Hebrew Gods
Elohim (Justice)
Topics covered in this document:
Introduction
As you know, God is known by at least two names in the Old Testament.
One of them is Elohim, the name used in Chapter 1 of
Genesis, which is usually translated in the King James version of the
Bible as God.
According to some sources, Elohim refers to the Justice of God.
Semitic Variant
Most likely, Elohim is an ancient, Semitic variant of the name
for the chief god popular in neighboring cultures.
Among the Hittites to the north and the Phoenicians to the west, the
chief god was named El (that's E-L, in case the font
doesn't show it well).
Among the Assyrians and Babylonians to the southeast, he was named
Ilu (that's I-L-U).
Among the Arabs to the south, he was named Il (that's
I-L) or Ilum (that's I-L-U-M).
Interestingly, El is often dipicted in art as a
bull ... which brings to mind the Hebrew fascination with bulls in their
mythology. We have, for example, Aaron's golden calf (Exodus 32:1-6, 24,
35) and Zedekiah's portrayal of God as an iron-horned bull (1 Kings 22:11).
Are these just mere coincidences?
Elohim = Plural Noun
Another interesting thing to note about the name, Elohim, is that
it's a plural noun. The singular form is Eloah.
Other Plural Nouns
You can see the same plural ending ("im") in other Hebrew words,
like the names for the various classes of angels, which also represent
multiple beings.
For example, there are seraphim (angels with six wings) and cherubim
(angels with human, animal, or birdlike characteristics).
The Talmudim and Midrashim are sets of books.
Shamayim are the seven (sometimes two, three, or ten) heavens.
Multiple Gods Created the World?
Remember, all of these words ending in "im" refer to multiple
beings or objects. What this means is that the opening sentence of the
Bible should have been translated as "In the beginning Gods
created the heavens and the earth." Oh really? Gods, not
God, created the universe?
Of course, it wasn't translated that way. How could it
have been translated that way -- right? After all, the Hebrews have
always believed in a single God, not multiple
gods. Or so we've always been told.
But my question is, were we always told the whole story? Hmm.
Scholarly Opinion
There are many scholarly -- and some not-so-scholarly -- explanations
for the apparent contradiction in the use of a plural noun to refer
to a single God. Things like "it's plural to remind us of God's
many attributes."
Okay. Fair enough. God does have many attributes. But why does that
mean we use a plural form of his name? I have multiple attributes too,
but I don't use a plural form of my name.
Some rabbis wrote that it's plural because God consulted with the
angels during creation. Others tell us that it was done to exclude the
possibility of Christians assuming it implied the Trinity.
My Opinion
In my opinion, which is certainly not a scholarly one,
it might have been the politically correct thing to do (see the
next section below).
By the way, my opinion is not an original idea -- many other people
thought of it long before I did. But I'm bringing it up only to point
out that this battle over semantics has gone on for a long, long time.
One Warrior God
Some scholars claim that the ancient Hebrews did, in fact, have
multiple gods at one point in time. Before they were united as a Nation.
Before they began waging war against their neighbors, claiming that
the rights to the land had been given to them by their God, who
incidently is assumed to reign supreme over any neighbor's gods.
Now, consider for a moment the psychological advantage of having
just one god when declaring such a war.
Many Gods Model
Under the "many gods" model, if a king contemplates launching an
attack, then his priests and priestesses would first need to determine
which of their many gods was most likely to assure a victory ... and then
pray to that particular god for help. And hope they were right because,
most likely, their continued enjoyment of life depended on it.
If the priesthood picked the wrong one, the king might very well lose
the battle ... supposedly because the priests from the opposing army were
better at choosing a god from their pantheon who had some strength or
attribute that your priests hadn't anticipated.
One God Model
But with one, all powerful God, you wouldn't have to guess which of
your gods would guarantee a successful skirmish. You just offer your
prayers and sacrifices to a single, omnipotent God ... and he, in turn,
uses his multiple strengths to fight for your cause.
And as your brave soldiers race headlong into the enemy lines, they
don't have to worry whether or not the priests had chosen wisely. Well,
they probably still worried.
Of course, your priests would still have to explain away any losses ...
which the Hebrews generally shifted away from a failure of their God to an
indication of some weakness in the people themselves. Win or lose, the
Hebrew's God came out on top.
Freud's One God
Other scholars, including Freud, claimed that the Hebrews borrowed
their one-God idea from the royal proclamations of Pharaoh Akhenaten,
the father of Tutankhamen, and otherwise known as Amenhotep IV.
Akhenaten's One God
Akhenaten tossed thousands of years of Egyptian beliefs and religion
out the window when he legislated Aten (the solar disk) as the eternal,
omnipotent, and only God.
As you might guess, this action did not put Akhenaten on the priest's
list of the Pharaoh most likely to live a long life.
After all, the priests who served all the other Egyptian gods suddenly
found themselves out of a job. And if you were an Egyptian priest, there
weren't many other jobs you were qualified to do.
Hebrew's One God
We can suppose that if the Hebrews did, in fact, borrow their one-god
model from the Egyptians, then the same thing might have happened to them.
