On Elohim, the Hebrew Word for "God"
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- Опубликовано: 2 авг 2024
- In this video I share some scattered thoughts on why the Hebrew noun אלהים (elohim), though grammatically plural, can be used in reference to individual deities, including the God of Israel as well as other individual deities. The two books I reference in the video can be found here:
www.amazon.com/Reassessment-B...
www.amazon.com/dp/0486443442/...
top tier thumbnail
I was gonna say the same thing. Also, that was fascinating
God tier some might say
I have to applaud your bravery in asking the religious community to "not get too upset" about something in the Old Testament. As always, thank you for your informative videos!
Love the delves into language! ❤
one of the best new channels on this site
Keep up the good work. I like the longer videos.
So glad to find you here on RUclips, sir. Love your content.
Always great information, thank you Dan!
Super informative, thank you, Dr. McClellan. I see several comments asking if you'll do a video on the authorship of the NT documents in the future, so I will add my voice to that. At the seminary I attend, a very conservative, traditional authorship is taken for granted for every biblical text. As a result if I want to know how actual scholarship arrives at an author I have to look outside of class. I'm particularly interested in the Epistles but the gospels would also be fascinating. Thank you for your work.
Awesome job, Dan! 👍 This clears a lot of things up regarding the word "Elohim"
So glad you have YT too!
Here from Tiktok.
I expect good things!
This clears up a lot of confusion I've had, thank you. So, ultimately it's just one of those odd languages things, it sounds like
My favourite line: "... we should interpret that as Abraham referring to plural gods, and not get too upset about that". Can you imagine how wonderful and less toxic our religions could be if people could just "not get too upset about that"?!? Thank you so much for your gentle tone, your immense wisdom, and a touch of positive humanity around the issue of polytheism which has caused so much hurt and grief over the centuries.
Exactly. Like, we know Abraham was polytheistic before Genesis 12 for sure, and then probably the cult of an esclusive God developed much more later. In the beginning probably it was a passage form polytheism to enoteism were you conceive the existence of more gods but you worship one preferentially. I am agnostic but I think a christian might reconcile this with his faith so why getting upset in the first place
Every time I think you are actually going to hit us with some HM doctrine, my hopes are dashed. But-I love this all the same.
Thanks for this. The use of Elohim as a plural when there is a perfectly useful singular form has puzzled me for sometime
The best option is to leave "Elohim" unstranslated and stick to the context
Good breakdown of the syncretized version of Elohim.
Can you do a video on Elohim before it was syncretized?
Used to mean "sons of El" and also used to have possessive (God's) and plural (gods) context.
For me i need you to do a 3 hour detail videos show all scriptures. But Great video though
The word Elohim I think was created
to reveal or conceal depending on
who was hearing it.
I think it's a fusion of
Helio alum... the alum of Heliopolis...
Say concretize one more time 😂🤣 Very informative and thought out 🧐🤓 Thanks! Keep it up 👾👾
Similar to "Providence" in English (but plural).
If in your field of knowledge, can you do a vid on the authorship of the gospels, I keep getting Papias, Irenaeus, and Eusebius but can’t find what they actually said.
It still sounds awesome in Prince Of Egypt tho
I come from a Middle Eastern Christian background (I am a Maronite) and because of that I understand basically all Semitic Languages use a 3 letter consonant root to develop words. So if we look at the word for God in Hebrew, Syriac-Aramaic and Arabic we see they all come from the same ancestral word. In Hebrew they use Elohim (which is the plural of Eloah) the root is ELH. In Syriac we say Aloho, the root is ALH. And when speaking of God in Arabic the word is Allah, the root is ALH. So we can see all three Semitic Languages word for GOD come from the same word ALH (A sound shifted to E but it is still from the same root word.
7:15 this seems to actually be more complicated. I don't know Hebrew, but perhaps there is an analogy to, for example, how a team or a group such as a council can be either singular or plural in English and many other languages?
For example: "the team was doing great, until the second half" as distinct from "the team were doing great, until the second half". In both cases the grammar is correct and describes the same thing, but in one case the team is singular and in the other case the team are plural.
Now I do personally believe that the word elohim is that way, and that it refers to a group of gods, and even gods and goddesses, acting as a group. HOWEVER, my faith doesn't trump facts, so if I am wrong about that, I would genuinely love to hear convincing evidence in support of that. In the meantime, however, the application above, of a team of gods acting together makes a lot of sense.
Do you have any videos on the Trinity in the Old Testament?
