“Twas ever thus that no man shall completely know his end. Knowing that there is an end is enough. If this were not so, each person who ponders on the wherefore and the why of this realm of existence might spend all time allotted to somehow change the fate was originally declared.
I’ll bet you thought you were going to read something profound. Sorry, I have no idea what I am talking about. What is this “fate that was originally declared”? What ever happened to the concept of “freedom of choice? There must be ……why must “there be”? Oh to hell with it for now.
To go completely way out, what did the writer in the Jewish News mean when he talked of “the giants” being referred to as being Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Their place in Hebrew history is quite secure, but I do believe that the “giants” were those mentioned very close to the time of Cain and Abel, when it was written, “There were giants in those days”. Then it was said, “The sons of man (the giants?) saw the daughters of man and saw that they were beautiful”. Was this something different than the original species that was supposedly originated in the Garden of Eden?
After writing the above about “giants” and “the sons of man”, I decided to read the Genesis portion that would pertain, and I found that I did not know what I was talking about. The “giants” were referring to the men living at that time and hinting to those coming up in the future. The “sons of man” seems to be a poetic usage, but the reason for the usage is not clear in my estimation.
I call this ‘musings”, but, I find it very difficult to drag out the words from my mind in attempting to put in writing the things that are bothering me at this time. Maybe I’m afraid that someone else will read what I have managed to dredge out and would wonder what manner of low-life might have been fooling around with the computer. Why must I have complete privacy for my innermost thoughts?
To get back to the “giants” referred to in a paragraph above, in a conversation with Rabbi Sieger, at Adam’s bar mitzvah yesterday, I questioned the difference in the translation of the Hebrew in my bible (the one I received at my bar mitzvah so many years ago) and in the chumash we were using presently at Beth Joseph. The Rabbi agreed that the translation in the later work was used incorrectly (“men” instead of “giants”) and he hemmed and hawed for a few seconds when I asked him why the difference. “What did the Rabbis in the earlier centuries decide about the meaning of the sentence?”, I asked. Finally the Rabbi said, “One group decided that it meant that angels came down to Earth and were enamored by the “daughters of men”.
Hoo!, Haw! I always thought that angels were considered pure and above reproach, for that was the way God had constructed them. Does this mean that these unadulterated beings had actually been given time off (from some unknown form of service), to live it up every once in awhile just like the sin-ridden humans that filled the earth? If this was so, than do the same band of angels fool around, even today, when Saturday night comes around and everyone is celebrating and having a hell of a time? Is it possible that some of the today’s Lotharios are actually from the gang of angels that still find that the “daughters of man” are good-looking?
To belabor the above just a bit more; God’s will is that man shall have freewill. That freewill comes at a terrible great price, because there must be a sense of responsibility for one’s actions. So what is the decision as to what actions are abhorrent so that the penalties will have to be assessed? Supposedly, a close reading of the Bible will give the answer to that question. But, by the time you go through the entire Bible and try to understand just what was being taught, you will be so old that you will forget what your original questions might have been. If you try to get an answer from the commentaries, you will ten times worse off, for the old codgers that found the good life in just study, were not foolish enough to give up their Social Security by reducing the amount of verbiage that would never really answer the original questions, but would add to the problem. You can’t really fault those old farts; they found the best life possible for that time, for everyone had been brainwashed into believing that their studying was the best possible arrangement for the village, the city, or maybe for the whole world.
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