is it written in the bible (i have heard that it is written but i don’t know where)
that “there is only one people on earth” i have tried to find in the bible but i have not found
if it is written i have a second quesion: does the “one” is a composite unity “ehad” in hebrews ?
thank you for your help

Eh, sorry, it does sound a bit familiar, but I haven’t been able to find it either.

Have we all not one father? Is there not one God over all? He is over all and through all and in all.

Not that I disagree in principle, RHM, but your first quote there is from Malachi 2, where the context involves Jews dealing treacherously with one another.

I was pretty sure the verse Erwan is looking for comes from Paul, though, and your attempt reminded me of where I ought to look that I hadn’t yet:

NASB Acts 17:26, “and He made from one [some texts read “one blood”] every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth… (verse 27) that they should seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; (28) for in Him we live and move and are, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His offspring.’ [alternately translated “You see, we are also a family of the One.”] Being then the offspring [or family] of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold etc.”

yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we live, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we live.

The Father of All things

I don’t know about your other question, but there is no “composite unity” intrinsic to any use of the word “echad” in the Hebrew scriptures. “Echad” is as singular as our English equivalent: “one”.

thank you all for your help
i don’t find neither in malachie 2 neither in the passage of acts that it is written that there is “one people”

To be more precise, there are several terms for “one” in Hebrew and except for YaCHiD (if I recall correctly) all of them, including AeCHaD, can be (and in the case of AeCHaD frequently is) used to express a meaning of composite unity. But WAAB is correct that none of them (so far as I know) including AeCHaD has an intrinsic meaning of composite unity.

Erwan’s question I suppose would be whether a one-family statement in the OT (which I still haven’t found strictly speaking, although the narrative thrust of the OT definitely implies this with everyone descended from Adam) uses YaCHiD (a sheer singularity) instead of a term like AeCHaD that could refer to a composite unity.

But I’m not sure what difference it would make, since either term would simply have different aspects of the one-family in view: one family instead of multiple families; or one family of multiple persons instead of a family of only one person. And AeCHaD instead of YaCHiD could still be used for the former; while YaCHiD instead of AeCHaD could (I suppose) still be used in reference to something that is in fact a composite unity although focusing on the numerical singularity of it (emphatically ONE family.)

Acts does say we are all the family (literally the offspring or descendants) of God, even though it doesn’t use the specific term “one family”.

Humanity is called “one people” during the incident of the Tower of Babel, but it’s hard to square that historically, and someone could argue that with the division of languages we stopped being one people.

However, as I noted the narrative theme of the OT, affirmed in the NT, is that we are all the descended family of the first human couple (which I tend to agree with despite historical difficulties in squaring the OT timeframes involved), the man of whom himself is called “son of God” in Luke’s geneology. Luke by evidence elsewhere in the geneology isn’t always talking about physical descent but he is always talking about being members of a family at least in a social sense. (Thus Jesus is considered Joseph’s son without being begotten by Joseph, and Joseph is probably being reckoned as Eli’s son by marriage through Mary.)

Jason, I may be misunderstanding you here (as you may be actually saying this already), but both yachid or echad still wouldn’t lend themselves to a composite unity in any meaningful sense, is that right? It is the noun that wholly determines “composite unity”. Thus in the term “one family” (both “family echad” and “family yachid” — excuse the clumsy mash-up), it is family that determines whether the term is a composite unity. It really has nothing to do with the use of echad or yachid. Likewise in the Schema, it must solely be “Jehovah/Yahweh” that determines whether Yahweh is a composite unity, not the word echad. One can squeeze a literal plurality out of God/Elohim if one’s inclined, but in my humble reading the echad (one-ness) describes Yahweh, not his title, Elohim; is that right? More than happy to be corrected on this though.

YaCHiD stresses the singularity more than the other terms, but I’m unsure if that’s because of something intrinsic to its meaning or if it just happened to be used that way by habit and so the stress came to be considered part of the meaning for future reference. It could still be paired with a noun of composite unity but it would stress the unique singularity of the composite unity (so to speak).

But yes, the noun, and the context (narrative, conceptual, thematic, etc.) is what determines composite unity, not the numerical adjective. The most that can be argued regarding AeCHaD on theological topics is that the term doesn’t exclude composite unity. This is of use when anti-trinitarian theologians go too far in the other direction (as I’ve seen attempted myself several times) to try to claim that the term only means one, as though it held an intrinsic meaning excluding composite unity (which even YaCHiD doesn’t hold although it would stress singularity). But the apologetic use is very limited and shouldn’t be pushed beyond a defense against an extreme on the other side.

I would say it’s a bunch of contexts involving YHWH and Elohim that determine whether YHWH is a composite unity, which AeCHaD easily allows for (more easily than YaCHiD would). AeCHaD can’t count against it. But dosen’t really count in favor of it either.

If I had to make a grammatic argument merely from the Shema I would observe that Elohim is a plural term (and that YHWH is our Elohim); and if I added a little more context I would observe that YHWH is defined by (report of) God’s declaration to involve two uses of “I AM”. But I acknowledge it would be irresponsible to make an argument from that limited scope, especially since in Greek the plurals are not typically retained. It’s an interesting and suggestive detail, but nothing stronger in itself.

Thanks Jason. Interesting stuff.

