Israel and Humanity - Derivation of polytheism from monotheism

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V.

Derivation of polytheism from monotheism.

We have seen what the Jews think of the pagan gods he calls sarim . It remains to consider now that the pagans believed their gods, to ascertain whether the two notions are consistent with each other. If that seems paradoxical at first glance the conclusion that we will lead this study, it nevertheless expressed a great truth.

The first thought that comes to mind is that the pagan gods were in the thinking of their worshipers, local and national deities, which corresponds exactly to the idea that Judaism is the sarim . Certainly we can not expect to find in polytheism the design of a superior, nor that the religious organization that belief would be produced by adjusting intelligently mutual relations of different gods. The whole notion that rudimentary paganism had this unit was limited to the basic idea of a supreme national, in which the deities of the tribes, cities and families found their center, as assembled for 'Hebraism all the various gods of humanity in the sovereign God of Israel. But the Jewish conception of a world united under the rule of one God, albeit in its various parts ruled by sarim , angels are individuals who the genius of different peoples, was foreign to the Gentiles, at least in its synthetic form, unitary entity. The astrology of the ancients had a vague glimpse of something, when the body of Hipparchus she was chair every constellation of the zodiac and the planet on which she was deemed the seat of government in large areas. Plotinus, the fourth book of his Enneads, talks about demon that we received, for its part , or, as another translation of demon that we received in sharing . Whatever the meaning adopted elsewhere, it is basically consistent with the idea eminently Hebrew, according to which, as we have seen, people are divided between the gods, implying a humanity and a single supreme power that operates sharing. [1] But here arises a question of extreme gravity. We said that this pagan idea reproduced by Plotinus does not contradict monotheism, since the Jews any form of polytheism was a cult that each people going to a aspect especially the one God and we have even hinted that this part of the worship of a divine aspects or attributes from different nations was in order and the economy of Providence. Does it follow then that we should accept the legitimacy of polytheism? To this we reply that we should not confuse polytheism with the design of the one God intended in different ways, a system that dominates the ancient Jewish tradition as the idea that the rabbis were made later by the revelation she itself. A body has many faces and the polygon can be contemplated in turn under each of its special angles. Therefore, the doctors said that the Act has seventy faces, it offers a different food for everyone and it has sixty myriads of comments [2] that is to say as many comments as there was for Israel to receive the foot of Sinai, only Tradition that represents the views of the Church, ie the religious community is there to mark the boundaries and harmonize the various individual viewpoints. So it is with the idea of God in humanity: a light that is refracted in a prism. Each reflects one of the spokes people and Israel is in the center of him scour the shelves, they converge toward him and he therefore entrusted with the unit.

Wherein the truth differs Does the error? As it takes account of the unity that connects all these rays into a single beam. Pagans do not recognize and that is why they were polytheistic, while the Jews professed expressly safeguarded and monotheism. There is no doubt that Israel had recognized all monotheistic pagan who admitted that unit and he had not required it more. But he was not satisfied of that for himself, because he not only taught that the many religious viewpoints that exist in the world have a center, a unit, but he loved the unit itself and could not love that it alone, because she saw in the fullness of the Godhead . For him, the gods of [3] nations, without being strictly speaking false gods or idols, as long as each of them represented to him an aspect or attribute of the true God, however, were false in that they were incomplete, in a worship would have been for the Israelites the undermining their idea of God, in whom all gods were at their partial perfection would have been commit an absurdity, as one would want to add a whole separate game, which already contains all without exception, as well as a sacrilege, because next to the Absolute, the Infinite, the special object of their faith they have placed and finished and the relative. Love all these gods separately and distinctly, as did the pagans was to ignore the unity and fall into a true polytheism, but rather look all together as elements of a single supreme deity, was Monotheism is the true universal humanitarian monotheism of Kabbalah who align unity and plurality, and that fits well in both engineering and engineering-Semitic Aryan. This monotheism is then that the future of humanity as a whole, Aryans and Semites, Israel and Gentile, can not be definitively established until the contact of these two geniuses, working first for a latently them closer to each other to finally triumph in the world as the sign and the very effect of this approximation.

But the monotheism of Israel, God's national, local, so to speak, the share has fallen to him by inheritance, the unit itself, the place designed to bring together all elements of the divine idea scattered everywhere, unit contained the seeds of all these elements, but the Israelites were to be really aware that since the dispersion and with new conditions of existence that it was provide. So in effect, by the mutual action and reaction of the Israelites and Gentiles, the idea of unity and of multiplicity would be in the presence and mutual penetration; offered the first and second synthesis, analysis ; these, the central point of religious faith and the latter, its development, is legitimate only when part of the center and returns as its end.

