Israel and Humanity - Philosophy of angelology in Hebrew tradition

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IV.

Philosophy of angelology in Hebrew tradition.

§ 1.

We must now study the struggles between the "Sarim </i> which the Bible offers several examples. We know that a similar idea is found in all mythologies where we see the gods constantly at war with each other. The perpetual antagonism of Ahura-Mazda and Ahriman offers us the type most characteristic of such myths. But angelology Hebrew, it is not God himself who is directly engaged in the struggle, Sarim alone therein or, when God intervenes, it is in accordance with designs monotheistic, to exercise its sovereign jurisdiction. We then see the angel of Israel, Michael, fight for his people or plead on his behalf before the Supreme Court. Sometimes a man, a saint, which is measured with the guardian angel of his enemy and he is the struggle that Jacob contended at Peniel, presumably with the guardian angel of Esau [1]

It also happens that these struggles between the angels have no political cause or national. For example, the rabbinic tradition shows us the heavenly spirits divided between [2] them about the creation of Adam and she means so, not as proper names, but As we have said, under the names of abstract Truth and Charity, Charity interceding for man to be created and requesting that the truth does not.

Anyway, it should not be seen in the struggles between the angels of simple metaphors, as if these wars being waged between them sarim symbolized only political and religious conflicts which the world is the theater. They are real to a dual perspective: first, in that each time a shock occurs down here in the material is that two trends, two opposing principles are already fighting in the world ideas. Secondly, it is true that angels are both ideas, and divine attributes, as we have stated, real entities, natural forces, giving the word a meaning broad enough to include the whole creation, it is true that every human and social struggle to match the spiritual battle between angels and committed sarim , the result, which follows, is that 'conflicts between humans and those whose social and physical realm offers us the spectacle, there is a parallel whose nature is probably hard to explain, but which nevertheless can not escape the attentive observer.

And it's not us who are trying for the first time this approximation of laws and revolutions, shapes and creatures of the social world and physical world. Hartmann gave us the exact formula and profound when he says: "It is clear that the opposition macrocosmic forces (natural struggles) is the kind of symbolic opposition microcosm (human wars) or, in other words, the trends are opposite to each other in the microcosm (genies, characters, ideas, human interests) are shown as elements of the macrocosm, in exactly the same meaning as microcosms opposed to each other produce precisely the reality of this struggle macrocosm [3]. But what the philosopher should add for completeness is that the struggle for achieving harmony and unity is an ideal and effective pre-existing unit somewhere and it was this primordial unity within which all these [4] trends harmony, they naturally seek, once divided, to come together to unite again. Elsewhere he writes [5]: "Once we accept the diversity of functions, since they are functions of a single being, the diversity of their ideal object must cause a conflict between them ideal for bringing in the agreement, and this fight becomes a real struggle ideal, because the ideas between which it undertakes are also objects of real acts of will. The same process takes place in the consciousness of the individual as a conflict between trends, desires, different conditions. If the fight occurs in spite of the unity of the soul in which these opposing desires are only the functions, it is perhaps even within the unconscious. The struggle of two passions in the soul of a man certainly not inferior in rage, relentlessly violent, fighting two hungry wolves. "

Another German philosopher Feuerbach, not less agree with our ideas when writing about the Christian monotheism: "Polytheism is more candid, as well as Christianity claims not distinguish individual signs in the Godhead his God still maintains the character of community. Just as the gods of Olympus have declared war on one another, so the various qualities of the Christian God had bloody battles among themselves. " So here is a thinker who treats different qualities of the Christian God to the gods of Olympus and that we recognize as the various qualities that can enter and have actually come into conflict.

There is a biblical-rabbinic doctrine on sarim perfectly justified our theological explanation. All around the Chariot Supreme ( the Merkaba ) that supports the divine glory, are sorted in hierarchical order, the seventy sarim or guardian angels and they are all together by the way they are grouped, the figure of a man, all eyes are fixed on the ineffable name, the Tetragrammaton, to draw both their own life and that of the people entrusted to them [6]. In this grand design that is itself a glory for the eternal religion which offers our meditations, we find precisely the idea of organization of various elements, the word from which derives the name [7] Char Supreme Merkaba being used in philosophical language of Jewish writers to indicate the composition into an organic whole of distinct parts [8]

§ 2.