Do you know if the greek word used for “one” in " that they would be one as we are one", is the word used in the LXX for the Shema?

Do you mean at John 17:21? “…that they may all be one, even as You, Father, (are) in Me, and I in You, that they also may be in Us…” (A large number of very respectable text families are divided as to whether that should read “in Us” or “one in Us”, but the first “one” is textually stable.)

The term for “one” there is the same as in Jesus’ Shema statement at Mark 12:29 (don’t know about the Aramaic in the peshitto/a texts). It’s {hen} (the word we directly derive English “one” from) at John 17, the nominative singular neuter form (connected to plural masculine subject and verb “they may be”), and {heis} at Mark 12, the nominative singular masculine form (connected to “Lord” singular masculine).

By comparison at John 10:30, “I and the Father are one”, the term is {hen}, nominative singular neutral.

I honestly don’t know if there’s such a thing as a plural form for {hen}, but a quick comparison indicates that where multiple persons are clearly in view the neutral version is used. (Worth noting that Jesus’ religious opponents immediately hop on His statement at 10:30 as making Himself out to be God, though.) It would be reasonable to infer that {heis}, being masculine, stresses the ontological singular and categorical supremacy of God in the Shema, and someone replying in contravention to a challenge about multiple Persons in the singular Unity would reasonably choose to use {heis}–but that isn’t the context of Jesus’ usage of the Shema. On the other hand, someone trying to explicitly teach a multiplicity of Persons might use {hen}, although without clear followup that would only look oddly out of grammar. Whatever else Jesus is doing there, He definitely isn’t trying to explicitly teach a multiplicity of Persons in the singular ontological supremacy of the One God, so a translation (of the presumed original Aramaic) to Greek {heis} makes sense in any case.

(Jesus does follow this up in GosMark with the Riddle of Psalm 110, which is a whole other verrrrrry large discussion. But whatever the riddle implies here and elsewhere in the NT, I could never honestly say it involves explicitly teaching multiple Persons in the Unity–definitely not here or in Synoptic parallels. Which, for whatever reason, do not include the Shema declaration per se.)

As another example, when Paul (at 1 Cor 8:4-6) explicitly includes Jesus Christ in a combination of Shema declaration (there is no God but one) and the typical Jewish declaration of God’s one and only unique creational supremacy (all things are from Him and by Him and through Him and for Him and into Him etc.) in direct contrast to pagan worship of lesser gods and lords, he uses {heis} nominative masculine singular to match up “one God the Father” and “one Lord Jesus Christ” as well as at the abbreviated Shema “no God but {heis}”. So the signals are very peculiarly mixed there: the use of {heis} indicates distinction of persons and of the singularity of God as God being stressed, but that ought to include (per the Shema) only one YHWH/kurios and yet Jesus is included as the “one Lord” in a mix of the very standard claims made only for the one God not for any lesser lord or god. Which Paul explicitly disavows worship of: there are indeed many so-called lords and gods whether in heaven or on earth, but for us there is only one God and one Lord from Whom and by Whom are all things and for Whom and through Whom we exist. If Jesus Christ wasn’t explicitly included as the one Lord by Whom and through Whom, no one would ever even slightly doubt Paul was heavily affirming supernaturalistic monotheism over-against paganism.

So it isn’t a straightforward grammatic issue. Jesus (or John Mark in translating Him, or in translating Peter’s recollections of Him) and Paul could have said “God” and “Lord” is {hen}, which would suggest multiplicity of persons in union, but would have looked grammatically sloppy just as (or even more) easily. Or Paul could have said that the Father is {hen} God and Jesus is {hen} Lord, but that might suggest they weren’t persons (or that each of them was multiple persons somehow)! But then {heis} looks to stress the singular person of God. But then Paul immediately includes Jesus Christ in a typical monotheism vs. paganism affirmation. (And Jesus follows up almost immediately with the Riddle of Psalm 110. And at John 10 with a reference to the one and only YHWH Elohim standing up in the midst of His temple to judge rebel plural elohim with the warning “I have said that ye are gods but ye shall die like mortal men.” With Himself in the place of YHWH Elohim. Which leads to His rabbinic opponents trying to seize Him to stone Him again.)

Jason you lost me
My point was, that the possibility exists that a compound unity is possible from “one” in the shema, if that is the same word the NT uses to describe a compound unity, which I think is possible. The two shall become one is another use that makes that a possibility. (Maybe I’m missing the whole conversation altogether though???)

I’d actually use this line of thought to argue against trinity btw. But thats because I believe in the infinity

Same word in both circumstances, yep.

Genesis 11:6 maybe?

The people being described in this scene are one family that happens to be every human being on Earth at the time, who, some time after the Flood, have begun constructing the Tower of Babel.

A more literal translation of what “the LORD” is being quoted as saying here would be:

The word “one” referring to the people is the masculine ’eḥāḏ while the “one” referring to the people’s “lip” is the feminine ’aḥaṯ. (I may be wrong about this but I think the first uses of each of these words in the Bible are, respectively, the “male” Yom ’Eḥāḏ “One-Day”] in which Elohîm spoke “Light” and separated darkness from this Light (Gen. 1:5), and when YHWH Elohîm took a rib from the sleeping man in Gen. 2:21, which one ’aḥaṯ] rib I guess must’ve been “female.”)

Erwan, is this the passage for which you were looking?