The Family of Baal: The Elohim  of Canaan

Stavrinides goes on to say:  “I Kings 11:5 is perhaps one of the clearest examples of the singular use of elohim in which it cannot possibly be construed to refer to a family of divine beings.  After all, it is plainly obvious that  ‘Ashtoreth the goddess (elohim) of the Sidonians’ was but one deity, not a family of such beings.”

As we shall see, however, although Ashtoreth the goddess (elohim) is used in the singular in I Kings 11:5, she was actually part of an elohim family!  Notice:

“The priests of Baal declared that the great god first appeared when a primal universal force called El, the elemental god, and Athirate, the goddess of the earth, who holds the ocean in her womb, became the parents of the gods.  Baal was their firtborn and was given the sun for his throne.  Soon the priests decreed that Baal and El were one and the same, and that Baal’s consort was Astarte or Ashtoreth.  She was known as Aphrodite to the Greeks, Ishtar to the Babylonians, Nana to the Sumerians, and Venus to her devotees in Rome, but regardless of her name or place, she was the wife of Baal, the virgin queen of heaven who bore fruit although she never conceived (the Virgin Ashtoreth)” (Bach, Strange Sects and Curious Cults, p. 12).

“Among the religious texts found at Ugarit there is a ‘Pantheon [family] of Ugarit’ (found in three texts, two Ugaritic and one Akkadian) in which the chief gods of Ugarit are listed.  The first item in the Akkadian version (lines 1-2) is DINGIR (the determinative for god [elohim]), followed by a-bi ilum; the fragmentory Ugaritic probably reads il ib.  The word il, ilu (m), or el is common to all the Semitic languages; in the broadest sense it can have the general appellative meaning of ‘god,’ but it can also be the proper name of a specific deity.  The word ib or ab means ‘father.’  Here the text   can be read   as a reference to ‘the god of the [or, my] father’ and be reminiscent of the concept of ‘the god of the fathers’ noted in chapter 1 (p.30); or the reading can be, ‘god the father,’ referring to the god El, one of whose titles is Father, or to a god so designated but distinct from El.

 “At any rate, as known throughout the religious texts of Ugarit, El is the first of the major gods and the head of the pantheon.  In the epithets that are applied to him, he is seen as the father of the gods and human beings, and as the creator of heaven and earth.  The totality of the gods constitutes his family, and he presides over the assembly of the gods [E. Theodore Mullen, Jr., The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature].  The title ‘Bull’ is frequently given to him, presumably to signify his power and/or procreative ability, and he is called king, wise, holy, and everlasting or eternal (olam) [Pope, El in the Ugaritic Texts, pp. 27, 35, 42-43]” (Finegan, Myth & Mystery, p. 138).

The Family of Zeus: The Elohim of Greece

 (Finegan, Myth & Mystery, p. 161)

Equivalences Chart

“Dionysos (Latin, Bacchus; god of wine, [was] worshiped in the frenzied exercises of the Maenads [”mad women”; Latin, Bacchae])” (Finegan, Myth & Mystery, p. 165 & p. 192).

Judge for yourself if Stavrinides’ conclusion is warranted:

“I Kings 11:5 is perhaps one of the clearest examples of the singular use of elohim in which it cannot possibly be construed to refer to a family of divine beings.  After all, it is plainly obvious that ‘Ashtoreth the goddess (elohim) of the Sidonians’ was but one deity, not a family of such beings.”

Stavrinides, history proves your statement false!

Trinitarianism Not Found in the New Testament

“In the New Testament we do not find the doctrine of the Trinity in anything like its developed [philosophic] form, not even in the Pauline and Johannine theology, although ample witness is borne to the religious experience from which the doctrine springs [i.e. the writings of the Catholic Church Fathers for four hundred or so years from the Apostle John to the theology of St. Augustine]...when the early Christians would describe their conception of God, all the three elements—God, Christ, and the Spirit—enter into the description, and the one God is found to be revealed in a threefold way.  This is seen in the baptismal formula, ... [and] is also seen in the familiar words of St. Paul [2 Cor 13:14], ‘The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost.’  This last has been called, and justly so, the great Trinitarian text of the NT, as being one of the few NT passages, and the earliest of them, in which the three elements of the Trinity are set alongside of each other in a single sentence.  If the passage contains no formulated expression of the Trinity, it is yet of great significance as showing that, less than thirty years after the death of Christ, His name and the name of the Holy Spirit could be employed in conjunction with the name of God Himself.  Truly, if the doctrine of the Trinity appeared somewhat late in theology, it must have lived very early in devotion” (Fulton, Trinity, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, pp. 458-459).

