The Jewish Trinity

Conventional wisdom states that the Hebrew Scriptures only hint that there are persons of Yahveh. This book shows that Moses and other Bible writers wrote strikingly and often, both about the Trinity and the deity of the Messiah. The Old Testament is as explicit about the Trinity and the deity of the Messiah as is the New Testament. The reader of this book will come to know the Trinitarianism in the Hebrew Scriptures that Yahvists knew. The reader of this book will come to read the Bible the same way the inspired writers intended it to be read-as Trinitarian

Sommer utilizes a lost ancient Near Eastern perception of divinity according to which a god has more than one body and fluid, unbounded selves. Though the dominant strains of biblical religion rejected it, a monotheistic version of this theological intuition is found in some biblical texts. Later Jewish and Christian thinkers inherited this ancient way of thinking; ideas such as the sefirot in Kabbalah and the trinity in Christianity represent a late version of this theology. This book forces us to rethink the distinction between monotheism and polytheism, as this notion of divine fluidity is found in both polytheistic cultures (Babylonia, Assyria, Canaan) and monotheistic ones (biblical religion, Jewish mysticism, Christianity), whereas it is absent in some polytheistic cultures (classical Greece). The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel has important repercussions not only for biblical scholarship and comparative religion but for Jewish-Christian dialogue.

To preview and search this book, go to Google Print: http: //print.google.com/print?isbn=1411601475. Color print books are very expensive--15 cents per page. If this is too expensive, check out the inexpensive B&W print edition, or view the entire color version book for free on Google Print

Some trinitarians explain the Trinity doctrine by reference to the three main colors united in one rainbow. Others explain how the understanding, the conscience, and the will blending together in one man illustrate the Trinity. Still others compare the Trinity to three lit candles in one room blending into one light. None of these illustrations satisfactorily offer an analogy of how three distinct almighty and eternal beings make one almighty and eternal being. The absolute uni-personality of God is the first principle of the Jewish Scriptures and the New Testament. Trinitarian Christians do not deny that there is one God, but differ as to the absolute unity of God. They speak of the Godhead as a Trinity composed of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Trinitarianism maintains that the term God includes not only the Father, but Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Yet, even the New Testament shows that Jesus was a person as distinct from God as the disciples were distinct from him.

Conventional wisdom states that the Hebrew Scriptures only hint that there are persons of Yahveh. This book shows that Moses and other Bible writers wrote strikingly and often, both about the Trinity and the deity of the Messiah. The Old Testament is as explicit about the Trinity and the deity of the Messiah as is the New Testament. The reader of this book will come to know the Trinitarianism in the Hebrew Scriptures that Yahvists knew. The reader of this book will come to read the Bible the same way the inspired writers intended it to be read-as Trinitarian

In this study of the rabbinic heretics who believed in Two Powers in Heaven, Alan Segal explores some relationships between rabbinic Judaism, Merkabah mysticism, and early Christianity. Two Powers in Heaven was a very early category of heresy. It was one of the basic categories by which the rabbis perceived the new phenomenon of Christianity and one of the central issues over which Judaism and Christianity separated. Segal reconstructs the development of the heresy through prudent dating of the stages of the rabbinic traditions. The basic heresy involved interpreting scripture to say that a principal angelic or hypostatic manifestation in heaven was equivalent to God. The earliest heretics believed in two complementary powers in heaven, while later heretics believed in two opposing powers in heaven. Segal stresses the importance of perceiving the relevance of rabbinic material for solving traditional problems of New Testament and gnostic scholarship, and at the same time maintains the necessity of reading those literatures for dating rabbinic material. Please note that Two Powers in Heaven was previously published by Brill in hardback, ISBN 90 04 05453 7 (no longer available).

For most of church history, the Catholic dogma of the Trinity has supplanted the original Jewish understanding of God’s incarnation in the Messiah that was taught in the New Testament Scriptures. But the Jews were never trinitarian in their understanding of Yahweh’s self-revelation. So, why is the evangelical Christian church described as trinitarian in her orthodoxy? The forgotten reality is that the Messiah Jesus and his apostles were Jewish and would have understood the nature of God exactly as Moses and the prophets had. They knew Yahweh as a single person Deity. Therefore, whenever Jesus or the apostles would speak of God or his Spirit, they would never deviate from that Mosaic understanding. And so, when we read of the gospel being presented to the Gentiles in the book of Acts, there is no introduction or controversy about the idea of the Trinity at all. This book will argue for the pure scriptural revelation of the Christology that the Jewish apostles proclaimed and defended, and will provide a definitive refutation of the Catholic fiction by appealing to the verbalized convictions and assertions of Moses and the prophets, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Jewish apostles, which cannot sustain the Trinity.

The Sourcebook is Volume 2 of a set, Volume 1 being "The Jewish Trinity: When Rabbis Believed in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit," on sale everywhere. For a free color PDF of the Sourcebook, see www.yoel.info (The free color PDF is also available from Lulu.com). To search inside this book, go to Google Print: B&W version: http://print.google.com/print?isbn=1411601467 Color version: http://print.google.com/print?isbn=1411601475