After receiving the doctrinal elements, it remains to be summarized in a general theory. We have seen that Judaism El ohieme are thus Sarim , angels available to various destinies of peoples. It is therefore to find a superior idea where these two characters of El ohieme and Sarim combine and blend into one whole.

Here we encounter one of the fundamental points of theology in Hebrew what concerns its relationship with humanity. Now this idea, as it follows from the Bible and commentaries of the rabbis, seems to be this: God, considered not as efficient cause and its relationship with creation as substance but as the formal cause its relations with the world as Perfect God, we say, shape the universe, Fini, in his own image and likeness, that is to say that it shapes the creation of the model's attributes, Non-point, it goes without saying, with perfect unity in which these attributes exist in Him, but with distinctions and diversity essential when dealing with finite things. In the irradiation of its attributes, there is a gradation of forms or imitations highest up copies of the most intimate, immense scale, but all levels are connected by a wire that is other than unity Plan reproduced more or less perfectly in the various orders of creation where it combines constantly identity type with its many accomplishments. However, as there is order and analogy between these achievements, we might even say these incarnations of the divine ideas, there are therefore each one of subordination and every creature is the point of view where it is considered less than or Superior subject or dominating vis-à-vis people who are below or above it. [9] It is understandable that all things earthly have an sar , exactly as taught rabbinic doctrine, and the nations themselves have one on the map which is immediately above the human level. The sar or angel of every nation is the divine idea that this nation is to represent the world by viewing it in a concrete way in which the superior resume. Whichever way we consider this idea, however, sar is basically a single thing that God saw and a partially reflected in one of its elements, angelic or human consciences n 'is nothing other than divine ideas and the forming lower consciousness of those elements that are superior to the Consciousness of consciousness which is God. If so consciences are only made divine ideas, if they grow hierarchically, becoming more or less comprehensive, we see that men are called superior synthetic, because they sum up in themselves the conscience of a nation , period, or even humanity, as Moses example, say the Rabbis, was tantamount to "sixty myriads" of Israelites. Then it rises above this synthetic idea of men to that of a consciousness that embraces all and sees in all their faces, to speak the language of Ampere, the subjects they themselves n'entrevoient same as a confused, maybe it does begin to better understand what is in this notion of sarim applied to nationalities.

Some will object that the nationalities, the product of human endeavor, that being artificial creations, they escaped by the very act of subordination to the hierarchy that connects all parts of the world by putting everything in a report domination and dependence vis-à-vis others. But anthropology and sociology do not they show us that although they have the humanity factor, nations are no less products of spontaneous or external nature, all natural or the provisions of humanity in general and of each specific breed? The science is so far from regarding the body as purely artificial as ethnic scholars even consider the literatures of various peoples themselves as part of the natural history of each country. Will it be said that nations are collective bodies and we can not therefore treat them as real people, a nationality is an abstract and general idea for a group of men [10] living in certain specified circumstances where there is real substance year individuals who compose it? We will respond to it as eminent writers rationalists, borrowing in a way our spiritual language, do not hesitate to talk about the idea that each nation is, they call him the genius, spirit, soul these people. It would be more accurate to say the idea that people will form of God or, more simply, his god .

There is no doubt in fact, and the greatest thinkers agree that the entire civilization of a people is only the outward manifestation of his religious ideas. This shows what we say when we say that every nation has its sar , his sar is its soul, its spirit, as it determines its destiny and who imparts his own likeness. "A nation in its empirical reality," said Mariano, offers precisely what it has in its spiritual reality. And what we call empirical reality, especially the feeling is the divine now present consciousness and practice of a people and individuals and classes that compose [11], p . 341 </ref> ".

