I was wondering how I could find in the Old Testament all the references that refer to monotheism and its relation to all nations, like Isaiah 45:6
Any idea how Logos 5 can help me without creating multiple searches? Thanks
Peace, Patrick! *smile* Just for "the fun of it," I typed monotheism into "search." I also did a topics search of monotheism. And got a wonderful set of possible resources. What have you tried?
I ask because you probably don't have some of the resources you'd like to have; however, if you have a couple of good Bible Dictionaries, you are well on your way indeed. Get back to us and we'll be glad to work with you .... Your project looks challenging and rewarding....
For example, I have this book that I would think most Logos Software Users wouldn't have unless they were in the right pre-pub program a couple years ago. (It is prohibitively expensive all by itself!)
I was wondering how I could find in the Old Testament all the references that refer to monotheism and its relation to all nations, like Isaiah 45:6 Any idea how Logos 5 can help me without creating multiple searches? Thanks
I would expect the answer is no, as in you won't get it done with just one search. However, have you looked at something like Treasury of Scripture Knowledge or whatever it's called? It is supposed to be good for stuff like that. Look up the Sh'ma` and go through those verses. Some Bibles have decent cross references; if your preferred Bible does, you can expand off the TSK info. Also consider a Bible dictionary like Anchor or whatever else you may have--search "one" or "monotheism".
No Other Gods: Emergent Monotheism in Israel by Robert Karl Gnuse Sheffield Academic Press 1997
I'm not sure how helpful that resource would be anyway, Milford. The use of "emergent" in reference to monotheism is highly suspect in my view...it gives me the same heebie jeebies that the term "emergent church" does, but for somewhat different reasons. It certainly doesn't speak to "eternal" truths.
As if Israel had to figure it all out on their own...
[^o)]
Thanks for the replies.
I used the Dictionary of Biblical Themes. That gave me quite a bit of helpful references. But I realize to get an exhaustive list is rather difficult with one search due to the fact that there is a large variety of words.
Yes! I agree. I tried it also! If you ever get an exhaustive list and share it with us, I for one would be quite pleased! *smile*
Yes, I can't see it possible through searching. For this sort of thing, we need a variety of methods, saving the results in a Passage List. I would normally do something like this:
I would then do exactly the same thing, but with the topic guide on nations. That gave me a much larger list of 658 passages. Now, you can merge these two lists together, which should give you some indication of where these two themes overlap. The answer is not very much, and that process didn't find me any additional passages - but I mention it because often it is a helpful technique.
However, all is not lost, as we still have our monotheism passage list. You could then manually look through the list yourself, or you could do a Bible search using just the passage list, and search for something like world, nations, east, west, gentiles, nations (though I confess I wouldn't have thought to include east/west if it wasn't for your example). Skimming through the results gives three more possibilities (more, depending on your criteria):
Armed with those four verses (and any others), I would finally look those verses up in the New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (or run a Passage Guide on each one and look at the Cross References section). That gives four additional possibilities:
Do the same for these new verses, and that adds:
I'd then do the same for these new verses, and so on, until I felt I had everything I needed.
Be careful...some of the verses Mark listed (Isa. 54:5, Isa. 55:5) have the phrase "the Holy One". The word for this in Hebrew is qaadhohsh which simply means "holy". The word is a noun, so it refers to a person, place, or thing. The word is used for the "holy place" when used in context of the temple or tabernacle. When words normally used as adjectives in English are used as nouns in Hebrew, such as "righteous", "wicked", or "holy", it is an English convention to add "one" to establish that a person is being referred to in the context, thus "righteous one", "wicked one", or "holy one". This can refer to a specific individual or may be a generic reference to anyone to whom the word applies. The inclusion of "one" in the English sentence is an English convention and not a product of the Hebrew. A translator could just as aptly translate it as "holy person" or "holy individual" or the like.
The point is, "One" in these verses isn't necessarily evidence of monotheistic doctrine; the concept of "one" isn't actually present in the Hebrew.
Be careful...some of the verses Mark listed (Isa. 54:5, Isa. 55:5) have the phrase "the Holy One".
I left those two verses in because the phrase "the God of the whole earth" seemed highly relevant.
Naming you as the source of the earlier material wasn't intended to be "personal", just referential. I agree the phrase you single-out is indeed "highly relevant" to the "...and its relation to all nations" criterion of the OP. Regarding monotheism (my focus), the verses are circumstantial at best.
