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The Daimonic in Jewish history (or, The Garden of Eden Revisited)

The Daimonic in Jewish history (or, The Garden of Eden Revisited) The Daimonic in Jewish history (or, The Garden of Eden Revisited) HARRY S. MAY One of my Fundamentalist students said to us one day: "I can no longer accept the notion of original sin which cursed the Western World. I reject the concept of evil, and don't want to believe in a God who makes man fall. This tastes to me of caprice and whim and contradicts my concept of what God really is or ought to be. How can the same God who created man wish to destroy him?" This incident prompted me to reinvestigate the negative aspects of the Paradise story or, to be more precise, to search for the meaning of "evil" in Jewish tradition and, in the process of doing so, to uncover that whole range of interpretations from the traditional historic, all the way to the daimonic of modern Twentieth Century psychology. We shall see that, as we retrace the interpreters of evil throughout Jewish literature, they were amazingly at ease if not nonchalent with it. As at matter of fact, they were quite willing to attribute a benevolent, almost positive cha- racter to that which conservative Christian theology labels as "evil". Could http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte Brill

The Daimonic in Jewish history (or, The Garden of Eden Revisited)

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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 1971 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
0044-3441
eISSN
1570-0739
DOI
10.1163/157007371X00153
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The Daimonic in Jewish history (or, The Garden of Eden Revisited) HARRY S. MAY One of my Fundamentalist students said to us one day: "I can no longer accept the notion of original sin which cursed the Western World. I reject the concept of evil, and don't want to believe in a God who makes man fall. This tastes to me of caprice and whim and contradicts my concept of what God really is or ought to be. How can the same God who created man wish to destroy him?" This incident prompted me to reinvestigate the negative aspects of the Paradise story or, to be more precise, to search for the meaning of "evil" in Jewish tradition and, in the process of doing so, to uncover that whole range of interpretations from the traditional historic, all the way to the daimonic of modern Twentieth Century psychology. We shall see that, as we retrace the interpreters of evil throughout Jewish literature, they were amazingly at ease if not nonchalent with it. As at matter of fact, they were quite willing to attribute a benevolent, almost positive cha- racter to that which conservative Christian theology labels as "evil". Could

Journal

Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte – Brill

Published: Jan 1, 1971

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