What is a God?

In this book Jaco Gericke is concerned with the question of what, according to the Hebrew Bible, an Elohim (God) was assumed to be. As a supplement to the tradition of predominantly linguistic, historical, literary, comparative, social-scientific and related approaches seeking to answer the question, Gericke offers a variety of experimental philosophical perspectives which examine how Elohim could be considered from and within the perspectives of an extremely wide range of philosophers. Consisting of a brief history of (anti-) metaphysical theories of whatness and essence from Socrates to Derrida, the relevant ideas are adapted and reapplied to the use of Elohim as common noun in the Hebrew Bible. As such it is a prolegomenon to future research related to the question by creating awareness both of possible alternative ways of conceptualizing the research problem and of the need for a more nuanced manner of speaking about what we mean in our asking of the question about what we mean when we talk about God.