Talk:El (god)

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[edit] Move to El

That "disambiguation" page only has one meaning: the one discussed on this page. Brianjd 12:23, 2004 Dec 16 (UTC)

[edit] Old talk

Entirely rewriten. The previous account seems to derive from confused and inaccurate and speculative tertiary material. Material dropped:

El was a sky god in Canaanite mythology, whose rain fertilized the earth, making agriculture possible. In a country dependent on rain, his role (and cult) were crucial, and he rapidly emerged as the chief deity in the Canaanite pantheon.

Someone's imginative POV? I know of no special connection between El and rain. Baal/Hadad was a storm god and rain god and Dagon a grain god (called by Sanchuniathon Zeus Ploughman).

El was the father of Baal in Ugaritic texts of the second millennium BCE.

Dubious. Mostly Baal/Hadad is son of Dagon in the Ugaritic texts or son of Sky (that is Uranus or Babylonian Anu) in other texts.

He was apparently adopted by the Israelite scribes, who lived in the southern hill district of the region and conflated with Yahweh.

Source for this POV is not given. The theory ignores altogether the presence of root ‘l in early Amurru and South Arabic names and the presence of the name ‘el in so many Israelite names. I did mention the theory of conflation with some accept and some do not. But I've no wish here to go through the interminable theories and hypotheses, none of them demonstrable. An article Theories on the development of Israelite and Judaean religion might be a place for more complete summaries giving names and sources.

Scholars identify the former with the divine attribute of justice and the latter with the attribute of punishment.

A commentator at Talk:The names of God in Judaism says the latter was identified with "mercy" rather than punishment. Sources are needed to validate the correct interpretation. Perhaps there are different schools of interpretation. Good references needed. But this has nothing to do with the name Ēl in any case.

In the book of Genesis the plural noun Elohim is found coupled with a singular verb, so biblical scholars have euphemized the plural as an abstraction meaning "divine majesty," although there is little precedent context for such an interpretation.

Euphemize? The possible "plural of majesty" idea appears more coherently in The names of God in Judaism. There are other explantions. But explanations are secondary. In the vast majority of cases in the Tanakh where Elohim appears as subject of a verb, the verb is singular, not plural. That is a fact of Classical Hebrew.

In the Genesis creation account (Genesis 1-2) , the word Elohim is used in reference to creation. Of course, biblical scholars resist making any equivalences between Canaanite myths and the Jewish Torah, but if they did, a literal rendition of the first verse in Genesis might be: In the beginning, when the Els made the heavens and the earth...

Biblical scholars have been using the Ugaritic texts to shed light on Biblical Hebrew since they were first published. Most don't resist such commentary. They may honestly disagree about things. But it is simply and clearly a fact that in Hebrew Elohim can be either singular or plural. When it govens a verb, the verb indicate whether it is singular or plural. In other cases context indicates. A translation as Els would be absurd. Els is not English and so not a translation. One might translate as "gods", e.g. "when gods made the heavens and the earth". But that would be an inaccurate translation is it mispresents the verb form which is singular (and masculine) which indicates the subject of the verb must singular and masculine. One might translate as "when gods, he made the heavens and the earth" to get the some of the effect of what looks like a plural form governing a masculine singular verb. But doing that thousands of times throughout the Tanakh would be awkward and certainly not indicate what the writers intended. They surely were not intentionally writing bad Hebrew grammar. Accordingly Elohim to them was acceptable as a masculine, singular form. To translate by supposed etymology rather than by meaning is not good translation.

Combining the new knowledge from Ugarit with the Dead Sea scrolls yields a new rendering of Deuteronomy 32:8-9: When El Most High gave to the races their patrimony, when he divided the sons of men, he fixed the bounds of the nations according to the number of the Sons of El. Yahweh's portion is his people, Jacob his allotted patrimony. Thus, each of the world's seventy races is given its own patron god, or "Son of El," a title in Ugarit common for the high spiritual gods assembled on Mount Tsephon. This differs from the later Masoretic texts, upon which the Authorized Version was based, which emend the end of verse 8 to "sons of Israel." The discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls help establish the earlier role of Ugaritic El as the god who oversaw the creation of mankind. It also sheds new light on how Yahweh calls out his people: he had to choose his people from among the races already allotted to the seventy divine Sons of El.

This was confused and sloppy. The form El which appears twice in the supposed translation is not in any Hebrew text of this pasage. The original texts only have the names `Elyôn 'Most High', and in a Dead Sea Scroll fragment the name Elohim in the phrase benai Elohim 'Sons of God'. But that last expression was hardly new as "sons of God" appears in some Septuagint texts (and most Septuagint texts read angels of God). Ugaritic El's mountain was not Tsephon or Zaphon but Lil. A full discussion of the paasage now appears in the article `Elyôn with a shorter mention here and a link. The best place for a discussion would probably be a new article Sons of God about Biblical passages mentioning the Sons of Elohim along with later commentary and legendary expansions and interpretations of such passages. Jallan 20:18, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)


Okay regardless of the squabble, why isn't El mentioned at all as it refers to the Canaanites? Editing is one thing, but outright deletion pertinent information is akin to censorship.

[edit] El and Allah

I have been told they are cognate. Any evidence for this?

