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(Continued from p. 266.)
By
Rabbi Isidore Kalisch, of Cleveland
No. II.
These views were based neither on tradition nor on
grounds of reason, but upon very vaguely assumed
deductions. It was considered, that, as we find in
the Bible שמים ושמי שמים
“heavens, and heaven of heavens,” which after all
conveys only an idea of the “height and the greatest
height,” or because seven terms are employed
to convey the idea of “heaven,” that we must assume
two or even seven heavens as thus conveyed and
actually existing. That such a view is quite wrong
is easily discernible from the fact that we often
find different names applied to the same thing in
the Bible. For instance, the soul is called by five
terms נפש רוח נשמה יחידה
חיה, and we know that man has not five souls,
but one, which, independently of
psychological is clearly proved from
Genesis 17, where we read
ויפח באפיו נשמת חיים “And he breathed in his
nostrils a living soul.”
<<310>>
However paradoxical such views of the term “heaven”
may appear to us at the present day, they were
nevertheless far otherwise at the times they were
propounded, when the system of Aristotle was
reverentially received and universally confided in.
“Space is the utmost quiescent limit of heaven which
touches the moving body. Heaven is the most perfect,
divine body, indestructible, and of a more noble
nature than sublunary bodies.” This Aristotelian
system found, however, no sympathy with the greatest
numbers of Rabbis; as we read in Midrash Bereshith
Rabbah אמר רשב״י אין אנו
יודעין אם הכוכבים קבועים בגלגל או באויר
“Rabbi Simeon, son of Yochai, said: We know not for
certain whether the stars are fixed on a wheel (a
solid ethereal substance), or whether they float in
space.” The same is found in Talmud Pesachim fol. 5:
“The wise man of the Gentiles say, that the heaven
moves, and the planets are fixed therein; but the
wise men of the Israelites teach that the heaven is
immovable space, but that the planets revolve.” The
system of the Jewish teachers, according to
Maimonides in Moreh nebochim, is a tradition
which is said to be derived from the prophets. At
the present day we know from incontestable proof
that this most ancient Jewish cosmological system,
which is simply, that the heavens are nothing but
space, in which innumerable suns and planets,
which appear to us as stars, and to which our earth
also belongs, is true and correct. For, since
astronomers have observed by the telescope many
stars, calculated their distances from each other,
and discovered among other things, that
notwithstanding a ray of light travels 70,000
leagues in a second, it would nevertheless take a
thousand years before the light of many stars, which
are visible through the telescope, could reach the
earth, on account of their immense distance, it
becomes evident that the apparent vault of heaven is
but an optical illusion.
And though the space which we call heaven, is
blue, it is not owing to the actual existence of
such a blue matter; but it arises from the fact that
every ray of light consists of seven, or more
correctly speaking, of three original colours, to
wit, red, yellow and blue; and as the light is
refracted by the atmosphere, if the sky is free from
vapour, the red and yellow colours are absorbed, and
the blue is thus reflected back. If this were not
the case, everything except the sun itself would
appear perfectly dark on even a clear day. Are,
however, watery vapours present in the atmosphere,
all the original colours are reflected, and hence
arises the whitish appearance of the sky. By the
expression a “heaven,” is therefore nothing else
represented to us, in point of fact,
<<311>> except
the more happy and perfect condition in another
purer world, in which the souls of the righteous
shall obtain their reward. Whence also the very
correct expression employed by our assistant
teachers עולם הבא (Olam
habba) the future world, to designate the
beatitude of the departed, or paradise.
By
the expression, “God dwells in heaven,” we mean to
convey nothing else, than God fills the universal
space to the utmost infinite extent,* and that he
alone is the Governor and Sustainer of the entire
universal existence. This is strikingly expressed in
Psalm lxviii. 5: “Sing to God, praise his name ;
glorify him who passeth along through the plains of
ether, the Lord is his name; and rejoice before
him.” The expression ערבות
is happily employed here by the holy poet, not to
indicate, as some erroneously suppose to indicate,
pleasantness, elysium, or a heavenly dwelling, from
ערב “to be
pleasant,” but the immense expanse, the vast extent;
from ערבה “the
desert,” and it will then say, that God is the
vivifying medium of innumerable worlds, existing in
the immeasurable extent of the universe, and governs
all things in their various courses, as the rider
manages his horse. Hence
לרכב ערבות literally “to Him who rides on the
deserts.”
In
order now to explain the verses with which we
started I will cite some few more deductions from
physical sciences.
