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Updated: June 20, 2025
The resulting poetry was enveloped in a romance of which Continental scholarship has discovered two versions, woven together, perhaps by Ezra, into a single tale. "In the beginning Elohim created the heaven and earth." That abrupt declaration, presented originally in but one of the versions, had already been pronounced of Indra and also of Ormuzd. The Hebraic announcement alone prevailed.
And He took His Own angels with Him, for His nature was to mount aloft, leaving Edem below; for inasmuch as she was earth, she was not disposed to follow upward her spouse. Elohim, then, coming to the highest part of heaven above and beholding a light superior to that which He himself had created, exclaimed: 'Open me the gates, that entering in I may acknowledge the Lord."
All this bears out the view that, in the mind of the old Israelite, there was no difference, save one of degree, between one Elohim and another.
If, as in the first chapter of Genesis, the Deity is always designated as God or Elohim; if the literary style is formal, repetitious, and generic; if the theme is the origin of an institution like the Sabbath; and if the Deity is conceived of as a spirit, accomplishing his purpose by progressive stages through the agency of natural forces, it is not difficult to recognize at once the work of a late priestly writer.
Some arrive only as far as the knowledge of "Elohim," while others attain to a knowledge of Jhvh, which may be compared to the reception of the sun's light in ruby and crystal. These are the prophets in the land of Israel.
And, first, concerning the god who stands in some sense at the head of the Chaldaean Pantheon. IL, or RA. The form Ra represents probably the native Chaldaean name of this deity, while Il is the Semitic equivalent. Il, of course, is but a variant of El, the root of the well-known Biblical Elohim as well as of the Arabic Allah.
Moreover, Elohim constantly appear in dreams which in old Israel did not mean that, as we should say, the subject of the appearance "dreamed he saw the spirit"; but that he veritably saw the Elohim which, as a soul, visited his soul while his body was asleep. And, in the course of the history of Israel Jahveh himself thus appears to all sorts of persons, non-Israelites as well as Israelites.
On the other hand, there is not the slightest evidence of any belief in retribution after death, but the contrary; ritual obligations have at least as strong sanction as moral; there are clear indications that some of the most stringent of the Levitical laws were unknown even to Samuel; priests often appear to be superseded by laymen, even in the performance of sacrifices and divination; and no line of demarcation can be drawn between necromancer, wizard, seer, prophet, and priest, each of whom is regarded, like all the rest, as a medium of communication between the world of Elohim and that of living men.
Grant the fundamental assumption of the essentially human character of the spirit, whether Atua, Kami, or Elohim, and all these practices are equally rational. The sacrifices to the gods in Tonga, and elsewhere in Polynesia, were ordinarily social gatherings, in which the god, either in his own person or in that of his priestly representative, was supposed to take part.
Paradise was trifled away; men increased and grew worse; and the Elohim, not yet accustomed to the wickedness of the new race, became impatient, and utterly destroyed it. Only a few were saved from the universal deluge; and scarcely had this dreadful flood ceased, than the well-known ancestral soil lay once more before the grateful eyes of the preserved.
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