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1 John 5:7 Since the 1500s this passage has been widely viewed as an interpolation in the NT text by early Catholic scribes. This article contains a chart of how modern English and Hebrew versions handle the verse. It also has comments from three informed sources on its history and explanations why most modern Bible editors do not include it. [5 HTML pages]
Early Christian Creeds
“Elohim” in Biblical Context
The Genesis Plurals
John 20:28 — Theological Astronomy
Old Models vs Biblical Priorities |
To God, Through Messiah In the NT, the repeated pattern of spiritual progression is toward God through the Messiah Yeshua. This mirrors the Tanakh pattern of approaching God at the Mishkan (Tabernacle) in the person of the High Priest. [2 HTML pages]
The Two Lords (of Psalm 110:1)
Visions of the Heavenly Council
Worship in the N.T.: Whom Did They Worship? (Redrawing Holy Land Maps)
Related Text Lists • Daniel 7 Allusions in the N.T. • The Word, the Son, Yeshua Was With God • Messiah and the Spirit [PDF] • Psalm 110:1 in the N.T. (Quotations & Allusions) • Salutations & Benedictions in the N.T.
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This portal has foundation articles on monotheism, the oneness of God, and the divinity of the Messiah.
Each study attempts to recover emphases and terminology in the biblical texts. This is done to distinguish the Hebrew Bible and New Testament from traditional monotheistic interpretations articulated by Judaism and Christianity. This is not an easy region to navigate. What you find is that Judaism and Christianity offer two competing maps of the same “country.” Neither one, however, provides a totally accurate depiction of what you encounter when actually trekking the Country (of Scripture) yourself. Judaism and Christianity, as we know them today, are Diaspora religions. They developed outside Israel, away from where the original biblical events took place and the divine revelations occurred. Both religions have evolved and partly in response to each other. And neither of them depends solely on their Scriptures for authority in teaching and observance. Both have bodies of interpretation and authoritative precedence upon which they draw to define themselves. [Top] Both faiths affirm belief in Monotheism ["one God"; Greek, mono+theos]. But the word has different meanings to each faith, so we cannot assume "monotheism" is a coin with universal value. The word itself was coined in 1660 and was imposed upon the field of biblical studies by Enlightenment scholars. In Modern Judaism monotheism refers to a form of exclusive unitarianism articulated primarily by Maimonides in the Middle Ages and upheld since by most branches of Judaism. In his attempts to interpret biblical teachings about God in light of the philosophy of Aristotle, Maimonides rejected the anthropomorphic language and imagery of the Bible. Instead, he said there is only one supernatural being, God himself. Other gods, demons, or spirits are figments of human imagination. Angels are only "attributes" of God, not independent beings. And the Messiah (contra Catholic Christianity) is not divine, but merely a man. However, recent studies in pre-Talmudic, pre-Rabbinic Judaism show this definition of monotheism to be a post-biblical—and post-New Testament—innovation. Maimonides's Aristotelian and anti-Christian model is not what all Jews always everywhere held to be true. The biblical and historical evidence shows that previous generations of Jews not only believed in other supra-human, supernatural beings, they also believed that a heavenly co-ruler sat at God's right hand as his prince, vice-regent, and governor. This one stood as mediating priest between Him and humanity. Daniel 7, Psalm 110, and Ezekiel 9-10 were (among others) three biblical sources for this idea. In the Alexandrian Greek Bible (the Septuagint, LXX), one passage states explicitly that the "Lord" (Grk, kurios) who sits next to God had been begotten by God in heaven before the dawn of time (Ps 110:3 =109:3 LXX). Later non-biblical Jewish documents in the Pseudepigrapha and Dead Sea Scrolls expanded on these biblical texts. Some authors of these documents identified God's vice-regent as a superior angel or an exalted patriarch. Others said he was God's chosen one, messiah, and son. Eventually, this imagery of heaven's court—God and Someone else—became anathema in Rabbinic Judaism (e.g. m. Sanhedrin 4:5; b. Sanhedrin 38a–38b). This happened especially after the rabbis had encounters with Yeshua's Jewish disciples. The rabbis vigorously fought against what they called a doctrine of "Two Powers" in heaven. And their spiritual successors among the Orthodox still do to this day. [Top] In the other Tradition, most varieties of Christianity (except for sects and cults) define monotheism in terms of the Trinitarianism expressed in the 4th and 5th century Nicean, Athanasian, and Chalcedonian creeds and in the theological dissertations of the early Church Fathers. Elements of the theoretical construct of the Godhead were taken from the New Testament and processed through a grid of Greek philosophy, primarily Neo-Platonism. In contrast, the NT does not explicitly articulate the doctrine of the Trinity. Instead, its doctrine of God is built upon the Hebrew imagery of God and his heavenly Vice-regent (Psalm 110:1 is a key verse in the NT). Significantly, what later rabbis condemned as heresy in the teaching of Yeshua's disciples is belief in "two powers"—not three—which reflects what the NT actually portrays. (See the overall pattern in Worship in the N.T.) As doctrinal evolution and crystalization took place in the Church, the Hebrew imagery of God-and-his-Agent was all but rejected because it depicted Yeshua as distinguished from and subordinate to God. To theologians such a view contradicted the settled-upon principles of a co-equal, co-eternal monotheistic, but triune, Godhead. One reason for Christianity's traditional antinomian bias toward the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament has been its relative silence in supporting the Church's evolved doctrine of the Godhead. Early church thinkers knew their philosophical model of God did not have any explicit support in the New Testament. So over the centuries some Catholic scribes tried to bolster the NT witness to the Trinity model. Certain Greek NT manuscripts were altered in order to give theologians proof-texts they needed for their doctrinal disputes (some major ones include John 1:18; 1 Timothy 3:16; 1 John 5:7). For the last few centuries, English Bible translations contain other forms of unauthorized, imposed bias meant to promote a trinitarian perspective. (See From Holy Spirit to Holy Ghost.) [Top] So today, both Judaism and Christianity represent, in their official traditions, altered forms of Biblical Monotheism. And not a few leaders of both groups have gone to extremes to defend their positions and, when necessary, deny the plain text of Scripture. Four examples:
In other words, Monotheism isn't so simple a topic to discuss, as though everyone knows (and agrees on) what the word means. It's evident that if we want to grasp the Bible's own teachings about God, we should study the Bible itself, trying not to read it through the contradictory lenses of the Diaspora traditions. A major principle of this website is to go back in time and dig below the accumulated sediments to enable people to see the progressions of religious thought. This will enable them to distinguish What Is from What Was, and to discern what is actually in the Country from what others say is there. That is why I am not committed to, nor do I uphold, either Judaism's or Christianity's traditional, orthodox definitions of "monotheism." I am committed to the revelations about God in both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament and to the divinity of the Messiah, as it is taught in the NT.
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