CYCLOPEDIA of BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL and ECCLESIASTICAL LITERATURE C - Canthcras by James Strong & John Mcclintock
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THE AGES DIGITAL LIBRARY REFERENCE CYCLOPEDIA of BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL and ECCLESIASTICAL LITERATURE C - Canthcras by James Strong & John McClintock To the Students of the Words, Works and Ways of God: Welcome to the AGES Digital Library. We trust your experience with this and other volumes in the Library fulfills our motto and vision which is our commitment to you: MAKING THE WORDS OF THE WISE AVAILABLE TO ALL — INEXPENSIVELY. AGES Software Rio, WI USA Version 1.0 © 2000 2 C Cab (bqi, kab, a hollow vessel; Sept. ka>bov), a measure for things dry, mentioned in <120625>2 Kings 6:25. The rabbins make it the sixth part of a seah (q.v.) or satum, and the eighteenth part of an ephah. This would be nearly two quarts English measure. SEE MEASURE. Cábala, Picture for Cabala the title of the celebrated system of religious philosophy, or more properly theosophy, which has played so important a part in the theological and exegetical literature of both Jews and Christians ever since the Middle Ages. SEE PHILOSOPHY. The following account of it is partly compiled from Herzog’s Real-Encylclopadie. I. The Name. — KABBALA (from the Hebrews hl;B;qi Kabbala’ the received), properly denotes reception, then a doctrine received by oral tradition. The term is thus in itself nearly equivalent to ““transmission,” like the Latin traditio-Massora, for which last, indeed, the Talmud makes it interchangeable in the statement, “Moses received (lBeqæ) the Law of Mount Sinai, and transmitted (rsim;) it to Joshua.” The difference between it, however, and the word hr;/Smi (from rsim;, to deliver) is, that the former expresses the act of receiving, while the latter denotes the act of giving over, surrendering, transmitting. The Cabala is also called by some hr;T]s]næ hm;k]j;, secret wisdom, because it pretends to be a very ancient and secret tradition, and ˆ”j, grace, from the initials of these two words. The term Kabbalah is employed in the Jewish writings to denote several traditional doctrines; as, for example, that which constituted the creed of the patriarchal age before the giving of the law; that unwritten ritual interpretation which the Jews believe was revealed by God to Moses on the mount, and which was at length committed to writing and formed the Mishna. Besides being applied to these and other similar traditions, it has 3 also been used in, comparatively speaking, modern times, to denote a singular mystic mode of interpreting the Old Testament. We are reminded by this indefinite title that among the Jews, as throughout the greater part of the East, human knowledge, whether historical or scientific, rested principally on a sort of succession, and the best claim for its reception was an unbroken chain of traditionary evidence. Hence the care with which Judaism established the regular consecution of the sacred custodians of truth, from Moses through Joshua and the so-called greater prophets, thence through Ezra and “the Great Synagogue” to the teachers of later times, subdividing at length into the various schools or period of particular rabbis and their hereditary adherents. While, therefore, the truth was gradually exhibited in the writings of the Law, the Prophets, and the Talmud, the Cabala indicates the verbal exposition of these, orally transmitted along with them, and not generally known to the people, but containing a deeper or more thoroughly initiated style of instruction. It thus came ultimately to designate a particular theologico-philosophical system, that arose and established itself in the bosom of Judaism, yet in a measure independent of, or rather supplementary to it. II. Original Documents. — Instruction in Judaism being principally verbal and founded on memory, its phases of development could necessarily leave but little mark on history; and as such a philosophy would thus naturally, in process of time, become a mystery, at least in the view of posterity, the origin and progress of the Cabala are yet largely matters of conjecture, and it is even a subject of scientific controversy whether in its speculative form it can be distinctly traced earlier than the Middle Ages, although its leading principles appear to have been derived from ancient documents, the nature of which is still very imperfectly understood, such as the so-called revelations of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Ezra, etc. SEE APOCRYPHA. The Talmud, indeed (both in the Mishna and Gemara of the tract Chagiga, passim), makes mention of a doctrine imparted only to a few carefully selected persons, and even applies to it certain fanciful names (drawn from the phraseology of <010101>Genesis 1:1, and <260101>Ezekiel 1:1), significant respectively