Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/451

 ELMO

393

ELOHIM

Abbot Ermenrich (c. 845), author of the life of iSt. Solus which may be found in the fourth volume of the "Acta Sanctorum" of Mabillon. Adalbero, a monk of this abbey, was made Bishop of Augsburg in 894. Abbot Lindebert became Archbishop of Mainz, as also did Abbot Hatto (891). St. Gebhard, Abbot of EU- wangen, became Bishop of Augsburg in 995. Abbot Milo about the middle of the tenth century was one of the visitors appointed for the visitation of the famous Abbey of St. Gall. Nothing is known of the property connected with EUwangen during the period of its Benedictine history, but in the eighteenth century, after it had passed into the hands of the secular canons, its possessions included the court manor of EUwangen, the manors of Taxstell, Neuler, Rothlein. Tannenburg, Wasseralfingen, .\bts-Gmundt, Kockenburg near the town of Aalen, Henchlingen on the River Lein, and Lantern. Most of the ecclesiastical buildings still ex- ist, though they are no longer used for religious pur- poses. Since the secularization they have been held by the State and used for state purposes.

M.tBlLLOX. Annales O.S.B. (Paris. 1704), II. 152. 204; III, 292; IV, 97; Mabillon. Ada SS. (Venice, 1734). IV; Kuex, Collectio Scriptorum (Ulm, 1755), 50; Buschixg. A new system of Geography (London, 1752), \, 169; Yepes, Coronica General de la Orden de S. Benito (1609), index; Bush in Kirchenlex., s. v.

G. E. Hind. Elmo, S.^iNT. See Peter Gonzalez, Saint. Elne, Diocese of. See Perpign.vn. Elne, Synod of. See Perpignan.

Elohim (Sept., SeAs; Vulg., Deus) is the common name for God. It is a plural form, but " the usage of the language gives no support to the supposition that we have in the plural form 'Elohim, as applied to the God of Israel, the remains of an early polytheism, or at least a combination with the higher spiritual beings" (Kautzsch). Grammarians call it a plural of majesty or of rank, or of abstraction, or of magnitude (Gesen- ius, Grammatik, 27th ed., nn. 124 g, 1.32 h). The Ethiopic plural amlak has become a proper name of God. Hoffmann has pointed out an analogous plural ellm in the Phoenician inscriptions ( I^eber einige phon. Inschr., 1S89, pp. 17 sqq.), and Barton has shown that in the tablets from El-Amarna the plural form Hani replaces the singular more than forty times (Proceed- ings of the American Oriental Society, 21-23 April, 1892, pp. cxcvi-cxcix).

Etymology. — 'Elohim has been explained as a plural form of 'Eludh or as a plural derivative of 'El. Those who adhere to the former explanation do not agree as to the derivation of 'El6dh. There is no such verbal stem as 'alah in Hebrew; but the Arabist Fleischer, Franz Delitzsch, and others appeal to the Arabic 'aliha, meaning "to be filled with dread", "anxiously to seek refuge", so that 'ilah i'elddh) would mean in the fir.st place "dread", then the object of dread. Gen., xxxi, 42, 53, where God is called "the fear of Isaac", Is., viii, 1.3, and Ps. l.xxv, 12, appear to sup- port this view. But the fact that 'aliha is probably not an independent verbal stem but only a denomina- tive from ilah, signifying originally " posses,sed of God" (cf. ipdovcridl^eiv, Soi^oi-ai') renders the ex- planation more than precarious. There is no more probability in the contention of Ewald, Dillmann, and others that the verbal stem, 'aldh means "to be mighty", and is to be regarded as a by-form of the stem_ 'aldli: that, therefore, 'Etodh grows out of 'dldh as 'El springs from 'dlah Baethgen (Beit rage, 297) has pointed out that of the fifty-seven occurrences of 'Elodh forty-one belong to the Book of Job, and the others to late texts or poetic passages. Hence he agrees with Buhl in maintaining that the singular form 'Elodh came into existence only after the plural form 'Elohim had been long in common use; in this case, a singular was supplied for its pre-existent plural. But even admitting 'Elohim to be the prior

