Discovering the Ancient Secrets

The Elohim - Finally We Know The Truth! Vatican Bible Translator Reveals Shocking Information! Ep 1

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

The video presented by 'The 5th Kind' delves into a groundbreaking interpretation of Biblical texts, challenging longstanding views on the concept of God. Two scholars, Mauro Biglino and Paul Wallis, explore the linguistic nuances of ancient Hebrew, particularly the term 'Elohim.' They suggest that this word, often translated as 'God,' should be understood in its plural form, indicating multiple powerful entities rather than a singular deity. This perspective reshapes our understanding of ancient narratives and offers a more complex view of the origins of humanity and its place in the universe.

Highlights

Mauro Biglino and Paul Wallis present a radical reinterpretation of Biblical texts. 🤓
The term 'Elohim' is analyzed for its plural meaning. 📜
The scholars argue that original texts suggest diverse beings, not a singular God. 👥
Reading the Bible with the original terms offers a fresh perspective on its narrative. 📚
Such interpretations may challenge traditional theological views. 📖

Key Takeaways

Elohim might not mean 'God' as traditionally believed; it could indicate multiple powerful beings. 🤯
The Bible’s original texts suggest a more complex narrative about human origins. 🌍
Translating ancient texts involves significant interpretative challenges. 📜
Different translations of the Bible can lead to entirely different understandings of its stories. 📖
Exploring the concept of Elohim provides insight into a more fascinating, concrete, and logical Bible. 🕵️‍♂️

Overview

Delving into the age-old debate on the interpretation of the Bible, this episode by 'The 5th Kind' features two renowned scholars, Mauro Biglino and Paul Wallis, who challenge the traditional understanding of God. They assert that the Hebrew term 'Elohim,' often rendered as 'God,' actually possesses a plural form, which opens up exciting possibilities in understanding ancient texts.

Through meticulous linguistic analysis, the scholars propose that 'Elohim' refers to multiple powerful entities rather than a single omnipotent figure. This revelation shifts the paradigm on how we perceive Biblical narratives, posing profound questions about the origins and history of humanity.

Their work also highlights the difficulties in translating ancient scriptures, where even small linguistic nuances can lead to vastly different interpretations. By maintaining the original terms in place, they argue, readers gain a more coherent and logical understanding of these age-old stories and their implications for our place in the universe.

