Sunday, March 26, 2017

HUMAN CHRONO-LOGIC and ETERNAL THEO-LOGIC




HUMAN CHRONO-LOGIC and  ETERNAL THEO-LOGIC

In building the Mishkan/ Tabernacle, HaShem mentions first, in Exodus 25:10, the ark of the Covenant/ the Aron.   This was clearly the Eternal’s first priority.  How then, do mere mortals like Moses and Bezalel get permission to work on the outside of the Mishkan first, before the sacred furniture is made and moved in. We don’t see the ark made until Exodus 37, AFTER all the exteriors.  Whats up with these dueling work schedules?   Would not the Creator of Man know that humans want to precede the making of furniture with the building of the exterior structure?

Yes, the Creator would know this. Yet His economically-terse Torah would want to present both His way: theo-logic, and Man’s way: chrono-logic. This issue surfaces often when Bible readers grapple with the precise chronology of Torah events.
The secular Bible Critics cannot fit their pinheads around the concept of a non-human author, or of any ancient authors, with the artistic sophistication of  a Picasso ( revealing alternative visions with cubism)  or a Melville (seamlessly moving from narrative to technology, as in Moby Dick).

The Torah sages understood the Eternal’s theo-logic, which defies the human restrictions of time and space, and considers the ultimate outcome before the immediate process. In the Lecha Dodi  (Come, My Bride) liturgy of Sabbath evening is a phrase telling us how eventual outcomes are planned long in advance by the Eternal.  

Before the cosmos and planet Earth’s lifeforms are in place, the Creator has considered His desire to communicate and guide free-will partners with the gifts of language and Torah. These goals, perhaps eons away in human time,  will make the elaborate creative process ultimately worthwhile.  A valid way to read the Torah’s first sentence is that  ב B’   (with or for)  ראשית  RaiSHeeYT (what is chief, as in the “premiere” wisdom, belief in Creation and Revelation , as per Psalms 110:10 ) the Lord created the heavenly and the earthly.”  

So, back to the Mishkan (the microcosm of the cosmos, the state, the body, etc.), the receptacle for Torah, the Ark of the Covenant and it’s ultimate impact, was premier on the Eternal’s “mind.”  But we wee mortals, who must painstakingly fashion the nesting, gilt boxes of wood, must work within our material, linear comfort zones to make a receptacle for Torah… using our limited chrono-logic, gaining perhaps a faint glimpse of Eternal theo-logic.