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The Meaning of the Torah in Jewish Mysticism. II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Gershom Scholem
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This principle of the Torah as a living unit connects with the third principle we are now ready to discuss, that of the manifold and even infinite meanings of the Torah. The different limbs in the simile of the organism were frequently interpreted not as coordinate organs on the same level of importance, but as different layers of meaning, leading the mystical student of the Sacred Text from the outer and exoteric meaning to ever deeper strata of understanding. The idea of an organism becomes identified here with the idea of a living hierarchy of meanings.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 4 , Issue 15 , September 1956 , pp. 65 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © 1956 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1. Bacher, "L'Exegèse biblique dans le Zohar," Revue des Etudes juives, Vol. 22 (1891), pp. 33-46.

2. Cf. my Hebrew book on the beginnings of the Kabbalah, Reshith ha-Rabbalah (1948), p. 152.

3. Zohar hadash (885) fol. 83 a. This earliest statement escaped Bacher's notice.

4. Ch. J. Ch. Huck, Joachim von Floris und die joachitische Literatur (1938), p. 291, si ad nucis dulcedinem pervenire volumus, primo necesse est, ut amoveatur exteria cortex, secunda testa, et ita tercio loco perveniatur ad nucleam. Cf. also ibid., p. 148.

5. Zohar II, 99 a/b, translation based upon Simon and Sperling, Vol. 3, pp. 301-2. A penetrating and beautiful essay on the history of this parable in later Kabbalistic literature is found in F. Lachover, cAl gebul ha-yashan we-he-hadash (Jerusalem, 1951), pp. 29-78.

6. Zohar, I, 26 b. The passage actually forms part of the Tikunim.

7. It seems to me that this reading re'iyoth is to be preferred to that of re'ayath (proofs, furnished by the interpretation) which does not fit into the given context. Bacher's conjecture that re'ayoth is but a corruption in our editions of the correct term remez, is refuted by the fact that the same interpretation of pardes is found in two other passages which escaped his atten tion, Zohar hadash, fols. 102 d and 107 c. (These passages are parts of the Tikunei Zohar.)

8. Tikunim, no. 24.

9. Moses de Leon, Sepher ha-nephesh ha-hakkamah (1608), near the end.

10. Zohar, II, 114 b, and Gikatila's commentaries published in the second part of Saul Cohen's questions to Isaac Abarbanel (Venice, 1574), fol. 21 a.

11. P. Sandler, Le ba'yath Pardes, in the El Auerbach Jubilee volume (Jerusalem, 1955), pp. 222, 235.

12. It is worth while noting that the affinity of the Kabbalistic theory with that developed in Christian tradition had been already observed by Pico della Mirandola, the first Christian humanist who dealt extensively with Kabbalah. In his Apologia, composed in 1487, he says: "Just as there exists in our midst a fourfold way of expounding the Bible, the literal, the mystical or allegorical, the tropological and the anagogy, so, too, is it among the Hebrews. The literary sense is called among them peshat, the allegorical midrash, the tropological is called sekhel, and the most sublime and Divine among all of them" (Opera, ed. Basle, p. 178-79). The Hebrew terms are exactly those used by Bahya ben Asher, whose book must therefore have served as Pico's source for the statement. The erroneous identification of midrash with allegory and of sekhel, which actually represents allegory, with tropology points to the limits of Pico's knowledge of these sources. This mistaken identification is amplified in the Apologia which the Franciscan monk Archangelus de Bourgonova wrote for Pico. He lists midrashic literature under the heading of allegory, but books like those of Maimonides and Gersonides among the tropological.

13. Othioth de-rabbi Akiba, ed. Wertheimer (1914), p. 12.

14. Zohar I, 140 a; Zohar hadash, fol. 8 b.

15. Vital, Etz ha-da'ath (Zolkiew, 1871), fols. 46-47.

16. Zohar III, 152 a; translation based on Simon and Sperling, vol. 5 (1934), pp. 211-12.

17. Luria, Sepher ha-Kawwanoth (Venice, 1620), fol. 53 b; more on this in Vital's Sha'ar gilgulim, ch. 17 (Jerusalem, 1912), fol. 17 b, and in Nathan Shapira's Megalleh ‘Amukkoth (1637), ch. 9.

18. Cordovero, Derishah be-'inyanei mal'akhim, ed. Margolioth (1945), p. 70.

19. Ma'amar ha-nephesh (Pjetkov, 1903), III, § 6, fol. 17 a, Ma'mar.

20. Tikunei Zohar, preface, fol. 6 b.

21. Ibid., no. 22, fol. 64 a.

22. Zohar, I, 23 a/b, belonging to the Tikunim.

23. Zohar, III, 215 b (Ra'yaMehemna).

24. Zohar, I, 26 b (Tikunim); II, 117 b, III, 124 b, 153 a, 255 a (all belonging to the Ra'ya Mehemna); Tikunei Zohar, nos. 56 and 60; Zohar hadash, fol. 106 c.

25. This was how H. Groetz in his "History of the Jews" understood them. A much deeper insight into the meaning of these statements has been gained by I. F. Baer's essay, "The His torical Background of the Ra'ya Mehemna, a chapter in the history of the religious-social move ments in Castile during the 13th century" which appeared in Hebrew in the historical quarter ly review Zion, vol. 5 (1940), pp. 1-44. Here the connection of these ideas with the Joachite movement of the Franciscan spirituales has been first brought to light.

26. Moses Cordovero, Shi'nr Komah, Warsaw, 1883, fol. 63 b.

27. Abraham Azulai, Hesed le'Abraham (1685), II, para. 27. The author made frequent use of a manuscript of Cordovero's work, Elimah, from which many of his most interesting state ments have been drawn.

28. Ibid., II, para. II, undoubtedly copied from the same source. Similar passages occur in Cordovero's published books, e.g., in Shi'ur Komah, fol. 85 d.

29. Naftali Bacharach, 'Emek ha-melekh (1648), fol. 4 a. Similar theories are developed in considerable length in many writings of the lurianic school, both in the authentic and apoc ryphal presentations of Luria's doctrine.

30. Azulai, Devash le-phi (Livorno, 1801), fol. 50 a.

31. The passage is first quoted in the collection Ge'ullath Israel (Ostrog, 1821), fol. Id, 2 a.

32. Aristoteles, De generatione et corruptione, 315 b, as an addition to his summing-up of Democritus' teaching.

33. The best edition is the second one, Lwów, 1892.

34. Quoted from one of the writings of the Temunah group by David ibn Zimva, Magen David (Amsterdam, 1713), fol. 47 b.

35. In another text of this group, Ms. Vatican. Hebr., 223, fol. 197 a.

36. In Sabbath, fol. 116 a.

37. Ibn Shu'eib, Devashoth (Krakow, 1573), fol. 63 a.

38. Temunah, fol. 31 a.

39. M. Yaffe, Lebush'or Yekavoth (Lwów, 1881), II, fol. 8 d.

40. Cf. Sodilan ha-atziluth, edited by me from a Vatican manuacript, Jerusalem, 1951, p. 94.

41. Jacob K. Lifschitz, Sha'arci Gari ‘Eden (Krakow, 1880), fol. 12 c.

42. Tishby in Kenesseth, vol. IX (Jerusalem, 1945), pp. 252-54.