Chapter Five

Investigating in Sefer ha-Bahir

I

Sefer ha-Bahir is a pseudepigraphic collection of midrashic-style hom- ilies whose speakers include both heroes of and invented figures. It was first cited by the Kabbalists in R. Isaac’s circle1 and is often referred to as the first Kabbalistic work. As I will explain, however, this characterization is a misnomer: it is neither Kabbalistic nor is it a work in the usual sense of these terms. Scholars generally view it is as a composite creation, consisting of various textual layers. Scholem, who, as we saw, regarded the Bahir as fundamentally Gnos- tic in character, suggested that its earliest layer had eastern origins. He traced a later layer to Germany and argued that the final layer was composed in the second half of the twelfth century, in Langue- doc, where, he suggested, it became known to R. .2 This final layer is of special interest, because Scholem dated it on the basis of borrowings from the newly available philosophic literature, includ- ing the writings of R. Abraham bar Ḥ iyya3 and R. Judah ibn Tibbon’s translation of R. Baḥya’s Duties of the Heart.4

1 in particular, by R. Ezra and R. Azriel. See the list of citations in Sefer ha-bahir, ed. Daniel Abrams, 67–70. (Unless otherwise noted, all references to the Bahir in this chapter are to Abrams’ edition.) See also , Commentary on the Talmudic Aggadoth, 187. 2 scholem, Origins of the , 39–68, 97–123, 180–198. It should be noted, however, that Scholem’s views on the redaction of the work are not always consis- tent. For a complete presentation of Scholem’s waverings on the matter, see Daniel Abrams’ introduction to his edition of Sefer ha-bahir 1–34, and Ronit Meroz, “On the Time and Place of Some of Sefer Ha-Bahir,” Daat 49 (2002), 138–148 [in Hebrew]. 3 Bar Ḥ iyya’s interpretation of the words tohu and bohu in Gen. 1:2 as matter and form, respectively, is reflected in secs. 2, 9, 93, and 109 of the Bahir (following the section numbers in Abrams’ edition—see n. 19 below). See Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, 62–63, esp. notes 22 and 24. Also, the term “pure thought,” used by Bar Ḥ iyya, may have influenced the use of the term “thought” (maḥshavah) as a name for the first sefirah in secs. 48, 53, 59, 60, 94, 103, and 134 of the Bahir. See Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, 126–27. 4 ibid., 62 n. 21. Scholem argued for the influence of Duties of the Heart on sec. 46 of the Bahir. This section will be discussed below. 192 chapter five

Broadly speaking, recent scholarship has affirmed Scholem’s thesis, while making certain corrections; thus an increasingly complex por- trait has emerged.5 While Scholem generally assumed that the origin of many of the Bahir’s ideas lies in ancient pagan Gnosticism, has suggested—following more recent research on Gnosticism, accord- ing to which Gnostic sources often preserve earlier Jewish concepts— that these ideas may have reached the Bahir through internal Jewish channels.6 In a somewhat similar vein, Elliot Wolfson has argued that certain portions of the text can be traced to late antique Jewish- Christian contexts.7 Ronit Meroz has attempted to place Scholem’s thesis regarding the eastern origin of portions of the text on firmer ground by showing that certain passages likely date from ninth- or early tenth-century Babylonia.8 Some of her arguments, however, have been called into question.9 Scholem’s notion of a German layer also seems increasingly likely.10 For our purposes, it is Haviva Pedaya who has made the most sig- nificant contribution. In an important study, she argues for the like-

5 For summaries of scholarly views on the redactional history of the Bahir, see Abrams’ introduction to Sefer ha-bahir, 1–54 and his Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory, 455–464. See also Meroz, “On the Time and Place of Some of Sefer Ha-Bahir,” 137–180. 6 idel, “The Problem of the Sources of the Bahir,” 55–72; Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 122–128. As Elliot Wolfson has pointed out, however, Scholem himself equivocated on the matter. At times, like Idel, Scholem assumes that certain motifs found in the Bahir have their origin in ancient Jewish traditions. See Elliot R. Wolf- son, “Hebraic and Hellenic Conceptions of Wisdom in Sefer ha-Bahir,” 155, and the sources cited there, n. 15. See, also Schäfer, Mirror of His Beauty, 139–140, 219–220. 7 elliot R. Wolfson, “The Tree that is All: Jewish-Christian Roots of a Kabbalistic Symbol in Sefer ha-Bahir,” in Along the Path: Studies in Kabbalistic Myth, Symbolism, and Hermeneutics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 63–88. 8 Meroz, “On the Time and Place of Some of Sefer Ha-Bahir,” 137–180; Ronit Meroz, “A Journey of Initiation in the Babylonian Layer of ‘Sefer ha-Bahir,’ ” Studia Hebraica 7 (2007), 17–33; Ronit Meroz, “The Middle Eastern Origins of Kabbalah,” Journal for the Study of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry 1 (2007), 49–56. 9 see Jordan Penkower’s critique in his “The Dating of Sections on Biblical Accen- tuation from Sefer ha-Bahir,” Kabbalah 14 (2006), 329–345 [in Hebrew]; reprinted in Jordan S. Penkower, The Dates of Composition of The and The Book Bahir: The History of Biblical Vocalization and Accentuation as a Tool for Dating Kabbalistic Works [in Hebrew] (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2010), 138–151. Abrams has also questioned Scholem’s view of the eastern origins of the Bahir. See his comments in his introduction to Sefer ha-bahir, 27–28 and in his Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory, 136, 456. 10 see Abrams’ discussion in his introduction to Sefer ha-bahir, 14–35 and in Kab- balistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory, 136.