What makes the word Elohim even more intriguing is that it didn't originate with the Hebrew tribe, a relatively late, historically vague variation on the human animal. The word originated with the Ugarites, a tribe that preceded the uncertain arrival of the Hebrews in Canaan. They were likely swallowed up by the Hebrews in one of the latter's many attempts to unite their fellow Canaanites under their own tribal king--a conclusion reinforced by the fact that the Hebrews adopted the Ugarite name for God, Elohim.
In Ugarite mythology, Elohim was the council of the gods and goddesses, united as one Being, but a Being with many aspects. In essence, this Ugarite/Hebrew concept of God--the seed of the Judeo-Christian God--is similar to the polytheism of ancient pagan Rome and Greece, or to the many deities of Hinduism, who are all understood to be individual manifestations of specific aspects of a Divinity united in its universal Oneness.
The pagans weren't so simplistic that they would believe that their little tribal god or gods was the One true and universal Spirit (what Luke Skywalker thinks of as the Force)--as Yahweh, a minor thunder deity in the Ugarite pantheon who Moses helped to usurp the throne of Elohim and create monotheism, was originally to the Hebrew tribe: that is, a local tribal thunder deity, male and warlike and entirely patriarchal. The pagans simply recognized--as the early Hebrews did, which is one reason the nationalists among them had trouble separating the boys from their luscious pagan priestess neighbors--that the One God has many, let's say..."allegorical" aspects.
So this was what I was explaining to Biker Chick before she read my piece on the computer. And when she finished reading, and had read the part about Nature's God being pluralistic and multicultural, she knew exactly what I was talking about.
And she gave me a big smile. And she said that it was good.
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