Table of Contents
- Frederick S. Oliver on the Bible
- The Gods in the Bible
- Elohim
- El Elyon
- Adonai
- Eloah
- El Roi
- Canaanite and Phoenician Gods
- Asherah
- Ashtaroth (plural of Astarte)
- El Shaddai
- Two Gods in One Story
- Noah: Enlil and Enki
- Abraham: the voice that commands and the voice that stops
- The prophets argue about the firstborn
- Elohim is a plural word
The Bible speaks of one God of Israel, but it calls him by many names. It also names many gods of other nations. Some researchers, like Paul Wallis and Mauro Biglino, read these names as signs of more than one divine being.
Frederick S. Oliver on the Bible
Frederick S. Oliver saw the Bible as occult teaching that later editors had changed.
“The Bible is sound occult doctrine, so far as the matter in it has escaped revisers, and worse than revisers – the Roman Catholic interpolators and twisters of its truth.”
The Gods in the Bible
Elohim
Elohim is a plural word. The Bible also uses it for the gods of other nations. Exodus 20:3 says: “You shall have no other gods [Elohim] before me”.
El Elyon
El Elyon (אֵל עֶלְיוֹן) is usually translated as “God Most High” or “Most High.” The usual reading is that it stands for supreme authority over all creation, other gods included.
Paul Wallis reads it differently. In his account, El Elyon chaired a council of the Elohim that divided the land among them. Yahweh was a junior member of that council. More in this video.
Mauro Biglino goes back to the pictograms behind the word. One is an eye, for the one who watches. The other is a shepherd’s staff, for the one who leads. For Biglino, “Elyon” means a governor above others, not the “Most High”. He compares this with Plato’s gods in Critias, who rule their people like shepherds.
Adonai
Adonai means “Lord.” It is mainly a title for Yahweh. Sometimes it is used in a broader divine sense, as in Genesis 18:27.
Eloah
The Book of Job uses El, Eloah and Shaddai for God much more often than Yahweh. In the speeches of Job and his friends, Job 12:9 is the one place where the name YHWH appears. This may point to an older tradition, from before Yahweh became the central god of Israel.
Job 12:7-10: all creation knows
Job says that the beasts, the birds, the earth and the fish all know who made them. Here the Hebrew uses YHWH, the only time in Job’s speeches.
But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the LORD [YHWH] hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.
Job 12:7-10 (KJV)
Job 28:23-28: the way to wisdom
Here God knows where wisdom lives, because he weighed the winds and the waters and made the rain. To humans he gives one rule: fear the Lord and depart from evil. The Hebrew uses Elohim and Adonai in this passage, not Eloah.
God [Elohim] understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof. For he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven; To make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth the waters by measure. When he made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder: Then did he see it, and declare it; he prepared it, yea, and searched it out. And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord [Adonai], that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.
Job 28:23-28 (KJV)
El Roi
El Roi means “the God who sees me.” It appears only once, in Genesis 16:13. Hagar, Sarai’s servant, is pregnant and has fled into the wilderness. Near a spring, God promises her a son, Ishmael, and she gives him this name.
Canaanite and Phoenician Gods
The Bible names many gods of the nations around Israel. Among them are Baal, Moloch, Nebo, Hadad, the Queen of Heaven (Ishtar or Astarte) and Kaiwan, a star god linked to Saturn. In the New Testament, people take Paul and Barnabas for Zeus and Hermes (Acts 14:12–13).
Asherah
Asherah is a mother goddess of fertility, seen as a consort of El or Baal. The Bible mentions the “Asherah poles” used in her worship (Judges 3:7).
Ashtaroth (plural of Astarte)
Ashtaroth is a Canaanite goddess of fertility and war. The Bible often condemns her together with Baal (Judges 2:13, 1 Samuel 7:3). The Oahspe Bible also uses the name Ashtaroth.
El Shaddai
El Shaddai is usually translated as “God Almighty” or “God of the Mountains.” Paul Wallis notes that better lexicons give other meanings, such as “the powerful one of the mountains” or “the destroyer.” More in this video.
Paul Wallis: “Almighty God” is inaccurate
Wallis quotes a reference work on the name. It calls the name very old and the usual translation wrong.
“El Shaddai – an ancient divine name of the patriarchal period, rarely used outside the Pentateuch. [It is] preserved mainly in the priestly tradition…The usual translation ‘Almighty God’ is inaccurate…”
Two Gods in One Story
The more I read the Old Testament, the more I find stories where one god seems to change his mind. Paul Wallis gave me a key to these stories in one of his interviews on The 5th Kind TV.
Noah: Enlil and Enki
Wallis compares the flood in Genesis with the older Mesopotamian flood stories. In those, the god Enlil wants to destroy humanity and his brother Enki saves one family.
Enlil wants a cull, wants to get rid of the human beings, just the same as the Yahweh character in the Bible.
In Genesis, a single god does both things. Wallis noticed how odd that is:
It’s almost as if he’s changing his mind, thinking two contrary things. In the source narratives, it’s different characters who think those things.
If you go to Genesis 6 and to the flood narrative, there’s no inversion there; all that’s changed is that the conversations among the Anunnaki and the conflict between Enki, Enlil, and Anu have all been rolled into the internal thoughts of Yahweh or God.
I wrote more about these two figures on Who is Enlil and Who is Enki.
Abraham: the voice that commands and the voice that stops
When I went back to Genesis 22, where Abraham is told to burn his son Isaac, I wondered whether the same thing happens there.
The command in verse 1 comes from ha-Elohim, “the Elohim”. The voice that stops the knife in verse 11 is “the angel of the LORD”, the messenger of YHWH.
My reading is that two different powers are on that mountain. Someone wants the firstborn, and someone else will not take the blood and gives Abraham a ram.
Abraham himself talks about more than one power. Wallis points to the place where Abraham says “the powerful ones” (plural) made him leave his father’s house. That is Genesis 20:13, where Abraham explains himself to King Abimelech.
The prophets argue about the firstborn
Later prophets keep coming back to child sacrifice. Jeremiah has YHWH deny it:
to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart.
Jeremiah 7:31 (KJV)
to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind
Jeremiah 19:5 (KJV)
Ezekiel says something very different. Here the god admits that he gave bad laws:
Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live; And I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb
Ezekiel 20:25-26 (KJV)
Micah still asks the old question:
shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
Micah 6:7 (KJV)
The god who wanted children in the fire has a name in other places: Moloch. See also Jeremiah 7 and Ezekiel 20.
Elohim is a plural word
Mauro Biglino translates biblical Hebrew. He is direct about it:
Elohim is undeniably a plural term, and it indicates a group of individuals to which the Bible’s protagonist belongs: Yahweh.
He bases Yahweh’s place among the Elohim on Deuteronomy 32:8:
Yahweh, far from being the one and only transcendent ‘God’, was simply one of the Elohim: the one who, as mentioned above, was assigned the task of ruling over a well defined territory and over a portion of a family, that of Jacob (Deuteronomy 32:8).
Wallis says the same thing in his own words: “Yahweh is one of the Elohim”.
When a god seems to change his mind now, I no longer see one confused god. I see a council of Elohim with different plans for us. Yahweh is one voice in that council. Later writers blended these voices into one.
More: Paul Wallis, Mauro Biglino, Abraham.
