Darwinism's LVPs continue to double down on the argument by misrepresentation and name calling

 “Creation Myths” Misquotes and Misrepresents Junk DNA Video

Casey Luskin

A YouTube channel called Creation Myths put up a new offering that claims, “Discovery Institute recently put out a video on junk DNA that contains all the usual lies about junk DNA, plus a few other tricks to make their audience think they’re on the up-and-up. We’re going to talk about it.” This is in reference to our new Long Story Short video:

Sure, Let’s Talk About It

Before I get too far into this, I need to say that it’s probably best to be cautious when dealing with “Creation Myths,” who also identifies as “Dr. Dan” and is a genuine PhD biologist at Rutgers. He’s an anti-ID YouTuber who has exhibited an unfortunate unwillingness to acknowledge black-and-white facts that are in favor of intelligent design. To be specific, two years ago I did a debate on the Unbelievable show, and Creation Myths left a comment stating that the ID research program “Hasn’t advanced past where it was in 2004/2005. Where’s the research program? Where are the papers?” Well, I had already provided this evidence in spades throughout the debate. He was just unwilling to accept these realities.

During the debate I discussed multiple ID 3.0 research projects that we fund, and discussed multiple papers that have been published through this research program. I don’t usually speak like this, but it’s important to get a sense of what we’re dealing with here: Creation Myth’s unwillingness to acknowledge the simple fact that the ID research program has advanced since 2004/2005 — and is publishing papers — does not inspire confidence in his ability to handle this debate fairly. He’s welcome to disagree with ID, but to deny our research program exists or that it’s publishing papers is simply to deny reality. He invited me to go on his channel, but I’m sorry, I don’t think it’s fruitful to dialogue with people who cannot acknowledge unambiguous facts. So it’s important to understand the temperament of debaters and their tactics before engaging with them. 

What We Actually Said

With that, my first point provides another disturbing example of how Creation Myths operates. He has now left another comment, this one on our YouTube Channel, which directly misquotes the new Long Story Short video on junk DNA. His comment claims the video says “it was assumed that the other 98 percent was junk.” Those are words that Creation Myths puts in quote marks but they were never stated in the video! 

Here’s what we actually said: it was “assumed that it was largely junk.” Words matter and we did not say it was assumed that the entire other “98 percent was junk.”

So did evolutionists say the genome was “largely” junk? Of course they did! Creation Myths recommends Laurence Moran’s book that says “90 percent” of the genome is junk, and then there’s Richard Dawkins who said 95 percent is junk. In other words, “largely” junk. What we said is accurate and defensible.

In fact, had we used the more aggressive language that Creation Myths falsely claims we did, there might even be authorities to support such a claim. As I recently noted, a 2021 article in American Scientist said that “Close to 99 percent of our genome has been historically classified as noncoding, useless ‘junk’ DNA”! So it’s clear that we are accurate in saying that many evolutionists view the genome as “largely” junk — if anything, that may be an understatement.

Creation Myths has overstated our argument in order to make it look unreasonable. This is a common tactic from junk DNA defenders. 

Second, Creation Myths wants to have it both ways — he wants to essentially say evolutionists never said DNA was largely junk, but that nonetheless the genome really is largely junk. So there’s an internal contradiction in his framing.

The Bigger Issues

With that, my first point provides another disturbing example of how Creation Myths operates. He has now left another comment, this one on our YouTube Channel, which directly misquotes the new Long Story Short video on junk DNA. His comment claims the video says “it was assumed that the other 98 percent was junk.” Those are words that Creation Myths puts in quote marks but they were never stated in the video! 

Here’s what we actually said: it was “assumed that it was largely junk.” Words matter and we did not say it was assumed that the entire other “98 percent was junk.”

So did evolutionists say the genome was “largely” junk? Of course they did! Creation Myths recommends Laurence Moran’s book that says “90 percent” of the genome is junk, and then there’s Richard Dawkins who said 95 percent is junk. In other words, “largely” junk. What we said is accurate and defensible.

In fact, had we used the more aggressive language that Creation Myths falsely claims we did, there might even be authorities to support such a claim. As I recently noted, a 2021 article in American Scientist said that “Close to 99 percent of our genome has been historically classified as noncoding, useless ‘junk’ DNA”! So it’s clear that we are accurate in saying that many evolutionists view the genome as “largely” junk — if anything, that may be an understatement.

Creation Myths has overstated our argument in order to make it look unreasonable. This is a common tactic from junk DNA defenders. 

Second, Creation Myths wants to have it both ways — he wants to essentially say evolutionists never said DNA was largely junk, but that nonetheless the genome really is largely junk. So there’s an internal contradiction in his framing.

The Bigger Issues

Third, and this bring us to the bigger issues, let’s look at the paper he cites, Kellis et al. (2014). It’s authored by quite a few prominent ENCODE scientists, and despite what Creation Myths asserts, this paper does not “walk back” central claims of their major 2012 Nature ENCODE paper. That 2012 paper is cited by our video because it reported evidence that 80 percent of the genome is biochemically functional. As the 2012 paper stated, “These data enabled us to assign biochemical functions for 80 percent of the genome, in particular outside of the well-studied protein-coding regions.” 

And note what our video says — we did not claim that the 2012 Nature paper said 80 percent MUST be functional. Our video correctly states that the 2012 Nature paper from ENCODE “found 80 percent of DNA shows evidence of functional biochemical activity.” That’s absolutely true and totally consistent with what the 2012 ENCODE paper said and what the evidence says. And no one has walked that claim back. 

I’d like to ask Creation Myths to provide the exact statement where Kellis et al. (2014) denies or “walks back” ENCODE’s claim that 80 percent of the genome shows evidence of biochemically functionality. He won’t find it because they never retracted that evidence.

Fourth, Kellis et al. (2014) does cite the major 2012 Nature ENCODE paper — not to retract it but rather it cites this paper very affirmatively. But we’ll get to that in a moment. Before we delve into the paper, here’s a revealing question:

If ENCODE was really “walking back” their claims, then why did lead ENCODE researcher Ewan Birney — who is a co-author on Kellis et al. (2014) — say the following just a couple of weeks before the Kellis paper was published: “There is not a single place in the genome that doesn’t have something that you might think could be controlling something else.”

That quote from Birney came from his comments in Bhattacharjee (2014), an article published in the journal Science as a response to ENCODE critic Dan Graur who had claimed that the genome is largely junk. So it’s totally on point and in context.

Birney is effectively saying that the entire genome appears to be functional — i.e., “There is not a single place in the genome that doesn’t have something that you might think could be controlling something else.” And he said what he did around the same time he co-authored the Kellis paper (the statement was published on March 21, 2014, and Kellis et al. came out on April 29, 2014, but was probably submitted months earlier). So Ewan Birney cannot be understanding his own paper to be walking back the claim about 80 percent functionality because clearly he thinks the genome is almost entirely functional.

Creation Myths Is Bluffing. How Do I Know?

Fifth, you have to understand what kind of paper Kellis et al. (2014) is. It’s a perspectives or review paper that compares and contrasts three different methods of investigating genome function: evolutionary, genetic, and biochemical. They set up this framing in the introduction, stating: “Geneticists, evolutionary biologists, and molecular biologists apply distinct approaches, evaluating different and complementary lines of evidence.”

