El, Eloah, Elohim: The Hebrew Bible's Three Words for God

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan. And

Dan Beecher I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. And Dan, Dan.

Dan Beecher Yeah?

Dan McClellan We did the intro part. Okay. Okay? So-

Dan Beecher Okay. Good ...

Dan McClellan just so you're, you are aware, we did the intro part. All right,

Dan Beecher good. Dan is referencing other things that we can't talk about here. We're... This is the YouTube thing. We're... There's a, there's an audio feed also that we do different intros for, in case anyone hasn't figured that out yet.

Dan McClellan Yeah, but that, that's the secondary audience. This is the, this is obviously audience-

Dan Beecher Oh, how dare you ...

Dan McClellan A, A1. So

Dan Beecher He said the same thing to them, that you guys were- ... the secondary audience. You guys-

Dan McClellan That's a lie. That's a lie ...

Dan Beecher you should be very offended right now- ... that he's just playing t- pandering in that way. Uh, today we're gonna be talk- we're gonna be doing a re- I like this concept. I like this- Hmm ... discussion. It's gonna be interesting. We're doing a Watch Your Language, and it's, uh, we're, what we're gonna be talking about are the ways in which the Bible refers to deity. So, uh, yes, deity do, here we go- ... with Watch Your Language. All right, so here we are with... The, the Bible, it's interesting because, as I read the Bible in English, in English translations- Right ... I tend to see, like, two words, God and Lord-

Dan McClellan Yeah ... maybe. Yeah.

Dan Beecher It, it doesn't seem like there's that many ways of referring to deity in the Bible, but you and I have done this show long enough that I know there's way more than that. Mm-hmm. It just gets sort of, uh, compressed into Lord, God, God of Hosts sometimes, or whatever. Like, it, but it, it, but I think that there's a lot more to it. So, so walk me in. Where, where... Help me out with the, with the words for gods.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, in, in- God

Dan Beecher and gods ...

Dan McClellan God, in, in the New Testament, the, the Greek is pretty easy. We can talk a little bit about the Greek, uh, later on, but I think the Hebrew is much more fascinating because we've actually got three different words that can be translated, and really should be translated, God, G-O-D, just like that.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And all three of them could be used to refer to the God of Israel. So, like, an, uh, an appellative. This is the God, capital G God. Or they could also be used to refer to lowercase g god, any old run-of-the-mill god. So, um, the uh, one of my famous mean tweets is when they had Larry King on and he read a tweet that said, "I thought, I think I saw Larry King at dinner yesterday, or it could've just been a run-of-the-mill goblin." But, um, anyway, we've got, uh, three different words. The most basic term for God in Hebrew is just El. This is- Hmm ... spelled alef lammed. Uh, you may hear people translate it or pronounce it Ale, so- Okay ... a little bit of a longer E. But El is also a, a common way to pronounce it. And this is actually-

Dan Beecher Can I say Al? I'd like to say Al.

Dan McClellan Al. Well, only if you, uh- ... you've gotta put the P on the end, which is pronounced as an F, uh, because then it becomes an acronym for- ... alien life form. But, um, and that's the one that eats cats.

Dan Beecher Yeah, exactly.

Dan McClellan Uh, little known fact, but, uh, that's why you don't have any reference to cats in the Hebrew Bible. Uh, but they were all over Egypt. Why? No God. Al. No God. Al. Yep.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Um, so, uh, and-

Dan Beecher Wow. That is- ... chill- Yes ... that is some Gen X deep cutting right there.

Dan McClellan Yeah. / Early

Dan Beecher millennial-

Dan McClellan Yeah, you've gotta- ... nonsense. You can't have been born after '85 to really have- ... firsthand knowledge of what's going on there. But, uh, so El is this, the generic word for God. If you just wanna refer to any old god, use El. But it's also the name of the patriarchal high deity over the Northwest Semitic pantheon.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so El is, can be a personal name or it can mean, uh, it could just mean God. And then the plural of that is elim. That's just your standard, uh, yod mem masculine plural ending on that, and so, on El. So elim is something that occurs a number of times in the Hebrew Bible, dozens of times in the Hebrew Bible, uh, but is just a plural reference to, to gods. Then you have a different singular, eloh, which is usually alef, lammed, vav, and then a he. And this is a peculiar singular. I, I think it occurs maybe, uh, 30 to 40 times in, in the entire Hebrew Bible. It's not very common. What do we got? 58 occurrences in the Hebrew Bible, uh, with approximately eight occurrences referring to gods other than the God of Israel, Adonai.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And Elohim actually comes from eloh. So- So the most common singular- Okay ... is based on the most rare, or the most common plural, excuse me, is based on the most rare singular.

