Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Pastor Mark Eddy" <markeddy AT adams.net>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Philip Engmann" <phil-eng AT ighmail.com>


> "The general Hebrew name for God is elohim (Myhilox<). Sometimes it is
> used with a definite article, sometimes without. Altogether it occurs
> 2555 times in the Hebrew Bible. In 2310 of these instances, it is used
> as the name of the living and true God, but in 245 passages it appears
> to be adopted in lower senses."[1]
>
> Kholenberger's and Swanson's Hebrew English Concordance to the Old
> Testament defines elohim as a masculine plural noun. The concordance
> lists all the occurrences of elohim in the Hebrew Old Testament and
> notes that elohim occurs 2600 times in the Biblia Hebraica
> Stuttgartensia (BHS)
>
> Which is which? Does elohim occur 2600 times or 2555 times in the Hebrew
> Bible?
This seems to depend on who does the counting. According to a search of the 
root word ELoHiYM in
BibleWorks there are 2602 occurrences of this word in 14 different forms 
(including the root with various
suffixes, prefixes and in construct form) in 2248 verses. The numbers are all 
close. Does the exact number
matter?
If you include the singular EL a BibleWorks search comes up with 6499 
occurrences with 22 forms in 4795
verses. If you had to, you could check each reference to see which form(s) 
may have been overlooked in the
first reference you cited.
Mark Eddy