The Editor's Preface to the New Edition

This is basically a rundown of what has been updated since the last edition and why.  I have not read the previous edition and one more go through this time around will hold me for a while.  Perhaps in another twenty-five years I'll be up for another read.  If a newer edition to this one has been published, perhaps I'll go that way.  Or if not, maybe I'll go back to the previous edition of this one and scoff at how badly in need of revision it is.

Asimov starts off with a discussion of the how "God" is translated in Genesis.  The Hebrew word is "Elohim", which is plural.  He notes other polytheistic references still in Genesis, such as Genesis 3:22, "the man is become as one of us", and Genesis 11:7, "let us go down".  This probably reflects the unnamed editor of the previous sources not quite catching all the references to other Gods from the older documents, perhaps from a time before the Jews had become monotheistic or perhaps reflects some borrowing from other Mesopotamian texts.  Asimov notes that more modern interpretations include that the reference to God as including more than one being may be a use of the "royal we" or a reference to the Trinity by Christians.  In any event, there it is.  I'll leave it to Believers and fervent non-Believers to argue which of those interpretations is correct.