PhilosopherJay

Hi No Robots,

Thank you for bringing up this material on the fascinating philosopher Constantin Brunner.

Brunner seems to be following in a long line of philosophers, starting with Philo who saw their own ideology reflected in the Torah. It is doubtful that the writers and editors of the Torah would be aware of Aristotle and his debate with Plato and the Greek pre-Socratics on the nature of being. Likewise, only through mistranslantion and misunderstanding do we get diverse writers from diverse cultures saying the same mystical propositions.

There is no indication that the writers of the Torah (not anybody named Moses) were ever engaged in a serious dialogue or discussion on the nature of being as the ancient Greek philosophers were or made pronouncements on it.

The writers of the Torah imagined their God as a powerful old magician who lived in the sky above the earth, which you could reach by walking up a mountain for a few days.

Note in the prohibition against idolatry, there is no concept of there being one God. In fact, idolatry is specifically forbidden because there are other Gods that are different from the specific Hebrew God-Man who brought them out of Egypt.

The Lord, who was imagined as a living man, was jealous and would hurt your children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren if you did not obey him. On the other hand he would love you a long time (the thousandth generation is just an expression that meant a very long time (kind of like the expression, "I'll give you a million kisses". It doesn't mean I will give you a million kisses, just that I will kiss you a lot.)

In this section of the Torah, there is a distinct non-separation between Moses and God. Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt - God led the Hebrews out of Israel. God gave the laws from Mount Sinai, Moses gave the laws from Mount Sinai. God can be seen as simply a title given to Moses.

Please remember that no records on human longevity was kept in those days. So if you saw an old man and he told you that he was 70, 150, 300, or 900 years old, you would have no way of knowing if he was telling the truth. If he told you that he was a God that led your people out of Egypt a couple of generations ago, you would have no way of telling that he wasn't.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

No Robots

The Mosaic principle of Absolute Being is not derived from Greek thought. Each civilization arrived at this insight independently. On this, see Spirituality and Dialectics by Anthony E. Mansueto and Maggie Mansueto (p. 75):

In all of the principal civilizational centers the basic process leading up to these breakthroughs was, furthermore, the same. First there was a gradual process of rationalization. This process is most apparent in Greece, where we can trace a step by step movement from Homer, for whom the gods are essentially characters in a story, superhuman perhaps, but no less individuals with distinct personalities, through Hesiod, for whom they have become personified natural forces, the natural philosophers (Thales, Anaximenes, Heraclitus) for whom anthropomorphic gods have given way to abstract natural forces (water, air, fire) fire), and finally Pythagoras and the post-Pythagorean philosophers (Xenophanes, Anaximander) who describe the first principle in mathematical terms (the Infinite, the One, etc.).

In Israel, similarly, we see a movement from the still largely anthropomorphic 'el yahwi sabaoth yisrael, to the God revealed in Exodus 3:13ff, who tells Moses that His name is eyeh asher. Eyeh is the imperfect indicative form of the verb "to be" indicating that this God is Being itself, acting still.

In the same passage we also find the revelation of the name (YHWH), which is the causative form of the verb "to be," and points even more clearly to recognition of God as the power of Being as such.

This same process of rationalization can be traced in India and China as well.

I disagree with Mansueto's progressivist orientation. In my view, the pure insight is at the beginning, with Homer among the Greeks, and with Moses among the Jews. The abstract principle is then subject to interpretation, for better or worse, by those who follow. In each civilization, there is a degradation of the abstract principle into a crude popular materialism. At the same time, though, there arise geniuses who properly understand and develop the abstract principle. Among the Greeks, it is Socrates who represents the high point of Homeric thought; and it is Christ who brings the Mosaic insight to its highest pitch of perfection. For more on this, see my review of Martin Rodan's book on cultural history.

kcdad

throughout the Bible when "calls" humans they respond "I am here, Lord". This answer indicates a presence in time and space... here, at this specific time. God's response to Moses is simply: I am. The eternal universal present tense. For me, the best translation of this Hebrew phrase is "existence". God is. NOT God is this or that, here or there, now or then... God just is.

No Robots

Here are some reflections on this subject:

If one were to substitute the word “Being” for “Lord” throughout the Bible, this would make for some startlingly fresh translations. Just to mention one, the central Jewish creed, the Shema, which is often translated as “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one,” (Deut. 6:1) would now read as, “Hear O Israel, Being is our God, Being is one.” In other words, rather than religion being the impetus for divisions between people and inciting hostilities among them based upon differences, this creed emphasizes the unity, not only among and between peoples, but with the entirety of creation.

--"Richard Dawkins: Vox Populi" / Jason Giannetti. In Journal of Liberal Religion, v.8 no. 1.
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Let us call our religion YAHVISM. It is no new-fangled name, it is simply the name by which our faith was called and cherished by our forefathers, who designated it as YIRATH YAHVE, the religion of Yahve. It is the fittest of all possible names for our religion. It is the expression of our cardinal beliefs and the profoundest ideas of our faith. Under this name we adore God as Eternal and Infinite Existence, as the source of all being.