Dan Beecher So Elohim is technically not the plural of El.

Dan McClellan Correct.

Dan Beecher It's the plural of eloh.

Dan McClellan Correct.

Dan Beecher And elim is the plural of El.

Dan McClellan Correct.

Dan Beecher Oh, my gosh. This is- Yes ... too confusing, Dan.

Dan McClellan It gets, it gets complicated.

Dan Beecher Oh, thank goodness. Um- Yeah, yeah. I, I thought you were gonna say it gets worse, and I was like, "Eh."

Dan McClellan Well, it does get worse when it comes to Elohim, because Elohim can mean either God or gods.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It can be singular or plural. And grammatically, the term is plural. And I, and I think we've discussed before Joel Burnett's book, A Reassessment of Biblical Elohim, is probably, in my opinion, the best discussion of what's going on there. It's a concretized abstract plural. Which is a fancy way of saying just think of it as a plural or a singular, depending on, uh, the verbs, the pronouns, the adjectives that are associated with it. If they're plural, you're looking at a plural use of Elohim. If they're singular, you're looking at a singular use of Elohim.

Dan Beecher And usually a context will, will help you through. You know, when we say the word deer, that can mean multiple deer or a single deer.

Dan McClellan Right. Yeah.

Dan Beecher And we just take it out of, take it from context. Is- Are there some contexts in which it is unclear whether Elohim is singular or, or plural?

Dan McClellan There, there are some... Well, there, yeah, there, there are a couple of rare contexts-

Dan Beecher Oh

Dan McClellan ... but it's, it's kind of odd that you wouldn't be able to tell based on the person speaking whether they're referring to plural or singular. W- I think what's most common, though, is you get a plural Elohim and a plural verb, but it's like, it really seems like this should be singular.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Uh, so, so there are examples of that, and a good example of that would be, like, the, the necromancer of, uh, of Endor.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan You are, you are familiar with, with that story, correct?

Dan Beecher Love that story. She's m-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... she's like, she's my girl.

Dan McClellan Yeah. She's-

Dan Beecher I love, I love her. She's awesome

Dan McClellan ... she's awesome. 1 Samuel 28. Let me pull up 1 Samuel 28, the, uh, the beginning of it, because there's a part when, when he shows up and she's like, "All right. Well, let me, let me get into my groove here." And then it says that, uh, she, she kind of freaks out, and, uh, 'cause he, he's like, uh, "Give me Samuel." And, uh, she freaks out, and she says, "Why have you deceived me? You're Saul." And he says, "Whoa, whoa. What did you see? What did you see?" And she says, "I see Elohim coming up out of the ground." Only the, uh, the coming up out of the ground should be a participle that is in the plural. Elohim, right, T, olim. Yes, so that's, that's the plural participle for rising up. And Saul's r- uh, question is, "What does he look like?" And so it's like-

Dan Beecher Oh, I get it. So she basically said, "I see gods rising up out of the, out of the ground," and he's like, "What does he look like?"

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, so the plural participle, it's like, okay, is the plural participle just kind of harmonizing with the grammatical plural ending of Elohim? Like, that's, that's something that can happen in some prose and poetry, where it's like we're, we want the, we want the rhyme.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan We want the, the symmetry. So when we got an im on the noun, we're gonna do an im on the, on the participle or something like that. So, so that's, uh, that's an instance where it's kind of like, eh, we shouldn't have anything to-

Dan Beecher Or was Saul non-binary and went with a they/them thing?

Dan McClellan You, you do not have a- any of that going on, um, in, in the Hebrew Bible, and certainly not with Paul, or Saul. Excuse me. Uh, but there's another example that's interesting in Genesis 20:13, because, um, Abraham is talking to Abimelech. And this is, you'll recall the, the story where he says, "Well, this is my sister," and Abimelech's like, "I like the cut of her jib."

