Talk:Elohim

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POSSIBLE CORRECT MEANING

Consider the name Yisraeli. It might mean the father of the biblical Israelites, ie Jacob, thus singular when used in this manner but with a plural verb. Eg, Yisraeli is our patriarchal father. But identifying their ethnicity will be plural. Eg, We are Yisraeli. Another way is 'Yisraeli(singular) is for Yisraeli(plural).' — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pat254 (talk • contribs) 02:32, 4 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Fantasy

Sorry to be so blunt, but The significance is it is the oldest record containing the Torah by over 1000 years, dating to around 2000 B.C. is sheer fantasy. tgeorgescu (talk) 08:04, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Lead is a more reasonable length now too. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:06, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, my reasoning is: in 2000 BC the Israelites did not exist, the Hebrew language (or anything like it) did not exist, the Hebrew alphabet (or anything like it) did not exist. So Torah manuscripts could not exist either, in any meaningful sense. tgeorgescu (talk) 20:40, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Plus it contradicts all scholarship. — kwami (talk) 00:23, 11 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Non credo proprio! 2A02:B023:12:E6E7:6AF7:8C03:B312:8C0B (talk) 21:10, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The file from the Irish church?

Sheila1988. The file you recently added has a question mark on the very title of the file. As much as I look at it, and try to expand it to see the details, I can't see the Hebrew letters there that would make up the word "Elohim" (אלהים) in it. Maybe the caption should be changed to say something like "that some argue (who?) bears the Hebrew inscription "Elohim."? Thank you, warshy ^(¥¥) 16:08, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That's a photo I myself took, I put the question mark in. It's probable that the carver had little knowledge of Hebrew (I've seen similar bad Hebrew carving elsewhere in Dublin) and you can just about make out א ל ה י מ ‎ Sheila1988 (talk) 19:17, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Sheila1988. If so, I believe that a note should be added to the caption of the picture, explaining what you explain above. Thank you, warshy ^(¥¥) 20:05, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

P.S.- By the way, the correct Hebrew spelling of the word is אלהים. Thank you, warshy ^(¥¥) 20:08, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes but I don't think the carver knew such intricacies as the terminal mem Sheila1988 (talk) 20:10, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

So what model from real life do you think the carver may have used, when he tried to carve the work אלהים? He just carved it out of his own mind/memory? There is no text written in Hebrew that would spell the work as you spell it. Thank you, warshy ^(¥¥) 20:29, 1 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I mean like this -- . I can't think what other word could be intended, anyway. Sheila1988 (talk) 18:11, 2 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I am sorry, but try as I may (and I have been trying the best I can), I cannot see the word carved there. To me it just looks more like a random carving. But in any case, you would need some other reliable source that says that the word is carved there. According to Wikipedia guidelines just you saying that the word is indeed carved there would look to me like WP:OR. I won't remove it, but someone else might. Thanks for your efforts. Thank you, warshy ^(¥¥) 21:29, 2 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Garbled citation

I wanted to correct the error message on the citation

Day, John (2003). Reviewed work: Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan, John Day. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series. Vol. 265. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. p. 23. doi:10.2307/3217888. ISBN 978-1-850-75986-7. JSTOR 3217888. S2CID 161791734. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)

I don't have a copy of either the book or volume 265 issue 1 of the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. I'm guessing the the book has a reprint of a paper from that issue. Can someone with access suggest what needs to be done? Thanks. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:48, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unexplained removal of link.

