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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God as “HE” represents a flaw in the language. period. And this mainstream insistence that “Trinity” is a necessary and meaningful concept reminds me of those who say all “true” Christians are Calvinist/Baptist/Virgins/etc. Insisting that God or the Holy Spirit has a gender is demeaning to them!
When the nation of Israel received the Law covenant, which forms part of the Bible, they were commanded: “You must never have any other gods against my face.” (Deuteronomy 5:7) How many persons were speaking here? Without any confusion, Deuteronomy 6:4 reads: “Listen, O Israel: Jehovah our God is one Jehovah”—not three in one. Israel had just been liberated from Egypt, where Osiris, Isis, and Horus,—one of a number of triads of gods—were worshipped. Therefore, Israel was commanded to worship just one God. How important was it for people to understand this command? According to Dr. J. H. Hertz, a rabbi: “This sublime pronouncement of absolute monotheism was a declaration of war against all polytheism . . . The Shema excludes the trinity of the Christian creed as a violation of the Unity of God.”
The confession of the oneness of God as expressed in the Shema, a prayer based on Deuteronomy 6:4, forms a central part of synagogue worship.
http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200270005
There is only one God and we refer to that God as “he” for simplification. we cannot merely say “it” or “she” which was a more mundane personality. So we say “He” and that does not mean that he is a male in the reproductive sense.
The LXX has heis “one”, not monos “only, alone” for Deut. 6:4. That dates to the second century BC, about 400 years earlier than this amulet.
Can anyone provide ANY instance in which Ehad in the Tanach means “alone”? “Alone” is always, as far as I know, “levad”, or a variation thereof. (Levado, bilvad, etc.)
Orthodox Jews mean, very simply, that G-d is one, as in singular. Even if echod used to mean “alone” (and please could you expand upon that in textual antiquity?) it would still mean that Jews refuse to worship any other single g-d, group of deities in any other religion, partial g-d, three-in-one g-d, five-in-one g-d or whatever. I don’t say this to in any way disparage any other religious belief or to say one religion is right whereas the other is wrong. I say this so that the commitment of the Jew to this specific meaning is clear throughout all time.
While I enjoy many of the articles, I cannot even stop wondering what this nonsense is supposed to mean, in the time that every child knows that ‘Achod’ means one, and is used all over the bible to represent the number one, and to denote ‘alone’ we use the word ‘Levad’ and the bible is full of these.
But besides this, what’s the point here to begin with? does the author try to claim that the bible didn’t exclude other deitis of having power? is that what the author wants to say? Well everyone that has read the bible even once knows that this impossible…
Starting with first verse ‘בראשית ברא אלוקים את השמים ואת הארץ’ that god created everything alone, till other verses that describes other deitis as useless and worthless.
Take for example two chapters before the shema it says ‘אתה הראית לדעת כי יקוק הוא האלוקים אין עוד מלבדו’ that hashem is the only god, or the verse ‘ראו עתה כי אני אני הוא ואין אלוהים עמדי, אני אמית ואחיה מחצתי ואני ארפא ואין מידי מציל’ (‘see now that I am the only one and there is no god besides me, I give life and death I destroy and heal and no one can escape me’) aren’t these enough?