Dan Beecher Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan McClellan Um, "Let me get some of that jib." And goes to marry her. The God visits Abimelech in the dream and everything. And Abraham in verse 13 then say- says, "When God caused me to wander from my father's house, I said to her, 'This is the kindness you must do me at every place to, at which we come. Say of me, he is my brother.'" Only the verb there, it's not a participle, it's an actual verb. Let me just verify that. Yes, it's a, it's a, a hiphil. Uh, "And it, uh, and it came to pass when," uh, hit u-o-t Elohim. "When the gods or gods, they caused me to wander."

Dan Beecher Ah.

Dan McClellan And so here, though, it's like, okay, maybe that's singular. Maybe it's not.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Maybe Abraham was talking about, uh, ye old gods, or as we discussed the other day, the old gods-

Dan Beecher Yes

Dan McClellan ... because we know what a thorn is.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Um, so that's an interesting instance where, you know, it's, it, it's debatable what exactly is going on there. Now, a lot of people are like, "Well, how dare you say that Abraham was not a monotheist?" Uh, but I, I think there are, there are good reasons to think that Abraham was happy to refer to the gods, um-

Dan Beecher So i- in the Dan McClellan translation, what do you think you do there? Because obviously-

Dan McClellan Oh

Dan Beecher ... the, the traditional translation is just going to say God.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Is just going to, uh, make that easy on the reader.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher What, what, what, what, what is, what does a scholarly translation, translator do? Just-

Dan McClellan Well, wait a minute. You didn't say a scholarly translator. You said the Dan McClellan-

Dan Beecher I, well-

Dan McClellan ... translation

Dan Beecher ... okay. That's right The, the, the, the DMT.

Dan McClellan No. Yeah, the DMV.

Dan Beecher DMV.

Dan McClellan That's, uh-

Dan Beecher Okay

Dan McClellan ... yes, 'cause, uh, it's taking forever. Um, it is... I would, I would, I would render what we find in the text. The gods, when the gods caused me to wander.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And I'd have a note there.

Dan Beecher Yeah, sure.

Dan McClellan There'd be a footnote saying, "Hey, deal with it."

Dan Beecher Other people.

Dan McClellan But-

Dan Beecher Other people write it this way.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But okay.

Dan McClellan And because I, I, I think, you know, we've gotta deal with what, what is there in the text unless we have a really, really good reason not to. And as you know, in my opinion, monotheism is not a really good reason not to in-

Dan Beecher Right. Yeah

Dan McClellan ... in the Bible. So, so I, I, I think there, there are some fuzzy areas where it's not clear exactly what's going on here. But here's, uh, here's an interesting thing, uh, about the word Elohim. I counted up... Well, I didn't, like, by hand count up. I used a program to do it all. But the book, can you guess what book of the Hebrew Bible has the most occurrences of the word Elohim?

Dan Beecher Genesis.

Dan McClellan Deuteronomy.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Genesis is third.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Deuteronomy is number one. Psalms is number two.

Dan Beecher That's interesting-

Dan McClellan Do-

Dan Beecher ... that it's the Deut.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Uh, why, why is it the Deut?

Dan McClellan One of the reasons is because Deuteronomy is just hammering home that Adonai is your God.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan This is your God. Those are other gods. This is your God. Do you recall that this is your God? There are many like it, but this one is yours.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Um, and so 374 occurrences of Elohim in Deuteronomy, 365 in Psalms, 219 in Genesis. So third place is a pretty big drop-off. And then, uh, fourth place with 204 occurrences is First and Second... Nope. Oh, sh... I skipped over First and Second Chronicles. Okay, Genesis is fourth place. Uh, First and Second Chronicles, 321. That's neither here nor there, but, uh-

Dan Beecher Sure

Dan McClellan ... I think it's pretty interesting that, uh, how-

Dan Beecher When Deuteronomy is doing it, are they us- is, is the Deuteronom- is the author using Elohim in the plural most of the time? In the singular?

Dan McClellan It's in the singular most of the time, but, uh, there are definitely occurrences of Elohim in the plural in Deuteronomy. But the interesting thing about the use of Elohim in Deuteronomy, and particularly with, like, the, the Shema, which is Deuteronomy 6:4. Uh, Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad, which I think should, ought to be translated, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one," or, "Adonai is one." But this is taken as, as kind of the quintessential expression of monotheism.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan But nothing about it is monotheistic. And, and e- even the first part of the clause throws into doubt monotheism, because what is, "Your God," is the generic use of Elohim with a possessive suffix, which means it's not an absolute use of Elohim. It is identifying the one among the many that pertains to you.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so right there-

Dan Beecher Your God-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... as opposed to their god.

