Is there a source of evil in the world, as powerful and equal to the god that is all good?
Depends on who you ask. And at what point in history.
What we believe or are afraid of keeps evolving, and Jewish thought, like pop-culture, is no different.
How does one make sense of a world in which pain and cruelty, hatred and suffering exists alongside glorious beauty and love? Every one of us, regardless of how we were raised, what we choose to believe, how privileged we are, or what values guide our lives, at some point, rarely because we want to - must face and handle the inevitable painful part in our existence and what this means about the bigger picture of our lives.
For Second-Isaiah, a prophet or a school of prophets, living as Judean exiles in Babylon in the 6th century BCE, theology was not a theoretical model but as basic as the air they breathed. How they imagined the divine reality required an adjustment as the culture that they found themselves living in went through radical shifts and religious-societal transitions.
A lot of it had to do with the question of evil in the world. Is there one source for all life’s up’s and down’s? The One Creator of both blessings and curses? Or are there multiple forces at play, often at odds with each other, alive within each one of us and operating on a mythic cosmic scale?
Back in Judah, YHWH was the Hebrew God, more monolatry then monotheistic - in other words - YHWH was “Our One God”, the only true deity of our people - but the existence and power of other pantheons, local gods and goddesses at war with YHWH and each other was never denied or dismissed.
Babylon was no different. Marduk the Lord of Earth was the head of the Pantheon, along with his consort Inanna/Ishtar the Queen of Heaven, and a whole host of lesser deities who did or didn’t get along.
But by the time the Persians took over mid 6th century - things got more - or maybe less - complicated. The Zoroastrian religion that Cyrus the Great imported to this emerging empire eventually became part of the way the world thinks about everything - and that includes how the Judeans would start looking at things.
Today the Zoroastrians are a relative minority in the world, but their impact, lesser known, on Western culture is immense.
The origin is not so clear, and likely starts with an 8th century BCE Persian prophet, known as Zarathustra - or Zoroaster in Greek.
Zoroaster broke with the traditional Aryan religions of the region (modern day Iran) which closely mirrored those of India, and developed the idea of the one good God – Ahura Mazda. In some ways he also linked religious belief in this benign deity with the supreme importance of personal morality.
Zoroastrian religion would eventually develop an elaborate afterlife that is familiar to us today - including the notion of heaven and/or hell, some kind of messianic future - complete with the final battle between Ahura Mazda and his Arch nemesis - the evil spirit Ahriman.
Was Ahriman an independent evil entity or an aspect of the one true god?
Opinions as to the original mythology differ. But what is clear is that by the time Isaiah is responding to this new religious reality he affirms that the Hebrew Deity is the One Creator who is responsible for both - there is no duality at all.
In some ways his words here are a protest.
He mocks the idols and the idol makers, scoffs at those who replace the one true deity with hand-made tales, and then delivers a description of YHWH that will become a major milestone in the evolving Hebraic history of liturgy and theology:
If you are at all familiar with the modern Jewish prayer book you recognize this line - but with a serious twist.
By the time the rabbis living in the Roman Empire tried to make sense of Isaiah’s worldview and created prayers for post-temple Judaism they struggled with this notion of a god who is the maker of all evil. So they altered Isaiah’s words.
In a famous Talmudic passage in Tractate Berachot, the sages suggest that instead of blessing God as the creator of both peace and evil we should say ‘Creator of peace - and everything else.’
And that’s what we find today in every single Jewish prayer book.
What I find fascinating here is the evolving story of what we believe - and how we do or do not talk about it. Whoever wrote this chapter in Isaiah is clearly offering a polemical approach, refuting the popular political-religious superpower of the day which included dualism. The Talmud adapts the protest to its own times.
What do we do with it today?
The trailblazing theologian, author, feminist and Judaic (and Below the Bible Belt reader!) Judith Plaskowhas written a compelling commentary on the way Isaiah’s original words transformed into the liturgy we know today, asking important questions about the very role of prophecy, poetry, and prayer in our complex modern lives:
“ In rendering Isaiah 45:7, “I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil” as “who forms light and creates darkness, makes peace and creates everything,” the Rabbis introduce a euphemism that avoids attributing evil to God. Of course, it is true that “everything” includes woe and evil, but the word conjures—and is probably meant to conjure—the plenitude of creation, rather than its destructive or negative aspects.
..This alteration of Isaiah raises the question of truth in liturgy. Do we want a liturgy that names the truths of our lives, however painful or difficult they may be, or do we want a liturgy that elevates and empowers, that focuses on the wondrous aspects of creation alone? Are these goals in conflict, or can hearing truth itself be empowering?
..The naming of this truth—that if one God is responsible for the universe, then that God must be responsible for evil—surely elicits feelings of protest as much as reverence.
…Is it not our obligation to struggle against the “bad” in the universe, whatever its origins? Thus our prayer might need to be expanded in the direction of protest. The masculine and hierarchical images of the prayer book in many ways capture the truth of our social and religious structures. We can seek to change those images as a step toward change in the structures, or we can name them as evil and woe and, in the context of a covenantal relationship, protest against them.”
Perhaps what Judith Plaskow is proposing here is that just as the original Isaiah protested against the theological problems of his day, and that the protest that continued through the revision by the rabbis - we must continue doing so, still, today?
What will that protest look like?
Maybe it has to do with what Isaiah imagines later in this chapter that the real deal is:
“You are indeed a God who hides in concealment” - God is a hidden mystery.
However we imagine the dance of chaos and order, good and evil in this complicated world of ours, there is, and always was a spectrum - a grey scale in between the binaries of good and bad. It’s on us to cultivate an honest approach, pick up where our ancestors got to, with brave attempts at non-binary or non-dualistic truths that are more both/end than either/or. Whatever Isaiah left us with, it is on each of us to keep exploring our inner ways of making sense of all the options - and ideally choose what is wise, kind, helpful and good.
And what does Nietzsche has to do with all of this? That’s coming soon.
Image: Persian Art: Ahura Mazda Defeats Ahriman
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