Other authors have assimilated positivist with the soul of the people due to the individual soul, but they involve the wrong one and the other in a series of manifestations of intellectual and moral life. We may be asked with astonishment if we pretend to see in this one as in the latter a true soul, a conscious individual substance and a real self? To this we answer, strange as it may seem that wherever there is unity or simply union, harmony or tendency to union, there must exist a common root, a focal point in which all are or should be united if we do not want to admit effect without a cause. So if each People first, then the whole of humanity, we discover that a unit or a tendency to unity, these features common presupposing a common nature, a unique strength and whose real the effect change, it is true, but eventually converge towards a larger unity and no less perfect.

We do not dispute that hereditary influences, issues of nutrition and hygiene, climate and customs have greatly contributed to the differences we observe between the national characters, but as soon as we admit also [12] at the root of all these differences a diversity of native breeds, we must also recognize the diverse ideas or primitive types, containing the germs of these dissimilar temperaments, and consequently forces of a different nature. Undoubtedly among peoples as well as individuals, there continuous action and reaction between the innate tendencies and external circumstances, but if it happens that they change to some extent the militancy, we can not yet say that 'they transform. The qualities, moral and intellectual abilities are hereditary: the Chinese, Malays, Jews to prove the obvious. One can not deny that there is the peoples better disposed than others to certain knowledge, certain arts and professions, without the geographical and historical conditions to which they have been submitted can account for these special provisions, evidence clear that nations are nothing more than simple mechanical or accidental aggregations of individuals. As to the changes caused by external circumstances, it is easy to realize that they never wear what is called the hallmarks of the breed. So scientists ethnologists have they not hesitate to conclude that nations were formed not by the work of chance or necessity, but thanks to a certain community of moral elements and belong to every people from the Initially, some special provisions which, in the course of centuries, become more active and more prominent.

Allow us to quote here a page of Renan seems to have been written to inform our theory sarim , as it conforms to our ideas "nations like France, Germany, England, said the illustrious thinker, cities such as Athens, Venice, Florence, Paris, act like people with character, a spirit, interest determined. We can reason with them as we reason a person. They like being alive, a secret instinct, a sense of their essence and their conservation, so that regardless of the political thinking of a nation, a city can be compared to the animal is [13] so ingenious and profound when it comes to saving his being or [14] to ensure the perpetuity of the species. It must be said of Church, religion, all the associations that constitute organic wholes that behave just like individuals. The greatest advance of modern physiology has been shown that plant life and that of the animal are a result of other lives harmoniously subordinated and lead to an unique concert. Life is the result of the vertebrate central individuality of each vertebra, a tree is the consonance of thousands of buds. Consciousness is also a result of millions of other consciousnesses consistent with a common goal. The cell is already a small concentration Personal: consonant several cells together form a second level of consciousness (human or animal), the conscience in the second degree is grouping form consciences in the third degree, awareness of towns, churches, nations produced by millions of people living in the same idea, with common feelings. For materialism, there is the atom that exists fully, but for the philosopher, the idealist, the cell is more than the atom, the individual is above the cell, the nation of Church, City are more than the individual, since individuals make sacrifices for those entities that looks gross realism as pure abstractions [15] ". Adding that what the German philosophers call Volksgeist , the soul of the people, the national spirit, far from being the product of various elements such as language and literature, beliefs and religious forms, laws and the kind of social and family life appears instead as the generative principle of these different manifestations of activity that maintains and develops according to its own genius and for a particular purpose.

It remains to consider what is the relationship of individuals with the group in which they are born to life as a body separate and distinct consciousnesses and how to reconcile the parties and the individuality of all. Obviously, we believe that the only real person is to be simple, indivisible and therefore immaterial, because the matter itself in its most intimate parts can be conceived as composed. But on the other hand, if each group material only exists because of force is immaterial who united the various parties and groups if [16] are themselves constituted by other groups smaller, it follows that the intangible is made. Where will we find the real person, therefore, the true unity? The difficulty disappears if one considers that, contrary to what happens in the field, unity, in the intangible increasing as the compound and that more groups are, the more the unit connects them is perfect because it affirms all the more because the multiplicity of parties bound together is greater. Therefore, the only true monad, both the simplest and most fruitful, is the universal unit located at both ends of the scale at the base of every potential and indefinite as the top as infinite and sovereign act, the bottom of the tiniest atom as the pinnacle of the immeasurable universe [17]