--Yahvism: And Other Discourses / Adolph Moses, p. 9-10.
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It is possible that in the Hebrew language, of which we have now but a slight knowledge, the Tetragrammaton, in the way it was pronounced, conveyed the meaning of "absolute existence."

--Guide for the Perplexed / Maimonides, p. 215.
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Beyond the sheer being of Being we can know nothing of Being except in the existential encounter. But what we learn in the existential encounter is not additional information about Being, but rather its meaning for us. First of all, this is, for some at least, the knowledge that Being is our God, that is, that Being is that to which we owe all and which rightfully claims from us our whole devotion.

--Chapter 11: H. Richard and Reinhold Niebuhr. In Living Options in Protestant Theology / John B. Cobb, Jr.
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And here the lesson of the Spinozistic philosophy, the lesson of the Scriptures, as far as we can undertand both, is that Jews, like all other men, should absorb themselves in the eternal life; and that they should live and die for the glory of the living God. Under the aspect of eternity there is no anti-Semitism, there is no Jewish problem, there is no evil.

Hear 0 Israel! Eternal Being is our God, Eternal Being is One!

--"Spinoza and the Jewish Tradition" / Ginzburg, Benjamin. In The Menorah Journal, Vol . 13, No. 1 (February 1927), p. 19.
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Once we understand that the One in Whom all else exists is the very same One Who awakens within each of us, then what follows is Adonai Echad, "the Eternal Being is One." Rashi, the great commentator of the eleventh century, translated the Sh'ma: "Listen, Israel, when yod-hay-vav-hay is truly our God, then yod-hay-vav-hay is One." This realization of the state of Oneness, which arises through contemplation and meditation, is common to mystics of all traditions. In expressing the unique Jewish path toward that Universal, the Sh'ma can be seen not only as a defining statement of our religion, but also as an authentic spiritual realization.

--"Life at its highest" / Ted Falcon
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Radical monotheism dethrones all absolutes short of the principle of being itself. At the same time it reverences every relative existent.

--Radical Monotheism and Western Culture: With Supplementary Essays by Helmut Richard Niebuhr, p. 37.
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[A]ll being, beingness, everything that is, is God, and it is all one. This is RADICAL UNITARIANISM. There is no me, no you, no microphone, no loudspeaker, no Sunday afternoon, it is all God. In a similar way as the Hindu tradition tells us that everything we sense is MAYA, is only a veil, so too, the Jewish tradition teaches us – in the words of the Eighteenth Century Rabbi Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl, “What is the world? The world is God, wrapped in robes of God, so as to appear to be material. And who are we? We too are God, wrapped in robes of God, and our task is to unwrap the robes and discover that we and all the world are God.”

--from here

Mageth

Well, it's nice to see some deep thinkers have come to those conclusions, I suppose. The unfortunate truth, however, is that the vast majority of Bible-Followers of various persuasions are not deep-thinkers and don't, or even won't, come anywhere near the ideals expressed by "radical monotheism", "radical unitarianism", and the like.

ApostateAbe

Look at the context of the first time God says it:

Then Moses said to God, "Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, `The God of your fathers has sent me to you.' Now they may say to me, `What is His name?' What shall I say to them?" God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM"; and He said, "Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, `I AM has sent me to you.' "

There is nothing profound about it. It is a tautology, and I think it expresses the authoritarian nature of God. He doesn't need a name, because he is either by far the most powerful god there is or he is the only god there is. He needs a name only if he needs to be identified out of a set of gods, if he is one among many. Almost all of the surrounding religions were polytheistic, or at least the adherents of a single god gave other gods respect. Not so for Judaism. "I AM" (YHWH) is meant to express the exclusiveness of the god of Judaism.

ApostateAbe

I read the thread, and it is a bit strange how many high-brow and philosophical explanations are given for something about people who were just beginning to be civilized. To me, the true explanation seems almost obvious on the face. You don't need obscure translations and you don't need a deep understanding of ancient Jewish ontological theology. The people who wrote it and believed it did so with a basic social agenda behind it, and it isn't hard to figure out what that agenda is.

Petergdi

This isn't fair or reasonable. The Torah as we have it is either a creation of an aniconic culture or the creator of an aniconic culture.


Yes, they wanted Hebrews to worship the one true God. And they wanted to tell their national story in such a way as to convince their nation that they had been the special people of the one God from the start, but had had frequent lapses into idolatry.

No Robots

Correct. That is what the doctrine of election is about: the difference in nature between spiritual thinkers and the rest of mankind.

No Robots

It is precisely civilization itself that allows genius to flourish. It is completely understandable that the first flourishing of civilization would see the first expression of genius.