Page 257 - Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew

COINCIDENCES IN THE BIBLE AND IN BIBLICAL HEBREW
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Biblical Hebrew seems to go here one step further in generating a most general
epitome, a meta-knowledge concept. This epitome explains the process of the
acquisition of knowledge—how the thought processes of humanity progress (or,
simply, how one becomes knowledgeable). The allegory embedded in this epitome
is created by equating the act of acquiring knowledge and the end product of this
process, to the act of sexual encounter (with the resulting offspring). The latter is
essential. The Bible invariably refers to “man knowing a woman” while explicitly
specifying an offspring, most commonly by name. Sometimes, an explanation for
the name is also given.
Why is a sexual encounter that breeds offspring always referred to in the Bible
as “knowing”? What is it in the offspring-producing encounter of two opposites,
male and female, thesis and antithesis forming a synthesis, that leads one to denote
this as “knowing”?
One can hardly avoid relating to the philosopher Hegel and his theory of

knowledge , better known as the “Dialectical logic”. It seems as though the latter

reflects, in a highly precise fashion, the epitome that the Bible tries to produce—
namely, a concept that succinctly describes the process of the evolution of human
thought, or the act of knowing.

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17.4 Hegel s Theory of Knowledge
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) was a German philosopher. He was
educated in theology at Tübingen and was a private tutor at Bern and Frankfurt.
In 1805, he became professor at the University of Jena. While considered a
follower of Schelling, he developed his own system, which he first presented in

The Phenomenology of Mind (1807). Hegel’s interests were wide, and they were all

incorporated into his unified philosophy, which is generally termed “the Hegelian
dialectic.”
According to Hegel , the world develops and acquires knowledge via the dia-
lectical logic. In this development (which progresses according to the Hegelian
dialectic), one concept, the thesis, inevitably generates its opposite, the antithesis .
The interaction of the two leads to a new concept: synthesis . This in turn becomes
the thesis of a new triad. The evolution of human thought thus proceeds in ever
more developed cycles, where the end result of a previous cycle (the synthesis)
becomes the trigger (a new thesis) for a new cycle. (A graphical demonstration of
the Hegelian dialectic is given in Figure 17.1.)

An example for this thought process is given in the way Hegel regarded
Immanuel Kant s theory of categories. He thought that the categories were incom-
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plete in Kant’s formulation. Kant’s idea of “being” is fundamental, but it evokes