The decline of the West, Volume 2 : $b Perspectives of world-historySpengler, Oswald
History
The decline of the West, Volume 2 : $b Perspectives of world-history
Spengler, Oswald
Civilization -- History
This development, however, took place on Classical soil, and,
therefore, even the Church that arose in opposition to Marcion and his
anti-Judaism was looked upon by Talmudic Jewry (whose centre of gravity
lay entirely in Mesopotamia and its universities) as a mere piece of
Hellenistic paganism. The destruction of Jerusalem was a conclusive
event that in the world of fact no spiritual power could nullify. Such
is the intimacy of inward relationship between waking-consciousness,
religion, and speech that the complete severance after 70 of the Greek
Pseudomorphosis and the Aramaic (that is, the truly Arabian) region
was bound to result in the formation of two distinct domains of Magian
religious development. On the Western margin of the young Culture the
Pagan cult-Church, the Jesus-Church (removed thither by Paul), and the
Greek-speaking Judaism of the Philo stamp were in point of language and
literature so interlocked that the last-named fell into Christianity
even in the first century, and Christianity and Hellenism combined to
form a _common_ early philosophy. In the Aramaic-speaking world from
the Orontes to the Tigris, on the other hand, Judaism and Persism
interacted constantly and intimately, each creating in this period
its own strict theology and scholastic in the Talmud and the Avesta;
and from the fourth century both these theologies exercised _the most
potent influence upon the Aramaic-speaking Christendom that resisted
the Pseudomorphosis_, so that finally it broke away in the form of the
Nestorian Church.
Here in the East the difference, inherent in every human
waking-consciousness, between sense-understanding and
word-understanding--and, therefore between eye and letter--led up to
purely Arabian methods of mysticism and scholasticism. The apocalyptic
certainty, “Gnosis” in the first-century sense, that Jesus intended to
confer,[388] the divining contemplation and emotion, is that of the
Israelite prophets, the Gathas, Sufism, and we have it recognizable
still in Spinoza, in the Polish Messiah Baal Shem[389] and in Mirza
Ali Mohammed, the enthusiast-founder of Bahaism, who was executed in
Teheran in 1850. The other way, “Paradosis,” is the characteristically
Talmudic method of word-exegesis, of which Paul was a master;[390] it
pervades all later Avestan works, the Nestorian dialectic,[391] the
entire theology of Islam alike.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account