This is a very illuminating paper exploring the implications and applications of monotheistic faith to the ethical/moral dilemmas which face the people of God exiled in a pagan environment. Wright sets the context of Paul’s Christological statement as being the challenge to strike a balance between a retreat from the issues on the one hand, and assimilation with paganism on the other. Judaism’s cardinal creed, the Shema, is of course central to any discussion of Biblical monotheism, and it is in connection with this that Wright proposes Paul’s modification of it in 1Corinthians 6:8. I will attempt to show that this is not consistent with the shema in the original Hebrew language and that the strongest parallel with 1Corinthians 8:6 is actually Paul’s statement in 1Timothy 2:5. In the light of this, Paul would seem to have left the shema intact, simply adding to Israel’s One God a ‘right hand man’, Jesus. I quote Wright:“In what is surely one of the most striking Christological formulations ever written in any century, Paul takes an argument which is about monotheism, and takes the Jewish formula which is the most basic expression of Jewish monotheism, and places Jesus at the heart of it. Instead of ‘Hear, 0 Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One’ we have ‘But for us: One God the father, from whom are all things and we to him and one Lord Jesus the Messiah, through whom are all things and through whom are we. (8:6)” Wright then juxtaposes the Greek text of 8:6 with the Septuagint of Deuteronomy 6:4 (akoue Israel, kyrios ho theos hemon eis estiv ).He suggests that ‘One God- the Father’ of 8:6 is a gloss on the word theos and ‘One Lord- Jesus’ is a gloss on kyrios. This has the effect including Jesus in the godhead. The spirit, as is so often the case, is treated like the poor relative of the Trinity and gets no mention.I quote:“There can be no mistake: Paul has placed Jesus within an explicit statement, drawn from the Old Testament’s best known monotheistic text, of the doctrine that Israel’s God is the one and only God, the creator of the world.”This would be more plausible were it not for the fact that the original language of the Chumash in which the shema was originally given to us is not the Geek of the Septuagint, but Hebrew. And the word ‘Lord’ in the original Hebrew isn’t the title ‘adonay’, but the name ‘Yahweh’.
(The difference between the Hebrew and Greek texts is the result of a scribal tradition of substituting the divine name with the title ‘Lord’, which had become all the rage by the time of the Septuagint’s translation.)
So the word which Wright relies on in order to link 8:6 with Deuteronomy 6:4 is actually completely different! Paul would certainly have been aware of this, as believing Jews are to this day, so it is unlikely that he intended what Wright suggests. But this raises a further and even more significant issue about the widespread interpretation of the title kyrios as thought it was a divine title when applied to Jesus. The title ‘lord’ in Hebrew is far less ambiguous than Greek or English. It makes a clear distinction between the many human lords and the one Lord God. This is attested to in the following sources:
Hastings Dictionary of the Bible, “Lord,” Vol. 3, p. 137. “The form ADONI (‘my lord’), a royal title (I Sam. 29:8), is to be carefully distinguished from the divine title ADONAI (‘my Lord’) used of Yahweh.” “ADONAI — the special plural form [the divine title] distinguishes it from adonai [with short vowel] = my lords” “Lord in the OT is used to translate ADONAI when applied to the Divine Being. The [Hebrew] word…has a suffix [with special pointing] presumably for the sake of distinction…between divine and human appellative”.
Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, p. 531.“Hebrew Adonai exclusively denotes the God of Israel. It is attested about 450 times in the OT…Adoni [is] addressed to human beings (Gen. 44:7, Num. 32:25, II Kings 2:19 [etc.]). We have to assume that the word adonai received its special form to distinguish it from the secular use of adon [i.e., adoni]. The reason why [God is addressed] as adonai, [with long vowel] instead of the normal adon, adoni or adonai [with short vowel] may have been to distinguish Yahweh from other gods and from human lords”.
Theological Dictionary of the OT, “Adon,” p. 63 and Theological Dictionary of the NT, III, 1060ff. n.109.“The lengthening of the Ä on Adonai [the Lord God] may be traced to the concern of the Masoretes to mark the word as sacred by a small external sign” “The form ‘to my lord,’ l’adoni, is never used in the OT as a divine reference…the generally accepted fact that the masoretic pointing distinguishes divine references (adonai) from human references (adoni)” (Wigram, The Englishman’s Hebrew and Chaldee Concordance of the OT, p. 22) (Herbert Bateman, “Psalm 110:1 and the NT,” Bibliothecra Sacra, Oct.-Dec., 1992, p. 438).
