Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site sphinx.UChicago.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!cjdb From: cjdb@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Charles Blair) Newsgroups: net.religion.christian Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Trinity: the fine line Message-ID: <1108@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> Date: Mon, 9-Sep-85 15:25:04 EDT Article-I.D.: sphinx.1108 Posted: Mon Sep 9 15:25:04 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 10-Sep-85 05:27:05 EDT References: <603@usl.UUCP> <3015@topaz.ARPA> <97@unc.unc.UUCP> Organization: U. Chicago - Computation Center Lines: 105 >>> Julie A Harazduk >>> Maybe the term monotheism is too limiting to describe the truth contained. >>> This is true of the term Trinity. Maybe that's why its not used in the >>> Bible to explain God. God has one will, one plan, and one mind. The >>> Bible says, "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One." Where the >>> word for God (Elohim) is plural indicating more than one in some sense,yet >>> One. And the word for "One" here, (I forget offhand) suggests a unity or >>> oneness as in one mind, one heart, one purpose, one plan...united. >> >> Sorry. The word for God in the She'ma (your quote from the Torah) is >> Elohaynu (is the software installed yet that will allow us to input Hebrew >> letters?). Singular. Not "more than one in some sense," but One, without >> any qualifiers. >> >> [A sentence irrelevant to the above has been omitted.] >> >> harold a. stern 410 memorial drive > The quote in question reads "Shma Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echad." It > was my original mistake and I apologize for the misinformation. However, I > do believe that the word "Adonai" is the word for "Lord" and this word is > plural. The word "Elohenu" following the plural "Adonai" just supports the > notion that He ("The Lord") is more than one person, yet one is our God. > "God" is one, there is no denying that, for He said it. But as the trinity > implies, He has revealed Himself to us in the three persons: the Father, the > Son and the Holy Spirit. And all the evidence of this can be found in the > Old Testament prophecies. This is my original point. > Julie A. Harazduk The above exchange calls for a few comments. First of all, monotheism simply means "the doctrine that there is only one God" (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary). It does not presuppose any one particular doctrine *about* that God. So I think that Trinitarians can call themselves monotheists without embarrassment or qualification. Secondly, the quotation in question does not read, "Shma Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echad," but "Shma` Yisrael, YHWH 'Elohenu, YHWH 'echad," i.e., not "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One," but "Hear O Israel, Yahweh our God, YHWH 'echad" (the accuracy of my transliteration, like everyone else's, is determined by the limitations of this medium). Jews avoid pronouncing the divine name for reasons of piety. "Adonai" is one substitution commonly used (and in fact many Hebrew texts "point" the reader to this reading, in how they "point" the divine name--pardon the pun; it should also be pointed out that the reading "Yahweh" is scholarly conjecture only). Another substitution in reading that I have heard is "haShem"--"the name." But more to the point is that the sentence in question, if it is making a statement about Yahweh's oneness--notice I left that part untranslated--is ipso facto irrelevant to a proof or disproof of whether Trinitarian notions have any basis in the text of the Hebrew Bible, for the two following reasons: (a) the text speaks of "our God," not "God"--we do not have here a statement of monotheism, "Only one God exists," but only of what "our God" is like: theirs might be different; (b) if the text speaks of the oneness of anything, it is of Yahweh, "our God." But since we have already shown that "our God" does not in and of itself mean the same as "God," and if Yahweh is to be equated with the "Father" person in the Trinity, then to tell a Christian that the Father is one (i) is probably not news and (ii) is irrelevant to the question of whether the Godhead is a trinity or not: Yahweh would only be one part of the Trinity, and the statement in question is about Yahweh, not God per se. To assume that God and Yahweh are completely identical is to beg the question. Thirdly, if the text does state that Yahweh is one, then what does this mean? (The RSV translates Dt. 6.4 as follows: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord" and in a footnote : "Or, 'the Lord our God, the Lord is one,' or ' the Lord is our God, the Lord is one,' or 'the Lord is our God, the Lord alone,'"--four different translations in all.) I don't think the ancient Hebrews were much given to ontologizing. One possibility therefore is that what we have here is a polemic against other Yahweh cults: the bulls of Bethel and Dan, for example. What the author could be attacking is a multiplicity of cults devoted to Yahweh (compare the multiplicity of cults devoted to Baal), stressing the importance of worship at one cult site (which given the other places in the Hebrew Bible where this kind of emphasis is found implies that the place in question was Jerusalem). The orthodoxy of one cult devoted to one version of Yahweh at one place (Jerusalem) could more easily be maintained--it was this kind of orthodoxy, or perhaps more properly, orthopraxy, that much of the prophetic literature in the Bible is interested in establishing and maintaining. (The books of the Bible from Deuteronomy through 2 Kings, in the Hebrew order--the English versions deviate--are thought to be the work, in their final form, of the so-called Deuteronomistic School. A tenet of this school was that Jerusalem was the one and only legitimate Yahwistic cult site.) Let me anticipate an objection from both Trinitarians and observant Jews. What I am doing here is history, not theology. (I do not regard myself as competent to do theology.) Theologically the distinction between "Yahweh," "God" and "our God" might be specious. Historically, however it isn't. The Hebrew Bible is more properly a library, not a book: it is composed of books, many of which are themselves constructed out of earlier documents (references to some of these may be found, for example, in the books of Kings). These documents span more than a millennium as far as their composition is concerned; it is clear that the view of God in these documents, like any view, was subject to changes, modifications, revisions, etc. The concept of God grew, developed, "evolved" if you like. That is why I am continually astounded by bald [sic] references to the "God of the Bible" in net.religion, net.religion.christian, and net.origins, especially by those who disbelieve "*the* God" of "the Bible." What are they disbelieving--an evolving idea that is almost two- and sometimes over three-thousand years old, depending on which part of the Bible you happen to be reading? You determine a commitment to God today on this?!