Descartes’ dictum: ‘There is nothing so absurd or incredible that it has not been asserted by one philosopher or another. - Paul Johnson

Body and soul, it taught, were one and jointly responsible for sin, therefore jointly punishable. This became an important distinction between Christianity and Judaism. The Christian idea that, by weakening the body through mortification and fasting, you strengthened the soul, was anathema to Jews. They had ascetic sects as late as the first century AD, but once rabbinical Judaism established its dominance, the Jews turned their backs forever on monasticism, hermitry and asceticism. Public fasts might be commanded as symbols of public atonement, but private fasts were sinful and forbidden. Abstaining from wine, as the Nazarites did, was sinful, for it was rejecting the gifts God has provided for man’s necessities. Vegetarianism was rarely encouraged.

He is recorded to have laughed only once, at a picnic with Ernst Jünger in the Harz Mountains. Jünger leaned over to pick up a sauerkraut and sausage roll, and his lederhosen split with a tremendous crack. Heidegger let out a shout of glee, but immediately checked himself, “and his facial expression reverted to its habitual ferocity.

Los judíos sencillamente suponen la preexistencia de un Dios omnipotente, que actúa pero al que nunca se describe ni caracteriza, y por lo tanto tiene la fuerza y la invisibilidad de la naturaleza misma: es significativo que el primer capítulo del Génesis, a diferencia de las restantes cosmogonías antiguas, armonice perfectamente, en esencia, con las explicaciones científicas modernas del origen del universo, y entre ellas con la teoría de la Gran Explosión.