of a speculative cosmology and a speculative theology; but it is uncertain whether these designate definite treatises, or, if so, whether these have in any identifiable form descended to modern times. The only works which can with any propriety claim to embody these earliest views are the following two, that became the acknowledged texts of the Cabala in the 4 latter part of the Middle Ages; a third cabalistic treatise (called the ryjæB; rp,se, Sepher Bachir, or Choice Book), which is found in an edition of Amst. 1651, and attributed to a rabbi, Nechoniah Ben-Hakana, of the first century, has long ago been generally acknowledged to be fictitious, although a cabalistic work of the same title is mentioned as early as the fourteenth century. The first of these is the Book of Creation (rp,se hr;yxæy], Sepher Yetsirah, often reprinted, as ed. Steph. Rittangel, Amst.1642, with a Latin translation and commentary; and the ed. of J.F. van Meyer, with a German translation and commentary, Leipz.1830,4to), ascribed to the renowned rabbi Akiba (A.D.120). It is a rather short treatise, in oracular sentences, the language of which, more obscure in import than in form, does not resemble the Hebrew of the Mishna. As a book of the same title appears to be already mentioned in the Gemara, where wonderful power is ascribed to it, and as R. Saadias is said to have commented upon it as early as the tenth century, it is certain that we can ascend to a considerable antiquity in tracing its authority. SEE JEZIRAH. The other and more important cabalistic text is the celebrated Book of Light (rhiwZhi rp,se, Sepherhaz-Zohar, from <271203>Daniel 12:3), first printed at Cremona and Mantua in 1560, and since often reprinted, ‘as at Sulzbach in 1684, fol., with various additions. Tradition ascribes this work to a contemporary of R. Akiba, namely, R. Simeon Ben Jochai, a teacher much praised in the Talmud for his great wisdom and legal knowledge, although nothing is there said directly of his writings. Incredulous criticism considers it as a production of the thirteenth century, the time of its first appearance in the history of literature, and ascribes it to a Spanish Jew, Moses of Leon. It appears, however, to be older than this, having probably originally appeared piecemeal in the East at intervals, the whole being completed in its present form about the eighth century. It includes certain special tracts or treatises, in which the author seems especially to develop his own sentiments, and which form, so to speak, the kernel of the science sought to be imparted. Three of these are designated by particular names (The Book of Confidence, and the Greater and Less Collections); the popular distinction made by the Jews, however, between a great and a small Zohar sometimes refers to the varying fullness of the editions merely. SEE ZOHAR. 5 III. Fundamental Doctrines. — These are somewhat differently expounded in the above-named books (to the separate articles on which the reader is therefore referred for full particulars), and most at large in the latter. The following, however, is a summary of the cabalistic views as expressed in the general writings of later authors of that school: 1. Nature of the Deity.— God is above everything, even above being and thinking. It cannot, therefore, be said of him that he has either a will, intention, desire, thought, language, or action, since these properties, which adorn man, have limits, whereas God is in every way boundless, because he is perfect. Owing to this boundlessness of his nature, which necessarily implies absolute unity and immutability, and that there is nothing without him, i:e. that the to< plan is in him, he is called EN-SOPH =without end, boundless, and can neither be comprehended by the intellect nor described with words, for there is nothing which can grasp and depict him to us. In this incomprehensibility or boundlessness, God, or the En- Soph (ã/s ˆyae), is in a certain sense not existent (ˆyæai); since, as far as our mind is concerned, that which is incomprehensible does not exist. Hence, without making himself comprehensible, his existence could never have been known. He had, therefore, to become active and creative in order that his existence might become perceptible. 2. Development of the Deity. — But since, on the one hand, the will to create, which implies limit, and the circumscribed and imperfect nature of this world, preclude the idea of taking it as the direct creation of him who can have no will, nor produce anything but what is like himself, boundless and perfect; and since, on the other hand, the beautiful design and order displayed in the world, which plainly indicate an intelligent and active will, forbid us to regard it as the offspring of chance, the En-Soph must be viewed as the Creator of the world in an indirect manner, through the medium of ten “Sephiroth” or intelligences, which emanated from the En- Soph.