In New Testament and Septuagint Greek, however, the same Greek word ‘kyrios’ is used for both human lords and the divine Lord. Therefore, in order to clearly establish what type of ‘kyrios’ Jesus is, we need to look at the specific Hebrew words in the original texts he appealed to as bearing witness to his lordship. In his debate with the Pharisees recorded in Matthew 22:41-46, Jesus substantiates his claim to be greater than David by quoting Psalm 110, and applying it to himself. But the joke is that the word used for the ‘my lord’ in Psalm 110:1 is ‘adoni’ not ‘adonay’! The very text Jesus appealed to as evidence of his lordship actually describes him in terms of human lordship, as opposed to divine personhood. This reverses claims such as the one made in this article by NT Wright, that the title ‘lord’ as applied to Jesus is a divine title. Quite the opposite. Within the frame of reference provided for the early church by the Hebrew Bible it is actually evidence that he is a human, instead of divine, lord. It is this understanding of the Christological implications of Psalm 110 which seem to underpin texts such as 1Tim 2:5. There is still only one personal God. What has changed is that a human mediator to represent men before that God and vice versa, has been added.
Of course, this reading in no way impinges on the thrust of the article as a whole. The principle remains that believers should be guided in their allegiance to this one God by the example of his sacrificial love in giving his Son as our substitute and of the Son himself, who forewent his right to reverence as Israel’s king and instead submitted himself to an unjust show-trial and execution. In view of what God has done for us in Christ, what is it to us to go without a plate of food?
What Saint Nigel Really Said
Thanks Theocrat. I think you yourself supply a reason why the word Kyrios when applied to Jesus, especially in contexts such as 1 Corinthians 8:6, could or does imply deity. If it is, as you say, reflecting the scribal tradition (of substituting Adonai for YHWH), which was standardised in the Septuagint through the use of Kyrios, presumably this was how the word came to be used and understood by Jesus and the NT authors. But what for me is more telling is the way Paul (in 1 Corinthians 8:6 and elsewhere), as Wright expounds it, places Jesus where, until then, ‘one’ God alone had been.
I don’t really have a problem with your take on Psalm 110. The NT writers identified Jesus with ‘the lord’ as risen messiah (it is a messianic psalm). But things don’t rest there because there is a fusing of human and divine imagery in Jesus’s identity. He was royal king, (offspring of David), Messiah of Israel, and God - returning to restore His presence in ‘the temple’. I suppose to be picky, one might argue that Psalm 110 only referred to Jesus’s human identity, whereas elsewhere there might be references to him which purely had the divine focus, but in the light of the filling-out of traditional word usages with an enhanced divine/human significance in relation to Jesus, this might be a difficult position to sustain.
As Wright puts it, in Jesus, God was doing for man what only God could do. Or as he puts it elsewhere, in Jesus YHWH was rolling his sleeves up and doing what only He could do.
Vowel points added later
It seems to me that the distinction between “adonai” and “adoni” is one the Masorites made, and is not found in the original Hebrew. The Masorites were the ones preserved and copied the Hebrew bible, and who added vowel points to the Hebrew text. So the distinction is a historical data point for this discussion, but not conclusive. I’ll have to confirm this when I get my hands on my Hebrew bible.
As far as Wright’s argument here…I find it plausible, but doubt it will be as convincing to many others as it is to him.
PeterNew Testament words
Peter
New Testament words and concepts detached from their roots in the Hebrew bible are left open to misinterpretation. If Jesus defined the sense in which he is lord by means of a specific text, we should listen carefully to it and allow it to inform our understanding. This should preclude any mistaken reading of kyrios when applied to Jesus as meaning either adonay, or Yahweh.
Vowel pointings
Chris
As far as I know, you’re right about this. The vowel pointings were introduced for the first time in the Masoretic text. Nevertheless, the Masoretes’ choice of how to render adny was an informed one, based upon the existing scholarship and oral tradition.
New Testament words - Theocrat
See my comment (“kyrios” - Hot chestnuts). Inattentiveness to context is something I am pointing out in your comments! You might also look at my comment on John 8 in response to yours.
