Not for me. You either need to clarify words or thoughts better.
You wrote OURS.
You wrote OURS.
Grammar is REALLY not your forte.
I said, "Not unless you do...It's actually EloheNU isn't it? He's OURS and echad." The word "ours" is a possessive pronoun...it's first person plural, NOT because whatever is possessed is plural, but because what is possessed is shared by you AND me. Why do I have to explain the difference between adjectives and pronouns to you? "Ours gods" is not English.
If He is my God, He is Mine...if He is shared by you and me, He is Our God/Elohim. He is Ours....The paradox isn't solved. The FACT that we share faith in the same God makes him OURS, as reluctantly as you receive this fact. There is only one.
And no, we don't have the same God. Our doesn't apply to you.
Despite your claims...there are. not two Gods...Elohim Elohenu.
Actually, as Dr. Heiser, which you acknowledge as an language expert, proves context contradicts you.
Learn from basic English terms fish, sheep, lamb, etc.
I already said this is a specious argument.
Sheep is singular. Sheep is plural...they are homographs, or invariants. Its number is determined by context.
On the other hand, El is singular and Elohim is plural...They are not homographic, and follow completely different rules.
You've been discredited with each of your posts.
No I haven't either. When you have been refuted, your ignore my post and return to your original error as if you were laying the claim for the very first time.
Here's Dr. Heiser's words again.
Again, context determines the meaning of words and Elo-him is definitely singular in Genesis 1:26-27.
Well...yes and no, i'n'it? It's definitely singular when it says "He created." The verb form is singular. But then...It's definitely plural when He says, "let us create Man..." Both the particle and the verb form are first person plural.
It's a specious claim.
Have you heard of Dr. Michael Heiser from Logos bible software? Check out what he has to say about the morphology of elohim and how context determines the meaning.
...
As noted above, elohim is morphologically plural. Morphology refers to the "shape" or construction of a word - its form. As far as meaning, though, elohim can be either singular or plural depending on context. As anyone who has taken a language can testify, meaning is determined by context, not by a list of glosses in a dictionary (which are only OPTIONS – the translator must look to context for accuracy).
That is both the license and the loss for any translator. The translator, not being the author, does not always have the heart of the author in mind, and he always albeit inadvertently has his own particular leanings. Each language is a tool unto itself with quirks and idiosyncrasies that do not easily translate well. I've said this, and as a translator, experienced it. The speaker I was interpreting into French used American puns to illustrate the points he was making. There were no equivalent French puns. I had to improvise off the cuff.
If you know Hebrew well enough, you know the OT is rife with serendipitous plays on words: Says Jeremiah, "I see the branch of an almond tree." Says God, "You see well...for I WATCH over my word to perform it." This makes not sense translated into English...but in Hebrew, it will change the way Jeremiah looks at an almond branch forever. It's a pun in Hebrew.
More specifically, the meaning of any occurrence of elohim must be discerned in three ways:
A. Grammatical indications elsewhere in the text that help to determine if a singular or plural meaning is meant.
So when it says, "Let US create..." where verb and pronoun are plural, you have a plural that is sustainable. Elohim.
B. Grammatical rules in Hebrew that are true in the language as a whole.
When you have "He created," and the verb form is singular, the claim to the singular is sustainable: echad
C. Historical / Logical context.
Ahhh...then you rely on traditions and assume that tradition does not nullify scripture. Fallacious assumption.
To illustrate, consider words in English such as:
"deer", "sheep", "fish" - the point is you need other words to help you tell if one or more than one of these animals is meant. Sometimes these other words are verbs that help you tell. Compare the two examples::
1) "The sheep is lost" - the word "is" is a singular verb (It goes with a singular subject; one wouldn't say, for example, "I are lost" - you would use a verb that goes with the singular subject ("I am lost").
2) "The sheep are lost" - the word "are" is a plural verb (again, another word next to our noun "sheep" tells us in this case that plural sheep are meant.
Specious.; I've pointed this out now four times. You cannot compare two completely different languages in this way unless you're completely ignorant of linguistic principles.
All of this is just basic grammar - and every language has grammar. Biblical Hebrew has its own ways of telling us if elohim means ONE person or many gods. It matches the noun elohim to singular or plural verbs, or with singular or plural pronouns (to use "sheep" again as an example:
"Those sheep are white"). The word "those" is what's called a demonstrative pronoun - it automatically tells us that sheep in this sentence is meant to be understood as a plural.
And interestingly enough This/these and that/those are the only two adjectives in the entire English language that are inflected, that have both a singular and a plural form. They are not a rule, but an exception. I use them to show kids what "agreement" meant in French, another moderately inflected language.