@Kwamikagami and Xcalivyr: permalink/1249430318 removed a piped link from grammatically singular to majestic plural (a redirect to Royal we) with no explanation as to why it was removed. I believe the link to be relevant. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 16:20, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Those are two different things. 'majestic plural' should only be linked for theories that this is a majestic plural, otherwise we're interjecting OR into the text. There is certainly no consensus that it is, for why would you denigrate foreign gods in the majestic plural? — kwami (talk) 00:02, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand that comment in the context of the relevant test, In Hebrew, the ending -im normally indicates a masculine plural. However, when referring to the Jewish God, Elohim is usually understood to be grammatically singular (i.e., it governs a singular verb or adjective)., which does not reference foreign gods. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 09:14, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's not just Jehovah who is referred to as elohim, but other gods as well. So if it's a majestic plural for him, it's presumably a majestic plural for them all. Regardless, how is your point an argument for conducting OR by claiming it is a majestic plural? We should only make such a claim where we are arguing -- with references -- that is it a majestic plural. We're not doing that here. We shouldn't conflate morphology with semantics, especially by sneaking our preferred POV in where it isn't readily visible. — kwami (talk) 10:36, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Again, how other deities are referred to is not relevant to the text in question.

I'm neither the editor who added the link nor the one who removed it. I was hoping to start a discussion between the two of you with the goal of either restoring the link with an appropriate citation or arriving at an agreement that it it isn't documented in the literature.-- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:57, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The link is not relevant to the text in question, so I fail to see what there is to discuss. We do not engage in OR on WP. — kwami (talk) 13:37, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"It's not just Jehovah who is referred to as elohim, but other gods as well. So if it's a majestic plural for him, it's presumably a majestic plural for them all."

Firstly, the scholarly consensus is that the Tetragrammaton is pronounced "Yahweh". "Jehovah" is a ghost word derived from a substitution of the vowels from the word "Adonai," meaning "my lords," or "my lordship (see below), which is the word to be read in substitution in traditional Jewish liturgies—and itself is rather explicitly used as a majestic plural in that context.

Secondly, the grammatical plural of certain masculine nouns in Hebrew is often also used to refer to a state or condition as a collective noun, equivalent to the sufﬁxes "-head" (as in "Godhead") and "-ship" (as in "Lordship") in English; given the longstanding Hebrew tradition of referring to Yahweh, a single god, as "Elohim" (i.e. "Godhead"), combined with the convention of substituting the reading of the name "Yahweh" with the title "Adonai" in such a capacity, it is very clear that in the monotheistic context of Judaism, there is a semantic difference between Elohim and elohim. Any observant Jew or Hebrew scholar will conﬁrm as such, and other articles on Wikipedia pertaining to the subject cover it thusly.

Given all of this, as well as your passive-aggressive tone and ignorance of Jewish custom and theology throughout all of your messages in this thread, I do not think I am the one in this discussion "sneaking in our preferred POV in where it isn't readily visible." Xcalivyr (talk) 08:19, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for proving my point. Yes, 'elohim' means 'divinity' (as both an abstract and a concrete noun) as well as 'gods'. That has nothing to do with the 'royal we'.

Odd though that you would repeat my argument and then admonish me for being ignorant of it.

As an aside, you've engaged in an etymological fallacy: 'Jehovah' is just the English form of Yahweh. You might as well argue that 'Moses' is the incorrect name for that figure because the final -s is Greek. — kwami (talk) 08:52, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll concede to your point regarding the matter of whether Elohim is a majestic plural for the classical theist God of the Abrahamic faiths, but come on.

"'Jehovah' is just the English form of Yahweh."

You're really going to double down when there's already two easily accessible articles on this platform that demonstrate otherwise, and plenty of evidence and study besides? As I said, it's a ghost word derived from Tiberian vocalization of the Tetragrammaton to indicate a substitutionary euphemism. The only organisations who insist otherwise are the Mormons and JWs, and that is exclusively on religious grounds they cannot substantiate. That is not comparable to English using Greek renditions of Hebrew names. Xcalivyr (talk) 15:56, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

i'm aware of the etymology, but words are not their etymologies. it's like anglos telling american indians that they shouldn't call themselves that because they're not from india, but they do call themselves that. in scholarly circles 'yahweh' now predominates, but AFAICT 'jehovah' is still the usual form in english otherwise. i could be out of date here, but it's usage that determines usage, not etymology. — kwami (talk) 21:33, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]