God is One without attributes of a unity.

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Santiago Cuellar

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Nov 29, 2009, 11:56:31 AM11/29/09
to The Nicodemus Project
The Talmud teaches the Messiah’s and Torah's pre-existence. According
to a baraita (an unattributed teaching from the Mishnaic period
rabbis, who are known as Tanna?im),

“It was taught that seven things were created before the world was
created; they are the Torah, repentance, the Garden of Eden, Gey-
Hinnom, the Throne of Glory, the Temple, and the name of the Messiah
…. The name of the Messiah, as it is written: ‘May his name [as
understood here, the name of the Messiah] endure forever, may his name
produce issue prior to the sun’ (Psalm 72:17).” (Pesachim 54a, N’darim
39a; also Midrash on Psalm 93:3) And see 19:17N.

So as you can see, Torah existed before Moses recorded it and Messiah
pre-existed before the creation... What is the name of the Messiah
which pre-existed?

“But then I will purify what all of the nations say. And they will use
their words to worship me. They will serve me together (Zephaniah
3:9).

• Zephaniah 3:9: “Then I will give to the peoples a pure language that
they may call on the name of the Lord (YHWH), to serve Him with one
accord; the name of the Lord (YHWH), this is nothing else but the King
Messiah” (Bereshith Rabbati 41:44).

Beautiful! - Torah and Messiah is nothing apart from God himself!

And let's not forget the Spirit of the Lord:
The Spirit of the Lord will rest on that Branch. He will help him to
be wise and understanding. He will help him make wise plans and carry
them out. He will help him know the Lord and have respect for him
(Isaiah 11:2).

• “Genesis 1:2: The Spirit of G-d was moving over the face of the
waters indicates that the Spirit of Messiah King was present, as
written in Isaiah 11:2, The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon
him” (Genesis Rabbah 2:4).

There is no difference between the Torah (or any Word of God),
Messiah, Spirit of God and YHVH himself..... as Maimonides said and
the Rabbis are reinforcing, "God is One without the attributes of a
unity"

In fact look at the what Word, Torah, and Sh'khinah did:

It also says that God “created the universe through” him, as taught
also at John 1:3, Corth. 1:16. That the universe was created through
an intermediary – the Word, the Sh’khinah, Wisdom, the Torah – is not
an ideas alien to Judaism, as shown by this quotation from Rabbi Akiva
in the Mishnah:

“He used to say, ‘ ….God loves Israel, because he gave them a precious
instrument [Hebrew “kli”, which means instrument or vessel]. But he
enhanced that love by letting them know that the precious instrument
they had been given was the very one through which the universe was
created – as it is said, “For I give you good doctrine; do not forsake
my Torah” (Proverbs 4:2) – Avot 3:14

“According to Saadiah Gaon [882 – 942 C.E.], the Shekinah is identical
with kevod ha-Shem (the glory of God), which served as an intermediary
between God and man during the prophetic experience. He suggests that
the ‘glory of God’ is the biblical term, and Shekinah the talmudic
term for the created splendor of light which acts as an intermediary
between God and man, and which sometimes take on HUMAN FORM. Thus when
Moses asked to see the glory of God, he was shown the Shekinah, and
when the prophets in their visions saw God in human likeness, what
they actually saw was not God Himself, but the Shekinah. (see
Saadiah’s interpretation of Ezekiel 1:26, 1 Kings 22:19, and Daniel
7:9 in Book of Beliefs and Opinions 2:10)”

Then we have the Greek term “character” (very expression), used only
here in the NT, which delineates even more clearly than the Greek term
“eikon” (image), that “God’s essence” is manifested in the Messiah
(John 14:9). Before Judaism rejects this idea, compare Numbers 12:8:
Moses, unlike Miriam and Aaron, saw the t’munah (likeness,
representation; which in modern Hebrew is “picture”) of Adonai.

Raphael Patai brings the following extraordinary paragraph from the
works of the Alexandrian Jew Philo (20 BCE – 50 CE), using the term
“shoot” for Messiah – who remarkable words in the mouth of a Jewish
thinker says “differ not a whit from the divine image” and is the
Divine Father’s “eldest son….”:

“I have heard also an oracle from the lips of one of the disciples of
Moses which runs thus: ‘Behold a man whose name is the rising (shoot
or sprout), strangest of titles, surely, if you suppose that a being
composed of soul and body is here described. But if you suppose that
it is that INCORPOREAL ONE, who differs not a whit from the divine
image, you will agree that the name ‘rising’ assigned to him quite
truly describes him. For that MAN is the eldest son, whom the Father
of all raised up, and elsewhere calls him his firstborn, and indeed
the Son thus begotten followed the ways of his Father, and shaped the
different kinds, looking to the archetypal patterns which the Father
supplied” – Philo, De Confusione Linguarum 4:45, as cited in Rafael
Patai, The Messiah Texts Pages 171-172)

This unique Unity of our One God, is not a Christian concept, it is
rooted in Judaism, yet many will challenge this. Our Rabbis and our
Sages were clear on this concept, why is it so difficult for some to
accept our own sages, yet reject Christianity? It's called spiritual
blindness and it's worse than physical blindness, because no matter
how many resources you put before them, they simply do not see.
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