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Updated: June 20, 2025
The terms mean simply 'god, and were applied by early Semitic communities to any deity, particularly to the local god. In certain parts of the Old Testament also "Elohim" stands for the national god, conceived of as all-sufficient. But these are late conceptions.
Yet, if the pretensions to infallibility set up, not by the ancient Hebrew writings themselves, but by the ecclesiastical champions and friends from whom they may well pray to be delivered, thus shatter themselves against the rock of natural knowledge, in respect of the two most important of all events, the origin of things and the palingenesis of terrestrial life, what historical credit dare any serious thinker attach to the narratives of the fabrication of Eve, of the Fall, of the commerce between the Bene Elohim and the daughters of men, which lie between the creational and the diluvial legends?
The point, however, is that Elohim is a term equivalent to Red Indian Wakan, Fijian Kahu, Maori or Melanesian Mana, meaning the 'supernatural, the vaguely powerful in fact X. This particular example of Elohim was a phantasm of the dead, but Elohim is also used of the highest Divine Being, therefore the highest Divine Being is of the same genus as a ghost so Mr. Huxley reasons.
Somewhat later, in the visions of Zechariah, angels play a great part; they are sometimes spoken of as "men," sometimes as mal'akh, and the Mal'akh Yahweh seems to hold a certain primacy among them. Similarly in Job the bne Elohim, sons of God, appear as attendants of God, and amongst them Satan, still in his rôle of public prosecutor, the defendant being Job.
In the earlier Hebrew Version Yahweh smells the sweet savour of Noah's burnt offering and says in his heart he will no more destroy every living creature as he had done; while in the later Hebrew Version Elohim, after remembering Noah and causing the waters to abate, establishes his covenant to the same effect, and, as a sign of the covenant, sets his bow in the clouds.
Then said Saul to his servant, But behold if we go, what shall we bring the man? for the bread is spent in our vessels and there is not a present to bring to the man of Elohim. What have we? And the servant answered Saul again and said, Behold I have in my hand the fourth part of a shekel of silver: that will I give to the man of Elohim to tell us our way.
Hence, the receiver of life is a goddess equally with the giver of life, and indeed, Ishtar and Allatu are but the two aspects of one and the same phenomenon. Allatu signifies 'strength. The name is related to the Arabic Allah and the Hebrew Eloah and Elohim. The same meaning strength, power, rule attaches to many of the names of the gods of the Semites: Adôn, Etana, Baal, El, and the like.
Before Bel, then, the other gods faded as the Elohim did before Jahveh, with the possible difference that there were more to fade sixty-five thousand, Assurnatsipal, in an inscription, declared. Over that army Bel-Marduk acquired the title, perhaps significant, of Bel-Kissat, Lord of Hosts. Yet it was less as a usurper than as an absorber that the ascension was achieved.
Do we say with Abraham, 'O my people, I am clear of all these things which rise and set, which are born and die, which begin and end in time, and turn my face to him that made heaven and earth! If so, how is it that we see people everywhere worshipping not idols of wood and stone, but other things, all manner of things beside God, and saying, 'These are my Elohim.
And he seems to have used the compound Jehovah Aleim in the first portion of his work in order to impress upon the reader that Jehovah, of whom he goes on to speak in the later portions, is the same Great Being who is called simply Elohim by the older writer, and notably in the first account of the creation."
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