The Names of God

 

In the illustrations above (which are from tanakh.info), we see Gen 1:26,27 in several related texts and languages. The translation of these verses in my JPS Tanakh is as follows:

"And God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth.'" 27And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."

Many have asked who God was talking to in Gen 1:26, since He had not yet created humankind. Were there other "gods" with him, who were to be co-creators? This suspicion is increased in the next verse, where "God" is literally "the gods." This is explained by invoking an "honorific plural," which apparently did become a feature of Biblical Hebrew, but seems not to exist in Hebrew's most closely related sister languages, Aramaic and Arabic.

In the illustrations for 1:26, we see that only the two Hebrew texts. the Samaritan and the Masoretic, have the Elohim (plural) form, the Aramaic texts have YeYa, Elah, or Alaha. In the illustration for 1:27

we see the same pattern. And yet all of the texts of 1:26 say, "our image," and "our likeness." In the texts for 1:27, all say "his image," and either "the image of Elohim," or "the image of Elah," or "the image of Alaha."

(to be continued)

Text Copyright © 2023 by Donald C. Traxler. I do not own the illustrations.