The paper then discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each method, and discusses estimates of function for the genome for each method, offering pros and cons for each estimate and the methods used to infer those calculations. No method is perfect or foolproof, and they look at strengths and weaknesses of the evolutionary method and of the biochemical method. That’s what you do in a review paper. Well, what method do they ultimately favor? We’ll get there in just a moment. 

Now, the biochemical method is the method that ENCODE used to find evidence of function for 80 percent of the genome. Kellis et al. (2014) note that the evolutionary method, in contrast, predicts that no more than 20 percent of the genome is functional, and the rest is junk: 

The estimated mutation rate in protein-coding genes suggested that only up to ∼20% of the nucleotides in the human genome can be selectively maintained, as the mutational burden would be otherwise too large. The term “junk DNA” was coined to refer to the majority of the rest of the genome, which represent segments of neutrally evolving DNA.

So which method does Kellis think is the most reliable? You guessed it — they strongly favor the biochemical method. Here’s the conclusion of the paper:

In contrast to evolutionary and genetic evidence, biochemical data offer clues about both the molecular function served by underlying DNA elements and the cell types in which they act, thus providing a launching point to study differentiation and development, cellular circuitry, and human disease (14, 35, 69, 111, 112). The major contribution of ENCODE to date has been high-resolution, highly-reproducible maps of DNA segments with biochemical signatures associated with diverse molecular functions. We believe that this public resource is far more important than any interim estimate of the fraction of the human genome that is functional.

They are saying that the “biochemical data offer clues about both the molecular function served by underlying DNA elements and the cell types in which they act” and that ENCODE’s application of this method provides reliable data that “is far more important than any interim estimate of the fraction of the human genome that is functional.” They affirmatively cite five papers in saying this. Guess which citation is #69? It’s the major 2012 ENCODE paper in Nature which said that 80 percent of the genome is biochemically functional. They are citing it to say that the approach taken in that paper gives results that are “far more important than any interim estimate of the fraction of the human genome that is functional.”

So it’s true that in this particular paper they aren’t asserting any particular fraction of the human genome that is functional — but neither are they denying or “walking back” the 80 percent statistic either. They are clearly endorsing the biochemical approach in ENCODE’s 2012 paper. That means they don’t think the evolutionary approach is going to give you the best answer. Instead, they prefer the biochemical method, which uncovered evidence of function for 80% of the genome. 

Critical of Evolutionary Estimates

Sixth, also noteworthy is that the Kellis paper is highly critical of evolutionary estimates of the fraction of the genome that is functional. Here’s how it describes the evolutionary view:

[T]he biochemically active regions cover a much larger fraction of the genome than do evolutionarily conserved regions, raising the question of whether nonconserved but biochemically active regions are truly functional. Many examples of elements that appear to have conflicting lines of functional evidence were described before the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project, including elements with conserved phenotypes but lacking sequence-level conservation, conserved elements with no phenotype on deletion, and elements able to drive tissue-specific expression but lacking evolutionary conservation. … A high level of sequence conservation between related species is indicative of purifying selection, whereby disruptive mutations are rejected, with the corresponding sequence deemed to be likely functional.

They are saying that the “biochemical data offer clues about both the molecular function served by underlying DNA elements and the cell types in which they act” and that ENCODE’s application of this method provides reliable data that “is far more important than any interim estimate of the fraction of the human genome that is functional.” They affirmatively cite five papers in saying this. Guess which citation is #69? It’s the major 2012 ENCODE paper in Nature which said that 80 percent of the genome is biochemically functional. They are citing it to say that the approach taken in that paper gives results that are “far more important than any interim estimate of the fraction of the human genome that is functional.”

So it’s true that in this particular paper they aren’t asserting any particular fraction of the human genome that is functional — but neither are they denying or “walking back” the 80 percent statistic either. They are clearly endorsing the biochemical approach in ENCODE’s 2012 paper. That means they don’t think the evolutionary approach is going to give you the best answer. Instead, they prefer the biochemical method, which uncovered evidence of function for 80% of the genome. 

Critical of Evolutionary Estimates

Sixth, also noteworthy is that the Kellis paper is highly critical of evolutionary estimates of the fraction of the genome that is functional. Here’s how it describes the evolutionary view:

[T]he biochemically active regions cover a much larger fraction of the genome than do evolutionarily conserved regions, raising the question of whether nonconserved but biochemically active regions are truly functional. Many examples of elements that appear to have conflicting lines of functional evidence were described before the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project, including elements with conserved phenotypes but lacking sequence-level conservation, conserved elements with no phenotype on deletion, and elements able to drive tissue-specific expression but lacking evolutionary conservation. … A high level of sequence conservation between related species is indicative of purifying selection, whereby disruptive mutations are rejected, with the corresponding sequence deemed to be likely functional.

We will address this objection head-on in a forthcoming Long Story Short video on junk DNA that’s been in production since long before Creation Myths posted its objections. The objection is fallacious because it assumes DNA can only be functional if it is “evolutionarily conserved.” But that view further assumes that evolutionary processes are the only way to produce function in the genome. If you can have function outside of “conserved” regions because evolution isn’t what generated the genome, then the argument falls apart. So this evolutionary argument effectively assumes the truth of evolution and boils down to a circular argument. 

Kellis et al. (2014) offers some additional arguments against the “evolutionary approach” to discerning function:  

has limitations. Identification of conserved regions depends on accurate multispecies sequence alignments, which remain a substantial challenge. Alignments are generally less effective for distal-acting regulatory regions, where they may be impeded by regulatory motif turnover, varying spacing constraints, and sequence composition biases (17, 49). Analyzing aligned regions for conservation can be similarly challenging. First, most transcription factor-binding sequences are short and highly degenerate, making them difficult to identify. Second, because detection of neutrally evolving elements requires sufficient phylogenetic distance, the approach is well suited for detecting mammalian- conserved elements, but it is less effective for primate-specific elements and essentially blind to human-specific elements. Third, certain types of functional elements such as immunity genes may be prone to rapid evolutionary turnover even among closely related species. More generally, alignment methods are not well suited to capture substitutions that preserve function, such as compensatory changes preserving RNA structure, affinity-preserving substitutions within regulatory motifs, or mutations whose effect is buffered by redundancy or epistatic effects. Thus, absence of conservation cannot be interpreted as evidence for the lack of function.”

That’s a potent critique. It says some sequences cannot be compared or aligned because they are TOO different, and those differences might in fact encode functions! The evolutionary approach might be missing some of the sequences that encode differences between species. And it notes that “absence of conservation” does not mean “lack of function.”  

So Kellis et al. (2014) gets the logic right: while conservation strongly implies function, the converse is not necessarily true: absence of conservation does not necessarily mean lack of function. In other words, they blew the “If it ain’t conserved you can’t say it’s functional” objection out of the water.

Seventh, there are additional noteworthy statements from the Kellis et al. (2014) showing they did not walk back the claim about 80 percent of the genome:

“[T]he noncoding regions of the human genome harbor a rich array of functionally significant elements with diverse gene regulatory and other functions.”

They still see the non-coding genome as having a “rich array of functionally significant elements.” This is NOT the traditional evolutionary view.

