Zemirah wrote:
“These Targums show that 1st century Jews understood the phrase "the Word of God" as referring to a divine entity within God Himself, yet distinguishable at times from God....
“At the very time that the Word was becoming flesh (John 1:1, 14), Jewish writers saw that God's Word could be distinguished from God the Father Himself, yet have the fullness of God...
Wow, your dishonesty and methods of deception are just appalling.
What this article, and thereby you, are doing is called “eisegesis”: reading back into a text what you want it to say, rather than “exegesis” which is getting from it what it is saying. It is also called an “anachronism” to read back into an earlier time a concept that was not developed until much later.
There are at least two ways to understand the Targum's use of debar/word that have nothing to do with a trinity.
One is that what they were doing was using debar (word) as a tool to distance God from directly speaking with themselves. It was much like how they, without any true biblical support, use “LORD” in place of the Tetragrammaton (YHVH “Yahweh”). In that case it was because of a superstitious tradition not to write the very holy name of God. Now, if “LORD” had the same exact equivalent of meaning and respect as YHVH, why would they need a “replacement/alternative”? The whole point was in substituting something of lesser, thus anything but “coequal”, status.
It is the same with debar/word of the Lord being used in the Targums. They used it as a tool for something less than Yahweh Himself and yet representing Yahweh. But they NEVER developed the idea of God being “one substance in three or more persons”. Thus, when you look at the article, it is only the Trinitarian apologist who suggest they “meant” a literal entity other than Yahweh, not the Targums themselves. This is nothing but dishonesty on the part of Trinitarians.
Secondly, Jews often used anthropomorphisms as literary tools that were not to be taken as literal. For example, "wisdom", in Proverbs 8:
“1Doesn't
wisdom cry out? Doesn't understanding raise
her voice?
2On the top of high places by the way, where the paths meet,
she stands...
12
"I, wisdom, have made prudence my dwelling. Find out knowledge and discretion...
16By me princes rule; nobles, and all the righteous rulers of the earth.
17I love those who love me. Those who seek me diligently will find me...
20I walk in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of justice;
21That I may give wealth to those who love me. I fill their treasuries.
22"
Yahweh possessed me in the beginning of his work, before his deeds of old.
23
I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, before the earth existed...
27When he established the heavens, I was there; when he set a circle on the surface of the deep...
30then
I was the craftsman by his side. I was a delight day by day, always rejoicing before him...” Proverbs 8:1-30
Note how “wisdom” here is clearly spoken of
as if it was a distinct personal being. Biblical Jews didn’t have a problem with such anthropomorphic expressions. They understood them simply as literary tools by which to describe the characteristics of their invisible God in ways we humans can understand.
Why don’t Trinitarians add the “person” of God’s “wisdom” to their “persons” in the “godhead”? Two reasons that I know of: first, wisdom is characterized as female, and Jesus was God’s male son, so that won’t do; secondly, the Trinity is based off of ancient triads of God’s, in particular, Platonism’s first cause, logos, and world soul, not ancient quads. So, to be true to their actual source in paganism, they have to stick with just three persons in the godhead.
Only the pagan-minded would interpret wisdom in Proverbs 8 to be a literally distinct person or “entity” from God, and yet that is precisely how and what Trinitarians do with God's "word" in the Targums and John’s prologue.
Let’s read John 1 “as if” John had used “wisdom” instead of “word” and see if it sheds any light of understanding for us:
“1
In the beginning was the Wisdom, and the Wisdom was with the God, and the Wisdom was God; 2this one was in the beginning with God; 3all things through her did happen, and without her happened not even one thing that hath happened...14
And the Wisdom became flesh, and did tabernacle among us, and we beheld her glory, glory as of an only begotten of a father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:1-3,14 with Proverbs 8
Now, it may seem like I’m stretching a point, but the fact is the Bible does call Christ both the wisdom and power of God:
“but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks,
Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.” 1 Corinthians 1:24
So then, if the Trinity is true, for one, God the Father must not have any personal wisdom or power, because these are character traits ascribed to the second person in their trinity. Furthermore, there must be at least a fourth and female member of the Godhead, because, obviously, God’s word talks about “Wisdom” in terms of being a distinct personal entity from God Himself. Of course not; trinitarians are just that inconsistent with the way they treat the biblical information. And they are simply willingly ignorant of the literary devices used in the Bible.
It is in the Jewish sense of God's wisdom that John used “the word”. Neither John nor any other biblical writer, described Jesus' birth or life as an “incarnation” of a second diefic person. To the contrary, Jesus himself, and John with him, explained Jesus being the "word of God" in terms that absolutely contraindicated the idea of a personal incarnation of a preexistent person named word, whose personal value was that of “the word of the Lord”. Rather, the Bible teaches that Jesus was the word because He faithfully delivered, and lived, God’s word:
“The
words… I speak not from myself; but the Father who lives in me.” (John 14:10)
“
The word which you hear isn’t mine, but the Father’s who sent me.” (John 14:24)
“He who sent me is true; and the
things which I heard from him, these I say...” John 8:26
“…I do nothing of myself; but
as my Father taught me, I speak these things” (John 8:28).
“For
I spoke not from myself, but the Father…he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak… The things therefore which I speak, even as the Father has said to me, so I speak.” (John 12:49-50)
“Now…
the words which you have given me I have given to them, and they received them...” (John 17:7-8)
"
I have given them Your word and the world has hated them; for
they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world." John 17:14
“For
he whom God has sent speaks the words of God…” (John 3:34-35)
"Jesus therefore answered them, "
My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me." John 7:16
"No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not understand what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, because
everything I have learned from My Father I have made known to you." John 15:15
"This is the revelation of Jesus Christ,
which God gave Him to show His servants..." Revelation 1:1
“For Moses indeed said to the fathers, ‘The Lord God will raise up a prophet for you from among your brothers, like me.
You shall listen to him in all things whatever he says to you. It will be, that every soul that will not listen to that prophet will be utterly destroyed from among the people.’” (Acts 3:22–23)
"I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers.
I will put My words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him." Deuteronomy 18:18
Ignoring and negating such verses as these are what expose the trinity as devilish in construction. For laying aside these words of the Bible, Trinitarians hold their traditions in higher regard and authority than Scriptures, making these words of God's of no effect on their understanding.
So, it is clearly in the same sense that the Targums used the word of God, and that Proverbs 8 used the word wisdom, that John used “the word” in John 1. Not as a coequal yet distinct person from God, but as an attribute of the one true God’s own character that relates to mankind. Even John never, ever said that God’s “word” preexisted as anything personally distinct from God. It wasn’t until the word was made flesh, i.e. “born”, that this distinct “person”, Jesus of Nazareth, is spoken of as a different person from God. And that person, Jesus, was not personally God the Self-Existent One:
“The Son can do nothing of himself…” (John 5:19)
“I can of myself do nothing” (John 5:30)
“All
authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth…” (Matthew 28:18–19)
Continued in Part Two