Tohu-wa-bohu as first substance(s)? Timo Schmitz, Philosopher When looking at the beginning of Bereshit, it is outstanding that God at first created the heavens and the earth. It continues stating that the earth (ha-aretz) was (hayetah) tohu wa-bohu. As pointed out in the Schmitz-Translation it can be translated as without form (=formless) and without content (=empty). However, it is worth to take a more literal look on the passage to fully understand it. The word ת הוּ is actually a spelling variety of תוהו which according to Strong's H8414 tohuw is a masculine noun rooting from to lie waste and means figuratively, a worthless thing. According to the Brown- Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon it means formlessness, of primaeval earth Genesis 1:2 (P), of land reduced to primaeval chaos Jeremiah 4:23 (both + הוּ andו ב voidness) [ ]. Rabbeinu Bahya comments on it that it is a reference to the raw material which could not be further properly definable and therefore could not yet be named. Especially, when looking on ב הוּ we get a further problem, since it was not simply chaotic, but it was also empty. And by looking on bot words, we see that they have something in common. They are made up of to-hu and bo-hu, both inheriting the hu which is Aramaic for the 3 rd person singular pronoun. The letter combination to (תו) looks close to tav ו) (ת which means character or sign. In the first chapter of the Sefer Ha-Bahir, verse two is dedicated to the question why the tohu-wa-bohu is described in the past form. The conclusion is that it is referring to a previous event and that it already happened, so it was. However, even more interesting is the description of the meaning of the two words. Tohu is something that confuses people, and bohu is something that has a substance as it is made out of bo and hu meaning that it is in it. To put it in a nutshell, the Sefer Ha-Bahir proposes to translate it as matter and form. This however, goes close to the Aristotelian view. As of Aristotle, everything which comes into being must be made out of matter and form. Matter itself has no form. It is an abstract thing that can exist as such, but cannot be grasped. Form however is the formal character which gives the matter an appearance. Let s take a pencil for example. A pencil includes lead, but that does not mean that lead cannot exist outside of a pencil. One can give another person a mass of lead, but it is useless for the other person. Just by taking its form, it will be convenient to write. Anyways, this is just a simplification, as the matter itself is much more complex. As even the lead has a form and the matter of lead also exists even if the form of lead does not exist, but then we cannot see it. Aristotle calls the substance οὐσία and the primary substance πρῶται οὐσίαι. In Categories, Aristotle emphasizes in chapter 5 that the primary substance is the basis substratum in which all other categories are realized. As such, the first substance is the individual while the second substance is the general term. Therefore, a certain individual person is the primary substance and the term human-being the second substance as the first substance has more being in it then the second
one. In Metaphysics, it is the exact opposite where the first substance is the general term and the second substance is the individual. Silke Piwko explains: Unter Berücksichtigung sprachlogischer Aspekte bei der Bestimmung des Begriffes der ousia ist festzustellen, dass es sich um ein griechisches Wort der Umgangssprache handelt, das bedeutet, das ousia nicht von vornherein [ ] ein philosophischer Begriff war. Ousia als Wortbildung geht auf das Partizip zu einai - sein zurück; hierbei ist es jedoch schwierig, eine passende entsprechende Übersetzung zu finden. [ ] Eine frühere Substanztheorie entwickelt Aristoteles in den Kategorien, deren Inhalt der traditionellen Deutung gemäß genau gegenteilig zu denen der Substanzbücher ausfällt. [ ] Die Frage nach der Substanz in den Kategorien erfordert die Differenzierung in Bezug auf die logische und die ontologische Bestimmung des Begriffes. Im logischen Kontext spricht man von der primären Substanz als das, was nicht vom Zugrundeliegenden (hypokeimenon) ausgesagt werden kann. Die ontologische Bestimmung der ousia ist die des unabhängigen Existierens im Unterschied zu den Eigenschaften, welche auf die Substanzen als Träger angewiesen sind. Die zweiten ousiai bringt man mit den Art- und Gattungsbegriffen in Zusammenhang, nennt man die Substanz nun zweite Substanz als die Art (eidos), in welcher sich die primären Substanzen befinden. Diese zweiten Substanzen sind nicht in einem anderen befindlich. Das bedeutet, alle nichtsubstantialen Bestimmungen bedürfen einer Substanz, von der sie abhängig sind. Sie können von der primären ousia prädiziert werden, was deren Wasbestimmtheit zum Ausdruck bringt [ ]. Die primäre Substanz liegt allem Seienden zugrunde (vgl. Kat. 5, 2b38) und nimmt hierbei eine Vorrangstellung ein, insofern sie weder von einem anderen ausgesagt wird noch sich in einem anderen befindet. Aus ontologischer Perspektive definiert Aristoteles in den Kategorien also das Einzelne als erste Substanz (prote ousia) [ ] das Allgemeine hingegen als zweite Substanz (deutere ousia) [ ]Die zweite Substanz macht durch ihr eidetischbeständiges Allgemeines das eigentliche Wassein des Einzelnen aus, macht die primäre Substanz erst zu dem, was sie ist. [ ] Im Sinne der Kategorien ist jedes Seiende durch das einzelne Ding - die ousia - seiend und somit das vorrangig vorliegende Seiende. Diese Bestimmung der ousia wird auch in der Metaphysik beibehalten (vgl. Met. Z1). [ ]Der deutlichste Unterschied zwischen beiden 2
