An analysis of the
content and influences of the earliest work of Kabbalah.
By Joseph Dan
In the following
article, the author refers to the relationship between Kabbalah and Gnostic
symbolism. Gnosticism was an ancient theology that included mythological
speculations into the nature of God. It posited the existence of two primary
forces, one good and one evil. Gershom Scholem believed that Gnosticism greatly
influenced the emergence of Jewish mysticism. The following is reprinted with
permission from The Early Kabbalah, edited by Joseph Dan and published by Paulist Press.
One of the earliest and most important discoveries of Gershom
Scholem, the great and pioneering scholar of the field of Jewish mysticism, was
the identification of the Sefer ha‑Bahir
(Book of Brilliance) as the
earliest disseminated text of Kabbalistic thought, the first to utilize the
symbolism of the dynamic and emanated sefirot.
Previous scholarship had given priority to a variety of other and much later
Kabbalistic works, but thanks to Scholem we are now reasonably able to
establish the sequence of the Kabbalistic texts of the thirteenth century and
to systematically develop a history of Kabbalah.
But while the basic problem of sequence has been solved, a
myriad of questions remains; and the Bahir
despite its name, is far from being clear to us. No satisfactory
explanation has yet to be proposed for the appearance or even the sources of
the Gnostic symbols in the Bahir.
Furthermore, the literary structure of the book is both a hodgepodge and a
mystery: one scholar has even suggested that at some early point in the
transmission of the text individual pages of the Bahir were scattered in the wind and reassembled in an incorrect
order.
Still, some of the sources of the Bahir can be identified. The Sefer
Yetzirah and the traditions of the heikhalot
and merkavah literature were
undoubtedly the main sources from which the unknown author lifted terminology,
and imagery. But medieval sources also had some impact. The author?s use of the
terms tohu and bohu (the ?unformed? and ?void? of Genesis 1:2) to denote
Aristotelian matter and form is derived from a twelfth‑century
philosophical treatise by Rabbi Abraham bar Hiyya (Sefer Hegyon ha-Nefesh, ed. G. Wigoder, Jerusalem, 1969). It is
possible that the author of the Bahir knew
of Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra?s theory of the kavod
as described in the latter?s commentary to Exodus 33 (Sections 128-129 of
the Sefer ha-Bahir display awareness
of Ibn Ezra?s terminology).
If this latter supposition is correct, the Bahir must have received its final form
only a short time before its appearance in the academies of Provence. There are
some connections between the Bahir and
the esoteric literature used by the Ashkenazi Hasidim. An ancient book entitled
The Great Secret (Raza? Rabbah) captured the imagination
of some of the German Pietists as well as the author of the Bahir. (Scholem published the German
Pietist text that includes the quotations from the Raza? Rabbah in an
appendix to his re?shit ha-qabbalah,
pp. 195-238.) Both the Pietists and the Bahir
were indebted to a collection of obscure commentaries to the Holy Divine
Names.* These shared sources may help to clarify, the origins of the Bahir, but it should be noted that none
of these sources contain anything even remotely similar to the sefirotic or
Gnostic doctrines characteristic of the Bahir.
The work was written
in a form that mirrors that of ancient midrashic style. The book is comprised
of brief homiletical paragraphs, each beginning with the name of a speaker or
speakers, and each interpreting a biblical verse or pericope with the aid of
other scattered verses, following the classical form of the Hebrew homily. The
book is traditionally attributed to a master of the Heikhalot Rabbati, Rabbi Nehunia ben ha‑Qanah, because the
opening homily of the work (and no other) is reported in his name. Other
speakers include some of the most famous Tannaim (such as Rabbi Aqiba), and
many sections are attributed to apocryphal rabbis bearing fictional names (such
as Rabbi Amora).
The language is
mostly Hebrew with an occasional Aramaicism which underlies the conscious
attempt by the author to create a tannaitic‑type text. One literary,
element employed for this purpose is the frequent use of parables, especially
parables centered on an earthly, king of flesh and blood and his royal family,
his loyal and disloyal subjects, and his majestic palace (now, of course, lofty
symbols for the teeming world of the sefirot).
