Doesn't the Shema rule out Jesus being God?
'Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one' (Deuteronomy 6:4). Jews have recited these words for millennia, and many died with them on their lips. God is absolutely one and indivisible, not a man (Numbers 23:19). Worshiping a human being as God is idolatry, whatever Christians call it.
Christians affirm the Shema completely. Jesus called it the first commandment, and the apostles never stopped confessing that there is one God. The question is what kind of oneness the Shema teaches. The Hebrew Scriptures themselves speak of the LORD appearing in human form, of a divine figure beside God, and of God's Word and Spirit acting as God. Early Jewish followers of Jesus did not abandon the Shema; they found Jesus within it.
What Scripture says
4Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is One.
The Shema: Israel's confession of loyalty to the one LORD.
29Jesus replied, “This is the most important: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.
Jesus quotes the Shema as the first and greatest commandment.
6yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we exist. And there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we exist.
Paul restates the Shema: one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ.
24For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
Man and woman become 'one' (echad) flesh: a unity of two persons.
1Then the LORD appeared to Abraham by the Oaks of Mamre in the heat of the day, while he was sitting at the entrance of his tent. 2And Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he ran from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground. 3“My lord,” said Abraham, “if I have found favor in your sight, please do not pass your servant by.
The LORD appears to Abraham as one of three men who visit his tent.
2There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from within a bush. Moses saw the bush ablaze with fire, but it was not consumed. 3So Moses thought, “I must go over and see this marvelous sight. Why is the bush not burning up?” 4When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called out to him from within the bush, “Moses, Moses!” “Here I am,” he answered. 5“Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6Then He said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
The angel of the LORD appears in the bush and speaks as God himself.
24Then the LORD rained down sulfur and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the LORD out of the heavens.
The LORD rains fire on Sodom 'from the LORD out of heaven'.
13In my vision in the night I continued to watch, and I saw One like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into His presence. 14And He was given dominion, glory, and kingship, that the people of every nation and language should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.
A son-of-man figure rides the clouds and receives worship-like service from all peoples.
The case
Honoring the Shema
The Shema is the heartbeat of Jewish faith. It is recited morning and evening, taught to children, and spoken at the hour of death. The Talmud tells how Rabbi Akiva, martyred by the Romans, died reciting it (Berakhot 61b). Christians must approach this objection with reverence. We are not asking Jewish friends to give up the Shema. Jesus himself called it the first commandment (Mark 12:29), and every Christian creed begins, "We believe in one God."
The real question is what the Shema means by "one," and whether Israel's own Scriptures leave room for the one God to exist in a way richer than solitary singleness.
What the Shema affirms
In context, the Shema is a call to exclusive loyalty. Israel was surrounded by nations with many gods. Moses declares that the LORD alone is Israel's God, to be loved with all one's heart (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). Many Jewish translations render it "the LORD is our God, the LORD alone." That is precisely what Christians believe: there is no other God beside the LORD (Isaiah 45:5).
The Shema rejects other gods. It does not, by itself, answer the question of God's inner life.
Hints of plurality in the Hebrew Bible
Read carefully, the Hebrew Scriptures speak of the one God in surprising ways.
1. The LORD appears in human form
The LORD appears to Abraham as one of three visitors who eat a meal with him (Genesis 18:1-3). Jacob wrestles with "a man" and then says he has seen God face to face (Genesis 32:24-30).
2. The Angel of the LORD speaks as God
At the burning bush, the angel of the LORD appears, yet the voice says, "I am the God of your father" (Exodus 3:2-6). Hagar names the angel who spoke to her as God who sees (Genesis 16:13). Manoah fears he will die because he has seen God (Judges 13:22).
3. The LORD and the LORD
"The LORD rained… brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven" (Genesis 19:24). Psalm 110:1 has the LORD speaking to David's Lord, who sits at his right hand.
4. A divine figure beside God
In Daniel 7:13-14, one like a son of man rides the clouds, a role elsewhere reserved for God, and receives everlasting dominion. Some later rabbis worried that such texts could suggest "two powers in heaven" (Babylonian Talmud, Hagigah 15a; Alan Segal's study).
5. God's Word and Spirit act as God
God creates by his word and his Spirit (Psalm 33:6; Genesis 1:2). The Aramaic Targums often speak of God acting through his Memra, his Word.
None of these texts spells out the Trinity. Together they show that the God of Israel is not a bare mathematical unit. He is one, yet he can be present in heaven and on earth, can send his Word and his Spirit, and can appear in human form without ceasing to be the one God.
The Shema in the New Testament
The first Christians were Jews who recited the Shema. When Paul wrote to Gentile converts surrounded by idols, he quoted it, but with a striking expansion: for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things (1 Corinthians 8:6). Paul takes the Shema's two key words, "God" and "Lord," and places Jesus inside the confession. Scholars such as Richard Bauckham argue that this is not a departure from Jewish monotheism but a reworking of it from within.
