verb with Elohim

I am not sure what the motivation behind the recent edits is, but they create an undue impression that the situation is clear and systematic. While in fact the irregularities and deviations from the standard use of this word is among the most striking evidence for the early development of monolatrism in the Hebrew Bible. The exceptions from the rule "singular -- God of Israel / plural -- pagan gods" are safely referenced [3][4][5][6] and is not to be "explained away" by hand-waving on the part of Wikipedia. --dab (𒁳) 13:20, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Also, I don't see why the "Sons of God" need a separate heading. It is perfectly adequate to discuss the attestations in the Hebrew Bible as divided in (a) referring to the God of Israel and (b) referring to other entities such as pagan deities, demons, spirits, angels, judges etc. The "Sons of God" are clearly just an item under (b). The fact of the matter is that the "Sons of El", i.e. the "Sons of God" are the original (Canaanite) Elohim, but that the God of Israel had hijacked this title before the redaction of the Torah so that the redactors of the Torah needed to regularize their texts. The inconsistencies in their redaction is invaluable evidence of how their texts looked like before 500 BC. If we had only the Samaritan Torah, we would never know that the original text of Genesis 20:13 had התעו which fortunately escaped the attention of the 5th century redactors, but was changed to (I assume) התעח by the Samaritans. --dab (𒁳) 13:25, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Hello D Bachman. Thanks for your contributions, I clearly am not as informed (or even interested) in the subject, but on the areas I knew a little about I could see some incorrect or unreferenced material. There's no particular motivation other than wanting the article to be properly referenced, and clear to those who may not be familiar with the way singular and plural are indicated by the verb/adjective not the noun. As for why Sons of God has a separate heading, for the same reason it has a separate article. If you have an Ugaritic text which is directly relevant to the use of Elohim with singular or plural by all means provide it into the article. Cheers. In ictu oculi (talk) 13:58, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I've put back a small part of your deletions. Particularly the ones relating to grammar, where I can assume goodwill. The Canaanite material you probably know more than I do, but this article needs decent refs. And needs to distinguish carefully between Ugaritic and Hebrew In ictu oculi (talk) 14:26, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

sons of God is a separate article on Wikipedia. Therefore a link, and separate section is justified. Likewise the normal place for a related phrase is generally at the end of the main lexical entry. Would still be interested to see the actual source refs from Canaanite texts on the other edits you deleted. In ictu oculi (talk) 16:01, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

In looking over this entry I have noted a number of issues. Below I discuss some of the more critical ones:

- Eloah is a rare form and is generally thought of as a singular back-formation from the plural elohim, not the root of it. The DDD article is only providing one point of view, and it’s not the current consensus. The Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament provides a much more extensive discussion.

- The Hebrew term elohim does not find an exact cognate in the Arabic ilah. The latter is singular, like the Aramaic elaha. The Hebrew cognate to both would be the rare term eloah.

- The following statement comprises two tautologies: “the construction is usually grammatically singular, (i.e. it governs a singular verb or adjective) when referring to the Hebrew God, but grammatically plural (i.e. taking a plural verb or adjective) when used of pagan divinities.” It is asserting that the term is singular when it refers to a singular noun, and plural when it refers to plural nouns. There is no need to point this out. Additionally, every single time it is used to refer to a singular foreign deity, it is singular. That hardly constitutes an exception to a grammatical rule. This usage us rare because the Hebrew Bible rarely refers to singular foreign deities, and when it does it often uses other terms, like their names. Can anyone point to an instance of a functionally plural elohim referring to a singular foreign deity? Additionally, if the term is being used to indicate plural deities, it can’t refer to the God of Israel alone. The fact that a plural noun is not singular does not require a special note. Later the statement is found, “Just as there are exceptions to the rule that Elohim is singular when referring to the God of Israel . . .” This is a bizarre comment. I can imagine no situation where we would be forced to conclude that elohim refers to the God of Israel but must be read as functionally plural. Does the author mean “the rule that elohim refers to the God of Israel when it is singular”? Irrespective, neither rule exists.

- The following statement appears in the Hebrew Bible section: “this seems to indicate that the term was indeed used simply to mean something like 'divine beings' in ancient Israel.” There is no semantic difference in Biblical Hebrew between “divine being” and “god.” To distinguish between the two is to retroject modern theological hierarchies into ancient texts.

