Introduction
This video by Anthony Rogers epitomizes what is typical of trinitarian apologists – eisegesis. Eisegesis is the act of interpreting a text by reading into the text one’s presuppositions. While it is true that we all have our own presuppositions, it is imperative, that when we approach the biblical text to exegete it, we should seek to draw the intended meaning from the text and not allow our presuppositions to drive our exegesis. Trinitarian apologists often accuse biblical unitarians of approaching the biblical text with the assumption of unitarainism. But do trinitarians think they can escape this charge? In fact, orthodox Christians must approach the text with the assumption of trinitarianism, because the doctrine of the Trinity is an essential dogma of the Christian religion. It therefore becomes necessary for an orthodox Christian apologist to find or to see the doctrine of the Trinity in the scriptures, and this leads to eisegesis when interpreting the text.
Here is the link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbav57M2aDc&t=325s. As I go through the video point by point (it’s only 11 1/2 minutes) I will provide the timestamp for each point. I will not repeat everything that was said , only what is relevant, so please watch the video if you want to hear everything Rogers said.
The Rebuttal
0:00 – 0:18 – In this brief section Rogers begins to review what he has shown so far in this series of videos. He brings up several passages that were looked at in previous videos where God “speaks in the plural, like Gen. 1:26, 3:22 and 11:7, all of which point to the inter-trinitarian council and activity of the triune God.” Now, I did not go back to these previous videos to see exactly what his argument on this point was. I really want to deal with his arguments for this particular video, but I will just say that there is no way that Rogers could prove that assertion, especially since even many trintarian commentators do not think these passages are referring to the trinity. If even trinitarian scholars deny that these passages speak of a plurality of persons in God then how can they be used as a proof of that doctrine? Please see my article on Gen 1:26, where I quote a number of scholars who disagree with Rogers.
0:19-0:28 – Here he mentions Gen 19:24 as a proof of a plurality of persons in the one God, a typical trinitarian apologetic move. But, of course, the repetition of the name Yahweh in this verse does not in any sense prove such a thing. There are other passages in the Hebrew bible in which this same phenomenon is found, but in relation to kings. One example is 1 Kings 8:1 – “Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes, the leaders of the fathers’ houses of the people of Israel, before King Solomon in Jerusalem . . .” Based on the repetition of the name Solomon in this passage, are we to assume that there was a plurality of persons in the one human being Solomon? Another passage is 2 Sam. 8:9-10 – “When Toi king of Hamath heard that David had defeated the whole army of Hadadezer, Toi sent his son Joram to King David . . .” Again I ask, does the mere repetition of the name Toi require us to believe there were multiple persons in the one being who was Toi. This is simply one of those idiosyncrasies of the ancient Hebrew language. But this is irrelevant to Rogers, who must have the Hebrew scriptures teach a plurality of persons in one God, and so he seizes upon any oddity in the language of the Bible that he thinks affords him an oppurtunity to exploit to that end.
Now we get to the meat of this video. In the section of 0:36 – 3:13 we really get to see how Rogers’ interpretation of certain odd texts in Genesis is constrained by his presupposition of a plurality of persons in the one God. He points his audience to Gen. 35:1-7 and claims that this passages, along with others in Genesis, “demonstrates just how entrenched the idea of personal plurality in the Godhead is from the very outset of the Bible.” At 1:00 -1:33 he presents Gen. 35:1 : “Then God said to Jacob, ‘Go up to Bethel and settle there, and build an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you were fleeing from your brother Esau.’ “ He then notes that God is the speaker but that he speaks about God in the third person, “as though he were another person distinct from himself.” This, he says, provides “another indication of personal plurality in the Godhead.” Is Rogers correct? While the language in this passage may seem odd to our ears, let’s not just jump to an absurd conclusion to resolve it. Yet this is what Rogers does. Here is where I must point out Rogers’ proclivity for only seeking solutions to strange texts by resorting to his presupposition of personal plurality in God. Is there no other possible or plausible interpretation of this and other texts than what Rogers offers? Well I can think of at least two more tenable ways to understand the strange language of Gen. 35:1.
First, we could take this as one of the many instances of illeism in the Bible. Illeism is a form of speech in which someone refers to themself in the third person. This phenomenon is found throughout the scriptures, and in other ancient near eastern texts, in the speech of God, Jesus, kings, the gods of the nations and others. Here are some other passages in which illeism is seen: Gen. 4:22; 2 Sam. 7:11b, 20; 1 Kings 2:44-45; 14:2; 2 Kings 10:18; Esther 1:15; Hosea 1:6-7; Zech. 10:12. There are many others, but this will suffice.
