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Originally Posted by figuer Of course, I completely disagree with these statements. Jahve is not a god? Not and idol fashioned with the mind? Brunner, who was a follower of Spinoza, seems to be interpreting Jewish scripture according to some later developed abstract philosophical notions not compatible with the conceptions and believes of the early Hebrews (or with those of modern Christians).

Jahveh ehad, cried Moses: "Hear O Israel, Being is our god, Being is one" (Deut. 6:4).

Yet this quotation provides precisely the historically monstrous example of how Israel hears and how the truth is straightway transformed into superstition in Israel's ears. For this magnificent saying is at once a hymn of exultation and a wrathful protest against idol worship of any kind; but despite this protest, it now signifies—in the conception of Israel, the Jewish, Christian and Muslim Israel—the well-enough known, imbecilically wrong translation: "Hear O Israel, the Lord our god is the only God!".... Moses said that thou shalt not make unto thee any image of this Jahveh, no imagination of it, i.e., it is that which cannot be thought as things are thought, as if it had the same sort of being as things—I am that I am (Ex. 3:14)! Jahveh, Being, is the term for the wholly abstract spiritual; it has no relation to the relative world. By Jahveh, the wholly great is meant. It means the same thing as Spinoza does in his great—his absolutely great expression, Ens constans infinitis attributis (Absolute Being with infinite attributes.) And Jahveh Tsebaot, Jahveh of infinite powers, is nothing but the mystical expression of the same thing as is expressed philosophically by Ens constans infinitis attributis. The whole tremendous concern of Judaism lies in this phrase Jahveh ehad [Ehad=one and only. Pronunciation; with a gutteral 'kh', accent on the second syllable], in that single word Jahveh, which was ultimately forbidden even to be pronounced, and to pronounce which was a deadly sin. The mystical primordial character of Judaism—so naturally mystical that the Jews, in spite of their having made Jahvism into religion, never established a mythology, even while their Jahveh always remained exalted as God over every god of other religions, so that other ancient civilizations did not recognize him as a god, and said the Jews were without religion and atheistic—the mystical primordial character of Judaism expressed itself in this, its ineffable holy word.—Brunner, Our Christ, p. 157-8