form, its etymology has not thus far been satisfactor- ily explained. The ancient Jewish and the early ec- clesiastical writers agree with many modern scholars in deriving 'Elohim from 'El, but there is a great differ- ence of opinion as to the method of derivation. Nestle (Theol. Stud, aus Wiirt., 1882, pp. 243 sqq.) supposes that the plural has arisen by the insertion of an artificial h, like the Hebrew 'Smdhoth (maidens) from 'dmdh. Buhl (Gesenius' Hebriiisches Hand- wprterbuch, 12th ed., 1895, pp. 41 sq.) _considers 'Elohim as a sort, of augmentative form of 'El: but in spite of their disagreement as to the method of deriva- tion, these writers are one in supposing that in early Hebrew the singular of the word signifying God was 'El, and its plural form 'Eloltim: and that only more reeent_times coined the singular form 'Elodh, thus giv- ing 'Elohim a grammaticallj' correct corjespondent. Lagrange, however, maintains that 'Elohim and 'Elodh are derived collaterally and independently from 'El.

The Use of the TTorrf. — The Hebrews had three com- mon names for God, 'El, 'Elohim, and 'Elddh: besides, they had the proper name Yahweh. Nestle is author- ity for the statement that Yahweh occurs about six thousand times in the Old Testament, while all the common names of God taken together do not occur half as often. The name 'Elohim is found 2570 times; 'ElOdh. 57 times [41 in Job; 4 in Pss.; 4 in Dan.; 2 in Hab.; 2 in Canticle of Moses (Deut., xxxii); 1 in Prov.; 1 in Is.; 1 in Par.; 1 in Neh. (II Esd.)]; 'El, 226 times CElim, 9 times). Lagrange (Etudes sur les religions .semitiques, Paris, 1905, p. 71) infers from Gen., xlvi, 3 (the most mighty God of thy father), Ex., vi, 3 (bythe name of God Almighty), and from the fact that '£7 replaces Yah in proper names, the con- clusion that 'El was at first a proper and personal name of God. Its great age may be shown from its general occurrence among all the Semitic races, and this in its turn may be illustrated by its presence in the proper names found in Gen., iv, 18; xxv, 13; xxxvi, 43. 'Elohim is not found among all the Semi- tic races; the Aramsans alone seem to have had an analogous form. It has been suggested that the name 'Elohim must have been formed after the descendants of Sem had separated into distinct na- tions.

Meaning of the Word. — If 'Elohim be regarded as derived from 'El, its original meaning would be "the strong one" according to Wellhausen's derivation of 'El from 'ul (Skizzen, III, 169); or "the foremost one", according to Noldeke's derivation of El from 'M or 'il, "to be in front" (Sitzungsberichte der ber- linischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1880, pp. 760 sqq.; 1882, pp. 1175 sqq.); or "the mighty one", ac- cording to Dillmann's derivation of 'El from 'alah or 'alay," to be mighty "(On Genesis, I, l);or, finally "He after whom one strives", " who is the goal of all human aspiration and endeavour", "to whom one has re- course in distress or when one is in need of guidance", "to whom one attaches oneself closely", coincidenli- bus interea bono et fine, according to the derivation of 'El from the preposition 'el, "to", advocated by La Place (cf. Lagarde, Uebersicht, etc., p. 167), Lagarde (op. cit., pp. 159 sqq.), Lagrange (Religions semitiques, pp. 79 sqq.), and others. A discussion of the argu- ments which militate for and against each of the fore- going derivations would lead us too far.

If we have recour.se to the use of the word 'Elohim in the study of its meaning, we find that in its proper sense it denotes either the trvie God or false gods, and nrietaphorically it is applied to judges, angels, and kings; and even accompanies other nouns, giving them a superlative meaning. The presence of the article, the singular construction of the word, and its context show with sufficient clearness whether it must be taken in its proper or its metaphorical sense, and what is its precise meaning in each case. Kautzsch