Israel and Humanity - Biblical and rabbinic Testimonials

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CHAPTER THREE

THE IDEA OF MAN IN JUDAISM

JEWISH CONCEPT OF PROGRESS

I.

Biblical and rabbinic evidence.

What characterizes Judaism is that down there establishment of other religions, not perfection in the beginning, but in the end. This is indeed the meaning of the messianic era, and he expects that we define as follows: faith, maintained from the outset in the future perfection, religious, moral, social and material of the human race and must have its performance in recent times.

We know that the critics divided into successive stages of development and that the Messianic doctrine, according to her, the complete formula to date relatively recent times. There is no need to initiate a debate here on the antiquity of this belief, at any age it's postponed, it is enough that sooner or later hébraïsons has finally realized that he especially constantly placed the realization of his hopes in recent times . This feature is so distinctive feature of the Jewish faith than Christianity, though he pretended to be realized messianism has never ceased, as heir of Israel and despite the contradiction that this idea had with all of its doctrines, to set at the end of time fulfilling promises and resurrection palingenetic. [1] Ecclesiastes echoed in Jewish thought when he said: "The end of something better than its beginning [2] "And to prove that impatience is useless and you need to know to wait for the events he added:" Better a patient spirit a haughty spirit, do you look forward point to be angry because the irritation is that of fools. " This, we will say, shrink ideas and there are far from commonplace wisdom that the principle to human progress. Without doubt, this limited application, but assumes the general principle and it is actually made by the author immediately and in such terms it encompasses the entire history and is presented as a response to all those who prefer old age to new, clear proof that the principle in question was already sufficiently introduced into the Jewish doctrines and fro to lift the opposition and provoke a reaction: "Do not say: Time does Was it not better than one? because you would not be wise to speak so "[3]. The general opinion was for progress and therefore it is only when some unfortunate circumstance seemed to contradict the popular belief that this or that isolated mind raised doubts about the value of the principle.

If now we leave the Bible to seek the views of Rabbis Talmud, Midrash and Kabbalists alike who all represent for us the Hebrew tradition, we see that they all agree to affirm, in accordance with the teaching of Ecclesiastes that what comes after is better than what came before. In the family we have already noticed that the Bible seems to give preference to younger brothers on their elders. Cain, Ishmael, Esau are excluded and are being supplanted by those born after them. This is what the Theosophists express in this picture: "The bark above the fruit" or the phrase: "The slag must leave before the crucible of pure gold." Sometimes a noble name in itself and which has linked the use of high ideas, that of Bechor , first born, used to describe homes that are rudimentary, imperfect one thing in his coarse and defective beginning [4] These contradictory meanings and these uses are explained when one considers [5] the two rings which form the general movement of people, that by which they descend from God and that on which they back to him. In the first quality and under Bechor , first-born is highly ceremonial, since it expresses a greater proximity to the source of beings. In the second word instead expresses only the first aspiration of the finish, his first move toward the perfect from which everything emanates, effort necessarily incomplete, because only the first portion of the potential state to the act.

After the sin of Adam, the scheschina , the divine in the world, moved away from one of ten degrees, say doctors, but she has come back ten degrees opposite direction and returning to the world through the work of the Patriarchs. This is a poetic way of saying that the movement of regeneration begins when the sin is consumed and it continues throughout history by the action of men of God. We thus see, as we said in the previous chapter, in the historical economy of the Bible degradation, the fall are the work of a moment, this is something prehistoric, extra-temporal if we can speak this way, while in contrast the work of repair, reinstatement, improvement begins, except the moment of sin, with the story then provided it to last and the complete whole. The serpent who brought evil into the world is to constantly have his head crushed by the descendants of the man, though it must also be bitten on the heel [6].

It is impossible to deny that under the picture of childish snake hides a deep and thought that the story of Genesis has a high range. We will not challenge more than announced in the fight between man and reptile, this is the first that should have victory, since the foot that receives the bite crushes the beast that bites. It is therefore the struggle between good and evil struggle in which the property should have the advantage, and this symbolic story of Adam became the first days of regeneration laborious history of mankind and as a program for its future development.

We know that the Talmud gives the world a total of six thousand years, divided into three periods of two thousand years each: [7] The first belongs to the chaos, the second with the Act and the last messianic era [8]. In this sketch of a philosophy of history, which is especially noticeable is the character of increase that Judaism has so many students realized that the height of a theory. The story is not for Judaism a succession of unconnected facts, it is a developing organism is a world that is formed and which, at its beginning, chaos, tohu-vavohu of Genesis and on his term, the Sabbath, the name given to palingenesis, in imitation of the Sabbath which ends the work of six days.


References

  1. Page 315
  2. Ecclesiastes, VII, 8-9
  3. Ibid., VII, 10
  4. See Zohar Emor, II, p. 72.
  5. Page 316
  6. Genesis III, 15.
  7. Page 317
  8. Sanh. 97 <super> a </super> שני אלפים תהו שני אלפים תורה שני אלפים ימות המשיח