> <Codebrea...@bigsecret.com> wrote:

> "It there anything more pagan than TRINITY"

> HOW ANCIENT IS THE TRINITY DOCTRINE?

> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----

> by Wesley P. Walters

> As different as para-Christian groups or cults are from each other,
> most have one thing in common: they hate the biblical teaching of the
> Trinity. They want their God to be simplistic, uncomplicated, and less
> complex than the world He created. They want a God reduced to terms
> they can get their finite minds around.

> Modern advances in science have shown that the created world is an
> extremely complex mechanism. Those who work in nuclear physics or
> molecular biology are continually discovering the complexity of the
> world God has created.

> In fact, some complex, seemingly contradictory data has yet to be
> fitted into a rational system that explains the relationships. A
> simple thing like "light" is known to move like "waves" yet strike
> like "particles." Atomic physicists are still struggling to put
> together a theory that can fully explain this apparent contradiction.

> Those who work in the complex mathematical equations of quantum
> mechanics are told by their instructors that "If you think that you
> really understand quantum mechanics and how it applies to reality,
> that proves you do not understand it." One of the basic theorems is
> that if the speed of a particle is known, then its location can not be
> known, and the more accurately you know its location, the less
> accurately you know its speed. This does not seem very logical to the
> average person, but it works very well in atomic physics, in which
> scientists get very close to the essence of matter.

> Thus, while scientists are continually learning more about how complex
> and even apparently contradictory the world of created reality is,
> cults that reject the complexity of the God who made this reality are
> proliferating. They, along with Moslems and modern Jews, taunt
> Christians, saying: "How can there be just one God, and yet the Father
> be God, the Son be God and the Holy Spirit be God? Is He the Son of
> Himself and the Father of both?"

> Even though Christ Himself taught that the name [singular] of God in
> which we baptize is Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19), all
> cults falsely assert that the doctrine of the Trinity is a teaching
> that grew out of fourth century paganism. So unified are the cults in
> this assertion that they appear to be using the same erroneous Church
> history book and parroting one another.

> The truth is that by the time of Christ, the first century A.D., the
> Jews themselves, on the basis of the Old Testament, were coming to an
> understanding of the complexity of Yahweh.

> The Teachings of The Targums
> When the Jews returned from Babylonian captivity 450 years before the
> birth of Jesus, they had adopted Aramaic as their native language.
> Although it is a dialect of ancient Hebrew, Aramaic is about as
> different from it as modern Italian is from its classical Latin
> ancestor. Consequently, during the first and early second centuries
> A.D., Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Old Testament were made.

> These translations, called Targums, were The Living Bibles of their
> day, an interpretive paraphrase of Scripture. They help us see how
> these first-century Jews understood their Old Testament.

> One of the striking things these Targums show is that first century
> Jews had come to understand the phrase "the Word of God" as referring
> to a divine entity within God Himself, yet distinguishable at times
> from God. J.W. Etheridge, in the introduction to his translations of
> the Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan, has given us a number of examples
> of this Jewish understanding of the term, "the Word" (Aramaic: Memra).

> In Genesis 18:1, where the Hebrew Bible says Yahweh (Jehovah) appeared
> to Abraham, the Targum says, "The Word of the Lord appeared to
> Abraham." Further on, where the Hebrew reports "Yahweh rained down
> upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Yahweh out of
> heaven," the Targum states that "the Word of the Lord sent down upon
> them sulphur and fire from the presence of the Lord out of
> heaven." (Genesis 19:24)

> In Genesis 16, when Hagar sees "the Angel of the Lord," the Targum
> says she saw "the Word of the Lord." After seeing this "Word" (Memra)
> she says, "Here has been revealed the glory of the Shekineh of the
> Lord." Then, according to the Jerusalem Targum, "Hagar returned thanks
> and prayed in the name of the Word of the Lord, who had appeared to
> her." Thus the Word not only is regard- ed as the presence of deity,
> but is in some manner personally distinguishable from the Lord.

> In Genesis 28:20 the Targum of Onkelos paraphrases Jacob's vow, "If
> God will be with me... then Yahweh will be my God" with the words, "If
> the Word of the Lord will be my help... the Word of the Lord shall be
> my God." Again, the Angel of Yahweh who spoke to Moses at the burning
> bush (Exodus 3:14) is designated by the Jerusalem Targum as "the Word
> of the Lord."

