Sunday, July 1, 2018

Jewish Scholar Benjamin Sommer's Comments on the Doctrine of the Trinity


In another blogpost I quoted Professor Dr. Sommer's Comments About the Trinity. Dr. Sommer is a professor in Bible and ancient Near Eastern languages at the Jewish Theological Seminary. The following video records audio from Sommer's lectures series on his book The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel where he concedes that the Christian understanding of the Trinity is technically consistent with Judaism.





Christian (and Jewish Messianic Believer in Jesus) Dr. Michael L. Brown, wrote
Interestingly, Dr. Benjamin Sommer, a professor in Bible and ancient Near Eastern languages at the Jewish Theological Seminary (that’s right, the Jewish Theological Seminary), came to similar conclusions in his recent book, The Bodies of God. He wrote“Some Jews regard Christianity’s claim to be a monotheistic religion with grave suspicion, both because of the doctrine of the trinity (how can three equal one?) and because of Christianity’s core belief that God took bodily form. . . . No Jew sensitive to Judaism’s own classical sources, however, can fault the theological model Christianity employs when it avows belief in a God who has an earthly body as well as a Holy Spirit and a heavenly manifestation, for that model, we have seen, is a perfectly Jewish one. A religion whose scripture contains the fluidity traditions [referring to God appearing in bodily form in the Tanakh], whose teachings emphasize the multiplicity of the shekhinah, and whose thinkers speak of the sephirot does not differ in its theological essentials from a religion that adores the triune God.”
So, it appears that there are Jewish scholars who do not believe in Yeshua who can see what my dear friend Rabbi Blumenthal cannot. Let’s continue to pray for Rabbi Blumenthal!

http://quotesandreferences.blogspot.com/2014/09/regarding-jewish-professor-dr-sommers.html

The above blogpost also provides links to Dr. Sommers full lectures that are relevant to the topic of the Trinity.

One of his lectures on YouTube:

Benjamin Sommer - The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel