¹ Gnosticism, Jewish, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition (New York, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1960), pp. 58f.Google Scholar

² Genesis Rabbah, 3.4; ed. Theodor-Albeck, pp. 19–20 (R. Samuel b. Naḥmani). References to the scholarly treatment of this passage are given by Scholem, p. 58, n.8.

³

⁴ Ps. 104:2

⁵ 3,4, cited in extenso by Scholem, p. 59; 24,3, ibid., p. 61.

⁶ For the text of this see Scholem's references (p. 36, n. 1, and p. 6, n. 12) to Musajoff's, Solomon(Jerusalem, 1921).Google Scholar

⁷ Scholem, pp. 36f., and S. Lieberman's (Hebrew) Appendix D, pp. 118f.

⁸ 5:10–16.

⁹ 24,3, Scholem, pp. 61f:

¹⁰ Included in the Heykhālōth Zutartī, and there ascribed to R. Ishmael; the relevant excerpt is printed by Scholem (p. 63) from MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, Neubauer 1531, f.45a, and MS 828, f. 23a of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

¹¹ P. 58, infra.

¹² For ḥālūq see M. Jastrow, Dictionary, p. 465; and note that according to a Baraita in T.B. Bēṣāh 32b (cf. Mō‘ēdh Qāṭōn 14a) possession of but a single ḥālūq seems to be a criterion of poverty (cf. Mark 6:9). The type of simple garment to which the term ḥālūq would plausibly apply has now been discovered by Y. Yadin amongst textiles from the Dead Sea area: see Y. Yadin, Meḥq^erey Midhbar Y^ehudhah (= Judean Desert Studies), Ha-Mamṣa'im Miymey Bar Kokhba Bim^e‘arath Ha-’iggaroth (= The Finds from the Bar-Kokhba Period in the “Cave of Letters”), Jerusalem, 1963, pp. 215f., diagram p. 218, and illustrations, plates 66, 75, 77.Google Scholar

¹³ No citations of this verse occur in the substantial body of rabbinic literature covered by Hyman, A. index (Tōrāh Hakk^ethūbhāh wehamm^esūrāh [Tel Aviv, 1940]).Google Scholar

¹⁴ I cannot now trace this observation in print, but do not think that it originates with myself.

¹⁵ P. 58.

¹⁶ See note 2, supra, and add Pir^e qēy d^e-R. Eliezer, 3.

¹⁷ P. 60.

¹⁸ Preisendanz, , Papyri Graecae Magicae, I (1928), no. iv, 11. 636f.Google Scholar, translated by Smith, Morton, Observations on Hekhalot Rabbati, in Altmann, A. (ed.), Biblical and Other Studies, Brandeis University Judaic Studies and Texts, I (Harvard University Press, 1963), 159.Google Scholar The Septuagintal rendering of the Hebrew epithets ṣaḥ we-'ādhōm in Song of Songs 5:10 is λευκὸς καὶ πυῤῥός.

¹⁹ To appear in Vol. 3 of the same series (see note 18), entitled Biblical Motifs: Origins and Transformations.

²⁰ Scholem, pp. 38f.

²¹ Origen in the Prologue to his Commentary on the Song of Songs (Migne, PGL 13,63) alludes to Jewish circumspection regarding the teaching of the Song of Songs to the young, in terms that link up with rabbinic statements (T.B. Ḥ^aghī-ghāh 13a) concerning the vision of Ezekiel, etc.

²² See especially the targum to 1,2; and compare the motif as found elsewhere in rabbinic literature that treats the oral Torah as God's “mystery,” e.g., P^esīqtā Rabbāthī, V (way^ehī b^eyōm kallōth mōsheh, beginning), ed. M. Friedmann p. 14b,

^22a 5:10

²³ I cite the text of a Yemenite MS (British Museum Ot. 1302), critically edited by R. H. Melamed in JQR (N.S.) 9 (1918–19), 377f., also separately, Philadelphia, 1921: [codd. and Lagarde's edition + (Lagarde's ed.

