Hear, O Israel, יהוה Our God, יהוה Is [More Than] One?

The Trinity by Andrei Rublev

Jewish binitarianism and belief in two YHWHs/Yahwehs (יהוה) was a Second Temple and earlier biblical belief that was suppressed and deemed heretical by the rabbis after Christianity rose to prominence. It appears that the idea that Israel’s יהוה was a purely monotheistic singular deity was a later development and enforced teaching, possibly or likely in response to Christianity’s claims for Jesus.

For more on this, read:

• “The Gospel of the Memra: Jewish Binitarianism and the Prologue to John” by the Orthodox Jewish scholar Daniel Boyarin.

• Israel’s Lord: YHWH as “Two Powers” in Second Temple Literature by David E. Wilhite and Adam Winn

• The Glory of the Invisible God: Two Powers in Heaven Traditions and Early Christology by Andrei A. Orlov

and watch this video by Dr. Michael S. Heiser: Two Powers in Heaven - Christian Heresy or Theology of the TANAKH?

In addition, watch the 2013 lecture “Did Rabbinic Judaism emerge out of Christianity?” by Hebrew University Professor Israel Jacob Yuval on how rabbinic Judaism may have invented ideas/traditions as a response and reaction to Christianity, e.g.: the teaching that the “oral Torah” was given to the Jews on Shavuot was in response to the Acts 2 account of the disciples receiving the Holy Spirit at Pentecost/Shavuot; the Passover Seder and Haggadah were created in response to Jesus’s words and actions over the bread and the cup at the Last Supper and to the gospels’ redemption story centered on Jesus. As Professor Yuval says (0:27:48–0:38:16 in the video):

“(0:27:48) Contrary to common understanding, I wish to say that the Last Supper is not an adaption (sic) of the Seder, but rather the opposite: The Seder is a later Jewish response to the Christian Easter.... (0:36:59) The Haggadah was created as a response and as an alternative to the Christian salvation story of crucifixion and resurrection.... (0:37:53) In this regard we can perhaps say that the earliest Passover Haggadah are (sic) the gospels. The Jewish later Haggadah for Passover would be a Jewish response or (thank you) counternarrative to the Christian Passion narrative.”

From The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible, by Dr. Michael S. Heiser, p. 148:

The most familiar way to process what we’ve seen is to think about the way we talk about Jesus. Christians affirm that God is more than one Person, but that each of those Persons is the same in essence. We affirm that Jesus is one of those Persons. He is God. But in another respect, Jesus isn’t God—he is not the Father. The Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father. Nevertheless, they are the same in essence.

This theology did not originate in the New Testament. You’ve now been exposed to its Old Testament roots. There are two Yahweh figures in Old Testament thinking—one invisible, the other visible and human in form. Judaism before the first century, the time of Jesus, knew this teaching. That’s why ancient Jewish theology once embraced two Yahweh figures (the “two powers”).⁶ But once this teaching came to involve the risen Jesus of Nazareth, Judaism could no longer tolerate it.

⁶ I mentioned Alan Segal’s work in this regard in the first footnote of the previous chapter: Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (reprint, Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012). In addition to Segal, the following scholarly studies are noteworthy in regard to Judaism’s two-powers teaching: Daniel Boyarin, “The Gospel of the Memra: Jewish Binitarianism and the Prologue to John,” Harvard Theological Review 94.3 (2001): 243–84; Boyarin, “Beyond Judaisms: Meṭaṭron and the Divine Polymorphy of Ancient Judaism,” Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Periods 41 (2010): 323–65.