Actually, I’ve seen western Christians say that the 3 angels visiting Sarah and Abraham were the Trinity too, so YMMV in the West too. If you’d like, I could try to find cites.
Well, according to Genesis, it was “God” who came down to speak to Abraham and Sarah, and “two angels” who visited Sodom as an immediate sequel to that story. It becomes very tempting to interpret the “three men” who came to Mamre as the Trinity – though how two of them become “angels” in the following story (it’s clear that it’s two out of the same three) then becomes difficult to decipher.
Better to understand it as story – in which not every element has to make sense as related to every other story.
i’ll admit it is a weird jump from angels visiting abraham to the holy trinity, jrdelrious. i did a bit of a search and found a site with the icon that comes to my mind.
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/liberal_arts/foreign/russian/icons/trinity-rublev.html
there is also an icon at this site that has the trinity depicted by scenes of genesis.
usually when i need to see the “why” of theology or canon law in the orthodox church i turn to judaism. it helps me understand where the disciples and the council members were coming from. sometimes the explaination i get from judaism makes more sense than the explainations the church gives. even with the old testament references my usual method isn’t going to help with the trinity question.
zev (and others),
Would you comment on the idea that the commandment “Thou shalt not have any other gods before me” is not strictly speaking a commandment to be monotheistic but one which demands primacy in one god. I come first, other gods may or may not exist, and may or may not be worshipped, but I come first. And how this interpretation may fit in with concepts of the Trinity.
Thanks.
I have ALWAYS wondered about that commandment, even as a little kid. But no one has ever given me an answer, even my prof in the one christian rel course I took in college (most of my courses for my rel minor were on non-western religion).
Just another of the “teeming millions” of reasons why I am a confirmed atheist.
I STILL want to know the answer to this though…
The Hebrew word there is less ambiguous than the English translation. The main meaning of the Hebrew word is “in My presence”. I’d agree that “before Me” is a legitimate translation of that, except that it introduces the ambiguity that its talking about “order of precedence”, as DSeid asks.
I’d have to admit that the Hebrew there (“l’fanai”) can have that connotation, but I think that if that was the intention, a different word (“kadamai”) would have been used instead. In any case, this is a good example of why Jews rely not only on the Torah itself, but also on the explanatory traditions which accompany it. And those traditions emphatically point to this verse as requiring monotheistic belief, to the total exclusion of any gods that one might think are existent but subordinate.
First, thanks to all who commnted on follow-up to my last post. Very informative.
Also, the way I see it, Jews and Muslims apply a sort of cosmo-theological Occam’s Razor. If a single, indivisible, unmeasurable(*), omni-everithing The God accounts for things, and Scripture (THEIR Scripture) makes great sense that way, why add unnecessary complications that seem to require feats of mental contortionism to explain.
(*)Which could mean, that you cannot quantify ANYTHING about The God with any other terms than one and infinity; such as “3”.
(In any case, many “mainstream” Christians are baffled by Mormon cosmo-theology vis-a-vis monotheism)
WADR, it looks like Keeve has misremembered this verse. In fact - possibly in order to avoid this ambiguity - the expression used there is not “lefanai,” but “al panai,” which unequivocally means “in My presence.” Similar usages are found in Genesis 11:28, where it says that Haran died in the presence of (“al penei”) his father; and in Isaiah 65:3, where G-d criticizes “those who anger Me to My face (“al panai”) constantly.”
Nitpick: “Kadamai” is Aramaic, not Hebrew. In Biblical Hebrew, the root “kedem” (where it’s not being used to mean “east”) generally means “antiquity” or something of the sort (e.g., Psalms 74:12: “Yet G-d is my King from of old (mi-kedem)”), and does not take a personal suffix.
Aaaarghh!!! As I was writing, I kept saying to myself, "You really should check your quotes… Nah, I know this one… You really should check your quotes… Nah, I know this one… You really should check your quotes… Nah, I know this one… " When will I ever learn?
I’ll have to check my Hebrew concordance at home. I know that this root can mean “early” or “before” in a chonological sense, and that this probably comes from the sun rising early in the east. But perhaps that is only later Hebrew, and not Biblical Hebrew. I’ll have to check.