Hebrew Name
Elohim
'Elohim
אֱלֹהִים
- Meaning
- 'God' — grammatically plural, but taking singular verbs when referring to the God of Israel.
- Occurrences
- ~2,600 times
- First occurrence
- Genesis 1:1
- Languages
- Biblical Hebrew
Pronunciation
el-oh-HEEM
Origin
Plural of Eloah, itself related to the common Semitic El. Used of the God of Israel, of foreign gods, of angels or divine beings (Psalm 82), and even of human judges in some readings.
Usage & scribal practice
Opens the Bible: 'In the beginning Elohim created.' The singular verb bara with a plural noun is one of the most discussed grammatical features in Scripture.
Cross-references
Genesis 1:1
'In the beginning God (Elohim) created the heavens and the earth.'
Genesis 1:26
'Let us make man in our image' — plural cohortative.
Psalm 82:1
'God has taken his place in the divine council; among the elohim he holds judgment.'
Exodus 20:3
'You shall have no other elohim before me.'
How translations render it
Theories, myths & conspiracy claims
Each claim is stated as its proponents state it, then assessed against the manuscript and linguistic evidence.
The plural proves the Trinity
The claim: Elohim's plural form and the 'let us' of Genesis 1:26 reveal plurality within God.
Assessment: A long-standing Christian reading, but grammatically weak on its own: Hebrew uses plurals of majesty and abstraction widely (e.g. adonim, 'lord'). Most Christian scholars treat it as suggestive at best and argue the Trinity from the New Testament instead.
Elohim means 'the gods' — i.e. ancient astronauts
The claim: Popularized by Erich von Däniken, Zecharia Sitchin, and the Raëlian movement: Elohim were physical extraterrestrial 'those who came from the sky'.
Assessment: Rests on invented etymologies and on Sitchin's Sumerian translations, which Assyriologists uniformly reject. The plural form is a normal feature of Semitic grammar; the singular verb agreement is fatal to the 'multiple beings' reading in Genesis 1.
The divine council
The claim: Psalm 82 and Deuteronomy 32:8 depict God among lesser elohim.
Assessment: Mainstream in current scholarship (Michael Heiser, Mark Smith). It is a claim about the Bible's own cosmology, not a conspiracy, though it is often flattened online into 'the Bible is polytheistic'.