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Primary texts of Kabbalah
The primary texts of Kabbalah were allegedly once part of an ongoing oral tradition. The written texts are obscure and difficult for readers who are unfamiliar with Jewish spirituality which assumes extensive knowledge of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), Midrash (Jewish hermeneutic tradition) and halakha (Jewish religious law).
For kabbalists, ten utterances in Genesis with which God created the world are linked to the ten sefirot—the divine structure of all being. According to the Zohar and the Sefer ha-Yihud, the Torah is synonymous with God. More specifically, in the Sefer ha-Yihud, the letters in the Torah are the forms of God. The kabbalist looks beyond the literal aspects of the text, to find the hidden mystical meaning. The text not only offers traditions and ways of thinking, but it also reveals the reality of God. One of the first Jewish philosophers, Philo of Alexandria (20BCE-40), said that Abraham knew the essential Torah, before it was given, because Abraham was himself a philosopher: he observed the world around him and looked inside himself to discover the laws of nature. While this is not strictly speaking a mystical notion, it does introduce the idea of an inner Torah that underlies the written word. Much later, in the 19th century, the Sfas Emes, a Hasidic rebbe, made the assertion that it was actually Abraham's deeds that became Torah. The Torah is thus seen as an ongoing story played out through the lives of the Nation of Israel. The Torah is an important text because even the most minor traditions of the Kabbalah will acknowledge its aspects of the divine.
Jewish forms of esotericism existed over 2,000 years ago. Ben Sira warns against it, saying: "You shall have no business with secret things". Nonetheless, mystical studies were undertaken and resulted in mystical literature. The first to appear within Judaism was the Apocalyptic literature of the second and first pre-Christian centuries and which contained elements that carried over to later Kabbalah. According to Josephus, such writings were in the possession of the Essenes and were jealously guarded by them against disclosure, for which they claimed a certain antiquity (see Philo, De Vita Contemplativa, iii., and Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies, ix. 27).
That books containing secret lore were kept hidden away by (or for) the "enlightened" is stated in 2 Esdras xiv. 45–46, where Pseudo-Ezra is told to publish the twenty-four books of the canon openly that the worthy and the unworthy may alike read, but to keep the seventy other books hidden in order to "deliver them only to such as be wise" (compare Dan. xii. 10); for in them are the spring of understanding, the fountain of wisdom, and the stream of knowledge.
Instructive for the study of the development of Jewish mysticism is the Book of Jubilees written around the time of John Hyrcanus. It refers to mysterious writings of Jared, Cain, and Noah, and presents Abraham as the renewer, and Levi as the permanent guardian, of these ancient writings. It offers a cosmogony based upon the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, connected with Jewish chronology and Messianology, while at the same time insisting upon the heptad (7) as the holy number, rather than upon the decadic (10) system adopted by the later haggadists and observable in the Sefer Yetzirah. The Pythagorean idea of the creative powers of numbers and letters was shared with Sefer Yetzirah and was known in the time of the Mishnah before 200 CE.
Early elements of Jewish mysticism can be found in the non-Biblical texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, such as the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice. Some parts of the Talmud and the Midrash also focus on the esoteric and mystical, particularly Hagigah 12b-14b. Many esoteric texts, among them Hekalot Rabbati, Sefer HaKana, Sefer P'liyah, Midrash Otiyot d'Rabbi Akiva, the Bahir, and the Zohar, claim to be from the Tannaitic era (10-220 CE), but all of these works, with the exception of Hekhalot, were actually composed 800-1,000 years later.
Kabbalists attribute Sefer Yetzirah to the patriarch Abraham, though the text itself offers no claim as to authorship and modern scholars consider it medieval. This book, which is noted for its early use of the word "sefirot", became the object of systematic study by medieval mystics.
Hekhalot literature (Hekhalot, "Palaces") are not a single text. Rather, they are a genre of writings with shared characteristics. These texts focus primarily either on how to achieve a heavenly ascent through the Hekhalot and what to expect there, or on drawing down angelic spirits to interact and help the adept. There are several larger documents of the hekhalot, such as Hekhalot Rabbati, in which six of the seven palaces of God are described, Hekhalot Zutarti, Shi'ur Qomah and sixth-century 3 Enoch, as well as hundreds of small documents, many little more than fragments.
