Christianity is to know more than you can comprehend.

Essenes and the Qabalah 1

Jewish Mysticism
Secret Doctrine
Creation
Chariot
Heavenly Citizens
Names of God

Abstract

The medieval Qabalists were disenchanted with life, seeking to build a bridge from this Vale of Tears to God. They renounced the world and sought the spiritual, the hidden and the unknown. Only the elect could benefit. Commentators say that Qabalah drew upon ideas form various places, yet they can be found together in Essenism. Much of the Dead Sea Scrolls is visionary and reminiscent of the Qabalah. The Qabalist rejection of life and inclination to asceticism is supposed to be the influence of the medieval Christian monasteries, but the Essenes and Therapeutae were there before the Christians. Qabalists mortified flesh to subjugate desire, but the Essenes had done it first, and were so successful they laughed at their Roman torturers. Through constant prayer and Torah study, Qabalists sought to reach God. So too did the Essenes. Among the parallels is that between the Metatron of Qabalah and the Melchizedek at Qumran.

Jewish Mysticism

Mysticism is concerned with achieving personal communion with God. The distinguishing mark of mysticism is an intensity of religious feeling often rising to ecstasy. Inasmuch as modern evangelical Christians always tell us they have a personal relation with God, they are mystics. The personal aspect of it means that it leans heavily on prayer rather than ritual whereas sacerdotal religions attribute communion with God to the observance of proper practice and ritual, like temple Judaism, though ritual is not precluded from mysticism especially for mystics practising in isolation or in small groups. Practical Judaism and Christianity are usually between these extremes.

The word Qabalah means “tradition” or “what is received” by being passed on by teachers. In older Jewish literature, Qabalah is all received religious doctrine except the Torah—the rule of the religious life and and worship of Jews—Prophets, Writings and Oral Traditions that became the Mishna. Qabalah had its beginning as mysticism, divided into “Maaseh Bereshit” (Creation Mysticism) and “Maaseh Merkabah” (Chariot Mysticism). The mystics of the Qabalah are called “Mequbalim”, those accepted by God.

Mysticism finds ways of seeking a “God’s eye” view of the world to reveal man’s relationship with the Creator and the universe. The method is to develop an insight whereby the real nature of the Creation can be seen, and this can be developed only by the mystic or someone trained in the tradition.

Qabalah as it is now known, as an esoteric form of Judaism, is first mentioned in the eleventh century in the work of Solomon Ibn Gebirol where the expression the “wisdom of Qabalah” is mentioned. It took three more centuries to become popular, or perhaps to escape into the open.

The medieval Qabalists were disenchanted with life, seeking to build a bridge from the “Vale of Tears” to God. They renounced the world with its snares and sought the spiritual, the hidden and the unknown. Only the “elect”—those who were worthy—could benefit. Commentators say that qabalah drew upon an eclectic collection of ideas—Jewish ethics, Zoroastrian dulaism, Pythagorean numerology, neo-Platonic emanations and medieval asceticism. Yet these concepts can nearly all be found together in Essenism, a form of Judaism, still displaying strong Persian roots, of 2000 years ago. The Qabalist rejection of life and inclination to asceticism is put down to the influence of the medieval Christian monasteries, but Essenic and Therapeutic monasticism preceded that of the Christians. Qabalists mortified flesh to subjugate desire, but the Essenes had done it long before, and were so successful that they could laugh at their Roman torturers. Through constant prayer and Torah study, they sought to reach God. So too did the Essenes.

The Jewish Encyclopaedia in its article on Zohar says Qabalism originated in the eighth century among Persian Jews, but in its article on Qabalah, it notes that Joseph ben Judah in the second half of the second century revealed that a secret doctrine existed, associated with Johanan ben Zakkai, a Jew who lived through the Jewish War. The article however also notes that the main elements of Qabalah occur in Jewish apocalyptic which is linked above all to Essenism.