Hartmann seems to us about the nature of sar talks about Judaism when he wrote: "If the soul continues to lead the two parties between which is an artificially divided animal remains one, why should it cease to be indivisible in the plant in the bud, in which the crayfish claws stand out spontaneously? And why would it not even generate an animal bisexual fertile hermaphrodite itself? If the soul remains unconscious and an even identical to itself in the various fragments of an insect or strain and detached buds, why would it not also naturally separated insects that make up a republic bees or ants? Without being physically together, these organic beings not they act with the same concert that the various parts of a single organism? [18] ". Now it is easy to assimilate, as have some scholars, the animal economy to social economy and see that in the history of civilization of the people, development efforts involve either to the origin or in the march of progress, a central unit that coordinates the individual acts to achieve the goal. Without doubt, as when a man starts, it can not account for the inner process that determined the movement, even in the evolution of nations, there to [19] the observer in many ways mysterious, but something analogous to the process resolvent of biology where the elements are prepared long before, even as production is instantaneous, and its cause is not proportionate to the Indeed, the latter being, at least in appearance, much bigger than this.

But if that be different people, so various that are manifestations of social progress, unity of nations is no less real, and this unity, humanity, the earthly Adam, as the unity of divine ideas, is the Logos, the world intelligible, Adam divine theosophy.

§ 3.

It will be useful now to embrace a glance the progress.

Everything we have said sarim or angels coordinates perfectly with what has been previously exposed to the Indian gods. If a scale, God descends to the last confines of creation, it is natural that every human being, according to his place, playing the role of El- ohieme in relation to those over whom they are placed and we understand that God, considered the source of these scattered forces, also called El- ohieme , a name that embraces all. A fortiori, if one looks separately, outside of its fumes, is do we just call it Eloh El-ohieme , the God of gods, or because the looks like their unity and their place ( Makom ), either because it is the ultimate Being, the Supreme Monad, which all depend.

It is therefore not surprising that we have restored the pagan deities as containing all a bit of truth, since, as the Bible says [20], divine ideas are distributed between nations that make up humanity, peoples sharing materially Adam's body and soul are mere fractions spare his. The consequence is that the religious movement tends to unity, that is to say, the full realization of the divine idea, while the evolution of nations is forcing them to close because they are members Mostly the first man, the human kind, as the various religious views are only the fragmentation of the idea of God. [21] Hence, the functions conferred on Israel to synthesize necessary religious assimilating all ideas everywhere homogeneous, to restore the religious unity of humankind and also that his unit in the social field. Hebraism is exactly in the metaphysical and religious, what happened, according to Thiele, in historical order. It says in effect that the religion of the tribe is the product of various cults of families and the religion of the nation is in turn the synthesis of those tribes. Finally, the national cults give rise to religious communions which foreigners are admitted as proselytes and they frankly universal religions. Certainly, families having agglomerated tribal nations and tribes, we understand the historical transition from one form of worship to another, but how to explain the transformation of a national religion in universal religion outside the secret instinct pushes the various national groups to the formation of a higher humanity? This is precisely the goal toward which Hebraism he continues to pursue the attainment of religious synthesis of humanity.

Christianity, despite its claims to universalism, does not this ideal it indeed requires factors such as the nationalities themselves, while the Christian religion, far from promoting their development, rather to their deletion. It has also formed too early to be the final religion of human kind that requires the prior development of various national genius. The real Christianity or messianism can arise when different people have completely united peacefully achieved progress in first developing humanitarian simultaneously their respective ethnic qualities. The Roman Empire, which suppressed the autonomy of nations by including them under its administrative jurisdiction, had operated as a unit too dummy had nothing in common with the ideal Hebrew, he was nevertheless, at its way, like Christianity, an attempt to universalism. The rabbis, including Maimonides and Judah Halevi, have so decided and they tell us there so that every time a messianic aspiration corresponding to the universal trend that continues to work as part of humanity. And as was the basis for the construction of large building, God has provided people constituting a International , Israel, Jews have become since their dispersal [22] a few Greeks , Persians or Egyptians - and it may be said of modern times - without ever ceasing to be Jews though.

