Joseph Weinberg is completing an MA in ancient philology in Jerusalem. He has an MA in Jewish studies (distinction) from UCL (London, UK), being awarded the Weitzman prize for Biblical studies and the Rothschild award for Biblical Hebrew, and a BA (distinction) in Theology from LST (London, UK), being awarded the top academic prize and the Biblical Hebrew prize.
"The One and Only": A Syntactic and Semantic Analysis of Dt. 6:4
Abstract
The words of Dt 6:4, שמע ישראל יהוה אלהינו יהוה אחד, have indisputable and foundational importance for both Jewish and Christian theology. Yet with this great centrality comes a surprising ambiguity. What exactly do these words mean? How might they be translated into idiomatic English? The verse’s ambiguity has given rise to a bewildering number of translations, ranging from “The LORD our God, The LORD is one” to “The LORD is our God, The LORD alone”.
One scholar goes as far as saying that ‘no statement in the Hebrew Bible has provoked more discussion with less agreement than this one’. This discussion integrates a wide range of disciplines including history, theology, literary studies, exegesis, and more. Yet at the heart of the discussion are the intertwined linguistic subfields of syntax and semantics. Syntactically, what is the subject and what is the predicate? Are there one or two predications? Is the primary emphasis on ‘The LORD’ being ‘our God’ or on ‘The LORD our God’ being ‘one’? Or something else? Semantic discussion centres primarily around the word אחד. What might be implied by describing The LORD as ‘one’?
The aim of this presentation is to offer a critical syntactic and semantic analysis of existing interpretations and translations, to present a methodological framework for assessing their relative merits, and to suggest a fresh translation that seeks to both build on the strengths and overcome the weaknesses of previous ones.