A small thought. If I decide to translate the term into the english; "The Divine" that seems to have the meaning of all the potential cases!? Since The Divine as a term can mean a singular monotheistic god to say a Jew, it can mean all the gods of a hindu, it can mean a specific pantheon of gods say to an ancient Greek person. The inherent content of the term The Divine is specific to the individual or the circumstance. So when Abraham was caused to roam by the Divine, it could mean the group of gods in the general nations of the land, or his personal individual singular god, but the writer may have wanted the plural def based on his reading of textual context, or of his intended message?!
I thought maybe *Elohim was originally a collective noun,* _which could explain the occasional use of a plural verb,_ representing the Canaanite pantheon with El Elyon at the head, ala Kipp Davis’ translation of (one of?) the Dead Sea Scrolls’ version of Deuteronomy 32:8-12
“When El Elyon apportioned the nations, when he divided the sons of Adam, he fixed the boundaries of the people according to the numbers of the sons of the gods. Thus Yahweh’s portion is his people Jacob, the region of his hereditary property.”
So El Elyon divvied up the land and Jacob’s people got Yahweh’s territory… and by extension the Moabites received Chemosh’s portion, etc, etc.
It is the same as the word Man. Where it can be used to refer to a singular Man or Man as a race.
We say " HaShem in conversation.
Never use name unless in prayers .
שלום
So how do we understand the bloods (damim) calling out in the Cain and Abel story in Genesis?
So am I understanding correctly that the Elohim in Genesis 1 is meant to refer to a single god, and the plural is a linguistic artifact of where that word came from?
The plural form of elohim is a linguistic artifact, but the plural pronouns in Genesis 1:26 are indicative of plural deities. God is speaking to the divine council and making plans with them.
I wonder what came first: El as a caananite god, or Elohim as "godhead" or an "concretized abstraction" (or what he said). I understand that over time the names of these gods where given new meaning (so, for example, you cannnot say that the Israelites of the second temple period where worshipping El (of the Caananites) just because they used a variant of El's name).
But did El become Elohim or the other way around (or are they in no way related)?
Interesting, can't say as this one has ever caused me to think much. We're talking about a story older than time, there are probably some grammatical shifts that have happened. In the end, what are we supposed to learn?
@DanMcClellan can you look at Amos 4:11?
Is Yahweh saying another god punished Sodmom and Gomorrah? Thanks
same God. King James Version English.
Thanks for infos in description, but one can not copy all clip links at once and save somewhere (RUclips problem), therefore you should put in description the chapters as text with timestamps links too:
0:00 Intro
0:20 Plural of Majesty
5:00 Elohim
Okay I have a question on 1 Kings 11:33. I looked at the Hebrew at the words used are אֱלֹהֵ֣י (’ĕ·lō·hê) and not Elohim… is he using a different text than I am?
What really makes me wonder is why the autor of Genesis 20:13 used the plural verb when making Abraham speak about god. Because I can't imagine a good reason even though as you showed there it is, why was an author who should have been interested in presenting a monotheistic religion or at least enotheistic made Abraham speaking of "the gods'. Does anybody have some insight on this?
I know the bible is not a book written by a single mind but why presenting more gods. If I' not wrong Genesis is dates during the babylon captivity so already a cult of a unique or at least more important god was spread
BTW, why do you avoid pronouncing Yahweh and say Adonai instead? I watched the MythVision interview, you were holding a book on screen with the word Yahweh in it's title, and you read the title as having the word Adonai there, it was weird. On the other hand you did use the world Yahwism.
I've had some Jewish friends ask if I wouldn't mind using a substitution for the full divine name on my social media and I've happily agreed.
Because orthodox Jews would hate him😂
Is Elohim the plural of El and of Elohe?
Hey Dan, El, Elohim, El Shadai, and El Elyon are all from Canaanite religion. Isn't Elohim just meaning the children of the god El or the Canaanite pantheon?
Also, Yahweh is also from the god of Metallurgy, correct?
El is the patriarchal high deity within the broader Northwest Semitic pantheon, but elohim just means "deity," and its cognate is found in a number of Northwest Semitic languages (it does not mean "children of el). El Shaddai and El Elyon are specifically Israelite titles, but related titles ("shaddayin" and "Ilyan") are known from Aramaic and Ugaritic texts, although neither refers to El.
@@maklelan do you have any reading materials about this I can look more into?
@@sageoffaith My new open-access book talks about this: www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/pubs/9781628374407.pdf
@@maklelan I will read it now, thanks! Do you have any books for purchase, I love your content and would like to support you.
So when the word Elohim is used it is actually amplifying the characteristics of who God is and yet only referring to only one God alone. His majesty his purity and his authority ect. ect. ect... Plurality in Hebrew has a much different meaning than it does in English am I right? It's purpose is to describe and amplify the dieties known attributes besides his or hers existance. Did I nail it?
I believe they stopped using the name of YHWH, hid his idols, and used the plural form in order to recruit worshippers of other gods.
