I am a Qara’i Jew, or Russian Qaraite. I have been studying Hebrew, as a Jew is meant to do, and I have come up against passages that suggest a Binity or Trinity, such as Deuteronomy 6:4 (I think), where it says, in Hebrew, Shema Yisra-el Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad, which means Hear O Israel God is Sovereign, God is one.
The problem with this passage is that echad is a uni-plural noun. The term Elohim, from which is derived Eloah, is also a uni-plural noun. Isaiah 6:3 also makes allusions to the uni-plurality of the Godhead, where it says ‘Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh’, or, in English, “‘Holy, holy holy’ is the Lord of hosts, the whole world is full of His glory”.
I wondered what you would suggest? I am proud to be Jewish, a convert to Judaism, but the whole idea of the uni-plurality of the Godhead disturbs me.
I don't really know what you mean by "uni-plurality" here. The word
echad is grammatically singular. If it were plural, it would be
achadim. No word in the Sh'ma is grammatically plural.
Now, the term Elohim (which is the plural of El: the word Eloah is actually a very archaic construct form of El, which is why it is never really seen alone as a name, but always in conjunction to or of something or someone, e.g.
eloah kol bri'ot, God of all creatures) certainly is plural in form, because its use dates from the earliest Israelite days, before monotheism, when Israelites were henotheistic (they believed that YHVH was the supreme god who had made other gods), and thus a plural term was called for. Once Israelite Judaism became monotheistic, the plural term was kept because it was in common usage, but its meaning shifted from referring to many gods to, instead, referring to God's infinite faces and aspects, and God's many strengths and powers. But we have not believed that God actually is in any way plural for over twenty-five hundred years.
As for Isaiah, it says there:
kadosh kadosh kadosh YHVH Tzeva'ot melo kol ha'aretz kevodo. Which is, "Holy, holy, holy! YHVH of the Legions! His glory fills all the earth!" There is no suggestion of God's multiplicity in this: the angels repeat
kadosh to reinforce the concept. YHVH Tzeva'ot (YHVH of the Legions) is a name for God, probably either referring to God as master of many legions of angels, or referring to God as creator of the legions of stars in the sky. And the rest is fairly self-evident, and is phrased decisively in the singular. Or, if you prefer, think of the three repetitions of
kadosh as signifying different aspects of holiness, as Onkelos paraphrases into Aramaic:
kadish bishmei meroma ila'a bet shechintei, kadish al ara ovad gevurtei, kadish l'alam u'l'almei almaya... "Holy in the highest heavens above, His royal dwelling; holy upon the earth, His work of wonder; holy for all time, forever and ever...." But the poetic repetition in Isaiah would never have been meant to signify plurality, much less trinity, a concept entirely foreign to Judaism, and entirely unthought-of in Biblical times.
Divine plurality is sometimes something of which one can see echoes in the ancientest phrases in the Torah, from the time before true Israelite Judaism arose; but those echoes were long ago reshaped and reimagined and reinterpreted into something very, very different. And sometimes in the deepest Kabbalistic texts, we can see things that, to the untutored eye, might appear to present dualistic or plural images of the divine, but even they, once properly understood, only present mystical understandings of different faces or aspects of the One God, and not any kind of true differentiation or multiplication of deity.
a. The true ancient Aramaic name of G-d is “Alahayim,” meaning; Aa means; “First,” La or Le means “big or greatest.” “ha” means; “the.” and “yim” means; “all living;” the heavens, earth, waters, plants, and animals.
　
Alahayim means; “The First, and The Greatest of “all living;” the heavens, earth, waters, plants and animals. See page on the name of G-d.
　
“Alahayim,” is similar to Abra”ham,” meaning; father of the “nations.” Abram is singular, ham (nations) is plural. In the same way Aala (First and
Greatest) is singular, Yim (all living) is plural. One G-d to “all living.”
　
c. “Elohim” used by the Pharisee Rabbis, is the Canaanite corruption of the ancient Aramaic name of G-d.
Can you please present some supporting citations for these grammatical contentions? Because I have never seen anything like them.
In every Aramaic text I encountered during my graduate research and rabbinical studies, the Aramaic form of this name of God is Elahah. If it were pluralized, which is seldom done in extant Jewish Aramaic literature, the plural form would be Elahin, or more irregularly, Elahaya. This word is, in fact, directly cognate to the Hebrew El or Elohim, both deriving from the Assyrian
ilu, meaning "mighty," "leader," or "a god."
The word that you have given, "Alahayim" is not to be found in any of the three major Aramaic-English dictionaries of Babylonian or Palestinian Jewish Aramaic, nor in any of the four major Aramaic-Hebrew dictionaries. It does not appear to be in a correct grammatical form for either the Jewish dialects of Syraic or Sassanian, and it is not Mandaic.
If it were a word, presuming it were spelled as one would reasonably expect, alef-lamed-chet-yod-yod-nun (the final mem ending that you are giving it is a Hebrism, not typical in Aramaic usage), or possibly alef-lamed-alef-chet-yod-yod-nun, it would be a compounding of Elah+Chayin, meaning "Living God." The compounding of morphemes that you have broken down are not translatable as you have given them. "First" in Aramaic would be
rishon, or in certain cases perhaps
reisha, or
chada. There is no word "Aa" in Aramaic.
La (there is no Aramaic word
le) in Aramaic means "no," or in certain rare cases, it can mean "a tiny mote," or "a particle." "Great" or "greatest" would be
g'dol or perhaps
rama. There is no word
yim or
yin. The closest words are
yom or
yein, meaning, respectively, "day" and "wine." "Living things" would be either
chayin or
chayata.
The name Avraham means "chieftain of many," and is a compounding of the ancient Hebrew words
aver ("chieftain") and
ham, which is a rare poetic short form of the word
hamon, meaning "a multitude." It is a play on the figure's original name, Avram, which is
av ("father") +
ram ("great"), meaning Great Father.
Elohim, which is actually not one of the names of God most favored by the Rabbis of the Talmud (or their predecessors, the Perushim, or "Pharisees"), is not a Canaanite corruption of Aramaic. Canaanite predates Aramaic, for one thing. More or less all of the Canaanite languages, except for ancient Hebraic, were either extinct or dying by the turn of the first millennium BCE, which is just about when Aramaic was becoming a distinct language.
