Comments on: Jesus and “God” – Part 7 – What did the Shema originally mean? (Dale)

By: trinities - SCORING THE BURKE – BOWMAN DEBATE – Burke 1 (DALE)

trinities - SCORING THE BURKE – BOWMAN DEBATE – Burke 1 (DALE) — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 23:11:59 +0000

[...] when he asserts that Deut 6:4 features “explicit Unitarian language”, but I’ve posted on that before. (Again, [...]

By: trinities - Jesus and “god” - part 11 - Review and Conclusion (Dale)

trinities - Jesus and “god” - part 11 - Review and Conclusion (Dale) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 02:24:48 +0000

[...] parts 7 and 8, I looked at the famous Shema passage, which is so often quoted as support for monotheism. It [...]

By: trinities - Jesus and “god” - part 6 - Jesus as “god” in the New Testament (Dale)

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 02:12:29 +0000

[...] Next time: Revisiting the Shema. [...]

By: JohnO

JohnO — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:39:54 +0000

The “oneness” is not a uniqueness of quality like the original ancient near eastern intent of Deut 6.4. But also the one of quantity.

By: trinities - Jesus and “God” - Part 7 - Some recent Jewish scholars on the biblical Shema (Dale)

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:29:04 +0000

[...] Last time we looked carefully at the verse normally translated as “Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one.” We saw, surprisingly, that on any credible translation, it is not itself an assertion of monotheism – although it’ll probably be consistent with monotheism – depending on what is understood by “monotheism”! And that is a tougher problem that must be faced, for even though this Shema wasn’t (originally) an assertion of monotheism, there are plenty of other monotheistic texts, even a few in Deuteronomy itself, which say that YHWH is the only god, or the only true god. [...]

By: Dale

Dale — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 13:29:31 +0000

Hi JohnO – thanks for the comment. In your view, what sort of “oneness” would the Pharisees (and perhaps Jesus) be asserting of Yahweh? Uniqueness?

Dale

By: JohnO

JohnO — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 16:10:43 +0000

I agree with your citation from IVP that the claim is YHWH’s sovereignty over other gods. The initial implication of Deut 6.4 that YHWH is sovereign over all since Jesus is not YHWH by Trinitarian claims, and only YHWH is sovereign – one wonders how that gets reconciled.

However, once you get to the first century, you have other baggage to deal with. This verse is a symbol of Jewish belief. Tacked on to it (in addition to its more ancient meaning) comes other claims chiefly the ‘one’-ness of God. That is a Jewish claim that did in fact come about in the first century which began because of massive pagan pressure against Judaism.

So, when we find Deut 6.4 in the New Testament affirmed by a Pharisee (which were the ones making these ‘one’-ness claims), and agreed upon by Jesus – this is the symbol we are talking about. The extra baggage is there implicitly. We cannot divorce a meaning of language from the social situations in which they were spoken.