steamboat28 wrote:
In rabbinic literature, the Presence of G-d has its own name (the Shekinah), and in the Kabbalah it is regarded as the feminine aspect of the Divine.
All this discussion about trinitarian doctrine is moot because, ultimately, "Adonai echad" -- G-d is One. Trinitarian thought doesn't dispose of that notion at all; it simply shows three "avatars", if you will, of the same Divine Being--the Father is the mind of G-d, the Son is the hands of G-d, and the Holy Spirit is the heart of G-d. At least, that's where my rabbit trail of belief led me.
Kabbalah is kind of like an unsanctioned version representing some of the dissenting views of Jewish orthodoxy. I believe they believed that much of the writings were simply written by different men who were "inspired" but not "directed" to write what they did. And so again, they have their own knife to slice the pizza with. Hebrew scripture battles these other versions as well as the "lying pen". You had groups like the Essenes which both Yeshua and John the Baptist were likely members of.
http://www.essene.org/Ancient_Essenes.htm
This is further complicated by different manuscripts.
"God is the Two in One. He is She and She is He.... Therefore shall the name of the Father and the Mother be equally hallowed, for they are the great aspects of God, and the one is not without the other, in the One God."
According to this, the Essenes didn't believe in multiple "persons" as the Trinity claims but rather that God was a BALANCE of masculine and feminine.
I don't think the Trinity is compatible with the OT. The NT was never concerned with the fundamentals of Judaism because it wasn't written as a bible or holy book, but rather mostly supplemental letters and guidance for people who were studying Torah. So the idea that one can obtain a new doctrine, especially about the identity or very idea of God, is incomprehensible
to me.
I'll give you a few examples of why I think this:
Deuteronomy 4:35 Unto thee it was shewed, that thou mightest know that the Lord he is God; there is none else beside him.
Now... let me render it again but how it actually reads in Hebrew.
Deuteronomy 4:35 Unto thee it was shewed, that thou mightest know that YAHWEH he is God; there is none else beside him.
http://www.linkedword.com/deut/4/35-4/35
(simply click on Lord to see that adonai here is a substitution for the ineffable name YHWH)
So here God = YAHWEH and at the same time it denies the existence of anyone else who might lay claim to the same title.
2 Samuel 7:22 Wherefore thou art great, YAHWEH God: for there is none like thee, neither is there any God beside thee, according to all that we have heard with our ears.
http://www.linkedword.com/2sam/7/22-7/22
One more. Isaiah 44:6-8.
6 Thus saith YAHWEH the King of Israel, and his redeemer YHWH of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.
7 And who, as I, shall call, and shall declare it, and set it in order for me, since I appointed the ancient people? and the things that are coming, and shall come, let them shew unto them.
8 Fear ye not, neither be afraid: have not I told thee from that time, and have declared it ? ye are even my witnesses. Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any .
http://www.linkedword.com/isa/44/-44/22
For me this is the clearest you can be. This isn't a title saying no one else can have this title. This is a name saying no one else can have this title. No one else is name YHWH and clearly he says "I" and "ME" and "MY" indicating there is but one speaker, identified as YHWH, who is saying he is the only God and there is no other. For ME... this makes the Trinity impossible because it relies on titles being like "offices" where you can have different people be president and vice president and so in their minds they wanted Jesus to have great power instead of Jesus having access to great power because he was a "son" of God. Who else was called the son of God in the bible? Adam. Who else? David.
A lot of people took the whole sonship thing quite literally without understanding the spiritual/metaphoric nature of it. But we can see an example of this was understood spiritually in the letter to the Corinthians. I want to make the "TWO Corinthians" joke here but its first Corinthians lol.
1 Corinthians 4:15 For though ye have ten thousand instructers in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.
This question of who begets who is like the olive tree representing Israel where Yeshua becomes the BRANCH that others are grafted into. I believe the idea from a spiritual perspective is more aligned with an understanding of the Force than what you will have if you try to pass the spiritual understanding through later forms of religion like Christianity because they, without many surviving rabbinical teachers and lacking access to the Torah, prone to misinterpretation and the took things literally that should have been spiritual. They even created an evil counterpart to God where no such being originally existed. But it was because they (pizza analogy) were holding the knife.
And of course they didn't speak the same language either so when they go back with that bias and try to understand words like "elohim" I can understand why they thought they were correct, because "el" or "eloah" is singular while the 'eem' ending makes it plural. HOWEVER... the word itself is "power" and the pluralization makes it a plurality of power. Not "powers" in every context but rather "powerful". Powerful is a plurality of potency. Since there were other "powers", including rulers and judges, they used superlative pluralities to differentiate G-d from the other gods (ex: the AL-might-y).
What is a synonym for "force"? Power. So literally the same Hebrew word for God is literally synonymous with the Force. And all I'm saying is that different groups of people had control of their own knife because even if they agreed there was one God not everyone agreed with what that meant. I submit to you that the Essenes did understand God to be a single person but that "he" was generic in the sense that "he" was a perfect balance of both genders. So they didn't need a God married to a Goddess. And this was important, imho, because it showed that God wasn't being given human features for the sake of being easier to relate to. They were willing to see God as a neutral genderless... "Force". So that's why I think it's good that we don't try to force each other into 1 belief or opinion about the Force or which religion was correct and what not because like you said, they're all just faces. To me the problem with the Trinity is that these were thought to be separate personas. Jesus talks to God and asks why he was forsaken as if he was a literal Son God which became God the Son. To me that goes against Yahweh's statements in the Torah. HOWEVER, I also believe that these statements in the Torah are also just the writings of men and reflect their beliefs, not the voice of a cosmic deity. But... for me the Torah is the foundation of the Tanakh which is the foundation for any holy books based on the Hebrew tradition. And so I just think the Trinity stepped too far outside the box and did so for the purpose of appealing to pagan gentiles; especially sun worshipers like Constantine.
It's a lot like the Faith of the Seven in A Song of Ice and Fire; the Father, Mother, Warrior, Maiden, Smith, Crone, and Stranger aren't different gods. They're all just faces, facets, aspects, or personae of one.
The existence of Yeshua haMashiach, Jesus the Christ, could be that of an ascended or awakened master. Either way, Yeshua Himself did nothing to contradict the Shema--G-d is still One, just One with many faces and omnipotence enough to send a sliver of Themselves into a human body to live and walk the earth as Yeshua. And Yeshua did nothing to discredit the Ten Commandments or the 613 mitzvot, because He claimed that if one loved G-d and loved their neighbor, they would unwittingly keep all the Law and the Prophets.
again, I agree with 99% of what you're saying but I think the "me" and "my" and "I" is incompatible with the "they" and "themselves" used in Christian dogma. Yes, Genesis says "let us make man in our image" but I believe that us and our were inserted into the English which is why I like the Linked Word Project so you can actually see which words were actually there and which were the original Hebrew. But I don't expect to change anyone's mind on this. I just like talking about it since I spent a lot of time researching it so thank you for the opportunity and for listening.
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
http://www.linkedword.com/gen/1/-1/0
