4 - One Means Not Two

Summary

This chapter, which begins the second part of this book examining the range of meanings that “God is one” can bear, is concerned with the rabbinic literature. In contrast to Philo’s frequent insistence that “God is one,” the rabbis rarely express this sentiment as plainly, although they were even more strongly committed to it. Rather, they mostly express ideas about God’s unity indirectly: negatively by polemicizing against “two powers” or obliquely by citing Deuteronomy 6:4. In this chapter, I argue that the rabbis refrained from explications about “God is one” because their concern was not the numerical unity or diversity of God but responding to beliefs in divine agents or intermediaries, even subordinate creations whose existence need not necessarily conflict with belief in one God. In other words, the targets of rabbinic polemics were Jews who believed in the Word or Wisdom not Christian trinitarians as many scholars suppose.