Israel and Humanity - Superiority of Biblical traditions over the pagan legends

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V.

Superiority of the biblical traditions of pagan legends.

We claim to Judaism is privileged to have been alone among the religions of antiquity to deal with the origins and early history of other peoples. However it is a fact that seems to contradict us is that we can meet at the pagan very recognizable traces of the ancient traditions of mankind. Hercules, Osiris, for example, are cosmopolitan character. They travel the world for humanitarian purposes. Osiris has been only on the banks of the Nile a fiction designed to hear that Egypt is the cradle of knowledge and enlightenment spread among other nations, but as we found almost everywhere equivalents of this Egyptian deity , we may conclude that what she recalls is common to all races.

These indications of a vague belief in the community of origin seem to prove by their unanimous agreement, despite differences, and perhaps because of these differences themselves, the truth of the Hebrew traditions. They also allow us to establish the unquestionable superiority of the biblical stories about all the legends, more or less similar than we can report in paganism. Anything that, in Judaism, relates the history of mankind in general without any consideration particularist undergoes when it hits the ground as it were pagan, a radical transformation that gives it a completely different character. Common traditions, humanitarian retained by Israel are still among the Gentiles a color national and local events in the [1] Bible relevant to the whole human race, are passing into a paganism stamp exclusively own particular story to tell people that. Surprising phenomenon that shows no doubt the lack of meaning in humanitarian and universalist pagans and, consequently, gives more value to that which appears in Judaism!

This remarkable fact has not escaped scholars whose testimony can not be suspected: "These traditions of Genesis," writes M. Burnouf, find themselves in fact more comprehensive and explicit in the sacred books of Persia, and even partly in the Vedas, they are presented as belonging to the race that has made these books, while in Genesis, they are most often foreign to those of the son of Israel [2], October 1, 1867, p. 680 </ref> ". Note that fact that the precious traditions of Genesis can be found in the sacred books of Persia and in the Vedas more comprehensive and explicit , which confirms in a striking manner that does is not his own spirit and traditions of his people that the sacred writer has drawn his materials, but a common source richer than the narrative itself necessarily fragmentary. "The local character has covered every legend," said Mr. Maury on his side, can not be opposed to the unity of the flood, as any mythical tradition once imported into a country which was foreign to it necessarily takes this character. This was put beyond doubt the comparative study of ancient religions. Every people relate to his homeland of the facts which ignores the drama and focused on the locations they inhabit the poetic expression of the phenomena common to all the earth "[3]

Finally, it is not only the historical perspective that Genesis is evidence of Jewish cosmopolitanism, but also as a program of the future of our species. Mendelssohn was the first, it seems, to realize, we will explain himself what this word may be obscure, with these words we have borrowed from his friend Friedenthal "It Mendelssohn which established a premise that nobody can happen in the study of our holy Law. The whole story of Genesis, he says, and everything that relates Scripture relating the story of Adam and Eve, Cain [4] and Abel, is true and some no doubt all that is told about these characters they really happened. Only is there a type and a symbol of what must happen to all mankind in general ... That is why the Bible speaks of it with so much detail "[5] It should be noted that this historical system typically has not received this application alone. The six days of creation were also interpreted as a program, a summary early in the history of the world history of the patriarchs of Israel as a type of their offspring and even the history of Adam been considered by the Talmud as the symbol of the Israeli [6]

We believe have said enough to show how, on this question of the origin of humanity, Judaism is superior to pagan ideas and what they have universal beginning its sacred books. [7]


References

  1. Page 291
  2. Revue des Deux Worlds
  3. Ibid, Volume XXVIII, p. 636
  4. Page 292
  5. addath Yesod, II, p. 31.
  6. Yalkut Shimeoni sect. Beresch passim
  7. Page 293