<P> J presents Yahweh anthropomorphically: for example, walking through the Garden of Eden looking for Adam and Eve . The Elohist often presents Elohim as more distant and frequently involves angels, as in the Elohist version of the tale of Jacob's ladder, in which there is a ladder to the clouds, with angels climbing up and down, with Elohim at the top . In the Jahwist tale, Yahweh is simply stationed in the sky, above the clouds without the ladder or angels . Likewise, the Elohist describes Jacob wrestling with an angel . </P> <P> The classical documentary hypothesis, first developed in the late 19th century CE among literary scholars, holds that the Elohist portions of the Torah were composed in the 9th century BCE (i.e. during the early period of the Kingdom of Judah). This, however, is not universally accepted as later literary scholarship seems to show evidence of a later "Elohist redaction" (post-exilic) during the 5th century BCE which sometimes makes it difficult to determine whether a given passage is "Elohist" in origin, or the result of a later editor . </P> <P> The word Elohim occurs more than 2500 times in the Hebrew Bible, with meanings ranging from "gods" in a general sense (as in Exodus 12: 12, where it describes "the gods of Egypt"), to specific gods (e.g., 1 Kings 11: 33, where it describes Chemosh "the god of Moab", or the frequent references to Yahweh as the "elohim" of Israel), to demons, seraphim, and other supernatural beings, to the spirits of the dead brought up at the behest of King Saul in 1 Samuel 28: 13, and even to kings and prophets (e.g., Exodus 4: 16). The phrase bene elohim, translated "sons of the Gods", has an exact parallel in Ugaritic and Phoenician texts, referring to the council of the gods . </P> <P> Elohim occupy the seventh rank of ten in the famous medieval Rabbinic scholar Maimonides' Jewish angelic hierarchy . Maimonides said: "I must premise that every Hebrew (now) knows that the term Elohim is a homonym, and denotes God, angels, judges, and the rulers of countries, ..." </P>

How many times does the word elohim appear in the bible