Why elohim is plural but means “god”

#maklelan2455

[derekeshelbrenner]

Thanks for doing something straightforward, scriptural, and useful --- without any sensationalized appeal.

[theoutspokenhumanist]

In English and certainly with some other languages, it is perfectly normal to understand the meaning of a word by using its context. When people read the bible and pick out a word to go "Aha!" they are deliberately ignoring what they themselves do with everyday speech.

[bargle]

I appreciate this meat & potatoes content, not straying into the culture war BS of moment. Good stuff.

[Boxerr]

I have been looking forward you Dan commenting on the old "plural of majesty", which is the explaination I got in at Dallas Theological Cemetery 40+ years ago. This explaination is as deep and hard to understand as trying to understand why English breaks at the rules with "its", "it's" and "it is". Oh well. I guess if I wanted to understand it completely I would just buy the Elohim book recommended. I have so much reading to catch up on already.
Thanks, Dan.

[julianhe]

The more important question is why a plural form came to be the name of a single deity. And that brings us back to ancient semitic polytheism.

[naggoob]

I appriciate the complexity of different languages even though I myself only speak two, Swedish and English. It is however a very fascinating subject and as always I enjoy Dans explanations and his thoughts. Another brilliant video. 👍👏

[DoubleAAmazin]

A single deity or a single council of deities.

[shanegooding]

I remember the first time I came across Elohim it was in the context of someone claiming it proved the texts referred to multiple deities. It was only when I encountered Hebrew experts that I became aware that these plural forms were often used for singular subjects.

[klavczarkalafan]

So basically they were saying "Then divinity did ____" as a fancy was of saying "Then God did ___" for so long that people just got used to it being another way to reference Yahweh in the singular. I guess this would also make sense with rabbinical law forbidding the use of God's proper name (Yahweh) much like modern Orthodox Judaism which avoids using the name because one possible interpretation of "Don't use the lord's name in vain" is to just say it casually. (As opposed to other interpretations which argue that Yahweh, being an onomatopoeia for the sound of breathing, is used to represent breathing/living and would therefore cause the command's pragmatics to be something like "don't live in vain")

[TheBarelyBearableAtheist]

Are there examples of this kind of grammatical usage being applied to words other than 'elohim'?

[DomingoAviles-jv]

"Deity" definitely looks like an abstraction. Same with German "Gottheit", Italian "divinita'" etc. This concretization of a word meaning "divinity" seems ubiquitous across languages and cultures.

[BobSmith-lbnc]

G. del Olmo Lete characterizes ilhm in Ugaritic texts as "the ʼIlāhūma, divine beings, " and relates them to Hebrew אלהים ʼĕlōhîm. Tess Dawson agrees. However, she also sees the ʼilahuma or Divine Assembly as the sons and daughters of ʼAthiratu and Ilu.

[Maurice-Navel]

The word Adonai is also a plural form; the singular would be Adoni (my Lord). And again, it is conjugated as a singular noun. Interesting side note from Latin: Opera starts out as a plural (of Opus) and then becomes a singular noun, too.

[grumpylibrarian]

I am happy and perfectly cool with this explanation. I run into trouble applying it to Genesis 1, for the following reasons:

1. The chapter DOES have instances of plurals, even in the English translation, ie "let us make man in our own image."
2. It is per my very limited understanding of Hebrew that many of the adjectives, verbs, and other numbered words convey the number only through vowel sounds. And while the Masoretic text contains diacritics to mark vowel sounds, there's no reason to expect those diacritics to be in the ancient manuscripts.
3. Even if there is sufficient evidence to confirm that even stripped of diacritics our oldest texts of Genesis 1 contain unambiguous markers that "elohim" is being used in a singular sense, the remnants of plural indicators suggest the text may have been whitewashed by the scribes.

I'm not asserting these as a challenge; I am asking if I'm just being stupid. I hear "the bible asserts monotheism from the very first verse, " and all I can think is "but the word in the first verse is plural." I don't want to run with that if I don't have a solid case for it. (Yes, I know other places where the bible seems to assert at least henotheism if not polytheism. This is specifically about Genesis 1.)

[eltonron]

As long as God is family, trinity be gone.
Ephesians 3:15.
Let us, elohim, family, make man in our image.
Joint heirs, brethren with the son, still family.

[everseekingwisdom]

A easier to understand example of what he's talking about would be the word sheep. It can mean many sheep or just one .. the rest of the sentence tells you which one is being referenced

[robertgray]

The all knowing god didn't know that people would struggle to understand what the hell he was talking about

[derekeshelbrenner]

What is the proper explanation of "We" & "Us" as used in the Quran?

[Dushan-ow]

Hey Dan . Ive got a question about that. We know that the ancient israelites worshipped a pantheon of gods with yahweh being the supreme god. Could Elohim be something to do with that? Originally it may have refered to "the gods" but as all the other gods got assimilated into Yahweh over many centuries, they just kept the term elohim after there had been a transition to monolotry or monotheism? Could it be some archaic holdover from that?

[papa_son]

If you keep the Sumerians in the background, then the use of 'elohim' is clear.

Besides, the creation of man, the flood, the tower of babel and many more has its roots to the sumerian.

Concerning the use of 'elohim' why do they use the plural form 'gods' when as you say there are other ways to write god, El, eloah or even YhWH. This elohim (gods) seems intentional to me.