Dan McClellan Right. So right there, it's not just saying, "Hey, the God." Which one? What do you mean which one?

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan There's only one. It's saying, "The one that pertains to you," and which is a tacit acknowledgement that not only are there other gods out there, but we recognize that there are gods that pertain to many others, and we're talking about the one that pertains to you. And, and you can go to Deuteronomy 32:8 and 9 with, uh, with El Yon, the Most High, distributing the nations to d, uh, according to the number of the bene elohim, the children of God, with Adonai getting, uh, his portion, his share of the inheritance, being Jacob, being his people, being Israel. You go to, uh, Deuteronomy 4:19, where the sun, the moon, the stars, the whole host of heaven, they are distributed to the nations for them to worship. But you, you're supposed to just worship Adonai, the God of Israel. So there's, in Deuteronomy, the overwhelming, uh, majority of the occurrences of Elohim are not in the appellative sense. They're not in the sense of capital G God.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And so you brought up the, the DMV. In the DMV, most of the time that you see the word God in Deuteronomy, it's gonna be a lowercase G.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Even when it says, "Adonai your God"-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... it's gonna be, "Adonai your lowercase G god."

Dan Beecher Right. Right.

Dan McClellan Um, and so-

Dan Beecher Differentiating this, this is your God, that's their god.

Dan McClellan Right. It, it's-

Dan Beecher That in, in that case, it's a title. It's not the name of-

Dan McClellan Well, it, it's, it's a, they're a member of a class.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And, uh, and you don't get a capital G just by virtue of being a member of, of the class.

Dan Beecher Well, that brings up an interesting point.

Dan McClellan Yes, it does.

Dan Beecher Is there a point to using a capital G if you allow the tetragrammaton?

Dan McClellan Uh, I think there is a, a, a point at which it's probably... I don't know if it's in the priestly literature. It might be a little after that. But there is a point where the title begins to take on the sense of a name.

Dan Beecher Even in the Hebrew, or-

Dan McClellan In the Hebrew Bible, yeah.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan In fact, in, in my, in my second master's thesis, uh, which I wrote at Twin- Trinity, Twinity Western- Trinity Western University, uh, I, I address the idea that it goes from being kind of a, a generic class to, you would see ha Elohim, the God-

Dan Beecher Mm

Dan McClellan ... with the definite article on the front, as a way to kind of, uh, identify a specific god that is understood to be the, the main god. And then the, the definite article drops off, but the usage still seems to be understanding Elohim to be referring to the main God.

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan So, um-

Dan Beecher But-

Dan McClellan And, and you see the... Go ahead.

Dan Beecher But i- but if I were to write the words, "The main God"-

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm

Dan Beecher ... "your main God, a main God," I would still not capitalize that, right?

Dan McClellan Right. But would you capitalize The President?

Dan Beecher Would I? Is it, do we do that? I-

Dan McClellan Yeah. Yeah, we normally do.

Dan Beecher No, no, I gotta consult my style manual. I don't know. I guess maybe, I guess you do.

Dan McClellan Yeah, but, but if, if it's like your president, our president, their president, the president-

Dan Beecher Okay

Dan McClellan ... um, uh, it, so I, I think there's... It, uh, it's interesting. It's a discussion that a lot of people don't wanna have and don't like having, but I-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... but I think it needs to be had. Um, and a lot of people wanna read the Trinity into Elohim. They're like-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... "Ooh, it's plurality and unity all in one." It's, uh, yeah, and it has nothing to do with the Trinity.

Dan Beecher Yeah, sure.

Dan McClellan Um, just it's, it, there's no case to make that the Trinity has anything to do with, uh, with the plural use of- Elohim. So-

Dan Beecher Well, since I brought it up- Yeah ... should we get to the tetragrammaton? Yeah,

Dan McClellan let's get to the tetragrammaton. Uh, the, the four letters.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Uh, Yod He Vav He. This is the personal name of God, which by the way, probably wasn't the earliest patron deity of Israel. Oh. Because Israel, the name means El contends. It's that- Right ... it's that personal name of the patriarchal high deity. And so Israel was probably originally dedicated to the Northwest Semitic patriarchal high d- deity El. And we, we have that name. We have, uh, the name Israel as in reference to a people group that occupied roughly this territory around 1208 BCE in the Merneptah Victory Stele. So-

Dan Beecher I'm, I, I'm curious about that because Israel- Mm-hmm ... that El is definitely that, that theophoric, uh- Uh-huh ... suffix.