Some try to find the roots of Qabalah in Gnosis. Qabalah and Gnosis have common concepts of light, emanations, aeons and letter mysticism, but the truth is that they both had common roots in Essenism, though it is hard to know what is the truth now. E Müller writes:

The scope of the Gnostic teaching itself—which contained Persian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek and Jewish elements fused together—is difficult to determine, since the greater part of the relevant literature has been destroyed by the Roman Church.

All we know is from the criticisms of Christian apologists, and therefore likely to be highly selected or misquoted, and latterly from the Nag Hammadi discoveries. Gnosticism was close to Christianity in its formative years because of their common roots in the Essenes and, like Christianity, tried to distance itself from Judaism when the Jews sank in popularity through the Jewish Wars, and became hostile to Jewish mythology. The Cainites venerated Cain, and the Ophites who corresponded to the Jewish-Gnostic sect called the Nachashites (from the Hebrew for serpent) venerated the serpent, who they saw as trying to warn humanity about the megalomaniac lesser god who ruled them. Marcion rejected the Hebrew God as the Creator because the world was evil, and made the Creator of the world a demon called Jaldabaoth.

Secret Doctrine

Scriptural exegesis is the source of Qabalah—the conviction that the Jewish scriptures are not just what they say, but also have an underlying meaning. This was the Essene belief, and it is from this source that medieval Jewish Qabalism arose.

“Agada” in Aramaic or “Haggadah” in Hebrew is biblical exegesis not concerned with the law (halacha). Practical Qabalah is the three methods of exegesis called “Gematria”, “Notarikon” and “Temura”, but the whole of Qabalah is concerned with scriptural exegesis. Agada is often illogical or based on false logic. It is like the peculiar methods of exegesis used by the Essenes in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Writing of the Qabalah as if he were writing about the scroll exegetes, A E Waite in The Holy Kabbalah, says their “doctrine in respect of exegesis was arbitrary to the last degree”. It was arbitrary to our way of thinking because it was based upon irrelevant connexions, but they thought God was at work. Such exegesis is characteristic of the Essenes, and Qabalistic tradition possibly came from them, seemingly through the Qaraites, but probably also linking back to and reviving ancient traditions of European Jews.

The Essenes were known as the Chashaim, the “Silent Ones”, yet another pun on their name. Both Josephus and Philo tell us the Essenes had books of secrets and knew secrets that they could not disclose. These related to the names of God and the angels, just some of the main interests of the Qabalah, but they also had their secret methods of exegesis that also were transferred to the Qabalah.

There is also a code involved. Psalms 85:11 says: “Truth shall spring out of the earth”, so whatever springs out of the earth, like grass, stands for truth. Biblical passages might be seen as connected because they contain the same phrase or even word. In Genesis 1:1, “beginning” is read as meaning “wisdom” because of Psalms 111. “Waters” means the secret doctrine of the Qabalah itself. In the the Damascus Document (CD 6:4-5) ”living water” is the teachings of the Essene community and is symbolicly drawn from the “well that the princes digged” of Numbers 21:18 which, in the scroll, symbolises the Law. Christian Qabalists will have noted “living water” for Jesus, addressing the Samaritan woman by Jacob’s well (Jn 4:10-14), brings salvation and eternal life. Anagrams and word associations are permitted. Genesis 2:4 reads “when they were created” which is interpreted as “Abraham” because the Hebrew is an anagram of the name.

The proper names of no Essenes are known from the Dead Sea Scrolls, only their titles. Josephus mentions some Essenes, highlighting their prophetic abilites, but they are not known elsewhere. In the Talmud, however, named Pharisees are listed as having mystical inclinations. Rabbinic Judaism presents itself in such a way that it seems unlikely that the Pharisees could have been mystics, and it seems plain enough that rabbinic Judaism discouraged it. G Vermes writes in The Dead Sea Scrolls in English:

The Throne-Chariot was a central subject of meditation in ancient as well as in medieval Jewish esotericism and mysticism, but the guardians of the Rabbinic orthodoxy tended to discourage such speculation. The liturgical use of Ezekiel’s chapter on the Chariot is expressly forbidden in the Mishnah; it even lays down that no wise man is to share his understanding of the Merkabah with a person less enlightened than himself. As a result, there is very little ancient literary material extant on the subject, and the Qumran text is therefore of great importance to the study of the Origins of Jewish mysticism.

