The world that is coming

The rabbinic Hebrew ha-olam ha-ba, translated by Daniel Matt as the world that is coming, ‘is often understood as referring to the hereafter and is usually translated as “the world to come”’(Matt, ZP I.44). The difference in translation may suffice, but is not necessary, to get the point: ‘“The world to come” does not succeed “this world” in time, but exists from eternity as a reality outside and above time, to which the soul ascends’ (Guttmann, quoted by Matt, ZP I.44). ‘In Kabbalah “the world that is coming” often refers to Binah, the ceaseless stream of emanation, who engenders and nourishes the lower sefirot’ (Matt, ZP II.81). To put it another way, the streaming is time, and its ceaselessness is eternity.

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