How do Jews and Muslims explain Genesis 1:26?

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Bithynian said:
where Abraham is described as the plural אַדֹנָי ( adonay ) “masters”
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The majestic plurals are only used by the person and is not used in refering to someone, or is it? At least in my native tongue someone calling king in plural doesn’t sound right.
 
ThoughtfulMind said:
The majestic plurals are only used by the person and is not used in refering to someone, or is it?
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It can be used to refer to someone else. In Gen 24:9 (v 19 in my quoted post was a typo, apologies!) it is being used in the third person by the author to describe Abraham.

The majestic plural has different variations across languages. In Hebrew, it affects nouns, verbs and pronouns whether in first, second or third person. In English, it’s generally confined to first person pronouns, and is typically only used in reference to monarchical majesty.

In contemporary English, there’s very little opportunity to describe God with a majestic plural mostly because we lack a standard second person plural pronoun. We do have vernacular pronouns, but saying “y’all” to God would never catch on.

I also want to note that a majestic plural is not communicating any sort of plural numerical quantity. It’s simply an arbitrary change in the morphology (in this case grammatical number) in order to suggest a meaning (majesty) which would otherwise not be associated with that morphological change.
 
That seems like some equivocation. In German for example, the address of respect is the same as the plural “Sie” or “sie”. But this is not the majestic plural. Does Abraham refer to himself in the plural?
 
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No where did I equate all Jews to those who persecuted Jesus.

The statement is truthful. We are all deluded at times. That’s what Satan does in the world and that is what we do to ourselves when we reject Truth.
 
Here’s my thoughts:

First off, I explain that verse to my son that the three Persons of the Holy Trinity are talking amongst themselves. He’s heard the ancient astronaut theorists use that as a basis for their theories.

As for Jews: I’ve read online that the early Israelites could’ve been monolatrists ( Worshipers of one god in a polytheistic system ) and that, in this theory; God could have been primus inter pares of the heavenly host that later became the One God served by the heavenly court of angels.

Of course, as a good Catholic; I don’t subscribe to such a theory. Thought I’d share it though.
 
The Apostles themselves laid the blame at the feet of their countrymen.
 
I cannot speak for Muslims at all and not even for all Jews. However, two interpretations of this verse are G-d is using the magisterial “we” and, just the opposite interpretation, G-d is revealing His humility by incorporating the angels in the decision process of creating humankind.
 
ThoughtfulMind said:
I just wonder how Jews and Muslims explain the “us” in the genesis:
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image…
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They generally say that the plural “we” is frequently used to emphasize divinity in Semitic languages.

While it is an interesting linguistic nuance, by itself it doesn’t prove the Trinity. Other passages throughout the Old Testament appear in retrospect to support the concept of the Trinity, such as the physical appearances of God to Abraham. In one example, YHWH is speaking with Abraham about the coming destruction of Sodom and Gamorrah, when YHWH rained fire on Sodom and Gamorrah from YHWH out of heaven. The appearances of the Angel of the Lord and the Spirit of the Lord in the Old Testament in various places may support this as well. However, the Trinity is not explicitly revealed until the coming of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament.
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At the same time, in the next verse, G-d is no longer written in the plural but rather in the singular. There is a shift from plural to singular in Genesis as well as other biblical texts. The Hebrew language enables this with regard to the majesty of G-d, as well as His humility.
 
True. But muddying the waters by being politically correct doesn’t help at all.
 
I see that the conversation on CAF has shifted, so why not the singular and plural of G-d in the Torah?
 
I don’t know how a jew would give an answer to that verse, but I can take a guess as to what a muslim would say. In the Qur’an, Allah uses the royal plural all the time; often more than once in the same surah. In the Qur’an, Allah uses the royal plural when he is expressing his majesty. He uses the singular pronoun when he is expressing his oneness (because remember, they believe in Tawheed, which says that God is a single divine person).

Even though Allah uses the royal plural in the Qur’an, that doesn’t change the fact that He is Ahad– one person. No person in their right mind would see a verse in the Qur’an that uses the royal plural and say “Oh look! Allah is speaking of himself in a plural, therefore Allah must be a trinity!”. Therefore, when we take that into consideration, the muslim would come across Genesis 1:26 and say “So what? Allah uses the royal we in the Qur’an. That verse is entirely consistent with the Qur’an”
 
This isn’t a Jewish problem, nor a Muslim problem, I expect.

It’s a Christian problem, part of the usual mining the Tanakh for any kind of text that can be used to explain how a man can be God.
 
meltzerboy2 said:
G-d is revealing His humility by incorporating the angels in the decision process of creating humankind.
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I always thought it was about God and the Angels. I have no theological proof of it, probably most Christians believe it’s the Persons of the Holy Trinity. I am just glad someone else thinks it might be the Angels since they are a big part of the “action” in the Bible.
 
First, they would know that the original language is not English.

They would speak of “The royal ‘we’”.
 
I don’t know about the Jews , but the muslim part , their prophet Mohammad made it up .
 
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