What is your God? a classic philosophical perspective on אלי -X theophory in the Hebrew Bible

Abstract

What, according to the Hebrew Bible, was a god assumed to be? In this article the author looks at data potentially relevant to any attempt at answering this question within a sub-type of אל theophory in the Hebrew Bible. These involve personal names that can be rendered into English as "My god is x", where x denotes a phenomenon the deity is prima facie wholly identified with. The approach adopted by the study is philosophical in general and descriptively metaphysical in particular. The objective is to provide an experimental clarification of this particular sub-type of proper names in Biblical Hebrew with the aid of technical conceptual distinctions found within mainstream interpretations of Aristotle's theory of predication.