Does Early New Testament “Monotheism” Preclude a Plurality of Divine Beings?

The Concept of Unity

“When the Christian fathers began to formulate their doctrines, the Greek philosophical tradition could offer them several theoretical discussions of the notion of unity [the One], some of which came to have a certain influence on Christian thought.  But I do not find that such analyses were applied to theology in any clear, consistent, and methodical fashion.  Christian thinking on the unity of God remained largely intuitive [i.e. perceived by the mind immediately without the intervention of reasoning, especially that of Philosophy].  Where certain axioms were accepted (as for instance that God is ‘simple’,) their content was not precisely defined; and where certain important distinctions were clearly grasped (as I think they were by Tertullian and Novatian) they failed to find a permanent foothold in theology.

“One can gain some idea of this loosely formulated concept of divine unity by employing a group of terms first known to me from M.J. Rouet de Journel’s Enchirdion Patristicum.  There is only one God (though no doubt his influence may be conferred upon, and found in, other beings); he is undivided (for if one finds in him distinctions of powers [as opposed to ‘an inner principle of distinction or individuation’] , or persons, these are not thought to infringe his wholeness or ‘simplicity’ [as opposed to no separateness]; and he is not subject to change (at least, not to moral change, nor to change imposed from without, though he may in some sense respond to changing human needs).   It seems that these three great claims were clearly distinguished at least by Novatian who writes (in his de Trinitate, 4-5) that God is ‘always self-same...one, without a rival...simple, without any corporeal structure [of the nature of the physical body; bodily; of the nature of matter; material; tangible; pertaining to material things] ‘ (Hic ergo semper sui est similis...et unus pronuntiatus est, dum parem non habet...est enim simplex, et sine ulla corporea concretione); and Tertullian, according to R. Braun (pp. 67-8), used the two Latin words unitas and unio to distinguish between God’s simplicity and his uniqueness.  Unitas excludes division; unio excludes rivals [i.e. the concept of THE ONE God who has no rival; Deut 6, John 13-18 and Heb 2] “  (Stead, Divine Substance, pp. 181-182).

Formulation of Trinitarian Doctrine (Circa 100-500 A.D.)

If Trinitarian doctrine did not come from either the Old or New Testaments, from whence did it come?  The answer is that it was philosophically derived from the imaginations of men!  The basic structure of this doctrine was formulated over a period of several hundred years beginning shortly after the death of the Apostle John and continuing down into and through the time of St. Augustine.  It was formulated from five great philosophic axioms or constructs that have roots deeply embedded in the soil of Neoplatonic philosophy.  We will also see, however, that some of these Trinitarian roots grew from the seeds of a totally new syncretistic religious philosophy!

Dogmatic Development One:

Association Christ with Logos of Greek Philosophy

(Circa 100-165 A.D.)

“(1) The formal identification of the pre-existent Christ (of the Pauline and Johannine theology) with the Logos of Greek philosophy.

“In the NT the identification is in the practical rather than speculative interest, but in Justin Martyr and the apologists it may be regarded as the first step in the logical process whereby the historical figure of Jesus Christ was caught up into the purely speculative [philosophic] sphere” (Trinity, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, p. 459).

Justin Martyr played a key role in the association of Jesus with the Logos of Greek philosophy.  Finding that this philosophic connection was unacceptable by Scriptural standards, he boldly altered the true New Testament text.

Justin Martyr the Corruptor of the Ephesian Text

“Conditions during the second and third centuries [100 through 200 A.D.] were not favorable to the accurate transmission of the New Testament text.  During this early period there were in the Christian Church many unspiritual persons who did not recognize the books of the New Testament as Holy Scripture, or at least did not accord such recognition to all the New Testament books.

“In addition to the variant readings which crept into the New Testament text through careless blunders, there were many others which were purposely introduced by editors and revisers (many of whom were heretics)” (Clark & Ropes, The Beginnings of Christianity, vol. 3, as quoted by Hills in The King James Version Defended, p. 50).

Ephesian Text Corrupted at Rome

“The Western text, [the early official Greek text of Rome] [was] the deliberate creation of one man [Justin Martyr, ca. 100-165 A.D.], as an intentional re-writing [at Rome] of the original New Testament text, ‘made before, and perhaps long before, the year 150, by a Greek-speaking Christian (of Syria or Palestine) who knew something of Hebrew, ...’ “ (Clark & Ropes, The Beginnings of Christianity, vol. 3, as quoted by Hills in The King James Version Defended,  p. 50). 

