It was in the darkest phase of the Middle Ages, a “century” between the Second and the Seventh Crusades, that Brightness and Splendor appeared, ushering in the golden age of the Kabbalah, which lasted for nearly half-a-millennium, culminating in the genius of Isaac Luria, and eventually subdued by the grim historical infamy of a succession of false self-proclaimed Jewish Messiahs, shamelessly abusing the esoteric intricacy of the Kabbalah, cynically drafted into the service of their fraudulent claims, and almost wholly discredited together with her manipulative charlatan masters.
Alongside with the school of Isaac the Blind, whose greatly influential theosophical commentary on Sefer Yetzira was mentioned in a previous entry, several other momentous Seferim came into being during that rather short period of time, including Sefer Ha-Temuna, Book of the Image, an anonymous work, which is especially famous for its far too liberal indulgence in gematria, that is in its interpretative symbolism of the twenty-two Hebrew letters, and for its eerie claim of the existence of an Invisible Torah. Alas, it was exactly this overreaching and arrogant book that gave the most aid and comfort to the false Messiahs, which nearly killed the future of Jewish mysticism, as a result of the general spiritual disillusionment of the Jews, caused by the exposure of the phonies. (On the false Messiahs see my separate entry Black Sheep Rising, to be posted later.)
It is, however, the emergence of two other Seferim, which is of particular interest to me in this entry. Sefer Ha-Bahir, The Book of Brightness, and Sefer Ha-Zohar, The Book of Splendor, are now my subject here.
Bahir is a loose collection of Scriptural Midrashim, named after its opening commentary, appearing in the late 12th century, but typically attributed to ancient sources and authors, also including Isaac the Blind. Like the later Temuna, it eagerly assigns mystical significance to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, both in their shapes and in their sounds, but it does not go as far as the other one in its wild claims. Bahir is particularly noteworthy due to its basic premise that both the esoteric purpose of Creation and the actual course of human history revolve around the existence and the destiny of God's chosen people, the Jews, an early unequivocal expression of a Jewish Manifest Destiny, crystallized in the Lurianic Tikkun Olam, and eventually developing into what I regard as the modern Jewish nation-idea.
Bahir contains the earliest effort to characterize the ten Sefirot of Sefer Yetzira as manifestations of God’s powers. These awesome powers are not attributes, but hypostases of God (another uncanny conceptual link to the Christian ideas of the Trinity and of the two hypostases of Christ). These hypostases are inseparable from the One God, but each possesses a personality of its own. (Once again, this argument parallels the idea of the multiplicity of oneness, contained in the Christian concept of the Trinity!)
Calling these Divine powers Maamarot, Sayings,--- Bahir divides them into three higher manifestations and seven lower ones, each acting on its own, putting them in direct correlation with the actions of the Jews in the real world. Evil is named as a Principle contained within God Himself, and the Jewish souls are alleged to be capable of transmigration, Gilgul.
Sefer Ha-Zohar, famously known as the Zohar, whose importance has been ranked third by the Kabbalists, after the Torah and the Talmud (note the conspicuous exclusion of the Neviim and the Khetuvim, that is, of the whole non-Torah part of the Bible, from this short list!!!), appeared in the 13th century as a Commentary on the hidden meanings of the Torah, the Book of Ruth, and the Song of Solomon. Naturally, it is attributed to the much earlier authority of Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai, but its actual author, or, more likely, its creative compilator, is believed to be Rabbi Moses de Leon of Spain, who died in 1305.
Zohar was written in fancy Aramaic, the most popular language of the Kabbalah, which is, perhaps, due to at least two main reasons: it allows the authors to claim their hoax’s ancient origin, dated back to the time when Aramaic was in wide use, and, on the other hand, this puts just enough distance between the author’s language of choice and the classic Hebrew, Lashon Ha-Kodesh, whose cryptic spirit is certainly the salient feature of all Kabbalistic theosophy.
The immense importance of the Zohar does not lie in its originality, in which sense it is probably the least original book among the literary giants of the Kabbalah, but in its overbearing authoritative imprimatur, a license to the truth, grandiloquently granting credibility to all works of esoteric Jewish mysticism, both up to date, and for all future time. All the main ideas of Jewish mysticism, creation out of the depths of God’s unknowability, the correlation of the ten Sefirot to the reality of the sensory world, and then, of course, the totally indispensable function of the observant Jew in the ultimate restoration of the universal harmony, all these ideas are hereby given the status of Divine revelations. The Zohar unequivocally puts itself above the normal Jewish Tradition, above the Talmudic contemplations of a group of very wise Jewish rabbis, to be accepted on the supernatural strength of Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai’s theosophical revelation as the Absolute Standard of Infinite Truth, not as a creation of some amazingly ingenious, yet finite, and therefore, limited and imperfect human mind. I would not be at all surprised, by the way, if the Zohar’s explicit urge to appeal to Divine Authority was directly influenced by the religious Authority of the Holy Koran of the Moslems. A similar daring, many centuries after the Zohar, would be exhibited in the Book of Mormon, where a “latter-day” Divine Origin has also been claimed by the book’s authors.