However, like primitive man was found split, each member carrying with him a fraction of the intellectual life, as God has distributed among its rays created intelligences, each part of humanity and reflecting a particular radius, it Consequently, the total household may be composed by the beam whole human, meaning that all sarim , to speak the language of Hebrew theosophy, must contribute to this work. This explains the raising or lowering of any sar , according to the conduct of the people entrusted to his care. When a divine idea is poorly represented by the people to whom it is drawn into sharing its intrinsic value is altered in any way, because, as Scripture says, the influence of human actions can point to God, but its influence in the world, the Shekina , which each nation is its sar particular, it is obscured.

The struggles between sarim are not something that the struggle of principles, cultures, ideas and beliefs, as long as all this fails to blend, to reproduce the perfect unity, in which everything exists in God, or that such antagonism occurs only in the intellectual sphere, or it explodes outwardly in wars and competition of any kind that divide peoples.

Feuerbach our city has taken the analogy between the wars of the gods of ancient polytheism and theological disputes about the nature of God and there is no doubt that discussions between God and men or between angels themselves same, including rabbinic books talking, do not represent the struggle the polemos ideas, principles, forces in the universe, the latter reflecting the internal discourse of divine intelligence, s' it is allowed to speak, the Logos who, like all discourse, of contradictions reconciled. Thus the angels are linked to the Logos, they are only the events, ideal when it comes to the Divine Spirit, but what is real for the beings emanating from Him, each other and being connected, we may even say identical to each other, according to the principle that consciences are not in God ideas.

This also explains the position that sarim occupy [23] in the Merkaba , the divine chariot, and the attitude they observe , eyes fixed on the Tetragrammaton, and their abstract names of Charity, Truth, and similarly abstract designations middat addin and middat Rahamim , literally Attribute of Justice and Attribute clemency, used in the dialogues divine finally made the call to all forces already created at the time of creation of man himself, whose nature is precisely to form a microcosm, that is to say summarize them all.

It is true that if the angels or lesser deities are connected with divine attributes of polytheism, as we have already noticed, had no other origin, its original form was the worship of personified attributes. This was the first degree by which passed the design of the divine unity before transforming into a true polytheism. Varuna, which in some hymns of the Vedas, is one of the names of the supreme and only deity, later became the king of his companions, that is to say that absolute unity takes the form of a supremacy. In Judaism we find this character as God of gods, but it does not mean anything but the unity of the manifold, ie an absolute unit and the name of El- ohieme has only relative value as a synonym forces . The error is therefore not polytheistic as to admit El ohieme that do not admit all or to worship separately, instead of recognizing their unity. In the Vedas, the two concepts exist here and there and mingle, that of a God above other gods and that of the divine unity or rather the simple logic value of these so-called deities personifying attributes . "The gods have cooperated in the work of Varuna, said a hymn of the Rig Veda. I am the king of my companions, I am King Varuna: I live in all the vital forces ... I am Indra and Varuna.

Similarly in the Bible the name of God, the Tetragrammaton, is given to the angel and the name of each angel is given to God. In the story of Balaam [24], sometimes it is God who gives him permission to go with Balak's messengers, and sometimes the angel who, in identical terms, it repeated the same authorization. The names of angels all termination El God is in them, Adonai bam , say the Psalms and the rabbis for their part say that every angel is on his heart a tablet on [25] which God's name is engraved. And it is true, as we have argued, that God is for all of creation that each angel is a part of creation, for one example of the heavenly bodies, it follows that the angels come and are summarized in God himself.

