Origins of the Kabbalah by Gershom Gerhard Scholem

Author:Gershom Gerhard Scholem [Scholem, Gershom Gerhard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780691020471
Amazon: 0691020477
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 1991-01-01T23:00:00+00:00

5. Isaac’s Doctrine of the ’En-sof and the Sefiroth

In Isaac’s writings, the esoteric tradition, which was still fluid in the Bahir, crystallized in fixed conceptions and continued its development in a manner peculiar to the author. He quotes the Bahir, though only infrequently, but also implicitly assumes his reader’s acquaintance with it.135 It is obvious that an intense spiritual activity had taken place during the interval that separates this book from his own thought. Much of that activity may be considered as Isaac’s personal contribution and reflective of his mystical conceptions. A great deal may have reached him from the traditions of the circle of Lunel. To judge by the uniform terminology of his disciples, the use of the expression Kabbalah in the sense of esoteric tradition, that is, secret doctrine, seems to go back to him, even if the word does not appear in any of the extant texts written by him.136 The transition from the usual meaning of the word Kabbalah to the esoteric nuance was easily made. We find the first sign of it in Yehudah ben Barzilai. Speaking of the creation of the Holy Spirit, which is the Shekhinah, he says: “The sages did not deal with it at length, in order that men would not come to form ideas concerning ‘what is above,’137 etc. and that is why they were accustomed to transmitting this thing in whispers and in secret, as a tradition to their pupils and to the sages.”138 The ordinary expression “to transmit something as Kabbalah [orally]” here acquires through the addition of the adverbs “in whispers and in secret” the quality of an esoteric tradition. Somewhat similar is the use of the term in an Arabic text of 1223 that counters Maimonides in its assertion that where the Kabbalah of the sages of Israel is mentioned the reference is to the baraithoth of the Hekhaloth literature as the true interpretation of Ma‘aseh Merkabah (A. Harkavy, in his appendix Ḥadashim gam Yeshanim to the Hebrew translation of Graetz’s Geschichte 5:47). But contrary to Harkavy’s view, this passage in no way proves that the term Kabbalah in its novel, technical sense was known in the Orient in 1223. That, precisely, is Kabbalah, in the sense of the Provençal school. But Eleazar of Worms also cites traditions of this kind—for example, with respect to the names of the angels—as “Kabbalah.”139 Besides, still other expressions were used in Isaac’s circle. In a letter sent to Gerona, Isaac himself speaks in this sense of ḥokhmah, wisdom or science, without adding the adjective penimith, “esoteric,” although this often occurs in other places.140 In the twelfth century, the expression of sefarim penimiyyim appears in France for writings considered there as esoteric literature, such as Seder ’Eliyahu Zuṭṭa.141 In the liturgical manual Sefer ha-Manhig, composed in 1204 by Abraham ben Nathan ha-Yarhi of Lunel, who in his youth had studied with the Rabad, the “Greater Hekhaloth” are twice designated by this term.142

The Bahir’s idea of the sefiroth appears in Isaac’s writings in a fully crystallized form.

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