Ancient Languages - Tumblr Posts

This is just all wrong.

Frist, in Biblical Hebrew the ending 'im' (ימ) is MASCULINE plural. Which could be its own discussion but the Scholarship is split so I won't go into that here.

Second, the word Elohim (אלהימ) is not "the name for the creative power in Genesis" it is a noun meaning 'god' or 'gods' and can refer to either the God of the Hebrews or false gods. It appears continuously in the Old Testament not just Genesis.

Thirdly, YHWH (יהןה) IS the name of God. And it doesn't appear much later it appears in Genesis 2 (and there are some suggestions as to why these chapters use different words for God but that's a different post).

'Al Shaddai' is actually 'el Shaddai' (אל שדד) the 'el' coming from 'elohim' and it means 'God Almighty'. While it does come later it is not a name for the God of the Bible.

The origin of the word Jehovah is very long but basically Jewish people would not say YHWH out loud and so would substitute the word 'adonai' (אדני) which means 'Lord' or 'Master' and can also refer to humans. Jehovah comes from the Latin of the Hebrew word that is produced when you take the vowels of 'adonai' and place them over the Hebrew letters YHWH. It is not a "mispronunciation" it is an evolution of a reading tradition.

(Edit: added tags.)