KABBALAH - Selected Writings. Bernhard Pick

Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу KABBALAH - Selected Writings - Bernhard Pick страница 3

Автор:
Серия:
Издательство:
KABBALAH - Selected Writings - Bernhard Pick

Скачать книгу

Judaism, as it is daily and hourly practiced. Maimonides, on the other hand, had introduced it into the holiest place in Judaism, and, as it were, gave Aristotle a place next to the doctors of the Law. Instead of unifying Judaism, Maimonides caused a division, and the Maimunists and Anti-Maimunists opposed each other. A reaction came and the Cabala stepped in as a counterpoise to the growing shallowness of the Maimunists' philosophy. The storm against his system broke out in Provence and spread over Spain. The latter country may be considered as the real home of the Cabala. When the Jews were driven from that country, the Cabala took root in Palestine and thence it was carried back into the different countries of Europe.

      The fundamental ideas of the Cabala are unJewish, derived from Philo, the neo-Platonists and the neo-Pythagoreans; we sometimes even notice Gnostic influences. But the close amalgamation 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.

      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.

      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' "

      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).

Скачать книгу