The Corrupt Greek Western Text

Early Church Fathers of the West who used the Greek text: 

               Irenaeus            130-200 A.D.

               Tertullian          150-220 A.D.

               Cyprian             200-258 A.D.

               Augustine          354-430 A.D. 

Extant Western texts among Greek manuscripts:

D  -- sixth century Greek manuscript containing Gospels and Acts

D2 -- sixth century Greek manuscript containing Pauline Epistles

The Western text is also extant among the Old Latin manuscripts.

The Western text is also extant among the Old Syriac manuscripts.

“This reviser was probably an influential teacher at Rome, a predecessor of the heretic Marcion [c. 140, a Christian from Asia Minor], who also taught at Rome around the middle of the second century and made even more drastic changes in the New Testament text [as Hills illustrates in his work The King James Version Defended, many of these drastic changes concerned the removal of all references of Christ as the Son of God!].  But, unlike Marcion, the Western reviser not only managed to avoid excommunication but even prevailed upon the Roman Church to accept his adulterated text, in which many additions were made to the sacred narrative, especially in the Gospels and Acts.  And when once this text had secured the support of the Roman Church, it was readily received everywhere, in Gaul, in Africa, in Syria and even in Egypt [but not in the province of Asia].  As the Western text began to circulate throughout the length and breadth of the empire, it underwent further changes in form due to the mistaken desires of subsequent editors [early church fathers with philosophic and or mystery religion backgrounds] to include additional material in it.  And so special varieties of the Western text developed in Africa, Syria, and Egypt” (Clark & Ropes, The Beginnings of Christianity, vol. 3, as quoted by Hills in The King James Version Defended, p. 52).

Justin Marytr a Philosopher from Samaria

“This Simon [Magus] mentioned in the Acts was not properly a Jew, but a Samaritan, of the town of Gittae, in the country of Samaria, as the Apostolical Constitutions, VI.7, the Recognitions of Clement, II.6, and Justin Martyr, himself born in the country of Samaria, Apology, I.34 inform us” (footnote in Josephus, p. 594).

“Tertullian denominates him, ‘philosopher and martyr’ (Adversus Valentinianus 5).  In the first chapter of I Apologia, Justin introduces himself as ‘Justin, the son of Priscus and grandson of Bacchius, of the city of Flavia Neapolis in Syria-Palestine [Samaria]’; ch. Eusebius, HE 4,11,8”  (Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday, p. 223).

Justin Martyr who was of Greek culture and extraction, was a professional philosopher born and reared in the region of Samaria. 

Corruption of the True New Testament Text Led to Trinitarian Formulation

“It is barely possible that before the middle of the second century the Western text was brought to Asia Minor from Rome.... The Quartodeciman controversy, a bitter dispute which arose during the last half of the second century between the Churches of Asia Minor and the Church of Rome over the date of Easter, makes this very improbable.  This controversy no doubt induced in the minds of the Christians of Asia Minor a violent prejudice against the Western text, which they knew to have emanated from Rome.  And the fact that the Alexandrian Church had sided with Rome in this controversy would combine with their traditional jealousy of that great Egyptian city to create in them a similar aversion to the Alexandrian text. 

“Thus, throughout the second and third centuries [100 through 200 A.D.] and down into the middle of the fourth century [300s A.D.] , the rank and file of the Christians of Asia Minor, and probably also of Antioch, remained loyal to the true New Testament text [the Ephesian text, now called the Byzantine text], which had become the traditional text of their native region, and resolute in their rejection of the Western and Alexandrian texts. 

“It was in this way, no doubt, that the true text was preserved [by God’s faithful servants of Asia Minor] by the providence of God during these early, troubled years.  Toward the end of the fourth century [300s A.D.] , the true New Testament text emerged from the relative obscurity into which it had been thrust.  The great fourth century conflict with the Arian heresy had brought orthodox [Greek Orthodox] Christians to a theological maturity, which enabled them to perceive the superior doctrinal richness of the true text.  In ever increasing numbers they abandoned the corrupt Western and Alexandrian text types and turned with eagerness to those ancient manuscripts which contained this true text”  (Clark & Ropes, The Beginnings of Christianity, vol. 3, as quoted by Hills in The King James Version Defended, pp. 55-56).

