Is God one or three?

that's probably nothing more than a quirk of the language. god seems to speak of himself in plural, but act in the singular.in this verse, we have:

quote:

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וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים, נַעֲשֶׂה אָדָם בְּצַלְמֵנוּ כִּדְמוּתֵנוּ;

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and god said [singular], "let us make [plural] man in our image [plural], after our likeness [plural]..."

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but in the next,

quote:

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וַיִּבְרָא אֱלֹהִים אֶת-הָאָדָם בְּצַלְמוֹ

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and god made [singular] the man in his [singular] image...

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is god plural, or is go just speaking in plural? he does this again in genesis 11:7, speaking of himself in plural, but then acting in the singular.i do not think there is anything mystical here, nor do i think this is any indication of the trinity. this particular case, in genesis 1, is written by P, who is about the furthest from polytheism of any of the authors in the torah. this account in particular seems to have been written largely for the express purpose of revising a more polytheistic account, probably originally told by J, that more closely mirrored the original enuma elish mythology. in P's version of events, the identity of elohim as yahweh is so assumed it's not even worth mentioning (as in P's mind, there could be no other god), and this god is responsible for everything. P even goes to great lengths to specifically de-mythologize entities that would have been divine in J's story, like leviathan, who only gets a passing mention in verse 21, and entities that would have been gods in other mythologies, like the sun. note that he doesn't even use the word "sun" because shemesh (the hebrew word for "sun") is directly linked etymologically to the akkadian sun god, shamash. yet, P is clear that his god created the sun, and that this sun is not another god.in short, i think this is at best an artifact of the language, and not some indication of either latent polytheism, or of a trinitarian theology. as you mention, there isn't really proof of the trinity in the bible, and that's partly because it's an idea that developed to interpret the bible. and it developed rather slowly; there are indications of an almost gnostic mystery sense of the divinity of christ in john's gospel. but note that, here in matthew, the "spirit of god" should not necessarily be understood as distinct from simply god himself; it is just his earthly presence, potentially similar to the presence of god in the holy of holies in the sanctuary/temple.matthew does not seem to maintain that christ is divine in the same way that john does. and actually, i kind of suspect that matthew means to argue, satirically, that jesus is not in any way the messiah. but that's a topic for another thread.

yes and no. the history of ancient israelite monotheism is a long and troubled one.in a broader perspective on the matter, they were largely adapting canaanite and akkadian/sumerian mythologies to their own regional flavor, and in doing so, yahweh was a conflation of several different gods, combined in several different ways.for instance, he seems to have some aspects of the canaanite yahweh, which was a god of war (see the exodus/joshua narratives), some aspects of the storm god baal hadad (pretty much the entire moshe at horeb/sinai narratives), and some aspects the grander parent god el (and his council of sons, the elohim). much of the ancient israelite emphasis on "one god" seems to have been an effort to collapse some of these regional henotheistic gods into a single, universal yahweh. which is probably why you get stories like elijah at carmel, where "baal" doesn't respond to prayer, because there is no baal -- baal is actually a corruption of yahweh in their minds.the problem is that some of these cults seem to have been especially persuasive. asherah (probably a conflation of inana/ishtar and anath and similar war/fertility goddesses) was said to be yahweh's consort, and her pillars (asherim) were placed next to yahweh's altars, in the same way that astarte's pillars were placed next to baal hadad's altars in canaan. ancient judaism seems to have especially abhorred the fertility rituals, which seemed to have involved sex and possibly even child sacrifice, in remembrance of baal hadad's battle with mot (death), and anath's resurrection of hadad and his return to the divine mountain. what's interesting to me, btw, is how closely the christian passion mirrors the canaanite baal cycle: these ideas seem to have been reincorporated in the religion, and you get the idea of "another" aspect of god because of the way the narrative seeped back in.Edited by arachnophilia, : i accidentally a word

having talked to several, they are somewhat better at reading the bible for what it says than your average christian. call that "legalism" if you'd like, but i'd like to call it reading comprehension. they do not believe in the trinity, because the bible does not teach about a trinity.

there's an interesting idea that the gods (plural) of abraham, isaac, and jacob were different gods, and that yahweh himself was a fourth god; that the insistence E places on yahweh being the same god was written to combat an earlier polytheism, in a slightly different way that J attributes everything to yahweh.i don't know what exactly to make of that idea, just yet.