“[F]unction in biochemical and genetic contexts is highly particular to cell type and condition, whereas for evolutionary measures, function is ascertained independently of cellular state but is dependent on environment and evolutionary niche.”

This suggests that something can still be functional in a biochemical context, though in an evolutionary sense it can be hard to determine if it’s “functional.”

“The methods also differ widely in their false-positive and false-negative rates, the resolution with which elements are defined, and the throughput with which they can be surveyed.”

So genetics and molecular biology, on one hand, and evolutionary measures on the other have different rates of “false negatives” for function. This is a polite way of saying that the evolutionary approach often wrongly says things aren’t functional.

But the junk DNA advocate will say that the biochemical approach might lead to false positives of function. The paper acknowledges this: “[A]lthough biochemical signatures are valuable for identifying candidate regulatory elements in the biological context of the cell type examined, they cannot be interpreted as definitive proof of function on their own.”

That’s fair. We haven’t studied in detail every single time that the genome is transcribed to see what it’s doing, and there could be some “transcriptional noise” — the “junk RNA” view. We’ve also addressed this in the earlier Long Story video. Is this tantamount to “walking back” the 80% statistic? Not in the lease. 

Random Noise or “Reproducible Biochemical Activity”

To defeat the 80 percent statistic, junk DNA defenders need there to be a huge amount of random noise in transcription. It’s possible that some transcription is random noise. But if much or most or nearly all of this transcription is noise, then cells are wasting colossal resources, and that would be highly deleterious to an organism, and would likely be selected against. So we have good reason off the bat to doubt that this transcription is largely random. 

Indeed, the paper has an opinion on this and it prefers the view that transcription is non-random and functional. Kellis et al. (2014) note that even if there is some transcriptional noise, there’s far more going on in cells than we would expect if most of the genome were genetic junk:

Thus, unanswered questions related to biological noise, along with differences in the resolution, sensitivity, and activity level of the corresponding assays, help to explain divergent estimates of the portion of the human genome encoding functional elements. Nevertheless, they do not account for the entire gulf between constrained regions and biochemical activity. Our analysis revealed a vast portion of the genome that appears to be evolving neutrally according to our metrics, even though it shows reproducible biochemical activity, which we previously referred to as “biochemically active but selectively neutral” (68). It could be argued that some of these regions are unlikely to serve critical functions, especially those with lower-level biochemical signal. However, we also acknowledge substantial limitations in our current detection of constraint, given that some human-specific functions are essential but not conserved and that disease-relevant regions need not be selectively constrained to be functional. Despite these limitations, all three approaches are needed to complete the unfinished process of inferring functional DNA elements, specifying their boundaries, and defining what functions they serve at molecular, cellular, and organismal levels.

The key words there are “reproducible biochemical activity.” 

ENCODE’s results suggest that a cell’s type and functional role in an organism are critically influenced by complex and carefully orchestrated patterns of expression of RNAs inside that cell. As another Kellis et al. co-author, John Stamatoyannopoulos, observed in a 2012 paper, ENCODE found that “the majority of regulatory DNA regions are highly cell type-selective,” and “the genomic landscape rapidly becomes crowded with regulatory DNA as the number of cell types” studied increases. Or, as two other ENCODE researchers explain in a 2013 paper, “Assertions that the observed transcription represents random noise … is more opinion than fact and difficult to reconcile with the exquisite precision of differential cell-and tissue — specific transcription in human cells.”

Stamatoyannopoulos (2012) further finds that repetitive DNA (often called “transposable elements”), which comprises over 50 percent of our genome, is active only in specific cell types. This nonrandom transcription of repetitive DNA into RNA suggests that transposable elements have functions whose importance are on par with other gene regulation mechanisms. He writes:

In marked contrast to the prevailing wisdom, ENCODE chromatin and transcription studies now suggest that a large number of transposable elements encode highly cell type-selective regulatory DNA that controls not only their own cell-selective transcription, but also those of neighboring genes. Far from an evolutionary dustbin, transposable elements appear to be active and lively members of the genomic regulatory community, deserving of the same level of scrutiny applied to other genic or regulatory features.

The vast majority of our genome — including repetitive DNA — is transcribed into RNA in nonrandom, cell-type-specific ways. These non-random processes strongly point against transcription being noise and provides strong evidence of function.

Indeed, individual RNA molecules then form networks in a cell, interacting with DNA, proteins, and other RNAs to control which genes are turned on and off, and which genes are expressed as proteins, thereby playing a crucial role in determining the cell’s type. As Stamatoyannopoulos puts it, this complex system exudes function:

More of the human genome sequence appears to be used for some reproducible, biochemically defined activity than was previously imagined. Contrary to the initial expectations of many, the overwhelming majority of these activities appear to be state-specific — either restricted to specific cell types or lineages, or evocable in response to a stimulus. … [B]iochemical signatures of many ENCODE-defined elements exhibit complex trans-cellular patterns of activity. … Together, these observations suggest that the genome may, in fact, be extensively multiply encoded — i.e., that the same DNA element gives rise to different activities in different cell types.

These consistent and predictable cell-type-specific patterns of RNA expression, and stimulus-specific patterns of transcription, show that mass genomic transcription of DNA into RNA is not random, but has important functional purposes.

In other words, transcription isn’t random — it happens over and over again in predictable patterns — and there’s a lot more non-random transcription going on than what you would expect from an evolutionary view of “constrained regions” of the genome. We may not yet have definitive proof of what every genomic element that’s transcribed is doing, but this evidence tells you that ENCODE’s data shows real evidence of function. Organized, reproducible, predictable transcription across the vast majority of the genome is far more compatible with the mass-functionality view of the genome, and highly incompatible with the “transcriptional noise” view promoted by junk DNA defenders. And the Kellis et al. authors think this biochemical evidence of function is more important than evolutionary predictions.

Bottom line: As for the rest of what Creation Myths has to say, there’s really not much there. Our video backs up what it says with clear quotes and references. We’ve provided more documentation here. Creation Myths, in contrast, is inventing quotes. Whether you celebrate Easter or not, may you enjoy this weekend and spend it quoting people carefully and accurately — not inventing quotes to suit your own purposes.

The Origin Humankind; an even bigger problem for Darwinism than the Origin of Life?

 Fossil Friday: New Dating of Pleistocene Fossils Rewrites the Story of Human Evolution

Günter Bechly

This Fossil Friday features a replica of the famous Broken Hill cranium (Kabwe 1) of Homo rhodesiensis, which was found in 1921 in a metal mining quarry in Zambia and was often considered to be an archaic ancestor of modern humans. The dating of this skull, and hundreds of other Homo fossils from Africa, Europe, Asia, and Oceania, was recently revised in a ground-breaking new study titled “Direct dating of human fossils and the ever-changing story of human evolution” by Grün & Stringer (2023), which represents an updated follow-up study to the previous work of Grün (2006).

What, Yet Another Rewriting?

Actually the study represents the summation of 37 years of collaborative research. Media reports about this impressive new study unsurprisingly featured headlines like “Recent fossil dating techniques change our ideas of the human evolution timeline” (NHM 2023) or “A new look at some old fossils has just rewritten the story of human evolution” (Spalding 2023). Why do we see such headlines over and over again? It is often claimed that the theory of evolution is as well established as the theory of gravity. When did you last see a headline like “New experiment rewrites the story of gravity“?