In the September 2009 issue of JETS, Robert Malone published an article titled GOD THE ILLEIST: THIRD-PERSON SELF-REFERENCES AND TRINITARIAN HINTS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. At the outset of his paper he clearly lays out his purpose:
“Since the first generations of NT believers [this phenomenon] has been employed as a significant tool for divining OT hints of the trinitarian plurality of God. It continues to be promulgated by contemporary evangelical systematicians, particularly in the influential textbooks of the last hundred years. Given the theological weight attributed by theologians to this syntactic phenomenon, coupled with renewed interest in it in the contemporary media, it is appropriate for us to critique how illeism has been used—and misused—in identifying the Trinity in OT texts. I propose that the various rhetorical uses identified by biblical and secular commentators offer a more responsible hermeneutic than do the revelatory claims made by many Christian apologists and theologians.“
Malone reasons that this kind of 3rd person self-reference by Yahweh in the Hebrew scriptures is a valid and common form of speech and that “such texts can indeed be better understood as divine self-references, rather than as one God or divine Person referring to another.” It is clear from his article that Malone has a trinitarian bias, yet, as regards the phenomenon of God’s use of 3rd person self-references in the OT, he has let the evidence lead him to his conclusion, and for this he must be commended.
It may be that Gen. 35:1 is not a true specimen of illeism because there is another possible way to understand it. When the text says, “And God said to Jacob . . .” it could be understood that it was not actually God who spoke this to Jacob, but rather an agent of God, whether a prophet or an angel. The reason why the text says “And God said” is because when an agent of God speaks to someone on behalf of God, then what the agent says can simply be attributed to God. A parallel example which clearly shows this fact is Is. 7:10-11, which reads:
Again Yahweh spoke to Ahaz, “Ask Yahweh your God for a sign, whether in the deepest depths or in the highest heights.”
So here we note that we have an exact match to Gen. 35:1. Yahweh speaks a message to someone in which he speaks of himself in the third person. But in this passage we know that it is actually Isaiah who is delivering the message {see vv. 3-9, 12-13}. Therefore, we should understand v. 10 as “Again Yahweh spoke to Ahaz by Isaiah.” So, Is. 7:10-11 would technically not be a case of illeism, but Isaiah relating the message he was given by Yahweh to Ahaz, which is then attributed to Yahweh. In the same way, we can understand Gen. 35:1 as “And God said to Jacob by a messenger,” and the unnamed messenger speaks of God in the third person, just as Isaiah did.
So the point is, I have offered two plausible ways to interpret the odd language of Gen. 35:1, while Rogers offers his audience no alternative ways that the text could be understood. Rogers simply assumes his presupposition upon the text and presents his interpretation as if it is the default meaning. In reality, his interpretation is the least plausible, in that it involves importing a much later concept of personal plurality in the one God back into this ancient text, whereas, the two alternatives I offered are consistent with the cultural and linguistic context in which it the book of Genesis was written.
From 1:40 – 2:50 he presents Gen. 35:6-7:
“Jacob and all the people with him came to Luz (that is, Bethel) in the land of Canaan. There he built an altar, and he called the place El Bethel, because it was there that God revealed himself to him when he was fleeing from his brother.”
Rogers then goes on to rightly point out that the words “revealed himself” in the Hebrew text is actually a third person plural verb, and that therefore, to his mind, the text literally says “God revealed themselves”. He then immediately brings up another similar passage in Gen. 20:13, where Abraham said, “God caused me the wander from my father’s house . . .” He again correctly points out that the Hebrew verb for “caused me to wander” is a plural verb. Incredibly, Rogers’ argues that these verses reflect the fact of a plurality of persons in the one God. What Rogers is suggesting is that the word “God” in these passages refers to the one being of God, while the plural verbs reveal a plurality of persons in that one God. This is Rogers’ biggest blunder in this video. Let me show you why I say this.
In the Hebrew scriptures the predominant Hebrew word used to denote “God” is elohim. Elohim is actually a plural noun, but, as all Hebrew scholars acknowledge, when it is used of the one God, Yahweh, it is not being used as a true numerical plural, but as a numerical singular. This is confirmed by the consistent use of singular verbs and pronouns that are employed in relation to elohim when it is used of God. For example, in Gen. 35:1, when it says “God, who appeared to you . . .” the word elohim is plural but the verb “appeared” is singular. This is how we know that the word elohim in that verse is being used not as a true numerical plural. Scholars call this use of elohim by different names such as plural of supremacy or intensive plural. This construction of singular verbs associated with the word elohim when referring to the one true God occurs multiplied hundreds of times in the Hebrew Bible.
