The Shema

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one (Shema Yisrael YHWH Eloheinu YHWH Echad, שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָד). You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates" (Deuteronomy 6:4–9).

The Shema is Moses's summation of the covenant at the threshold of the promised land. Deuteronomy as a whole is Moses's final extended address; chapter 6 begins the core instruction that follows the Decalogue. The Shema is the distillation of everything the Decalogue said in six words.

The word Shema (שְׁמַע) is the Qal imperative of shama (שָׁמַע, to hear, to listen, to obey). In Hebrew thought, hearing and obeying are not separated, to truly hear is to respond. The Shema does not merely declare a doctrine; it summons Israel to a posture: listening, responsive, obedient.

"YHWH is one" (YHWH echad, יְהוָה אֶחָד), the word echad (אֶחָד) is the standard Hebrew numeral "one." Its translation has theological significance. The standard Islamic argument distinguishes the Hebrew echad ("compound unity," as in echad in Genesis 2:24, "the two shall become one flesh") from the Hebrew yachid (יָחִיד, absolute singular unity). The argument concludes that echad allows for a compound unity (Trinity) while yachid would not.

But this distinction should not carry too much weight. Echad in the Shema is the simple numeral, YHWH is one, not multiple. The Shema was the Jewish counter-confession to the polytheism of the surrounding world: not many gods, not a council of divine beings with YHWH as head, but one God. Deuteronomy 4:35: "To you it was shown, that you might know that the LORD is God; there is no other besides him." Isaiah 44:6: "I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god." 45:5: "I am the LORD, and there is no other, besides me there is no God."

The New Testament does not abandon the Shema, it deepens it. Mark 12:29–30 has Jesus cite the Shema as the greatest commandment: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." Jesus does not modify the Shema, he quotes it. The scribes approved.

The Shema flows immediately into the command to love (Ve-ahavta, וְאָהַבְתָּ): "You shall love (ve-ahavta, from ahav, אָהַב, to love) the LORD your God with all your heart (levavkha, לְבָבְךָ) and with all your soul (nafshekha, נַפְשְׁךָ) and with all your might (me'odekha, מְאֹדְךָ)" (Deuteronomy 6:5).

The Hebrew anthropology of the three dimensions: levav (heart) is not the emotional center alone but the seat of will, intention, and thought, the inner person. Nefesh (soul) is the living self, the whole person as an animated being, the same word as Genesis 2:7 where YHWH breathes the nishmat chayyim and Adam becomes a nefesh chayyah (a living soul). Me'od (might) is usually translated "strength" but is literally "very-ness", maximum intensity, the superlative of capacity. To love YHWH with all your me'od is to love him at the outer limit of what you are.

Jesus adds a fourth dimension in Matthew 22:37: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (dianoia, διάνοια, reasoning, understanding, the intellective faculty)." Mark 12:30 adds "strength" (ischus, ἰσχύς) as well, giving four dimensions. The Gospel writers' different renderings of the Shema's command are not contradictions, they reflect different aspects of the Hebrew me'od translated into Greek anthropology.

In Matthew 22:34–40, a lawyer (testing Jesus) asks: "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" Jesus answers with the Shema and Leviticus 19:18: "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."

The pairing of the Shema with Leviticus 19:18 is Jesus's own synthesis, not unique to him (similar pairings appear in rabbinic literature) but authorized by him as the summary of Torah. "On these two commandments depend (kremantai, κρεμαννται, hang from, are suspended from) all the Law and the Prophets." Every specific commandment hangs from these two, love for YHWH and love for neighbor. This is not an abolition of the specific commandments but a hermeneutical key: the whole moral structure of Torah hangs from the love-command.

In Mark 12:32–34, the scribal response is notable: "You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him; and to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." Jesus responds: "You are not far from the kingdom of God." The scribe who grasps the Shema's priority over ritual is at the threshold.

Paul's engagement with the Shema in 1 Corinthians 8:6 is one of the most remarkable texts in the Pauline corpus: "yet for us there is one God (heis theos, εἷς θεός), the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord (heis kyrios, εἷς κύριος), Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist."

The structure is a deliberate expansion of the Shema. Deuteronomy 6:4: "YHWH our God, YHWH is one." 1 Corinthians 8:6: "one God, the Father... and one Lord, Jesus Christ." Paul takes the two divine names of the Shema (YHWH Eloheinu, YHWH our God) and identifies them with the Father and Jesus Christ. Jesus receives the title "Lord", the Septuagint's translation of YHWH. The Shema is not abandoned, it is fulfilled. Paul is affirming Jewish monotheism (against the polytheism of Corinth's idol-temples) while including Jesus within the divine identity that the Shema confesses.

N.T. Wright has called this the most decisive christological move in the New Testament: Paul places Jesus within the Shema, within the confession of divine unity, not alongside it or above it or below it. The one God and the one Lord are not two gods, the Shema is one. But within the divine unity, the Father and Jesus Christ are distinguished.

The Shema is the beginning of theology, not one doctrine among many. Everything the Sanctum teaches hangs from it: the oneness of YHWH that the Shema confesses, the love-command that flows from it, the expansion that the New Testament makes, placing Jesus within the divine unity that Israel always knew. The Spiritborn say the Shema with the full weight of what it now contains: the Father from whom all things are, and the Lord Jesus Christ through whom all things are.