That said, the very extensive new study by the distinguished paleoanthropologists Rainer Grün and Chris Stringer undoubtedly produced several very important results:

The authors reviewed the dating of all major finds of fossil Homo from the past one million years, and critically discuss the U-series and ESR dating with special emphasis to different sources of errors such as leaching and overprinting. “The problem with bone is that it’s an open system. Uranium can get into the bone, allowing it to be dated, but more can also be added or washed out over time” said Professor Chris Stringer in the press release (NHM 2023). The scientists found that for some sites “the direct dates obtained do not fit the age estimates using other methods” and “in some cases the direct dates discussed here have challenged conventional thinking in palaeoanthropology.”

They re-dated the earliest occurrences of Homo sapiens in Africa, the Levant and Europe, and confirm that “if Apidima 1 is indeed a H. sapiens, it documents the earliest known presence of our species in Eurasia with an estimated age of about 211 thousand years, while the Misliya cave material from Israel “still represents the earliest known derived H. sapiens in the Levant” with an age of 152 thousand years”. Both dates are much earlier than the traditional Out-of-Africa scenario would predict to find. The press release by the Natural History Museum says “The existence of early Homo sapiens in Europe was over 150,000 years earlier than first thought” (NHM 2023).

The authors also discussed the more recently described human species of Homo floresiensis, H. luzonensis, H. naledi, and H. longi. They found an age of 134 thousand years for Homo luzonensis, refuting younger datings of only about 65 thousand years that were apparently distorted by secondary U-overprints. They also mention that skeletal characteristics led to a very incorrect initial age estimate for Homo naledi, four times older than the later radiometric dating, and said that “it may be worth mentioning that the postulated “morphological clock” was out by 1.35 million years for H. floresiensis”. Another example of Darwinian reasoning that massively failed the empirical test.  

Finally, they provided an updated summary of our present understanding of human evolution, with remarkable admissions such as the “co-existence of multiple lineages (in our view, species) over the last 2 million years, with at least 4 of these persisting into the last 100,000 years”, or that studies “show that searching for deep single points of origin for lineages like H. sapiens may ultimately be a futile task.”

The Take-Home Message

However, the most important take-home message is shown in figure 85 of Grün & Stringer (2023), which is based on Galway-Witham et al. (2019) and is featured below. It shows that several different alleged species of the genus Homo lived contemporary in the Pleistocene and experienced various instances of gene flow. This strongly suggests to me and some other critics of the current consensus that all these assumed species are just different populations of a single species Homo sapiens, that at best would qualify as subspecies or geographical races. I will provide a detailed argument for such reclassification in a book-length treatment of archaic Homo that is currently in preparation.

The most recent data on human fossils and their dating do not really support an evolutionary narrative from ape-like ancestors to modern humans, but a gap between ape-like australopithecines and real humans, as well as just a very diverse human species that even featured a greater morphological and genetic diversity in the past than today. Darwin critics with a Biblical perspective may find it interesting that this would resonate quite well with population genetic models based on a first pair with designed heterozygotic diversity and a significant population bottle neck (Sanford et al. 2018, Hössjer & Gauger 2019).

References

• Galway-Witham J, Cole J & Stringer C 2019. Aspects of human physical and behavioural evolution during the last 1 million years. Journal of Quaternary Science 34, 355–378. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.3137
• Grün R 2006. Direct dating of human fossils. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 131(S43), 2–48. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.20516
• Grün R & Stringer C 2023. Direct dating of human fossils and the ever-changing story of human evolution. Quaternary Science Reviews 322: 108379, 1–109. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2023.108379
• Hössjer O & Gauger A 2019. A single-couple human origin is possible. BIO-Complexity 2019(1), 1–20. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5048/BIO-C.2019.1
• NHM 2023. Recent fossil dating techniques change our ideas of the human evolution timeline. NHM Press Release December 18, 2023. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/press-office/recent-fossil-dating-techniques-change-our-ideas-of-the-human-ev.html
• Sanford J, Carter R, Brewer W, Baumgardner J, Potter B & Potter J 2018. Adam and Eve, designed diversity, and allele frequencies. pp. 200–216 in: Whitmore JH (ed.). Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism. Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh (PA).
• Spalding K 2023. A New Look At Some Old Fossils Has Just Rewritten The Story Of Human Evolution. IFL Science December 20, 2023. https://www.iflscience.com/a-new-look-at-some-old-fossils-has-just-rewritten-the-story-of-human-evolution-72092

An interlude XVIII

 No retreat No surrender

Thomas Reid's argument from common sense re:design in nature.

 

Be afraid,be very afraid?

 

Deuteronomy6:4 demystified.

 ECHAD (א ח ד)

I have seen Deut. 6:4 - “YHWH [Jehovah] our God, YHWH [Jehovah] one [Echad,  
  א ח ד  in Hebrew]” - rendered in several ways. (I prefer "Jehovah [is] our God, Jehovah alone.") Some trinitarians misinterpret this. They usually say something like this: “At Deut. 6:4 the word ‘one’ is echad [1] in Biblical Hebrew, which means ‘composite unity’ or ‘plural oneness’.”

The examples that they cite which are supposed to verify this understanding for echad are usually either Gen. 2:24 - “They [two persons] shall be one [echad] flesh,” or Gen. 1:5 - “the evening and the morning were the first (or one) [echad] day,” or Numbers 13:23 - “one [echad] cluster of grapes.” 

In addition to insisting that echad means “plural oneness” some of them also insist that, if God had intended the meaning of “absolute oneness” (singleness, only one individual) at Deut. 6:4, he would have used the word yachid (or yacheed). 

So let’s examine the intended meanings of echad and yachid and the scriptures cited above. 

First, it certainly wouldn’t be surprising to find that some recognized trinitarian authority on Biblical Hebrew had written somewhere that echad means “united or plural oneness.” but I haven’t found one yet! 

Here is what I have found written about echad by authorities on Biblical Hebrew: 

The only definition given for echad in the very trinitarian New American Standard Exhaustive Concordance is: “a prim[ary] card[inal] number; one”. We find no “plural oneness” there! 

The highly respected Biblical Hebrew authority, Gesenius, says that echad is “a numeral having the power of an adjective, one.” He then lists the various meanings of echad as: 

“(1) The same,” 

“(2) first,” 

“(3) some one,” 

“(4) it acts the part of an indefinite article,”[2]

“(5) one only of its kind,” 

“(6) when repeated [echad ... echad] ‘one ... another’,” 

“(7) [K echad] AS one man.” [The initial consonant of this word, “K,”  actually means “as” or “like,” so in this special form the meaning is close to that of a plural oneness. But this is not the form used at Deut. 6:4 !! ]

Gesenius also lists a plural form of the word (achadim) which means “joined in one, united.” This, too, is not the form used at Deut. 6:4 which context shows, instead, to have meaning #5 above. - See Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament, #259, Baker Book House. Surely, if God (Jehovah) were really a union of persons, a united one, this form which truly means “united one” would have been used to describe “Him” repeatedly in the Holy Scriptures. But it and all other words with similar meanings were never used for God (or Jehovah)! 

By using a good Bible Concordance (such as Strong’s or Young’s) we can find all the uses of echad in the Bible. Unfortunately (due to space limitations), Young’s and Strong’s both list the rare plural form (achadim in Hebrew letters) and the “AS one” (Kechad) form along with the common singular form (echad) without distinguishing among them. 