Why it matters
Christians and Jews share the conviction that the God of Abraham is the only God and deserves all our love. Christians believe that this one God has made himself known most fully in Jesus, the Word made flesh. Inviting Jewish friends to consider Jesus is not inviting them to a second god. It is inviting them to see the one God of the Shema coming near.
Word study
hebrew · “one, first, a single” · Deuteronomy 6:4
ʾEḥād is the ordinary Hebrew word for 'one'. It can describe a simple single thing, but it is also used of composite unities: evening and morning are 'one day' (Genesis 1:5), husband and wife 'one flesh' (Genesis 2:24), two sticks become 'one' (Ezekiel 37:17). The word does not prove plurality in God, but it leaves room for it.
hebrew · “only, solitary, unique” · Genesis 22:2
Yāḥîd stresses singularity: Isaac is Abraham's 'only' son. It is never used of God in the Hebrew Bible. Later Jewish creeds, in the Hebrew form of Maimonides' Thirteen Principles and the Yigdal hymn, do use yāḥîd to stress God's absolute singleness. That is a later formulation, not the Shema's own wording.
“But what about…?”
Doesn't Numbers 23:19 say 'God is not a man'?
The verse contrasts God with humans who lie and change their minds. Christians agree God is not a man in that sense, and the divine nature never became sinful or changeable. But the same Torah shows the LORD appearing in human form to Abraham (Genesis 18) and wrestling with Jacob (Genesis 32:24-30). The incarnation claims God took on humanity, not that a man became God.
Isn't the 'compound unity' argument from echad weak?
On its own, yes, and Christians should not overstate it; echad is the normal word for one. The case for the Trinity does not rest on one word but on the whole pattern of Scripture: a God who is one, yet who speaks with his Word, sends his Spirit and appears through his Angel.
Wasn't belief in more than one divine figure always rejected in Judaism?
Not always. Scholars such as Alan Segal and Daniel Boyarin have shown that some Second Temple and early rabbinic-era Jews spoke of a second divine figure, such as the exalted Son of Man of Daniel 7 or God's Word (Memra) in the Aramaic Targums. The rabbis later condemned this as the heresy of 'two powers in heaven', which suggests it had been held by some Jews.
Why would a first-century Jew like Paul ever worship Jesus?
Only because he was convinced God had revealed Jesus as sharing his identity. Paul, a strict Pharisee, did not drop the Shema; he expanded it to include Jesus (1 Corinthians 8:6). That such devotion arose so early among Torah-observant Jews is one of the striking historical facts about the first Christians.
Where Christians differ
Go deeper
- book · 2008Jesus and the God of IsraelRichard Bauckham
- book · 1977Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and GnosticismAlan F. Segal
- book · 2012The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish ChristDaniel Boyarin
- book · 2003Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest ChristianityLarry W. Hurtado
- bookAnswering Jewish Objections to Jesus, Vol. 2: Theological ObjectionsMichael L. Brown
Sources (4)
- Mishnah, Berakhot 2:2 and Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 61b: the Shema and taking on the yoke of the kingdom of heaven; Rabbi Akiva's death while reciting it
- Maimonides, Commentary on the Mishnah, Sanhedrin ch. 10 (Thirteen Principles), second principle: God's unity
- Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven (Brill, 1977)
- Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel (Eerdmans, 2008): 1 Corinthians 8:6 as a Christological reworking of the Shema
Related questions
Isn't the Trinity polytheism?
Christians are monotheists. We confess with Jesus that 'the Lord our God, the Lord is one' and reject three gods, a God who takes a wife, and the worship of any creature. The Trinity means that the one God eternally exists as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, not that a man was promoted to divinity. Shirk adds a partner to God; the Son and Spirit are not partners alongside God but are God's own Word and Spirit, sharing his one nature.
Wasn't Jesus just a prophet, not the Son of God?
Christians agree that Jesus was a prophet and a servant of God; the question is whether he was only that. The earliest records of his life show him forgiving sins, accepting worship, claiming to share God's glory and identifying himself with the divine 'Son of Man' of Daniel 7. 'Son of God' never meant that God took a wife; it means Jesus shares the Father's very nature. A prophet points to God. Jesus pointed to himself as the way to God.
Can a Jewish person believe in Jesus and remain Jewish?
Jesus, his apostles and the entire first generation of his followers were Jews who worshiped in the Temple and kept the customs of Israel. They saw faith in Jesus not as leaving Judaism but as trusting Israel's Messiah. The Church's later hostility to Jews was a betrayal of its own roots and must be confessed. In the New Testament, a Jewish person who follows Jesus remains a son or daughter of Abraham and part of Israel's story, not a deserter from it.
This entry is a draft and has not yet been theologically reviewed.