In the first part of this book, we will examine texts predicating the numeral “one” of nouns for God, gods, or the divine. I will demonstrate that, although the idea that the traditional deity of one people was the only God among its region’s pantheon that exists had developed by the middle of the first millennium BCE, expressing this idea by stating that “God is one” does not emerge before the second century BCE. We will begin in this chapter by examining “God is one” from its earliest beginnings: first in ancient Egypt, where third-millennium inscriptions praise the Egyptian sun god, “Greetings, sole one who constantly endures every day”; and then in the rise of YHWH as the proper name of Israel’s God, of whom the Bible declares, “YHWH is one.” Yet these early texts intend only to praise these deities, not to deny the existence of others.

In this essay I survey the development of the Kabbalistic Godhead; exploring sources from the Hebrew Bible, through rabbinic literature and medieval Jewish philosophy, and culminating in thirteen century kabbalah and the Zohar. Following this discussion, I discuss primary theological elements incorporated within this conception, such as the understanding of the ten sefirot, which comprise the Godhead, the mystical understanding of the Tetragrammaton as correlating to the divine essence, God’s identification with the Torah and commandments, and the feminine element of the Godhead. This examination of the configuration of the Godhead and its various elements naturally leads to a discussion of the “complex unity” of God. In this examination I discuss the relation of different divine persona within the Godhead, the evil or demonic element of the Godhead, and lastly the differing conceptions of the Godhead as a kataphatic or apophatic entity. Finally, I examine the phenomenon of mystical union between the human being and the Godhead.