Faced with a traditional creed which contradicts the strict unitary monotheism of the Messiah and of the Bible, some believers in Yeshua as Messiah, even, remarkably, Messianic Jews, have felt compelled to find a way to justify their departure from the Messiah's creedal monotheism. This has led to one of the most bizarre exercises in the distortion of simple words known, I suppose, to the history of ideas. It needs to be exposed as a bold venture in twisting the straightforward terminology by which the God of the Bible declares that He is one single Person. 

We cite some examples. Professor Boice attempted to find good reasons in the Hebrew Bible for believing that YEHOVAH God is three in one. He wrote:

The statement proposed by Professor Boice about the meaning of echad is completely untrue. Echad occurs 970 times in the Hebrew Bible and it is the number "one." It means "one single." It is a numeral adjective, the ordinary word for "one" functioning very much like our English number "one." The Hebrew for eleven is "one (echad) plus ten."

Lexicons of the Hebrew offer no support at all for any complication of the simple word "one." [2] Some unsuspecting readers have been bamboozled into the fraudulent argument that because "one" in English or Hebrew can modify, (describe) a collective noun, then the word "one" itself must be "compound"! One can think of humorous ways of exposing this trick. Does the word "one" mean "black and white" in the phrase "one zebra"? Does "one" mean "one single" in the phrase "one loaf of bread" and yet more than one in the phrase "one loaf of sliced bread"? We trust that the point is clear.

One tripod is still one tripod, despite the three legs on the tripod. It is the noun, in these examples, which contains the idea of plurality (three legs), while the word "one" maintains, thankfully, the stable, unchanging, meaning of "one single." One tripod is a single tripod. "One LORD" in the Bible does not mean two or three LORDS. The meaning of "one" is precisely the same in "one rock" and "one family." The numeral adjective "one" is not affected in any way by the collective noun "family." To say otherwise would be to enter the mad world of hot ice cubes, married bachelors and square circles.

According to numerous popular websites and even a number of textbooks, the combination "one bunch," we are invited and lured into believing, means more than one, so-called "compound one," or "composite one," or "complex one." The mistake should be quite obvious. One bunch is still in Hebrew and English one bunch and not two or more bunches! It is nonsense to suppose that the word "one" has altered its meaning when it modifies (describes) a collective noun. It is the noun which is collective and gives us the sense of plurality.

The word "one" is fixed, unchanged and delightfully stable in meaning, in both "one pencil" and "one bunch." The numerical adjective, "one," retains its meaning always as "one single." When Adam and Eve are "one flesh," they are not two or more "fleshes"! One still means one. The combining of Adam and Eve as "one flesh" has not in any way altered the meaning of "one" (echad), one single, one and not more.

On this amazing piece of verbal trickery Christians have been persuaded that in the phrase "one God" the word "one" imparts some sort of plurality or complexity to the word God. This is completely unfounded. It is plainly false. Imagine the confusion which would ensue if when we present our one-dollar purchase at the checkout counter, we are told that "one" is really "compound" or "complex one." Thus the item will cost three (or more) dollars! A collective noun, like family, is clearly made up of a number of items. But the word "one" which stands before it is not in any way changed by its proximity to the collective noun. However, the unwary have been taken in, scammed, by the most amazing assertions that echad tells us that God is more than one!

We are dealing with the most critically important of all issues, defining the true GOD. Professor Boice's assertion that echad "in fact is never used in the Hebrew Bible of a stark singular entity" cannot possibly have been checked by that author. One suspects that it is a piece of misinformation passed on uncritically as heavy-handed dogma. It has, however, no basis in fact.

Equally unreasonable is the suggestion of Dr. Michael Brown on Zechariah 11:8, where the prophet speaks of "one (echad) month." Brown asks, "What does that tell us about the essential nature of a month? Does it mean that a month does not have thirty days because it is one?" [3] But the word "one" modifying (describing) "month" is not remotely connected to how many days there are in one month! On Brown's argument the word "one" loses its fixed sense as "one single." And the whole argument is then brought to bear on the central question of monotheism and is used to justify a plurality in the Godhead. Such teaching defies the easy words of the Messiah in Mark 12:29 and John 17:3.

How would the proponents of one as "compound one" explain Nehemiah 11:1: "one [echad] out of ten"? Or Ezra 10:13: "one [echad] day or two"? "Two are better than one [echad]...If two lie down together they keep warm, but how can one alone [echad] keep warm? Where a lone [echad] man may be overcome, two together may resist" (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12). The rest of the 970 appearances of echad might be cited to make exactly the same point.

Ignoring this massive and simple evidence for the meaning of the word "one" as "one single," "one alone," Robert Morey asserts that echad "means a compound or unified oneness. If the authors of the Bible were Unitarians, we would not expect to find echad applied to God." [4] But the facts are precisely the opposite. Echad always means "one single" and it is applied to YEHOVAH God who is a single Divine Person.

Morey invites his readers to imagine that "one" means more than one. He cites eight examples, including "one day" (Genesis 1:5). The word "one" refers, he says, to compound oneness, because the day combines evening and morning! The truth is that this means one day and not two or more days. The whole congregation from Dan to Beersheba can of course assemble "as one man" (Judges 20:1). But the word "one" means just as much "one and not more" as in every one of its occurrences.

Robert Morey claims that the Hebrew word "one" (echad) really means "more than one"! He claims support from a lexicon that "one" means "compound oneness." Morey includes a footnote to the standard Brown, Driver and Briggs Lexicon of Biblical Hebrew for support. [5] But the authority he appeals to contains not a word of support for his theory that "one" really means "compound unity."

The lexicons rightly define "one" as the cardinal number "one." Echad is the word for "one" in counting. Imagine the chaos of communication if "one" really means more than one. The use of "one" in the sentence "They shall become one flesh" (Genesis 2:24) does not mean that "one" is really plural. It means that two human beings in marriage become one thing (not two). The idea of plurality is not found in the word "one" at all. It is found in the context: male and female human persons. Students of Scripture should be alerted to the fact that they have been taken in by a camouflaged attempt to force them into tritheism. Isaiah 29:21 observes that it is possible to "defraud the one in the right with meaningless arguments."

The idea that the word yachid (unique) would be the only word suitable to describe a Unitarian God is false. Yachid in Scripture is very rare and has associations like "lonely" or "solitary" which are not appropriate for YEHOVAH God. Echad itself is the mathematical term meaning one, and it is sometimes rendered properly as "unique" or "lone" (Ecclesiastes 4:12, NAB) or even by the indefinite article "a."

Professor Boice's extraordinary assertion above that echad never means anything other than "compound one" raises my suspicions as to how far people will go to force their Triune view of YEHOVAH God on to Scripture. When a contemporary author cited uncritically Boice's misinformation on the meaning of echad, I wrote to him, and received the following gracious reply:

"Following our recent correspondence I have taken theological and academic advice, and it seems clear that...my comments on the Hebrew word echad are inaccurate. I am very grateful to you for pointing this out, and assure you that in the future printings of the book the paragraph will be replaced by one that uses other Old Testament arguments for the plurality of Yahweh's being. Thank you again for preventing that particular error being perpetuated in the book." [6]

This elementary information about the word "one" deserves the widest publicity. At present, the alleged "plurality" of the word "one" is being inadmissibly used to substantiate the completely unfounded idea that YEHOVAH God in Scripture is composed of a plurality of Persons. In 2002 the Seventh-Day Adventists, who were earlier not Trinitarians, produced a complete book on the Trinity to reassure the religious world of their "orthodoxy." A team of their scholars argued for a personal tri-unity in YEHOVAH God, and in support of this doctrine spoke of "the inherently plural word echad" [7] found in Israel's creed in Deuteronomy 6:4. But if "one" is "inherently plural," then language has ceased to have any stable meaning, and (to quote Henry Alford from another context, Revelation 20:4-6) "there is an end to all significance in language, and Scripture is wiped out as a testimony to anything." [8]

For too long some systematic theologians have blithely inserted a post-biblical dogma into the pages of the Hebrew Bible. Gustav Oehler refers to the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4; Mark 12:29) as "the locus of the unity and trinity of God." [9] The Messiah, and many another rabbis, would feel strongly that this is to deface the sacred text.

The famous Cardinal Newman was refreshingly honest when he conceded that "the mystery of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is not merely a verbal contradiction, but an incompatibility in the human ideas conveyed. We can scarcely make a nearer approach to an exact enunciation of it, than that of saying that one thing is two things." [10] Think about that. It would mean that the well-accepted laws of language and logic have been scrapped. 3x or 2x cannot equal 1x. If we lose the logic of language we lose our minds and utter nonsense prevails.

Try this out respectfully on your church-going friends: What do they mean when they declare these words in the creed week by week? The Son is "begotten, not made." They will probably have no idea. Trinitarian scholar Dr. Millard Erickson candidly admits that a good Trinitarian ought to be willing to say of YEHOVAH God that "He are one, and They is three." [11] How can such nonsense please the Creator?

[2] Ernst Jenni and Claus Westermann, Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament; Brown, Driver and Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament; Koehler and Baumgartner, Lexicon of Biblical Hebrew. The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament speaks of diversity within unity, but states rightly that this sense is found in its plural form achadim, an adjective never used for the One God. Abraham was viewed as "the one" (echad) and "the one father." He was certainly not plural. The same work, however, curiously and without citing any examples, says that echad "recognizes diversity within that oneness." Actual definitions then follow: "one single blessing," "Solomon was alone," "uniqueness," "a single man," "one voice" (Moody Press, 1980, Vol. 1, p. 30). The word "one" displays no sense of diversity. The complaint about the popular misuse of the Hebrew word for "one" is made well in Lindsey Killian and Dr. Emily Palik, The God of the Hebrew Bible and His Relationship to Jesus, Association for Christian Development, 2005, Appendix A, p. 35-37.

[6] The reference is to John Blanchard, Does God Believe in Atheists? Evangelical Press, 2000, p. 450.

[7] Woodrow Whidden, Jerry Moon and John Reeve, The Trinity, Review and Herald, 2002, p. 76.

[8] Greek Testament, Vol. 4, p. 726.

[9] The Theology of the Old Testament, Funk & Wagnalls, 1893, p. 30.

[10] J. H. Newman, Select Treatises of Athanasius in Controversy with the Arians, 1895, p. 515.

[11] God in Three Persons, p. 270.

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