- On multiple occasions this article cites a single source and states that additional sources agree, but does not provide a reference for any additional sources. It usually occurs when the article favors outdated and obsolete conclusions. For instance, the article states that “Gesenius and other Hebrew grammarians” explain the plural form of elohim as a plural of excellence, but the footnote only cites Gesenius. He is outdated and tendentious on this issue. There are other theories that explain the plural of elohim much better than the problematic “plural of excellence/majesty.” The best represented of these theories is found in Joel S. Burnett, A Reassessment of Biblical Elohim, which argues that elohim was originally an abstract plural, like abot (“fatherhood”) or adonim (“lordship”), that was concretized in reference to an object. An analogous concretizing of an abstract plural is found in Deut 22:15, which calls for the father of a putative virgin to bring out “evidence of the girl’s virginity,” which comes from the Hebrew phrase “virginities of the girl,” with “virginities” acting as an abstract plural of the singular “virgin.” Obviously this renders the following statement entirely false: "The only plural singular noun in the Hebrew Bible is "Elohim." What is a "plural singular noun"? The rest of that sentence ("it is the only noun that can, in addition to plural, connote singular quintessence, uniqueness, or might") is a theological assertion that has absolutely no basis whatsoever in lexicography.

- The following is found in the section entitled Pagan gods, angels and judges: “Brown-Driver-Briggs and other sources list both angels and judges as possible alternative meanings of elohim + plural verbs and adjectives.” My issue is with the "judges" reading. Not only does it neglect to cite any source other than BDB (without a page number), but it entirely neglects the 75+ years of scholarship that has argued vehemently against the notion that elohim ever means “judges.” BDB is over 100 years old, and the overwhelming consensus today is that elohim absolutely did not mean “judges.” For an early example, see Cyrus Gordon, “Elohim in Its Reputed Meaning of Rulers, Judges,” Journal of Biblical Literature 54.3 (1935): 139–44. Modern lexica list “judges” as an erroneous meaning derived from theological sensitivities.

- The following statement is found in the same section: “of 2606 occurrences of elohim in the Hebrew Bible (equivalent to the Protestant canonical portion of the Septuagint) 5 instances (Exodus 21:6, 22:8,9 twice, 1Sam.2:25) are rended ‘judges’ in the Greek.” In addition to the misspelling of “rendered,” this statement is simply false. In Exod 21:6 the Greek renders “tribunal of God,” not “judges.” In Exod 22:8, 9 the Greek renders “God.” 1 Sam 2:25 has nothing to do with the question, as the word elohim is rendered with kyrios, “lord,” in the Greek. Maklelan (talk) 09:52, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I've removed all but the first sentence from that section, and removed 'pagan gods' from the section heading as both clearly pov and not mentioned in the section. I really wish you'd edit this, it's not something I feel I want to spend time on although it interests me. Dougweller (talk) 10:40, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Smith

There is much meaningless verbiage in the article about "vertical translatability" from a Smith. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.194.200 (talk) 12:20, 7 April 2011 (UTC) The word "yahweh" is in the singular and goes back before the alleged invention of monotheism in the second century A.D. Smitty has got himself involved in a wild anachronism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.194.200 (talk) 12:33, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I have put some of Smith's drivel about Goldman Sachs in the article. We also hear about Eva Hoffman. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.120.119.12 (talk) 10:55, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Smith tells us that Eva Hoffman's family moved from Poland to America in the late 1950's and that this obliged them to learn a new language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.30.71.244 (talk) 13:19, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Holy Council of Elohim

I've removed all of this. It was mainly original research (see WP:NOR - it should not have used any biblical sources to construct an argument, and it should have used reliable sources - see WP:RS and WP:VERIFY which discuss this 'Holy Council of Elohim' (and they of course hopefully will refer to the Bible). WP:NPOV suggests that these should be significant in some way, eg discussed in the academic literature even if that literature rejects them. In my opinion the 19th century sources should not be used and if they are only after discussion here including some quotes showing what they say about this alleged council. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 19:02, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

The "Divine Council" is discussed by scholars based on a few hints here and there in the Bible, but it's only very tangentially related to Elohim... AnonMoos (talk) 20:00, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, that's more or less what I found when I looked. Dougweller (talk) 20:27, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Thirded. Good call. In ictu oculi (talk) 05:19, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