So is YHWH the name God that is from the NIV/AMP bible of today?
Sounds like the way we use “royalty”. Genderless, class above us but includes several levels. Remaining ambiguously anonymous but definitely a deity class being.
A friend who is an Orthodox Jew once compared the Jewish approach to words for God to radiation. If you leave an object next to enriched uranium for long enough, the object will eventually become radioactive. God and his name are much the same. God has infinite power and is due infinite reverence. The name of God is part of God and shares in the power of God. The name of God deserves the same reverence as God himself. Jews use more generic terms such as “Elohim”, “Adonai”, and “Hashem” to speak and write about God but, over time, those terms acquire some of the power of God and require the reverence due to God. It becomes taboo to use those words and another term has to be found to refer to God.
I have another friend who is ethnically Jewish and was raised in the Jewish religion but is now an atheist. Because of the Jewish reverence for the name of God, he writes the word English word “God” as “G-d”. He said that he knows it is silly to feel this way as an atheist but he just can’t fully overcome his early religious indoctrination.
How about they refer to a group instead of 1 specific god. This would explain the multiuse of both plural and singular as such.
Elohim (the group of divine beings), created man.
Interesting how the sumerian tablets say Anunnaki, the Divinie Beings from the Sky, or the Sons of An (Anu), which would be pretty close to the term Elohim, as like a Group being the family of Divine Beings.
in your 1st Kings reference, the word is NOT elohim, but rather elohey
Jesus - Yeshuah Moshiach
Acts 4:12
“Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”
John 14:7
“If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.”
John 10:30
“I and my Father are one.” -- One = EV, Oneness, Unity.
Avot is definetly not fatherhood, even avut isnt, but abahut (אבהות) is. If this explanation holds any merit its אלוה that turned to אלוהות ie divinity that turned to אלוהים, but it still doesnt explain why its plural, an explanation i heard from some rabbis is that the plurality refers to the powers and so the word means the being which controls the powers, so by that logic if people believe that other deities have powers it makes sense it will be refered to as elohim even though it isnt.
These are the uncomfortable conversations most Christians aren't willing to have. I find it weird whenever I discover a "heretical" biblical teaching, I saw always find a group of people that knew it all along.
I have just come from another video about elohim, the name for god, and that other one genuinely made me nothing but confused. I wonder if this also merits a Dan McClellan response at some point: ruclips.net/video/sSHsYZj0mKo/видео.html
I’m one of those who’s actually contemplated that HM “could” be the Holy Ghost. The attributes of the HG just seem very feminine. Also the Godhead makes more sense to me to be my Father, brother, mother. Not my father, brother, random ghost man. Anyhoo,.. first to admit I could absolutely be wrong. But I like to contemplate these things.
Abstract; creation. Its extremely feminine. Elohim is not only plural, but both a masculine and feminine references to the creative forces of "god'. Book of Mary clearly states that the Holy Spirit is a woman. It was removed from the roman canon during the council of Nicaea. Jesus gave the ministry to Mary because she was the smartest of them all.
@@goodtoGoNow1956 ok, never doubted that, only the name of Jesus
Here is my theory: The original word was not plural and was not pronounced Elohim. In a text with no vowels, a word can have many pronunciations. In this case, the word might have been pronounced Alahum that occurs in the Quran and pre-Islam Arabic, which is very close the the original Hebrew. Alahum's meaning is not fixed and rigid. It might mean Oh Allah for calling, The great Allah, or any exalting intent.
Why can't we just explain that Elohim refers to "powers" (EL from Hebrew "strong"). Therefore whatever deity is believed to possess certain "powers" is called Elohim.
That's an outdated etymology that was abandoned almost 75 years ago.
That definition does not work. As power is a pretty broad term what do you mean by power.
@@pleaseenteraname1103 a divine power of sorts. For example, an angel responsible for rain may be called elohim, a deity.
@@davidjay4373 yes but power is far too broad for instance kings and rulers have power. And scholars typically don’t use that definition anymore.
@@pleaseenteraname1103 there are many definitions that are broad - that doesn't mean those words/definitions don't exist. Yes some definitions are broad, which is why we use words in sentences that hopefully provide context and narrow the broadness of the word.
This was a very helpful and informative video. And I agree with that many of the explanations for Elohim do not work for the reasons you gave. I agree there’s nothing special about a lot of the terms we use for God or lord in the Hebrew Bible, I think the only unique term is YHWH, as no other being said to be on the same level as YHWH.
I think I will stick with how Michael S Heiser defines Elohim, As I think it best captures the biblical worldview of the biblical writers, Michael S Heiser “i reject that idea, along with any other explanations that seek too hide in plain reading of the text. In all such cases the thinking is misguided. The problem is rooted in a mistaken notion of what exactly the word Elohim means.