Konzeptionen macht sich an der Tatsache fest, dass Aristoteles in der Metaphysik nicht mehr zwischen erster und zweiter Substanz unterscheidet, sondern das konkrete Einzelding wird in die beiden Aspekte Form und Materie aufgespalten. Ausgeschlossen von den Substanzen wird in der Metaphysik der Bereich der Gattungen, weil Allgemeines nicht Substanz sein kann. (Silke Piwko: Bedeutungen und Funktionen des Terminus 'ousia' bei Aristoteles, 2008) If there was chaos, then there was already a primary essence, therefore it is (bo-hu). But since it is without form, it cannot be described or grasped as such. It was neither flat nor round, but notdescribable. It was even empty, though there was something (cp. the concept of shunyata in Buddhism). But as this something had no form yet, it could not inherit anything then that-which-it-was and thus consisted of those-what-it-inherited which was not yet separated and had no accidents as such, as the accidents are things further defining the substance. However, form and matter come.רוּח together through the breath of God, the ruah Hannu Töyrilä however argues that It may seem improbable that the image of utter emptiness of the Gen 1:2 could have anything to do with the sober philosophy of Aristotle. However, such a connection was made, when in medieval Jewish thought the interpretation of tohu and bohu as matter and form important concepts in medieval philosophy and science surfaced and even attained a level of popularity. (Hannu Töyrylä: Slimy Stones and Philosophy: Interpretations of tohu wa-vohu as Matter and Form, 2004, p.2; http://users.abo.fi/htoyryla/tohu-paper10b.pdf, retrieved on 21 May 2018). Furthermore, the Sefer Yetzirah describes how God creates the world with 32 mysterious ways, which are then identified with the 10 cardinal numbers and the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Each cardinal number also presents a stage in the creation, which starts from the spirit (ruah) of God, then proceeds to wind or air (ruah), then to water, fire and even further. Out of water come tohu, bohu, mud and clay, which are then used by God as material for building the world. [ ] In another verse of Sefer Yetzirah, God is said to have formed something real (mamash) out of tohu. It can be deduced from this that tohu itself is not anything real. In the Biblical usage there was hardly any difference in meaning between tohu and bohu. (Töyrylä, 2004, p.7) Indeed, the Torah has a lot of mystical information that goes either back to early belief or was later seen in it in the Middle Ages. At first, the different elements play an important role. Air or breath, as 3
well as water are things mentioned from the early beginning. They stand in several interrelations and strongly remember of the five elements of Daoism. This might be no surprise as everywhere in the world, people asked the question, which was the first element?. Natural philosophers such as Thales and Heraklitos worked with water as the original source saying everything was born out of water and then through thickening and thinning came into different states and manifestations and forms (cp. Aristotle: Physics, Book 1). Parmenides claimed that nothing comes from nothing, and thus the void. It goes back to an even earlier theogenic thought already found in Hesiod. It became later known as creatio ex nihilo. Melissos stated that everything which exists is one and motionless. Even further, that what is then is eternal and infinite (DK 30 B7). Despite water, the other basic elements have been proposed as first substance as well, though Aristotle rejects them as being valid (cp. Schmitz commentary on the first four chapters of Aristotle s Physics Book 1). The only natural philosopher who is in a good light in Aristotle s view is Anaxogaras who proposes the nous (=reason) as first substance. Aristotle also rejects motionlessness as nothing could change through thickening and thinning if nothing was able to move and he also rejected that there is only one first substance, because it would imply that everything must be always found in everything (which means that water also always contains meat, even in the littlest drop). Critics however could say that motion is just an illusion and that in fact everything is static and we just imagine that everything changes (skepticism). Much more interesting concerning our question however is the Platonic view as given in Timaeus. According to Plato, the universe originally was a chaotic, unformed matter, which was then brought into order by a