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 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 Asherahwas 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 EDEN ENIGMA: Do ancient carvings in the mountains of Türkiye (Turkey) carry memories of E.T. contact from the dawn of civilization? What secrets lie encoded in ancient carvings, artifacts, and cuneiform inscriptions found in the mountains of Ararat?
What do the Vikings have to do with these finds? What is the meaning of the mysterious wristwatch, pinecone, and "handbag" found on Bronze Age carvings around the world?
Forbidden knowledge revealed
What was the meaning of the cross before the advent of Christianity? How does an ancient seal recently excavated in Jerusalem overturn our understanding of religion and of history? What is the significance of 8,000-year-old human remains under the floor of a pub in Northern Ireland?
And what does any of this have to do with E.T. contact in the deep past and today? The Eden Enigma takes readers on a mind-altering journey in Türkiye and Armenia, back to the silent spring which followed the most recent ice age, back to a lost civilization to unearth vital information concerning the emergence of humanity. More
The Book of Enoch excluded from KJV Bible
It's a completely curated narrative called 'holy' and can't be questioned
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(MisunderstAndy) June 19, 2025: There are a lot of gods in the [allegedly monotheistic Judeo-Christian, written in polytheistic Israel/Palestine but appropriated in large part from super ancient Sumerian texts] Bible. Here's a video about those deities. The true history of the Hebrew Jewish national God
The original gods of Israel (El, Baal, Yahweh, Goddess Asherah)
(Stephan's History of the World) Nov. 18, 2024: This is a lecture on a chapter of the author's book, In Search of the Sublime, a world history of humanity's relentless pursuit of scientific truth, moral excellence, and enlightenment. Read the book for FREE at worldhistorybook.com
or buy it on Amazon:
amazon.com/Search-Sublime...
-Stephan P. Dinkgreve, MSc Theoretical Physics
Amsterdam
SOURCES
R. Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution, Harvard University Press, 2011.
R. Hendel, The Book of Genesis. Composition, Reception, and Interpretation, Brill, 2012.
R. Hendel, The Book of Genesis; A biography, Princeton University Press, 2013.
M. Smith, The Early History of God. Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, Eerdmans Publishing, 2002
Correction:
01:55 Some have noted that Yahweh was not part of the Canaanite Pantheon, which is to say, he is not mentioned in the Ugaritic text. I meant that in Israel, as we shall see, he was related to this pantheon, but this can be confusing.
03:05 The Bible itself explains "Israel" as "struggle with God," which seems to be folk etymology. Genesis is full of them. Here, the meaning of words was guessed at the time long after the original meaning was forgotten. "El rules" seems linguistically more sensible.
07:38 The Hebrew version of the Bible states “the children of Israel” instead of "the divine sons." The
"the divine sons" is part of the Greek translation of the Bible and also from a fragment from Qumran, making scholars believe that “the children of Israel" was a later alteration, to avoid the complications described on this slide.
Corrections
1:55
Some have noted that Yahweh was not part of the Canaanite Pantheon, as in, he is not mentioned in the Ugaritic text. I meant that in Israel, as we shall see, he was related to this pantheon, but this can be confusing.
The beginning of stories is not the real first point
The curious mistaken assumption about "creation" as understood in the West and in the Abrahamic faiths is that it is treated as absolute when it is no such thing. Any creation is The Creation, when it is just a story, a myth meant to explain current things. These narratives do not reveal existential questions. For example, say the God "created" Adam and Eve. They were not the first. They are just the current generation, the latest Adama (a group, not an individual). Eve was not the first woman in that story; Lilith was, but she's erased and divorced and sent away. What happened to the God's wife, Asherah? She was widely venerated as the Queen of Heaven in the past, but then all her temples were wiped out and her votive totem pole statues were smashed. They are found all the time, so widespread was devotion to her. That God, the God of the Bible, had a wife? He/It sure did.
Even if one could show that the Elohim, the gods, created humankind in their image, as is written, it was not the first creation of those means, merely this earthly vehicle, this generation of body (or bodies, koshas), not a "first creation" at all. It may be those gods think they did create something out of nothing, or bodies out of dust, and that may be. They are/were very advanced extraterrestrials/extradimensionals. But the us we imagine existing now existed before. There was karma in the past, and those old deeds have more to do with what happens to us now, what we experience seemingly by chance or fate.
Ven. Dr. Suwanda H. J. Sugunasiri, Ph.D.
