 Some scholars believe that Jewish Religion has evolved over time eventually ending up at monotheism. The Divine Council worldview seems to blow this up It also seems then to discredit that El and Yahweh were not always worshiped Concurrently and that one came after the other and replaced the other. Is this true? If so, then could that be a reason why more scholars seem to not want to accept the binitarian view? Well, you're a little the question is a little overly optimist Most scholars who are of the it's hard to pick the right terms here most You know if I say critical scholars, it makes it sound like evangelical scholars aren't critical If I say non-confessional scholars, it makes it sound like if you're a confessional scholar You can you only have to think one way or you can only think one way But I'll put it this way most non-confessional scholars in other words most scholars who aren't you know Committed to some form of what we would loosely call Bible-believing Christianity most most people who don't fall into that category They actually think the Divine Council idea Proves the evolutionary idea. They're not afraid of it They use it to promote the evolutionary idea from polytheism to monotheism because they look at things like council references They look at things like more than one Elohim, you know a bunch of Elohim, you know flying around They look at that as polytheism And then they they interpret certain passages in the Old Testament as getting rid of that and evolving toward Monotheism like Psalm 82 when when you know God sentences the gods to die like men He says see you know that God God says all those gods are going to be put to death and in Israelite In the Israelite mind they were put to death and we're only left with one And so we've evolved to monotheism. That's how they'll take Psalm 82 Now they get there because they they refuse or they I should say they fail to define Elohim like an Israelite would Instead they look at plural Elohim and they assume that the word Elohim has something to do with a unique set of attributes and Oh That means there's more than one. There's more than one capital god here. You know, that's polytheism Again, what I've what I've been saying, you know, my basically my whole academic career is saying look that's dumb Because the the departed human dead are called Elohim Obviously, no Israelite is going to think that their dead relative is on a is on par In terms of attributes and characteristics with the god of Israel or even any other god like bail I mean, they're just not the same Elohim has nothing to do with a set of unique attributes It really doesn't have to do with it do with specific attributes at all The reason why so many different things are called Elohim is because Elohim is a term you would use to describe Where that entity properly belongs or lives Every occupant every disembodied occupant of the spirit world is an Elohim That's why it's plural and that's why it gets used that way But if you're looking at Elohim thinking, oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna look at Elohim just like modern Americans or modern westerners look at the letters g o and d Because when I see g o and d I think of omniscience and omnipotence and omnipresence And if I put an s on that whoo, we got polytheism. That's actually what they do They you know, you have scholars. I mean, I could give you names You have you have scholars that parse a Hebrew word the way a modern Westerner would parse an English word in terms of its meaning It just doesn't make any sense and not only that but they'll they'll somehow ignore or miss All of the divine plurality stuff that shows up after This wonderful evolution to You know, magnificent monotheism had occurred case in point the Dead Sea Scrolls I just published an article last year. It was part of my dissertation on hey, look, there are 160 references To plural Elohim In the Dead Sea Scrolls a couple dozen of which are also in divine council contexts in those texts So what happened to this wonderful evolution? Didn't the people who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls? Didn't they get the memo? Hey, we're monotheists now. I don't write like this. No, it's very clear in what they're saying and the and those scenes If you actually go read them that they're talking about animate spirit beings in the spiritual world and over in that world Yahweh isn't Elohim, but none of these other ones are like Yahweh. He's unique. He's incomparable They're very conservative in their theology The people who you know, the people who lived at Qumran were so conservative in their theology They thought that the priests the Pharisees were heretics I mean, it's just it's crazy to think that they're like some kind of you know, liberal or something No, they get it the people who don't get it I think are the modern scholars who just parse these terms these biblical terms in modern terms So, I mean to get the full view of this. I would say you need to go up to more unseen realm dot com That's the companion website to the book the unseen realm and chapters three chapters four chapter three and four They're going to be links in there to some of the articles I've written specifically on this topic Some of the journal articles, uh, one of those or actually two of them I think you'll find if memory serves me are about the the el and Yahweh question to an orthodox Israelite to a biblical writer el and Yahweh were not separate deities Okay, so other Israelites who were not theologically careful or who were deliberately sort of apostate Well, they may have viewed them as separate characters. You have to realize that Israelites. There's there's no one Category for Israelites. It's kind of like today people who call themselves Christians Well, they could believe a hundred different things. I mean you have Christians who again are aren't aren't even trinitarian Okay, well, I still accept G's on the cross, but I'm a I'm a I can't remember what the term is You know certain types of Pentecostal oneness Pentecostals I mean they'll they'll insist on on embracing the gospel the work of Jesus on the cross But yet they'll deny the trinity and again you my point is you have just as today you have this vast and in some cases we look at strange variation Under one term in this case Christianity. It's the same thing in the ancient world. What was Israelite religion? Well, it depends who you talk to well if you're talking to the biblical writers And what they we only know what they think because of the text they they gave us that we have El and Yahweh are not viewed as Separate deities and of course there are scholars who argue that there are vestiges of this still in the Old Testament Again, you're gonna have to read my articles Specifically on that issue to understand why I think that just doesn't make any sense and is actually Contradicted by a number of passages in the Old Testament So divine counsel stuff and the binatarian stuff does not deter People from arguing for An evolution from polytheism and monotheism in many cases It encourages them to argue for that and I've tried to explain here Why they they sort of take the paths that they do and how that works But to get the fuller picture you'll have to you'll have to reference the articles