Many of the world's major religions do not believe in the Trinity: the concept that God is composed of three beings (the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) acting as one. Islam, Judaism, and even some forms of Christianity hold that God is one and
only one. God is singular - never plural. I find it especially interesting that Jews hold this belief, considering something I recently discovered about the Old Testament's grammatical treatment of God. The Hebrew word for God is "Elohim." The ending "-im" always denotes a plural. If the writers of the OT had wanted to portray God as singular, they would have used the noun "Eloh" instead. However, they chose specifically to implement the use of the grammatical plural ending. Interestingly enough, although the noun "Elohim" is uniformly used to refer to God, the verbs which accompany His actions are almost always in singular! I do not think the Hebrew writers were linguistically incompetent. They knew what they meant when they used a plural noun with singular verbs: a morphological equation for the Trinity.
I suppose it's incorrect to say that the
Hebrew writers concocted the theme. The Orchestrator of the scriptures chose the description Himself. For illustration, let's simply read verse 3:15 from the book of Exodus: "
And God (plural) said (singular) moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, the LORD God (plural) of your fathers, the God (plural) of Abraham, the God (plural) of Isaac, and the God (plural) of Jacob, hath sent (singular) me unto you: this is my (singular) name for ever, and this is my (singular) memorial unto all generations."
Eager to reduce the amount we send to landfill every week, Paul and I have taken to sharing our extra food with the neighbors who live behind us. Their culinary tastes are exceedingly diverse. I've always prided myself in the broadness of my palate, but Barbara, Bessy, Belle, Babette, Belinda, Beatrice and Buttercup have far surpassed my expertise. Then again, perhaps they're just too polite to turn down our offerings of onion and banana peels...
Many of the world's major religions do not believe in the Trinity: the concept that God is composed of three beings (the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) acting as one. Islam, Judaism, and even some forms of Christianity hold that God is one and only one. God is singular - never plural. I find it especially interesting that Jews hold this belief, considering something I recently discovered about the Old Testament's grammatical treatment of God. The Hebrew word for God is "Elohim." The ending "-im" always denotes a plural. If the writers of the OT had wanted to portray God as singular, they would have used the noun "Eloh" instead. However, they chose specifically to implement the use of the grammatical plural ending. Interestingly enough, although the noun "Elohim" is uniformly used to refer to God, the verbs which accompany His actions are almost always in singular! I do not think the Hebrew writers were linguistically incompetent. They knew what they meant when they used a plural noun with singular verbs: a morphological equation for the Trinity.
