.......Kabbalah originally simply designated "received tradition." Now, generically, it refers to Jewish mysticism in all its forms. Denotatively, however, it refers specifically to the esoteric theosophy that crystallized in 13th century Spain and Provence, France.)
It is particularly paradoxical to find these occultic practices embedded within Judaism, despite the numerous explicit prohibitions against all forms of the occult recorded throughout the very Torah that is so highly venerated among the Jews. It is essential to explore the current resurgence of Kabbalah within a broader historical perspective.

Judaism Redefined

Having rejected Jesus Christ as the Messiah, and enduring the subsequent destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70, Mosaic Judaism was faced with a serious dilemma: the Torah, and all its related practices, had emphasized that "without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins." How could there be a continuation of the prescribed sacrifices without an altar and a Temple?

This, and other related issues, resulted in the Council of Jamnia in A.D. 90, which began redefining Judaism and led to the formulation of the Talmud (3rd - 6th centuries) and what is known as the Geonic Era (7th - 11th centuries).

The Talmud

The Talmud is a body of Jewish civil and religious law, including commentaries on the Torah, or Pentateuch, and oral laws handed down through tradition. It consists of a codification of laws, called the Mishnah, and a commentary on the Mishnah, called the Gemara.

The Talmud also includes materials which concern decisions by scholars on disputed legal questions known as the Halakhah (from Hebrew, "to go"). The illustrations and amplifications of the ethical, political, and religious principles involved in the laws are set down in the Haggada.

Two compilations of the Talmud exist: the Jerusalem Talmud (3rd - 5th century A.D.), and the Babylonian Talmud (3rd - 6th century A.D.). Both compilations contain the same Mishnah, but each has its own Gemara.

The Babylonian Talmud became authoritative because the rabbinic academies of Babylonia survived those in Palestine by many centuries (and is referred to in the "Geonic Era").

After the completion of the Talmud, the Halakhah continued to develop as it was applied to new situations by rabbinical authorities. The Haggada also continued to develop, in the form of compilations, commentaries, and mystical and moral literature.

One of the most important of the works of Talmudic scholarship is the Mishneh Torah by the Spanish rabbi, philosopher, and physician Maimonides; it is an abstract of all the rabbinical legal literature in existence at his time. Among the most widely known commentaries are those on the Babylonian Talmud by the French rabbi Rashi and by certain scholars known as tosaphists, who lived in France and Germany between the 12th and 14th centuries.

The epistemological problems emerge from an excessive veneration of the scholastic commentators over the text itself. This lengthening tether reaches its extremes in the imaginative conjectures that emerged among the Kabbalistic scholars of the 11th and 12th centuries and subsequently.

It is interesting to note that there emerged a Jewish sect in the 8th century known as the Karaites who clung to the strict interpretations of the Scriptures, rejecting the Talmud and the rabbinical traditions that had been incorporated during the first six centuries.

Considered heretical by "Orthodox" Jews, in Czarist Russia they were exempted from abuses such as the double taxation, the pogroms, etc., that fell on Talmudic Judaism.1

Kabbalah Emerges .....

Epistemology, Part 3: The Kabbalah - Chuck Missler - Koinonia House
 
 
Thunderstone: K-House Search: Talmud
 
 

Maranatha!
Deborah
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