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God's Name(s): Singular? Plural? Blasphemous To Cite?

ChasFink said:
But one name of God (Elohim) is plural, so that confuses things.


Exactly.
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Aha! Not necessarily plural. The Biblical Hebrew Elohim is treated as a singular noun when it refers to the one god of the Hebrews, but also appears as a plural when it refers to the gods of the other guys. In the above case the writer is simply illiterate in English. And yes it does seem to be a basic requirement for deciding to write something in English.
 
ChasFink said:
But one name of God (Elohim) is plural, so that confuses things.
Click to expand...

Lb8535 said:
Aha! Not necessarily plural. The Biblical Hebrew Elohim is treated as a singular noun when it refers to the one god of the Hebrews, but also appears as a plural when it refers to the gods of the other guys. In the above case the writer is simply illiterate in English. And yes it does seem to be a basic requirement for deciding to write something in English.
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I was, of course, joking and recognize the poor literacy of the writer. However, while I understand that many scholars believe that Elohim, the name of the One God, and elohim, the word for (plural) gods, are coincidental homonyms - with the former being singular - not all agree. There is the fact that God does refer to himself in the plural: "Let us make man in our image," etc. Some Christian scholars believe that plural names and pronouns in the Hebrew scriptures are a hint at the Trinity.
 
ChasFink said:
I was, of course, joking and recognize the poor literacy of the writer. However, while I understand that many scholars believe that Elohim, the name of the One God, and elohim, the word for (plural) gods, are coincidental homonyms - with the former being singular - not all agree. There is the fact that God does refer to himself in the plural: "Let us make man in our image," etc. Some Christian scholars believe that plural names and pronouns in the Hebrew scriptures are a hint at the Trinity.
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Actually I was just quoting my Hebrew textbook - a friend wanted to improve her very basic knowledge and since we have taken classical languages together she asked if I would do it with her. So I'm speaking from toward the end of first-year biblical Hebrew. I really doubt that this could be a homonym. It will be related to the origin and development of the root. I suspect that there are many learned books on the subject, but if not a masculine plural, it sounds like it has one or two connected suffixes, which are common in Hebrew. And most likely we read god in English as referring to himself in the plural because as with so much in the bible that's what the King James translators said. After all, if the king says "we" you would expect god to do the same, and the noun looks to be plural. Adonai is singular. In my minimal contact with modern translations of Hebrew prayers and hymns god refers to himself as I. And I'm betting strongly that it has nothing to do with the trinity. Thank you for bringing this up, a very interesting question about how the human brain deals with language.
 
Lb8535 said:
Actually I was just quoting my Hebrew textbook - a friend wanted to improve her very basic knowledge and since we have taken classical languages together she asked if I would do it with her. So I'm speaking from toward the end of first-year biblical Hebrew. I really doubt that this could be a homonym. It will be related to the origin and development of the root. I suspect that there are many learned books on the subject, but if not a masculine plural, it sounds like it has one or two connected suffixes, which are common in Hebrew. And most likely we read god in English as referring to himself in the plural because as with so much in the bible that's what the King James translators said. After all, if the king says "we" you would expect god to do the same, and the noun looks to be plural. Adonai is singular. In my minimal contact with modern translations of Hebrew prayers and hymns god refers to himself as I. And I'm betting strongly that it has nothing to do with the trinity. Thank you for bringing this up, a very interesting question about how the human brain deals with language.
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So because I couldn't resist - El derives from the ugaritic root, as spoken by the early Canaanites (or I guess written.) It appears in other related languages. They had a pantheon of gods, hence it usually appears in the plural. The Hebrews along with a few other cultures emerged from the Canaanites (including the Phoenicians, that's interesting) and they moved toward monotheism but the word for deities was taken on to relate to the one deity. And of course had to take verbs in the singular. I have in the past run across brief discussions of the appearance of possible "abandoned pantheism" in the old testament, characters who probably were originally deities of the Canaanites and appear in the oldest stories but of course are not deities in the established old testament. Fascinating field ...
 
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