What the Bible Talks About When It Talks About God (part 2)

 

Note: This post is meant to be read after reading part 1 of this series, where I lay some groundwork and introduce some important concepts.

When I was growing up, one of my parents' favorite Christian musicians was Amy Grant. And I remember, vividly, a song by her called El Shaddai.

 The lyrics of this song begin:

El Shaddai, El Shaddai
El Elyon na Adonai
Age to age You're still the same
By the power of the name 

And these lyrics represent an idea that was very prevalent in the theology I grew up with - that the various names for gods in the Bible are all just a bunch of different names for the same God. They would argue: of course these can't be names for different gods, because "I the Lord do not change" (Malachi 3:6) and "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8 - see also James 1:17). And while there are verses in the Bible that say that God doesn't change, that is a very different argument than saying that the perspectives of the Hebrew people regarding what God is like didn't change. 

Another common argument that is used to say that polytheism couldn't have been represented in the Bible is to point to Deuteronomy 6:4, which says that "the Lord [YHWH is used here] is one." This is used to argue that the Bible is saying that YHWH is the only god - but there's a few problems with this argument. First off, it assumes univocality - that every author in the Bible agreed on everything with every other author and no author ever wrote anything that contradicted another. But also, the interpretation of the phrase ignores another place in the Bible where the same language is used. When this verse says that God is one, it says "YHWH ehad", and that same word - ehad - is used in Song of Songs 6:9, when it says "my dove, my perfect one, is the only one." And this is not saying that she is the only woman in the whole world - it's saying she's the only one for me. It's about devotion, not existence.

So I would like to discuss various names of deities we find in the Bible. And for reasons which will soon become apparent, I am going to start with El Elyon.

El Elyon

People who believe that the Bible is Inerrant are trained not to see polytheism in the Bible. Their views about what the Bible is dictate that the Bible is not allowed to have any texts that represent polytheism. And yet, scholars see quite a bit of evidence for polytheism within the Biblical texts.

 

Perhaps the strongest case for polytheism within the Bible can be found in Deuteronomy 32:8-9: 

When the Most High apportioned the nations,
when he divided humankind,
he fixed the boundaries of the peoples
according to the number of the gods; (in Hebrew, this is the "bene elohim", and some later manuscripts tried to hide this by changing it to "bene Adam", or the "sons of man")
the Lord’s (YHWH) own portion was his people,
Jacob his allotted share.

When this passage says "the Most High", this is "Elyon", which sometimes shows up in the Bible as "El Elyon" (literally: "the Most High God"). And it is clear from this passage that Elyon and YHWH are not the same god, since Elyon is giving Israel to YHWH as an inheritance (and speaking of Israel as YHWH's inheritance is a theme that is repeated many times in the Hebrew Bible - we will return to this when we cover YHWH in this series). And not only that, but this passage implies that Elyon gave the other nations to other gods - or "bene elohim", as this passage states.

 

Now, note here that elohim can be a confusing term in the Bible, as it is sometimes used as a generic term for God (so it can be singular), but the word itself is grammatically plural and is sometimes used to speak of more than one god. And a discerning interpreter/translator has to be very careful about this and examine the surrounding verbiage to determine whether the singular or the plural is meant.

 

But to return to polytheism - there are other verses in the Bible that give a strong case for the idea of polytheism. Exodus 15:11 says "who is like you, O Lord (YHWH is used here), among the gods...". In Exodus 12:12, YHWH says that he's going to "execute judgements" on "the gods of Egypt" (and how can one execute judgements on something that doesn't exist?). 

 

And returning to Elyon, Psalm 82:1 shows us a picture of Elyon as the head of the pantheon (like Zeus in the Greek pantheon):

God [Elyon in the original Hebrew] has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods [elohim] he holds judgment...

Then in verse 6 of this same Psalm, it says:

I say, “You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you..."

And here it uses the term "elohim" again for "gods", and "children of the Most High" is the phrase "bene Elyon". And yes, at some point in Jewish history, it became custom to interpret this Psalm as talking about the Israelites (they become the bene Elyon), but when you take into context the mention of the "divine council" at the beginning of the Psalm, as well as some of the other passages I've brought up demonstrating polytheism, it makes more sense to understand the original intention of this Psalm as indicating that Elyon is judging the other gods.

 

 

 

The name "El Elyon" (the Most High God) shows up in a few places - one place of note being the story in Genesis 14:17-24, where Abraham (called Abram here) is blessed by King Melchizedek, whom the story says "was priest of God Most High [El Elyon]". And in this story, Melchizedek says in verses 19-20:

Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
maker of heaven and earth,
and blessed be God Most High,
who has delivered your enemies into your hand! 

Note something of interest here: according to this passage, the belief is that El Elyon is the creator - not YHWH (as Genesis 2:4 indicates). And this indicates that Abram was polytheistic, as other passages have him worshiping other gods. Just turn to the next chapter and Genesis 15:1 switches to talking about YHWH talking to Abram. So, as I argued in the first post of this series, there is a progression of ideas that starts with polytheism before we start seeing monolatrism (belief in many gods but worshiping only one) or henotheism (belief in many gods, but believing that the god you worship is the supreme god over all the others).