Radical Judaism_ Rethinking God and Tradition - Arthur Green [22]
This new situation created by monotheism is given subtle but dramatic expression in the generic Hebrew term for “god,” elohim. As anyone who knows even a bit of Hebrew will recognize, elohim is a plural form; its primary meaning is “gods.” There is a singular, eloha, but this form is almost never used in the Bible. When speaking about non-Israelite (or “false”) deities, elohim is treated as a full plural, requiring the use of plural verbs and adjectives, as in elohim aherim (Ex. 20:3), “other gods.” But when applied to the God of Israel, elohim is treated as though singular, as in bereshit bara’ (and not bare'u) elohim, “In the beginning God created.” Elohim here is a collective form (not entirely unlike the Greek pan-theon, by the way), meaning that all the multiple and diverse powers of godhood are now concentrated within this single personality. The process of monotheistic transformation— with all its difficulty — is borne in the very language.
What we are seeing here, the cultural historian might claim, is a totemic representation of the increasing complexity of human personality. People who live complex and often conflicted lives need to imagine a deity who somehow reflects them, who bears within Himself the painful choices faced by humans on a daily basis. The rabbis tended to schematize the divine personality into a twofold model: the “Aspect of Mercy” and the “Aspect of Justice” together made up the divine self, and God, in response to the actions of humanity, was constantly wavering between the two. It is not hard, however, to see in this depiction the situation of the rabbis themselves. As leaders they loved their people and wished to ease their burdens, especially to reassure them, in the face of historical tragedy, of God's unabated love. Hence the projected Aspect of Mercy. But at the same time the rabbis were judges, upholders of the Law and administrators of its authority. As such they had to be bearers of an “Aspect of Justice” that surely brought them into tension with their desire to offer compassion and forgiveness, precisely the lens of conflict through which they came to depict God.
The maleness of God is also a part of this process of the monotheistic adaptation of the ancient Near Eastern legacy. Pre-Israelite religion did include the worship of goddesses as well as gods, some of them quite powerful and cultically significant. Rites of hieros gamos, or earthly reenactments of the coital union taking place between male and female deities, were also well established. But when the forces were unified under the aegis of the most powerful single deity, it was always clear that this deity would be male, reflecting the power situation in the human community. The oneness of God meant His essential maleness, even though some classically “feminine” personality traits, including compassion and the love of peace, would become manifest in that God. God's essential maleness, carried from ancient Near Eastern religion (the realm of Baal and Marduk) into the religious imagery of biblical and rabbinic sources, is key to that image, including its poignant descriptions of the typically male struggle to overcome an inner tendency toward violence and to strive for compassion, a point to which we will return later. Female elements of nearly divine character reappear in the figure of Mary in early Christianity, who becomes a quasi-divine figure, and in the shekhinah of medieval Kabbalah, also to be discussed more fully below.
Theology and Myth
The God of Hebrew Scripture as we are describing Him (and God is clearly a “Him” at this stage) is a God of myth, and there is no reason to object to that term. The absence of a pantheon of