But when the word elohim is accompanied by plural verbs then the word must not be considered as referring to the one true God, Yahweh, and not as a plural of supremacy or an intensive plural, but as a true numerical plural, and hence should be translated as “gods”. This means that the two passages invoked by Rogers should actually read like this:
Gen. 35:7 – “There he built an altar, and he called the place El Bethel, because it was there that the gods revealed themselves to him when he was fleeing from his brother.”
Gen. 20:13 – “ gods caused me the wander from my father’s house . . .”
Another passage in Genesis that falls into this same category is Gen. 3:5, in which the first occurrence of elohim is assigned a singular verb, denoting that Yahweh is being referenced, but the second occurrence of elohim is assigned a plural verb, denoting “gods”. Here is how the passage should be translated – “For God knows that in the day ye eat of it then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”1
The sad thing is that nearly all English versions totally ignore the grammatical data concerning the use of elohim and translate 35:7 and 20:13 as reffering to the one God. Some of these may provide a footnote noting the alternative reading of “gods”. The NET Bible, while retaining “God” in the text of these passages, explains in the translators note that “gods” is a possible reading. Robert Alter in his translation of the Hebrew Bible has “gods” in 20:13 but “God” in 35:7, without any explanation as to why the difference, though the grammatical construction is the same. It seems that some translators wouldn’t know what these verses could possibly mean if they read “gods” instead of “God”, so they simply translate the plural verbs as singulars.
So what could these verses possibly mean if we take elohim to be referring to “gods” rather than to “God”? Let’s look first at 20:13. This verse would be saying that it was on account of the gods of Ur that Abraham became a wanderer from his father’s house. It was while Abraham was still in Ur that God spoke to him to leave his father’s house and his country {see Neh. 9:7 and Acts 7:2-3}. The reason God told him to leave was to separate him from the idolatry of Ur and his father’s house {see Josh. 24:2-3}. It was, therefore, quite appropriate for Abraham to speak of the reason for his wandering to be the “gods”. As for 35:7, this recalls the dream that Jacob had in Gen. 28:12-13, in which he saw a stairway reaching from earth into the heavens and angels of God ascending and descending upon it. Hence, the “gods” refer to the angels of God, who were disclosed to Jacob for the first time. That the term elohim can refer to angels is universally acknowlegded by Hebrew scholars. In fact, the second use of the term elohim in Gen. 3:5 is probably a reference to angels, as is also Gen. 32:30 likely referring to an angel.
What all of this means is that Rogers’ insistence that the grammatical construction of these two passages reveals a plurality of persons in the one God is completely without warrant, and comes soley from his own imagination rather than from the text itself. Rogers’ proposal ignores the consistent use of elohim as referring to “God” when accompanied by singular verbs and referring to “gods” when accompanied by plural verbs. The fact that the word elohim in these two passages is assigned a plural verb, precludes the possiblity that the term is being used of the one God. Rogers is simply in error here. One can only surmise that Rogers’ obsession with the idea of personal plurality in one God has led him to thoughtlessly jump to that conclusion when the grammar in the text seemed odd to him.
The next section is from 3:14 – 10:54 and deals mainly with the ‘Angel of the Lord’ and once again, reveals Rogers’ penchant for assuming his presupposition upon the text. The first text he draws our attention to is Gen. 28:16-22, where Jacob has a dream in which he sees Yahweh and Yahweh speaks to him certain promises regarding his descendants and the land in which he dwelt. When Jacob arose in the morning he set up a pillar and anointed it and made a vow to Yahweh. Rogers then takes us to Gen. 31:11-13, where Jacob relates another dream in which “the angel of God” spoke to him. The angel says: “I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and where you made a vow to me.” Can you guess what conclusion Rogers jumps to? Rogers concludes that this reveals that the angel, whom he assumes is synonymous with ‘the angel of Yahweh’, just is Yahweh, but not simply Yahweh, but one of the multiple persons in Yahweh. Once again, Rogers fails to inform his audience of all of the possible ways to understand the text and simply acts as if what he is presenting just is the meaning. There are at least four possible ways to interpret this 1. the angel just is a manifestation of Yahweh himself 2. the angel is a manifestation of one of the persons who comprise the one God (this is Rogers’ view) 3. the angel is simply a messenger of God 4. the angel is the representative image in the dream that stands in for God.
