Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
El Shaddai
Summary
El Shaddai (אֵל שַׁדַּי; el ʃadːaj) or just Shaddai is one of the names of the God of Israel. El Shaddai is conventionally translated into English as God Almighty (Deus Omnipotens in Latin, الله عز وجل), but its original meaning is unclear.
The translation of El as "God" or "Lord" in the Ugaritic and the Canaanite languages is straightforward, as El was the king of the gods in Ugaritic and Canaanite religion. The literal meaning of Shaddai, however, is the subject of debate.
The form of the phrase "El Shaddai" fits the pattern of the divine names in the Ancient Near East, exactly as is the case with names like ʾĒl ʿOlām, ʾĒl ʿElyon and ʾĒl Bēṯ-ʾĒl. As such, El Shaddai can convey several different semantic relations between the two words, among them: the deity of a place called Shaddai, a deity possessing the quality of shaddai and a deity who is also known by the name Shaddai.
The name Shaddai appears 48 times in the Bible, seven times as "El Shaddai" (five times in Genesis, once in Exodus, and once in Ezekiel).
The first occurrence of the name is in , "When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, 'I am El Shaddai; walk before me, and be blameless,' Similarly, in God says to Jacob, "I am El Shaddai: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins". According to Shaddai was the name by which God was known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Shaddai thus being associated in tradition with Abraham, the inclusion of the Abraham stories into the Hebrew Bible may have brought the northern name with them, according to the documentary hypothesis of the origins of the Hebrew Bible.
In the vision of Balaam recorded in the Book of Numbers 24:4 and 16, the vision comes from Shaddai, who is also referred to as El "God" and Elyon "Most High". In the fragmentary inscriptions at Deir Alla, though "Shaddai" is not, or not fully present, shaddayin appear (שדין; the vowels are uncertain, as is the gemination of the "d"), perhaps lesser figurations of Shaddai.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.