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| The God prior to God: El |
El means "god" or "deity" or as a proper name, El refers to any one of multiple major ancient Near Eastern deities.
El ("God") is a Northwest Semitic word. A rarer form, 'ila, represents the predicate form in the Old Akkadian and Amorite languages [8]. The word is derived from the Proto-Semitic *ʔil- [9]. Originally a Canaanite deity known as 'El, 'Al, or 'Il was the supreme god of the ancient Canaanite religion [10].
It has always been understood that there were many gods, which is clear from teh Bible even as henotheists and monotheists try to obscure that fact.
Scholars like Frank Moore Cross and Ignace Gelb speculate El may have also been the supreme god of East Semitic speakers in the Early Dynastic Period of Mesopotamia (circa 2900–circa 2350 BCE) [11, 12].
Among the Hittites, El was known as Elkunirša (Hittite 𒂖𒆪𒉌𒅕𒊭 Elkunīrša). Although El was given different appearances and meanings in different languages over time, the word continues to exist as El-, -il, or -el in compound proper noun phrases like Isra'el (Hebrew Yīsrāʾēl, Israēl, which means "El [God] persists or rules," Micha'el, Beth'el, and El'izabeth, most of which are theophoric given names. More: El (deity)
- The Monad (Gnosticism): the GOD prior to all other gods
- Creator of the physical world: "The Demiurge" Yaldabaoth (Yahweh, Jehovah, YHWH)
How to call upon the Monad (GOD)
The Elohim: Hebrew word meaning "gods." The word is plural. It can also mean "godhood," which is to say what beings who become gods are called. As an abstract noun it refers to the concept of "divinity." In the Jewish (Hebrew) Bible, it often takes singular verbal or pronominal agreement to refer to a single deity, particularly but not always the God of henotheistic and polytheistic Judaism, that later tried to claim itself only monotheistic. In other verses it takes plural agreement and refers to gods in the plural. Who were these other gods? God's wife Asherah was one. She (the Goddess) was well known. The other, El, is less known because it is hidden through the biblical texts, which were chosen for political and Roman imperial purposes.
The Devil before Satan
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