The possibility remains that these mystical rabbis were Essenes who did not become Christians, but rather turned to Pharisaism when it became clear that Essenism had been Hellenized in its adoption as a gentile religion.

Ben Sirach 3:21-23 implies a secret doctrine that should not be asked about, and Talmud Chagigah repeats it:

Seek not the things that are too hard for thee, nor the things that are above thy strength. But what is commanded thee, think thereupon with reverence, for it is not needful for thee to see with thine eyes the things that are in secret. Be not curious in unnecessry matters, for more things are showed unto thee than men understand.

Qabalah equates the secret doctrine with the Book of Enoch, much admired by the Essenes. Arthur Lillie (Modern Mystics and Modern Magic) thought the Qabalah was an Essene sectret doctrine, though he spoke specifically of the Zohar. He also thought S Paul was a Qabalist. There is good reason to think he had Essenic training so, if the Essenes were the source of Qabalism, perhaps he was. Lillie was among those troubled that Buddhism was a source of Christianity, but his more extreme fancies do not automatically invalidate his more reasonable one.

The connexion of Philo with the Qabalah on one side and Philo and the Essenes and Therapeutae on the other might suggest a commonality between the two systems. There are too many similarities to discount, and Philo affirms a Jewish mystic doctrine.

Creation

In the mystical tradition, God did not create the world out of nothing, but out of the six elements mentioned in Genesis: Tohu, Bohu, darkness, water, wind and Tehom (abyss). These suggest a Zoroastrian origin.

In the Sepher Yetzirah, the creation of the world is described based on the 32 signs of the “sephiroth”, the 22 Hebrew consonants and the ten numeric signs. Creation is an emanation from the Holy Spirit into three elements, air, fire and water. Air is central and from it fire ascends and water descends. Just as in Zoroastrianism, these are sacred elements. The 22 letters are classified as three “mothers” (aleph, mem and shin), seven “doubles” are letters that have an alternative pronunciation, and twelve “singles”. The three mothers stand for the three primary elements, the seven doubles are the planets and the twelve singles are the signs of the zodiac. Jubilees, a favourite of the Essenes has a cosmogony derived from the Hebrew alphabet.

A Sepher Yetzirah is mentioned in the Talmud in the context of creation. Either the two books are the same or the modern Sepher Yetzirah is a forgery of what was conceived of as the old one. Yet whoever forged the book managed to do it in a convincing style of Hebrew, appropriate to the time! The doctrine of the power of the divine name was held in Mesopotamia, so might have been deliberately introduced by the Persian founders of Judaism.

Michael L Rodkinson points out that the sources of the Talmud are the “customs and regulations practised by the authorities in their administration of religious and civic affairs”. These customs and regulations themselves ultimately derive from Ezra, the Persian administrator who founded Judaism, though the Mishna actually began to be laid down by Rabbi Judah the Prince in the time of Marcus Aurelius. The Talmud insists on obedience to authority, showing its ultimate purpose.

G Scholem says the Qabalah degenerates into magical texts and incantations like the Sword of Moses when “the less sense any passage has in itself, the more important it becomes”. There are plenty of people taday who think something meaningless is profound. A E Waite writes:

It is useless to reason with those whose confidence is not shaken in the face of impossibilities, whose imagination can bridge all gulfs in evidence by fantastic suppositions.

Presumably he means Christians and Jews in this context.

Chariot

“Maaseh Merkabah” or Chariot Mysticism is deduced from the first chapter of Ezekiel which is written in distinctive imagery and language compared with the rest of the bible. Apocalyptic literature is important to Maaseh Merkabah. The central figure for Merkabah mystics is Enoch who did not die but walked with the gods. He is identified with Naar (the Lad) and thence with Metatron.

Most apocalyptic works have an angel sent to introduce a chosen human to angelic mysteries. Such works treat Judaism as a mystery religion and the angelic guide is the mystagogue initiating the mystae into the secrets of the cult. Rabbi Eliezar initiated Rabbi Akiba into the mysteries of the Song of Songs and the Merkabah, according to Midrash ha Neelam. In the Hechaloth Rabbati, Rabbi Akiba is called an initiate of the Merkabah.

