Israel and Humanity - Predestination and the question of the identity of nature

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III.

Predestination and the question of the identity of nature.

We can talk about the unity of human origin from the Pentateuch without saying a word by a system called the préadamisme, which was claimed to find traces in the book of Genesis and from which he would existed before and outside of Adam and Eve, other men on earth. This assertion can it rely on the Bible? The answer to this question depends on how to interpret the early chapters of Genesis, depending on whether one wants to see a true story or fictional. For us, these first pages of Scripture contain historical data that was used as the basis for mythical developments of which it is surrounded and penetrated completely. So if it's in the biblical narrative a mythical element, it is natural to encounter in the course of the narrative of the circumstances which suggest the existence of humanity outside the mythical Adam and which are in reality the historical part pure, it could not be completely fused with the legend in one seamless narrative.

Yet it is these facts that is based on concurrent préadamisme to show that Adam was neither the first nor the only human being. This assumption is true for the mythical Adam and false regarding the historical Adam. This other humanity that is claimed see outside of the character of Eden, Adam is the history itself. Thus the enemies that Cain fears the lawsuit, the city that is built so that humanity still consisted of four people, all this is that the effect of the contradiction between the dual historical and mythical element that the narrator Sacred has not always been avoided.

We may ask if the original unit is not also compromised, whether we admit the préadamisme or that one sees in Genesis the historical-mythical Adam that we offer. it is not because the original unit is obviously a historic elements of the biblical narrative. We mean by history all that the writer believed this, regardless of the objective reality of his narrative. But when a religion is able to rise to the conception of the unity of origin of the human species, it will not abandon this idea into a myth in the risk of compromising, she will give him more of a foundation history in order to strengthen and accreditation.

But the original unit did really important that we attribute as an index of universalist aspirations of Judaism and other legacy systems are modern, without admitting the unity of origin, identity or recognize the unity of nature , are not they equally successful? Serious authors argued that the unity of nature alone interests us and the other is an accessory: "The identity, the essential idea of humanity and language, they tell us, consists in the intellectual principle, not in the natural starting point. It is by virtue of human reason that all men are brothers and intimately united. This is a base much more profound and essential affinity than the physical derivation. We do not believe that fear s'entraimer, men need to have advance notice of their intellectual affinity and a simple fact attested in a manner worthy of belief seems to be beyond comparison a more secure and effect more general than the best reasoning. Differences among men are they also larger physically and morally, so that we can more firmly establish human unity on the moral than the physical? We think not. There are Negroes or Samoiedes that are much closer to monkeys than the European breeds and even among civilized modern ethnology reported instincts, tendencies, faculties so characterized, so different, it would allow the doubts the most serious kind of identity. How it could it establish itself successfully, since we used the pretext of religious differences geniuses so marked that separate Aryan and Semitic an objection against the unity of origin? Although these differences would point visible, one could still wonder if the seeds do not remain dormant in the depths of human nature because we are far from having probed the point to say it contains more secrets for us. A criterion based on the identity of an intellectual nature seems so inadequate. If indeed the eyes of scholars, the identity was also apparent that morale physics, one could not say much for the common man and is not doubt that, to discover, it does have a great deal more effort and penetration. In addition, the proverbial economy of nature, fertility indefinite she has endowed each individual can not reconcile a perfect moral identity with the diversity of origin. The original community accepted the contrary, the identity of nature follows a rigorous result. The physical differences, so striking that we sometimes doubt our relationship with an Indian or a Hottentot, find a fix victorious in this belief in a common origin and it is then brought to see in the races more degraded than brothers deformed or crippled.

Finally, by examining the identity of nature in the light of the prevailing philosophy, we see reduced to nil. It certainly does not effect most salient features and more persuasive than the types, genera and species of plant or animal around. We know what our naturalistic philosophers think that these similarities are for them as creations of the human spirit, a work product of abstract thinking that operates on the materials offered by nature, about the only things really existing individuals. We do not see many men fall in love with an abstraction to the point of brotherly love anyone admitting this general idea that we are brothers, not Adam, the father of mankind, but in the simple design a logical Adam imagination.

But if we instead recognize the reality of the human species as type, model and formal and efficient cause of all individuals, we have, in the absence of earthly Adam, a heavenly Adam, that which the Kabbalah calls Adam Kadmon , son of the Logos and Psyche, the ideal and reality, mind and matter. This last Adam is the type closest to the character of Genesis, and the holy book itself tells us that two cherubim came to replace Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise seems to spare the transition to a higher order of ideas.

The identity of nature without the community of origin does not appear to qualify for other reasons. It is necessarily based on the assumption of several processing centers to a lower species to humans or, to express without any evolutionary system, the separate work, yet identical physical forces, chemical and even biological, leading to production as similar as those that have a common origin. It is not likely that in times and places are so different, with so many different moods, the same forces and, in the same forces, the same officers have met and have acted in circumstances and so such a uniform manner so that they could produce identical people despite their complexity.

When one considers the considerable differences between individuals, generations, the people, one feels inclined to deny to admit the identity of moral and intellectual, if it admits, it is by some act of faith. So it is folly to seek proof of identity of nature in a field where everything seems rather contradictory, unless one adopts the first biblical doctrine so wonderful and so rich of unit origin. We do not believe we ever noticed how pretty it is surprising that this doctrine is received in a world where it was bound to seem outrageous and senseless: outrageous, because she put on a footing of perfect equality major and children, masters and slaves, civilized and barbaric senseless, because all that had an influence in the pagan society, religion, science, tradition, authority, was hostile. He had therefore necessarily cost a lot to the Jewish national vanity to proclaim this unity so shocking to recognize brothers in race physically and morally inferior or at least hostile to Jews and Judaism and, by any member they were also authorized, denied this principle of human brotherhood. The dogma of the unity of origin has been a product of the Jewish spirit, the Jews had not invented, but the experience and we can not see more the product of the mind human, we mean a conception of any other nation of antiquity, for there is none which is found in psychological terms, moral or social, or it would have been able to imagine such a principle and to adopt it. If some philosopher had risen up lonely that idea, he would never be able to introduce into the religious beliefs of the masses.

While we believe that the human mind had the intuition of the unity of origin of our species, but we mean something something above everyone's mind; is the human mind in its state of spontaneity that is indistinguishable from that religions call Revelation and that is how we explain that this belief is inaccessible to the pagan world existed, we do not say the Jews regarded as a people, in many ways similar to others, but in Judaism. And not only the Jewish religion professed this doctrine eminently universalist, but Israel was going to attribute it generously to pagans. He saw a vague recollection in the stories and characters from mythology. Saturn it was Adam and the Saturnalia was a remembrance of its history . The image of Isis holding Horus in her arms was breastfeeding her child Eve, as Serapis was none other than Joseph adored by the Egyptians because of its benefits

Anyway, if the idea or not aware of the identity of nature and origin existed among the pagans, they certainly have none experienced the moral effects, that is ie the feeling of universal brotherhood and have even denied in principle that this feeling was possible. "The human qualities," said Maximus of Tyre, are generally well below the divine perfections, they are still particularly in view of the character of universal benevolence that they lack and that is the prerogative of the Godhead. No man can embrace a sense of love in all its species. "As the animal that lives in troops, man seeks not only his fellow citizens still do wonder, if he succeeds to love everyone without distinction. Plato also tell Climas: "What ordinary men called peace is meaningless in reality all States are by the nature of things in a state of continual war against each others ". It was reserved to the people of the Bible to spread the belief in the identity of nature and origin of mankind and with it the principle of universal brotherhood that results.