An EL is a god in the sense of a dynamic force or kinetic power in Nature, anything from the sexual impulse to the survival impulse, from rain-clouds to rose-bushes, from the algae in the pond to the distant planets at the far end of the cosmos, and the black holes in your life and garden too: a primitive, allegorical formulation of E=MC² (Time, Space, Matter): and primordially a verb, not a noun, though they later became anthropomorphised into nouns as stories (parables, fables, allegories) were made up to explain them.
The plural of El (אל) is Elim, but Yehudit also has the multiple plural, which allows the formation of Elohim (אלהים). That plural Elohim is used to mean all the many Elim (אלים) or powers that exist in the Universe, the polytheon of all the gods and goddesses. combined to form one single, abstract deity, recognition that, as Dylan Thomas once put it, "the force the through the green fuse drives the flower drives my green age": the Oneness of the Universal Pulse - all of which is too complex to keep restating, so the multiple plural Elohim is allowed to suffice.
This concept of an eternal, absolute, omnipotent etc divinity was first proposed by the Pharaoh Akhenaten, and adopted, perhaps adapted, by the Beney Yisra-El. It is an entirely different paradigm from the German Gott, whence the Christian God, who is one half, the theoretically good half, of a dualistic universe; Elohim is unistic, or monistic, and this is why TheBibleNet does not use the name God as a [mis]translation of Elohim.
Originally Ha Elohim, from the later root developed from the primordial El = "mighty ones" or "heroes", Beney Elohim (בני אלהים) and Beney Elim came to mean the sacred-kings themselves, the surrogates of the Elim (gods with a small "g") on Earth. There are thus Beney Adam, who are Humankind in general, and Beney Elim, who are the aristocracy, the priests, prophets and rulers.
In Exodus 21:6 and 22:7/8 EL is used to mean "judges", though not in the same sense as Shophtim (שופתים), as in the Book of Judges.
Although the final version of the Tanach repeatedly merges, or at least synonymises, YHVH with Elohim, to make a single name or single deity out of them, it is quite clear that the Elohim were a huge pantheon of gods and goddesses based on the seven planets and the twelve constellations, elsewhere called "the Hosts of the Heavens", and a good deal else in Nature in addition; whereas YHVH was a single deity; and that before the Rabbinic redactors got their hands on the stories the two were never regarded as synonymous; indeed, they often appear side by side in the same text.
During the Biblical epoch, the key phrase "You shall have no other gods before me" can thus legitimately be read: "but you may have as many after me as you please", which gradually evolves towards monotheism with a tone of "albeit that it is pointless, since I am more powerful than all of them put together, and can do everything they can, and better". Only in the Hasmonean period, after the Tanach was completed, does the final transition take place from which YHVH emerges as the One-and-only, the Omnideity, all other deities subsumed within him, patriarchalised; and this is the form in which Judaism understands Monotheism to this day.
"Elohim" in one sense may be defined as "the absence of nothingness". El as "force" implies that something already exists in essence and as potential, which is then cut or fashioned into the universe (see Genesis 1:1). The act of Creation is thus an act of transubstantiation, remoulding the elements into material form. Thus Elohim is Himself/Herself/Themselves Creation, a unity of all gods - i.e. all primal forces, impulses: abstract rather than anthropomorphic. Possibly the best description of Elohim as "God" in Yehudit terms is as "the common pulse of the universe". Elohim should not be confused with the anthropomorphic Theos-Zeus-Deus-Dieu or with the moral absolute God-Gott-Gutt-Goodness.
Elohim is linked to Eloha (אלוה), which may originally have been feminine (cf Ouranos as a masculine version of Ourania: there are innumerous instances of the female cult being masculinised). Alternately, though less likely, Eloha may at one time have have been El + Yah, or a tribal variant on Elah (אלה), the female version (original?) of El.
The name Elohim may simply be a variant among Middle Eastern variants of the same name, which is El among the Beney Chet (Hittites) and at Ugarit, Il or Ilum among the South Arabians, Ilu among the Assyrians and Babylonians, El among the Beney Kena'an (Canaanites), al-Lah in the pre-Moslem Hejaz. El, in Ugaritic poetry - from which later Yehudit poetry was mostly derived - is portrayed as the bull-god, as in Exodus 32:1/6, 24 and 25, and by Yerav-Am (Jeroboam) in 1 Kings 12:28/9; also Tsidki-Yah’s (Zedekiah's) impersonation of the deity as an iron-horned bull in 1 Kings 22:11.
The early Yisra-Eli cult appears to have blended two forms: one the cult of an Aramaean war-and-fertility god (or even pantheon of gods), similar to those of Mo-Av and Amon, whose power was effective only in his own people and the territory where they dwelled (cf 2 Kings 5 which has Na'man the Assyrian importing earth from Ephrayim to Damasek (Damascus) in order to worship him.) The other form was simple ancestor-worship, with El as the Great Father, an alternate name for Av-Raham, who as Av-Ram also means Bull-God (Av-Raham means "Great Father").
All the other gods and goddesses of the original Yisra-Eli pantheon have either been expurgated from the Tanach by the Rabbis, reduced to angel or patriarch or hero status, masculinised, or are regarded as synonyms, by proess of absorption into the monotheos.
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