Israel and Humanity - Astrolatry and angelology

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NINTH CHAPTER

THE IDEA OF "SARIM" OR GUARDIAN ANGELS

THE JEW IN MONOTHEISM

I.

Astrolatry and angelology.

We have seen that the pagan gods were, in the Jewish perspective, as partial aspects of the unique attributes of the Godhead and they formed together as many elements of the Unit or supreme synthesis adored by Israel. There seems no doubt that these pagan deities identified with the Jews with the Angels, who are frequently named in the Bible El- ohieme , the same word used to describe the gods of the Gentiles also . It is implausible to argue that if the angels are often the name of El-ohieme, gods, they were the eyes of the Hebrews real divinities ambiguity resulting from such names as it seems instead have caused their subsequent deification.

Anyway, the modern critics themselves acknowledge that identity of angels and gods. Mr Havet says about traces of monotheism exist among the nations, "It is true that beneath this god, they recognized other, lesser gods, but these did not fall in comparison with their father and master. They were only ministers or rather manifestations of what a called a unique name, the deity. In a word, they were angels. This is not me talking, but a father of the Church, Augustine, who tells us in his own words: the gods that we, we call Angels a name less top, deos quos angelos our familiarius dicimus If this was in the pagan way of understanding their gods, a fortiori, it must be true for Jews in the sense that unit much more developed and stronger naturally facilitated assimilation.

But the angels and sarim of the Bible are they one and the same thing? If the word meant only the heavenly principalities and not angels alike, we do not would read in the Psalms: "I said, 'You are El- ohieme , you're all the son of Elion , however you will die like men, you fall like any of sarim . The guardian, clearly attributed to angels in Scripture, certainly closer to that of their function sarim staff specifically by God to guard each nation. "It is written, the Zohar says: Anyone who curses his gods bear the penalty of his sin . Because, even though they are gods, God has charged the government of the world "

The manner consistent with the sacred writers confuse the gods, angels and sarim must convince us that these different names to express their unique design. We show in fact the Lord exercising justice sometimes on one, sometimes another for sarim , along with the people whom they preside. The gods of Egypt for example are punished as well as persecuting the nation. In the prophecy of Isaiah the kings of the earth and the heavenly host are simultaneously visited by God and Daniel, for his part, says that people struggle, triumph or die on earth, while the angelic powers make both in the sky.

What exactly is the sarim by biblical concepts? The name of El- ohieme are the angels in the Torah suggests that they have a divine role to fill in the people entrusted to their care and it is not the reason they are even sometimes called the incommunicable name of Avaya they represent under the mandate entrusted to them? This is not all. We find ourselves in the Pentateuch an extraordinarily important "take heed, lest you lift your eyes to heaven and see the sun, moon and stars, you're no drawn away and worship them and worship those whom the LORD thy God hath distributed to all peoples under the whole heaven . This is about the stars and no mention of angels we currently occupy. But just as it is beyond doubt that Moses and the Israelites believed in the existence of angelic spirits, it seems impossible to deny that they are heard in this passage. Moses provides aberrations idolatrous which astrology could give birth, would it not, a fortiori, forewarned his people against the worship of angels or the demonolatry, if all that was included in the recommendations we just mentioned? Any darkness ceases as soon as we admit that, under the heavenly bodies which he speaks, to hide the Hebrew legislator angels or spirits, each staff in the care of the people of the earth, that these attributes or supreme forces of God and universal in every part as in the whole, is the soul of creation. And he runs the result that in the mind of Moses, the Lord is for the entire cosmos that each angel is for the star that governs and animates.

This way of conceiving life of stars is so absurd that we find in Aristotle and even among modern philosophers. "The heavenly bodies," said Hartmann, are actually organisms. When they die, individuality disappears in them as animals and plants " Goethe had said, hiding a graceful image a deeper theological idea: "I would not be surprised if in the course of centuries, I met Wieland monad from another world, a star of first magnitude, shining everything that surrounds one-day friendly. Such souls take part in the pleasures of the gods by associating with happiness as they enjoy the creative forces. To them is entrusted the work of any new perpetual creation. The same idea, that one can also point to Socrates and Pythagoras were among younger and presented in a rational form by a modern thinker who writes: "I am sometimes haunted by the idea that each world has a special virtue of creation he has his power and genius, which broke out in his surface in a series of existences and different beings. Each world would conceal a kind of divinity V. Havet, Christianity and its origins , vol. I, p. 148. </Ref>

These theories on the lives of stars, the soul of the earth, without having the value of demonstrating scientifically sound, however, are anything but a proprietary product of the imagination. It should be seen converging rays of different sciences, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, which led the mind to conceive, as the crown of the majestic edifice of human knowledge, the Supreme analogy which reveals the law of the unit plan for all parts of the material universe and the spiritual world. Moses took the sublime intuition of the conclusions of science when, glimpsing the divine forces under the stars in the firmament, he said the core principle of angelology while he's guarding people against the dangers of astrolatry "Lest you lift your eyes to heaven and see the sun, moon and stars, you feel driven to prostrate yourself before them and worship those whom the LORD thy God hath distributed to all people who are sound heaven. "

These are indeed very meaningful lyrics and whether we want to recognize the idea of providential distribution of stars, angels or gods, it is remarkable that instead of saying that people are given their share , according to a very common expression of biblical language, the text says instead that they themselves are distributed to the various peoples and the god or angel is the possession of each nation rather than the nation itself the possession of angel or god. There is nothing here that should surprise if one wants to be remembered that, according to the Hebrew conception, the complete idea of the true God is distributed, as we have said, in a piecemeal fashion, to the worship of different peoples and, therefore, they are diverse and incomplete conceptions of the Deity that represent the gods of the Gentiles.

The meaning of this passage from Deuteronomy seems indirectly confirmed by the words of Moses to the Israelites immediately following: "But as for you, the Lord took you and brought you out of the iron furnace, from Egypt, that you might be a people unto himself, of his own, as you are today ". What does this mean? Should we see here a justification Critics rationalists who Avaya exclusively national god of the Hebrews? Those who would assume a long time could not keep that illusion, in fact, just as other nations have a special tutelary deity, the Israelites for Avaya one God, by freeing them from slavery in Egypt, will be the Attached to a particular way, but Avaya itself, do not forget, circulation to the other peoples of their national divinities, so that its sovereign empire is said without question just as we thought he could deny it.

Another text that is also worth quoting Deuteronomy to support this theory of angels or national gods. We find it to renewal of the covenant in these terms: "Generations to come, your children born after you and the stranger who comes from a distant land at the sight of wounds and diseases for which the Jehovah shall smite this country, all nations shall say: Why the Lord done thus to this land? Why this passionate, this great anger? And one answer: Because they have forsaken the covenant with them by the LORD, the God of their fathers because they went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they knew not, and that the Lord had not given them given our shared . What! Abroad, the pagan is supposed to speak here as would the Jew himself. It recognizes that there is a Supreme God, the LORD loved Israel and the subordinate deities that he loves govern by command of God that other nations.

This passage leaves no doubt about the meaning of the previous issue where it was the stars, because the same word is used in one and the other to designate the distribution Those who understand Hebrew better seize the obvious analogy between the two texts given by God to the Gentiles sarim , guardian angels, we believe we can distinguish the various nations of the Godhead. II.