Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Shoshanna and Jim:

Your arguments miss an important point, namely the 
linguistic one.

Tanakh was written to be accessible to human readers, and as 
such it uses speech that people understand. As a linguistic 
principle, it acknowledges that many things are called "god", 
to the point that when Elijah mocked the priests and prophets 
of Baal he used the royal plural for Baal, a linguistic 
practice that does not translate into the Biblical authors 
accepting the theological claims for the other gods as being 
valid. Tanakh could hardly be more clear in its rejection of 
those theological claims.

Similarly, the English word "god" is possibly the most 
undefined term in the language: its meaning ranges from 
"everything" (to the pantheist) to "nothing" (to the atheist) 
and almost everything between. So while I acknowledge only 
the one God of Tanakh as having a valid claim, I have no 
problem talking about the god(s) that other people worship as 
this is consistent with linguistic use. I see the same 
pattern in Tanakh.

Karl W. Randolph.

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