The very first Hebrew who rejected all the other gods and declared God's
singularity would have upset a lot of people.
Was that the basis of the Abraham story? If you recall the story,
after destroying all his father's idols, Abraham decided (was forced)
to leave his home city.
Like Kennedy / Lincoln Correlations
Of course, this tie between Akhenaten and Abraham is difficult to
support, because the two events were separated by hundreds of years.
But it seems to appeal to some scholars because they can find so many
similarities and correlations.
Kinda like all the "similarities" we saw back in the 1960s that
compared the assassinations of Kennedy and Lincoln.
Akhenaten Rebuttal
If you care to read a schollarly rebuttal to the Akhenaten influence
theory, may I suggest the book Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient
Times, by an eminent Egyptologist, Donald B. Redford?
Sidestepping the Issue
Still other scholars simply sidestep the issues surrounding many gods
evolving into a single God. Instead of addressing the issue directly,
they replace the idea with a pseudo-intellectual debate.
You know the ones I'm talking about. Words withdrawn randomly from a
hat and then strung together in such a way as to make the document and
their pet theories sound intellectual.
Some might argue that everything I write is jumbled up too, though I'm
neither a scholar nor an intellectual.
Not All Tracks Covered
As it turns out, even a cursory study of the Bible clearly shows that
the Hebrews didn't cover all their tracks in trying to eradicate
the idea of multiple gods. A few hints of God's plurality still remain
in the Scriptures.
In Genesis 1:26, for example, there seems to be more than one god
present when Elohim says "Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness..." (emphasis mine).
This too has been explained away by the scholarly and by the
fundamentalist desciples of the Bible.
Tertullian's Opinion
Tertullian (c.AD 160-230), a Carthaginian theologian, implies in one
sentence that, yes, Elohim is a plural noun.
However, he later claims that early Christians erroneously assumed
that the Trinity was implied in the plural form of God's name.
Instead of implying the Trinity, Turtullian claims that the plural
noun implies that God consulted with the angels during creation. As we
all know, angels are not gods (see the next section).
Sidestepping Remains Popular
Sidestepping the issue remains a popular form of resolving the one
God / many gods conflict even today.
Are Angels Gods?
Who are the angels anyhow? Seemingly out of nowhere, they suddenly
burst onto the ancient scene ... not appearing in the Hebrew literature
until some time after the Babylonian exile, when the Hebrews were hoping
for a heavenly deliverer, or Messiah, to rescue them.
While held captive in Babylon, however, every single Hebrew must have
viewed the many winged creatures drawn in reliefs on the walls of Babylon.
They were depicted everywhere. The Hebrews must have seen them thousands
of times.
Demoted Gods?
Then, when the Hebrew people finally returned from exile, the priests
must have recognized it as a most opportune time to eradicate, once and
for all, the beliefs that the many illiterate people had in multiple
gods.
All they neeeded to do, they thought, was to give the many cultural
gods (those revered by the masses) a brand new name -- angels -- and in
one fell swoop, they ended up with one, single God ... with myriads of
angels serving Him. Most of the gods became angels, leaving only one
God at the top.
Of course, other cultures still would have named the angelic beings
"gods." Even the Hebrews might have continued to call them gods.
That is, if they hadn't needed to have only one God. One God
to unite them as One People.
They had to do something with all the other gods, however. So perhaps
they invented angels. Not a bad solution, either, I might add.
Akhenaten Should Have Known
Perhaps if Akhenaten had been as clever as the Hebrews, he might have
succeeded also.
Instead of throwing away all the gods except Aten, he could have
relegated deities -- such as Osiris, Thoth, Sekmet, and so on -- to the
lower status of angels. Then he could have elevated Aten to the throne
of the one and only God.
Then we'd read about the Archangel Osiris. And maybe then we'd know
how and why they built those pyramids.
What if...
I wonder what would have happened if the Hebrew nation had died out
as did the Egyptians, or Babylonians, or Maya. No Jewish rabbis to
interpret and re-interpret the Scriptures.
No sacred texts for Emperor Constantine to canonize into the Bible.
Seven Archangels
Would some future archaeologist uncover the Torah, buried under the
Middle Eastern sands, and proclaim that the angels were actually Hebrew
gods? That Gabriel, with his fearsome trumpet that could knock down city
walls, was the god of war? That the seven archangels -- Uriel, Raphael,
Raguel, Michael, Sariel, Gabriel, and Remiel -- were (planetary) gods
as well?
Even the archangel with the funny name -- Metatron -- might he have been
thought to be a god too?
By the way, in case you're interested, Metatron is often associated
with the archangel Michael. He is also sometimes referred to as "lesser
Yahweh."
He records the sins and merits of men and is the keeper of Celestial
secrets.
Think About It
Or on the flip side, should we not take another look at some of the
other ancient cultures, and perhaps reduce some of those we have labeled
gods to the status of angels?
For example, was Annubis, the god of Egyptian embalming, simply the
angel of death? Semantics, it seems, can be very useful at times.
I enjoy thinking about issues like the above. I hope you do too. I'm
sure you've thought of many things that I haven't. And that's good.
What Next?
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