Q. Jesus Christ was a Jew who was sent to Jews to educate them, and remind them about The Torah. So Christianity was never a separate religion. Also, there are many different, conflicting versions of The Bible, and none of them include references to the Trinity, only to Monotheism.
A. Thank you for your statements, which I will address as if they are infer underlying questions.
Jesus was sent to all humanity, not just to Jews
I agree with your core premise: Jesus absolutely came to bring, not only Jews, but also the world to the recognition of One True God. However, His mission was not only about returning the hearts of Jews to God, but was about what the fullness of that unity (what you call monotheism) entails, as revealed progressively throughout The Bible.
The inference that Jesus was only sent to the Jews to remind them of the Torah, totally misses the broader, prophetic, and universal scope of His mission, as He Himself repeatedly mentioned.
• Jesus was born as a fulfillment of promises made to the descendants of Jacob, about a coming Messiah/Savior. Born through the line of Jacob, whose name The Lord changed to Israel, He came to His own people first, which is why He focused His early ministry on the people of Judah, several centuries after the northern kingdom of Israel (10 tribes) had been exiled. He didn’t simply remind them of what Moses had written. He substantially elaborated on and revealed MUCH MORE than what He, as The Lord God, had given Moses to write in the Torah, and what The Old Testament (2nd age) prophets had spoken and written after Moses died. Jesus declared the establishment of a New Covenant, not just for Jews, but for all humanity!
• Before His second post-resurrection ascension back to Heaven (see John 20:17 re. His first ascension), He gave a clear instruction to His followers that moved His mission far beyond any single ethnicity:
‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them
in the Name of The Father and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit.’
(Matthew 28:19).
And those words most certainly were not the first time The Bible introduced the concept of the Trinity or the Triune Godhead! That concept was introduced in the first chapter of Genesis!!! Sadly, many people might miss this point. Without using the words, Trinity or Triune, that chapter signifies this concept as the internal reality of One God, Who is revealed progressively in Scripture, as Father, Son, and Spirit. That is still strictly Monotheism—One God, existing eternally in three distinct persons/personalities or expressions. I often equate that to how we humans express ourselves—spirit, soul, body.
• Genesis 1:26–27 signify Plurality within Unity. The Hebrew word for God in that verse is Elohim (a plural noun). God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.’ Yet, the very next verse affirms unity: ‘So God created man in His image.’ The plural, Us, reflects a divine, internal counsel, not a conversation with angels.
• Genesis 1:2 reveals The Spirit in Creation. ‘And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.’ The Spirit is portrayed as both of God, yet acting as a distinct, personal agent. There are numerous other passages across The Old Testament that elaborate what Genesis 1 signifies.
• In accordance with the strategic approach Jesus uses to reveal insights about everything to humanity (as noted in Isaiah 28:10 & 13), The New Testament significantly EXPANDS and FILLS IN the portrait of The Triune Godhead. At Jesus's baptism, we see all three persons distinctly present, while acting in unity: The Son is baptized, the Spirit descends like a dove, and the Father speaks from Heaven, ‘This is my beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased.’ (Matthew 3:16-17). If that’s not the picture of the Trinity at work, I don’t know what is. I think people conclude The Bible does not reveal the Trinity, because they can’t find that exact word in The Bible. Thus, they totally miss the higher and deeper insights from what they read while searching for that particular word. That might be a case of spiritual blindness in people whose hearts may not yet be inclined to believe.
The Father initiates, the Son executes and reveals, and the Spirit empowers, indwells and completes. They ‘present’ in distinct roles, yet in one essence, mind and will.
Many versions of The Bible
What people mostly count as different versions of The Bible, are largely different translations—scholarly efforts to render the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek manuscripts, into modern languages. Along the way, other religions selectively edited out parts of the original text that did not fit with their personal understandings or desires.
I noted how Jesus placed an exceptional ‘copyright’ on The Book of Revelation. (Revelation 22:18-19) But He never placed such a copyright on the entire, original Bible, and perhaps He had His reasons for such. Over the millennia, He had selected many prophets, psalmists, and wisemen, to pen what He inspired in them, and He apparently allowed succeeding editors to have free will with it. Revelation must have a unique signification in His strategic plan for humanity, worthy of a strong copyright. I intuit this because He deemed it so crucial for all of us to have the chance to KNOW the final destinations He has planned for every human He will have ever endowed with breath and spirit. That declared destination is in one of three geographical zones on a massive, new, eternal Earth—2 glorified zones for His faithful saints (described in Revelation 21 and 22), and 1 damned zone—the lake of fire for all others who will have rejected Him. That is clearly what The Scriptures declare and attest.
Across the thousands of ancient Bible manuscripts available today, the original message and core doctrines in The Bible (including the Triune nature of God) are affirmed with remarkable consistency. The multiplicity of manuscripts, preserved across different continents and millennia, is actually a powerful witness to the accuracy and careful preservation of the original text. I perceive that has been the work of The Holy Spirit.
So I agree, Jesus clearly attested of Monotheism, but not as you think. He defined it as it was originally signified in Genesis 1, was progressively revealed across The Old Testament, and made abundantly clear in The New Testament …as The Triune Godhead.
Recommended video
This short video, Elohim, from the respected BibleProject channel, explains the meaning of the Hebrew word, Elohim. Perhaps it might offer more clarity on this topic.
Searching eyes ‘see’, when hungry hearts
are open to ‘receive’ and then ‘believe’.
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