The Elohim - Finally We Know The Truth! Vatican Bible Translator Reveals Shocking Information! Ep 1 Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 for hundreds and thousands of years people around the world have turned to the bible for information about god two scholars Mauro Biglino and Paul Wallis argue for a radically different interpretation seeking out the root meanings of key words in these ancient texts they find another
00:30 - 01:00 quite different story emerges one with enormous implications for our understanding of the human race and our place in the universe for more than two millennia readers have interpreted the ancient texts of the bible as stories of god a seamless narrative in which god creates the heavens and the earth botanical and animal life and eventually the human race however a number of anomalies
01:00 - 01:30 in the texts along with intriguing questions of translation point to another possibility. Paul Wallis is an internationally best-selling author researcher and scholar of ancient mythologies over the last decade paul's work has probed the world's mythologies and ancestral narratives for the insights they hold on our origins as a species and our potential as human beings as a senior churchman paul served as a church doctor
01:30 - 02:00 a theological educator and an archdeacon in the anglican church in australia paul's work in church ministry has included training pastors in the interpretation of biblical texts his work in biblical translation and interpretation has revealed a forgotten layer of ancient story with far-reaching implications for our understanding of human origins and our place in the cosmos
02:00 - 02:30 Mauro Biglino is an internationally best-selling italian author researcher and highly regarded scholar of ancient hebrew for many years he worked for rome's saint paul press as a bible translator providing with great precision the literal meaning of hebrew words for vatican-approved interlinear bibles it is an exacting discipline the scholar must be rigorous in avoiding any kind of interpretation of the word and give only the literal etymological meaning of each word part
02:30 - 03:00 morrow's finding set him at odds with the conventional expectations of the catholic world and propelled him onto the international stage where his work has opened up a world of cultural memory recorded in the bible yet hidden from the public for centuries by mistaken translation and the dogmas of the church together morrow and paul show that the root meanings of a series of key words in the bible reveal an earlier layer of information very different to the
03:00 - 03:30 story of god associated with the bible hidden plain sight in the pages of genesis is an even more ancient narrative one which reframes the whole story of human beginnings the oldest word in the bible rendered as god is the hebrew word elohim but is that what the word means and what are the implications of the translation choices surrounding this mysterious word
03:30 - 04:00 hello everyone it makes me smile a little bit to see this bible's tower that i consulted to prepare this video it is a real pleasure for me to be here with my friend Paul Wallis to talk
04:00 - 04:30 together about biblical topics i will tell you about a very simple concept but very respectful of the way of reading the so-called sacred test then we will start from here with a series of short videos with the aim of obtaining very simple indication for a respectful reading of the bible
04:30 - 05:00 as respectful as possible towards the ancient authors in this way we could do an autonomous reading and we could get an idea of what the bible probably tells us beyond what theology has told us instead at the beginning of course i would also like to give you some indications relating to the absolute
05:00 - 05:30 uncertainty that we have when we approach that text i mean the awareness of the fact that we know very little about that text to develop this topic it is interesting to read some concepts expressed by professor garbini professor at the la sapienza university of rome professor of semitic philology
05:30 - 06:00 professor garbini argues that ibrahim is a canaanite dialect south phoenician actually hebrew is one of the many dialects within the canaanite languages we only know hebrew as it was reconstructed at the end of the first millennium after christ
06:00 - 06:30 the so-called majority hebrew at that time the important thing was not to know the linguistic structure of those texts but the theological implications deriving from the various currents of judaism this means that when we read the bible we do not read a text that followed grammar rules but we read a text that followed an ideological path
06:30 - 07:00 and grammatical rules were not a problem for the authors this is important because over the centuries many grammatical rules have been developed for example those relating to the term elohim which from plural witches must absolutely become singular
07:00 - 07:30 the linguistic and grammatical rules have therefore been elaborated after so we know only one of interpretation of the biblical text that of the school of tiberias which produced mesoretic hebrew the ibrio language in the beginning it was expressed through the consonants of the phoenician language ibru was written without bubbles
07:30 - 08:00 we will never know how the bible was originally read the vowel sounds were introduced by the school of tiberias between the 6th and 9th centuries after christ
08:00 - 08:30 professor garbini says that when we speak of ancient languages even the agreement of all scholars on the meaning of a term is not a guarantee of certainty based on this information what we can honestly do is try to do a literal reading of the bible regarding the term elohim in the face of all these uncertainties i think
08:30 - 09:00 the best thing to do is what i will tell you shortly elohim is actually a term that you don't know how to translate for this reason it is translated in many ways for example it is translated with the term god but the jewish executives
