Israel and Humanity - The question of original monotheism
V.
The question of primitive monotheism.
§ 1.
Not only the rabbis and the Bible before them which, by exposing one hand institutions Hebrew and the other those of the Gentiles, established, according to similarities in doctrines, traditions and practices, that the one God was known outside Israel. The philosopher Proclus said that humanity on two parallel tracks, religion and science, and that all religions boil down to one whose elements can be determined and known origin. All the work of scientists involved in the study of comparative religions tend to prove more and more this fundamental unity.
With regard particularly Judaism, the science of the eighteenth century was split in two schools, that of Mosheim, who argued that the purpose of the orders was to remove as many tiles as possible the ideas and the Hebrew people pagan customs, and that of Spencer, who claimed that the institutions of Moses imitation of the Gentiles dominates the contrary intent. We believe, for us, as points of contact and deep differences can be in turn reported and that we must seek the reason in the way the pagan world was more or less deviated from the spirit and traditions of the original revelation. Thus traces of the knowledge of God among the Gentiles vary according to time and the races and if we insist on their undeniable presence among different peoples, if we ask the history and archeology confirm our assumptions, if Not that the universalistic tendency of Judaism can not be found without it, is that it is a fact of considerable importance for the truth of revelation and Hebrew for the future of monotheism in general.
It has long argued that humanity, through a series of gradual steps, rose slowly from the most rudimentary notions of religion to the highest conceptions were excluded and any idea of perfection to their origins. Today the question no longer seems definitively resolved and can boldly say that the former is highly rationalistic dogmatism [1] shaken. Scientists do not hesitate completely independent in the presence of numerous facts and eloquent in monotheism to recognize the first form of religion that humanity has ever known. We also wondered if indeed the human mind and the feeling of religious parties are so low and primitive beliefs do not have contained the seeds as you like dark, subsequent developments. In the gross weight of the oldest superstitions, we should be able to discover, vaguely comic already elegantly simple religion which, in past centuries, is himself the human race. It is not at all certain that the savage sees the fetish as a god himself and he has the instinct that a mysterious power surrounding the envelope, dominates; he feels in his heart, He sees in his obscure reason, his eyes never discover anywhere, He finds a way to enclose a link to materialize for the return to human scale and keep it handy. His painstaking and fruitless efforts attest to the latent action of the great idea that lives in the secret of his being and it manifests by disfiguring.
Some scholars have even gone too far in this direction when, not content to show that all men are religious in their way, they even argued that all peoples without exception admit, over the spirits and other supernatural powers, a supreme god, as if they existed in monotheism, not as vague memory of a primitive state, but already restored and in full development. "Is not this something worth knowing, also known as Max Müller, before the separation of the Aryan race, before the existence of Sanskrit, Latin and Greek before the Vedic gods do adored and there was a sanctuary of Zeus in the middle of the sacred oaks of Dodona, one has found a supreme deity, that he was given a name, it has been invoked by the ancestors of our race and that it has invoked a name that has never been surpassed by any other name? [2] ".
Recent discoveries have given the certainty that in the popular superstitions of ancient Egypt was hiding the belief in a single intelligence and supreme, instructing judge of the universe and humans in the afterlife and was able to convince the religion of the Aryans first has always been far superior to Hinduism and Greek polytheism which are derived. [3] An inspiration monotheistic remarkably pure and elevated circulating through the Vedas, Maury said. Soma, Agni, Indra, Varouma are for old Aryan singers that different manifestations of a single principle, and this sovereign god, inaccessible in its essence, unnamed as endless, is the father of all that is earth and sky, gods and men [4] ". The author claims that even primitive monotheism taught by the ancient Aryans was a kind of pantheistic naturalism, the prototype of which we find in the Vedas, that is to say not monotheism or Karaite antithéosophique, but monotheism emanationist of Kabbalah Hebrew which we later discovered a trace of the Greeks, not only in the sovereignty of which Jupiter is invested, but especially in the design of Fate superior even to Jupiter. Those who do not admit that monotheism was the original form of religion of humanity have seen at least in this sense of fatalism one presentiment of pure monotheism, without considering a presentiment that translates a form of religion so clear, so clear, so completely outside the general system may well be regarded as a stepping-stone, but on condition, however, have previously been the last stone of the old building.
Such is the monotheism of mankind including that of Israel may not differ essentially without condemning themselves to isolation and powerlessness and without also condemning the divine wisdom that would have human tendencies in an insoluble contradiction. Going back as far as possible in the past, we no longer find any trace of pantheism, and indeed the idea of creation is similarly lacking. The absence of this latter idea at the same time as the pantheistic concept thus excludes the time all that resembles either Christian conceptions, from Spinoza. There remains the assumption that the primitive monotheism of mankind was that of Jewish theosophy.
