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Examined Doctrine
God & Christ

Divine plurality & the unseen realm

What are the other elohim of the Hebrew Bible — real created spiritual beings under Yahweh, human rulers spoken of as gods, or nothing at all?

2
1
4
5
Real created spiritual beingsHuman judges or rulers addressed as go…Never posed as a question in these termsNo stance
12 FIGURES · 6 QUOTED · 5 WITHOUT A STANCE

Real created spiritual beings

Real created spiritual beings, ranked under Yahweh and holding delegated rule

Jonathan Edwards1703 – 1758AFFIRMS°PRIMARY SOURCE❝ QUOTEDMichael S. Heiser1963 – 2023AFFIRMS°PRIMARY SOURCE❝ QUOTED

Human judges or rulers addressed as go…

Human judges or rulers addressed as gods by office, not by nature

John Calvin1509 – 1564AFFIRMS°PRIMARY SOURCE❝ QUOTED

Never posed as a question in these terms

Never posed as a question in these terms

John Chrysostomc.347 – 407NOT FRAMED°DISPUTED READING❝ QUOTEDMartin Luther1483 – 1546NOT FRAMED°STANDARD ACCOUNTSecond London Baptist Confession1689NOT FRAMEDDISPUTED READING❝ QUOTEDWestminster Confession1646NOT FRAMEDDISPUTED READING❝ QUOTED

Figures who hold no stance here

These are not gaps in the table. Each group below says which kind of blank it is — searched and not found, held open on purpose, never framed in these terms, or deliberately unassigned because no stance fits.

QUESTION NOT FRAMED1 FIGURE

Never posed in the terms this locus uses. Foreign to the figure, not unanswered.

NO POSITION FOUND4 FIGURES

Searched and not located. An honest gap in the corpus.

How to read a cell — sourcing tiers, blanks, and why some figures are never quoted
PRIMARY SOURCEread in a primary source
STANDARD ACCOUNTstandard scholarly account
DISPUTED READINGdisputed among scholars
NOT LOCATEDnot located in a source

A cell marked quoted carries the figure's own words — 285 of 402of them, about 71%. Where there is no quotation the claim is still sourced, and the tier says how far. 4 figures carry no quotation at all, for reasons that differ: a living author cannot be quoted at length under copyright where Calvin can, and a figure at the standard account tier has simply had no primary-source pass yet. 4 of them state their own reason on their page.

A state label ending in ° was read from the stance, tier and note rather than stated by the corpus. See themethodology.