Vapour consists, as is well known, of small globules
of water, which have in themselves the capacity of
rising to a given height, not that the atmosphere
produces this vaporisation, but according to a law
of nature ordained by the Creator; for, since
vaporisation proceeds much more rapidly in a vacuum,
that is, a space exhausted of atmospheric air, it is
proved that the atmosphere contributes nothing to
this phenomenon.
Rain, therefore, is produced when the vapours or
water-globules separate again from the atmosphere,
which has taken them up, touch each other, and flow
together, whence they fall down in drops, owing to
their being specifically heavier than the air. The
atmosphere which flows around our earth like an
ocean, is the theatre of many changes, is the chief
laboratory of nature, and is a compound fluid in
which the elements of water, electricity, and
magnetism, are present. This atmosphere is evidently
meant by the word heaven, as the Talmud, Treatise
Chagigah ch. ii. indicates
במשניתא תנא שמים אש ומים מלמד שהביאם הקב״ה וטרפן זה
בזה “It was
<<312>>taught in the Mishnah, that heaven is called
Shamayim, because it consists of Esh, fire,
and Mayim, water; which God in the creation
mingled together.”
The height of heaven, or region of vapours, cannot
be determined; for although ten geographical miles
(German?) is the greatest elevation for our earth
where the heat of the atmosphere ceases, and the sun
is unable to produce any more warmth: we cannot for
all that fix the limits of the vapoury region of the
earth.
The astronomers maintain and prove that each planet
has an atmosphere like our earth. They maintain
farther, that the planets belonging to our solar
system consist of continents and seas. This is
especially the case with Mars, which, when viewed
through a telescope, presents an appearance
corresponding with this theory, as the parts which
are probably continents have a reddish, the others,
or seas, a greenish appearance. It has also been
incontestably proved in the latest times that the
tides of the ocean are owing to the attraction
exerted by the moon. Water, therefore, has the
greatest tendency to rise upward when it lies under
the zone of the moon’s course.
The limit of the various atmospheres of the planets
to which they extend without the one encroaching on
the other, is called רקיע
השמים Rekia
hashamayim, “the expansion of heaven.”
By
the term מים מעל לרקיע
“the waters above the expansion,” the upper waters,
is here meant the atmosphere of the other planets,
and by the “lower waters,” the atmosphere of our own
earth.
That God divided between the upper and lower waters
will then convey, that God ordained a law of
nature, that the various atmospheres might indeed
touch one another, still without ever commingling
together, and that there is, so to say, an
expansion or wall of separation which keeps them
asunder. This will also explain why on the second
day we find not the expression
כי טוב, “And God
saw that it was good,” or “that it answered the
purpose of its formation,” as on the other days;
since this was not intended alone for our earth, the
origin of which is here especially narrated, but
applies also to the whole universe, to which it is
equally necessary as for us. There is likewise no
contradiction between the history of creation of
the second and first period, of which it is said:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth,” (v. 1); because there under the word
שמים “heavens” is
understood, as I have said already, the whole space
of the universe, with its inmunerable suns and
planets; and שמים
in the second period signifies “the heaven” in a
more limited sense, which is the relation of the
earth to our planetary system.
<<313>>
The Rabbins express unquestionably this idea in
Chagigah, ch. ii. מעשה
ברבי יהושע בן חנניה שהיה עמד על גבי מעלה בהר הבית
וראהו בן זומא ולא עמד מפניו אמר לו מאין לאין בן זומא
אמר ליה צופה הייתי בין מים העליונים למים התחתונים
ואין בין זה לזה אלא שלש אצדעות בלבד, “It is
told of Rabbi Joshua, son of Chananiah, that he once
stood on the top of the temple mount at Jerusalem,
and that Ben Soma saw him without rising up from his
seat to honour him as usual. Rabbi Joshua then said
to him, What means this Ben Soma? what art thou busy
about? to which the other answered: I was engaged in
investigating the distance between the upper and
lower waters, and I found that they are only three
fingers breadth apart.” רב
אחי בר יעקב אומר כמלא נימא “Rab Achi, son of
Jacob, said, Only the breadth of a thread.” But the
Rabbins in general maintained, there is no distance
at all between them, but the one begins where the
other terminates.
In
these words, as it appears to me, the Rabbins meant
to convey the incontrovertible truth, as I have
already stated, that the atmospheres border on each
other without commingling.
This will also explain the expression which occurs
in the history of the flood. “And the windows or
sluices of heaven were opened;” which may mean, that
the other atmospheres were permitted to let water be
sent to our atmosphere, a communication between them
being for that once established, whence also it
became possible for the whole earth to be covered
with water. This hypothesis I believe is the key to
the biblical history of the flood; but I shall speak
more fully on the subject in its proper place.
(To be continued.) |
