Israel and Humanity - The man in God's image and miniture of the universe

 Share 

CHAPTER TWO

THE IDEA OF MAN IN JUDAISM

HUMAN DIGNITY

I.

The man God's image and miniature of the universe.

If Judaism was the only religion from antiquity to deal with the origin and early history of all mankind, we can also say that it is not religion or philosophy that has pushed him further than respect for the dignity of man, and even the human form. The value of it and holiness inspired several doctrines all the more expressive than the other.

We have seen that for the rabbis all souls were contained in that of Adam. They even go so far as to penetrate the human form in the spiritual world to compose the heavenly man that all souls are shaping: "Know that there is a deposit at the top called the body > ( guf) , in which are contained all the souls destined to live according to what the doctors were taught the son of David will not come until all the souls who are in guf have finished off the earth. " Yet this is precisely deposit celestial shape, size and all members of a real man, so he called guf (body) Selah But what do we need these doctrines singular, since we see that the Bible tells us God's revelations, always does occur in human form? The man, in Genesis, appears not only as the most perfect creature because of its place in the order of creation, but it is proclaimed in so many words image and likeness of God. It is true that Moses seems to be not alone in declaring that man is created in the image of God. Others came after him, but probably unrelated to his teachings, said something similar. But the pagans by raising the dignity of man heard about his attitude, his ability to walk upright, while animals have their heads tilted down and they took care not to its inner nature, its spirit, of his moral being. The resemblance between man and God is contrary to Moses from a much higher degree. We recognize that in the eyes of some critics of the Pentateuch narratives offer simple anthropomorphism, God having been conceived by the sacred writer in bodily form to equal pleasure, while for other scholars, he is in the mind of Moses a purely spiritual resemblance. We believe, in our opinion, that the true meaning of biblical stories should be sought in the system of Kabbalists who do not separate the physical likeness of the spiritual likeness, nor do they separate the soul from the body, and the declaration Moses that man is created in the image of God and concern as well as one another.

Not that the Hebrew Theosophists have never thought to attribute to God no corporeality, they would be inclined to deny it even in creatures, at least in the sense that the word is used commonly. But they believe that the body, too, is made in the image of God in the same direction they believe is the image of the soul or spirit that is taking shape physically by his own nature; that is to say to them that there is no force or function, no form, no qualification in the human body are one embodiment, in the matter, abilities, strengths, virtues corresponding to the Divine Being. There is no need to add that the same is true for moral and intellectual faculties, for life and functions as well as thought and its manifestations are modeled after the supreme archetype of all things.

Whatever indeed how to understand the likeness of God proclaimed by Moses, the eminent dignity of man is nonetheless relieved and consequences of this doctrine are no less valuable. But in Judaism, man is not only created in the image of God he is still considered a microcosm, that is to say, as a summary of the universe. This idea seems to have rabbinical its foundations in Scripture. The place occupied by humans, the latest addition to the creation and thus its synthetic nature, the word "Let us make man" sent by one commentator to all the forces of the universe, which in theological language of the Rabbis is an invitation to the angels to cooperate in the creation of Adam, precisely because it is in him that these forces are summed up, while it gives us to believe that this concept is not foreign to the Bible. We have here a confirmation of the idea that we made angels or El ohieme , partial personifications of virtues or divine ideas. This conception of man is found elsewhere in antiquity: "It's a great theory, says a scientist, that of Aristotle who, considering the man as the highest term of the organic series, see united in himself the nature of all beings inferior plants (nutrition, life reget) and animal (sensation, movement, desire, sensitive life). What distinguishes it is the rational soul ".

In terms that seem to recall the letter phraseology rabbinic, modern science is expressed in an even more conclusive: "We admitted, says Leard, that the individual was the product of a cooperative society of laws General ". And another scholar wrote: "The human development in the womb is like the development of the whole animal world, beginning with the simple cell to the wonderful perfection of man. If we could interpret it in all its phases the most minimal, it would be the key to the natural history, origin and development of life on our planet. Repeat here the nature in miniature and in the space of a few months these major developments and those developments whose accomplishment has required millions of ages ". Thus, even to the point of view of contemporary science, forms of subalterns lower creatures are like testing that is preparing to make his masterpiece who is the man, and the human body appears finally as the summary, the abstract of the entire animal kingdom. "Nature, says the same author, performing separately the elements that constitute the idea of the perfect individual, faithfully reproduces the hierarchy of the divine idea of creation"

Man, God's image and summary of the universe, has a nobility for Judaism, an incomparable greatness, and when you consider that according to their traditions and sacred texts, these sublime prerogatives do not belong to only Jews, but to pagans and barbarians also, we wonder in amazement how a religion of four thousand years old could teach such doctrines and how it is possible to doubt that even after its universal aspirations.