KABBALAH - Selected Writings. Bernhard Pick

      Passing over all manner of subtleties of the pre-Zoharic times, we will consider the masterly performances of the Cabalists. According to them the letters, words and names of the scriptures contain divine mysteries of wondrous, mystical thoughts and ideas, of significant symbols and riddles, on which depends the continuance of the world. (Zohar, II, 99a). "Is it conceivable," the Zohar makes one of Simon ben Jochai's circle exclaim, "that God had no holier matters to communicate than these common things about Esau and Hagar, Laban and Jacob, Balaam's ass, Balak's jealousy of Israel, and Zimri's lewdness? Does a collection of such tales, taken in their ordinary sense, deserve the name of Torah? And can it be said of such a revelation that it utters the pure truth? If that is all the Torah contains, we can produce in our time a book as good as this, aye, perhaps better. No, no! the higher, mystical sense of the Torah is its true sense. The biblical narratives resemble a beautiful dress which enraptures fools so that they do not look beneath it. This robe, however, covers a body, i. e., the precepts of the Law, and this again a soul, the higher soul. Woe to the guilty, who assert that the Torah contains only simple stories, and therefore look only upon the dress. Blessed are the righteous, who seek the real sense of the Law. The jar is not the wine, so stories do not make up the Torah" (ibid., Ill, 152a). Thus the Cabalists attached little importance to the literal sense; yet not a single iota was to be taken from it and nothing was to be added to it (ibid.j II, 99).

In order to elicit the mysteries from the scriptures, the Cabalists employed certain hermeneutical canons,12 viz.:

1. Gematria,13 i. e., the art of discovering the hidden sense of the text by means of the numerical equivalents of the letters. Thus from the Hebrew words והבה שלשה (vehineh sheloshah) translated "lo! three (men stood by him)" in Gen. xviii, 2, it is deduced that these three were the angels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, because the letters yield the numerical value of 701, viz,

      ו‎ = 6 + ‏ה‎ = 5 + ‏נ‎ = 50 + ‏ה‎ = 5 + ‏ש‎ = 300 + ‏ל‎ = 30 + ‏ש‎ = 300 + ‏ה‎ = 5 = 701; and the same number yields the words ‏אלו מיכאל גכריאל ורפאל‎, viz. = ‏א‎ = 1 + ‏ל‎ = 30 + ‏ו‎ = 6 + ‏מ‎ = 40 + ‏י‎ = 10 + ‏כ‎ = 20 + ‏א‎ = 1 + ‏ל‎ = 30 + ‏ג‎ = 3 + ‏כ‎ = 2 + ‏ר‎ = 200 + ‏י‎ = 10 + ‏א‎ = 1 + ‏ל‎ = 30 + ‏ו‎ = 6 + ‏ר‎ = 200 + ‏פ‎ = 80 + ‏א‎ = 1 + ‏ל‎ = 30 =701.

      A like figuring we find in the Epistle of Barnabas, ch, ix, with reference to the 318 servants of Abraham, mentioned in Gen. xiv. 14. The author lays stress upon the fact that in the Hebrew the "eighteen" are mentioned first, and the "three hundred" afterwards. In the eighteen expressed by the Greek letters I = 10 and H = 8 he sees Jesus (ΙΗΣΟΥΣ), and in the three hundred he sees by the letter T — 300, the cross.

With this canon may be compared the "number-oracle," by means of which one can tell from the number of the letters of the name and the dates of the birth important years and days in the life of a man. Thus, for instance, Emperor William I, was born March 22, 1797; 3 + 22 + 1797 + 7 (number of the letters of the name= 1829, the year of marriage; 1829 +1+8 + 2 + 9 = 1849, campaign to Baden; 1849 + 1 + 8 + 4 + 9= 1871, coronation as emperor; 1871 + 1 +8 + 7 + 1 = 1888, year of death. Napoleon III, born 4, 20, 1808; 4 + 20+1808 + 8 (number of the letters of the name) = 1840, the coup at Boulogne; 1840+1+8 + 4 + 0= 1853, first year as emperor; 1853 + 1+8 + 5 + 3 = 1870; end of his rule.14

2. Notarikon (from the Latin notarius, a short-hand writer, one who among the Romans belonged to that class of writers who abbreviated and used single letters to signify whole words), is employed when every letter of a word is taken as an initial or abbreviation of a wrord. Thus, for instance, every letter of the Hebrew first word in Genesis,15 is made the initial of a word, and from "in the beginning" we obtain "in the beginning God saw that Israel should accept the law"; or the word "Adam" (ADM) is made "Adam, David, Messiah." Sometimes very curious and ingenious combinations are derived from this system. For instance the word passim16 used in the passage "And he made a coat of (passim) many colors" (Gen. xxxvii. 3) is made to indicate the misfortunes which Joseph experienced in being sold by his brethren to Potiphar, Merchants, Ishmaelites, Midianites.17

It appears that the Christian fathers sometimes made use of the same rule; as for instance Christ has been called by them IX0Y2, "fish," because these letters are the initials of the Greek words "Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour."18 Thus St. Augustine tells us {Be civ. Dei, XVIII, 23) that when they were speaking about Christ, Flaccianus, a very famous man, of most ready eloquence, and much learning, produced a Greek manuscript, saying that it was the prophecies of the Erythrian sibyl. In this he pointed out a certain passage that had the initial letters of the lines so arranged that those words could be read in them.

Then he went on and gave these verses, of which the initial letters yield that meaning, and says, "But if you join the initial letters of these five Greek words, they will make the word ichthus,19 that is 'fish,' in which word Christ is mystically understood, because he was able to live, that is, to exist, without sin in the abyss of this mortality as in the depth of waters." It is worthy of notice that Augustine only gives twenty-seven lines20 of the thirty-four, as contained in the Oracula Sibyllina, VIII, 217 ff., where the acrostic reads: Jesus Christ, Son of God (the) Saviour, (the) Cross.21

      In its full form it is also given by Eusebius in the Life of the Blessed Emperor Constantine. For the benefit of the reader we subjoin Neale's translation of the acrostic as given in the Christian Remembrancer, October, 1861, p. 287:

      "Judgment at hand, the earth shall sweat with fear.

      Eternal king, the Judge shall come on high;

      Shall doom all flesh; shall bid the world appear

      Unveiled before his Throne. Him every eye

      Shall, just or unjust, see in majesty.

      "Consummate time shall view the Saints assemble

      His own assessors, and the souls of men

      Round the great judgment seat shall wait and tremble

      In fear of sentence, and the green earth then

      Shall turn to desert. They that see that day

      To moles and bats their gods shall cast away.

      "Sea, earth, and heaven, and hell's dread gates shall burn;

      Obedient to their call, the dead return;

      Nor shall the judge unfitting doom discern.

      "Of chains and darkness to each wicked soul:

      For them that have been good, the starry pole.

      "Gnashing of teeth, and woe, and fierce despair

      Of such as hear the righteous Judge declare

      Deeds long forgot, which that last day shall bare.

      "Then when each darkened breast He brings to

      sight, Heaven's stars shall fall, and day be changed to night;

      Effaced the sun-ray, and the moon's pale light.

      "Surely the valleys He on high shall raise;

      All hills shall cease, all mountains turn to plain;

      Vessels