It's been question on my talk page as to how many sources are needed before this isn't original research. Almost all of the section was clearly original research built up out of quotes from the Bible, so it boils down to whether we should have a section on the ideas of Michael Heiser I guess. If we do, it certainly can't have a heading 'Holy Council' as the referenced website [7] is about a 'Divine Council'. If Heiser is a reliable source, thatn WP:NPOV applies, we need to represent "fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources." Our policy also says "While it is important to account for all significant viewpoints on any topic, Wikipedia policy does not state or imply that every minority view or extraordinary claim needs to be presented along with commonly accepted mainstream scholarship." (something I occasionally forget when I see fringe stuff in mainstream articles). So far I can't find significant discussion of Heiser's ideas and most mention is in self-published sources or websites. Dougweller (talk) 05:04, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

There is some material in Anchor Bible Dictionary, as I think has been noted, but using Heiser as a source in scholarly article. IMHO, no. Heiser's theories may not even be notable enough for his own BLP. In ictu oculi (talk) 05:50, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Steussy 2003, Mark S. Smith 2008, Hulsean Lectures for 1888

Hi of these four refs Steussy and Smith okay, if the text and ref match up, but the 1888 source and Wade Cox (who?) Michael Heiser (who?) Martha Jones (who?) = websites, not needed. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:11, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Page number missing

I received this message:

Hi there. On 9 April 2011, you changed a major component in the Elohim article, and you did not you offer any explanation in your edit summary why you did that. You did provide an incomplete general book reference which lacks the page number. As you are aware, Wikipedia's Guideline for Citing sources for Books stipulates that "...Inline citations should additionally give the relevant page number...". I would therefore like to ask you, to please kindly provide the missing information (page number) of the book in which you found the expression which you placed into the article ("....grammatically singular word for God...."). This would enable other editors to verify this information. Thank you. Amsaim (talk) 17:22, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately however the standard ref work by K. van der Toorn, Bob Becking, Pieter Willem van der Horst Dictionary of deities and demons in the Bible appears to have been pulled from Google Books and hence the link no longer works, so difficult to retrieve the page number. So maybe someone with a paper copy handy could supply it. Cheers In ictu oculi (talk) 17:36, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

The words אל El אלהי Elohey and אלהים Elohim

Modern Scholars believe that the word אלהים Elohim is both singular and plural depending on the singular and plural usage of the adverb, verb, and or pronouns used with it. But when the Hebrew word אלהים Elohim is translated to Greek as ὁ θεὸς with an article, the usage is most often a Neuter Plural referring to both a male and a female, because man was finished in the image from אלהים Elohim in Hebrew, from θεοῦ in Greek, male and female. But when plural adverbs, or verbs, and or pronouns are used with it, it is a Neuter Plural Gods speaking of both males and females alike.

That is allegoric of God as the Father being Light, and Zion as a Goddess being Day, and the Father of Light and Goddess of Day have Children of Light called the sons of Elohim אלהים.

Elohey אלהי is singular and depending on the Gender of the words used with it, it is translated as either God or Goddess, while אל El is always a singular Masculine God. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JosephLoegering (talk • contribs) 22:53, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

The above would need sources, but sounds non WP:RS. FWIW ὁ θεὸς is masculine singular. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:24, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

1 Kings 11:5 and 11:33 Elohey אלהי is translated "goddess" in the phrase; "Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians." Elohey אלהי is the singular construct of the word אלהים Elohim, which like Elohey is Neuter also, making the Gender of the Nouns and Pronouns and Verbs determine its Gender. But Greek and English have no Neuter for θεὸς or God, so the Masculine is used, causing a loss in translation, because it is impossible to accurately translate without a Neuter.

Like the English Article in the Phrase "The Sheep all ate grass," the Greek Article ὁ makes the singular θεὸς a class equal to the Plural word אלהים Elohim. θεὸς without an Article is equal to the singular Elohey אלהי but the Greek LXX does not always translate Elohey אלהי and אלהים Elohim accurately, and the mistranslations divided the Hebrews and Greeks for thousands of years.

