Dr Paul Allen

We all have watershed moments in life, critical turning points where, from that moment on, nothing will ever be the same. One such moment in my own life came when I rediscovered the word elohim. It was in church on a Sunday morning while still in graduate school. I was chatting with a friend who, like me, was working on a PhD in Hebrew studies, killing a few minutes before the service started. I don’t recall much of the conversation, though I’m sure it was something about Old Testament theology. But I’ll never forget how it ended. My friend handed me his Hebrew Bible, open to Psalm 82. He said simply, “Here, read that . . . look at it closely.” The first verse hit me like a bolt of lightning: God [elohim] stands in the divine assembly; he administers judgment in the midst of the gods [elohim] I’ve indicated the Hebrew wording that caught my eye and put my heart in my throat. The word elohim occurs twice in this short verse. Other than the covenant name, Yahweh, it’s the most common wor...

What is a deity? Now, that’s a good question. But it’s not one with a simple answer. In fact, there are several answers that we can give. POLYTHEISTIC DEITIES If your educational background is anything like mine, then at some point in your schooling you learned the basics of Greek mythology. The colorful stories of Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Poseidon, and the other gods worshiped in ancient Greece were some of my favorite things to read about.  And while the Greeks eventually learned that no divine beings lived on Mount Olympus, the stories of the Greek gods became a core element of Western culture. This continues today, with movies, television shows, and even comic books retelling, adapting, and using these stories in various ways. Though the Greek gods themselves are fictional, they fall under one of the definitions of the term deity. As Merriam-Webster tells us, one meaning of the word deity is “a god or goddess,” that is, a being who is worshiped—or in the case of the Greek gods, w...

  This psalm is unusual because, except for in the opening and closing verses, God is the speaker, not the addressee. The movement from a prophetic oracle (with the opening verse describing the envisaged setting) to a petition makes best sense as a liturgy performed at the temple. The close parallels with the psalms of Yahweh’s kingship imply a liturgical setting similar to theirs. WHO ARE THESE OTHER GODS? ISN'T THERE ONLY ONE? The crux of this psalm lies in determining the identity of the gods (Hb. ʾelōhîm) and addressees of verses 2–7. Are they human judges (Exod. 21:6; 22:8–9, 28) or spiritual beings?  WHAT IS AN ASSEMBLY OF EL/GODS? Translation must always involve interpretation, and this is evident in the NIV’s rendering of this psalm. In verse 1 the literal phrase “the assembly of El/God” is translated as “the great assembly,” and “gods” is placed in quotation marks (likewise v. 6), though not indicated in the Hebrew text (Classical Hebrew does not have such punctuati...

The oneness of God is under relentless assault today — though not in the way we might expect. At least in the West, very few try to make a public case for traditional polytheism. There is little pressure in the mainstream to affirm many gods (at least not formally). Rather, the pressure which continues to rise with each generation, and each passing year, is the pervasive assumption of secularism — the pressure to sideline any talk of the one God and live together as though there were none. In the ancient world, various pantheons of gods abounded. In Canaan. In Egypt. In Babylon. In Athens. In Rome. Everywhere God’s strange monotheistic people turned, they encountered polytheists. They were tempted incessantly to adopt the world’s gods to try and improve their lives. Against this pressure, the Hebrew Scriptures, again and again, assert the oneness, and supremacy, of the true God, not many gods. But today, the mounting social pressure is to believe in (or at least to live as if...

We all have watershed moments in life, critical turning points where, from that moment on, nothing will ever be the same. One such moment in my own life came when I rediscovered the word  elohim .  My friend handed me his Hebrew Bible , open to Psalm 82 . He said simply, “Here, read that . . . look at it closely.” The first verse hit me like a bolt of lightning: God [ elohim ] stands in the divine assembly; he administers judgment in the midst of the gods [ elohim ]. LET'S GO EXPLORE THE BIBLE I’ve indicated the Hebrew wording that caught my eye and put my heart in my throat. The word  elohim  occurs twice in this short verse.  Other than the covenant name, Yahweh , it’s the most common word in the Old Testament for God . The first use of the word in this verse worked fine. But since I knew my Hebrew grammar , I saw immediately that the second instance needed to be translated as plural. There it was, plain as day:  The G...

Question: In the Garden of Eden , the serpent told Eve that if she and Adam ate of the forbidden fruit, they would be “as gods” (Gen. 3:5 KJV). Then in Genesis 3:22 God says, “Behold, the man has become like one of us” ( NASB ). Does “gods” and “us” imply the existence of more than one God? Answer: Not at all. The usual Hebrew term for “God” is ʾelōhím, which is the plural of ʾelôah. It is occasionally used as a true plural, referring to the imaginary gods of the heathen. But usually it refers to the one true God, and the plural ending is known to Hebrew grammarians as the “plural of majesty.” Like ʾadōním (“lords” or “Lord”) and beʿālím (plural of baʿal, “lord,” “master,” “owner,” “husband”), ʾelōhím also may be used to give a heightened impressiveness of majesty to God. As such, this plural is modified by adjectives in the singular and takes a singular verb. In the case of the serpent, serving as Satan’s mouthpiece, his previous uses of ʾelōhím (3:1,5a) are unquestionably...