Ketika bergelut dengan tumpukan buku demi menyelesaikan tesis (yang tenggatnya makin dekat) saya menemukan kutipan midrash (tafsiran atau kotbah rabi Yahudi) mengenai penciptaan Adam. Ketika dibaca, masuk akal, menarik, dan lucunya juga! Jadi, saya mau bagikan kepada para pembaca blog ini! Ada komentar?
God created man not until the last day of creation. Why did He not create him on the first day? In order that later on no mouths can be found which spread the rumor that God did not create the world alone; that Adam had helped him.
He also created him as the last in order that man not be arrogant. God said to him: “Do not forget that even the least living being, even the worm was created before you!”
It would have been within God’s potentiality to create more people at once. Why did he create Adam by himself? If God had created more human beings at once, then the descendants of later generations would have boasted, “my father was nobler than yours.”
Therefore God created only one human being in order that all descendants in the future should know that they have a common father, that they are all descendants from one father, and none of them belong to a higher or lower race.
God created all living being through his word, but he created man with his own hands. For this purpose he took earth from the four corners of the world in order that man should fell at home everywhere.
And why did God create man in his image? In order that man should build further in the world and should do the work which God had begun before him.
Man was created as an individual in order that we learn that he who destroys a human being is as if he had destroyed the whole world—but whoever saves a human being is as if he had saved the whole world.
Adam was created as a single being in order to proclaim also God’s greatness, for man imprints many coins with one form, and they all are alike, but the king of all kings, the holy one, praised be he, imprints each human being with a form of the first Adam, and, nevertheless, none is like the other.
Dari Pinchas Lapide, The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1983) 103-104.
God created man not until the last day of creation. Why did He not create him on the first day? In order that later on no mouths can be found which spread the rumor that God did not create the world alone; that Adam had helped him.
He also created him as the last in order that man not be arrogant. God said to him: “Do not forget that even the least living being, even the worm was created before you!”
It would have been within God’s potentiality to create more people at once. Why did he create Adam by himself? If God had created more human beings at once, then the descendants of later generations would have boasted, “my father was nobler than yours.”
Therefore God created only one human being in order that all descendants in the future should know that they have a common father, that they are all descendants from one father, and none of them belong to a higher or lower race.
God created all living being through his word, but he created man with his own hands. For this purpose he took earth from the four corners of the world in order that man should fell at home everywhere.
And why did God create man in his image? In order that man should build further in the world and should do the work which God had begun before him.
Man was created as an individual in order that we learn that he who destroys a human being is as if he had destroyed the whole world—but whoever saves a human being is as if he had saved the whole world.
Adam was created as a single being in order to proclaim also God’s greatness, for man imprints many coins with one form, and they all are alike, but the king of all kings, the holy one, praised be he, imprints each human being with a form of the first Adam, and, nevertheless, none is like the other.
Dari Pinchas Lapide, The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1983) 103-104.
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