Emanuel Swedenborg and the Kabbalah
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chapter 9 De Sapientia Salomonis: Emanuel Swedenborg and the Kabbalah Susanna Åkerman-Hjern There is a perception that Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) was influenced by the Kabbalah, and it is true that one can often see a phenomenological similarity1 in the two cosmologies: existence of upper (celestial and spiritual) worlds and lower (natural) worlds; an influx from the celestial world into the lower worlds; the presence of spirits and angels; emphasis on the Old Testa- ment text and its inner dimension; the engendered cosmos-and-Deity motifs, both divisible into male and female qualities; the Sephirotic tree as having hu- man form and Adam qadmon as similar to Swedenborg’s postulation of the Grand human forming the heavens in communities of souls – especially since both are coordinated with the human organs.2 However, it has recently been argued by Friedemann Stengel that Swedenborg as a rationalist gained these specific ideas from his contemporaries, for example by reading the German cosmologist Andreas Rüdiger’s Physica divina, recta via (Frankfurt, 1716) – treating of the nexus between the spiritual and natural worlds and of physi- cal influx.3 Wouter Hanegraaff has further argued that Swedenborg was very critical of the Jews and that he did not appreciate their religion. Swedenborg repeatedly says that Jewish form of worship is external and even if the religion of the Jews is symbolical of the Divine they lack what he calls an internal sense. With such a negative assessment of the Jewish tradition, Hanegraaff consid- ers it most unlikely that Swedenborg would regard important anything of the 1 Pacheco, Visionary Consciousness, 59–67. 2 Moshe Idel in a Hebrew article of 1986, ‘The World of Angels in Human Form’, 64–66, claims that the structure of Swedenborg’s angelic world in human form may have been influenced by Kabbalistic writings, as Roling records, see note 6 below. In Sweden for instance Duke Charles of Suderomannia in the 1780s depicts the Sephirotic Tree coordinated with the hu- man organs; for Swedenborg and the Grand human coordinated to the human organs see Swedenborg’s Arcana Coelestia 4302: 3 and Heaven and Hell 94, 100, 65–66. 3 Stengel, ‘Swedenborg als Rationalist’. The term “influxus mutuus” between soul and body oc- curs in Rüdiger’s objection (Gegen-Meinung) to Christian Wolf, published in 1727. See Stengel, Aufklärung bis zum Himmel, 123. Rüdiger defines spirit as a force of unextended elasticity. But note that Rüdiger says that “hypothesis de influxu ist eine Meinung vieler tausend Gelehrten … voriger und itziger Zeiten”, Rüdiger (1727), 139. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi �0.��63/9789004334953_0�� <UN> Emanuel Swedenborg and the Kabbalah 207 Jewish or Christian Kabbalah. He forcefully formulates that Swedenborg was neither a theosophical Kabbalist, nor a Kabbalist theosopher.4 Both scholars consider Marsha Keith Schuchard’s published efforts to trace Kabbalistic influ- ences in the context of Swedenborg’s biography as circumstantial and specula- tive, in the end inconclusive.5 Furthermore, Bernd Roling’s careful portrayal of Hebrew studies in Swedish Universities in the beginning of the 1700s and in Uppsala in particular, is considered as too general to prove anything.6 Stengel points out that no one has shown a direct literary influence from the Kabbalah on Swedenborg’s works. It is therefore of interest that in the Swedenborg Library in Gröndal, Stock- holm, there is a small dissertation with the distinctive autograph ‘Emanuel Swedberg’ on its title plate. It is a work by the Hebraist at Uppsala University, Daniel Lundius (1666–1747), treating of the wisdom of Solomon, Dissertatio historico-philologico de sapientia Salomonis (A Historico-Philological Disserta- tion on the Wisdom of Solomon, Uppsala, 1705). Here, Kabbalist ideas are dis- cussed in broad terms. Apparently, Swedenborg acquired the dissertation as a young student in Uppsala where he was living with his brother-in-law, Eric Benzelius, a linguist specializing in Hebrew and Greek.7 The respondent of the dissertation, Fredericus Swab, defended it publically and may even have been a fellow student of Emanuel, who was still named Svedberg, thus not yet ennobled. In De sapientia Salomonis, Lundius shows that the Kabbalists through con- templating the ten sephiroth wanted to restore the Divine light of wisdom that formerly had reigned with Adam and King Solomon. The tract contains a few, but important, observations on the Sefer Yetzira – Book of Formation and on how ‘the ancient Jewish philosophers called this light sepho Elohim – Divine influx (influxum Divinum).’8 Further, that the Kabbalist ‘sephira Chokma (wis- dom) was used by their pious men to inwardly perceive the secrets of God (arcana Dei),’ in order to be led to act righteously.9 Lundius goes on to say that the Jews maintain that the Divine channels from the upper worlds were broken with the fall of Adam so that full illumination 4 Hanegraaff, ‘Swedenborg, the Jews and the Jewish Tradition’, esp. 154. 5 Ibid., 146 n. 36 and Stengel (2008), 184 n. 210 citing Schuchard, ‘Swedenborg, Jacobitism and Freemasonry’. 6 Roling, ‘Erlösung in angelischen Makrokosmos’. 7 Emanuel’s father, Bishop Jesper Svedberg, was also a Hebraist and interested in linguistic problems as seen in his work on the Swedish language that he entitled, Schibboleth. 8 Lundius (1705), 6, ‘Hoc lumen antiqui Judaeorum Philosophi “sepho Elohim” influxum Divi- num vocarunt.’ 9 Ibid., 8, ‘…ex sephira Chokma et quod per eas viri pii arcana Dei introspiciunt.’ See also 13–14. <UN>.