|
When I studied philosophy in college and graduate school, I took some courses in “epistemology,” or the theory of knowledge. These courses would discuss things like “what can we know?” “what is truth?” and the like. In the Greek/Western conception, truth (aletheia) is a property generally ascribed to linguistic states: a proposition p is true if and only if p obtains in the (empirical/observable) world. That is, truth has to do with some sort of correspondence between our thinking (as expressed by language) and states of affairs in the world.
And to some degree, this is surely correct. When we affirm that something is true, we mean that the description we are trying to convey through our language obtains not only for ourselves, but for others who use language in a public way. Language, then, is not a subjective interpretation, but a means of communicating about reality.
The Hebraic conception of truth, while not denying the importance of correspondence, seems to have a different focus. The Greek conception of truth as a static property that pertains to propositions inevitably led to metaphysical speculations about “essences” and “universals” as something “more real” than the everyday world of particular cats, trees, and water lilies. The Hebrew mind, on the other hand, seemed more focused on the dynamic, the changing, and the idea that truth involved the formation of the character of the person -- and the restoration of the world. Especially in relation to God, to Whom the Jew must give account, the nature of truth becomes grounded in the moments of decision encountered in one’s life. Shall I steal? Shall I turn a blind eye to social injustice? etc.
The Seal of Truth
The Jewish sages sometimes say "the seal of God is truth," since the final letters of the three words that conclude the account of creation -- bara Elohim la'asot ("God created to do" [Genesis 2:3])--spell emet:
In other words, God created reality "to do" (la’asot), which has come to be interpreted by the sages as meaning that it is our responsibility, as God's creatures, to complete the "doing" of His Creation (tikkun Olam). Truth is about doing, not being...
Truth Encompasses all
In Hebrew, the word for truth, emet, contains the first, middle (if you include the sofit letters and Sin/Shin as separate letters) and the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which seems to suggest that the truth contains everything from Aleph to Tav:
Since truth is all-encompassing, there is always a place for it to be practiced -- there is literally no place or experience that is exempted from its presence -- and therefore, there is always the demand to live in its light. Indeed, God Himself is called the Spirit of Truth (Ruach HaEmet) (John 14:7, 15:26, 16:13).
The word emet comes from a verb (aman) that means to support or make firm, and expresses the image of strong arms of a parent supporting the helpless infant:
|
