The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (727 page)

(Heb., God(s)). A name for the God of the Jews. Its plural form may once have been literal—‘mighty ones’—but it became subsumed in the accumulating Jewish sense that if God is indeed
God
, then there can only be what God is: One, and not a plurality of gods.

 
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El
r
(sacred Indian cave temples)
:

see
ELLOR
.

 
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(Jap.). Pictorial votive offerings.
Koema
(small ema) is a small flat wooden plaque, which may be rectangular, square, or pentagonal in shape, with a picture painted on its front surface.
ema
(large ema), which appeared after the 15th cent. is a work of art in many cases, painted by famous painters at the request of their rich patrons. Both
koema
and
ema
are offered to the
kami
of a shrine or to the deity of a temple for making wishes and for the fulfilment of the wishes.
The word
ema
(picture + horse) suggests its origin as a substitute for a live horse.

 
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(Jap.). A picture scroll. A long scroll, viewed from right to left, contains a series of pictures, often with the text that illustrates a story.
Its motifs range from the secular to the religious.
Jigoku z
shi
(the Scroll of Hells), made in the 12th cent., is a religious emaki, in which the gruesome scenes of
hells
based on Genshin's
j
y
sh
(The Essentials for Salvation) are vividly illustrated. Temples and shrines supplied legends and miracle stories, and as a result of the spread of Buddhism in the Kamakura period, the lives of exemplary people were added to its themes.