Dan McClellan Good work.

Dan Beecher Thank you. I do learn some things- ... sometimes. Um, but that's also in Daniel. Like, our name- Yeah ... but also the name of the guy who he was writing much later.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher And presumably, the tetragrammaton has come into, uh, into usage by the time Daniel comes around.

Dan McClellan Yes. So what we're dealing with here is a question of conflation because we get, uh, Adonai seems to show up somewhere before the middle of the ninth century BCE. Because by the ninth century BCE, we have the Mesha inscription talking about Adonai.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan We have the Tel Dan Stele talking about Jehoram and Ahaziah, which have the theophoric elements, the tetragrammaton, in their names. I, and we have Jehu in, uh, the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, which was my h- band in high school. But, uh, so by that time period, Adonai has shown up and is now the patron deity of Israel. And the, the theory that I think makes the most sense, and seems to me to be the most popular, is that El and Adonai were originally distinct deities. El was the original patron deity of Israel. Adonai is a Johnny-come-lately. Adonai gets brought into Israel probably by some nomadic tribe coming from deeper in the east and in the south in the Arabian Peninsula, and they bring their ancestral, in my opinion, deity with them, whose name is or becomes Adonai. And they insert Adonai into the Israelite pantheon on the second tier as the storm deity, which brings Adonai into conflict with Baal, who is the Northwest Semitic storm deity. And so there's conflict with Baal, but there is, uh, w- later on, and probably because a king who was a devotee of Adonai or a king who recognized the value of the, the deity Adonai, acceded to the throne or said, "We're bringing Adonai with us," and asserted the identity of Adonai and El.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Basically said, uh, as the great poets once said, "When two become one." Um, be a l- be a little... I, I'm gonna screw up a song. That's an old Spice Girls song. Again, you gotta be... But anyway, um, and El and Adonai became one and the same god. And you actually see this. You see some of the vestiges of the, uh, attempt to assert the equation of the two deities in some of the names and in some of the textual transmission of the Hebrew Bible, like the name Joel. Um, our good buddy Joel McHale is named after Adonai is El. Not Adonai-

Dan Beecher Oh, yeah ...

Dan McClellan is God. Yeah, not Adonai is God. When, when the, the term El appears at the end of a name, and particularly when there's another theophoric element in there, that is using El as the divine name. Um-

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So, um-

Dan Beecher So w- I, I, I, there's a point of confusion here that I think- Okay ... I need to, to sort of separate out for our listeners because, uh, the, so the tetragrammaton, Yod He Vav He- Yes ... we, we resist saying that name because, uh, because it, it, it's dif- you know, it's, it, it-

Dan McClellan Yeah,

Dan Beecher it- ... it's sacred to certain people, and we don't want to, uh, we want to be respectful of that. But I do have to say, other people pronounce it differently.

Dan McClellan Uh-huh.

Dan Beecher So the Jehovah's Witnesses, they pronounce it Jehovah.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher And I, you know, I had, I had heard from scholars like you that, uh, that that's the, you know, the... I know why they make the switch with the, uh, with the vowels.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher 'Cause there's a, there's an Adonai switch thing happening- Yeah ... where they inserted Adonai vowels. The a- Right. Right?

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Okay. But the Jah sound.

Dan McClellan Uh-huh.

Dan Beecher I, you're telling me that the theophoric element that is, uh, that is to do with the tetragramma- grammaton has the Jah sound. Joel, Jehoram, J- the Jah, Jah, right? Am I wrong?

Dan McClellan As, as, as we pronounce it, because we're pronouncing it as it has gone through transliteration into Greek, into Latin, and into English. And in the 1600s- Okay ... we formalized the, uh, the letter J. And even before the letter J came into being- Okay ... we had already gone through some, some jeezmo where the, the, the I or Y vowel, when it's used as a consonant at the beginning of the word, began to harden a little bit. Uh, so it was already, uh, pronounced closer to Jehovah before the J existed.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Um-

Dan Beecher So, so what was, what you're saying is that Brother McHale should be properly pronounced Yo-el or something like that?

