Metabiblical

Suppose, on an archaeological dig, you were to find, scribbled on the edge of a piece of potsherd, the something like the following:

𐤊𐤌𐤅𐤔 𐤀𐤋𐤄𐤉 𐤌𐤅𐤀𐤁 𐤅𐤃𐤂𐤍 𐤀𐤋𐤄𐤉 𐤐𐤋𐤔𐤕𐤉𐤌 𐤅𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 𐤀𐤋𐤄𐤉 𐤉𐤔𐤓𐤀𐤋

After squinting at it for a while, you realize that it’s the equivalent of

כמוש אלהי מואב ודגן אלהי פלשתים ויהוה אלהי ישראל

You vocalize it and read it aloud, and you get something like this:

kemosh elohei moav wedagon elohei pelishtim weyahweh elohei yisrael

Now, how do you translate this into English? Here’s what I would write.

Kemosh is the god of Moab, and Dagon is the god of the Philistines, and Yahweh is the god of Israel.

Now, some might object — surely Yahweh is quite a different kind of being than the mere national god of the Moabites or Philistines! Yahweh deserves a capital G. Translating in the style of the NRSVUE, we might read

Kemosh is the god of Moab, and Dagon is the god of the Philistines, and the LORD is the God of Israel.

To do this is to pile up on top of the source text ideas it does not express. Perhaps the writer of our little Hebrew text would agree that Yahweh is a deity in a much higher sense than the other two. Nevertheless, the author of our little Hebrew text did not put such a distinction into his text, and insofar as we are translators, we have no right to import it ourselves.

For a less hypothetical example, consider Judges 11:24, which reads

הֲלֹ֞א אֵ֣ת אֲשֶׁ֧ר יֹורִֽישְׁךָ֛ כְּמֹ֥ושׁ אֱלֹהֶ֖יךָ אֹותֹ֥ו תִירָ֑שׁ וְאֵת֩ כָּל־אֲשֶׁ֨ר הֹורִ֜ישׁ יְהוָ֧ה אֱלֹהֵ֛ינוּ מִפָּנֵ֖ינוּ אֹותֹ֥ו נִירָֽשׁ׃

Is it not the case that you will hold on to whatever possessions Kemosh your god gives you to possess? Then whatsoever Yahweh our god has conquered before us, we will possess.

The entire rhetorical force of Judges 11:24 rests on the speaker drawing a parallel between “Kemosh your god” and “Yahweh our god”. This is not to deny that Jephthah may have had a strong personal preference for Yahweh, or even may have thought of Yahweh as ontologically distinct from all the deities of the nations round about. But whatever differences Jephthah sees between his own patron deity and Kemosh, Jephthah is not expressing here.

This does not mean that we need to go crazy and just stick a lower-case ‘g’ onto every use of God we find.

In many cases, the Hebrew elohim is used like a proper name, used without an article or any other qualifier, just as the English “God” is. Thus, in Genesis 1:27, we may read

And God created humanity in his image; in the image of God he created it; male and female he created them.

On the other hand, in Genesis 5:1, we read,

And afterward Moses and Aaron came, and said to Pharaoh, Thus says YHWH, the god of Israel, Let me people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.

And so, in order to avoid imposing theology onto verses that do not contain them, we may go along translating “God” as a proper noun whenever it is used that way, and “god” as a common noun whenever it is used that way.