Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Lösung der Schwierigkeiten der deutschen Schule: Kraus, Alt; Einsicht von Wensinck

Kurzinhalt: insight that the symbolic forms of the cosmological empires and of Israel are not mutually exclusive

Textausschnitt: 75/9 In order to overcome the impasse, we must abandon all attempts to harmonize the text. Both the historical and cosmological symbols must be accepted at their face value as the expressions of the corresponding experiences of order; and it must be recognized, consequently, that the Davidic Empire, as well as its Israelite and Judaite successor states, were built on conflicting experiences of order. How such a composite order can function at all is not a question of the "subordination" of one set of symbols to the other one through the interpretative skill of contemporary Old Testament scholars, but of the balance of the conflicting experiences in the Israelite society from the tenth to the sixth centuries B.C. The history of Israel must be examined if we want to know whether the motivations of action, originating in the conflicting experiences whose coexistence is conclusively proven by the symbols, were held in such balance that the order remained stable. Only the actions of individuals or groups can indicate the relative vigor of the experiences, as well as the corresponding strength or loss of substance of the symbols.
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77/9 Our own position with regard to the various issues has been intimated on the occasion of their emergence. We shall now bring the scattered remarks into focus by recalling an early study by Wensinck on the subject of cosmological symbolism. Wensinck had seen that each New Year is a memorial and repetition of Creation. Order is not an eternal status of things, but a transition from chaos to cosmos in time. Once created, order requires attention to its precarious existence, or it will relapse into chaos. In the New Year festivals are concentrated the cults which restore order under all its aspects: The order of the world under the rule of the creator god;- the renewal of the cycle of vegetation; the foundation and restoration of the Temple; the coronation of the King and the periodic restoration of his ordering power. The drama of transition from chaos to cosmos, which draws its primary symbols from the vegetation cycles, is therefore a form that can be applied wherever a problem of order is at stake. As the principal examples of its application in the Old Testament Wensinck enumerates the story of Creation, the Exodus from Egypt and the passing through the Red Sea, the wandering in the Desert and the conquest of Canaan, the Babylonian captivity and the return from the Exile, the prophetic visions of a destruction of the world and its renewal through Yahweh. More subtly he finds the form applied to the prophetic writings with their sequence of prophecies of doom and blessedness, as well as to the figure of the Suffering Servant who emerges in triumph from humiliation. And the prophetic application of the form, finally, inspires Wensinck to the definition that "eschatology is in reality cosmology applied to the future." (298f; Fs) (notabene)
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78/9 While the formulations of Wensinck were frequently unprecise, his vision was admirable. From his study we can reap the enduring insight that the symbolic forms of the cosmological empires and of Israel are not mutually exclusive. Although each of the great forms has an organizing center of experience of its own, they are parts of a continuum in so far as they are linked by the identity of the order of being and existence which man experiences, on the scale of compactness and differentiation, in the course of history. Neither does the cosmological form become senseless when the organizing center of symbolization has shifted to the experience of God's revelation to man, nor does the history of the Chosen People become senseless with the advent of Christ. The ritual renewal of order, one of the symbolic elements developed within the cosmological civilizations, for instance, runs through the history of mankind from the Babylonian New Year festival, through Josiah's renewal of the Berith and the sacramental renewal of the sacrifice of Christ, to Machiavelli's ritornar ai principaj, because the fall from the order of being, and the return to it, is a fundamental problem in human existence. Once the adequate expression for an experience of order has been developed within the cosmological form, it does not disappear from history when divine revelation becomes the organizing center of symbolic form. For within the historical form created we must distinguish between the area of experience which is more immediately affected by revelation and the much larger area which remains relatively unaffected. The relation between God and man requires new symbols for its adequate expression, such as the dabar (the word of God), the nabi (the revealer of the word), the berith (the covenant), the da'ath (the knowledge of God), and so forth. But the conditions of existence in the world, such as the celestial and vegetational cycles, birth and death, the rhythm of the generations, the work to sustain life, the necessity of governmental organization, remain what they were and do not require new symbolization. A large part of the cosmological symbolism will therefore be received into the historical form, though that transmission without transformation is liable to produce tensions within the new symbolic form. We have noted the conflicts of this type in the tension between Sinai Covenant and David Covenant. (299f; Fs) (notabene)