The most common Hebrew word for a deity is ´elohim whose various connotations are
difficult to render in English translation. Indeed, one must have a good grasp of the history of
Israelite religion to convey the proper sense of the word in a given context. The historical
meaning of the word is almost completely obscured by Bible translations who incorrectly and
unconsciously ascribe to it a monotheistic meaning by consistently translating it as "God." As
a matter of fact, this rendering is correct only in a small number of traditions that emerged
during and soon after the Babylonian exile (587-538 BCE). In most cases, since up to that
time Israelite culture shared the polytheistic world view of the ancient Near East, the word
basically conveyed the notion of one deity among many. Therefore,in the majority of cases, it
should be rendered as "god."
Strangely, ´elohim is a plural noun that is regularly used as the subject of singular verbs. Its
singular form is ´el. Of the several suggestions that have made to account for the anomaly,
three in particular seem most likely.
The majority opinion is that the plural form is intended to
communicate the notion of royal power and is so dubbed the "plural of majesty." Somewhat
similar is the notion that the plural form designates somehow a gathering up of all divine
powers, all ´els concentrated into one divine being as it were, often called a "plural of
intensity." A less popular interpretation that has the advantage of support from Ugaritic text is
the understanding of the form as a "plural of cultic manifestation."
In spite of the popularity of these views, the present writer finds that they have something of a
desperate quality about them that does not illicit conviction. As an alternative, I would suggest
that the plural form ´elohim is actually an elision or contraction of the formulaic phrase, ´el
´elohim, a construction which for this reason is very rare among pre-exilic texts (Ps 50:1).
Understood in this way, the phrase from which ´elohim is derived is still somewhat
ambiguous, for ´el is used both as a personal name for Israel's high god, "El", or as a
common noun, "god." The phrase could then be translated as both "El of gods" and as a
superlative construction meaning, "god of gods" or the "highest god." In point of fact, it seems
to be overly analytical to make the two renderings mutually exclusive, for El was indeed
regarded as the highest god of the pantheon, not only in Israel but in Phoenicia and Aram.
Consequently, ´elohim appears to be a term itself a contraction that is laden with
connotations regarding Israel's namesake supreme deity.
The foregoing understanding of the meaning of ´elohim does not exhaust its biblical usage. In
fact, the connotation attached to it were generated in the distinctive environment of the
northern Palestine that came to be known as the Kingdom of Israel or the Northern tribes.
The term was also favored by an equally distinctive group known as the Levitical priesthood
that had its beginnings with Moses and which was deeply informed by Egyptian ontological
speculation. The author of the creation story of Genesis 1 was a member of this group who
were in fact essentially monotheistic. What is distinctive about the Levites is that they in fact
"demythologized" Egyptian ontology to produce classic monotheism whereas the Egyptian
tradition incorporated the various gods into a transcendental view that saw of all the was as
the dynamic becoming of God. It appears that it was for this reason that they favored the
plural form ´elohim and so interpreted in light of their Egyptian heritage. In this tradition,
'elohim approximates a "plural of intensity."
The most far-reaching implication of these findings is that the Old Testament in translation
severely distorts the religions of ancient Palestine in uniformly translating ´elohim as "God."
While this translation is tolerably accurate for its use in Levitical tradition, it is quite inaccurate
with regard to northern usage where it denoted the high god of a polytheistic pantheon. To
illustrate the profound difference that these consideration make, one need only read the Book
of Psalm and replace the word "God" with "god." The conclusion is inevitable that until the
substitution is made, one will not be able to understand the religion that has inform the
composition of not only this poetic collection, but also of the varieties of ancient Palestinian
religion that produced the majority of the Old Testament writings. In short, to the present we
do not have an accurate translation of the Hebrew Bible. Indeed, our translations and
therefore also our understanding of the Old Testament are fundamentally flawed.
L.M. Barrre, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-he ... 07671.html
.jpg)