Alongside with the school of Isaac the Blind, whose greatly influential theosophical commentary on Sefer Yetzira was mentioned in a previous entry, several other momentous Seferim came into being during that rather short period of time, including Sefer Ha-Temuna, Book of the Image, an anonymous work, which is especially famous for its far too liberal indulgence in gematria, that is in its interpretative symbolism of the twenty-two Hebrew letters, and for its eerie claim of the existence of an Invisible Torah. Alas, it was exactly this overreaching and arrogant book that gave the most aid and comfort to the false Messiahs, which nearly killed the future of Jewish mysticism, as a result of the general spiritual disillusionment of the Jews, caused by the exposure of the phonies. (On the false Messiahs see my separate entry Black Sheep Rising, to be posted later.)
It is, however, the emergence of two other Seferim, which is of particular interest to me in this entry. Sefer Ha-Bahir, The Book of Brightness, and Sefer Ha-Zohar, The Book of Splendor, are now my subject here.
Bahir is a loose collection of Scriptural Midrashim, named after its opening commentary, appearing in the late 12th century, but typically attributed to ancient sources and authors, also including Isaac the Blind. Like the later Temuna, it eagerly assigns mystical significance to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, both in their shapes and in their sounds, but it does not go as far as the other one in its wild claims. Bahir is particularly noteworthy due to its basic premise that both the esoteric purpose of Creation and the actual course of human history revolve around the existence and the destiny of God's chosen people, the Jews, an early unequivocal expression of a Jewish Manifest Destiny, crystallized in the Lurianic Tikkun Olam, and eventually developing into what I regard as the modern Jewish nation-idea.
Bahir contains the earliest effort to characterize the ten Sefirot of Sefer Yetzira as manifestations of God’s powers. These awesome powers are not attributes, but hypostases of God (another uncanny conceptual link to the Christian ideas of the Trinity and of the two hypostases of Christ). These hypostases are inseparable from the One God, but each possesses a personality of its own. (Once again, this argument parallels the idea of the multiplicity of oneness, contained in the Christian concept of the Trinity!)
Calling these Divine powers Maamarot, Sayings,--- Bahir divides them into three higher manifestations and seven lower ones, each acting on its own, putting them in direct correlation with the actions of the Jews in the real world. Evil is named as a Principle contained within God Himself, and the Jewish souls are alleged to be capable of transmigration, Gilgul.
Sefer Ha-Zohar, famously known as the Zohar, whose importance has been ranked third by the Kabbalists, after the Torah and the Talmud (note the conspicuous exclusion of the Neviim and the Khetuvim, that is, of the whole non-Torah part of the Bible, from this short list!!!), appeared in the 13th century as a Commentary on the hidden meanings of the Torah, the Book of Ruth, and the Song of Solomon. Naturally, it is attributed to the much earlier authority of Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai, but its actual author, or, more likely, its creative compilator, is believed to be Rabbi Moses de Leon of Spain, who died in 1305.
Zohar was written in fancy Aramaic, the most popular language of the Kabbalah, which is, perhaps, due to at least two main reasons: it allows the authors to claim their hoax’s ancient origin, dated back to the time when Aramaic was in wide use, and, on the other hand, this puts just enough distance between the author’s language of choice and the classic Hebrew, Lashon Ha-Kodesh, whose cryptic spirit is certainly the salient feature of all Kabbalistic theosophy.
The immense importance of the Zohar does not lie in its originality, in which sense it is probably the least original book among the literary giants of the Kabbalah, but in its overbearing authoritative imprimatur, a license to the truth, grandiloquently granting credibility to all works of esoteric Jewish mysticism, both up to date, and for all future time. All the main ideas of Jewish mysticism, creation out of the depths of God’s unknowability, the correlation of the ten Sefirot to the reality of the sensory world, and then, of course, the totally indispensable function of the observant Jew in the ultimate restoration of the universal harmony, all these ideas are hereby given the status of Divine revelations. The Zohar unequivocally puts itself above the normal Jewish Tradition, above the Talmudic contemplations of a group of very wise Jewish rabbis, to be accepted on the supernatural strength of Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai’s theosophical revelation as the Absolute Standard of Infinite Truth, not as a creation of some amazingly ingenious, yet finite, and therefore, limited and imperfect human mind. I would not be at all surprised, by the way, if the Zohar’s explicit urge to appeal to Divine Authority was directly influenced by the religious Authority of the Holy Koran of the Moslems. A similar daring, many centuries after the Zohar, would be exhibited in the Book of Mormon, where a “latter-day” Divine Origin has also been claimed by the book’s authors.
No comments:
Post a Comment