Nevertheless, since both the plural form achadim and the kechad form are used quite rarely (see Ezek. 37:17 and 2 Chronicles 5:13 for examples), we can see that the overwhelming majority of the uses of echad listed in these concordances (over 500) obviously have the meaning of singleness just as we normally use the word “one” today. 

If you should find a scripture listed as using echad in your concordance that definitely has the meaning “plural oneness” or “together,” or “as one,” you should check it out in an interlinear Hebrew-English Bible. If the word in question is really the echad form of the word (as at Deut. 6:4), then it will end with the Hebrew letter “d” (similar to '7') in the Hebrew portion of your interlinear. If, however, it is really the plural form of the word (achadim), then it will end in the Hebrew letter “m” (similar to 'D'). And if the word is really Kechad (“AS one”), it will begin with the Hebrew letter “k” (similar to a backward 'C'). Remember, though, that Hebrew reads from right to left (so the LAST letter of a Hebrew word is really the letter at the extreme LEFT.) 

Using your concordance along with an interlinear Hebrew-English Bible in this manner, I don’t believe you will ever find echad (as used at Deut. 6:4) literally meaning “plural oneness”! 

Further emphasizing the impropriety of this “plural oneness” interpretation of echad are the many trinitarian renderings of Deut. 6:4. In the dozens of different trinitarian Bible translations that I have examined none of them have rendered Deut. 6:4 (or Mark 12:29 in the Greek NT) in such a way as to show anything even faintly resembling a “plural oneness”!! 

Even the highly trinitarian The Living Bible, which, being a paraphrase Bible, is able to (and frequently does) take great liberties with the literal Greek and Hebrew meanings in order to make better trinitarian interpretations, renders Deut. 6:4 as “Jehovah is our God, Jehovah alone.” Notice that there’s not even a hint of a “plural oneness” Jehovah! 

The equally trinitarian (and nearly as “freely” translated as The Living Bible) Good News Bible (GNB) renders it: “The LORD - and the LORD alone - is our God.” - Compare the equally “free-handed” (and trinitarian) The Amplified Bible. 

And even among the more literal trinitarian translations of Deut 6:4 we find:

“The LORD is our God, the LORD alone.” - New Revised Standard Version.


“The LORD is our God, the LORD alone!” - New American Bible.

“The LORD is our God, the LORD alone.” - The Holy Bible in the Language of Today, Beck (Lutheran).

“Yahweh our God is the one, the only Yahweh.” - New Jerusalem Bible.

“Yahweh is our God, - Yahweh alone.” - The Emphasized Bible, Rotherham.

“The LORD is our God, the LORD alone.” - An American Translation (Smith-Goodspeed).

“The Eternal, the Eternal alone, is our God.” - A New Transation, Moffatt .

The trinitarian ASV (also the RSV) gives 4 different possible renderings of Deut. 6:4. One of them is identical with The Living Bible, and none of them includes an understanding of a “plural oneness” God! 

The paraphrased The Living Bible also renders Mark 12:29 (where Jesus quotes Deut. 6:4 and an excellent spot for him to reveal a “trinity” God --- or even just a “plural oneness” God) as: “The Lord our God is the one and only God.” Notice the further explanation of the intended meaning of this scripture at Mark 12:32, 34. “’... you have spoken a true word in saying that there is only one God and no other...’ Realizing this man’s understanding, Jesus said to him, ‘You are not far from the Kingdom of God.’” 

Why doesn’t this highly interpretive trinitarian paraphrase Bible (or any other Bible for that matter) bring out a “plural oneness” meaning at these scriptures (Deut. 6:4; Mark 12:29) if that can be a proper interpretation for echad? 

Surely, if the trinitarian scholars who made this Bible had thought there was even the slightest justification for an echad = “plural oneness” interpretation, they would have rendered it that way: “Jehovah is a composite unity;” or “Jehovah is the United One;” or “Jehovah is a plural oneness;” etc. 

Instead they have clearly shown that God (who inspired it), Moses (who wrote it under inspiration), and even Jesus himself (who taught that it was part of the most important commandment of all - Mark 12:28-29, LB; GNB; etc.) intended this scripture to show God as a single person only! 

Similarly, the three annotated trinitarian study Bibles I own would certainly explain any intended “multiple-oneness” meaning for echad at Deut. 6:4 (if there were any possibility of such an interpretation). But the extremely trinitarian New American Bible, St. Joseph ed., gives no hint of such an understanding of echad in its footnote for Deut. 6:4 (or anywhere else). And the trinitarian The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 1977 ed., likewise gives no hint of such an understanding in its footnote for Deut. 6:4 (or anywhere else). And that trinitarian favorite: The NIV Study Bible, 1985, also gives no hint of such a meaning for echad in its footnote for Deut. 6:4 (or anywhere else). The only possible reason for all these trinitarian study Bibles ignoring this “proof” is that it simply is not true! 

The examples given by some trinitarians to show a “plural oneness” meaning for echad don’t stand up either. The Gen. 2:24 example of a man and wife becoming “one (echad) flesh” certainly does not mean one literal body of flesh is composed of two people. 

A man and wife becoming “one flesh” also doesn’t mean that two different persons suddenly become equal or identical. They are still two distinct individuals (one is lord and head over the other according to the Bible) and do not share nervous, circulatory, skeletal, etc. systems. They both did not have to (and, in fact, did not) come into existence at the same time, nor do they both have the same minds, personalities, nor even equal authority! 

So, then, how did the Bible writers understand that the two became “one”? It should be enough to show that being “one” with someone else merely shows how two (or more) people are “united in purpose” as though they were one person in that respect only (purpose). - See the ONE study.

Notice how the following scripture uses the very same “one flesh” reference:
Ephesians 5:31 "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." 32 This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. - NKJV.
This could be understood as in the “one in purpose” interpretation above, and/or it could be understood in the “close relationship” understanding below. But it clearly is speaking of Jesus and his followers being “one flesh.” 
Another way a man and wife can be considered “one flesh” has to do with what the word “flesh” (basar) meant in ancient Biblical Hebrew. Any good concordance will show you that “flesh” (basar) in Bible usage often means a close relative. Gen. 37:27 is an example of this: “for he is our brother and our flesh.” 

And the equivalent NT Greek word for “flesh” (sarx) could be used in the same manner. At Ro 11:14, “my flesh (sarx)” - KJV is also rendered: “my fellow Jews” - RSV; “my own race” - MLB, TEV, GNB, NEB; “my own people” - NIV; “my fellow countrymen” - NASB. 

The King James Version even translates this OT Hebrew word (basar) as “KIN” at Lev. 18:6 and 25:49. The New English Bible translates it “blood-relation.” With this common understanding for “flesh” it is clear that the expression “one flesh” at Gen. 2:24 can simply mean that the two married people are now to be considered as closely related as “blood-relatives.” In other words, their closest “flesh” (relatives) used to be their parents. Now they are to consider their new relationship to one another as being even stronger than that with their parents: “therefore shall a man leave his mother and father” - Gen. 2:24. 

To argue that a man and woman somehow, in some mysterious supernatural way, literally become one flesh, is simply not what was intended in the original language. 