Well of course muslims would want to consider El to be Allah. If they weren't one and the same, Islam would have some explaining to do. --metta, The Sunborn ☥ 07:48, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I suspect the question referred to linguistic evidence. thx1138 09:44, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
They are cognate. "god" in Arabic is " 'ilah" (the "a" is a dagger alif). "The god" or "God" is al-ilah, which become "Allah" (second "a" is again a dagger alif). So, it is literally, "the El" or "the god."
Yom 04:42, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why were the articles separated?

This article used to include a discussion of the Canaanite El as well. Why were the articles separated? Is it too much to ask that we include the possibility of connections between Canaanite and Abrahamic theology?

The articles should be recombined.--Rob117 22:55, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Absolutely, it is silly to separate them. --Zero 12:29, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. Particularly since a cursory review of them seems to indicate they are 90% the same article, one with more 'pagan' side-comments, the other with more 'Israelite/Judaic'. --patton1138 17:25, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

It is in no way too much to include the possibility of any kind of theories. All theories should be welcome to be mentioned. But I really do think that the use of the word for the Biblical god and the word used as a name or explicit title of a Canaanite god should be treated in two distinct articles. There is a clear difference in how the word is used. If there could be a connection, this can be mentioned without any controversy, but the two articles should be separated. Summer Song 02:16, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

The biblical god already has articles- Yahweh and Names of God in Judaism. This article focuses on the Canaanite god and includes material about his relation to the Israelite god.--Rob117 01:37, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Children

"El had fathered many gods, but most important were Hadad, Yaw and Mot, each of whom has similar attributes to the Greco-Roman gods Zeus, Ophion and Thanatos respectively. Ancient Greek mythographers identified El with Cronus (not Chronos)."

With this whole thing of equating El and his children to the Greek gods, shouldn't we be listing Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades? Not Zeus, Ophion, and Thanatos? -- MasterXiam 03:57, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

The two sentences add up to some utter silliness. There's no connection between the West Asian gods and the IE Greek and Roman ones beyond the purely accidental. The article neds some pruning. PiCo 09:29, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
KTU 1.1 IV 14 lists "Yahweh" and refers to that god as a son of El. I'm guessing we should add this along with the other gods who were sons of 'El' (if we can get clear sources;I'd say we should show a source for each offspring though it does get confusing all these myths). Obviously won't use KTU but secondary sources that refer to KTU so we can just argue reliability. El is derivative of the earlier dated god Anu, which seems to be missing as a reference (kind of obvious really given the Sumerian mythology easily predates the lot and seems to have been copied wholesale into the likes the Tanakh and obviously the OT). OK on this ? Ttiotsw 12:40, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed move

What do you guys think about moving El (god) to El (mythology)? Seems to be the consensus in other articles that were formerly named "(god)" or "(goddess)". -Silence 03:09, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Superman's name and Jewish creators

I am curious: Superman's real name is Kal-El ("El" being his family name, as he was born to parents Jor-El and Lara), and his creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, are Jewish (often considered an inspiration for why Superman wanders the Earth an immigrant, his homeland lost to him long ago). Is this relevant? It may not be, considering his name was originally written "Kal-L," but I wanted to put it out there should you guys find the info useful... 67.100.45.171 10:08, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Kal= ancient hellenenic for "wood" El= ancient hellenic word for "light" or "god" when in the beginning of a word, "darkness" or "evil" when at the end of a word. Ell-as is translated as the "mighty people" or "people of light" Kal El would then be translated today as "the staff of darkness or evil". A mistake, considering Superman is not an evil character, but it sounds better than "El-Kal".

[edit] el as a female deity?

 In the Isrealit/Christian bible, most of which have been most receintly translated from
latin, El or as the word means "of" is a female diety, daughter of Jethro, that saved moses's
life from god's designs to kill moses for returning to egypt, she circumsized moses and
married moses.  El as such is a translation of "of".  In as such el is a refference to

pre-isrealit judain belief that god is the mother and from whom they are born. A tribal phenomina

know all aroung the world even to egyptian, thought they are geared more toward the father god
and the mother goddess culture, the egyptians that is.  Saddly enough ,or maybe not, el
is "kind" of generic much like the word jew once was. to be a jew was to be the son of the
mother and not the father, el was to be "of" but not nessicarally a named "of".

[edit] Tanakh = Old Testament or Hebrew Bible

I'm wondering about adding either "Old Testament" or "Hebrew Bible" alongside Tanakh in the section header. I think the majority of Christians do not know that the terms are similar and, although not precisely the same are functionally identical at the popular level. Any objections? JodyB talk 12:38, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pointless header

"Ēl in the greater Levant" is an exact repetition of "Ēl in Proto-Sinaitic, Phoenician, Aramaic, and Hittite texts"

[edit] El = "mighty"

In Hebrew, does "El" mean "mighty"? The Elijah page says that it might mean "Yah is mighty." Or is "mighty" just the root meaning? Leadwind (talk) 04:48, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

'El' means mighty or god. 'Elijah' would mean Jah/Yahweh is mighty or Jah is god. (see also theophoric name)

--Editor2020 (talk) 02:27, 7 February 2008 (UTC)