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The biggest objection to this is that the authors of the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament never held any concepts of "the Holy Spirit/Ghost", or even the Doctrine of the Trinity. The personification of God's "breath" (translated as "spirit" in many older Bibles) as a divine "Spirit" was a very late innovation, and the Doctrine of the Trinity finds no explicit mention in the Greek New Testament itself.
This isn't to say that the idea of a god that was able to manifest itself via hypostases is alien to the ancient Israelites. There certainly isn't anything arguing against such a concept (contrary to many critiques of Christianity as non-Monotheistic because of the Doctrine of the Trinity) - there just simply isn't such a defined and explicit concept in the Bible.
While the word trinity is not in the Bible , it concept is.
"Elohim" is a plural noun with a singular meaning. Then Gen 1:16 God says let US make man in OUR image...
Who is the US and OUR?
Jn 1:1 says "in the beginning was the Word...and the Word was God. Then 1:14 identifies the Word as Jesus.
Acts 5:3 says Ananias lied to the Holy Spirit. Then verse 4 says he lied to God.
Jn 10:30 - I(Jesus) and the Father are one.
Jn 14:9 - ...He who has seen Me(Jesus) has seen the Father.
There are a couple more but you are not going to believe any of them, so I will stop here.
While the word trinity is not in the Bible , it concept is.
"Elohim" is a plural noun with a singular meaning. Then Gen 1:16 God says let US make man in OUR image...
Who is the US and OUR?
Jn 1:1 says "in the beginning was the Word...and the Word was God. Then 1:14 identifies the Word as Jesus.
Acts 5:3 says Ananias lied to the Holy Spirit. Then verse 4 says he lied to God.
Jn 10:30 - I(Jesus) and the Father are one.
Jn 14:9 - ...He who has seen Me(Jesus) has seen the Father.
There are a couple more but you are not going to believe any of them, so I will stop here.
Omega, you are making the classic Christian mistake of reading LATER Christian theology back into ancient Hebrew theology much like the momotheistic post exilic Jews writing their later monotheism into their telling of their ancient history. In fact, your response is so "corporate," most of us here could have given the predicted reply.
Last edited by InsaneInDaMembrane; 08-04-2016 at 09:15 PM..
Location: In a little house on the prairie - literally
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Quote:
Originally Posted by omega2xx
While the word trinity is not in the Bible , it concept is.
"Elohim" is a plural noun with a singular meaning. Then Gen 1:16 God says let US make man in OUR image...
Who is the US and OUR?
Jn 1:1 says "in the beginning was the Word...and the Word was God. Then 1:14 identifies the Word as Jesus.
Acts 5:3 says Ananias lied to the Holy Spirit. Then verse 4 says he lied to God.
Jn 10:30 - I(Jesus) and the Father are one.
Jn 14:9 - ...He who has seen Me(Jesus) has seen the Father.
There are a couple more but you are not going to believe any of them, so I will stop here.
Why is "Elohim" plural? Because the early splinter group for Canaanites, the Hebrews, didn't have the concept of a monotheistic god until the Persians, and their Zoroastrian religion, influenced them to think differently. Cyrus the Great, and later Darius, promulgated this. Zoroaster and Cyrus were contemporaries. Those early Hebrews worshiped the same gods as their brethren. Hence the plural.
A quick note on the word elohim (ʾĕlōhîm), taken from the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible:
I. The usual word for 'god' in the Hebrew Bible is ʾĕlōhîm, a plural formation
of ʾĕlōah, the latter being an expanded form
of the Common Semitic noun ʾil (see: Eloah).
The term ʾĕlōhîm occurs some 2570 times in
the Hebrew Bible, with a variety of meanings.
In such expressions as "all the gods of
Egypt" (Exod 12: 12) it refers to a plurality
of deities - without there being a clear distinction
between these gods and their images.
Far more frequent is the use of the
plural with reference to a single being:
Chemosh is the ʾĕlōhîm of Moab (I Kgs
II :33); the plural here is a plural of excellence
or of majesty (Joaon/Muraoka §
136d). Though having the generic sense of
'god', the term is also used in an absolute
sense ('the god'. e.g. Gen 5:22) whence it
developed the function of a proper name
('God'): when an Israelite suppliant says his
soul thirsts for ʾĕlōhîm he is not referring to
just any god but to Yahweh the god of
Israel (Ps 42:3). Since the Israelite concept
of divinity included all praeternatural
beings, also lower deities (in modern usage
referred to as 'spirits', 'angels', 'demons',
'semi-gods', and the like) may be called ʾĕlōhîm. Thus the teraphim (Gen 31:
30.32), anonymous heavenly beings (Ps 8:6;
LXX CiyyEA.Ol), and the spirits of the dead
(I Sam 28: 13) are referred to as 'gods'. A
metaphorical use of the term - metaphorical
from our point of view - occurs when it is
applied to living human beings, such as
Moses (Exod 4: 16; 7: I) and the king (Ps
45:7).
(Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible - DDD: "God I", Karel van der Toorn, 1999 Brill, 2nd ed.)
While the word trinity is not in the Bible , it concept is.
"Elohim" is a plural noun with a singular meaning. Then Gen 1:16 God says let US make man in OUR image...
Who is the US and OUR?
Jn 1:1 says "in the beginning was the Word...and the Word was God. Then 1:14 identifies the Word as Jesus.
Acts 5:3 says Ananias lied to the Holy Spirit. Then verse 4 says he lied to God.
Jn 10:30 - I(Jesus) and the Father are one.
Jn 14:9 - ...He who has seen Me(Jesus) has seen the Father.
There are a couple more but you are not going to believe any of them, so I will stop here.
See my note above in the entry from DDD. Before you set out to offer examples "proving" your view, make sure your view is at least built upon a foundation that acknowledges what we know about the term ʾĕlōhîm in the Bible and other cognate languages.
As Insane pointed out, your reponse is not only theologically and ideologically suspect, but I would add that it is ignorant, since it ignores the basics. A theory built on shaky basics cannot sustain itself, except through special pleading.
Quote:
Originally Posted by InsaneInDaMembrane
Omega, you are making the classic Christian mistake of reading LATER Christian theology back into ancient Hebrew theology much like the momotheistic post exilic Jews writing their later monotheism into their telling of their ancient history. In fact, your response is so "corporate," most of us here could have given the predicted reply.
Yes, indeed - the classic apologetic for the plural nature of ʾĕlōhîm! We've heard this a million times, and in that million times of repetition it hasn't gotten any more convincing, has it?
Really good post. I doubt whether 1% of Bible -believers have any idea of just how much more complicated and different from the straightforward march in and grab all the canaanite land story of Exodus is the picture painted by archaeology.
What evidence has archaeology presented to refute the Biblical account of this?
I will take a wild guess and say none that can be verified.
Omega, you are making the classic Christian mistake of reading LATER Christian theology back into ancient Hebrew theology much like the momotheistic post exilic Jews writing their later monotheism into their telling of their ancient history. In fact, your response is so "corporate," most of us here could have given the predicted reply.
I am not reading Christian theology. I quoted the Bible.
If my response is "corporate," maybe it is because a great many who actually understand the Bible agree that those verses teach the doctrine of the Trinity.
Oh, no doubt. I would not venture as far to say he never existed; what I would doubt, as I do with the Jesus character in the NT, is the fanciful story weaved around his person to make him appear larger, more prominent, more noble and more favored than anyone around to SET the stage for the creation of the "chosen people" and beyond. As you cannot sell your mythical god-man hero without a predicted and miraculous birth, heroic and/or noble life and a conqueror of death, you cannot sell your ethnocentric ideas without lathering your patriarch with the most glorious of praises and special status with the gods.
"We are the special chosen people of the only god there is because look, our patriarch was called, blessed, chosen and full of faith and for that reason, we are the s**t!"
To bad you have no evidence for your purely biased opinions.
If you care to believe opinions with no evidence, be my guest, but it seems rather foolish to me.
Why is "Elohim" plural? Because the early splinter group for Canaanites, the Hebrews, didn't have the concept of a monotheistic god until the Persians, and their Zoroastrian religion, influenced them to think differently. Cyrus the Great, and later Darius, promulgated this. Zoroaster and Cyrus were contemporaries. Those early Hebrews worshiped the same gods as their brethren. Hence the plural.
They never came out of Egypt.
The Jews were not Canaanites. Abraham was a pagan Chaldean.
The Persians did not influence the Jews. Their belief in one God was established long before the Persians became a people.
The early Hebrews did not worship the same gods as part of their religion. Now at various times the Hebrews did backslide and worship other god, but that was not part of their original theology.
Good could h ave use a singular noun, but that is not what he wanted to teach us. The use of Elohim was deliberate and verifies "US" and "OUR<" in Gen 1:26.
He did it to establish the doctrine of the Trinity.
I can't offer any Biblical evidence that Judaism was originally monotheistic, but Ex 20:3, You shall have no other gods before me, certainly validates it would be from then on.
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