JosephLoegering (talk) 22:11, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Joseph. Sorry, but no. For a start, English "the sheep" is plural in the above example. Do you have any published source behind the above comments? In ictu oculi (talk) 01:03, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes it is plural, and originally the Greek ὁ θεὸς with an Article was considered Plural equal to the Plural word Elohim. Scholars consider it as a Royal "We" being a singular ruler speaking of himself in the Plural. The Greek Grammars explain the usage of the Article ὁ as to when it is used as a definite Article or a class Article, and explain that the usage of the Article changed from Ancient Greek to Modern Greek with only some phrases left still using ὁ as a class Article. The Greek Grammars also show that the Greek LXX uses it as a definite Article in some places and as a class Article in some places. The different usages of the Article is what divided the Hebrew and Greek Jews, but in reality, there is very little difference in the two Texts, today they translate the plural word Elohim and the class ὁ θεὸς as a singular God speaking a Royal "WE." But was the Royal "WE" the original intent of the writers? JosephLoegering (talk) 01:23, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Joseph. Do you have a printed WP:RS? In ictu oculi (talk) 01:42, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I need to get a copy of Wallace's Greek Grammar to find the page on class Articles, and I can get another Greek Grammar in a few days, with the same subject. The Article is partly what caused a division between Elohist and Yahwist Jews. In Hebrew it says you are Elohim, (Psalm 82:6,) it does not say that you are Yahweh or God. In Hebrew the Article does not change the meaning of Elohim, but in Greek it can make a noun a singular class or a plural class according to the Greek Grammars I am talking about. JosephLoegering (talk) 03:13, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

You will not find that in Wallace. However if you do find something relevant to Theos that has a WP:RS please bring it to Talk. Cheers. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:41, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

JosephLoegering -- אלהי does NOT spell eloah in Hebrew. Furthermore, the word in 1 Kings 11:5 and 11:33 is elohey, the construct state of elohim (used non-monotheistically in this particular case); it's hard to see how this word can be feminine, since exactly the same word is used in connection with Milkom and Chemosh. For extremely detailed explanation of why "Eloah" does not have a Hebrew feminine ending, see the talk page archives... AnonMoos (talk) 05:25, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

You correct it should be spelled "elohey," but the fact is, unlike other places like Deuteronomy 6:4, they translate it as "goddess" in those verses. I did not write their translation.

The reason I and others spelled it Eloah, that is what Elohey is listed under in the concordance. Strong's Concordance lists it under Elohim.

JosephLoegering (talk) 19:50, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

oculi|In ictu oculi A T Robertson wrote "A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the light of Historical Research." On pages 756 to 758 he discusses how the article is used with a singular noun to represent a class, and says that in light of that Theos and other nouns are often used with an Article that is not needed in English. JosephLoegering (talk) 19:50, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Psalm 82:6

The meaning here is, "I have said like God (elohim) you are" or "I have said you are like God (elohim)."

Ps 82:6 אֲ?ֽנִי־אָמַרְתִּי אֱלֹהִים אַתֶּם וּבְנֵי עֶלְיֹון כֻּלְּכֶֽם׃

The "like" or "as" is implied because you are created in the image of God (elohim).

Hebrew is a difficult language to use to explain yourself because it has fewer words than modern languages.

Similarly, Exodus 4:16 means "And you shall be to him (Aaron) like God (elohim)" because Moses was to say to Aaron what God said to Moses.

Translation errors often appear in the bible because the translators had incorrect understanding. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.196.154.194 (talk) 13:49, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

1 Samuel 28:13

The medium that Saul went to was shocked in what she saw because mediums deal with demon spirits (familiar spirits), but this time she saw something different. Hence she thought it was God (elohim), but she was mistaken because it was not God (elohim) but Samuel whom God allowed to speak to Saul. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.196.154.194 (talk) 14:00, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Anything in this article on this subject needs to be cited to reliable sources meeting the criteria at WP:RS. Dougweller (talk) 10:03, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Incorrect information on plural Hebrew verbs

The explanation on plural verbs is incorrect. In Gen. 20:13, Abraham said, "God (elohim) caused and continued to cause (plural verb) me to wander." That is the meaning of a Hebrew plural verb.

Similarly in Gen 35:7, "because there God (elohim) had revealed and continued to reveal (plural verb) himself to him..." It is incorrect to say that a plural verb changes the subject of the verb. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.10.147.188 (talk) 23:21, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Raelians believe "We are created "in the image" of our Creators, the Elohim, an advanced race of people mistaken as 'gods' by our ancestors", which suggests where the incorrect teaching on plural verbs is coming from. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.10.147.188 (talk) 23:33, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Elohim isn't an English word, it is simply Hebrew for 'gods'; 'im' is the masculin plural suffix in Hebrew. 'El' is the Hebrew singular; 'god'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Titanis Walleri (talk • contribs) 23:24, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

The Hebrew word Elohim means "the God who is" and the God of the bible refers to Himself as "I am". The Hebrew word El Shaddai mean "the God who is all sufficient". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.248.128.87 (talk) 15:37, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Therefore, a more accurate translation is:

Genesis 20:13 "Abraham said, 'The God who is caused and continued to cause me to wander.'"