This literary device is essential for correctly
understanding one of the most important among the many new concepts introduced
by the Bahir: the conception that the
divine world includes both masculine and feminine elements. In many passages
the Bahir describes the figure of the
Queen, the Bride, the Sister, the Wife, the Daughter, and the Matron who stands
at the side of the masculine divine power, usually the King. She is sometimes
portrayed in terms very reminiscent of Gnostic terminology: ?the daughter of
light? who came ?from a far away country.?
There is little
doubt that this feminine power is usually identified with the shekhinah. This grammatically feminine
term was used for nearly a thousand years before the advent of the Bahir, but only as a designation of God
in His immanent facet and never as a hypostatized feminine power. The Bahir is the first Jewish mystical work
to introduce the idea that sexual and familial symbolism is appropriate for the
description of the essence of the divine realm. This sexual motif was to become
one of the most central and distinctive themes of the Kabbalah.
Another basic symbol of the Bahir, employed frequently in parables but often independently of
them, is the portrayal of the emanated powers [the sefirot] as a living tree. The divine world is portrayed as an
enormous phalanx of intertwined limbs, roots, trunks, appendages, leaves, buds,
and sprouts. Once again, it appears that this symbol reached the Bahir from a Gnostic source. It is even
possible that the biblical term maleh (fullness),
so prominently invoked in the Bahir in
describing the divine powers, is nothing more than a translation of the Gnostic
pleroma [the ideal world]into Hebrew.**
Many sections of the Bahir
are dedicated to an investigation of the evil element in the upper and
lower worlds. This kind of emphasis is unusual when compared with the
traditional stress given to such considerations in rabbinic literature, and the
metaphors for portraying the workings of evil are often quite new.
Philosophical notions can be detected in the Bahir?s linkage between matter and evil. In most passages it seems
that the evil elements in the universe are no more than divine emissaries:
obedient messengers of the divine command. In such a case evil is not an
independent force; the messengers are not evil in essence, nor is there an
independent divine source of evil in the pleroma.
In other sections of the text such an interpretation would run into difficulty,
for in these passages it is implied that there are indeed two separate realms,
one wholly good and the other entirely evil. Though hints of such a Gnostic and
dualist picture are indeed present, the early Kabbalists who studied and
commented on the Bahir did not use it
to develop a dualistic system. To be sure, Gnostic, dualist theologies do
appear in thirteenth‑century Kabbalah, but the dualist theosophists do
not follow the symbolism of the Bahir.
The most important new element in the Bahir is the system of ten divine powers [the sefirot], arranged in a specified sequence and studied in great
detail. The main discussion of these powers begins in the latter half of the
work with the question: ?What are these ten utterances [with which the world
was created]?? (see Genesis 1 and Mishnah Pirqey
Avot 5:1).Then begins a list,
some powers passed over quickly, others the object of intense speculation.
A wealth of new symbols are laid forth, to be used by
Kabbalists in all subsequent generations. The system described through these
symbols provides a glimpse into the divine dynamism, and rules every aspect of
the earthly realm. There are important and puzzling differences in the order,
symbolism, and function of the sefirot
presented in the Bahir and among
other thirteenth‑century Kabbalists, but there is not a single Kabbalist
who does not reflect?at least to some extent?the basic symbolism of the Bahir.
*See J. Dan, The
Esoteric Theology, pp. 74-76 et
passim.
**See Scholem, Ursprung und Anfänge, pp. 59-62.
Joseph Dan is the
Gershom Scholem Professor of Kabbalah at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A
winner of the Israel Prize in 1997, he is recognized as one of the most
influential scholars of Jewish mysticism in the world today.
Excerpts from THE EARLY KABBALAH, edited and introduced
by Joseph Dan, texts translated by Ronald C. Kiener, preface by Moshe Idel,
from The Classics of Western Spirituality, Copyright © 1986 by Joseph Dan and
Ronald C. Kiener, Paulist Press, Inc., New York / Mahwah, N.J. Used with
permission of Paulist Press, www.paulistpress.com.
