ELOCUTION (Lat. elocutio, from eloqui, to speak oat, from e, out loqui, to speak). The art of effective speaking, more especially of pub lic speaking. It regards solely the utterance or delivery; while the wider art of oratory, of which elocution is a branch, takes account also of the matter spoken. See READING.
ELOHIM, 61-o-himf (Ileb., gods, plural of cloak, God, •r. Tab, Aramaic Assvr. god). One of the names by which Yahweh, the na tional deity of the Hebrews, was known. It signi fies, like rl, orlon, and in a measure Imo', 'power,' and the attachment of the plural ending serves, as it often does in the Semitic languages, which have various peculiar uses different from modern grammatical notions, to express the idea of greatness, supremacy, and the like. Elohim therefore, equivalent to 'the great Eloah'—fhe Eleah, or powerfnl deity par r.rr•li•ace. Already in the Tel-el-Amarna letters (e.1400 n.c.) we find in letters addressed by Palestinian officials to the Egyptian king (Mai, time plural of the As Sy ia ilu, 'god,' used much in the saint' way as Elohim is in the Old Testament. The use, if not the introduction, of Elohim as a description of Yahweh (Jehovah) seems to ladong to the nor thern Ilebrew domain rather than to the south ern. Al. all events, in northern literary sources we
encounter it earlier than in the south. So the. col lection of creation and deluge narratives, early history of mankind, and traditions of time pa trkirelms, \Odell was made in the northern king dom probably in the eighth or possibly the ninth century tic., make, use of ' Hob %%611.0.4 the collected from the sources that originated in, the srlutln is characterized by the use of 'Yah weh' It may reasonably be ,uppf,ed that the ti.e of 'Elohim' arose from a desire 10 avoid the htronger anthroloomorphie connected with 'Yahweh,' which is more in the nature of a personal name. Subsequently, as the conceptions connected with Jehovah became spiritualized, as it were, largely through the influence of the prophets, the objections to the use of Yahweh disappear, and in the post-exilic period Yahweh becomes a common designation, though as a trace of the old feeling against its use, the view arises that Yahweh is too sacred a name to be employed on ordinary occasions, and it gives way to various descriptive epithets and subsequently to disguises. See ELOUIST AND YAIIWIST.