Hence it follows that the belief of the pagan was absolutely right when he recognized his god in a partial aspect of Divinity which Israel loved the fullness and what have been a sacrilege to the Jews, namely the association of another god [4] at the national god, was not at all one to him. Indeed, it was not as gifted as well as Israel's intuition unit, any association of this kind, instead of altering her religious faith, as did closer to the true conception of God . Since it had only part of the true notion of the Deity, who had any notion further be added, could only improve his belief. The polytheists had in their system, another way to get to monotheism than not arbitrarily restrict their principle of multiple divine their pantheon should logically be closed to any god and the day when all the deities had been admitted, these multiple gods finally would be virtually fused into a single god.

If one is willing to forgive a comparison unworthy of such a subject, we say that the body is so necessary in a simple chemical compound, which remain in the state of disgrégation, as they are not all together. No sooner are they all in contact that the combination takes place; components disappear and their place is one that contains them all in its synthesis. What is the secret of training the body made of? It is an invisible place, a kind of elective affinity, a hidden unity that exists prior to the combination itself and whose potential power is present when external conditions allow.

Maybe this will give you better now rabbinic maxim as extraordinary as precious as we have already had occasion to quote: "It was not forbidden to the Gentiles (Noachides) associate (the one God to another god) "[5]. So Naaman Elisha obtained permission to make an act of worship to Rimmon, the god of the king of Syria his master [6] and in the history of the colonies carried the land of Israel by the king of Assyria, the latter on the advice he was given, implanted the worship of the God of Jews alongside that of the old gods: "One of the priests who had been captivity of Samaria came to live in Bethel and taught them how they should fear the Lord (Tetragrammaton) ... So they worshiped the LORD, and they served [7] their own gods according to the custom of the nations where they had moved "[8].


But we will say it is acceptable that combines thoughtful worship a particular god than any other national or local deity, why this special worship can be combined with that of the God of Israel is the fullness of the Godhead? This is more so for the Pagan to bring more of the truth by adding complementary concepts, since it is supposed to convert to the God who is Truth itself. This tolerance of Judaism due to the fact that for him every people is particularly inclined to consider a specific aspect of the Godhead and that outside the Semitic race, and especially Israel, are all more or less unified conception of the rebels . Also as the heathen do not convert to Judaism altogether, as it is pagan or even proselytizing door , his religious faith is far from having the purity of the monotheistic birth and is therefore a need for him to use spiritual freedom which is left and, lacking the idea of absolute perfection, to seek to complete its ideal for all perfections accepting that it is capable of conceiving.

What is absolutely necessary for the establishment of monotheism of mankind is that the Gentiles living in religious communion with Israel, because if it is the center of each unit and if people have a natural tendency to do see only one side of truth, a radius of the circle, it is clear that to live in religious truth and not to thwart the laws of its future development must be oriented toward the center from which all rays and to which all return. That is how knowledge and practice of true religion do not go without peaceful relations and the spiritual communion between nations and how the messianic era will be both a religious and a palingenetic palingenetic social unity is realized on finding land as collateral and condition of the unit in the sky.

It occurs in the religious field something similar to what happens in the economic order. Every country, every race has only limited resources, a people can live, grow and develop so far as he borrows from others what he lacks is only through the exchange by [9] pooling of products that can be well-established and plenty reign everywhere. Who does not see why that peace and unity are indispensable? But we also believe that there should be a people or as the intermediary between the various nations and that, while not itself a producer or trader, however, and somehow International goods from all countries flocked to his house to be subsequently dispersed to the four corners of the world. Now this is how the Jewish people appears in history and this is also his role in the moral, intellectual and religious. Cosmopolitanism business that is blamed on Israel and Internationalism in the bad sense which, by its two leaders Marx and Lassalle, one and the other Jews by birth, he is the inspiration which he is a crime, are a double application, an incomplete and material, the other monstrous or misunderstood, if you will, of its true universal mission: the first is simply the image of a cosmopolitan higher and more fruitful, the ideas, and second, international socialism is that the gross infringement of the international alliance that is expected to achieve.

In terms of religion, as well as the unity of God be reconciled with the different views of each race and the same result of these various approaches, so too the religious unity of the human race should result not no outright condemnation of the ethnic religions, but the assimilation of all that is good in each of them with Semitic monotheism. This is the basis on which are aggregating all the elements of truth scattered among the Gentiles, to ultimately form the universal religion in the constitution of which all humanity will cooperate.