The Rabbis make the teaching of divine names a closely guarded secret and the Essenes do the same for what they call the names of angels. Philo himself, agreeing in this with the Pentateuch, called the Logos prophoricos which is equivalent to the Shekina and talmudists malkouth Kabbalah, the first of the angels, the archangel. And what are angels Philo? It is generally recognized in them the ideas same of Plato, with the difference that they are personified. This one brings the Sadducees is even more conclusive. They would have regarded the angels as virtues inseparable from God, who appeared on earth under different names, depending on the various functions they were called upon to perform here, while remaining connected to their source as the sun rays. This report so intimate with God is probably the cause of defending the appointment of the angels that we find among the rabbis and perhaps even in the Bible. What is certain is that we see in Scripture of angels fill different roles in various circumstances without any special name for them is assigned. It is unlikely that this is just a gap, if one takes into account the trend of biblical times to decorate everything sounding names that drew the attention and commanded respect.

The fact is all the more remarkable that we see repeatedly saints which angels appear inquire about their name, like that of Moses inquired of God, and the following response was always something elusive mysterious and suggesting the existence of a name you want to hide. "Why," the angel said to Jacob, you ask my name? And he blessed him there [26] ". Manoah his question: "What is your name, so we were going you glory, when your words come?" The angel gets a similar response: "Why do you want to know my name? [27] ". And the sacred writer adds here a short observation seems significant: vehou pélhi , says the "gold [28] This name was mysterious." It seems that the answer given by God to Moses in Exodus is similar to it. Beside the highly metaphysical sense that this famous phrase: "I am the one, and thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel: He who has sent me to you [29] 'No' would it not one of those sets of words which occur frequently in the Bible, the words ehie ascher ehie , meaning quite simply: who I am " that is to say: "Do not give much trouble to find my name whatsoever, what matters it is to fulfill my mission."

We read, indeed, in the Talmud, the Israelites brought back from exile the names of angels, however, this does not seem to mean the Angels did not have names before, but rather that the names n ' were written anywhere and they were only given to a secret oral teaching and the Israelites carried with them on their return. The angel is unspeakable, so there is some point of resemblance to God himself, whose August name was not commenting. Modern critics, such as M. Havet, who also deny the existence of any angelology among the ancient Hebrews, recognize that even in the Pentateuch and the book of Judges, heavenly messengers are not separate beings God himself and serve it, and they have been represented since then but mere appearances by which it manifests itself and merge with Him, just as if they called the flash of lightning the messenger [30].

But when the critics are wrong, in our opinion, is when they believe they discover a difference in the way of conceiving the angels in the Pentateuch and the Judges on the one hand, and the other in the books of Samuel and Kings, angels become in these last works of individuals or distinct individuals. The truth is that this dual nature is everywhere, since the angels, as we have explained, are each showing an awareness of elements of the divine consciousness. [31]

References

  1. Genesis, XXXII, 24-30.
  2. Page 252
  3. The world, the order from the war and contrast of strengths, Philos Review, February 1877, p. 153.
  4. Page 253
  5. Philosophy of the Unconscious, Volume II, p.197.
  6. See Schaar Ora Tifereth
  7. Page 254
  8. This is the root רכב racab to hiphil הרכיב apud rabbinos ; componore, conjungere, hence נשמים מורכבים corporation composite concreta, mixta ( Editors note ).
  9. Page 255
  10. Page 256
  11. Cattolicismo civiltà e
  12. Page 257
  13. knows that in the book of Daniel empires and kingdoms are symbolized by animals. The rabbis also said: "There is a heaven which is called Israel" חיה אחת יש ברקיע ששמה ישראל
  14. Page 258
  15. Dialogues and philosophical fragments, p. 89.
  16. Page 259
  17. is what the Kabbalists expressed by the double yud, yud tattaa and Yod Illa
  18. Philosophy of the unconscious , Volume II, p. 195.
  19. Page 260
  20. Deuteronomy, XXXII, 8
  21. Page 261
  22. Page 262
  23. Page 263
  24. Numbers, XXII
  25. Page 264
  26. Genesis, XXXII, 29
  27. Judges, XIII, 17-18
  28. Page 265
  29. Exodus III, 14
  30. V. HAVET Christianity and its origins , t. III, p.162.
  31. Page 266