Israel and Humanity - Value is Elohim vis-à-vis the pagan ideas
§ 5.
VALUE OF THE WORD ELOHIM VIS-À-VIS PAGAN IDEAS.
Continuing our study, we meet a fact which the Scriptures testify on several occasions: that the Gentiles, when they were talking about the worship of Israel, did not speak [1] otherwise that had this been any polytheistic religion. Here is an example. When the ark of the covenant entered the camp of Israel, the Philistines terrified cry: "Woe to us! Who will deliver us from these mighty gods? These are the gods who struck the Egyptians with all kinds of plagues in the desert. [2]
Those who talk seriously they believed that the Jewish religion was polytheistic as their own? Such a mistake on their part would have nothing to surprise us, but this does not prove, is it necessary to say that the Mosaic replied to the idea that it did the pagans. The holy ark is driving this exclamation of terror involves the entire history of Israel, the Sinai, the Law and God who proclaims, and the Philistines could not ignore that this arch was a single deity. Their words betray simply pagan habits of language, they allow us to see how similar expressions have been infiltrating the monotheism which gradually has accommodated its beliefs in their ideas superimposing unit. There is an application of this law has consistently recognized today, according to which religious ideas, passing from one people to another, bend the particular genius of the race that takes. So is there any foreign words that are among those who adopt a special appearance and even the grammatical form of a new country, although this form is repugnant to the original language. The proof is that the sacred historian, though he belonged to a time when monotheism was already triumphant, was not shocked at all by phrases like this and he has never dreamed of correct in the monotheistic sense, some would have been easier than this correction. It uses instead the language either monotheistic and polytheistic language and we understand very well that in time the plural El ohieme , the gods, has become widely synonymous with our word abstract, Divinity. But the constant development of forms of language does not there have been times in the choice of words some theological concern.
The fact is that the name of El-ohieme , no evidence in any particular god pagan and was thus used by them in the plural to refer to all of their deities. If the introduction of [3] that name in monotheistic should be regarded as an unconscious influence of polytheism loss he would be surprised, and they have accepted a rather abstract name that the proper name of a god is closer to their religious conception. The plural El ohieme they have used in preference thus indicates a clear intention to serve the God of Israel alone was equivalent to all El ohieme pagans he absorbed all the divine in him and left no room for other deities. So it seems to us that this name they wanted a weapon against monotheism is rather an expression much more complete than if we had had a singular word.
We must beware of judging our own habits of speech. At a time when polytheism prevailed everywhere, the most natural and most eloquent both for Jews to express the idea that their God was the only God, it was precisely to call it a name meant the gods, that is to say, the whole Godhead, the heathen Olympus entirely concentrated in a single God. Thus Varro quoted with approval the words of the poet Valerius: "Jupiter Almighty Lord of kings, the world and the gods themselves, father and mother of the gods, one god and all gods together deus unus et omnes ". What more wonderful commentary could be found in El-ohieme word that these last words, he is the one God, because it represents all the gods together and it represents both the gods, because it is unique!
Plato offers us a remarkable example of the use of pagan formulas. It was monotheistic and personal conviction, however, because the environment in which he lived and the thousand influences of language, customs and beliefs, he frequently speaks of God as did the polytheists be used to designate either the genus : [4], just as they say: man , for men, sometimes plural: gods , the two terms are used sometimes interchangeably in the same sentence.
It is not difficult to find in the ancient pagan traces of this belief in a God, a synthesis of all others and that they were only different aspects. The rabbis refer to a party in which all the gods were worshiped and indeed the whole universal intolerance, which was one [5] of the dominant characteristics of paganism, sometimes led to such confusion between the many different beliefs that gave some idea of the true unity. There was no rigid dividing line between the pagan religions. The idea of a jealous God was unknown to them. The complete truth, the absolute alone has the exclusive right to show, while the error is mainly given to accept the most varied forms, for feeling how she relates, she feels the need to complement each other. It is true that in approaching and when combined together, the various errors disappear to give birth to truth, as well as chemical combinations in the body lose their special character to put on another quite different from its components .
