El

אל


From the root Ul (אול) or Il (איל), which may originally have been written as Eyl (איל) = "to be mighty"; the concept of El thus gives a "mighty one" or "hero", and suggests something similar to the Greek heroes who preceded the Olympian deities (e.g. Zeus in his sacred-king capacity).

The word is used both for the Kena'ani father-god and as a straighforward human adjective - meaning "strong", "mighty", "powerful". See for example Ezekiel 31:11, where El Goyim - אל גוים means "the mighty one of the nations", which is an epithet for Nebuchadnezzar II.

The plural is Elim (אלים), or sometimes Eylim (אילים). The multiple plural is Elohim (אלהים).

El was the Phoenician Zeus, and in Ugaritic texts from 1400 BCE onwards (from which later Yisra-Eli poetry was mostly derived) - is called "Bull-El". He may appear in the Tanach as the Golden Calf of Exodus 32:1/6, though this is more likely his Egyptian counterpart, Hor (Horus). He definitely appears as Yerav-Am's (Jeroboam's) Golden Calf in 1 Kings 12:28 and as Tsidki-Yah's (Zedekiah's) impersonation of YHVH as an iron-horned bull in 1 Kings 22:11. A detailed and illustrated account of the ancient bull-cults of the Mediterranean can be found here).

In Yehudit prose the word El as the name of the god almost never appears alone, but is attached to some epithet or attribute e.g. El Elyon (אֵל עֶלְיוֹן - Genesis 14:20), El Shadai (אֵל שַׁדַּי - Genesis 17:1), El ha Shamayim (אֵל הַשָּׁמָיִם - Psalm 136:26), El Elohey Yisra-El (אֵל אֱלֹהֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל - Genesis 33:20), YHVH El Elohim, El Elim, El Beit-El (אֵל בֵּית אֵל - Genesis 35:7) and others; though many of those at the last link are names that you will not find in the Tanach, but only in the prayers of Judaism, which is to say prayers written after the fall of Yeru-Shala'im in 70 CE.

Ba, the Egyptian "soul"

In order to understand the Semitic/Arabic/Phoenician concept of El as god/s we need to see them, rather than "Him", as the natural animistic forces of the universe being perceived as kinetic impulses, very much in the primitive/Greek manner. El was not a single divinity but a compound term for the atavistic belief that within every living being there is a spirit or force of life that is extinguishable; the "Élan Vital", in Bergson's terminology, the Ba, in the ancient Egyptian.

In terms of the Kena'ani pantheon, El was the great father of the gods, whose son Ba'al ruled in his place, much as Zeus ruled in Chronos' place in the Phoenician legends that preceded the Greek.

An El was believed to inhabit virtually every living organism, but nothing more so than the oak tree, whose longevity (some oaks can live up to five hundred years) and whose remarkable capacity to draw lightning, make it an obvious tree to associate with the deity. Hence the Yehudit word for oak tree is Elon (אלון), which quite literally means "the place where the god lives".

Eylim = "trees" was the second station of the Beney Yisra-El in the wilderness; there were twelve wells and seventy palm trees according to Exodus 15:27, 16:1 and Numbers 33:9; both of them significant numbers in the realms of Yisra-Eli mythology. Clearly from this the original gods were tree gods, a statement reinforced by the fact that the Chaldean word for a tree is Ilan (אילן).

The name Elohim (the multiple plural of El) may simply have been a variant among Middle Eastern variants of the same name, which, as noted above, was El among the Beney Chet (Hittites) and at Ugarit, Il or Ilum among the South Arabians, Ilu among the Assyrians and Babylonians, El among the Beney Kena'an, al-Lah to the pre-Moslems of the Hejaz. There is also Eloha (אלה), in Deuteronomy 32:17, used to mean gods or deities in general, and occasionally used elsewhere to mean idols, though generally Lo-Elohim (לא-אלהים) = non-gods is used for this.

"Mighty one" also means "hero" in the Greek sense, and is used specifically in this way for Shimshon (Samson) and Nimrod; however the Yehudit generally uses GIBOR (גבור) in such human contexts.

El also has the meaning of "motion", "direction", "impulse", "kinesis" etc. Hence the contemporary Israeli airline El Al - literally "forwards and upwards".

Elah (אלא) in Kings 4:18 means a terebinth-oak; elsewhere spelled אלה. This may lead to confusion with the root אלה = "to swear", "curse", "lament"; but that in fact comes from the root YALAL (ילל) or ALAL (אלל). The Hiphil form of that root means "to bind with an oath" or "to confirm a covenant by means of an oath" and is an alternative to Shev'a (שבע), as in the town of Be'er Sheva. Having said which, it is entirely possible that, very anciently, YALAL and ALAL developed as independent roots from the word EL, precisely because of its sacredness.

In Psalm 8:6; 82:1; 97:7 and 138:1 Elohim is used to denote angels, though modern orthodox Judaism has difficulty with this concept, and so, as in the links given here, you will see that three of the four still translate Elohim as "God" or "gods". Nevertheless, we can deduce from this that the idea of angels was originally a means of reducing deities in order to establish YHVHist monotheism; as the replacement of "angels" by "gods" now is, only in reverse.

In Exodus 21:6 and 22:7/8 EL is used to mean "judges", though not in the same sense as Shophtim (שופתים), as in the Book of Judges.

Elohim (אלהים) is properly a multiple plural, in exactly the same way as Mayim (מיים) for "water", but it is used in the singular to denote monotheism (all gods are really the same One god). Originally Elohim denoted the pantheon as a cosmic unity, in which sense it was also used as a singular form. The term also includes, and sometimes specifically intends, goddesses.

Ha Elohim (האלהים) generally signified "the One god" but from the many contexts in which it is used, the prefictual definite article (Ha - ה) seems to infer "the gods" in the sense of the pre-monotheistic pantheon.

The month of Elul (אלול) is the sixth month, which confirms that El was originally only one god amongst the twelve calendric deities, or Tseva'ot ("hosts") who dominated the pantheon.

Elil (אליל) is used in Jeremiah 14:14 to mean "vain" - a reference to idol-worship.

El was originally either an oak-tree or storm or sky god (the three are always linked; cf Jupiter etc). Eventually he became all three. Modern feminism has conjectured that there may have been a female equivalent named Eloha (as Ouranos was the masculine equivalent of the earlier Ourania), and even that Eloha came first and was later masculinised. In fact, the Kabbalistic work known as the Zohar had already made the same conjecture centuries before, and found confirming evidence in the Book of Job - click here.

Was El a variant of, or source for, Hel - Helios? Hel is the Nordic devil-god, the brightest star who fell. Lucifer in the Latin. See also my commentaries and the texts of the Egyptian Am-Tuat and Book of Gates, which appear to precede any of these.

Why does El become "The" in the Spanish languages?

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