It is no more mysterious than my saying that my wife Karen and I (and our children, Randy and Robin) have become a single (or “one”) family (“relationship,” “kin”). I certainly don’t mean to imply some “mysterious” plurality by the word “single” even though there happen to be two (or four) members in that one family (relationship, “flesh”). Or, a person could have dozens of members in his one, single family (“flesh”). Or, a person might be the sole surviving member (“absolute mathematical oneness”) of his one family - it’s still only one family and the singularity or plurality of its composition has nothing whatsoever to do with its being one single family! 

It’s no different from talking about two families, three families, etc. We are talking about a definite mathematical number of families, not the numerical composition within those families. The “one flesh” example works exactly that same way. 

A few “echad = multiple oneness” trinitarians even claim that a man and woman becoming “one flesh” means “they are one in nature ... one in human nature as the Father and Son are one in the God-nature.” 

This kind of reasoning would mean that the man (or the woman) before marriage (before they “became one flesh”) was not by himself already equally “one” in human nature with the rest of mankind! Then what kind of nature did this person possess before he married? 

Each person (whether they ever marry and become “one flesh” or not) obviously already possesses human nature equally with any other human being. But when they marry, they are supposed to become one in purpose, goals, etc., the closest of relatives, not suddenly become human beings and thereby gain human nature! 

Strangely, one recent anti-Watchtower letter sent by a relative to a local Witness used the above example for “one” in marriage being “one” in nature and then said: 

“‘the marriage relationship portrays the mystical oneness and union of Jesus, the Bridegroom with His Bride, His Church’ just as it portrays that the man and his wife ‘are ... one in nature ... as the Father and Son are one in the God-nature.’” 

Yes, this writer was actually saying, then, that just as the Father and Son are one, so the man and wife are one, and so Jesus and his Church (all his true followers) are one! In other words, in trinitarian terms, Jesus and his Father are equally God; and Jesus (God in every sense, they would say) and his Church (also equal in nature with Jesus) must then be equally God also!! 

Clearly it means, instead, that Jesus, the bridegroom, and his bride, his church (of “brothers”) are one in purpose only (as are God and his Son). - 

“That they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they may also be in us ... that they may be one even as we are one.” - John 17:21, 22, ASV. 

Even if the Hebrew echad were used here at John 17:22 for “one” (as the famous Lutheran trinitarian scholar, Franz Delitzsch translated it in his Hebrew New Testament), it is obvious that it does not mean some mysterious plural oneness wherein the individuals are all equally the Father, or equally the Son, and certainly not all equally God! (In any case, John would have used the masculine form of “one” in the NT Greek, heis, at John 17:22 if he had intended any of the above “trinitarian” meanings. Instead, he used the neuter form, hen, in NT Greek which signifies a union of purpose - see the ONE study). 

Delitzsch also translates the NT Greek heis at 1 Cor. 9:24 (“only one” - NIV, NEB, TEV, GNB, RSV; “only one person” - The Living Bible) as echad ! There is certainly no “plural oneness” intended here! - Hebrew New Testament, Delitzsch, The Trinitarian Bible Society, 1981. 

If a person will not acknowledge the obvious figurative meaning of “one” as “united in purpose,” then he is saying that as man and wife become absolutely equal in nature by marriage (and as Jesus and the Father are “absolutely equal in nature” and are, therefore, equally God) so do Jesus and his Church become “one” or “equal in nature” and, therefore, the Church (Jesus’ “brothers”) is equally God! 

Such reasoning is obviously ludicrous and illustrates what was really figuratively intended by “one” in marriage and other relationships: they are as though they were literally “one” in only one respect: unity of purpose! 

As the bride is to become “one” in purpose with her husband (although he is designated to be head over his wife - 1 Cor. 11:3; Eph. 5:23), so, too, those chosen ones are to become “one” in purpose with Jesus (although he is to be their head - Eph. 5:23; 1 Cor. 11:3 - so he does not conform to their will and purpose, nor are they equal to him, but they willingly conform to his purpose so that they may be “one”), and so, in like manner, Jesus has become “one” in purpose with his Father (the only true God - John 17:3) who is his head. The Father does not conform to the will and purpose of Jesus, nor is Jesus in any way equal to the Father, but Jesus willingly and perfectly conforms to his Father’s purpose and will! - “The head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman (wife) is the man; and the head of Christ is God [not ‘Christ is equal to God’].” - 1 Cor. 11:3, ASV. 

So, why couldn’t the absolute mathematical oneness of echad at Deut. 6:4 be describing a figurative unity of purpose just as the Greek “one” (hen) does at John 17:21, 22? 

That is, if Jesus can describe certain chosen men, and his Father (God alone), and himself figuratively as all being “one” (in purpose only), why couldn’t God be telling us at Deuteronomy 6:4 that he is more than one person, all of whom are united in purpose? One reason is that the word used for “one” in this sense is neuter (hen). But the word used for “one” at Deut. 6:4 in the ancient Greek Septuagint (and at Mk 12:29 in the New Testament) is the masculine heis! - cf. Mk 2:7. 

We also know that such an interpretation is ridiculous because of the clear context of Deut. 6 (and the clear statements of the rest of the Bible). Nowhere in Old or New Testament is God said to be more than one person. No one would have possibly understood Deut. 6:4 as meaning “Jehovah is a ‘many persons united in one purpose’ God” at that time or for thousands of years thereafter (certainly not until hundreds of years after Jesus’ death - see the HIST study, parts 2-5). 

The context of Deut. 6:4 and 6:13-15 shows that God is not speaking of all persons who could be considered to be “united in purpose” with the Father (this would have included the Father and the Word, of course, but it would also have included the millions of faithful angels, and today it would include a large number of faithful Christians!). Remember that when “one” is used figuratively for “united in purpose” it is always describing a relationship between certain individuals or groups who are identified in context. There is no such identification (nor even the slightest suggestion of such an identification) found in Deut. 6. 

We cannot believe that Deut. 6:4 is saying that all those who are “united in purpose” with Jehovah are Jehovah! But that is the only figurative use we could possibly have for echad at Deut. 6:4. Otherwise we are left with the literal meaning (mathematical oneness, a single individual) of echad (which is obviously intended in the vast majority of uses of echad and which is obviously intended at Deut. 6:4, 13-15 and further explained at Mark 12:29, 32.) 

Just as no Bible translation (including all the many trinitarian translations I have examined) renders Deut. 6:4 with any kind of suggestion that “Jehovah is a multiple unity,” no translation suggests it should be rendered with the understanding that “Jehovah is united in purpose.” 

It is also clear from other Bible statements that God is a single person: the Father in heaven. (Jehovah is never described as “the Son,” “the Messiah,” “the Holy Spirit,” or any other individual but the Father - Deut. 32:6; Is. 63:16; 64:8; Jer. 3:4; 3:19 - and conversely, no heavenly person except Jehovah is ever called the Father! - Matt. 23:9.) 

Notice how Jesus used the word monos (“only,” “alone”) to describe God (Jehovah, the Father) at John 17:1, 3. “Father ... they should know thee the only [monos] True God.” Or, “Father ... who alone art truly God” - NEB.

But let’s look at another example where echad is supposed to literally mean “plural oneness.” 