09:00 - 09:30 themselves say that in the hebrew language there is no term that indicates god as we understand it as an omniscient omnipotent transcendent spiritual entity that is to be worshipped elohim is also translated as judges legislators governors the bright ones from above and so on
09:30 - 10:00 all of these terms that are used actually indicate the functions that this elohim performed but do not say who they really were the elohim were certainly judges they were certainly legislators they were certainly governors but who they really were and what the term elohim really means we don't know
10:00 - 10:30 this is the fundamental thing since we don't know we must have the correctness to say it here in genesis 2013 we see one of the examples relating to those uncertainties
10:30 - 11:00 i mentioned earlier that concerns the term elohim and the verbs that are used this is the passage where abraham tells his story and tells when the elohim brought me out of my father's house then you see that here the verb is translated in the plural form
11:00 - 11:30 this is the bible translated for scholars who know the hebrew language this is the guide of the verbal forms present in the old testament and also here it is said that the verb it is in the plural form in the third person so it is certain that the verb connected to the term elohim is plural but in the bibles translated
11:30 - 12:00 for families the verb is theologically translated into the singular because the term elohim must indicate god and so it must have the verb in the singular even if it is plural in ibraheem as you can see the bibles translated for scholars respect the letter of the hebrew text
12:00 - 12:30 while the bibles translated for families contain theological translations that is they must convey an idea a different concept from what is written in the original bible
12:30 - 13:00 these bibles are translated for the public and therefore they have the translation of verb in the singular form luther's bible the jerusalem bible the bible of the german bishops conference the king james bible the septuagint that is the bible translated
13:00 - 13:30 into greek the bible published by the house of the geneva bible all this derives from the fact that elohim be translated with the singular term god
13:30 - 14:00 witnesses translates the verb into the singular but in the note it says that in reality the verb is plural various commentators from different schools try to explain why this
14:00 - 14:30 plural verb might must be translated into the singular but each time they are explanations that always have the purpose of affirming that elohim refers to the one god i don't want to go into the merits of all the explanations that have been worked
14:30 - 15:00 out to try to prove that elohim is singular to refute them it is sufficient for example to take psalm 82 which clearly speaks of an assembly of the elohim and follow what professor manuel tov of the hebrew university of jerusalem says
15:00 - 15:30 he says that the various ways used by ibrahim to indicate the term we translate with god actually refer to different people and the terms are l eleon and yahweh plural
15:30 - 16:00 l is probably one of the singular forms of the term elohim the other form is uh
16:00 - 16:30 we still remember that even the jews
16:30 - 17:00 tell us that we will never know how the bible was read because there were no vowels as you can understand all these terms if they are considered without the vowels they are all very similar
17:00 - 17:30 so we are faced with the same category of individuals also from the point of view of the name so we saw that from the point of view of the meaning of nouns from the point of view
17:30 - 18:00 of the use of verbs from the point of view of uncertainties in the translations we are faced with a situation in which we don't know so in this situation of not knowing what we can do a very simple thing to read the bible respectfully
18:00 - 18:30 i think it is right not to translate the term elohim the term l the term aloha and when in the bibles we have at home we find the term god we can replace it with the term elohim living the word used by the biblical authors
18:30 - 19:00 so we will understand that without entering into useless discussions and with the utmost respect for the biblical authors if you read the bible while keeping the terms they use we will realize that we are faced with a bible different from the one we are told but a bible much more fascinating
19:00 - 19:30 much more concrete much more understandable but above all much more logical than what we are told at this point i give you an appointment here in the videos with my friend paul wallis
19:30 - 20:00 to address other indications about the most respectful way to read the bible ciao from italy i'm very happy to be in conversation with mauro on these topics because my own research journey in the eden series had brought me to very similar conclusions and it was initially the
20:00 - 20:30 issues around the word elohim the plural form of the word elohim that broke me out of my old world of narrow christian orthodoxy to a point of view from which i can see that the bible is not a book about god in the way i thought it was but it is actually representative of a kaleidoscope of entities from the beginning of the hebrew canon to the very end now the word elohim is the bible's
20:30 - 21:00 oldest word that gets translated as god but as mado has pointed out it is a masculine plural form that takes plural verb forms and as i began drilling down into those questions i realized that the problems thrown up by the plurality of that word are not just a grammatical glitch they represent an earlier form of the story in which elohim was understood to represent
21:00 - 21:30 a diversity of beings there is a body in the hebrew canon referred to as the sky council in which a number of elohim sit in council together now in my eden books escaping from eden the scars of eden and echoes of eden i argue that the elohim stories make better sense if we do just as mauro just said and read them with the word elohim still in place
