Friedman (Hebrew and Comp. Lit./Univ. of Calif., San Diego; Who
Wrote the Bible?, 1987) traces the theme of God's disappearance in
the Hebrew Bible and in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and
proposes a new religious outlook based on a synthesis of the Big
Bang theory and Kabbalah. Dramatic interventions of God in human
affairs, like the parting of the Red Sea, are found in the earlier
books of the Bible and gradually diminish, according to Friedman,
as the human race learns to take responsibility for its own
destiny, above all with the institution of rabbinic Judaism, in
which men hand down decisions concerning God's law. Friedman offers
a stimulating analysis of Nietzsche's Zarathustra and the Superman,
with parallels from Dostoevsky, arguing that both writers
experienced the full weight of the disappearance of God and man's
consequent loneliness. Finally, he speculates that science, which
had seemed to strip the world of its religious meaning, is now
reuniting us with God as we learn about cosmic background radiation
from the explosion that gave birth to the universe. The
"singularity," he suggests, from which the universe is expanding
vindicates the Kabbalah's mystical theory that the visible universe
emanated from a single, unknowable point. He argues - without much
evidence - that, in a world where God seems absent, we will surely
find a basis for morality in the idea of loyalty to the human
species. Friedman exaggerates the importance of the short-lived
Death of God theology of the '60s, and in his ideal of a cosmic and
somewhat pantheistic deity, he seems to equate the notion of a
personal God with anthropomorphism. And many readers will dispute
Friedman's dismissal of Dostoevsky's religiosity and of the
present-day openness to contemplative awareness of God's presence.
A nontheological approach to a profoundly theological question that
is both exciting and inevitably limited. (Kirkus Reviews)
This work, by the author of "Who Wrote the Bible?" probes a chain
of mysteries that concern the presence or absence of God. It begins
with a reading of the Hebrew Bible, revealing the mystery and
significance of the disappearance of God there. Why does the God
who is known through miracles and direct interaction at the
beginning of the Bible gradually become hidden, leaving humans on
their own by the Bible's end? The book then investigates this
phenomenon's place in the formation of Judaism and Christianity. It
goes on to explore the forms this feeling of the disappearance of
God has taken in recent times, focusing on a connection between
Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, who each independantly developed the idea
of the death of God. The author then relates all of this to a
contemporary spiritual and moral ambivalence. He notes the current
interest in linking discoveries in modern physics and astronomy to
God and creation, and explores the connection between the mysticism
of the Kabbalah and "Big Bang" cosmology, relating the findings to
the age-old quest for a hidden God.
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