KABBALAH - Selected Writings. Bernhard Pick

of these different elements with Biblical and Midrashic ideas has given to these foreign parts such a Jewish coloring, that at the first glance they appear as an emanation of the Jewish mental life.

1 In the Talmud he is called Elisha ben-Abuja, surnamed Acher, i. e., "the other one," after his apostasy From Judaism. It is related of him that while attending the Jewish college he had often been noticed to carry with him writings of the "Minim" (probably of Gnostics), and that he had even been in the habit of quoting Greek poetry. Elisha was a pupil of the famous rabbi Akiba; comp. Jellinek, Elisha ben-Abujja, genannt . Ichcr, Leipsic, 1847.

2 See my article s. v. in McClintock and Strong's Cyclop., Vol. IX, p. 757.

3 The reader is referred for such things to my article "Talmud," loc. cit., Vol. X, pp. 170. 171.

      CHAPTER II

      THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CABALA IN THE PRE-ZOHAR PERIOD.

       Table of Contents

      Pre-Zohar Period.—The history of the Cabala comprises a period of nearly a thousand years, its beginning may be traced back to the seventh century, whereas its last shoots belong to the eighteenth century. For convenience^ sake we can distinguish two periods, the one reaching from the seventh to the thirteenth century, the other from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. The former is the time of gradual growth, development and progress, the other that of decline and decay. The origin of the Zohar in the thirteenth century forms the climax in the history of the Cabala. It became the treasury to the followers of this theosophy, a text-book for the students of the Cabala, the standard and code of the cabalistic system, the Bible of the Cabalists.

From the seventh to the ninth century we meet with the representatives of the mysteries of the merkaba,1 which is expounded in the so-called Hekaloth, i. e., "Palaces." This work, which is ascribed to Ismael ben-Elisa, opens with a description of God's throne and his household consisting of angelic hosts. In this mystical production, which has been reprinted by Jellinek in Bet ha-Midrash, Vol. Ill, pp. 83-108, the praises of the Almighty God and his chariot throne are celebrated. We are told that each of the seven heavenly palaces is guarded by eight angels; a description of the formula is given by virtue of which these angelic guards are obliged to grant admission into the celestial palaces; also a description of the peculiar qualifications necessary for those who desire to enter into these palaces. Some hymns of praise and a conversation with God, Israel and the angels conclude this treatise, which like the Shiar Koma or the treatise on "the Dimensions of the Deity," also ascribed to Rabbi Ismael, knows nothing of the speculations of the En Soph, the ten Sephiroth and the doctrine of the Transmigration of Souls.

Another work belonging to this period is the Othijoth de Rabbi Akiba, i. e., "the Alphabet of Rabbi Akiba," which alternately treats each letter of the Hebrew alphabet "as representing an idea as an abbreviation for a word, and as the symbol of some sentiment, according to its peculiar form, in order to attach to those letters moral, theoanthropic, angelological and mystical notions." This treatise is also given in Jellinek's work, cited above, Vol. Ill, pp. 12-49, Leipsic, 1855. A Latin translation of Akiba's Alphabet is given by Kircher, in his (Edipus Egyptiacus,2 and in Bartolocci's Bibliotheca Rabbinical.3

      Bodenschatz in his Kirchliche Verfassung der heutigen Juden, (Erlangen, 1748) gives in Part III, p. 15, the following specimen: "On the words: 'The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart' (Ps. xxxiv, 18) we read: 'All who are of a broken heart are more agreeable before God than the ministering angels, because the ministering angels are remote from the divine Majesty 360,000,000 miles, as it is said in Is. vi. 2: "Above it stood the Seraphim7' {mimaal lo), where the word lo by way of gematria means 36,000. This teaches us that the body of the divine Majesty is 2,000,000,336,000 miles long. From his loins upward are 1,000,000,180,000 miles, and from his loins downward 118 times 10,000 miles. But these miles are not like ours, but like his (God's) miles. For his mile is 1,000,000 ells long, and his ell contains four spans and a hand's breadth, and his span goes from one end of the world to the other, as is said Is. x. 12: "Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span?" Another explanation is that the words "and meted out heaven with the span" denote that the heaven and the heaven of all heavens is only one span long, wide and high, and that the earth with all the abysses is as long as the sole of the foot, and wide as the sole of the foot, etc., etc' "

Another part of Akiba's Alphabet is the socalled "Book of Enoch,"4 which describes the glorification of Enoch and his transformation into the angel Metatron, regarding him as "the little God" in contradistinction to "the Great God."

These mystical treatises came into existence in the course of time, and their teachings rapidly spread. So numerous became the disciples of mysticism in the twelfth century that Maimonides found it necessary to denounce the system. "Give no credence to the nonsense of the writers of charms and amulets, to what they tell you or to what you find in their foolish writings about the divine names; which they invent without any sense, calling them appellations of the Deity, and affirming that they require holiness and purity and perform miracles. All these things are fables; a sensible man will not listen to them, much less believe in them."5

A new stage in the development of the Cabala commences with the publication of The Book of Creation or Jezirah, which is the first work that comprises the philosophical speculations of the age in one systematic whole. Scholars are now agreed that the Book of Jezirah belongs to the eighth or ninth centuries, and that it has nothing to do with the Jezirah-Book mentioned in the Talmud, where we are told that "Rabbis Hanina and Oshaya studied it every Friday, whereby they produced a calf three years old and ate it" (Sanhedrin, fol. 65, col. 2), and whereby Rabbi Joshua ben Hananya declared he could take fruit and instantly produce the trees which belong to them (Jerusalem Sanhedrin, chapt. VII towards the end).6

      The Sepher Jezirah as we now have it, is properly a monologue on the part of Abraham, in which, by the contemplation of all that is around him, he ultimately arrived at the conviction of the Unity of God. Hence the remark of the philosopher Jehudah Halevi (born about 1086)—"the Book of the Creation, which belongs to our father Abraham demonstrates the existence of the Deity and the Divine Unity, by things which are on the one hand manifold and multifarious, whilst on the other hand they converge and harmonize; and this harmony can only proceed from One who originated it" (Khozari, IV, 25).

Referring the reader to the literature on the Sepher Jezirah to Goldschmidt's book, pp. 35-46,7 we will state that the Book of Creation consists of six Perakim or chapters, subdivided into thirty-three very brief Mishnahs or sections, as follows: the first chapter has twelve sections, the second has five, the third five, the fourth four, the fifth three, and the sixth four sections. The doctrines which the book propounds are delivered in the style of aphorisms or theorems, and, pretending to be the dicta of Abraham, are laid down very dogmatically, in a manner becoming the authority of this patriarch, who, according to Artapanus instructed King Pharethothes of Egypt in astrology (Eusebius, Pracp. evang., IX, 18) ; fulfilled the whole law, before it was given (Apoc. Baruch, chap. 57; Kiddushin, IV, 14 fin.), and victoriously overcame ten temptations8 (Pirke Aboth, V, 3).

      Theosophical Arithmetic.—The book opens with the statement that "by thirty-two paths of secret wisdom, the Eternal, the Lord