Almost anything we can name is composed of different elements or parts. If I should say, “Randy was the first (another way echad may be rendered into English) runner to cross the finish line,” I am not referring to the fact that he has two legs (or flesh, blood, and bones) which together help compose the whole of that one (or “first”) individual. I am saying (as everyone well knows) that, at the time he crossed the finish line, Randy was the only one who had done so (whether he had one or two legs, etc.). In the same sense of absolute mathematical order I would say that the very next runner (whether it should happen to be a woman, horse, octopus, snail, etc.) is the second individual runner to cross the finish line regardless of how many legs, arms, etc. that racer has. So, Robin, the second runner to cross the finish line is no more a “plural twoness” than Randy, the first one, is a “plural oneness”! 

Therefore, “the evening and the morning were the first [echad] day [‘one day’ - RSV]” - Gen. 1:5, KJV - means exactly what it says, just as “the evening and the morning were the second [sheni] day” - Gen. 1:8 - means exactly what it says and so on through six days! 

“The first [echad] day” does not in any sense refer to the individual parts which compose that day (or a “plural oneness”) any more than “the sixth day” refers to a “plural sixness” making up that single day! They are absolute mathematical numbers and do not refer to internal composition but, instead, to single, individual things. 

And so it is with the example of “one [echad] cluster of grapes” at Numbers 13:23. Here again “one” [echad] obviously means only one (singleness, absolute mathematical oneness) for whatever word it is applied to. 

It is the word “cluster” in this scripture which means “one thing composed of many individual items,” but there is only one single (absolute mathematical oneness) “cluster”! 

This is no different from one (echad) single tribe (whether composed of one single, last person or millions of persons) at Judges 21:3, 6 and two tribes (whether each is composed of one person or millions) at Joshua 21:16. Echad literally means “single,” “only” as can plainly be seen at Exodus 12:46, “one house;” Ex. 33:5, “one moment;” Numbers 7:21, “one bullock, one ram, [etc.].” 



Yachid

A few trinitarians insist that not only does echad mean “plural oneness,” but that, if singleness were intended by the Bible writer, the Hebrew word yachid would have been used at Deut. 6:4. 

Here is how it was presented to me by one trinitarian: 

“The word for ‘one’ in this great declaration [Deut. 6:4] is not Yachid which is an absolute oneness but rather echad which means ‘united one.’ Had the Holy Spirit desired to state absolute mathematical oneness in this all-important declaration, He could have easily used the word yachid, couldn’t He?” 

We have already seen the absolute falsity of the “echad-means-’plural-oneness’” idea. But what about yachid? Did the Bible writers really use it whenever they meant “absolute mathematical oneness”? We have already seen that they really used echad for “absolute mathematical oneness,” and a good concordance will show they did this consistently—many hundreds of times! 

Yachid, on the other hand, is only used about 12 times in the entire Bible and then only in a narrow, specific sense. 

The Old Testament language authority, Gesenius, tells us that yachid is used in three very specialized ways: (1) “only” but primarily in the sense of “only begotten”! - Gen. 22:2, 12, 16; Jer. 6:26; and Zech. 12:10. (2) “solitary” but with the connotation of “forsaken” or “wretched” ! - Ps. 25:16; 68:6. (3) As yachidah (feminine form) meaning “only one” as something most dear and used “poet[ically] for ‘life’ - Ps. 22:20; 35:17.” - p. 345 b. 

We find yachid is never used to describe God anywhere in the entire Bible! But it is used to describe Isaac in his prefigured representation of the Messiah: Gen. 22:2, 12, 16. It is also used at Judges 11:34 for an only-begotten child. The ancient Greek Septuagint translates yachid at Judges 11:34 as monogenes (“only-begotten”): the same NT Greek word repeatedly used to describe Christ (even in his pre-human heavenly existence - 1 John 4:9). Monogenes, however, like the Hebrew yachid, is never used to describe the only true God, Jehovah (who is the Father alone). 

So, if Jehovah were to describe himself as “forsaken” or “wretched,” or were speaking poetically about his “dear life,” or were describing himself as the “only-begotten son” (which he never does anywhere in the Bible!), then he might have used yachid.[3] 

But since he was describing his “mathematical oneness” at Deut. 6:4, he properly used echad! 

As we pointed out at the beginning, there are Hebrew words that mean “plural oneness,” but echad is not one of them. As another example, notice the clear meaning of echad as “absolute mathematical oneness” at Gen. 42:11 where the sons of Jacob say, “we are all one [echad] man’s sons.” They certainly weren’t saying “we are all sons of different men who together make up a ‘plural oneness’ man.”! Instead, the inspired Bible writer wrote that they were all sons of one [echad not yachid] single, solitary man. 

We see the same thing at Malachi 2:10 even though we find two different interpretations by trinitarian translators. 

Some translate it: 

“have we not all one [echad] father? Has not one [echad] God created us?” - RSV. 

The meaning of this rendering seems to be that everyone has a single person as his earthly father and, by comparison, we also all have a single [echad] person as our God and Creator in heaven. 

Other trinitarian scholars translate Malachi 2:10 as: 

“Have we not all the one Father? Has not the one God created us?” - NAB (1970 and 1991). 

“Is there not one Father of us all? Did not one God create us?” - NJB.

“Have we not all one Father? Did not one God create us?” - JB.

“Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us?” - NKJV.

“Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us?” - The Amplified Bible.

“Is there not one Father to us all? Has not one God created us?” - MKJV, Green.

“Don’t all of us have one Father? Hasn’t one God created us?” - In the Language of Today, Beck.

“Do we not all have one Father? Has not one God made us?” - NLV.

We clearly see in these trinitarian translations that the common Hebrew use of parallelisms was intended by the inspired Bible writers. That is, the first half of the verse is differently worded but parallel in meaning with the second half. Therefore, the first half refers to God just as the second half does, so the translator has capitalized “Father” to make such an interpretation unmistakeable. The meaning in this interpretation, then, is: 

“We all have one [echad] Father (the only person who is God),” and, in parallel meaning,

“We all have one [echad] Creator (a single person as God).” - Compare 1 Cor. 8:6; Eph. 4:6. 

No matter which interpretation you prefer, it is clear that the comparison with (or parallel with) a single individual father (whether we interpret it as the single male human parent or the single person, God the Father), who is called “one [echad] father/Father,” is a single individual who is called “one [echad] God”! The comparison (or parallel) would be senseless if echad meant one single person for “father/Father” (as it must) in its first half and “plural oneness” persons for “God” (as it clearly doesn’t) in its second half! 

The inspired Bible writers at Gen. 42:11, Malachi 2:10, and Deut. 6:4 could easily have used a word that really means “united one”[4] - but they didn’t! The inspired Bible writer at Deut. 6:4 could also have easily said (and definitely should have said if it were true) that “God is three persons who together make up the one God” or even just “the one God is three persons,” but he didn’t, and neither did any other Bible writer! He should also have used yachid repeatedly in the Bible for God if Jehovah is ever to be understood as being Jesus (“the only-begotten”), but no Bible writer describes Jehovah that way, ever! 

A footnote for Deut. 6:4 in the very trinitarian The New American Bible, St. Joseph ed., 1970, says: 

“this passage contains the basic principle of the whole Mosaic law, the keynote of the Book of Deuteronomy: since the Lord [Jehovah] alone is God, we must love him with an undivided heart. Christ cited these words as ‘the greatest and the first commandment,’ embracing in itself the whole law of God (Mt 22:37f and parallels [especially see Mark 12:28-34]).” 