#1 is based on the fact that many commentators see ‘the angel of Yahweh’ simply as a manifestation of Yahweh, though it must be noted that the phrase ‘the angel of Yahweh’ does not appear in Gen. 31:11-13, just “the angel of God”. This may be a valid way to understand the phrase but I just don’t think it is a necessary conclusion, and also it doesn’t take seriously the word malak. If it just is Yahweh then why does the text not just say Yahweh instead of the angel of Yahweh? This is what has led some, like Rogers, to assume that while it is Yahweh, it is actually only one specific hypostasis of Yahweh, namely God the Son. This is the least defensible of the four views because it involves the importing of a much later theological idea back into these texts. #3 is very reasonable for it takes the word malak seriously so that the angel of Yahweh is just that, an agent of Yahweh. The problem some have with this view is that the ‘angel of Yahweh’ will often speak in the first person as Yahweh, just like in Gen. 31:13. But this objection is easily overcome once one considers the function of such an agent of Yahweh, which is to stand in for God, to speak and act on his behalf. That the angel speaks as Yahweh is simply one of his functions. Human agents, i.e. prophets, who are also designated as malakim in the Hebrew Bible, often speak in this same fashion. #4 is not a view that I have heard before but which I only came to see as possible while researching for this article. I used to take #3 as the best way to understand Gen. 31:11-13, but now I prefer #4. The rationale behind this view is that this is a dream that Jacob had, and things that are seen in dreams are not real, but only mental images representing something. So in this dream Yahweh may have appeared to Jacob, but it was not literally Yahweh but only a mental image representing Yahweh in the dream. This representative image of Yahweh can legitimately be called malak Yahweh. It is not Yahweh but represents Yahweh, just like any malak does, except that this malak is not a personal entity. Hence, this explains why the word malak is used instead of just saying “God said to me” and why the image in the dream speaks in the first person as Yahweh. This is the only passage in the Tanakh where this phenomenon occurs, where “the malak of God” speaks in a dream, instead of just simply God speaking in a dream. So, then we can surmise that when God appears to someone in a dream this can be reported as either God appeared or the malak of God appeared.
So, whatever the case, we can see that Rogers hastily assumed his own predilections onto Gen. 31:11-13, thus arriving at the conclusion he really started with.
From 5:36-6:36 he then gives some accurate data concerning the biblical use of the Hebrew word malak (angel, messenger). From 6:37 on, though, he begins to go off the rails, making assertions that cannot be substantiated. The first false claim he makes is that whenever the phrase ‘angel of Yahweh’ is used it is “always definite in Hebrew, pointing to a specific person and the context always indicates that the angel is God.” To the first two points in that statement I say, yes and no, and to the last statement I say definitely not. Regarding the first point, it is true that the phrase is technically definite, but not practically so. As for the second point, of course it refers to a specific person, the one who is being presented in any given text. But if he means that the phrase always refers to the same specific person then he is demonstrably wrong. As for his third point, he thinks this mainly because the ‘angel of Yahweh’ often, but not always, speaks in the first person as Yahweh and he thinks the angel receives worship as God. He also thinks that those who have encountered ‘the angel of Yahweh’ believe they have actually seen God. But each of these claims can be shown to be false. For those who want to see my full explanation of the ‘angel of Yahweh’ and why Rogers’ assertions are wrong, see this article. Here I will just say that I categorically deny that any text of scripture ever depicts ‘the angel of Yahweh’ being worshipped as God or that those who saw him thought they saw God. These claims are part of the ongoing misinformation being promulgated by apologists like Rogers, and the only reason he thinks the text says these things is because he presupposes that the angel is Yahweh, something that even many trinitarian scholars deny.
