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The Only True God
“The Word”—a final observation Because of the importance of the meaning of the “Word” for trinitarianism, a considerable part of this study has been concentrated on this point. We have noted the fact that none of the sources, whether Greek, Jewish-Greek (Philo), or the OT (whether Hebrew or Aramaic) provides any basis for the trinitarian notion of the Word as an independent, much less co-equal, being in relation to Yahweh who they call “God the Son”. Support for this notion is simply nonexistent in any of the sources; it was produced by the misinterpretation of John and some other NT writings. Thus trinitarianism is without any support from any of the sources mentioned above. In contrast to this, we arrived at a completely different conclusion in this study, namely, that “the Word” in Scripture is a metonym of Yahweh God, who came into the world in the form of His self-revelatory and creative Word by which He indwelt Jesus Christ in a way He had never done before in relation to any human being. Significantly, when the Word is understood in this Scriptural way, even the Greek (Stoic) idea of the Word (Logos) as the rational principle by which the universe operates could find an echo within the Biblical concept of the Word which sustains all things (Heb.1.3); many of Philo’s interpretations of the Logos could also serve to illustrate points of interest and even of importance for the understanding of Jesus’ ministry. The OT references to the Word, though relatively few, are nonetheless important, while the large number of occurrences of the Memra in the Aramaic Targums provide further elucidation for the Johannine Word. Thus all the sources provide useful and, indeed, valuable support for the understanding of the Word in the light of Biblical monotheism; this wide scope available to the meaning of the Biblical “Word” may well have been an important reason for its use in John’s Gospel.
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A summary f we could sum up the wonderful Biblical revelation of Yahweh, we might adumbrate or sketch it as follows:
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