As the ASV renders it in a footnote for Deut. 6:4 - “Jehovah is our God; Jehovah is one”. Yes, the great distinction between Israel and all the nations around them was that they worshiped only one [”absolute mathematical oneness”] person as God (as they always have, and as they still do today - see the ISRAEL study). 

The only honest interpretations of “this great declaration” of Deut. 6:4 are “Jehovah our God is only one [echad] person” or “Jehovah our God is only one God”! 

Judging by the literal meanings of both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Greek (NT and Septuagint OT) Scriptures Deut. 6:4 actually says: “Hear Israel, Jehovah the God of us, Jehovah is one” (Sept. Greek) and “Jehovah our God, Jehovah [is] one” (Hebrew - Interlinear Bible). But in any case echad clearly refers to a single, solitary [absolute mathematical oneness] being, not a “multiple oneness”! 

So even the very trinitarian literal translation, the New King James Version[5], (like the very trinitarian ETRV [6] paraphrase Bible) translates echad at Deut. 6:4 correctly as: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD [Jehovah] our God, the LORD [Jehovah] is one!” 

The meaning is clear. It is expressed perhaps even more clearly in the popular trinitarian paraphrase Bible, The Living Bible: “Jehovah is our God, Jehovah alone.”




NOTES

1. Or echod according to Dr. Walter Martin’s use of this preposterous “evidence” - p. 69, The Kingdom of the Cults, 1985 ed.



2. In English the words “a” and “an” are indefinite articles. For example, then, ‘one [echad] cow’ in Hebrew could mean ‘A cow’ in English - it certainly would not mean ‘a plural oneness cow’! In fact this whole “proof” is exactly like saying “a” is a multiple oneness indefinite article. And, of course, they would find a few (out of thousands of others) uses like “a committee,” “a month,” “a musical trio,” etc. and brilliantly conclude that “a” here has to be a multiple oneness, because “committee, or “trio,” etc. is composed of more than one person!



3. As for any use of yachid by a 12th or 13th century A.D. Rabbi (as a few trinitarians resort to in defense of “yachid” for God), what has this to do with what Scripture actually says? Maimonides (or Moses Ben Maimon) lived from 1135-1204 A.D. and was a well-known Jewish philosopher and commentator.



For what it’s worth, Maimonides also wrote: “Can there be a greater stumbling block than [Christianity}? …. [Trinitarian Chrisianity] caused the Jews to be slain by the sword, their remnants to be scattered and humbled, the Torah to be altered, and the majority of the world to err and serve a god other than the Lord.”- Mishnah Torah, “The Laws of Kings and Their Wars,” chapter 11.



And Steve Gross writes:



“Let me quote Evelyn Garfiel, author of Service of the Heart: A Guide to the Jewish Prayerbook (Jason Aronson, Inc., 1958, 1989). Here she is discussing the Yigdal prayer (pp 52-54):



“ ‘ …. It must be stated categorically that this ‘Confession of Faith’ [the ‘Thirteen Creeds’ of Maimonides] as it has sometimes been called, has no legal, doctrinal standing in Judaism; that it is not, in any case, the Jewish creed. It was written (in his Commentary to the Mishnah) by Maimonides when he was twenty-three years old, and he never referred to it again in all the rest of his writings.



“ ‘The need to formulate the Jewish religion in a clearly stated creed had apparently not been felt in the previous two millennia of its existence. It was only in the late Middle Ages, when Aristotelian philosophy dominated the whole intellectual world, that Maimonides was impelled to try to set down the basic axioms of Judaism as he understood them, and in the light of the philosophy current in his day. 


….


“ ‘During his lifetime and for many years afterward, Maimonides was bitterly opposed by many Rabbis. They felt that something extraneous to the genuine Jewish tradition was being injected into it by this precipitation of Aristotelian philosophy and by these strange formulations of belief... Crescas, in some ways the most subtle and brilliant of the Jewish philosophers, Nachmanides (the Ramban), Abarbanel, and others all registered strong opposition to Maimonides Creeds. ….



“ ‘The Shulhan Arukh ... does not even mention the Thirteen Creeds. Someone - perhaps a printer, but no one knows exactly who - included the Creeds in an edition of the Prayer Book sometime after 1400....’ ” [emphasis added - RDB]




4. Among the Hebrew words that can mean “united oneness,” such as achadim and Kechad, are the various forms of yachad. The New American Standard Exhaustive Concordance, 1981, p. 1529, tells us that #3161 yachad means “to be united” and #3162 yachad means “unitedness”. 

Nelson’s Expository Dictionary of the Old Testament, 1980, pp. 430, 431, also describes the various forms of yachad: “yachad appears about 46 times and in all periods of Biblical Hebrew. Used as an adverb, the word emphasizes a plurality in unity.” Used as a verb “yachad means ‘to be united, meet.’” And, although the noun yachad occurs only once, it is still used “to mean ‘unitedness.’” 

You will not find yachad in any of its many forms that mean “united” or “plurality in unity” ever used to describe God!! 

However, we do find other Hebrew words that, like echad, clearly mean “single,” “only,” “alone,” etc. and these words are used to describe the one person who alone is the Most High God. 

For example, The New American Standard Exhaustive Concordance, p. 1496, tells us that #905 bad (“bod”) means “separation, apart, alone.” 

Also Nelson’s Expository Dictionary of the Old Testament, pp. 280, 281, states, “in most of its appearances (152 times) this word [bad] is preceded by the preposition le. This use means ‘alone’ (89 times): ‘And the Lord God said. It is not good that the man [Adam] should be alone [bad] ....’” - Gen. 2:18. 

Yes, Adam was the only person of humankind in existence, and, therefore, he was described by God as being alone in that special sense (bad in Hebrew). (There were myriads of spirit persons, the angels. There was God Himself. There were innumerable other creatures. And yet, Adam, as the only one of mankind, was alone [bad]!) Then, as soon as God created another person of his own kind for Adam, he was no longer alone (bad)! 

This use of bad (“alone”) is frequently used to describe the person who is God. For example, 1 Sam. 7:3, “direct your hearts unto Jehovah [a personal name] and serve him [masculine singular] only [bad].” - ASV. 

And 2 Kings 19:15, “O Jehovah, the God of Israel, that sittest above the cherubim, thou [second person singular] art the God, even thou alone [bad].” - ASV. 

And Psalm 83:16, 18, “Fill their faces with confusion, that they may seek thy name, O Jehovah. .... That they may know that thou [singular] alone [bad], whose name is Jehovah [singular personal name], art the Most High over all the earth.” - ASV. - (Also see Neh. 9:5, 6; Ps. 86:10; Is. 37:16.) 

5. With a “symbol for the Trinity” on the title page which symbolizes “that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are ... indivisibly One God.” Published and copyrighted by Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1982.


6. “Listen, people of Israel! The Lord [Jehovah] is our God. The Lord [Jehovah] is one!” - Holy Bible - Easy-to-Read Version, World Bible Translation Center, Fort Worth Texas, 1992.  


Posted by Elijah Daniels  at 9:28 PM