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Primary texts of Kabbalah
The primary texts of Kabbalah were allegedly once part of an ongoing oral tradition. The written texts are obscure and difficult for readers who are unfamiliar with Jewish spirituality which assumes extensive knowledge of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), Midrash (Jewish hermeneutic tradition) and halakha (Jewish religious law).
For kabbalists, ten utterances in Genesis with which God created the world are linked to the ten sefirot—the divine structure of all being. According to the Zohar and the Sefer ha-Yihud, the Torah is synonymous with God. More specifically, in the Sefer ha-Yihud, the letters in the Torah are the forms of God. The kabbalist looks beyond the literal aspects of the text, to find the hidden mystical meaning. The text not only offers traditions and ways of thinking, but it also reveals the reality of God. One of the first Jewish philosophers, Philo of Alexandria (20BCE-40), said that Abraham knew the essential Torah, before it was given, because Abraham was himself a philosopher: he observed the world around him and looked inside himself to discover the laws of nature. While this is not strictly speaking a mystical notion, it does introduce the idea of an inner Torah that underlies the written word. Much later, in the 19th century, the Sfas Emes, a Hasidic rebbe, made the assertion that it was actually Abraham's deeds that became Torah. The Torah is thus seen as an ongoing story played out through the lives of the Nation of Israel. The Torah is an important text because even the most minor traditions of the Kabbalah will acknowledge its aspects of the divine.
Jewish forms of esotericism existed over 2,000 years ago. Ben Sira warns against it, saying: "You shall have no business with secret things". Nonetheless, mystical studies were undertaken and resulted in mystical literature. The first to appear within Judaism was the Apocalyptic literature of the second and first pre-Christian centuries and which contained elements that carried over to later Kabbalah. According to Josephus, such writings were in the possession of the Essenes and were jealously guarded by them against disclosure, for which they claimed a certain antiquity (see Philo, De Vita Contemplativa, iii., and Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies, ix. 27).
That books containing secret lore were kept hidden away by (or for) the "enlightened" is stated in 2 Esdras xiv. 45–46, where Pseudo-Ezra is told to publish the twenty-four books of the canon openly that the worthy and the unworthy may alike read, but to keep the seventy other books hidden in order to "deliver them only to such as be wise" (compare Dan. xii. 10); for in them are the spring of understanding, the fountain of wisdom, and the stream of knowledge.
Instructive for the study of the development of Jewish mysticism is the Book of Jubilees written around the time of John Hyrcanus. It refers to mysterious writings of Jared, Cain, and Noah, and presents Abraham as the renewer, and Levi as the permanent guardian, of these ancient writings. It offers a cosmogony based upon the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, connected with Jewish chronology and Messianology, while at the same time insisting upon the heptad (7) as the holy number, rather than upon the decadic (10) system adopted by the later haggadists and observable in the Sefer Yetzirah. The Pythagorean idea of the creative powers of numbers and letters was shared with Sefer Yetzirah and was known in the time of the Mishnah before 200 CE.
Early elements of Jewish mysticism can be found in the non-Biblical texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, such as the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice. Some parts of the Talmud and the Midrash also focus on the esoteric and mystical, particularly Hagigah 12b-14b. Many esoteric texts, among them Hekalot Rabbati, Sefer HaKana, Sefer P'liyah, Midrash Otiyot d'Rabbi Akiva, the Bahir, and the Zohar, claim to be from the Tannaitic era (10-220 CE), but all of these works, with the exception of Hekhalot, were actually composed 800-1,000 years later.
Kabbalists attribute Sefer Yetzirah to the patriarch Abraham, though the text itself offers no claim as to authorship and modern scholars consider it medieval. This book, which is noted for its early use of the word "sefirot", became the object of systematic study by medieval mystics.
Hekhalot literature (Hekhalot, "Palaces") are not a single text. Rather, they are a genre of writings with shared characteristics. These texts focus primarily either on how to achieve a heavenly ascent through the Hekhalot and what to expect there, or on drawing down angelic spirits to interact and help the adept. There are several larger documents of the hekhalot, such as Hekhalot Rabbati, in which six of the seven palaces of God are described, Hekhalot Zutarti, Shi'ur Qomah and sixth-century 3 Enoch, as well as hundreds of small documents, many little more than fragments.