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