Since Elohim is often translated God, we look at the Hebrew word in the same way we look at capitalized G-o-d when we see the word God, with a unique set of attributes-omnipotence, omnipotence, sovereignty, and so on. But this is not how a biblical writer thought about the term. Biblical authors did not assign a specific set of attributes to the word Elohim.x that is evident when we observe how they used the word.
The biblical writers referred to a half dozen different entities with the term Elohim. By any religious accounting the attributes of those entities are not equal.
.Yahweh, the God of Israel (thousands of times-e.g, Gen 2:4-5;
.The members of Yahweh’s Council (Psa 82:1,6
.Gods and goddesses of other nations (judge 11:24:24, 1.Kgs 11:33),
.Demons (Hebrew: shedim-Deut 32:17
.The deceased Samuel (Sam 28:13)
. Angels or the angel of Yahweh (Gen 35:7
The importance of this list can be summarized with one question: would any Israelite, especially a biblical writer, I really believe that the deceased human dead and demons are on the same level as Yahweh? No. The usage of the term Elohim by by biblical writers tells us clearly that the term is not a set of attributes. Even though when we see “ G-o-d we Think of a unique set of attributes, when a biblical writer wrote Elohim. he wasn’t thinking that way. If he were, he’d never have used the term Elohim to describe anything but Yahweh. Consequentially there is no warrant for concluding that plural Elohim duces a pantheon of interchangeable deities.There is no basis for concluding that the biblical writers would have viewed Yahweh as no better than another Elohim. A biblical writer would not have presumed that Yahweh could be defeated on any given day by another Elohim, or that another Elohim (why not any of them?) had the same set of attributes. That is polytheistic thinking. It is not the biblical picture.
We can confident of this conclusion by once again overviewing what the biblical writers say about Yahweh-and never say about another Elohim. The biblical writers speak of Yahweh in was that telegraph their beliefs in his uniqueness and incomparability:
“Who is like you among the gods, [elim], Yahweh?” (Exod 15:11)
“” What god [el] is there in the heaven or on earth you can do according to your works and according to your mighty deeds?” (Deut 3:24)
“O Yahweh, God of Israel, there is no god, [Elohim] like you in the heavens above or on earth beneath” 1( Kgs 8:23).
For you. O Yahweh, are most high over all the earth. You are highly exalted above all gods [Elohim] (Psalm 97:9).
Biblical Raiders also assign unique qualities to Yahweh. Yahweh is all-powerful (Jer 32:17,27; Pss 72:18; 115:3), the sovereign King over the other Elohim (Psa 95:3; Dan 4:35; 1 Kgs 22:19), the creator of the other members of his host-Council, (Psa 148:1-5; Neh 9:6; cf. Job 38:7; Deut 4:19-20; 17:3,29:25-26; 32:17; Jan 1:17 and the lone Elohim who deserves worship from the other Elohim (Psa 29:1). In fact, Nehemiah 9:6 explicitly declares that Yahweh is unique-there is only one Yahweh(“ you alone are Yahweh”). The biblical use of Elohim is not hard to understand once we know it.
The Unseen realm: Pages 30-32, Michael S Heiser, 2015):
Really confusing
1 Corinthians 3:19
“For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.”
1 Corinthians 2:14
“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”
1 John 2:27
“But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.”
Elohim is the same as annunaki
The Yod/Mem means belonging to as a classification.
Singular Sherif, Sherifim. A singular Angel belonging to the classification of group.
Hebrew or the Adamic language, is a picture language. The picture is the Aleph-Strong-silent-leader-wilful
Lamed-voice of authority-teacher-shepherd
Hey-behold-revelation-worship
Yod-to do a work on-my
Mem-water-(final Mem-enclosed water)
He is the ONE who controls the waters. The womb, the rain, Jesus walking in the water, calming the waters, flooding the Earth, separating the waters above the firmament.
The word is NOT pronounced Elohim. As there is no Waw. There's no reason to put an 'O' or any vowel. It is El'Heyim.
Much of Hebrew has been hidden until these final days.
The Father the Son and the Holy Ghost.. who are ONE why when God said let US make man in our image.. if you read anything Jesus said he makes it very clear he has always been with the Father. And the spirit of truth bares witness of him and the Son bares witness of Father. But they are one. Trying to understand God without spiritual inclination you won't get far. Read the word and ask him he will teach you.
Google abstract plural noun. Abstract plural noun
There is literally no such thing as a a concrete abstract noun lol. It's one or the other. Even if that existed, what you're saying is, "in the beginning, God's Godness created heaven and earth" That is absurd and contrary to language. God's "strength" or "power" or "glory" etc, did NOT create. God did. Elohim. Plural. Explain it away all you want. whatever