Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Jewish Pantheism

Found this on Wikipedia's article on pantheism:
Biblical Judaism asserts the origin of the Universe was brought forth by the Torah law of nature. Thus the original Torah is found not within the writing of Moshe, but within nature itself. "Reading" the Torah of nature is seen as equivalent to "reading" the Torah of revelation and theoretically will agree with one another in the end [as illustrated for example in the discovery of the Big Bang in 1965]. Rabbinical Orthodoxy viewing this as a discrepancy, in order to maintain the written Torah above that given first in nature, has argued that written Torah preceded creation, and it was from the written Torah that God "spoke" creation. A view rejected by Biblical Pantheists.

Maimonides, though Orthodox, reflected the sentiment that the Torah of nature and the Torah of scripture were equivalent and found its logic inescapable, in his comments on the reconciliation of science with scripture.

Not sure what the bit about the Big Bang refers to (I know what the Big Bang is, and I can guess how it relates to Torah, but it's not a theory I've seen before), and I'm disappointed but unsurprised by the gross retconning by "Rabbinical Orthodoxy", but in general I love this view of connection between religion and science. This is what I've always believed, and how I came to my faith.

Also love this description of Hindu pantheism: "As the sun has rays of light which emanate from the same source, the same holds true for the multifaceted aspects of God emanating from Brahman, like many colors of the same prism."

1 comment:

  1. See, for example: http://www.levity.com/alchemy/luria.html for comparison of Big Bang to the contraction of the Ein Sof.

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