The Shema‘ Yisrael
Monotheistic Jewish amulet discovered near Carnuntum
According to a BAR article, the Shema‘ Yisrael on this Jewish amulet discovered near Carnuntum is one of the earliest monotheistic readings of Deuteronomy.
However, in the Second Temple period, the Shema‘ Yisrael text in Deuteronomy would have been read “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.” The Shema‘ Yisrael was originally a monolatric statement; it stated that Israel had an exclusive relationship with its God, but it did not deny the existence of other national deities for other peoples.
When did Deuteronomy’s Shema‘ Yisrael become a monotheistic statement? When did Jews begin to recognize their deity as the only deity existing in the universe? In the May/June 2013 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Armin Lange and Esther Eshel discuss the discovery of a Jewish amulet near the city of Carnuntum that “marks an early pinnacle of this monotheistic interpretation of the Shema‘ Yisrael in Deuteronomy 6:4.”
The Jewish amulet was discovered in a third-century C.E. child’s grave near the Roman frontier city Carnuntum (close to modern Halbturn, Austria). The amulet is formed out of a silver capsule and small gold leaf, inscribed with a Hebrew Shema‘ Yisrael written in Greek letters. Lange and Eshel state that “the Jewish amulet reads the last clause of the Shema‘ Yisrael as ΑΔΩΝ Α ‘the Lord is 1.’ That is, it replaces the Hebrew word אחד, which meant originally ‘alone,’ with ‘one’ (a Greek A). The letter in ancient Greek represents the numeral 1.”
What is an early monotheistic Shema‘ Yisrael doing near Carnuntum? Lange and Eshel illustrate that Carnuntum had a well-integrated Jewish population that stated their religion openly. The Jewish population would have known how to recite the Shema‘ Yisrael, but most likely did not know how to write in Hebrew.
Lange and Eshel conclude:
To our knowledge the Halbturn amulet is the first text that renders the Hebrew word ehad (אחד) with the number “1.” This numerical representation of the final word of the Shema‘leaves no doubt about how the Jewish craftsman who made the Halbturn amulet understood the Shema‘ Yisrael —as a monotheistic statement! Only the Lord is God; there is no other God. Though the Jews of Carnuntum were open to the multi-religious culture of their city, this openness clearly had defined limits. For them, no other god existed but the Lord.
Armin Lange and Esther Eshel’s full article “‘The Lord Is One’: How Its Meaning Changed” explores the Jewish amulet and its Shema‘ Yisrael inscription in light of ancient Jewish magic, the evolution of monotheism and the local Jewish population.
BAS Library Members: Read the full article “‘The Lord Is One’: How Its Meaning Changed” as it appears in the May/June 2013 issue of BAR.
Not a BAS Library member yet? Sign up today.
This Bible History Daily feature was originally published in April 2013.
Related reading in Bible History Daily:
Ancient Amulets with Incipits by Joseph E. Sanzo
The blurred line between magic and religion
Word Play by Glenn J. Corbett
The power of the written word in ancient Israel
Miniature Writing on Ancient Amulets
Ketef Hinnom inscriptions reveal the power of hidden writing
Related reading in the BAS Library:
Paula Fredricksen, “Gods and the One God,” Bible Review, February 2003.
The BAS Library now includes the full book Aspects of Monotheism: How God Is One, edited by Hershel Shanks and Jack Meinhardt, featuring chapters written by Donald B. Redford, William G. Dever, P. Kyle McCarter Jr. and John J. Collins.
Not a BAS Library member yet? Sign up today.
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When Jesus was asked, what is the most important Commandment, the Gospel of Mark has Jesus begining His answer with, “Hear O Israel, Adoni (Written yod, he, vav, he) Adoni our God, Adoni exad.” A teacher of the Law said,”You are right in saying that God is One and that there is no other but Him.
This was in the 2nd Temple period and clearly is a monotheistic statement.
@Marty: I am not sure if this is really a defence of “the archaic theological invention that was created to ease a Pagans understanding of their conversion to a monotheist religion.”, but I would point out that “echad” is used as a “plural one” at least two times in Scripture: When God says in Gen.2 that a man will leave has father and mother and cling to his wife and the two will become one, the word “echad” is used. Also the prophet Ezekiel (37) used the word “echad” to describe the future unity of Judah and Israel. In Hebrew there is another word that could have been used instead of “echad”; namely “yachid” which would not allow for this “plural” unity.
@Paul: Neither the “Gospel of the Hebrews” nor the “Gospel of Thomas” can be used to demonstrate what the first Christians believed. No scholar truly believes that either of these writings were in any way connected to the first apostles of Jesus (whereas the early Christian “church fathers” testify that our current canonical writings were actually all written either by an apostle of under the influence of one of Jesus’ apostles/shelachim).