21:30 - 22:00 or if we use a root meaning the powerful ones when we read the stories that way the stories change but not in a random way they change in a way that resolves many of the moral questions we would have over the elohim stories why such brutal and unconscionable things done how it is that human beings get slaughtered in the conflict of the elohim something that doesn't make sense
22:00 - 22:30 if elohim is translated in the singular as god but the other thing that is revealed is that the moment you re-read the stories as stories of the elohim the powerful ones you quickly realize that you're reading the summary form of the source narratives from out of ancient mesopotamia the narratives from out of ancient sumeria babylonia arcadia and assyria i sometimes get a knee-jerk reaction from people of faith regarding what i argue for in the
22:30 - 23:00 translation of elohim as the powerful ones and the knee-jerk reaction is when people of faith say ah but wait a minute we know that god is father son and holy spirit so this is the christian theology of the holy trinity surely that's why elohim the bible's oldest word for god is a plural it must represent the persons of the holy trinity well there are many problems to that reaction
23:00 - 23:30 and the first is that the holy trinity is a christian doctrine it's separated from the work and intent of the original authors by millennia and the theology of the most recent redactors of the hebrew canon was a monotheistic theology they did not believe in multiple gods and in fact the insertion of the holy name yahweh over earlier elohim texts such as we see in
23:30 - 24:00 genesis 3 or genesis 11 reveals that that later redactor is turning the stories of the elohim into a story of god and it's those adjustments that throw up many of the moral problems why would a holy god genocide people why would a loving god bomb people back into a pre-stone age condition
24:00 - 24:30 from having previously been a technological civilization this is what we read in genesis 11. so no it's not a representation of the holy trinity and would it make any sense for thousands of human beings to get killed in the crossfire between the elohim is that what happens when the father son and holy spirit get into a spat of course not no the original stories are
24:30 - 25:00 about something else elohim what i would argue are powerful ones now some theologians argue that when the word elohim is understood as the powers or the powerful ones that it doesn't specify what kind of entities they are that this word could refer to anything more powerful and advanced than humanity and so we shouldn't draw specific conclusions from the word tnt clarke published a theology
25:00 - 25:30 of the old testament which was modestly titled the theology of the old testament it's edited by sdf salman and in it they quote the theologian a b davidson and he writes these words in contrast to men angels belong to the class of elohim now i'll pause right there because that's a reminder that the word elohim gets translated in various ways through the hebrew canon in one place it's god
25:30 - 26:00 and in another place it's chieftains or judges or landlords in another place it's angels how can this earliest word for god be so elastic why would the ancients choose a word to denote the unique transcendent god but also denote random other entities who they never define it's slightly ill-fitting so the quote goes on it might be interesting to contemplate the question of how the same name elohim came to be applied to god and this class of beings agreed good question
26:00 - 26:30 then he goes on perhaps we should be satisfied with the general explanation that the name meaning powers is applied from the standpoint of men to all that is above man to the region lying above him that's an interesting phrase isn't it though the same name is given i.e to angels and god the two are never confounded in scripture
26:30 - 27:00 well that's a rather disingenuous thing to say the two were never confounded in scripture that's a non-explanation of why the word can mean angels here or false gods here or demons here or judges here or god over here what's the truth of the word and that's why i argue for re-reading the elohim texts and leaving elohim in the text so that the shape of the stories becomes that much
27:00 - 27:30 clearer to the modern reader another theologian who points to the word elohim as representing a kaleidoscope of powerful entities is michael heiser and he rightly points out that the word is far more elastic than we generally believe but it's only a halfway explanation as to why that is the earliest designation for god why would god be categorized with archonic entities
27:30 - 28:00 other material beings why would there be this competition among yahweh and the other elohim and it's clear in moments in the bible yahweh classes himself as an elohim there's an occasion when his king wants a prognosis on his health and he sends for advice from the elohim of the people of ekron yahweh gets furious and says is there no elohim here
28:00 - 28:30 that he could consult that he would run off and consult the elohim of ekron and it's a moment when you realize these elohim are in competition with one another for hegemony go to the ten commandments and you've got something similar where there's a great forgetting of the other elohim being commanded you're not to bow down to them you're not even to depict them you serve only yahweh and then moses successor joshua says something very similar cut yourself
28:30 - 29:00 off from the elohim the egyptian serve and the elohim your ancestors served on the other side of the river in mesopotamia and you should serve only yahweh so there we have a world of many powerful entities but you serve this one and so the yahweh character is set among the many elohim of the hebrew stories you also have stories about a sky council in which a number of elohim
29:00 - 29:30 sit in council together presided over by the character yahweh how can you have a council where a number of those entities are fictitious but the president of the council is real and that's god that's not quite coherent we have to realize there is an earlier form of the stories prior to the 7th to 6th century bce edit and the original form is a world in which there are many elohim