Although the true New Testament text was preserved, the corrupted texts were the prevailing influence in the formulation of early church doctrine.  These corrupted texts were instrumental in shifting early church teaching concerning the true nature of God to the false doctrine of Trinitarianism.  The removal of references to Jesus as the Son of God from the text was soon followed by the association of Jesus with the Logos of Greek philosophy.  Once this philosophic connection was embraced by the early church, it was only a matter of time before the complete philosophy of the Trinity became the basis of Christian theology.

The Logos of Greek Philosophy Placed in the Trinitarian Formulation

“There are then (as the statement may run) three Persons (Hypostases) or real distinctions in the unity of the divine Nature or Substance, which is Love.  The Persons are co-equal, inasmuch as in each of them the divine Nature is one and undivided, and by each the collective divine attributes are shared.  As a ‘person’ in Trinitarian usage is more than a mere aspect of being, being a real ground of experience and function, each divine Person, while less than a separate individuality, possesses His own hypostatic character or characteristic property (...).  The hypostatic characters of the Persons may be viewed from an internal and an external standpoint, i.e. with reference to the inner constitution of the Godhead or to the Godhead as related to the cosmos or world of manifestation.

Viewed ab intra, the hypostatic [i.e. essence or essential] character of the Father is ingeneration (...), of the Son filiation, of the Spirit procession; wherefore, ‘the Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.’ [Westminster Confession, ii, 3].  Viewed ab extra (for Love functions externally as well as internally, is centrifugal as well as centripetal [Cf. S.A. McDowall, Evolution and the Doctrine of the Trinity, Cambridge, 1918, p. 53 f.], the hypostatic character of the Father is made manifest in creation, whereby a world is provided for beings who should be capable of experiencing fellowship with the divine Love; the hypostatic character of the Son in redemption, whereby the alienating power of sin is overcome; and the hypostatic character of the Spirit in sanctification, whereby human nature is quickened and renewed and shaped to the divine likeness.  Yet, while this is said, as there is no separation in the unity of the Godhead, so the one God is manifested in the threefold work of creation, redemption, and sanctification; moreover, each of the Persons as sharing the divine attributes is active in the threefold work, if with varying stress of function.  Verily the doctrine of the Trinity exit in mysterium”  (Fulton, Trinity, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, pp. 459-460).

Dogmatic Development Two:

Origen and Eternal Generation of the Logos (Circa 185-254 A.D.)

“(2) The doctrine of the eternal generation of the Logos or Son (hitherto regarded primarily as the cosmological principle of revelation [the visible universe] and not therefore co-eternal with God).

“This doctrine, due to Origen [ca. 185-254 A.D., Alexandria, Egypt], which may be expressed in other words as the eternal Fatherhood of God, entered into Athanasian theology.  Formulated in the interests of the divinity of Christ, it conserved also—as against Sabellian views [the Sabellians taught that there were three beings in the godhead but that they were not distinct] -- the distinction between the Father and the Son.  On the other hand, the subordinationism it implied and acknowledged, while countering dyotheistic [we would be classified as dyotheistic] and tritheistic tendencies, lent support to the Arian conception of the Son as a creature, especially after the Origenist theory of eternal creation [which enabled Origen himself to regard the Son as still primarily a cosmological principle] had been abandoned” (Fulton, Trinity, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, p. 459).

The Eternal Generation of the Logos in the Trinitarian Formulation

“Viewed ab intra, the hypostatic character of the Father is ingeneration (...), of the Son filiation, of the Spirit procession; wherefore, ‘the Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.’ [Westminster Confession, ii, 3].  Viewed ab extra (for Love functions externally as well as internally, is centrifugal as well as centripetal [Cf. S.A. McDowall, Evolution and the Doctrine of the Trinity, Cambridge, 1918, p. 53 f.], the hypostatic character of the Father is made manifest in creation, whereby a world is provided for beings who should be capable of experiencing fellowship with the divine Love; the hypostatic character of the Son in redemption, whereby the alienating power of sin is overcome; and the hypostatic character of the Spirit in sanctification, whereby human nature is quickened and renewed and shaped to the divine likeness.  Yet, while this is said, as there is no separation in the unity of the Godhead, so the one God is manifested in the threefold work of creation, redemption, and sanctification; moreover, each of the Persons as sharing the divine attributes is active in the threefold work, if with varying stress of function.  Verily the doctrine of the Trinity exit in mysterium”  (Fulton, Trinity, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, pp. 459-460).