The soul undergoes a journey, ascending through the levels of heaven, meeting various supernatural creatures and mysterious objects—the merkabah, the angelic hosts, supernatural beings of all ranks and kinds—of stars, of elements of nations, watchers by the gates, archangels and the throne of God. Humans can come to these things through the cult and can also see the past and the future of the Jews, including its conclusion in the eschaton—Judgement and punishment of the wicked. The messiah is called “son of God” in some of these apocalypses, as is the Metatron (Apocalypse of Elijah).

G Scholem says in Major Trends of Jewish Mysticism, that each stage of initiation corresponded to a stage of religious progress—devoted, pure, sincere, wholly with God, holy before God, able to turn away guardian angels by speaking the Kedushah, and finally to stand trembling before God and praying, “Praise to the Lord”.

Heavenly Citizens

A whole hierarchy of heavenly assistants to God can be called upon to help mystics, ranging from angels who are slightly God-like beings in the appearance of androgynous men, to the Sephiroth who are slightly men-like Gods. One object of Jewish mysticism is to categorize angels correctly according to their divine powers. The mystic is taught how to know these things and how to call them—an ability called “neshamah”. The outcome of it is its application to human life and conduct. All these beings are accepted in a supposedly rigid monotheism! Harry Gersh, in The Sacred Books of the Jews, writes:

The Jews wove into their mysticism ideas of upper and neither worlds, angels, and demons, ghosts and spirits—ideas that had been unknown or of little importance to them until then.

When? The truth is that the supernatural entities he speaks of were originally Jewish precisely because Judaism was founded from Zoroastrianism by the Persians. It is a common Persian influence that gives such beliefs a similar flavour. Isaac Myer in Philosophy of Ibn Gebriol says the “secret learning” of the Israelites was “in accord with the philosophy of Plato and Pythagoras”, and emanated from the same source, “Aryan and Chaldaean esoteric doctrine”. In Pierre Larouse’s Great Universal Dictionary of the Nineteenth Century, an article on the Qabalah said:

The Qabalah originated among the Jews five centuries before our era… It was elaborated silently, and in the main among the sect of Qaraites.

Ernst Müller in History of Jewish Mysticism tells us that Pythagoras was in Babylon in the Persian period and was taught by Nazarates, who in the Greek tradition was “a Zoroaster”, a renewer of Zoroastrianism. Since no one denies a marked similarity between Essenism and Pythagorianism, one might have thought this was worth a passing comment from scroll scholars and Christians, but needless to say, it gets none. P Mordell notes many similarities between Pythagorean mysticism and Jewish, confirming their joint root in Zoroastrianism. Letter mysticism is sometimes said to be purely Jewish but there are enough grounds to reject it.

The Persian religion was based on the existence of a vast suprasensual world of angels and demons, and this same emphasis came into the version of Persian religion imposed on Judah. Once the new religion had been accepted after about 100 years, subsequent writers made frequent reference to it, though no one had before simply because it had not existed in a form that distinguished it from the age old religions of Canaan in general. The Mosaic legend was formulated late in the elaboration of the cult but based on a romanticised telling of its early years of struggle against the local Baal cults of Canaan. The tent of meeting was a mobile sanctuary and it seems the initial stage of eliminating independent local sanctuaries was to provide this mobile sanctuary to just one God—Yehouah.

Judaism is replete with superhuman beings, showing its Persian ancestry. Cherubim pop up here and there and have the task of guarding the entrance to Paradise (Gen 3:24), mysterious “sons of God” canoodle with the daughters of men (Gen 6:2), the “angel of Yehouah” appears to Moses and to Hagar and leads the Israelites in their Exodus, angels visit Abraham, and Jacob even wrestles with one! The “angel of Yehouah” has his power through the Holy Name (Ex 23:20-21):

Behold, I send an Angel before thee to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him, and obey his voice. Provoke him not, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for My name is in him.

