Over on the Quora Website, Robert F. Smith provided this very useful answer to the question, "Who is Elohim in Mormonism, and how does the Bible support that?" I am reproducing it here to make sure it gets wider readership as it is a very useful response, and as is his usual practice, accompanied by many scholarly references:
The title Elohim is used by members of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) in a number of official liturgical and
canonical contexts.[1] However, since the esoteric usage is off-limits, and
since the term is part of the official Scriptural Canon of the LDS Church, it
might be well to focus on that:
Biblical Hebrew ʼĒl, ʼĔlōhîm, “God(s),” and
variations (Genesis 1:1, Exodus 9:1, 12:12, 20:3, 1 Samuel 1:17, Psalms 19:1,
82:6, Isaiah 43:12).[2] In LDS usage, Elohim is equivalent to God the
Father,[3] and the head of pantheon or Gottheit (Godhead).[4]
Gregorio del Olmo Lete characterizes ilhm in Ugaritic
texts as "the ʼIlāhūma, divine beings," and relates them to
Hebrew ʼĕlōhîm.[5] Tess Dawson says that "the Ugaritic
word ʼilahuma is related to one of the names of the Hebrew deity,
Elohim, which means 'gods'." However, she sees the ʼilahuma or
Divine Assembly as the sons and daughters of ʼAthiratu and Ilu.[6]
In his study of the Ugaritic pantheon, del Olmo Lete notes that the
god-lists at Ugarit demonstrate the preeminence[7] of
“the ‘god-father’ (ilib),
an epithet in which, possibly there is an evolution or syncretism: from the
‘father of the god’ or the ‘father-god’ of family / personal / nomadic religion
with its divinized ancestors, there is a shift to the ‘god / ʼIlu-father’,
i.e., to the confession of the supreme god ʼIlu under the
title of ‘universal father’ (‘father of gods and men’, as he is known in myth
and epic). To this ‘primitive’ epithet / title belong two other personal names
of the supreme deity, culturally more exact but noetically more
imprecise, il and dgn (1 + 2), forming a
first tri-unity of epithets (cf. also KTU 1.123:1-3: il
wilm…il…il šr). Although the epithets might be distinct in the cult and in
the prayers of the faithful, in myth and theology they correspond to the same
god.
Del Olmo Lete adds that “’My father’ is the god summoned by the faithful
person who utters the incantation, . . .”[8]
[1] Ryan C. Davies & Paul Y. Hoskisson, “Usage of the Title elohim in
the Hebrew Bible and Early Latter-day Saints,” in A. Skinner, M. Davis, and C.
Griffin, eds., Bountiful Harvest: Essays in Honor of S. Kent Brown (Provo:
Maxwell Institute/BYU, 2011), 113-135; Daniel O. McClellan, “’You Will Be Like
the Gods’: The Conceptualization of Deity in the Hebrew Bible in Cognitive
Perspective,” master’s thesis (Trinity Western Univ., 2013), online at https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/80296084.pdf .
[2] R. N. Holzapfel, D. M. Pike, and D. R. Seely, Jehovah
and the World of the Old Testament (SLC: Deseret Book, 2009), 17-18;
cf. Seixas, Manual Hebrew Grammar, 2nd ed., 55 (§ 63) Elōheem;
85.
[3] LDS Gospel Topics section online at God the Father (God the Father) .
[4] LDS Gospel Topics section online at Godhead (Godhead) .
[5] Del Olmo Lete, Canaanite Religion, 2nd ed.,
82,85,87,180.
[6] Dawson, The Horned Altar: Rediscovering &
Rekindling Canaanite Magic (MN: Llewellyn Worldwide, 2013), 48, ʼAthiratu = Asherah,
who is elsewhere the consort of YHWH.
[7] Del Olmo Lete, Canaanite Religion, 2nd ed.,368;
366, “a late sublimation of the ancestor cult.”
[8] Del Olmo
Lete, Canaanite Religion, 2nd ed., 323 n156, reading KTU 1.82:9.
