From: George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Wed Nov 20 2002 - 09:39:36 EST
Dick Fischer wrote:
>
> Hi George, you wrote:
>
> >Dick Fischer wrote:
> >
> > > If the early Accadians worshipped a triad of gods rather than one
> > > god, and if those gods were the equivalent of our trinity, and if Ea
> > > corresponds to "Emmanuel," then it may be that they worshipped in
> > > fact the pre-incarnate Christ.
> > >
> > > In other words, our saviour today who exists in spirit may have been
> > > the one they knew as "Ea." If so, then it is possible that Christ to
> > > us was Ea to them - the same God.
> >
> > Many people, both pro- & anti- the Christian doctrine of the
> > Trinity, have
> >tried to equate various triads of deities with Father, Son & Holy
> >Spirit. (The
> >Jehovah's Witnesses, e.g., will tell you that the Trinity is
> >Babylonian.) The Celts,
> >Hindus & probably a lot of others have had such triads. But the Christian
> >understanding
> >of God as Trinity does not have to do simply with some idea of 3-ness in
> >God. It is
> >connected in a fundamental way with the belief that God has revealed
> >Godself in Jesus of
> >Nazareth, & specifically in the cross-resurrection event. I.e., it is
> >based on the
> >belief that God really is, in the most down to earth sense, "Immanuel",
> >"God with us."
>
> Was the Son of God entirely unknown before His human birth in
> Nazareth? No, read Psalm 110:1, and Matt.22:41-44. Was David the only one
> to have knowledge of the pre-incarnate Christ?
As I note below, "There may be hints of such a belief in the OT, &
Christians legitimately read the OT in light of the NT & thus of
trinitarian belief."
Both are in play here. The coronation Psalm 110, understood as
pointing toward a future
Messiah, suggests that that Messiah will be greater than David, someone even
qualitatively different from David. It does not in itself mean that
the Messiah will be
divine, and even less does it state a trinitarian character of God.
Psalm 110 is most frequently cited chapter of the OT in the
NT. (Actually it's
tied with Exodus 20 - the 10 Commandments.) In light of their belief in the
resurrection of the crucified Jesus, the early church - and we - read
this psalm as
referring to him. The Christ event puts new meaning into it.
>
> > While there may be hints of such a belief in the OT, & while
> > Christians
> >legitimately read the OT in light of the NT & thus of trinitarian belief,
> >the ancient
> >Israelites, including the writers of the OT, did not know of or believe in
> >God as the
> >Trinity. (No, the plural character of "elohim", "Let us make ..." &c do
> >not mean this.)
> >Much less did the early Accadians.
>
> Our concept of the Godhead has no parallel that I know of. And even if the
> Accadians had a similar belief, I don't know how they would express that
> with rudimentary writing skills. I'm not sure that we Christians all
> understand how God can be in three persons either.
>
> But all the other cultures are not the Accadian culture. They appear to be
> the historic equivalent of the Adamic race which history books
> ignore. Since Hebrew derived from the Accadian language, and the Accadians
> wrote a flood account, and worshipped three gods from the beginning until
> the Sumerians corrupted them, it certainly is not a reach to posit that the
> Semitic race derived from the Accadians, and that they may have had a
> primitive knowledge of the spiritual realm as we believe it exists.
>
> To a primitive culture, the idea of three gods could be a preamble to
> accepting a multitude of gods when another culture is so pervasive as were
> the Sumerians to the Accadians. Certainly beginning with Abraham,
> monotheism is in vogue. But did we Christians learn of three Gods from the
> NT, or did we re-learn it? If God is in three persons, why would God (the
> father) have kept that a secret from His people - if the Accadians and
> Adamites are one and the same?
Christians never did learn of "three Gods" - the doctrine of
the Trinity isn't
tritheism. & there is nothing in the OT, read on its own terms, that
states a 3-fold
character of God. On one wall of my study is a little reproduction
of Rubelev's icon of
the Trinity - Abraham's three visitors in Genesis 18! But again,
that interpretation
comes from reading the OT account in light of the NT.
Your final question is equivalent to "Why did God wait until
~4 B.C. to become
incarnate"?" I don't know.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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