Israel and Humanity - Rabbinic ideas on human progress compared to the immutability angelic
III.
Rabbinic ideas on human progress compared to angelic immutability .
The rabbinic view that puts the nature of man over nature stems from the angel of course the idea that the former is likely to progress, while the latter is doomed to immobility. And indeed, while walking characterizes man and phrases walk before God, walking with God , in Judaism are synonymous with virtue and religion, angels are otherwise qualified of stationary. In the Jerusalem Talmud, the rabbis even say this as evidence of immobility that angels have the legs together, they have only one foot and they have no joints, in a word they make us a description that recalls the exact figure of the Egyptian gods that we have proved the modern discoveries.
The Bible or Judaism, or rabbinic, we often present the man with the angels and they are not always who they have the advantage. The fight that supported the patriarch of Israel, obviously with an angelic being which he requested the honor, is famous among all. That which we originally described the creation between mankind and the serpent is a struggle most angelic and that has been engineered. No sooner do we see [1] arise design of Satan What appears on the other hand, as correlative term, the antagonism of the man called therefore to fight, to conquer, to triumph.
We will not hear that one does not discover here and there in Scripture passages in the opposite direction, that is to say where we are angels depicted as superior to man. Their greater proximity to the throne of God they are the heavenly court, the recognition they receive from the man, the terror they inspire him sometimes seem difficult to reconcile with the rabbinic doctrine which we are now and which, in our view, has its roots in the Bible itself. However, all is explained if we do not lose sight of the idea of human progress which is based on the notion of the superiority of man over the angel. From this it is clear that there is a double way of looking at human nature. The man, as he is on and more so at the beginning, must be lower than the angels, but this inferiority is not definitive, because there are stages and levels inducing in the way that must go. And not just humanity in general in the rest of his generation is constantly changing, but in a single generation ago between the men who compose it, such differences as their value compared to other creatures, lower or higher necessarily changes in appearance. Man is thus higher or lower than the angels according to the place it occupies in this grade level, it must be done. That is how the Bible itself testifies to the possibility of man to rise above the angel upholding the doctrine of human progress.
What is beyond doubt, it is the opinion of the Rabbis and the unanimous testimony of tradition as that Talmudic Kabbalistic about it. The assertion of the superiority of man is so clear and so broad that it would be inconceivable that the Scripture differed completely on this point. On the verse of the Psalmist: "He will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways" Psalm [2] The Midrash says: "What is the larger of the two? keeper is that he keeps? "And elsewhere he says that ministers worshiped and served angelic Adam in paradise and one day will come when they sing: Holy, holy, before Israel. [3] The contrary opinion that the angel gives absolute superiority belongs to the Christian Church and some Jewish schools in the Middle Ages, except, we repeat, all Talmud and Midrash monuments which are unanimous in the sense that we specify. Between these two opposing views it is curious to hear the "voice of independent science. The problem arises naturally for her with a little differently, but basically the issue is the same. She wondered if the man is the kind of being the highest and it is possible to think of others who are above him. Some scholars have responded negatively. We believe, for us, with man, or if you want to be conscious, opens, but does not close, a new world, the rational and moral world, and that in the world then it can and should even exist a hierarchy of species, otherwise kinds of creatures that are distinguished precisely by the degree of their awareness of the universe. In this world of consciousness, between intelligence essentially perfectible and another that is stationary in nature, the superiority belongs to the first and that is the meaning of the maxim of the Rabbis: "The righteous men are superior to the angelic ministers' [4].
This doctrine of the superiority of man over angels merges with another on which we have occasion to return, ie one that puts the works of man over the works of nature. Just to realize it noted that the angels are the forces of nature and therefore freedom, civilization and what we call miracles, in a word all manifestations of human intelligence are well- above the natural forces and works of the gods. Paganism himself said that Jupiter has more need of man just as it does not need to Jupiter and Plotinus, by his disciples invited to attend a sacrifice, replied: "That the gods to come to me rather than me to go find them. " The reader now knows what Judaism believes in human perfectibility have no difficulty in seeing how the Jewish perspective, is the correct response Neoplatonic philosopher, in a way that is even better the dignity of rights, while respecting the majesty of God, without whom there would be no progress possible. [5]