Genesis 35:7 "because there the God who is had revealed and continued to reveal Himself to him..." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.248.128.87 (talk) 19:44, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Please fix this article, first it mentions that Elohim could mean both singular God and plural gods. Then it adds this: In Gen 20:13 Abraham, before the polytheistic Philistine king Abimelech, says that "the gods (elohim) caused (plural verb) me to wander".[10][11][12] The Greek Septuagint (LXX) and most English versions usually translate this "God caused", possibly to avoid the implication of Abraham deferring to Abimelech's polytheistic beliefs.[13] NOTE: Book of Genesis doesn't describe Abimelech, King of Gerar as having any religion, it only describes his dream with God commanding him to free Sarai, wife of Abraham. If the book was dealing with multiple gods, it should have called each by name. So it's very far stretched - to conclude it's indeed plural and Abimelech is polytheist, by using modern books from 1995, 2012 with unproved speculations vs Genesis. Also it contradicts with the start of the article, as i already mentioned above.

Category: Latter Day Saint doctrines regarding deity

I noticed that the article contains the category "Latter Day Saint doctrines regarding deity", but doesn't mention the Latter Day Saints specifically. I know (married to a LDS) that it certainly could contain referenced LDS related material, but I'm wondering if that was split out into another article or deleted.Naraht (talk) 19:53, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

What's this banner doing since August 2012?

Quote: "This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: <incorrect information on plural Hebrew verbs and incorrect information on the Hebrew word elohim>. Please help improve this article if you can. (August 2012)"

Is this actually the case? There's been a lot of drive-by traffic on this article by editors with no awareness (or acceptance?) that some nouns have plurality indicated by the verb/adjective/etc but the article seems to cover this.In ictu oculi (talk) 15:54, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Capitalisation

It's my understanding that capitals are used for words which claim uniqueness, such as "God" in monotheistic religions. In ictu oculi (talk) 15:54, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Special pleading

Elohim is plural, and this fact is obvious to anyone who understands even a little bit of Hebrew, especially ancient Hebrew. People are trying to make it out to be a singular noun because it is translated as "God" or "Lord" in the Bible. This is because the religions of the ancient Lavant were all originally polytheistic, with "El" (A proper noun, a NAME of a God) being the highest, most important god, and other gods being subordinate to him (Ei, Ba'al, Molech, and Yahweh). The "Elohim" or "council of El" or "Children of El", is not some weird word describing the same thing that the word "El" describes, but is a plural which describes a body of gods - a pantheon - the same pantheon, BTW, referred to in Genesis when "they have become like US, knowing good an evil".

The dishonesty that created this article disgusts me. The people editing this article know better. Shame on you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.69.157.77 (talk) 06:08, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

you need to bring sources saying the plural form has some meaning. many languages handle number different than English does, without any special difference in meaning. for example the word for "water" in Hebrew is always plural in form (see Strongs) ditto the word for sky. These sorts of issues are discussed in Grammatical number Jytdog (talk) 12:23, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

If Elohim is "always" plural, why does it sometimes take a singular adjective or verb? 69.42.17.116 (talk) 15:25, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

In Hebrew, as well as other Semitic languages, verb-first constructions are only conjugated based on gender, not number. So if the first verse in the Torah were Bəréšîṯ, ’Elohim bårå’ ’éṯ ha-šammåyim wə-’éṯ hå-’åreṣ (subject first) instead of Bəréšîṯ, bårå’ ’Elohim ’éṯ ha-šammåyim wə-’éṯ hå-’åreṣ (verb first), then the singular verb conjugation would be a valid argument in favor of a singular meaning. But when the verb comes first the only way to know is based on other references to the word within the sentence. Here's a scholarly article with a full analysis of this phenomenon in Biblical Hebrew: https://www.academia.edu/235293/So-Called_First-Conjunct_Agreement_in_Biblical_Hebrew. Here is one with examples of the same phenomenon in Arabic: http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/mtb23/nsp/Chapter%204%20Agreement%20in%20Arabic.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by Andrewjohnbayles (talk • contribs) 18:12, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Partial agreement in verb-first constructions

