Hey, this is John at the Bible Project. Last week, on the podcast, we began a conversation

about the identity of God in the Bible, and we quickly ran into a problem.

The word God in English is a terribly confusing, unclear word.

In Hebrew, the word translated as God is the word Elohim.

Elohim is a word that refers to a type of being, a spiritual being, and it can refer to

spiritual beings of all kinds.

And that's the big takeaway from last week. Elohim, translated in your Bible as God,

doesn't strictly mean the all-powerful Creator God. It actually refers to a wide swath

of spiritual beings, lowercase G gods.

These beings exist, they have power, and they're referred to in Scripture often.

According to the biblical authors, there are other Elohim, spiritual beings, and those

spiritual beings as Paul the Apostle called them, can be called God's poor lords, like

beings that do have power.

So the Bible talks about other Elohim, but the Bible also has verses like this.

I am the first, and I am the last, besides me, there is no Elohim.

So which is it? Are there other gods?

So it is monotheism, even a helpful word, to describe what ancient Israelites believe

about Yahweh among all the other Elohim.

Why this apparent contradiction will get into that today on this episode. Thanks for joining

us.

Here we go.

Alright, so we're talking about God.

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