It is absurd to imagine that the Persians planted these ideas only in Yehud. They were planted widely, explaining why Jews mysteriously appeared all over the parts of the east controlled by the Persians, even though they were supposed to have come from originally from a tiny underpopulated region of limestone hills in Palestine. The Persians implanted Juddin in Egypt, Anatolia, Mesopotamia and the north of the Iranian plateau, as well as in the Levant. There was no diaspora but rather a spiritual convergence to the temple state deliberately set up by the Persian kings as the focus of the religion of the Juddin. After the fall of Persia, all the Juddin looked to Yehud as their spiritual home, though few wanted to go there. It was the Maccabees who gave the Jews a national home of their own. All the Jews in the lands outside Yehud were called the diaspora, and the scriptural myth was written to support this new concept.

Names of God

The replacement of a Canaanite pantheon is clearly stressed in Deuteronomy 4:35,39 where we read: “Yehouah, he is the gods (elohim)”, and the same statement is proclaimed eventually by the people (1 Kings 18:39) showing that an editor of the deuteronomic history wrote after the event, therefore seeming prophetic to those who cannot understand what a pseudepigraph is.

M H Landauer, in the nineteenth century, had already noted the distinction in the bible between Yehouah and Elohim, a distinction that translators are happy to hide by false translation, notably the plural form of the latter and its use for gods and spirits in general, making its use for the monotheistic God extremely unlikely, except as a fudge by monotheists trying to disguise an earlier polytheistic phase. Moses is Elohim to his brother Aaron (Ex 4:16) and Saul conjures up Elohim as the ghost of Samuel. It was an earlier use exactly parallel to that of the polytheistic Greeks, desperately altered to suit later theology and eventually accepted as one of the many names of God though plural in form.

As in the Persian religion, abstract qualities are personified as beings or aspects of God. One of the main ones in Judaism is typically translated “glory” but in Greek is “appearance” (doxa) and in Hebrew is the word that denotes a numinous materialisation of the spirit in the form of a cloud (kabod)—essentially the popular wispy visualisation of a ghost! The kabod of Yehouah rests on Mount Sinai and Moses wants to see it (Ex 32:18). The “shekinah”, a word that does not appear as such in the whole Jewish scripture, is important to the Hasids, and is similar in meaning to “kabod” although not materialised, and therefore invisible or at best looking more like a translucence than a luminous cloud. It is the “presence” of God in the world. The spirit or breath of God (“ruach Elohim”, breath of the gods) is material enough to set into motion the primeaval chaos, and is the Holy Spirit that effects the soul (Psalms 51:11).

The Persian God, Ahuramazda, could not be confined to a temple, and the solution for the Jews was to separate God from his name. Only the name of God lived in the temple! The authors of the Mosaic myth got round this problem with the promise:

In all places where I record my name I will come to thee and I will bless thee.
Exodus 20:24

The utterance of the Holy Name at Yom Kippur therefore led to the most astonishing miracles, according to the Talmud!

The Agada uses a variety of terms as aspects of God, just as Philo uses Logos—Metatron, Michael, Melchizedek and Shekinah. These are identified with Messiah, David and the Name. This aspect of God has the second throne of the vision of Daniel, so important to Christianity. Note that Paul mentions a Jewish sect called the Melchizedekites (the Order of Melchizedek) in Hebrews (Heb 5:5-9; 7:11-17).

In the Ethiopic Book of Enoch, the seven angels who keep watch are Uriel (or Phanuel), Raphiel, Raguel, Michael, Zarachiel, Gabriel and Remiel. Of these the four main ones are the four faces of a Janus-like figure, the four faces of God. The Christians called these four, archangels. The names of the angels show them to be qualities of God, just as the Amesha Spentas were. El means God, so each stands for a different description of God, except for Michael which is “who is like God”.

Page Tags: Qabalah, Qabala, Kabbala, Kabala, Cabala, Essenes, Mysticism, Jewish, Judaism, Zohar, Sephiroth, Yetzirah, God, Heavenly, Jewish, Melchizedek, Messiah, Persian

Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.