Abstract
The Hebrew word ᵓĕlīlîm is usually explained as the plural of the Hebrew adjective ᵓĕlīl (“useless, vain”), hence a dysphemism describing idols. However, the ancient versions did not understand the word this way. The word more plausibly is a loanword from the Akkadian illilu, itself a borrowing from Sumerian. The earliest attestations of ᵓĕlīlîm in Hebrew appear in Isaiah often as part of code-switching to signal the foreignness of the word itself.
Highlights
The word ɔĕlîlîm appears in the Hebrew Bible fourteen or fifteen times, always as a designation of deities other than Yhwh
The Greek translators understood the Hebrew to denote a physical object, a rendering befitting the frequent parallelism between ɔĕlîlîm and pesel
I am grateful to John Huehnergard and Jo Ann Hackett, as well as two anonymous reviewers, all of whom made comments on earlier drafts of this document
Summary
Articles in JHS are being indexed in the ATLA Religion Database, RAMBI, and BiBIL. Their abstracts appear in Religious and Theological. The journal is archived by Library and Archives Canada and is accessible for consultation and research at the Electronic Collection site maintained by Library and Archives Canada.
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