The Buddha told a creation myth, not of a "first creation" but of humanoid life on earth. That "Genesis" is called the Agganna Sutta, the Discourse on Beginnings. The tale is wrapped in the power of karma because the Buddha, rather than being Buddhist, was a Karmavadin, a "Teacher of the Efficacy of Karma" or action. (One monk even reads into this tale an allegory about energy, photonic light, and its impact on matter here; see Dhamma Aboard Evolution, putting Buddhism right in line with science. Buddhism should not be put in line with mere materialistic science because it is metaphysical. That is, it goes beyond materialism to explain things).
The Agganna Sutta perhaps does not actually qualify as a creation myth because it does not say, "There was nothing and then there was this." Rather, no first point is asserted, discerned, or claimed. The Buddha may have seen one, but he did not state that. What he did state was that this plane was in such a way, and beings alighted on it. They came as they were, having (pre)existed elsewhere, and they began to devolve here. Surely there is evolution in Buddhism, but it is cyclical, bound up with devolution.
Having eaten, it's time to start making art.
So as for the "second moment" of creation, after they arrived, this happened. Then this happened. And on account of this, things became like that. Things were dependently originated. The cause, ultimately, was karma (deeds). Things devolved. Later, they will evolve again. And after that, they will devolve. This goes on and on. It is as if there were a garden called Earth, a great and beautiful place. Who made it? Did anyone make it? Others might have, or it might have just been.
Being can terraform platforms and places, bring life and set it a'rolling. Things might even originate on their own when circumstances permit -- such as when stardust, full of amino acids, crashes on suitable ground for organic things to arise. Or space traveling beings may have set up countless worlds.
Whatever the case, those organic "beings" who come to be are not beginning out of nothing. They have been, and they will be again, cyclically. Thiis is samsara, the endless round of rebirth. It is not the same being being reborn, but it is not quite right to say it is another as that does violence to the language. Ultimately, they are not the same. But conventionally, one having given rise to the other, they may be said to be the same string, the same line, the reappearing of the former version.
Then, having arrived, having devolved, beings became humanoid earthlings, and in the second moment, they did stuff -- art, civilization, farming, survival...karma, giving us what we have now. What we do matters. It will give future earthlings what they will have.
Proto-India: Indus Valley Civilization (IVC)
Reality is strange, much different than what it seems. We are seeing a tiny fraction and attempting to form whole theories. It is like looking through a pinhole into a mostly dark room and spinning an entire narrative from that fragment of data. It is like looking through a glass darkly.
It would be far better to first purify the mind/heart, see things with the third eye (pineal gland), and understand things in context. And most of that context extends long before this slice of life and goes on long after. In this way, undertaking "science" with a cleansed instrument of understanding, we will not be misled by our six senses or jump to conclusions or favor certain answers. And when we see things as they really are, we can be set free. The delusion entraps one, whereas the Truth sets one free.
The Second Moment of Creation | Civilizations | Episode 1 | PBS
(PBS) PBS is an American public broadcast service. Aug. 2, 2024: Watch more of this series with PBS Passport. Examine the formative role of art and the creative imagination in the forging of humanity itself.
Images and artifacts found in South America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Australia testify to the urge to develop civilizations. Liev Schreiber narrates. (Originally aired in 2018).
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Civilizations: Survey the history of art from antiquity to the present on a global scale. Civilizations reveals the role art and creative imagination have played in forging humanity and introduces viewers to works of beauty, ingenuity, and illumination across cultures. Download. #ancienthistory #worldhistory #anthropology #CivilizationsPBS
Lost in Translation: The Bible's Genesis 1 is NOT about the creation of the universe
(James Tabor) May 23, 2024: Lost in Translation Series. The very first verse of the Jewish-Christian Bible (Genesis 1:1), which millions can quote from heart, is mistranslated in almost all major versions and all languages with very few exceptions.
The reasons are simple, marketing and commercialism. Who would buy a Bible translation that does not begin with "In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth"?
This short exposition shows how the original Hebrew [though according to classicist Dr. David Ammon Hillman, the original was in Ancient Greek and the Hebrew was translated down from that by idiomatic radiation, not the other way around] has a completely different meaning.
It is not a philosophical or scientific statement -- but rather a description of the ordering of the chaotic, empty, water covered, wind swept wasteland that was planet earth when the "Force of All Forces" (Elohim, always plural, always "gods," never a God) began to bring order out of the random chaos.
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley
מהמלים בקשר את המלים ועל סמך המלים retired professor of religious studies/Christian origins at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte
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