²⁴ Melamed's main MS points de-‘^aṭīf, i.e., a passive participle; but three other codices collated by him point de-‘āṭīf i.e., active. For the possible significance of the difference, cf. supra, at note 10.

²⁵ See note 15.

²⁶ See note 17. I transliterate according to the punctuation of the MS.

²⁷ Cf. the targumic handling of 4:4; 5:10; 5:13; 6:5; 7:14.

²⁸ According to R. Nehemiah, on Proverbs 6:1, in Exodus Rabbah 27, 9, ed. Wilna f.49a, column 1. In T.B. Bābhā Bāthrā 98a Rabh indicates his view that the “ṭallīth of a scholar” is not to be arrogantly assumed by someone who is not a scholar; but ibid. 57b suggests that there was nothing distinctive about a scholar's robe. See most recently J. M. Rosenthal, art., “Vestments, Jewish, iv,” in Enc. Brit. (1963 ed.). It is desirable to make clear that there is no connection between the present attribution of the tallīth or ḥ^alūqū of rabbinical scholars to the Deity, and the eschatological notion of the celestial garment assumed by the soul or by its aethereal “body.” Scholem, G. has shown (L^ebhūsh ha-N^eshāmōth we-“ḥ^alūqā de-rabbānān”, Tarbiz, xxiv, 3, 1955, pp. 290f.)Google Scholar that it was in cabbalistic circles in 16th-century Safed that it became conventional to style this soul-garment as “the rabbinical robe” (ḥ^alūqā de-rabbānān) (p. 299), although the connection is in fact somewhat older. Moses de Leon makes use of it, to some slight extent in the Zohar (pp. 300, 306), but more so in the Hebrew writings that appeared under his own acknowledged authorship (Sēpher Hā-rimmōn, Sēpher Ha-Mishqāl, Sēpher Mishkan Hā-‘ēdhūth) (pp. 300–01); from the latter it was taken up by Menaḥem Recanati, and erroneously identified with the ḥālūq-notion found in the Hēykhā-lōth-literature (p. 302, note 25) which is one of the starting-points of the present discussion (see supra, p. 153, n. 9). According to Scholem, Moses de Leon had, in his turn, amplified a feature in the Hebrew translation of the Book of Comfort by Nissim b. Jacob ibn Shāhin (died between 1058 and 1065) known as the Ḥibbūr Yāpheh mē-ha-y^eshū‘āh. In the Arabic original the garment, offered by an angel on the eve of the Day of Atonement to R. Eliezer and R. Joshua, is described as a ḥamiṣ; the Hebrew version calls it a white ḥālūq. It was the talmudic reminiscences conjured up by this word that recommended it to the translator, and which induced Moses de Leon to effect a postive identification of the celestial garment with the “rabbinical robe” (pp. 302f., 306).

²⁹ See I. Davidson, Thesaurus of Mediaeval Hebrew Poetry, i, 6827; L. Zunz, Literaturgeschichte der Synagogalen Poesie (1865), p. 300.

³⁰

³¹

³² 63,12, end, and 75,4, also other parallels; ed. Theodor-Albeck, pp. 697,882, cf. also 'Aggādhath B^erēshīth, § 84, p. 164.

³³ Cf. targum to Song of Songs 5:2 , and, e.g., the blessing of God as “making choice of song and psalm” that concludes the selections of the psalter in the daily morning liturgy—Singer, S., Authorised Daily Prayer Book (1929), p. 36.Google Scholar

³⁴ I. Elbogen, Die jüdische Gottesdienst,² p. 81; I. Abrahams, Companion to (Singer's) Authorised Daily Prayer Book (revised ed., 1922), p. xc.

³⁵ See Abrahams, op cit., p. cxxvi.

³⁶ Printed, e.g., Singer, op. cit. pp. 111f. Abrahams, op. cit., pp. cxxivf.

³⁷ T. B. Sabbath 119a.

³⁸