Front Matter (PDF) - Stanford University Press

term applied to this emerging school of mystical thought in the early thirteenth
a
century. The word means ``tradition''; its use in this context indicates
the kabbalists saw themselves as a conservative element within the Jewish
that
community. Their secretsÐso they claimedÐwere qabbalah, esoteric
religious
received from ancient masters by means of faithful oral transmission
teachings
one generation to the next.
from
ProvencËal Jewish community in the twelfth century was one of great
The
wealth, formingsomethingof a bridge between the spiritual legacy of
cultural
creativity in Spain of Muslim times and the rather separate world of
Jewish
in the Ashkenazic or Franco-Rhenish area. It is in this cultural realm that
Jewry
®rst appears, about the middle of the twelfth century. The origins of
Kabbalah
spiritual and literary movement are obscure and still much debated. There
this
clearly elements of Near Eastern origin in the earliest Kabbalah, materials
are
to Merkavah and late midrashic texts that were present in the Holy
related
in the ninth or tenth centuries. There are also strongin¯uences of
Land
that were to appear in Rhineland Hasidism as well, indicatingthat
elements
some early point these two movements had a common origin. But here in
at
a new sort of religious discourse began to emerge in circles of
Provence,
who combined knowledge of these various traditions. These groups,
mystics
may have been several generations in formation, are known to us as the
which
as one of the strangest and most fascinating documents in the long
editors
of Hebrew literature. This slim volume is known as Sefer ha-Bahir,
history
renderable as The Book of Clarity. We ®rst ®nd reference to it in
awkwardly
works of the latter twelfth century, and from that time forward it
ProvencËal
a continuous history as a major shaper of Jewish mystical ideas.
has
Bahir takes the form of ancient rabbinic Midrash, expoundingon
The
phrases, tyingone verse of Scripture to another, and constructingunits
biblical
its own thought around what it offers as scriptural exegesis. Like the old
of
it makes frequent use of parables, showingspecial fondness for those
Midrash,
and their courts, in which God is repeatedly compared to ``a
involvingkings
¯esh and blood.'' In form, then, the Bahir is quite traditional. But as
kingof
as the reader opens its pages to look at the content, astonishment takes
soon
The text simply does not work as Midrash. Questions are asked and not
over.
or answered in a way that only adds mysti®cation. Images are
answered,
that in the midrashic context surely refer to God, and then suddenly
proposed
are said that make such a reading theologically impossible (The ``King''
things
out to have an older brother, for example). What sort of questions are
turns
and what sort of answers? The scholar is sometimes tempted to emend
these,
text! the
one comes to the Bahir, on the other hand, bearingsome familiarity with
If
methods of mystical teachers, particularly in the Orient, the text may seem
the
bizarre. Despite its title, the purpose of the book is precisely to mystify
less
Introduction
xxxiv
rather than to make anything``clear'' in the ordinary sense. Here the way to