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This essay overlaps significantly with ba-capitalization. I hope at some point to merge the two.
When writing about the Hebrew Bible, I tend to use a different set of conventions around the capitalization and non-capitalization of the word God/god. I’m not going to do the deliberately provocative thing you sometimes see with online atheists who deliberately use lowercase across the board mostly for the fun of ticking off theists. I’m also not going to follow the pious norm that is used by most English-speaking writers today: of capitalizing the word wherever it refers to a Jewish/Christian/Muslim/other monotheist conception of God and lowering it whenever it refers to a polytheistic deity.
Instead, I’ll be charting a bit of a middle course, as explained by the Anglican theologian and retired bishop N. T. Wright, who says the following in the preface to his The New Testament and the People of God, pages xiv-xv:
. . . I have frequently used ‘god’ instead of ‘God.’ This is not a printer’s error, nor is it a deliberate irreverence; rather the opposite, in fact. The modern usage, without the article and with a capital, seems to me actually dangerous. This usage, which sometimes amounts to regarding ‘God’ as the proper name of the Deity, rather than as essentially a common noun, implies that all users of the word are monotheists and, within that, that all monotheists believe in the same god. Both these propositions seem to me self-evidently untrue. It may or may not be true that the worship of any god is translated by some mysterious grace into worship of one god who actually exists, and who happens to be the only god. That is believed by some students of religion. It is not, however, believed by very many practitioners of the mainline monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) or of the non-monotheistic ones [begin page xv] (Hinduism, Buddhism and their cognates). Certainly the Jews and Christians of the first century did not believe it. They believed that pagans worshipped idols, or even demons. . . .
It seems to me, therefore, simply misleading to use ‘God’ throughout this work. I have often preferred either to refer to Israel’s god by the biblical name, YHWH (notwithstanding debates about the use of this name within second-temple Judaism), or, in phrases designed to remind us of what or who we are talking about, to speak of ‘the creator,’ ‘the covenant god’ or ‘Israel’s god.’ The early Christians used the phrase ‘the god’ (ho theos) of this god, and this was (I believe) somewhat polemical, making an essentially Jewish-monotheistic point over against polytheism. In a world where there were many suns, one would not say ‘the sun.’ Furthermore, the early Christians regularly felt the need to make clear which god they were talking about, by glossing the phrase, as Paul so often does, with a reference to the revelation of this god in and through Jesus of Nazareth. Since, in fact, the present project presents a case, among other things, for a fresh understanding of the meaning and content of the word ‘god’, and ultimately ‘God’, in light of Jesus, the Spirit, and the New Testament, it would be begging the question to follow a usage which seemed to imply that the answer was known in advance.”
I won’t be following exactly the same uses as the good bishop, and this website is more concerned with the Hebrew Bible than with the New Testament, but my reasons have a good deal in common with his.
If we were to find, on some ancient scrap of Israelite pottery, the words yhwh elohenu wedagon elohe hapelishtim, it would not do to translate it, following modern conventions, as Yahweh is our God and Dagon is the god of the Philistines. This would imply that the writer meant Yahweh is our (true monotheistic) God and Dagon is the (inferior polytheistic) god of the Philistines. To translate in that way isn’t just translating: it’s translating and adding later commentary to the text.
Now, if we went into a time machine and found the guy who scratched those words in to pottery, we could ask him. And maybe he would agree that Yahweh was superior and Dagon inferior. Maybe he would even turn out to hold to a theology that looks a lot like the monotheistic theology of later Jews and Christians. But whatever his personal views were on those questions, the fact remains that those personal views are not on the pottery.
If we were translate elohim as ‘True Monotheistic God’ every time we think the ancient writer is referring to Yahweh and as ‘false pagan god’ every time we think the ancient writer is referring to someone else, we would clearly be adding something to the text. We are committing the same error, in a more subtle and sneaky way, when we do the same thing by means of capitalization.
So what I’m going to try to do is this. When elohim is used roughly as if it were a proper name, I’m going to translate it with a capital G: “And God said, Let there be light,” for example. But when it is used as a common noun, I will translate it as a common noun: “Yahweh is my strength and song, and he has become my deliverance. He is my god, and I will prepare a home for him; my father’s god, and I will exalt him” (Exodus 15:2).
This last example, from a poem embedded in Exodus 15, is a good example of why using injecting modern capitalization norms into an ancient text is not a good idea. In verse 11, the writer asks, Who is like you, Yahweh, among the gods? The implied answer is, of course, No one.
The author tells us that Yahweh is the greatest of the gods. And yet he speaks as if the other gods exist. Suppose Wayne Grudem were to go back in time and interrogate this poet to see whether his theology matches Grudem’s systematic theology.
Does the poet really think that the other gods actually exist, or is he only using them as a foil to illustrate Yahweh’s greatness? When the poet implies in verse 11 that Yahweh is somehow unlike the gods, does that unlikeness pertain simply to some of Yahweh’s attributes, or does it extend all the way down into his fundamental being? Is Yahweh on the same ontological plane as Dagon or Amon-Ra?
Of course, for that last question, you’d surely have a really difficult time translating an abstraction like ontological plane into terms the poet would understand. And if he understood you, I’m not sure what the poet would say. But we do know this. None of the authors of classical Hebrew used capitalization, underlining, or any other orthographical device to mark all instances of the word elohim and distinguish all the “monotheist” from all the “polytheistic” cases.
So I won’t either.
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