The problem posed here and there where we see the Vedas each particular god to turn the character of supreme god appears as a phase transition between primitive monotheism and polytheism decadence. The views of critics who saw it as a souvenir of the old monotheistic creed seems more justified than interpreting this form of adoration of God as an additional special tribute to the [5] faithful in one-interested. Even when there would be a clever tactic as a cult of worshipers, this would be another proof that no individual was considered to have god in itself the fullness of the Godhead. If then the notion of a supreme god existed despite this, he must seek the origin only in the previous belief and persistent superior power to various gods and was the common attribute of all and not the exclusive privilege one of them. It should be added that in the polytheistic system, each god has necessarily under his rule a more or less of the kind which it is the undisputed king, so that by addressing him in a particular case the true n has to fear any possibility of rivalry between the different deities whose specialties are clearly established. Such a system is absurd without question when one considers the mutual dependency that links into an organic whole the various parts of the universe, but well explained by the vague notion of survival of a divine unity meeting unity of creation.
We wanted to oppose this hypothesis dualism and polytheism of the Aryans which emerged from the remotest antiquity. But we have not thought about that in our system, this idea of a higher power, a heavenly king whose side were grouped with other deities is quite natural in an age which, according to us, the passage deviations from pure monotheism polytheism. As for India, it is arbitrary to claim, as we did, that the Aryan Polytheism took the form is pantheistic. Should be established, according to the earliest records, the successor to polytheism pantheism is not the case and the ancient monuments of religious thought show rather than a vague belief in the unity then coexisted with the idea of plurality of gods. And if, as we believe such a design is consistent in substance with that of Judaism, do not we see that it bridges the chasm is widening between thought and religion Aryan Semitic religion?
§ 2o.
Some critics argue that the monotheistic idea is less straightforward than the polytheistic conception and thus, the law of religious evolution is a gradual shift from basic lower [6] to higher beliefs, polytheism has been pre-monotheism. But they do not think it is not necessary to have understood the unity of the universe to imagine a single cause. The wild one teacher assigned to the small corner of the world where his limited knowledge contain all created things is monotheistic in its way.
The law to which it refers is that true and constant during the period of evolution, at such times as it historical. At the beginning of humanity, we must assume the contrary-born necessarily the other laws, or if one prefers, the existence of other phenomena resulting from various conditions of things. So rationalists themselves apart in history of our race, the time of the spontaneity of thought and we kept saying that the first identified for us with what the different churches call in their theological language, Revelation. However, in times of spontaneity, humanity was ready to do many things she was then unable to periods of reflection, without any research, without knowledge or prior arrangement, she made discoveries thrown bases, sowed the seeds of what would exist in the future, in a word, she found a creative genius who, in future, seems exhausted. Why have there not been the same for the religious idea? Why humanity, by a burst of spontaneity or inspiration, would she not have the first intuition of monotheism? This one, well understood at the outset, did nothing to contradict the general law of evolution, and we see that between rationalism and orthodox Hebrew, there is a difference of words , calling Judaism revelation what scientists describe as rationalist spontaneity . It seems only natural that polytheism has appeared in the second place, when the sight of the confused and synthetic early gave way to the analytical study of things and the distinction of the parts.
It was pointed out, it is true that in the beginning of mythical time before Abraham, not a word of the Bible tells us about the outbreak of polytheism. But they forget that the sacred writers do not explain usually causes and origins, unless they are deemed necessary for the purpose and essentially religious practice they pursue. The story of creation itself, said the rabbis, have been omitted, if a goal was eminently practical [7] motivated this story. Moreover, we saw that the verse of Genesis, which says that at the time of Enos "began to invoke the name of the Lord," said fact, according to Midrash, how we introduced polytheism giving the name of God to false gods.
M. de Quatre hoping to find in the Bible traces of a primitive polytheism argued that "the plural Elohim, the genealogies of the antediluvian patriarchs, the role attributed to the son of God, are proof of polytheistic background which has arisen, to, a mysterious moment, the first monotheism which was to become the true religion of humanity. But that proves for the prior existence of polytheism that plural Elohim? Do we not find the same pages as the Tetragrammaton, the perfect unit, and the singular El Shaddai or El? The only use of the plural Elohim in the monotheistic sense proves that monotheism did not prevail as a result of an evolution of the idea polytheistic, because in that case we held that the word conservation was a serious danger. We must admit that what appears to be a polytheist terminology has been included in any other way and perhaps it would be more fair to see, instead of a residue of the old polytheistic religion, the pretext that did fall into this error when you start to take literally the plurality of symbols which had served the first monotheists in their imagery and poetic, to bring their unit designs. The very name of Elokim nai [8] indicates a higher unity in which these son of God are the fumes and, consequently, the coexistence of monotheism. Numina appointment , said the ancients. We see a similar phenomenon occur at the birth of Christianity, again the image is taken for reality.
We do not want to look that we accuse of bias in Jewish monotheism a hidden side or symbolic. Authors little sympathy for the suspects Kabbalah have the same findings as we do. "When they originally said Larroque, pagan myths and symbols were only in their coarse bark, it was not difficult to philosophers such as neo-Platonists to find meaning and ideas more or less reasonable. This admission makes criticism Neoplatonists [9] the importance that others refused them as faithful representatives of the thoughts of former founders of religions and are worth studying in more detail now mythology which they claimed to be the true interpreters,