Dan McClellan If, i- yes. In, in Hebrew, it would be Yo-el. It would be, um, Jehu. It would be Yehoshua, not Joshua.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, so yeah, in Hebrew, that's a, uh, that's a Y sound- Okay ... not a J sound.

Dan Beecher Sorry, just, I, I just had to go off on that. And, and also, you know- Uh, just to make sure that everybody... Like, new, new people won't know that when you say Adonai, you're often using that as a, as a- Substitution for- ... substitution for-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... the tetragrammaton.

Dan McClellan For the divine name. That's something that I decided to do on my social media channels a while ago because of requests that I'd gotten from members of the audience. It's not, uh, a difficult affordance for me to offer, so, uh, so yeah.

Dan Beecher But every now and then, we need to step in and make sure and make that clear.

Dan McClellan Yes, yes. Uh, and there are, there are other ways to, uh, refer to God or gods, uh, in the Hebrew Bible. We've gone through most of them. El, Elim. Uh, sometimes the mem on the end of Elim is really just an enclitic mem, and that's this, this grammatical category you don't need to worry about. So sometimes Elim itself is being used in the singular. Uh, and yeah, we... I wanted to cover some interesting circumlocutions, though-

Dan Beecher Okay, yeah

Dan McClellan ... where the He- the authors and editors of the Hebrew Bible didn't wanna use the word God, or they wanted to use some kind of pejorative, so they replaced Elohim with some kind of pejorative. And the-

Dan Beecher Oh

Dan McClellan ... the three, the three that I think are interesting are, the first one is, uh, shequts, which means a detestable or disgusting thing.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan And so, uh, in 1 Kings 11, for instance, you... They're rattling off the names of the patron deities of some of the territories around them, and so they call Milcom the shequts of the Ammonites, and Chemosh the shequts of Moab. And, and this is a, a way to say the god of, but they're replacing god with shequts, which means detestable thing or the, the, the disgusting one or something like that.

Dan Beecher They're like, "Their garbage god is Chemosh, and-

Dan McClellan Well

Dan Beecher ... their garbage person."

Dan McClellan Yeah, but you, you get even closer to the sound Elohim with two other words. One of them is gillulim, and the other is, uh, elilim. Now, gillulim is the fun one because it comes from a word that, it probably comes from a word that means feces.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so gillulim is using, uh... You've got the lamed sound and you got the im sound, but you're switching up some of the other sounds to make it sound like you're approximating the word God, but really what you're calling these things are shit gods.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And if you've ever seen Dogma- ... there's a shit god, a literal god made of shit-

Dan Beecher Okay, I-

Dan McClellan ... in, in the movie Dogma

Dan Beecher ... I haven't seen Dogma since the '90s, so-

Dan McClellan Okay

Dan Beecher ... alas, I don't remember it well. We need to... I, we need... It's, it's back. It's out somewhere. It's

Dan McClellan back there. Yeah, it's,

Dan Beecher it's- We, we need to find that thing

Dan McClellan ... it's accessible. But, uh, yeah, when, when they have their run-in with, uh, uh, with... Oh, gosh, why can't I remember her name now? The only name that's coming into my head is Eva Mendes, which just-

Dan Beecher Alanis Morissette?

Dan McClellan No, no. No. No. Um, From Dusk till Dawn, Desperado.

Dan Beecher Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Um. Uh, um, oh, we're bad at names.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Don't, don't get our-

Dan McClellan We're on the spot. We're... Th- this happened to me at, uh, at the, uh-

Dan Beecher I literally-

Dan McClellan ... at Ray Wilson's thing where, where he was-

Dan Beecher I literally saw her last night on an, on a, a rerun of, uh, of 30 Rock. Ah.

Dan McClellan Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, anyway. Anyway. You, you can tell who has, who has, uh, taken over my, my top spot. Uh. Anyway, um, when they find her, they run into her, that's when- Salma Hayek. Salma Hayek. Oh, my gosh, how could I not think of that name? Um, but that's when they run into the, the shit god.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan But the other one is elilim, which is generally translated idols.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so, uh, like there are passages that say, "All the gods of the nations are elilim," are idols. It doesn't actually mean idols. It means worthless things.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan That's... Like, when you look at, at how it's used, that's what it seems to be, but there's an argument to make that it's actually riffing on the name of another god. A friend of mine actually published a really interesting article that suggests that elilim is actually based on the name Enlil-

