ANUARUL ACADEMIC 2003-2004 - Facultatea de Teologie "Andrei ...

the soul, and this natural solidarity manifests itself in various ways. Above all, thebody must be understood as a concrete manifestation of the soul, as itsphenomenon; this makes the body able to express a certain “visibility”, a certainconcreteness of the soul. 5 This strict interdependence between the body and thesoul points to an absolutely positive vision of the human body. In fact, the body -as the rabbis state with no shadow of hesitation - constitutes the most accomplishedpart of the creation; it represents the Creator’s masterpiece. Firstly, the body is anicon of the entire created universe, the Talmud proposing a detailed system ofcorrespondences between the parts of the body and the elements of the createduniverse. Secondly, the Talmudic wise men lay stress on the perfect insertion ofthe body in the Universe, on its adaptation capacity and on the harmony of itsfunctions 6 . But the quoted author draws attention to the fact that some oldtestamentarytexts were written in a climate dominated by the Hellenistic culture.That is why the exegetes speak about the existence of two anthropologies of oldtestamentaryorigin: the first one, faithful to the original spirit of Judaism, suggests– especially by means of the Talmudic hermeneutics – a positive image ofcorporality; the second one, marked by the fundamental ideas of the Hellenisticanthropology, lays stress upon the unconceivable distance between the body andthe soul. In “Solomon’s Wisdom”, a text written in Alexandria between 100 and 50B.C., the signs of this influence are obvious but without becoming prevailing in theentire Jewish anthropology. However – as Oliver Clement points out – the biblicaldifference between the body and the ghost has nothing to do with the Hellenisticdichotomy between the soul and the body, in spite of the numberless historicalconfusions which have seldom made out of Christianity a “popular Platonism”. 7In conclusion, the biblical anthropology systematically rejects dualism. Thehuman body is animated and the soul is embodied, the soteriology is notunderstood as a radical break from the body (even if paradoxically one always5 For example, certain parts of the body correspond to some faculties of the soul: the heart must beconsidered an embodied equivalent for the soul, the kidneys, organ traditionally associated to theheart, refer to the faculty of the secret thoughts, the intimate being of man; the liver stands for theelementary feelings, cf.: M.Lazurca, op. cit., p. 97.6 Ibidem, p. 98.7 Olivier Clement, Trupul morţii şi al slavei, Scurtă introducere la o teopoetică a trupului, Bucureşti,Editura Christiana, 1996, p.8.150