Israel and Humanity - The cosmic periods by the rabbis
§. 2.
COSMIC PERIODS ACCORDING TO THE RABBIS.
"We learn, says a Midraseh, the Holy One, blessed be He, manufactured worlds and destroyed them. And He said: "I'm happy for them, those do not please me [1]. There is therefore an escalation in the creation, because the worlds that follow are more and more perfect. But we stick to the biblical text alone, do we not see a formally established the principle of progress? Each new creation in six days of work marks a step forward on previous creations. Life appears after the inanimate and in the manifestations of animal life there is a progression, until the appearance of man, the last and most perfect beings. The Exameron or period of six days of Genesis seems to be so, in relation to God, creative power, a chronological representation of the progressive creation, the six-day period corresponding to the creative and the Sabbath to the cosmic time. In terms of man power created the Exameron develops the contrary during the cosmic itself, and that is what the Jewish theologians say when they say that the six days of creation are the picture of world history and humanity, while the Sabbath is the creative or chaotic period, the last thousand years during which the force created while the rest is creative force at work.
What it is, the increase in life forms is in the account book of Genesis, a fact that has always attracted attention. This is a wonderful insight of what science should see after so many centuries of research. Anaximander, which was sometimes cited as a precursor of Darwinian doctrines, had really only a vague idea of the progression. According to him the action of sunlight on the ground then covered by the waters brought forth films that produced imperfect bodies, something like the protoplasm of the moderns, and these organisms are developed heavy then gradually gave rise to all the existing species. The ancestors of man were [2] and aquatic animals like fish. We have only read the first page of the Pentateuch to be convinced of the superiority of the biblical data on the theories of the Ionian philosopher.
Just as the present order of things makes progress on those that preceded it, so also the one who will succeed him will mark vis-à-vis her progress again. In the history of the earth, each period is therefore a palingenesis or regeneration compared to the previous, while it is a genesis in relation to those who follow. The succession of worlds and their growing perfection, whether in the past or in the future, are undefined. It is an evolution governed by laws which are represented in Kabbalah by the various Sephiroth , eons , hypostasis or fumes. There is a wider application of what Scripture itself teaches us about the various ages of humanity in each of which God is worshiped under a different name, ohieme El, Shaddai , finally, the Tetragrammaton. Human reason by voices coming from opposite points of the horizon gives us the formula of this philosophical doctrine. "The idea says progress," said Hartmann, appears mainly in the philosophy of Hegel for whom the universal life is that the gradual evolution and spontaneous idea "[3]. And a Catholic, Mr. Fornari, says his side: "This same hierarchy (of divine ideas) transported from the area in time and substance to the actions called progress" [4], p.46. </Ref>.
It is important to note that the cycles established by civil law in Palestine are organized on the type of these eons. Each world or cosmos responds to schemitta or week of years and seven eons represent a Yobel , Jubilee, so that the universe is expanding by septenaries spaces. This is the system of the Kabbalists, but we also found something in the Talmud, at least the idea of cosmic sevenfold. It also reads the treaty Sanhedrin, 97: "Only seven thousand years that God will renew his world." And R. Katthia asks this: "So what do the just for the thousand years that God uses to renew his world? . In another passage we find this proposal: "There existed a sequence of time before Genesis. [5] and the author of Anafim [6] at the book Principles ( Ikkarim ) by Joseph Albo said in commenting on the first of these texts: "We learn that the world indefinitely, it is built, destroyed and rebuilt again, otherwise we would read in the Talmud: After six thousand years of existence, the world will be destroyed. But since we do read anything like it must be concluded that the world will destroy a thousand years and then it will again be rebuilt. " Finally in Beresch rabba, R Hiya said: "In the beginning God created <i> ; this creation. The earth was formless and empty , that is the destruction of the world. And God said, Let there be light! that is the rebuilding. "
Schemittot and yobelim Jews are certainly very different from the idea that pagans were the movement of history: "From Natural and misleading analogies, we are told is in this regard, analogies drawn from the tale of human life, celestial revolutions, the periodic return of the seasons, sufficiently explain the Greeks and Romans are often represented the movement of history as circular or retrograde "[7]. Pagans indeed assimilated world history to that of the individual, the sky or nature; Jews instead approached the history of the human community, that is to say what that it is truly progressive in humanity. Civil institutions of the schemitta and Yobel , reconciliations that were continually between the Prophets and social palingenesis palingenesis land, while we prove that the Jewish perspective The world and humanity, these two great collective beings, if indeed there are two beings and not one have the same destiny. Moreover, since the progressive nature of biblical cosmogony successive does not doubt, there is no reason to suppose that in the hands of the Jewish Rabbis have demoted this point. Evidence to the contrary moreover do not default.
Millenarianism rabbinical Future World, we are always portrayed as an improvement on the current state and there is no reason to believe that this concerns only a single period or our planet only. We said earlier that according to R. Abhu, God said invariably every world he created before ours: It pleases me, others do not suit me! It does not indicate in a more naive the idea of progressivity General in creation. The author of Anafim, we [8] already quoted, written about it: "In every new world created after the destruction of the previous humanity was greater and more capable of perfection than that which it succeeded. That is precisely what is meant by the words attributed to God: "I am glad of this world, no other point I liked."
