- Not a novel notion. Cf. Rabbi Benjamin D. Sommer’s book: The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel 1st Edition or Dale Tuggy’s interview with Rabbi Sommer about his book content. And Rabbi Sommer’s Youtube audio presentation at: Benjamin Sommer The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel
1 Like
I really do not think that is what is meant. God is “up there” in OT theology. When He talks, He is bridging the Gap. God has a presence. There is no indication tht He is anywhere else at the same time.
Is the tetragrammaton for God. There is no indication that it has 2 meanings
Richard
The idea of a three person Godhead is not scriptural. It is not taught, nor even hinted at, OT or NT. Jesus is the firstborn Son of the Most High God, Yahweh… and the beginning of Yahweh’s creation. Jesus himself tells us in plain terms that our God and Heavenly Father is also his own God and Heavenly Father. (John 20:17)
John 3:16… For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that everyone believing in Him should not perish, but should have eternal life.
This most fundamental teaching of the scriptures belies the Trinity Doctrine.
It was an angel of Yahweh in the bush - not Yahweh Himself.
Are angels holy? Why was the ground any holier there?
God is omnipresent and not more ‘above’ than ‘below’, but he can make his presence more known and reveal himself more explicitly at any place and time he chooses.
Read the text, Dale. It clearly says in Exodus (and Acts) that it was an angel (literally “messenger”) of Yahweh in the bush. And yes, God’s faithful angels are holy - just as we are commanded to be.
Does scripture say God is omnipresent? I know it says there is no place one could go to escape Him, but that doesn’t mean He is omnipresent.
Making claims that in essence declare “I know better than the ancient rabbis!” is pretty astoundingly arrogant! When people who grew up with the scriptures in two languages, and could read and speak both, become scholars, especially when that comprises a significant portion of all the scholars on the matter, it behooves us to take it seriously.
Yeah, the burning bush is a good instance; so is the appearance of “the Lord” at Mamre, the fourth man in the furnace in Daniel, and “the commander of the army of the LORD” who talks with Joshua. Then there’s Exodus 15 where YHWH is called “a man of war”, and all the appearances of the “מַלְאַ֧ךְ יְהוָ֛ה”, ‘malach YHWH’, the Angel of the Lord, which in both Hebrew and Greek can be read as “the Angel who is the Lord”. Additionally there’s the interesting statement in the Sodom and Gomorrah account where “the Lord rained down fire from the Lord in heaven”, which since the previous part of the story had the Lord as a man talking to Abraham, is telling us that the Lord who is present as a man rains down fire from the Lord who is in heaven – two Lords in the same verse.
1 Like
Okay, if we grant that, that made the ground where Moses was standing holy?
Maybe the “Angel of the Lord” is a way of saying just that.
@St.Roymond, can you give us some enlightenment?
Ha! Our posts were pretty much synchronous.
That suffices, for me anyway, but the rest supports it too, of course.
It was both; in verse 2 it’s the angel of the Lord, but in verse 7 it’s the Lord Himself.
It’s worth noting that the term “the angel of the Lord” can be rendered as “the Angel who is the Lord” in both Hebrew and Greek.
Just BTW, it’s an interesting chapter since at the start YHWH is used to indicate God, but that name isn’t actually given until later in the chapter.
If IIRC my Old Testament studies, the idea of holy ground only applies when the one present is an actual deity, not a messenger.
2 Likes
It’s common when the Angel of the Lord is on the scene for the text to say “and the LORD said”. That’s not sloppy writing, it’s because the Angel was identified with YHWH.
There’s another instance in Daniel 7, where the Son of Man shows up with the Ancient of Days in a setting that is definitely Heaven, and there are “thrones set up” – but the Ancient of Days only needs one throne, so why is there more than one? The text tells us: “dominion
and glory and a kingdom” are given to this Son of Man, and that’s a phrase that describes someone who sits on a throne. And since this throne is there with that for the Ancient of Days, it tells us that the Son of Man is co-regent with the Ancient of days – in other words, the Son of Man is also God.
I read this and my mental connection is to the Ascension, where Jesus departs Earth and gets seated on the right hand of the Father – it’s the enthronement of the Word made Flesh. But at the very least it shows “two powers in heaven”.
2 Likes
Wow.
It seemed I missed this portion of the question in the OP.
But again it is likely I do not believe the same thing in this regard.
I do not believe God created some torture chamber to punish the bad people. Hell is our creation and its reality is best seen right here on the earth in the hell people make of the earth. This is simply something that does not change after death. The sin of people creating hell wherever they go continues. Therefore what is there for God to reveal in this regard? It is already revealed on the earth for all to see. As for existence after death, that is something with dubious benefits, but it is spoken of in the OT. The focus however is on the fact that goodness has rewards and sinful behavior brings misery… as it should be.
This is the standard anti-trinitarian argument. The word Trinity does not appear in Scitprue so it doesn’t eist. The word Television does not appear in Scripture does that mean it does not exist?
Scripture does not understand mental illness or viral infections. Does that mean they do not exist?
Scripture clearly does not understand cosmology. Does that mean that the wider Universe does not exist?
Um, err,
John’s prologue?
And you know as well as I do all the other scriptures that get quoted at you.Do you wnat to go through them one by one?
Jesus was on earth as a man. He behaved as a man. He interacted as a man. He was seen and understood as a man. That was the whole point. If He was identified straight away as God He could not have done what He did. Mark shows the divine secret… demons saw what you can’t. Every time someone saw His divinity Jesus told them not to tell.
By quoting Jesus talking about His God you are failing to see that He had to say that.
He also claimed a unique connection that no other man had/has. He claimed He had come direct from Heaven, That he had actually been there. Have you? he claimed that God and Him were one in terms of thought and action.
Just once, put yourself in the place of God and work out how you could send a part of yourself to live and work on earth. The dynamics of God in human form. What we see is the only way it could be accomplished.
Now you tell everyone here how you see Jesus as a man. How He is the perfect servant submitting to God… How iHs powers have been duplicated by others because of the presence of God’s spiritual power. (I am avoiding using trinitarian language) His unique knowledge and insight are just symptomatic of a unique God/human relationship rather than an actual connection. And so on. Go on, lay it out so that we can all see it (and believe it?)
Richard
Grab a time machine and go back to the first century B.C. and try telling that to the rabbis who saw two powers in heaven, an invisible YHWH who always remained in Heaven and another YHWH who came down in the form of a man. And others were already pondering whether these two YHWHs were joined by a third, the " ר֣וּחַ יְהוָה֙" (ru-ach YHWH), the Spirit of Yahweh.
I know, even with it being obvious in English that the Father is called God, that Jesus declares Himself to be God (as established by the Sanhedrin’s reaction), that Paul calls Jesus God, that the Spirit is called God, you’re not going to budge.
But historically there was never a time when the church did not believe God was Triune; the large numbers of “liberal” Jews and the “God-seekers” who filled the first churches understood it immediately because the Old Testament came so close to it – and the only other option is Tritheism.
1 Like
I have the same reaction every time I recite John 1:1 - 5 and skip to 14.
= - = + = - = † = - = + = - =
Proverbs says His eyes are everywhere, God tells Jeremiah that He “fills Heaven and Earth”, and Paul tells the Greeks that God is not far from any of us.
1 Like