divine being, the Demiurge. It seems, then, that the purpose of the creation myth is to give an account of the nature of man and of the universe to serve as the background for another mythical account, the purpose of which will be to show that the ideal state is superior and ultimately more powerful than an adversary which has greater material resources and skill but is morally inferior. (12) That the purpose of the creation myth is to give a systematic account of the nature of man and the world rather than a chronological report of how the world came into being, is, I think, undeniable; this systematic character of Timaeus' exposition can be seen even in the three main divisions of his discourse. There is first a prelude (27 C-29 D) (13) in which the nature and the limits of the exposition are set down. (14) Timaeus deals then with the work of the Demiurge and of the created gods (29 D-47 E) which constitutes the work of Reason in the universe. At 47 E ff., however, he declares the need to begin all over again and introduces the third factor, the receptacle; this is done in order to describe what comes about of Necessity (47 E- 69 A). We hear now of things that 4
the Demiurge had done before some of those described in 29 D-47 E. (15) In the third and last part of the myth (69 A-92 C), after recapitulating the two previous sections, Timaeus explains the creation of those things which are a result of the cooperation of Reason and Necessity. (Leonardo Taran: The Creation Myth in Plato's Timaeus, in: The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter, 252, 1966) And even in Augustine s Confessions (Book 12), the tohu-wa-bohu is a kind of formless matter which is used by God to create the world. However, he does not differentiate between tohu and bohu explicitly, but sees the whole tohu and bohu as one term: unformed matter. As such, he does not distribute one term to the other, but only looks at the whole. The most important source, in my view, however, is the look on the Sefer Ha-Bahir as described above, as it shows not only a historical formation of understanding, but rather a historical transformation through editing over centuries from the 1 st century CE to the 12 th century CE. According to Joseph Dan s Gerschom Scholem and the Mystical Dimension of Jewish History (New York, 1988), Scholem asserts that the Sefer Ha-Bahir subscribes to Bar Hiyya's tohu/hyle and bohu/form analogy (Töyrylä, 2004, p. 8). However, Töyrylä couldn't find direct support for this, neither in Scholem s Origins of the Kabbalah (Princeton University Press, 1987) nor in the Sefer Ha-Bahir, but indirect support is provided by the fact that in the Sefer Ha-Bahir, tohu is primarily interpreted as evil, which in Neoplatonism is associated with matter (cp. Töyrylä, 2004, p. 8). The hyle-form analogy goes back to Aristotle again, but Bar Hiyya also puts a Neoplatonic falvor inside (which then goes back to the Timaeus). Schmitz puts it in the whole context of Chapter 1 of the Sefer Ha-Bahir, which teaches that the beginning was a blessing (bet) which according to (alef-bet) started out of a chaos that brought forth a something which had substance. Everything that turned out from the blessing was a blessing again. As the whole nature is a blessing, Man is a blessing too, as he is an exact copy of nature that inherits God, and God is inherited in the whole nature. (Timo Schmitz: A vague interpretation of Section One of the Sefer Ha-Bahir, self-published online article, 28 April 2018). He puts it further in the context that Gen 1:2 are written alef-bet in the Hebrew Bible, not only representing the alphabet, but the beginning must be picked up there because one (alef) is the beginning, and two (bet) is a blessing and thus the blessed beginning (ibid.). And According to Bar Hiyya, Form penetrates all things from angels to the material world: the ladder of beings culminates in human beings who possess reason. The Torah elucidates such a hierarchy. (Lavinia Cohn-Sherbok & Dan Cohn-Sherbok Medieval Jewish Philosophy An Introduction, 2014, p. 73). As such Bar Hiyya distinguishes four categories in which form exists. The first is a self-subsistent form that never combines with matter; the second is form that is attached inseparably to matter; the third is form which is temporarily attached to matter; and the fourth is form which is attached to a body (ibid.). According to Jonathan Dauber Bar Hiyya's interpretation of the words tohu and bohu in Gen. 1:2 as 5
