Every revelation of Yahweh has context. No revelation ever appears in a vacuum. The context of the Pauline revelation of Elohim (God), and most especially his revelation on the divine identity of Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ), is unquestionably first century Judahite (Jewish) monotheism and if we try to understand and make any attempt to analyse it in terms of beliefs and doctrines about the Elohim/Godhead that evolved later it will lead to horrible distortions of the emet (truth) and to a damaging cariacature of who He really is.

One word we have to immediately get rid of, hard though that may prove to be because it is so entrenched in our language, is the word 'monotheism' which most believers do not realise originated in the theology departments 17th century European universities. If we want to know what believing in the 'One' Elohim (God) of Israel meant to first century Judeans, and especially to the Benjamite Judean Paul, we have to leave those dusty old European brainchildren behind and seek a different context. We have to stop thinking and philosophising like Europeans, Americans and Westerners in general and get into the Israelite soul. In the words of N.T.White, we have to get into their "blood and breath, prayer and persecution, family and flesh" [1]. Why? Because it in this setting - this context - that Yahweh revealed to His apostle, Paul, who the Messiah really is. We will not find that revelation amongst the Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Protestants or their spinoffs.

How, then, shall we understand First Century Judean 'monotheism'? It was, at its heart, a 'Kingdom of Elohim (God) Movement' whose aim was the re-establishment of the sovereignty of the Creator, Israel's Elohim (God), over the whole world, and especially over the Romans who in AD 70, following the failure of the Bar Kochba Revolt, had subsquently forbidden all those practices defining the Israelite way of life. The most intimate of these was the praying of the Shema - invoking Yahweh as the 'one Elohim (God)', and determining to love Him with mind, heart and soul, with the sum total of human chayim (life itself) - two or more times a day. The Shema was a Judean's declaration of total commitment to the sovereignty of one Elohim (God) and a repudiation of all the idols of paganism and the cruel kingdoms, like the Roman Empire, which served them. This, then, would have laid at the heart of what 'monotheism' would have meant to a devout Judean.

The same kind of 'monotheism' that characterised the Maccabees would have been the 'monotheism' of Saul of Tarsus too [2], the belief that clear, sharp, bright that Yahweh-Elohim was the creator attributes, at the core of which was that politically explosive attribute of Kingship. Thus 'monotheism' and the Kingdom of Elohim (God) were firmly lashed together. And what Saul came to believe about Yah'shua (Jesus), and about the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit), is best understood in terms of precisely this 'monotheism' though understood in a new way. And considering the oppression the Maccabees went through at the hands of the Greeks, and especdially Antiochus Epiphanes, this zealous 'monotheism' would have been viewed in a context of extreme suffering. The invocation of the martyrs as they were tortured and killed would have been of the one true Elohim (God), creator of all things, whom they trusted would raise them from the dead one day [3].

(to be continued...)

Endnotes

[1] N.T.Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God (SPCK, London: 2013), Vol.2 (Parts III & IV), p.619
[2] See 1 Maccabees 4:8-11; cp. 4:30-33; 7:36-38; 2 Maccabees 1:24-29; for temple 'monotheism' see 3 Maccabees 14:34-36; 2:1-21
[3] See, for example, 2 Maccabees 7:28ff,35-38

Acknowledgements

[1] J.C.Fenton, New Clarendon Bible Commentaries, The Gospel According to John in the Revised Standard Version (OUP, Oxford, England: 1970)
[2] J.L.Houldon, Black's New Testament Commentaries, Johannine Epistles (Adam & Charles Black, London: 1973)
[3] N.T.Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God (2 vols.), (SPCK, London: 2013)
[4] N.T.Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, (SPCK, London: 1996)
[5] N.T.Wright, Paul and His Recent Interpreters, (SPCK, London: 2015)
[6] James S.Stewart, A Man in Christ (Hodder & Stoughton, London: 1972)
[7] Andrew Gabriel Roth, Ruach Qadim: Aramaic Origins of the New Testament (Tushiyah Press, Mosta, Malta: 2005)