Hebraic Literature

Maurice H. Harris

• Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9783849632625
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

This anthology provides in-depth insights into Hebraic Literature and its main foundations. In the Talmud is contained the very life of the Jewish race. The Midrashim are expositions of Jewish legends and the Kabbala is the foundation of Jewish Metaphysics. In addition the reader will learn a lot about proverbial sayings, traditions, feasts and festivals.

Hebraic Literature

Translations From The Talmud, Midrashim And Kabbala

Contents:

The Kabbala – A Primer

Hebraic Literature

Special Introduction

The Talmud

Judges.

Witnesses.

Criminals And Criminal Punishments.

The Midrashim

Introductory Note

THE MIDRASHIM

The Kabbala

Introductory Note

The Symbolical Kabbalah

The Real Kabbalah

The Kabbala

Rabbinical Ana

Proverbial Sayings And Traditions

Fasts And Festivals

Passover

Pentecost

New Year, Or The Day Of Memorial

The Day Of Atonement

Feast Of Tabernacles

Hannukah

Purim

Hebraic Literature

Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9

Germany

ISBN: 9783849632625

www.jazzybee-verlag.de

www.facebook.com/jazzybeeverlag

[email protected]

Cover Design: Based on an image by Roy Lindman (Roylindman at en.wikipedia), licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Details for re-usage etc, can be found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en.

The Kabbala – A Primer

The term is now used as a technical name for the system of esoteric theosophy which for many generations played an important part, chiefly among the Jews, after the beginning of the tenth century of our era. It primarily signifies reception, and, secondarily, a doctrine received by oral tradition. Its application has greatly varied in the course of time, and it is only since the eleventh or twelfth century that the term Kabbala has become the exclusive appellation for the system of Jewish religious philosophy which claims to have been uninterruptedly transmitted by the mouths of the patriarchs, prophets, elders, etc., ever since the creation of the first man.

The two works which the advocates of this system treat as the authoritative exposition of its doctrines are the Book of Creation and the Zohar.

The Book Of Creation

The Book of Creation is a short treatise consisting of six chapters subdivided into thirty-three very brief sections. It is written in Mishnic Hebrew, and is made up of oracular sentences. It professes to be a monologue of the patriarch Abraham, who enumerates the thirty-two ways of wisdom by which God produced the universe, and who shows, by the analogy which is assumed to exist between the visible things and the letters which are the signs of thought, the manner in which all has emanated from God and is inferior to Him.

The Zohar

The Zohar, or second expository work of the Kabbala, has justly been called the "Bible" of the Kabbalists. It is written in Aramaic, and its main portion is the form of a commentary on the Pentateuch according to the latter's division into fifty-two weekly lessons. Its title Zohar (light, splendour) is derived from the words of Genesis 1:3 ("Let there be light") with the exposition of which it begins. It is a compilatory work, wherein several fragments of ancient treatises can still be noticed. The following is a brief account of the chief contents — doctrinal, hermeneutical, and theurgical — of the Zohar.

Doctrinal content of the Zohar

The First World

Considered in Himself, the Supreme Being is the En-Soph (Endless, Infinite) and, in a certain sense, the En (Non-existent) since existence is in human conception a limitation which as such should not be predicted of Him. We can conceive and speak of God only in so far as He manifests and, as it were, actualizes Himself in or through the Sephiroth.

• His first manifestation was by way of concentration in a point called the first Sephira — "the Crown", as it is called — which is hardly distinguishable from the En-Soph from Whom it emanates, and which is expressed in the Bible by the Ehieyeh (I am). From the first Sephira proceeded a masculine or active potency called wisdom, represented in the Bible by Yah, and an opposite, i.e. a feminine or passive potency, called intelligence, and represented by Yahweh. These two opposite potencies are coupled together by the "Crown", and thus yields the first trinity of the Sephiroth.

• From the junction of the foregoing opposite tendencies emanated the masculine potency called love, the the fourth Sephira, represented by the Biblical El, and the feminine one justice, the fifth Sephira, represented by the Divine name Elohah. From them again emanated the uniting potency, beauty, the sixth Sephira, represented in the Bible by Elohim. And thus is constituted the second trinity of the Sephiroth.

• In its turn, beauty beamed forth the seventh Sephira, the masculine potency, firmness, corresponding to Yahweh Sabaoth, and this again produced the feminine potency splendour, represented by Elohe Sabaoth. From splendour emanated the ninth Sephira, foundation, which answers the Divine name El-Hai and closes the third trinity of the Sephiroth.

• Lastly, splendour sends forth kingdom, the tenth Sephira, which encircles all the others and is represented by Adonai.

These ten Sephiroth are emanations from the En-Soph, forming among themselves and with Him a strict unity, in the same way as the rays which proceed from the light are simply manifestations of one and the same light. They are infinite and perfect when the En-Soph imparts His fullness to them, and finite and imperfect when that fullness is withdrawn from them (Ginsburg). In their totality, they represent and are called the archetypal man, without whom the production of permanent worlds was impossible. In fact, they constitute the first world, or world of emanations, which is perfect and immutable because of its direct procession from the Deity. The Second, Third and Fourth Worlds

Emanating immediately from this first world is the world of creation, the ten Sephiro...

Table of contents

• The Kabbala – A Primer
• Hebraic Literature