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THE SHI'UR QOMAH Liturgy and Theurgy in Pre-Kabbalistic Jewish Mysticism Martin Samuel Cohen The Jewish Theological Seminary of America l)i • u UNIVERSITY PRESS OF AMERICA LANHAM ••NEW YORK • LONDON Copyright © 1983 by University Press of America1,“inc. 4720 Boston Way Lanham, MD 20706 3 Henrietta Street London WC2E 8LU England All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America ISBN (Perfect): 0-8191-3273-X ISBN (Cloth): 0-8191-3272-1 Library of Congress Number: 83-6723 This book is dedicated to the memory of my beloved mother, Mildred Cohen. iii iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface vii I Introduction 1 II A Survey of Recent Scholarship 13 III The Recensions of the Text 43 IV The Provenance and Nature of the Text 51 V Studies in the Text i The Name of the Text 77 ii The Attribution of the Text 82 iii Hvmnody in the Shicur Qomah 88 iv The Names and Dimensions 99 of the Divine Limbs V The Use of Biblical Verses 110 in the Shicur Qomah Texts vi Metatron in the Shicur Qomah 124 vii Commentaries on the Text 138 viii The Shicur Qomah, the Sefer 146 Razi'el and the Sefer Harazim VI The Shicur Qomah and its Place in Pre- 167 Kabbalistic Jewish Mysticism VII A Translation and Commentary of the 187 Sefer Haqqomah Recension of the Text, Oxford Manuscript 1791, Ff. 58-70 VIII Bibliography 267 IX Index and List of Abbreviations 287 V PREFACE This book was first conceived as a dissertation when I was a doctoral candidate at the Jewish Theo logical Seminary several years ago. I am grateful to my colleagues and teachers at the Seminary, and foremost among them, to its Chancellor, Dr. Gerson D. Cohen, for their support and interest during the years of research and analysis I was privileged to conduct in their midst. In addition, I would like to take this opportunity to specifically thank those who offered me even more direct help: my doctoral advisors, Professors Shaye J.D. Cohen, David Halivni and Yochanan Muffs, all three of the Jewish Theological Seminary; Dr. Menahem Schmelzer of the Seminary's Library and Mr. Benjamin Richler of the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem, both of whom assisted me in tracking down elusive manuscripts and texts; Professor Moshe Idel of the Hebrew University and Professor Barbara Sproul of Hunter College of the City University of New York, who kindly consented to read my research and then to offer me the benefits of their insight and criticism; Dr. Ismar Schorsch and Dr. Mayer Rabinowitz, both of whom, in their capacities as deans of the Seminary's Graduate School, were instrumental in helping me acquire the financial assistance that was necessary to enable me to have the leisure to pursue my research; the Charles H. Revson Foundation, for its generous support in the 1979-80 and 1980-81 academic years; the various European, Israeli and American libraries from which I was able to acquire microfilms of the various manu scripts on which my research was based, and specifically the Bodleian Library at Oxford, which was kind enough to grant me permission to publish my translation of one of their manuscripts; and finally, my wife, Joan Freeman Cohen, without whom I could not have even begun, much less finished, this work. I have dedicated this book to the memory of my mother, Mildred Cohen, who passed away after long years of illness while I was conducting the research reflected in these pages. My mother typified to me, and to all who knew her, a rare blend of intelligence, aesthetic sensitivity and culture, qualities I have tried, however inadequately, to capture in ray own scholarship. For this reason, as well as for others too numerous to list here, it is my reverent duty to dedicate these chapters to her memory. M.S.C. New York - Jack Lake (Ontario) viii INTRODUCTION The entire Hebrew Bible was written in an age of priests and prophets. Whether one sought out one's God in the sacred precincts of His Temple in Jerusalem, or whether one chose the less direct path of seeking communion with God in the contemplation of His word as conveyed by the prophet to the world of men, the Jew in the Biblical period was more than able to find God in the world, and thus to know, love and commune with Him as best he was able. The post-Biblical period presented a challenge to monotheistic man, who, in an age that was post-prophetic as well, could no longer count on the fact that sooner or later, a prophet would rise up to proclaim God's word to man. He was forced to develop new methods of finding God in the world, for finding God was the obvious prerequisite to knowing and loving Him, both of which, in addition to being commandments ordained by Scripture, had become religious and even moral imperatives for religious man as well. In time, different theories were developed from within Jewish tradition itself. One such technique was the mythologization and idealization of the Torah beyond its former status as the law and word of God to the point at which the Torah became the agent through which men might actually commune with God. The Torah came to be described as the blueprint from which God created the universe, the personification, one might almost say, of God Himself in the world of men. Long lists of rabbinic adages extolling the study of Torah and the virtues of the sage transcend mere pietisms; they are directing men to the source of knowledge of the divine in their world, and to the means by which any man might commune with his God. It was in the early rabbinic period that we find the roots of Jewish mysticism, a phenomenon that even in its pre-kabbalistic stage of development can be shown to have existed for more than a millenium. The famous definition of mysticism as the formal and intentional cultivation of experiential, rather than merely intel lectual, knowledge of God can help set this phenomenon in its proper historical context, for that definition allows us to trace the history of the development of 1 Jewish mysticism in the post-Biblical period from the phenomenon of prophetism in the Biblical period into the medieval period.1 It should be obvious to any reader of the Biblical text that the Pentateuchal narratives fluctuate between an anthropomorphic and an amorphic conception of the Deity. It is, therefore, not surprising to see the prophets of Israel split along similar lines, depending of whether a particular prophet's experiences included instances of the prophet visually gazing on the godhead or whether they were strictly aural. Regardless of whether the difference of prophetic experience is a development of the specific prophet's understanding of the Pentateuchal text, as traditional chronology would demand, or whether the reverse is true, and the differences between the various strands of thought incorporated into the Pentateuch are the result of the variations in the prophetic experience, it is not at all surprising to find this double strand of prophetic experience reflected in earliest Jewish mysticism. Like their prophetic antecedents, the so-called merkavah mystics of the early rabbinic period cultivated communion with God.2 It has been observed that these mystic endeavors fall roughly into two classes: the exegetical mysticism connected in our texts with Palestinian Judaism, and the practical mysticism of both Palestinian and Babylonian Jewry.3 The former is clearly a derivative of sorts of the standard Torah mysticism of the rabbis, except that, instead of engaging in Pentateuchal exegesis for the purpose of learning the will of God, these mystics chose the ancient prophetic texts which described the prophet's communion with an anthropomorphically conceived Deity as the basis for their mystical exegetical activity. Two texts may be cited to demonstrate the way in which this exegetical mysticism functioned. The first, the parable of the barber, is taken from the Palestinian text, the Visions of Ezekiel, and sets forth the author's understanding of the relationship between the ancient prophet and the mystic of the author's own day. We cite our own translation of the parable: While Ezekiel was still staring [at the River Kebar,] the Holy One opened up [all] the seven heavens and Ezekiel saw the godhead. 2