Shema Israel Adonai Elohim Adonai ehad...
When I was first taught the Shema (long before I learned Hebrew), I was taught to say “Shema Israel Adonai Elohim Adonai ehad….” It was not a scribal tradition to substitute Adonai for YHWH (though the Masorites did use the vowel pointings for Adonai, they applied them to YHWH and did not just substitute ADN); rather, it was traditional to read YHWH as “adonai” when reading out loud. So, although the Hebrew indeed reads YHWH, what people would recite and hear was “adonai” (In a similar way some English versions read “Jehovah” not “Yahweh” for YHWH.)
For Wright’s argument, I guess this would have God=Elohim=theos and Lord=YHWH=kurios.
I would still find this argument unconvincing.
Shema Israel Adonai Elohim etc
Three different topics in your post; I think the issues are becoming confused. What is ‘this argument’ that you find unconvincing? To what does ‘this’ refer?
As far as Wright’s exegesis of 1 Corinthians 8:6 is concerned, there is the reference to the Shema: “The Lord our God … The Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4) which is now rewritten in the parallelism: “One God - the Father … One Lord - Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 8:6).
To continue (quoting from Wright): ” … he has taken the most holy and central confession of (that) monotheism, and placed Jesus firmly in the middle of it.”
Coninuing further: “Paul has taken the word ‘God’ itself and filled it with new content. Or rather, he would say, he has discovered what its true content always was.” (‘What Saint Paul Really Said’/Eerdmans pp.66-67)
Wright also points out that Jewish monotheism of the period was not an ‘interior analysis of the being of the one true God’. It was polemical - asserting that ‘the one God, the God of Israel, was the only God of the whole world’ (and therefore the claims of other gods were blasphemous); and that one day these gods and their powers would be exposed/defeated, and God’s people vindicated.
Following this line of thought, Jesus continued (and fulfilled) the polemic - and by so doing, God revealed more fully who he was. But this is going beyond the immediate point at issue.
A stretch
I do not find the argument that, in placing Jesus in the context of the shema, Paul supports the doctrine of the Trinity as traditionally understood. This may not even have been Wright’s argument, but in the context of the discussions we have been having here I perceived it to be pressed into that service (perhaps by an unsympathetic reader).
If called upon to defend the deity of Christ from the New Testament, this is not an argument I would employ. First, it actually distinguishes Jesus from God in important ways (“God”/”Lord, “from whom”/”through whom”); second, it does so in a way more compatible with certain neoplatonist or protognostic notions than with what was outlined in the fourth century.
Stretching it
Wright’s aim is not to develop arguments for the trinity per se - and is very far removed from post 1st century attempts at trinitarian formulations. I don’t quite know what you mean by 4th century neoplatonist or protognostic formulations, or how this would apply to Wright, but I would have thought precisely the opposite. Wright is developing the view that Paul’s mindset and worldview were firmly based in 1st century Judaistic thinking - and in a response to 1st century paganism governed by this mindset. Paul argues (according to Wright) from a strenuously Jewish base: insofar as Jesus fulfilled in a variety of unique ways the expectations of 2nd temple Judaism(s) in the 1st century.
1L 1P
You seem to have latched on to a parenthetic point I made in passing and missed the overall thrust of what I was setting out. It may be useful for me to restate my position in a different way.
The vowel pointings used to alter the pronunciation of the name YHWH were those for adonay. But Jesus referred to himself as adon. Therefore ‘lord’ as applied by New Testament writers to Jesus should be equated with adon, not adonay/YHWH.
It is on account of this that Wright’s claim that 1 Cor 8:6 is a modified shema breaks down. The parallelism doesn’t work. In the place where Paul puts a title ‘lord’, there was originally a personal name, Yahweh. If there is a parallel to this text, I would suggest it is 1 Tim 2:5:
Of course, this strongly echoes Psalm 110:1, bringing us back to Jesus the adon.
Unfair play
Chris
What you say above about an unsympathetic reading implies that I may not have been fair to Wright in my summary of his exposition of 1 Cor 8:6. Why not read the article for yourself and see?
If after reading it you feel that I have in some way distorted the thrust of what he is saying, please feel free to point out how.