Thank you Chavoux, for elaborating on the word “echad.” As for the above quote I should add the footnote from Decornick’s article where she quotes the 3rd century “Church Father” Origen: “‘Even so did my mother, the Holy Spirit, take me by one of my hairs and carry me away to the great mountain Tabor.’ (Origen, Commentary on John 2.12.87, on John 1:3).”
Maimonides suggested changing echad to yachid because of the trinitarian confusion. To the best of my knowledge, in the Tenach it is always used as a compound unity: one bunch of grapes, one group of people, etc.
Paul, Origen was infamous for superimposing Greek religion and philosophy on scripture. There is nothing of biblical Christianity about that quotation, nor the ones from the gnostic sources of your earlier comment. Obviously there is no connection between kabbalistic tradition and the early Church. And I doubt that you can support your Holy Spirit = mother of Christ or anyone else from the Bible.
Again, James, I must quote DeConick’s article in answer to your correct statement about the dearth of references to the Mother Spirit in the early church: “So what happened to the Mother Spirit in Christianity? She was nuetered (or spayed, if you prefer) as the language shifted from Aramaic into Greek, where “spirit” lost her female coding. In Hebrew and Aramaic, “spirit” is a feminine word. In Greek, it is a neuter word. In Latin, it is a masculine word.”
Another quote comes from “Lost Christianities” by Bart Ehrman, p.4: “But virtually all forms of modern Christianity, whether they acknowledge it or not, go back to ONE form of Christianity that emerged as victorious from the conflicts of the second and third centuries. This one form of Christianity decided what was the ‘correct’ Christian perspective; it decided who can excercise authority over Christian belief and practice; and it determined what forms of Christianity would be marginalized, set aside, destroyed. It also decided which books to canonize into Scripture and which books to set aside as ‘heretical,’ teaching false ideas.”
Personally, I see a similarity to the setting for the Tower of Babel narrative; “Everyone on earth had the same language and the same words” (Genesis 11:1). This was probably a reference to a line in the Sumerian poem, “Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta,” line 140: “The whole universe, the people in unison, to Enlil in one tongue [gave praise].
“From the beginning of its developement, the Kabbalah embraced an esotericism closely akin to the spirit of Gnosticism; one which was not restricted to instruction in the mystical path but also included ideas on cosmology, angelology, and magic. Only later, and as a result of the contact with midieval Jewish philosophy, the Kabbalah became a Jewish ‘mystical theology,’ more or less systematically elaborated.” Gershom Scholem, “Kabbalah” p.5
“The earliest Jewish mysticism is throne-mysticism. Its essence is not absorbed contemplation of God’s true nature, but perception of His appearance on the throne; as described by Ezekiel, and cognition of the mysteries of the celestial throne-world. The throne-world is to the Jewish mystic what the pleroma, the “fullness”, the bright sphere of divinity with its potencies, aeons, archons and dominions is to the Hellenistic and early Christian mystics of the period who appear in the history of religion under the names of Gnostics and Hermetics.” Gershom Scholem, “Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism” p.44
“Rabbi Rahumai said: What is the meaning of the verse (Deuteronomy 22:7), ‘You shall surely send away the mother, and the children you shall take for yourself’? Why does it not say, ‘You shall surely send away the father’? But the scripture says, ‘you shall surely send away the mother’ in honor of the one who is called the Mother of the World. It is thus written (Proverbs 2:3), ‘For you shall call Understanding Mother.'” Areyah Kaplan, “The Bahir”, p,39
“There is a commandment in the Torah that states that when one finds a nest with eggs or chicks, one must send away the mother bird before taking anything from the nest …Binah-Understanding is the future, the end point of time continuum, and hense, it represents the completion of the concept of time … Binah-Understanding is therefore the Mother Womb from which all creation emerged.” The Bahir, p.162
There is to many proof that the Holy Spirit is a masculine figure. There is so many proof of the actual existence of the Trinity.
“…and the spirit/wind of God was hovering over the waters” (Genesis 1:2).
“In the beginning, Eurynome, the Goddess of All Things, rose naked from Chaos, but found nothing substantial for her feet to rest upon, and therefore divided the sea from the sky, dancing lonely upon its waves … she assumed the form of a dove, brooding upon its waves…”
“In this archaic religious system there were, as yet, neither gods nor priests, but only a universal goddess and her priestesses, women being the dominant sex and man her frightened victim … Eurynome (wide wandering) was the goddess’s title as the visible moon; her Sumerian name was Iahu (exalted dove), a title which later passed to Jehovah as the Creator.” Robert Graves, “The Greek Myths I”, p.27,28