“And on Mount Sinai: ‘I am your God who has led you out of the house of bondage’ (Exod. 20:2). The leading out of Egypt—and it alone—say the Rabbis, gives God the right to say ‘I’ and to lay upon humanity as ‘thou’ the yoke of the reign of heaven.”

“This I-thou experience of immediate relationship is so powerful, singular, and unique that it never allows the presentation of a plurality of principles or of a multiple personality of God to arise. In order to protect the Oneness of God from every multiplication, watering down, or amalgamation with the rites of the surrounding world, the people of Israel chose for itself that verse of the Bible to be its credo which to this very day not only belongs to the daily liturgy of the synagogue but also is impressed as the first sentence of instruction upon the five-year-old schoolchild.”

“This is the confession which Jesus acknowledged as the ‘most important of all the commandments’ and which is spoken by every child of Israel as a final word in the hour of death: ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is One’ (Deut. 6:4).”

(Pinchas Lapide & Jurgen Moltman, Jewish Monotheism and Christian Trinitarian Doctrine. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, translated by Leonard Swidler, 1981, 27)

“The average Jew today considers the Trinity at best a kind of heavenly triumvirate, and at worst a tritheism which is reminiscent of a relapse into paganism, and nevertheless in both cases much too like polytheism to still earn the name of monotheism.”

(Pinchas Lapide & Jurgen Moltman, Jewish Monotheism and Christian Trinitarian Doctrine. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, translated by Leonard Swidler, 1981, 32-33)

“In the Old Testament God reveals Himself. This is what makes the Old Testament Scriptures different from any other collection of sacred books dating from pre-Christian times. All the other sacred books of antiquity are polytheistic. They are filled from beginning to end with tales of many gods. Only the Old Testament Scriptures are monotheistic. Only the Old Testament Scriptures are filled throughout with God’s revelation of Himself. In no other ancient book has God made Himself known as the one true God, the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of the heavens and the earth and all things that are therein.”

“The very first verse of the Bible presents us with this monotheistic conception of God. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth (Gen. 1:1). Only the LORD is God. The gods of the heathen are mere fictions. For all the gods of the nations are idols: but the LORD made the heavens (Psalm 96:5). God is omnipresent. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the LORD (Jer. 23:24). God is unchangeable. I am the LORD, I change not (Mal. 3:6). God governs all things according to His eternal plan. I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure (Isa. 46:9-10). These are but a few of the many passages of the Old Testament Scriptures in which the LORD reveals Himself as the only God.”

(Edward F. Hills, Believing Bible Study, Des Moines, Iowa: The Christian Research Press, 1977, 19).

What is Monotheism?

”Monotheism is the ancient doctrine that God is One, not many. It is succinctly summarized by the verse: ’Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is ONE LORD.’ (Duet. 6:4) This is the extreme opposite of a Plurality of Beings whether called Tritheism or even Tritheism in its modified form termed Trinity. It is this fundamental belief that is the root and branch of Jewish rejection of the Trinitarianism and Tritheism of the so-called Christian world, for they feel that their Messiah will be the One God of the Old Testament coming in the form of man.”

(Rev. Kennth V. Reeves, The Godhead, Granite City, Illinois, 1971, 9; Fifth Edition)