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From
Rabbi Eli Munk, The Seven Days of the
Beginning, (Feldheim) note 6,
p. 11:
"The day that five elders wrote the Torah in Greek for King Ptolemy was as hard for Israel as the day when the (golden) Calf was made, because the Torah could not be translated as it should be."
The
following two quotations from the sages are taken
from The Light Beyond, Adventures in
Hassidic Thought,
©1981 by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan (New York:
Maznaim
Publishing, ISBN 0-940118-33-5):
pp:
158-9:
"Rabbi Yehoshua Avraham of Zitmar [said]:
'Our sages teach us that the Torah was created two thousand years before the world.
'This is difficult to understand, since the Torah contains accounts of many events that happened after creation. How can the Torah speak of creation, Adam and Eve, Noah, the holy Patriarchs, and all the other happenings recorded in the Torah? All these things had not yet happened (when the Torah was written).
...'Actually, when the Torah was first created, it was a mixture of letters. The letters of the Torah were not yet combined into words as they are now...
'Whenever anything then happened in the world, these letters were combined, and the words were recombined to form the account.
'This was true of the account of creation, and the story of Adam and Eve. The letters combined with each other, forming the words that told this story. Similarly, when an individual died, a combination of letters was formed, saying that he had died. The same was true of the rest of the Torah.
'As soon as an event (that was to be recorded in the Torah) took place, a combination was immediately formed, corresponding to that event. If a different event had taken place, the letters would have combined differently. The Torah is God's wisdom, and it has no end.'
Rabbi Yehoshua Avraham of Zitmar,
Geulath Yisroel, Pithgamin Kadishin.
Quoted in "Sefer Baal Shem Tov," Zoth
HaBerachah 4. Cf. Machazeh Avraham,
Zoth HaBerachah 5.
pp
160-1:
"Rabbi Levi Yitzchok [said]:
...'In its sequence of descent to this lowly world, the Torah must become clothed in a material garment, which often consists of stories. When God grants a person knowledge, understanding and intelligence, uncovering the mask that blinds his eyes, he can see the wonders of God's Torah. The people on this level are few, however, and the majority only understand the Torah according to its simple meaning.'......
"See Zohar 1:153a, 1:201a, 3:98b, 3:152a, Zohar Chadash 10d."
The following excerpt from the Zohar is taken from Louis Ginsberg, On Jewish Law and Lore, ©1955 Jewish Publications Society of America. New York: Athenum, 1970. LCC #55-6707, pp. 144-145
"Regarding these levels, the Zohar [Zohar, iii. 152] states:
'Wo [sic]
unto the man who asserts that this Torah intends to relate only
commonplace
things and secular narratives; for if this were so, then in the present
times
likewise a Torah might be written with more attractive narratives...Now
the
narratives of the Torah are its garments.
He who thinks that these garments are the Torah itself deserves to
perish and have no share in the world to come.
Wo unto the fools who look no further when they see an elegant
robe! More valuable than the garment is
the body which carries it, and more valuable
even than that is the soul which animates the body. Fools see
only the garment of the Torah, the
more intelligent see the body, the wise
see the soul, its proper being, and in the Messianic time the 'upper
soul' of
the Torah will stand revealed.'"