Early Violence Against the Church of God
Among the many misstatements and incorrect claims Deuble makes, his so called silence ignores the reaction of the Jews to the earliest members of the Church:
Acts 8:1:
And there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem
The Church, which Paul calls the ecclesia of God (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:9, Galatians 1:13) consisted entirely of Jews. Paul testifies to his vehemence against fellow Jews:
Acts 22:4-5:
4 I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering to prison both men and women, 5 as the high priest and the whole council of elders can bear me witness. From them I received letters to the brothers, and I journeyed toward Damascus to take those also who were there and bring them in bonds to Jerusalem to be punished.
Acts 26:9-11:
9 “I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth. 10 And I did so in Jerusalem. I not only locked up many of the saints in prison after receiving authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death I cast my vote against them. 11 And I punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to make them blaspheme, and in raging fury against them I persecuted them even to foreign cities.
Paul persecuted these Jews to the death. He had raging fury against them. He voted to have them executed, and ...they were put to death.
What crime requiring the death penalty had these Jews committed?
Blasphemy is the only crime for which these Jews could receive the death penalty. Claiming Jesus is the Christ is not blasphemy. Claiming the Christ was God and thereby making Jesus God or equal to God would be blasphemy. Acts reports that the Apostle James was put to death and but for his miraculous release, Peter would have been executed in Jerusalem.
The hostility of the Jews towards Jews in the Church of God continued after Paul became a believer. It was Jews who stoned Paul in Lystra. What crime requires stoning? Apparently Deuble believes this early violence which continued throughout Paul's life was nothing more than illegal rage which had no justification from Scripture.
This hostility toward Jews in the Church of God did not always result in execution. Jews were beaten and expelled from the synagogue. The vehemence against Jews who proclaim belief Jesus is the Christ continues to this day. Civil laws protect them from execution, but they are considered to have died. They no longer exist as Jews.
The New Testament clearly indicates some Jews considered and did return to Judaism. The letter to the Hebrews, written to the Jews considering a return to the monotheistic Judaism Deuble envisions, clearly states the divinity of Jesus and the worthlessness of a Christ-less religion.
The "silence" Deuble claims was presented was much louder than he is willing to acknowledge.
Yahweh in the Septuagint
The name Septuagint (from the Latin septuaginta, “70”) was derived later from the legend that there were 72 translators, 6 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel, who worked independently to translate the whole and ultimately produced identical versions. Whether the legend was true, the historical reality is the Greek Old Testament was in use hundreds of years before Christ. It was used to bring the knowledge of God to the Greek speaking world. For hundreds of years it lead Gentiles away from polytheism to Judaism.
Despite this success, around the time the New Testament was completed, the Jews abandoned the Greek Old Testament and returned to the Hebrew or Aramaic text. Deuble, who incorrectly claims the Trinity was not even an issue until 300-400 AD, fails to address this change. Why would the Jews stop using what a Gentile could understand? Why stop using something which had successfully brought the truth of Judaism to the Greek speaking world and use something a Gentile could not understand?
The reason is simple. It is impossible to read the New Testament from the perspective of the LXX, and not recognize YHVH and Jesus are synonymous:
LXX-Deuteronomy 6:4 NETS:
And these are the statutes and the judgments which the Lord commanded to the sons of Israel in the wilderness as they were coming out from the land of Egypt. Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.
1 Corinthians 8:6:
Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
Deuble, like many who deny the Trinity, claim the Shema is a proof text Jews of Paul's time would never have accepted the claim Jesus was God. Yet, any Gentile who learned and repeated the Shema from the LXX, would have no doubt, the Lord Moses spoke of was Jesus Christ.
Why did the Jews abandon the LXX after hundreds of years of successfully bringing the word of God to the corrupt polytheistic world of the Gentiles? Because Christians used the LXX to prove Jesus was the Lord God proclaimed in the Shema.
It is not only Paul who makes this connection. On the Day of Pentecost Peter quotes Joel saying, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. What is the name Peter says saves?
Acts 4:8-12:
8 Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders, 9 if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, 10 let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. 11 This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. 12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
Peter. speaking by the Holy Spirit says salvation comes by one name only: Jesus Christ of Nazareth. This was the blasphemy for which Jews were put to death.
Maricon of Sinope
The earliest and best documented heresy in the Church was Marcionism. Concurrent with the Jews abandoning the LXX, Marcion of Sinope began to teach Jesus was not the Jewish Messiah and the God who sent Jesus was not the God described in the Old Testament. The very essence of this position is one of multiple Gods. There was God found in the Old Testament, which Marcion rejected in his canon, and there was God as Paul described:
1 Corinthians 8:6:
Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
Most Trinity deniers, like Deuble fail to acknowledge the significance of what Paul wrote about the Father. Paul's description of the Father is not found in either the Hebrew or Greek Old Testament. Consequently, Marcion could use Paul's letters to support his claim the Father Paul wrote of was not found in the Jewish Scriptures.
Marcion was excommunicated and his teachings outlawed, but the historical reality is Paul's letters were used to "prove" there was more than one God. The fact the Church rejected Marcion's misuse of Paul does not erase the reality such an interpretation was not only possible; it was attempted with some success. Even today some Jews claim the God of Israel is unrecognizable in Paul's writings. This is exactly what Marcion used to fuel his heresy.
Summary
The silence Deuble sees in the lack of an explicit statement Jesus is YHVH is only present if one ignores the earliest treatment of those persecuted believers in Jerusalem. One must also maintain the position Gentiles who converted to Christianity never read the Old Testament in Greek. Instead, they like second century Jews, lived as strict Second Temple monotheists as understood from a Hebrew text, they could not read.
On the other hand, if Gentile converts to Paul's presentation of the Gospel read about YHVH in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the so-called silence is explained by accepting what is without dispute: Jesus is Yahweh in the LXX.
binitarians
as much as to trinitarians (i.e. no mention of holy spirit).