Is that great doctrine of the Trinity only found in the New Testament and the creeds of the early church? Let us take a moment to examine the Old Testament for shadows and hints to the multipersonal nature of the one being of the God in the Hebrew Scriptures. Interestingly enough beginning in the very first chapter of Genesis we start to see signs of this.
Genesis 1:1
If the first verse of the Bible it says “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The word translated into English here as “God” is the Hebrew word “elohiym” (אֱלֹהִים). The word “elohiym” is the generic word in Hebrew for “god” and it is a masculine plural noun. It is used in Hebrew in much the same way as the word “god” is used in English. It can be used to represent the one and true “God” or it can also be used to refer to a false “god”. It’s usage is determined by it’s context in exactly the same way we use the word “god” in English. The thing that is interesting is the word “elohiym” here is the plural form of the masculine singuar noun “elowahh” (אֱלוֹהַּ). This is because the noun “elohiym” ends in the letters “Yod” and “Mem” (י and ם). The letters “Yod” and “Mem” ending a word make singular masculine nouns plural in the same way as “s” and “es” make singular nouns plural in English. The singular noun form of “”elowahh” is used in poetry and in later Hebrew (i.e. Deut 32:15,17) but most of the time the plural form “elohiym” is used when referring to “God”. This is interesting because the very first verse of the Bible already hints at a plurality.