From 6:52 – 7:53 he makes an absurd claim that he assures us “numerous scholarly studies have shown” to be true, i.e. that “the word malak carries the connotation of presence or manifestation,” and hence, “points to him as a manifestation of God or God’s very presence.” To back up this claim he quotes from the doctoral dissertation of one Gunther Juncker. In the quote Juncker says, and I quote verbatim, “The word [malak] means only ‘presence’ or ‘manifestation’. But what lexicons say this? Rogers doesn’t tell us. I checked BDB, TWOT, Gesenius and TDOT and none of these gave the meaning of ‘presence’ or ‘manifestation’ for the word malak. I conjecture that Juncker and others derive this meaning from their own misunderstanding of the recorded actions and words of malak Yahweh in the Hebrew scriptures. But this is a fundamental ignorance on the part of these ‘scholars’ who assert this, an ignorance of how a malak functioned in the ancient near east. The malak came in the name of the one who sent him and represented that one to those to whom he was sent. His message was not his own but was the message of the one who sent him. If a king sent his malak to the king of another land to represent him to that court, the presence of that malak in the court of the other king was, to all intents and purposes, the presence of the king who sent him. But the malak was not literally that king. Rogers and the scholars he relies upon are just plain wrong on this issue. There are cases in the Tanakh where Yahweh is depicted as addressing his malak, so how can it be Yahweh himself, unless of course, you presuppose personal plurality in Yahweh. So again, we see that to arrive at Rogers’ conclusion one must start with his presupposition.
Rogers is also guilty of cherry-picking quotes from scholars while ignoring other things said by the same scholars. He quotes from S. A. Meier to the effect that the angel of Yahweh in the biblical narratives doesn’t act like the messenger gods or human messengers of other ANE literature. So what! Meier has rightly observed this difference but it has definitely not led him to the same conclusion as Rogers. What he doesn’t quote from Meier is this statement at the end of his long entry on the angel of Yahweh:
In conclusion, there is in the Bible no single “The angel of Yahweh”. The phrase mal’ak YHWH is better translated as “an angel (or messenger) of Yahweh” when it first appears in a narrative, for it represents the appearance of an unspecified supernatural envoy sent from Yahweh.
Dictionary of Deities and Demons p. 59
This quote from Meier decidely contradicts Rogers’ conclusions which he sought to affirm by the other quote from Meier.
From 8:38 – 10:40 Rogers deals with Gen. 32:24-30 and it’s companion text in Hosea 12:3-5. I will point the reader to a recent article where I give a reasonable explanation of these texts. Click the link and then scroll down to where I deal with this passage; it is only three paragraphs.
Conclusion
While this video by Rogers may have some information that is of some value, it is far too little. The video is filled with misinformation, half-truths and baseless assertions. I am not accussing Rogers of purposely trying to mislead his viewers, but pointing out that this kind of rhetoric is inevitable when one approaches scripture with the sole goal of affirming his own presuppositions.
Endnotes
- Here is the NET Bible translators note on Gen. 3:5.
tn Or “like divine beings who know.” It is unclear how the plural participle translated “knowing” is functioning. On the one hand, יֹדְעֵי (yodʿe) could be taken as a substantival participle functioning as a predicative adjective in the sentence. In this case one might translate: “You will be, like God himself, knowers of good and evil.” On the other hand, it could be taken as an attributive adjective modifying אֱלֹהִים (ʾelohim). In this case אֱלֹהִים has to be taken as a numerical plural referring to “gods,” meaning “divine or heavenly beings,” because if the one true God were the intended referent, a singular form of the participle would appear as a modifier. Following this line of interpretation, one could translate, “You will be like divine beings who know good and evil.” The following context may support this translation, for in 3:22 God says to an unidentified group, “Look, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.” It is possible that God is addressing his heavenly court (see the note on the word “make” in 1:26), the members of which can be called “gods” or “divine/heavenly beings” from the ancient Israelite perspective (cf. KJV, NAB, JPS). (We know some of these beings as messengers or “angels.”) An examination of parallel constructions shows that a predicative understanding (“you will be, like God himself, knowers of good and evil,”) is possible (see Gen. 27:23, where “hairy” is predicative, complementing the verb “to be”). Other evidence suggests that the participle is attributive, modifying “divine/heavenly beings”(see Ps31:12; Isa1:30; 13:14; 16:2; 29:5; 58:11; Jer14:9;20:9; 23:9; 31:12; 48:41; 49:22; Hos 7:11; Amos 4:11). In all of these texts, where a comparative clause and accompanying adjective/participle follow a copulative (“to be”) verb, the adjective/participle is attributive after the noun in the comparative clause. The translation of “God,” though, is supported by how אֱלֹהִים (ʾelohim) is used in the surrounding context where it always refers to the true God and many translations take it this way (cf. NIV, TNIV, RSV, NRSV, ESV, HCSB, NLT, NASB, REB, and NKJV). In this interpretation the plural participle refers to Adam and Eve.
Let the Truth Come Out 