I've heard far too many arguments saying that the word Elohim has to be singular because the verb that modifies it is conjugated as singular. Students and scholars who have studied any Semitic language know that this just isn't true. Biblical Hebrew, like Arabic and other Semitic languages, was primarily a VSO language, meaning that the verb came first, then the subject, then the object. (In Modern Hebrew, the subject usually comes before the verb, like in English.) When the verb precedes the subject, verbal agreement is only partial, as in the following example (from Holmstedt, 2009), in which the verb is clearly singular, but the noun is clearly plural:

qaraʔ-a	ʔal-ʔawlaːd-u	l-qis’s’a
read-3MS	the-children-MP.NOM	the-story
“the children read the story”

In this example, the verb qaraʔa is conjugated as masculine, singular, third-person, and literally translates as 'he read' on its own, but the subject ʔal-ʔawlaːd-u is the explicitly plural form. No one who knows anything about Hebrew would argue that in a sentence like this, 'the children' really only refers to one child. The majority of arguments regarding the word Elohim are exactly the same. Take Genesis 1:1

bə-reːʃiːθ	bɑrɑ	ʔɛlɔh-iːm	ʔeθ	ha-ʃamɑj-im	wə-ʔeθ	hɑ-ʔɑrɛts
in-beginning	created.3MS	god-PL	OBJ	the-heaven-PL	and-OBJ	the-Earth
“In the beginning, Elohim [the Gods] created the heavens and the Earth.

This example is syntactically identical to the previous example, with a verb conjugated as masculine singular, a plural noun, and an object. If it were the case that Elohim was meant to be singular, the only way to tell in a sentence like this would be by looking at other words—adjectives, etc.—that modified the subject, to see if those words were singular or plural.

In the article section God of Israel, with singular verb, Genesis 1:26 is claimed as an example of Elohim being used singularly, even though every word in the sentence that can be plural is plural, apart from the verb, which appears first in Hebrew, and therefore conforms to partial agreement, as in the examples above:

wa-j-oːmɛr	ʔɛloh-iːm	na-ʕăsɛh	ʔɑdɑm	bə-tsalme-nuː	ki-dmuːθe-nuː…
and-3.M.S-say	god-PL	1.M.PL-form	humankind	in-image-1.M.PL	as-likeness-1.M.PL
And Elohim [the Gods] said, let us form man in our image, after our likeness

Which is more likely—that the verb is conjugated with partial agreement, which is a proven phenomenon common in Biblical Hebrew; or that despite partial agreement being a proven phenomenon, the singular conjugation of the verb negates the three other explicitly plural constructions in the sentence? Draw whatever theological conclusions you will, but it's clear from a grammatical sense that these constructions are intentionally plural. Any argument that Elohim is singular based on a singular verb is ridiculous.

Here are two scholarly articles discussing partial agreement in verb-first constructions, the first with regard to Biblical Hebrew and Arabic (with contrasts to Modern Hebrew), and the other dealing primarily with Arabic:

Holmstedt, Robert. "So-Called ‘First Conjunct’Agreement in Biblical Hebrew." Afroasiatic Studies in Memory of Robert Hetzron: Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics (NACAL 35). Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. URL: http://individual.utoronto.ca/holmstedt/Holmstedt_FCA_NACAL.pdf

Al-Horais, Nasser. "A minimalist approach to agreement in Arabic." Newcastle Working Papers in Linguistics 15 (2009): 1-21. URL: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/linguistics/assets/documents/Agreement_in_Arabicupdatingpaper.pdf

Andrew John Bayles (talk) 19:41, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

so you implemented the above in this dif. Would you please tell me on what page of the ref Holmstedt discusses the application of this to "elohim"? I didn't see that any where in the source. Have reverted for now, as the application appears to be your work, and if so would be WP:OR.Jytdog (talk) 02:41, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

John's all mixed up here. At first glance, Biblical Hebrew appears to exhibit agreement asymmetries that pattern like Standard Arabic, but the similarity of Biblical Hebrew and Standard Arabic phenomena is superficial.

