Metaphysical meaning of Jews (mbd)
Jews, jews.
People belonging to the tribe and kingdom of Judah only, or to the Hebrew nation generally (II Kings 16:6; Matt. 2:2).
Meta. Jews in their highest aspect symbolize divine ideas, or spiritual consciousness. Each individual has his formless and his formed mind, and they seem in the present race consciousness to be hostile one to the other. In Scripture these are referred to as Jew and Gentile.
Mind has two broad aspects, the formless and the formed. In its formless aspect it is a unity; in its formed aspect it is a diversity. It might be compared in its first aspect to vapor, and in its second to that same vapor precipitated into crystals of snow. In the vapor aspect there is a homogeneous whole; in the snow each little crystal has form and character peculiarly its own. Raise these inanimate crystals to the plane of thought and free will and you have a parallel to the formed mind of humanity.
In the New Testament, Jews symbolize our established religious thoughts and systems of worship. The Jews were always the hardest to reach with the new thought. They were very set in their religion, and they usually refused even to listen to new teachings of Truth (see Acts 13:45). So we find in ourselves that our religious convictions frequently stand in the way of our accepting the new revelations of Truth that come to us. The orthodox church has a very large number of people who are truly spiritual and would quickly grasp the real import of Christianity were they free from the restraints of religious habits of thought and worship and from the established customs of the church.
The Jews symbolize our religious thoughts and the Gentiles symbolize our worldly thoughts. Paul was determined to reconcile the Jew and the Gentile (Acts 21:13, 19). We find that there is a separation between our religious thoughts and our worldly thoughts. We have built up a Sunday religion and thrown around it a wall of sacredness. In it are rites and ceremonies and sacrifices according to a standard fixed by some sect, whose teachings about God we have accepted as true. Then the broad Truth of the Holy Spirit enters the mind and begins to break down this wall of separation between the religious thoughts and the worldly thoughts. It perceives that the principles involved in the Fatherhood of God must go to the uttermost parts of the mind and the body and unify them in Spirit.
Fixed traditional religious thoughts, the Jews, that follow the letter of the law rather than the living Truth that seeks to unite in spiritual harmony both Jews and Gentiles, are the opposing force in Jerusalem (the religious consciousness) that would hinder the word, presented by Paul, from doing its work (Acts 21:11). But the living word of Truth cannot be killed. Paul's words of Truth were bound for a time, but they have filled the whole world. So it is with the living words of Truth now being sown in our consciousness: they will do their work of restoration throughout our being.
________________________
Preceding Entry: Jewish
Following Entry: Jezaniah
