The New Testament and the People of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God Book 1)

by N.T. Wright

Within the most fiercely monotheistic of Jewish circles throughout our period—from the Maccabaean revolt to Bar-Kochba—there is no suggestion that ‘monotheism’, or praying the Shema, had anything to do with the numerical analysis of the inner being of Israel’s god himself. It had everything to do with the two-pronged fight against paganism and dualism. Indeed, we find strong evidence during this period of Jewish groups and individuals who, speculating on the meaning of some difficult passages in scripture (Daniel 7, for example, or Genesis 1), suggested that the divine being might encompass a plurality.60 Philo could speculate about the Logos as, effectively, a second divine being;61 the Similitudes of Enoch might portray the Son of Man/Messiah as an eternal divine being;62 but none of these show any awareness that they are transgressing normal Jewish monotheism. Nor are they. The oneness of Israel’s god, the creator, was never an analysis of this god’s inner existence, but always a polemical doctrine over against paganism and dualism. It was only with the rise of Christianity, and arguably under the influence both of polemical constraint and Hellenizing philosophy, that Jews in the second and subsequent centuries reinterpreted ‘monotheism’ as ‘the numerical oneness of the divine being’.