29:30 - 30:00 many powerful ones all presiding over their own respective human colonies maori and i are not the first people to point out the moral problems thrown up by reading the elohim stories as god stories there were some really significant church fathers at the beginning of christianity who pointed this out very clearly and who were wishing to nudge the church away from regarding the hebrew scriptures as foundational for christianity that decision had already been taken
30:00 - 30:30 in acts 15 reading that book and yet the arguments have to be had all over again in the first one two three four centuries of christianity an origin argued that if you read the elohim stories as if they were god's stories and took them at face value then you would end up believing in a god of whom you had to justify the most brutal actions we would have to believe of god he said quote
30:30 - 31:00 such things as we would not believe of the most savage and unjust of men so he pointed out very clearly there is a moral problem when you translate the elohim stories as god stories i completely agree with mauro that when the final redaction of the hebrew canon was done in the 7th to 6th century bce the agenda driving that edit was an ideological one not a grammatical one
31:00 - 31:30 and that is why you can have texts where the theological problem of too many gods has been cleaned up but the grammar's a mess the fact that the earlier grammar of the elohim stories survives in stories where the name yahweh has been pasted over the top is a clue that you're not reading the original form and a clue that the original form had more gods or advanced beings in it
31:30 - 32:00 than the current translation wants to give away and the shape of the henotheistic world remains the stories don't make sense until you realize there are many powerful ones in the picture in competition with one another when abraham gives this explanation of why he moved from ur of the chaldees he says the powerful ones told me to move
32:00 - 32:30 and we have the elohim the plural form noun and then told me to wander is a plural form verb now the plural form verb is clear in the hebrew so that survived that 7th to 6th century bce edit but what that information does not survive is the translation into english because you translate it into english and told me to is no different whether you've got
32:30 - 33:00 a single or a plural subject of that verb and so the translation into english hides the fact that abraham is actually referencing many powerful entities and this is why it's important to go back to the hebrew to look at the translation of these words this is the power of the work that maori has done because as a translator of interlinear bibles he had to give a very precise rendering
33:00 - 33:30 of each word in the hebrew text with no interpretation no theological um orthodoxization of the text simply report what's in the text and then you have the translations either side and you can see i've got a plural form verb in the hebrew and it's been changed into a singular form word because the translators want this to be about god when it clearly isn't
33:30 - 34:00 i argue in the eden series that when in the text the elohim say let us make the humans to look like one of us they really do mean that look like is a very concrete term and one of us is very clear the plurality is emphasized there if that word is translated as god you've got a philosophical
34:00 - 34:30 problem and you've got a grammatical problem as soon as you translate elohim as the powerful ones the problem resolves elsewhere in genesis 3 you have the elohim arguing over how intelligent human beings should be and one of them says we don't want the humans to be as intelligent as us and once again the conflict and the plurality of the language throws up a problem that even a
34:30 - 35:00 child can recognize in the telling of the story from conventional family translations of the bible those questions resolve as soon as you realize that you are reading a story about multiple elohim conflicting over how intelligent human beings should be not a news story it's actually a summary form of the conflict between enlil and enki in the ancient mesopotamian stories in my book escaping from eden i argue for the root meaning of the word elohim
35:00 - 35:30 as being the powerful ones and suggest that when we read the stories that way they make sense and they line up with their sources there's a coherence to that picture which emerges but if you don't want to follow that logic just keep the word elohim in the elohim text and re-read the stories that way and that's quite sufficient for a different shape of the story
35:30 - 36:00 to emerge a story that has something different to say about the world in which our ancestors lived that gives different information about our origins and our place in the cosmos the final edit of the old testament of the bible the hebrew canon included the layering of some beautiful and profound theology over the top of ancient texts. unfortunately mistranslating traumatic ancestral memories as if there were encounters with god
36:00 - 36:30 is a choice with far-reaching consequences belief in a violent xenophobic hierarchical god has been used through the ages to justify violent wars and all manner of abuses however the fidelity which the ancient manuscripts have been curated in the hebrew canon by countless generations of priests and scribes means that in our generation we can now return to these
36:30 - 37:00 fascinating artifacts of our pre-history and ask how differently they might be translated to find out more about Paul Wallis and Mauro Biglino along with links to their published works follow the links in the video description thanks for watching the fifth kind please subscribe and click the bell icon so you never miss out on new content
37:00 - 37:30 for more thought-provoking programs interviews and documentaries check out our website at fifth kind dot tv you