matter and form, respectively, is reflected in secs. 2, 9, 93, and 109 of the Bahir (Jonathan Dauber: Knowledge of God and the Development of Early Kabbalah, 2012, p. 191). Scholem points out that Abraham bar Hiyya literally speaks of form and reality (surah we-hashashah). As light has form and reality, the term formation is employed; whereas darkness has neither form nor reality, the term creation is employed (Scholem, 1987, p.63). This again shows a two-partite system, as we know it from Aristotle s form and matter and Daoism s yin and yang. Through a certain amount of yin and a certain amount of yang, a certain manifestation becomes established. The same seems to appear through tohu and bohu. They are a dualism making a oneness, but through working on them, they establish a manifestation. It is the manifestation of God s creation. Same than light and darkness are contradictions, but God can be found in both at the same time, yin and yang are contradictions in which the Dao appears at the same time. Thus, everything which the yin and yang brings forth shares a part of the Dao. The same goes to the tohu and bohu. God created the earth which was made out of the dualism, but both are divine and everything which was brought forth by it was a product of the divine, too. Therefore, the whole nature inherits God and everything must be part of God, too. Indeed, for this reason, we shall not harm our environment for no reason, as everything has God s spirit inside. At the same time, we have to be aware of Aristotle s thought on individuality. The thing itself is most individual (individual term), but as more general the term becomes as less individuality it has. The term tohu wa bohu includes everything, and thus has least individuality as everything is chaotic inside. As it encompasses everything, it also encompasses all forms, colors, etc. and therefore becomes so abstract, that it cannot be further described. As chaos has a rather negatively connotation, tohu can be indirectly seen as evil, while bohu as an affirmative state is rather good. If we see it in this way, then everything is made out of good and bad. For this reason, there is nothing perfect on earth and even human-beings who can act reasonable have flaws, as they consist of good and bad at the same time, and sometimes the good is dominating and sometimes the bad. As such, the chaos is without form as it has not much what-it-is-in itself (Seiendheit) anymore and thus is just an abstract form without form, while the material is not a specially related materia anymore and we can just say that there is any material. From here, Genesis is creating the world inductively. If we go deductively from Gen 1:27 to Gen 1:2, we can say, the first human is Adam, he is something-whichis-being (ein Seiendes). If we use the next general term, we say the term human-being (ha-adam) which means that he loses that-which-is-being (Seiendheit) by receiving the article the. The word adam comes from adamah meaning mud and thus explains everything which is muddy. It has less Seiendheit than human-being. If we go further in generality, everything loses more and more Seiendheit until we are at a point, where the thing itself is so abstract that we can only say that there 6
is form, but we cannot talk of a specific form anymore as it is chaos, and we can only say that there is matter, because we know there is a substance but it has such less Seiendheit that it cannot be further precised. To put it in a nutshell, tohu-wa-bohu refers to the first ousiai from which everything further developed. Therefore, everything stands in a connection with it, which means that from an individual term to a general term, all general terms might be further generalized until one gets to the tohu-wa-bohu. This also means that everything is connected to one another and that nothing exists independently for it alone (cp. parinispanna (absolute nature) as part of the three natures of Yogacara-Buddhism). Therefore, instead of seeing everything independently for itself, we need to understand how everything relies to each other to finally become one with God. Although tohu and bohu exist for themselves, they cannot be split off leaving only tohu or bohu, but where there is tohu there must be bohu as well, making them inseparable. As such, using one term to explain both (such as unformed matter) is legit, since neither the unformed nor the matter appear alone. Based on this, we can build further dualisms such as light and darkness, as well as formation and creation. In chapter one of Genesis, the word creation can be found through bara and its form wayibra (and He created) which refers to things that are separated out of another thing through setting aside, and the form wa-ya as (and He made) from asah (to do, to make) refers to things that were made through God s will out of the thought of God and thus what God thinks also necessarily becomes. As a result, things that are created, always can be generalized until the most abstract thing. In Genesis chapter 2 it gets evident, when it is pointed out that the plants which were brought forth by God were still not on the surface as the necessity of rain was lacking. This shows, that the plants cannot exist without the earth and they cannot come into visual being without the rain. But even the things that God made are not independently but already rely on a substance that was there. The firmament which was made, but at the same time was not a separated entity from the waters around (see Gen 1:7). Therefore, we can also assume that neither tohu nor bohu are static, but in constant motion and thus are responsible for the change of manifestations of God s creation. Timo Schmitz, 22 May 2018. http://schmitztimo.wordpress.com 7