If it is true to say that each religion brings its quota to the formation of the religion of the future, it is not to say that unless there is already a germ, a center of unity, without which it there would be a simple juxtaposition of elements and not a real organization and development. The final unit that is to be achieved requires an initial unity and scalable, as there is no end without principle. Israel, we are not afraid to repeat, is that monotheistic faith with religious center necessary. It is far removed from the tolerance pagan gods housed indiscriminately, with no idea of organizing, [10] prioritize the multitude of deities, and intolerance of Roman Catholicism, which claims monopolize the truth in a church outside of which there would be no salvation.

From the central position that Judaism holds it is possible to judge impartially what is true in the ideas of philosophers Bayle, Voltaire, Rousseau, when they proclaim that all particular religions where God is worshiped institutions are adequately beneficial. This is not, as they say, essentially because the cult is the cult inside of the heart, because to be in good faith is not just any belief or worship any legitimate because it is sincere, and Rousseau even ask that God loves properly , but that is because each nation is required by his particular genius to pay tribute in a special way to some aspect of truth.

Polytheism, understood in this way is, of course, changes in nature. Nowadays, a philosopher, spiritualist, Renou, gave an acceptable formula, when he places in the upper regions of the world's spiritual nature and various sets of beings who, through intelligence and power are so far above of man than this, calling them gods, merely obeying a spontaneous religious feeling as old as the world without harming it for the unity of God, because God is at the top of the level of superhuman beings as the first and greatest of all. But Judaism, God is not only the first, is the Summary , the synthesis of all these deities, He is Truth itself, that is to say intelligence Comprehensive facts resulting from all points of view together.

We find in Goethe's idea of these aspects without which one can view the world and also the distribution, ownership of those aspects at different spirits who contemplate: "With the many needs of myself," he wrote in a letter to Jacob, I can not simply one way of thinking. As an artist and a poet, I am polytheistic Pantheist instead as a naturalist. My personality requires moral man does a god? I also know where to find it. The things of heaven and earth form a kingdom so extensive as to embrace this too is not all bodies of all beings together. "Goethe, in this portrait he draws of himself, we appears as the revelation of one of these men that we have called synthetic , because they sum up in themselves the nature and [11] trends of more or less of their peers. Long before the German philosopher, said the rabbis had in their imagery, God told Moses to do in each question forty-nine sides to the affirmative and forty-nine in the opposite direction, reserving to Him alone knowledge fiftieth of that tips the balance and un-finished the secret nature of things. It also includes, and the illustrious thinker has also said in its way, the more the subject is vast, the more points of view will be considerable. But a fundamental unity is at the root of things, otherwise the harmony would be impossible, and later we can say it is the very foundation of theism and pantheism, these two aspects of truth from which the Goethe's spirit floated like so many others. Polytheism, which for him was a general system among other systems, appears rather as a collection of aspects of the divine attributes and not only is consistent with theism and pure and simple, but there is one element .

This dual principle of the relative value of different conceptions of the universe and truth arising only from their synthesis seems to be at the bottom of the Leibnizian theory of monads. The life of monads is to think of themselves and to represent the world, each with a particular way. The degree of this representation, that is to say, his conscience more or less deep, depends the perfection of the monads. These are many worlds, microcosms of the universe concentrated or little gods . This is the thought of Leibniz, who, by a natural development, and meets with the biblical idea of sarim understood in the sense that we have allocated. The life of monads is therefore in a continuous and endless changes in their own nature and God is the Monad Leibnitz supreme, infinite, most perfect, creative and authorizing the universe.

One wonders if some vast intelligence like that of Leibnitz or Goethe, having sensed the fundamental unity that links these seemingly contradictory systems, pantheism, polytheism, monotheism, not find one day This secret formula which expresses the unity and harmony which will finally result in the religious development of humanity. We know beforehand that this formula will only result in philosophical language that the Hebrew theology has consistently affirmed. [12]


References

  1. Page 267
  2. ששים רבוא פירושים לתורה - שבעים פנים לתורה
  3. Page 268
  4. Page 269
  5. בני נח לא נזהרו על השותף See Tosaphot Sanhedrin 64, 2. R. Moses Isserles in Orach Chaim , ch. 156. Arosch OLAT tamid 156
  6. KINGS II, V, 18-19
  7. Page 270
  8. II Kings, XVII, 28-33 .
  9. Page 271
  10. Page 272
  11. Page 273
  12. Page 274