El Elohe Isra’el - What does it mean?

Question

So when Jacob names the site of his altar, he declares “El Elohe Isra’el”. I understand the most common translation of this phrase is said to be something along the lines of “God is the God of Israel”. But I have some questions about this.

Now I realize that the word ‘el’ is a Hebraic Semitic word that means ‘god’, so the vast majority of the usage of the word ‘el’ in the Hebrew manuscripts can be explained as such.

However there is supposedly a bit of a catch, so to speak, and I have seen several scholars and skeptics use said catch to fuel their theories that Judaism evolved from Canaanite Polytheism. In ancient Canaan, the head deity of their pantheon, also considered their most high god and creator god, father of all the other gods, has the name El.

Now going back to the specific phrase; “El Elohe Isra’el” is the only place I can recall in scripture where it is difficult to translate El as simply the word ‘god’ as in ‘a deity’, rather than a proper name of God, simply because “God is the God of Israel” is a very redundant and broad statement that doesn’t really make sense. One might ask, which god? So my questions are best split up as follows;

1. Is it possible that Jacob, not yet fully knowing the covenant name of God as revealed to Moses, simply used the name of what he knew to be the closest idea or identity of an all powerful divine being in his culture (being Canaanite El) and apply that title to the one true God after his wrestling encounter?

2. Or is it more likely that El in this instance is simply a short form of El Shaddai and therefore has absolutely no connection to the Canaanite head deity?

3. Does anybody know of any good apologetics sources on this subject as it is fascinating to me and reaching out to the skeptics has long been a calling on my life. Any advice on how to engage on the topic is helpful.

Answer 1

Stephen, the martyr, begins his last sermon, after which he was stoned :

The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Canaan. Acts 7:2 KJV.

God appeared to Abraham and God revealed himself to Abraham and God spoke many things to Abraham. This is why he went to Canaan and whilst in Canaan he begat a son Isaac, who in turn begat a son, Jacob.

To Jacob, also, God appeared as is evident from the record of Genesis ; recorded, retrospectively, by Moses.

'El Elohe Israel' reflects these recorded occurrences, that God - El in Hebrew - the one true God for there is one God and there cannot be another god, is He who appeared to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob.

God - El - is also called 'the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob'. For that is how he has revealed himself. He chose to reveal himself to these three men, in turn.

And then he appeared to Moses in a burning bush that was not consumed and he called himself 'I am that I am'.

This is whom God Almighty has revealed himself to be. This is what recorded scripture narrates.

These are the men to whom God chose to reveal himself.

Men of faith. Men of integrity. Men who can be trusted.

One either believes the written record, or one disbelieves it.

It is a matter of faith.

To say that these men merely adopted cultural ideas from their - original - dwelling place does not agree with the record of scripture. There is no evidence whatsoever in the holy writings - in either Hebrew scripture or in the Greek scripture - that they brought with them from Mesopotamia any idolatrous concepts or any other ideologies.

Their knowledge of God was a matter of personal revelation - a matter of personal faith based upon the revelation of God himself to their individual persons.