> The distinct personality of this Divine Word is seen pointedly in
> Jonathan's Targum of Isaiah 63:7-10. There, where the Hebrew text
> speaks of Yahweh being their Savior, the Targum reads, "the Word
> (Memra) was their Redeemer." (vs. 8) When the Israelites continued to
> disobey, then "His Word (Memra) became their enemy, and fought against
> them" -- an action ascribed to Yahweh in the Hebrew text. Again in
> Isaiah 45:22 the Targum of Jonathan exhorts, "Look unto My Word and be
> saved."

> While this personalizing of the Word was being expressed in Palestine
> in the Targums of Jesus' day, Philo, an Egyptian Jew and contemporary
> of Jesus, was expressing similar thoughts in even more distinct words.
> In his essay "On the Creation," Philo states that man was not made in
> the image of some creature, but in the image of God's own uncreatedWord. He wrote: "for the Creator, we know, employed for its making no

> pattern taken from among created things, but solely, as I have said,
> His own Word."

> Philo continues: "Man was made a likeness and imitation of the Word,
> when the Divine Breath was breathed into his face. ("On the Creation,"
> XLVIII: 139, Loeb Edition I, pp. 110-111)

> In his work on Noah, Philo again expresses the teaching that man is
> made by "the First Cause" (that is, God) in the image of "the Eternal
> Word:" "Our great Moses likened the fashion of the rea- sonable soul
> to no created thing, but averred it to be a genuine coinage of that
> dread Spirit, the Divine and Invisible One, signed and impressed by
> the seal of God, the stamp of which is the Eternal Word."

> He continues: "...man has been made after the Image of God (Genesis
> 1:27), not however after the image of anything created... man's soul
> having been made after the image of the Archetype, the Word of the
> First Cause." ("Noah's Work as a Planter," I:18-20, Loeb III, pp.
> 222-223)

> Thus, the eternal Word is in some sense distinguishable from God, and
> yet at the same time is, like God, uncreated, rational and the bearer
> of the divine image. This comes very close to the teaching of the New
> Testament that the Word was distinguishable from God, and yet was God.
> As John 1:1 expresses it, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
> was with God, and the Word was God." It also appears similar to Paul's
> teaching that the Son is "the image of the invisible God" (Colossians
> 1:15); and the writer of Hebrews statement that the Son "is the exact
> representation of His being." (Hebrews 1:3)

> Philo, however, goes further. He says that God is the king and
> shepherd of all creation, but rules and controls it through his
> eternally existing Word, whom Philo calls God's "First-born Son."

> His "hallowed flock" of created things God directs by his divine laws,
> setting over it His true Word and first-born son, who shall take upon
> Him its government like some viceroy of a great king. ("On Husbandry,"
> I:51, Loeb III, pp. 134-135)

> Philo has God expressing Himself in this manner: "I alone... sustained
> the Universe to rest firm and sure upon the Mighty Word, who is My
> viceroy." ("On Dreams," I:241, Loeb V, pp. 424- 425)

> Therefore this eternal Word, God's first-born Son, is the upholder of
> the whole creation, "the everlasting Word of the eternal God is the
> very sure and staunch prop of the Whole. He it is, who extending
> Himself from the midst to its utmost bounds... keeps up through all
> its length Nature's unvanquished course, combining and compacting all
> its parts. For the Father who begat Him constituted His Word such a
> Bond of the Universe as nothing can break." ("Noah's Work as a
> Planter," I:8-9, Loeb III, pp. 216-217)

> This reflects the same thought that Paul expressed about the Son as
> being the one "in whom all things hold together." (Colossians 1:17) It
> also reminds also reminds us of Hebrews 1:3, which depicts the Son as
> "sustaining all things by his powerful Word."

> Philo continues his discussion of the Word by maintaining that to
> those incapable of seeing the supreme cause, God Himself, He appears
> to them in the form of His Angel, the Word: "For just as those who are
> unable to see the sun itself, see the gleam of the parahelion and take
> it for the sun, and take the halo round the moon for that luminary
> itself, so some regard the image of God, His Angel, the Word, as His
> very self." ("On Dreams," I:239, Loeb V, pp. 422-423) This sounds very
> similar to the teaching tha t the Son is "the radiance (or outshining)
> of God's glory" (Hebrews 1:3), the only part of God's nature that
> people are allowed to see. This is true because "no one has ever seen
> God," but "the only begotten God... He has made Him known." (John
> 1:18) Thus, Jesus, the Son, can say, "Anyone who has seen me has seen
> the Father." (John 14:9)

> Philo further explained that God, ...

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