Dunemeister
Well-Known Member
Not to anyone who understands it.
Feel free to educate yourself a bit about circular logic (from an easy to read source) and then give your argument another shot if you like.
I was being a bit facetious, which doesn't always come through well in writing.
I am assuming the Jews understood their own language as well, they could have used the singular term as they later did but they didn't. I assume the original author understood his own language.
What you are trying to argue is akin to saying that 3,000 years from now, Americans will better understand the intent of each word in the U.S. Constitution than the original authors... I don't think so.
In 3000 years, the Americans will have a whole lot of case law that will help them understand the constitution, and they will use that case law (among other things, such as linguistic history) to reconstruct the original authors' intent.
So it is here. The Jewish stewards of the book of Genesis uses relatively recent Hebrew. The book was composed during the Babylonian captivity, most likely. So it's not all that difficult to reconstruct the meaning. As it turns out, ancient Hebrew is similar to ancient Babylonian and Sumerian and Egyptian in that it can (and, as I argue, in this case does) use plural nouns to refer to singular entities in order to emphasize their majesty. Kings and individual gods were afforded this honor regularly. To argue that "Elohim" actually denotes a plurality of beings, you need further argument.
Besides, the fact that the entire Old testament speaks of God in singular terms, I think we're safe to assume that it is best to interpret the plural noun Elohim as denoting a singular deity but connoting supreme majesty -- likely over against Babylonian deities.