Dan Beecher Okay

Dan McClellan ... which is, which is a, a Mesopotamian god, one of the main gods of the Mesopotamian pantheon. But the nun in Hebrew, when the nun occurs right before another consonant and there's not a vowel in between, the nun tends to assimilate, which means the nun tends to turn into the double of the letter that follows.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And this happens in English. The word illegal comes ultimately from in-legal.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan Only the N turns into an L, and that's why there are two Ls at the beginning of illegal. So elilim could be Enlil, and it could be a way to say that god is a worthless thing, and so now you're all little Enlilites. You're, you're little worthless things. And that became a way to refer to idols, 'cause they would've been prominent in Mesopotamia, but we're gonna refer to them as these worthless things. So it, it really doesn't mean idol. It means worthless thing, perhaps as a reference to Enlil. Um, but-

Dan Beecher That is... This is, this is a really fun, uh, conversation, and it's so much richer. I, I really wanna see that translation of the Bible. I wanna see the-

Dan McClellan Oh, yeah

Dan Beecher ... translation that, that goes with the complicated, uh, setup and just translates it directly 'cause it's so... It feels like such a m- much more rich environment.

Dan McClellan Oh, yeah. The, the rhetoric lands a lot more squarely when you can actually see what's going on.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Uh, because when they, when they say the gods of the nations are idols, you're just like, "Yeah." Idols aren't real gods. But that's not at all what they're saying. Like-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... they're not calling them idols, they're calling them worthless. They know they exist. They're not saying there are no other gods. They're saying, "Those gods? Oh, yeah, pfft."

Dan Beecher They're just, they're just being dismissive about them.

Dan McClellan Yeah, they're-

Dan Beecher Even though they, uh, they, they-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... acknowledge the existence of them.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's like me and the Raiders.

Dan Beecher It's trash talk.

Dan McClellan I acknowledge their existence- ... but I don't acknowledge their significance. Um-

Dan Beecher They still play football, but-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... come on.

Dan McClellan Come on. Yeah, re- Yeah, kinda. Um, although I think we just lost against the Chiefs- ... uh, recently, so, so I'm gonna keep my mouth, my pretty mouth shut when it comes to that. But, uh, we could, we could go on for a long, long time.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan We didn't talk about the shedim. We, we, okay. We, we're- Yeah, we- We didn't talk about some other things, so.

Dan Beecher And theos and kyrios are just gonna have to wait.

Dan McClellan Oh, yeah, we'll have to do a, a New Testa- We'll have to do the, the God redux, uh-

Dan Beecher Yeah, yeah, yeah

Dan McClellan ... come back and revisit this, 'cause there's more-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... to talk about.

Dan Beecher El Shaddai, we didn't, we didn't get to any-

Dan McClellan Oh, yeah ... El Shaddai action. El Shaddai, El Olam, El Roi, El Elyon. There, there are lots of, uh-

Dan Beecher Yeah. We did, you did say El, El... You said Elyon, but we didn't-

Dan McClellan I said Elyon

Dan Beecher ... actually get to it.

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher There's so much. There's so much. There's so much,

Dan McClellan yeah.

Dan Beecher All right. Well, it's just a lot of fun. It's just a, a, a, a really interesting conversation. I hope our viewers tune in for our next episode, where they are going to get us talking more about the gods of the Hebrew Bible versus the God of the, uh, New Testament. Uh, that's gonna be a really fun one. But l- so look for that coming up. For right now, thank you so much for joining us. If you would like to help keep this program up and operational, uh, we do love it when you join up here on YouTube, where you can, if you become a member, you're gonna get access to a whole bunch of things, including, uh, especially Lives that Dan and I are gonna be doing that are exclusive to our members. Uh, there are also exclusive, like, emojis that you can use. There's a whole bunch of cool stuff that you can do, and it just supports the show. So we really appreciate our members. We also appreciate people who go over to patreon.com, uh, where they, where they can become patrons over there too. Uh, both places you'll get early, uh, access to the show, uh, and that's always great. So please considering, consider becoming, uh, someone who supports the show in that way. If you can't do that, that's fine. You know, find, find a place to give us a five-star review, like, comment, subscribe, whatever you can do. That's always great. Thanks so much to Roger Gowdy for editing the show. Thanks to Sam Holden for being our producer. And thanks to all y'all for tuning in. We'll talk to you again next time.

Dan McClellan Bye, everybody.