another claim by TheSkepticChristian:
"Elohim can also mean many gods."

my response:

judaism is a monotheistic religion. in hebrew, elohim is a homonym, and when used with plural verbs, can mean things like gods, angels, judges, etc. in the context of the god of the old testament it is a name/title that represents god's attribute of a "pluralistic reality in nature". ask any jewish rabbi, or read here:
http://www.askmoses.com/en/article/275,2024029/Why-is-the-name-Elohim-plural.html

elohim as meaning many gods in the context of the creation in the first book of moses is a great example of the falsehood of the mormon book of abraham.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 05/01/2011 06:04PM by Nick Humphrey.

But, not quite in the same way as mormons would have it.

Yahweh used to have a consort named Asherah. They have found quite a bit of archeological evidence attesting to this lost hebrew goddess.

i found this jewish atheist blog about the subject:
http://jewishatheist.blogspot.com/2008/05/repost-ancient-judaism-was-polytheistic.html

Asherah is interesting because of her status in Canaanite religion. She is the "consort" of El, and the mother of his 70 sons.

Scholars believe that Asherah was worshipped by many in ancient Israel and Judah, referred to by Jeremiah as "the Queen of Heaven."

Jeremiah 7.18:

The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead [their] dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.

Lol, the "TheSkepticChristian" is getting a lot of "face time" here on exmormon.org. He must be posting a ton on youtube :P.

"Elohim" is quite correctly a plural form in Hebrew. But Hebrew uses plural a bit differently from English. Plural forms can also mean that something is immense or that it is without known borders. Example: The words for "water" and for "heaven" are plural, the same is the word for "face".

The way to see the difference is by looking at the verb in the sentence. The Bible (Genesis) starts "Bereshit barah Elohim" - in the beginning God created. Here "barah" = created is singular, which shows that the plural Elohim does not imply more than one god.

What is the singular form, and was it also used in the OT?

The Kabbalists were 12-13th century Jewish mystics from France and Spain who drew from the Midrash, Book of Enoch, writings of the Essenes, and several different middle eastern groups including the Zoasters, Egyptians and Greeks with a lot of Gnosticism thrown in. (Guide to the Zohar, Green)

One of the things that Kabbalism did was try to explain the different faces or emanations of God that make up Elohim. The sephirotic table is a diagram of these emanations. There are 10 distinct "personages" within the the supreme God En Sof. There are two distinctive female components Binah and Malchut.

En Sof translates to "The Infinite". El is also used as the singular God in the Torah and is the root of Elohim. The im ending denotes plural.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2011 12:36PM by Jim Huston.