And that's not my opinion. That's the opinion of Robert Holmstedt, whom John cited to make his case, in the very work that he cited to make his case: "At first glance, BH appears to exhibit agreement asymmetries that pattern like SA, but the similarity of the BH and SA phenomena is superficial."

Nor is John's opinion about the grammar of Hebrew in line with Holmstedt. John says Hebrew is primarily a "VSO" language, while Holmdstedt's whole paper works toward the conclusion that Hebrew is SVO.

That "qara awladu" sentence that John uses as his sole example is an Arabic sentence, and it has to be because Hebrew virtually never does that. And it's not just that Elohim is paired with a singular verb is 1:26. It is paired with a singular verb in 1:1, 1:3, 1:4 (twice), 1:5 (twice), 1:6, 1:7 (twice), 1:8, 1:9, 1:10, 1:11, 1:12, 1:14, 1:16, 1:17, 1:18, 1:20, 1:21, 1:22, 1:24, 1:25 (twice), 1:26, 1:27, 1:28, 1:29, 1:31, 2:2 (thrice), 2:3 (four times).

Those singular verbs, contra John, are not singular because they begin the clause. The verbs are still singular when they don't begin a clause: welahoshek qara layla (1:5), ulemiqveh hammayim qara yammim (1:10), betselem elohim bara oto (1:27), asher asah (2:2), ki vo shavat mikkol melakto (2:3).

And this phenomona of singularness isn't restricted to verbs, betselmo ("in his image", 1:27), melakto ("his work", 2:2, 3).

I could go on, but the argument about verbs presented above is linguistically nonsense. And 1:26 is a silly example, too. Just because a speaker says "Us" does that mean the speaker is plural. Don't individual singular people say "Us" all the time. Now, you could argue that 1:26 implies the existence of other gods, perhaps, silently present but not active in the narrative. But there's no good argument that the grammar of Hebrew somehow points to the elohim who is speaking in 1:26 being plural. Alephb (talk) 23:26, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Elohim connection to Sumerian Mythology and difference from Yahweh

I'm pretty sure that I added a section in this talk and it was deleted. I seems that anyone may have the right/privileges to delete someone else's input on a subject, but I feel that it is immoral to do this on Wikipedia. This is for sharing of knowledge and ideas and not suppressing it. People can make their own judgement on the information and do further research themselves to support or dismiss the information.

If you have read/studied the Sumerian Myths , then it becomes pretty clear that Genesis is a consolidated version of the Sumerian Myths. In this light, the use of Elohim becomes clear.

When there is talk of Angels (Seraphim , Cheribim , etc) or the , the term used for God is Elohim.

When there is talk of God and there are no angels or mention of the Sons of God/Lord, the term used for God is Yahweh .

And, here is where I'll branch into the use of Elohim in respect to Christianity and the New Testament. In order to rectify the use of a plural word used for God (Elohim being plural) and Yahweh also being used for the name of God, they had to find a way to unite all the traditions. I had though that the information was pointing to Elohim taking the position of the Holy Spirit . However, after reading the information page on the Holy Spirit it seems to make more sense that the Elohim take the position of Father as the Sumerian mythology would place them/him as the Creator (as a group versus Enki as an individual), and Yahweh having more characteristics of the Holy Spirit/Ghost.

This is information for further research, but I feel that it is relevant to the discussion of the term "Elohim" and it's relevance to the over-all religious discussion.

WereTech (talk) 01:57, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

References

Elohim in the Lxx.

The article has this line: "In the Septuagint and New Testament translations, Elohim has the singular ὁ θεός even in these cases, and modern translations follow suit in giving "God" in the singular. The Samaritan Torah has edited out some of these exceptions.[22]"

This isn't entirely true. See Exodus 22:27(Lxx 22:28) which has θεοὺς theous (plural) instead of theos. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.199.224.239 (talk) 21:16, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

What are your thoughts about the order of the subchapters?

Is there some smart order in this article which I don't understand? It makes no sense to me that "Canaanite Religion" and "Elohist" are put before the "Usage"-section. The "Canaanite"-section is historically prior, one can argue, but on the other hand few people would look for "Elohist" or "Canaanite" but for biblical usage because the biblical references cause all other chapters. I would argue for the order: etymology, canaanite, usage, elohist, mormonist, 2A02:120B:2C7E:5530:AD39:9B83:22C2:A14F (talk) 19:15, 16 December 2019 (UTC)