“[T]he doctrine of a plurality of Gods is as prominent in the Bible as any other doctrine…. The head God organized the heavens and the earth. I defy all the world to refute me. In the beginning the heads of the Gods organized the heavens and the earth. Now the learned priests and the people rage, and the heathen imagine a vain thing. If we pursue the Hebrew text further, it reads, 'The head one of the Gods said, Let us make a man in our own image.' I once asked a learned Jew, 'If the Hebrew language compels us to render all words ending in heim in the plural, why not render the first Eloheim plural?' He replied, 'That is the rule with few exceptions; but in this case it would ruin the Bible.' He acknowledged I was right…. In the very beginning the Bible shows there is a plurality of Gods beyond the power of refutation. It is a great subject I am dwelling on. The word Eloheim ought to be in the plural all the way through—'Gods'. The heads of the Gods appointed one God for us; and when you take [that] view of the subject, its sets one free to see all the beauty, holiness and perfection of the Gods. All I want is to get the simple, naked truth, and the whole truth.”
History of the Church, 6:474-76 (7 April 1844)
1840s, King Follett discourse (1844)
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Joseph Smith, Jr.40
American religious leader and the founder of the Latter Day… 1805–1844Related quotes
“God said, "Let us make man in our image." Man said, 'Let us make God in our image."”
Douglas William Jerrold (1803–1857) English dramatist and writer
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 257.
Ricky Gervais (1961) English comedian, actor, director, producer, musician, writer, and former radio presenter
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist
The Inferno (1917), Ch. XVI
Context: The heavens have fallen on our heads! What a tremendous idea! It is the loftiest cry that life hurls. That was the cry of deliverance for which I had been groping until then. I had had a foreboding it would come, because a thing of glory like a poet's song always gives something to us poor living shadows, and human thought always reveals the world. But I needed to have it said explicitly so as to bring human misery and human grandeur together. I needed it as a key to the vault of the heavens.
These heavens, that is to say, the azure that our eyes enshrine, purity, plenitude — and the infinite number of suppliants, the sky of truth and religion. All this is within us, and has fallen upon our heads. And God Himself, who is all these kinds of heavens in one, has fallen on our heads like thunder, and His infinity is ours.
“In the beginning God created heaven and earth.”
William Tyndale (1494–1536) Bible translator and agitator from England
Genesis 1:1; archaic spelling: In the begynnynge God created heaven and erth.
Tyndale's translations
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 106