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is to discover the mysterious. The reader is beingtaught to recognize
clarity
much there is that he doesn't know, how ®lled Scripture is with seemingly
how
secrets. ``You think you know the meaningof this verse?'' says the
impenetrable
to its reader. ``Here is an interpretation that will throw you on your ear
Bahir
show you that you understand nothingof it at all.'' Everythingin the
and
be it a tale of Abraham, a poetic verse, or an obscure point of law, hints
Torah,
a reality beyond that which you can obtain by the ordinary dialectics of
at
Talmudic or philosophical thinking.
either
we read on in the Bahir, it becomes clear that the authors are not simply
As
for its own sake. The text has in mind a notion, often
advocatingobscurantism
only vaguely, of a world that lies behind the many hints and mysteries
expressed
of the scriptural word. To say it brie¯y, the Bahir and all kabbalists that
it claim that the true subject of Scripture is God Himself, that revelation
follow
is essentially an act of divine self-disclosure. Because most people would
be able to bear the great light that comes with knowing God, the Torah
not
divinity in secret form. Scripture is strewn with hints as to the true
reveals
of ``that which is above'' and the mysterious process within divinity that
nature
to the creation of this world. Only in the exoteric, public sense is revelation
led
a matter of divine will, teachingthe commandments Israel is to
primarily
in order to live the good life. The inner, esoteric revelation is rather
follow
of divine truth, a web of secrets pointingto the innermost nature of God's
one
self. That self is disclosed in the garb of a newly emergent symbolic
own
one describing the inner life of the Deity around a series of imageclusters
language,
that will come to be called (in a term derived from Sefer Yetsirah) the
se®rot. ten
earliest documentary evidence of Kabbalah is found in two very differ-
The
sorts of literary sources. The Bahir constitutes one of these. Alongside it
ent
is a more theoretical or abstract series of kabbalistic writings. These
there
®rst in the family and close circle of Rabbi Abraham ben David of
appear
a well-known ProvencËal Talmudic authority. His son, Rabbi Isaac
Posquieres,
Blind (d. ca. 1235), and others linked to his study circle (includingfamily
the
evidence an ongoing tradition of kabbalistic praxis both in their
members)
commentaries on prayer and on Sefer Yetsirah, and in their written re¯ections
brief
on names of God. These treatisesÐquite laconic in style when compared
the mythic lushness of the BahirÐpoint to an already well-de®ned
with
of kabbalistic contemplation, suggesting that their appearance after
system
may re¯ect a decision to reveal in writingthat which had been previously
1150
secret, rather than an entirely new genre of religious creativity. The sort
kept
rabbinic circles in which Kabbalah is ®rst found are highly conservative; it is
of
to imagine them inventing this new sort of religious language on their
hard
It seems more likely that they saw themselves as guardians and transmitters
own.
of a secret tradition, passed down to them from sources unknown, but in
Introduction
xxxv
their eyes surely ancient.