tracer

I recently acquired the entire NIV translation of the Bible as a book-on-tape, and I am going through and listening to the whole thing from start to finish. As of the time of this post, I've slogged about half way through Psalms.

When I was listening through the Book of Job, I got to thinking. Job is supposedly one of the oldest books in the Bible, presumably predating the Torah/Pentateusch. I also recall that the Hebrew word "Elohim" can be translated as either "God" (with a capital G) or as "gods" (with a lowercase g). Many times throughout the Book of Job, in this translation, Job refers to God -- e.g. "Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" (Job 2:10) and "If God places no trust in his servants, if he charges his angels with error" (Job 4:18). Every place that the word "God" appears in this translation, the Hebrew it was translated from says (I believe) "Elohim".

But if this book is really so much older than the rest, I wonder -- was Job, perhaps, referring to "the gods" in the plural, collectively, and not a single "God" as in the one almighty monotheistic Yahweh? Is Hebrew grammatical structure such that it's impossible to tell whether Job 4:18 should be translated as "if he charges his angels" or "if they charge their angels"?

Since the NIV Translation was aimed at modern monotheistic Christians, I can understand why they'd lean toward translating "Elohim" as "God" (rather than "gods") as often as possible -- but I wonder if that's not being a little dishonest here.

Doctor X

Good question.

The answer is 42 [Stop that.--Ed.]

Seriously, I, too, jumped on the plurality of Elohim and, especially, the fact that Hebrew has no "royal we"--so who is the "we" that Adam and Eve cannot be like.

However . . . it is clear that the P writer uses Elohim as a singular. The Hebrew scholars can tell you that he uses singular verbs.

What could be happening is the use of polytheistic stories made "monotheistic." I use the ""--or is that "''"?--because monotheism for the Pentateuch is not so much that there is One Big Daddy, but OUR Big Daddy beats up YOUR Big Daddy.

Job, however, preserves the polytheism. "The Adversary" comes to visit the heavenly meeting of gods. Translaters "reinterpret" it to imply that there are just a bunch of "angels" and "God" in charge, however this is more like an El or Enlil figure in charge of other gods.

The "Big Daddy" of Job does act as the "king" of the rest of the gods, however.

Someone else will have to comment on the age of Job. It does preserve older traditions--polytheism, and "the adversary/prosecuter" as an agent of Big Daddy. Also, the writer has no problem with Big Daddy proclaiming he created evil.

--J.D.

tracer

So -- does that mean that many, if not most, of the instances where Elohim is translated as "God" in the NIV and KJV should probably be "the gods"?

Doctor X

Ooooo . . . depends on the myth in question.

--J.D.

Haran

Elohim can be either singular or plural. The first verse in Genesis uses a 3rd person singular verb, so it is God and not Gods. In the singular sense, Elohim is not much different than the Hebrew words for face, water, heaven, mercy, and life (all plural in form but singular).

Dean Anderson

Then (and I apologise for my pretty much non-existent Hebrew...) why do the witers of Genesis sometimes (e.g. Gen 20:3) use the plural-form Elohim as 'God' and sometimes - even in the same passage (e.g. Gen 20:13) - use the singular-form El as 'God'? What is the difference between the two?

Haran

No need to apologize. Asking questions is how we learn.

God in both Genesis 20:3 and 20:13 is Elohim. The EL that you are seeing in both of those verses is the preposition "to/toward/into".

In Gen. 20:3, the phrase is, literally, "Came God to {EL} Abimelech..." and in Gen. 20:13, it is "into {EL} every place that we come...".

M. Hoz

"Elohim" is used both pluraly and singularly,like face as you
mentioned correctly,but "El" has two different meanings:
Single-Noun as "a god",and,otherwise,"To".

The Canaanite gods (and others) are called "Elilim",and their
statues,pictures Etc. are called "Elohim" but their falseness is
made clear.It's usually used that way with commands to destroy
Canaanite ritual sites (where they sacrifice people Etc.).

Dean Anderson

Damn those homonyms! They always trip up novices with a language...

Dean Anderson

True - those were bad examples.

Other verses do have 'God' as 'El', though (e.g. Gen 14:20-22 - verse 22 being an example of both meanings of 'El' in the same sentence) so the question remains. Why is 'El' sometimes used and 'Elohim' sometimes used? I can think of four scenarios...

1) The texts were written by multiple authors and the difference is an idiomatic one (some of these preferred 'El', some preferred 'Elohim').

2) Some (not necessarily all) of the 'Elohim' references are actually talking about multiple gods.

3) There is a good Hebrew grammatical reason where 'El' should be used in some cases and 'Elohim' should be used in others.

4) all of the above - in different parts of the Bible.