Scripture Over All Else?

The finally definitive move for the Rabbis was to transfer all Logos and Sophia talk to the Torah alone, thus effectively accomplishing two powerful discursive moves at once: consolidating their power as the sole religious virtuosi and leaders of "the Jews", aand protecting one version of monotheistic thinking from the problematic of division within the godhead. For the Rabbis, Torah supersedes Logos, just as for John, Logos supersedes Torah. Or, to put it into more fully Johanine terms, if for John the Logos Incarnate in Jesus replaces the Logos revealed in the Book, for the Rabbis the Logos Incarnate in the Book displaces the Logos that subsists anywhere else but in the Book. This move on the part of the Rabbis at the end of the rabbinic period effectively displaces the structure of western thought, embodied in the Fourth Gospel, whereby Logos is located most directly and presently in the voice of the speaker, Jesus, with the written text understood at best as a secondary reflection of the speaker's intention.

Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: the partition of Judaeo-Christianity, pg. 129.

Creatio Ex Nihilo in the Zohar

I'm currently reading Isaiah Tishby's The Wisdom of the Zohar (Mishnat ha-Zohar), an excellent anthology of material on different subjects from the Zohar, that key book of the Kabbalah, the predominant form of Jewish mysticism.
For beginners I would probably even recommend this over Daniel Matt's translation. This has the advantage of being organized thematically. Both of course are superb.
The following is a passage dealing with creatio ex nihilo, or creation from nothing. This conception is not quite as straightforward as standard Christian teaching has it. According to this passage there are two forms of creation, beriyah (creation), which is creation from nothing, and asiyah (making), or creation from something substantive. The body comes from nothing, the form from something substantive, i.e. light from above.

Rabbi Tanhum began by quoting: "Thus says God, the Lord who created the heavens, and stretched them forth..." (Isaiah 42:5). When the Holy One, blessed be He, created His worlds, He created them from nothing, and brought them into actuality, and made substance out of them; and you find the word bara (He created) used always of something that He created from nothing, and brought into actuality.
Rav Hisda said: Were the heavens really created from nothing? Were they not created from the light above?*
Rabbi Tanhum said: It is so. The body of the heavens** was created from nothing, but their form from something substantive.*** And so it was with man.**** So you find "creation" used of the heavens, and subsequently "making": "To Him that made the heavens" (Psalm 136:5) - from something substantive, from the light above.
Rabbi Tanhum also said: "Making" is the provision of something with the size, stature, and quantity that it has, as it is said, "And David made a name for himself" (2 Samuel 8:13).

* From the light of the angels.
** The basic matter of the heavens.
*** From the supernal light.
**** Man's body is made from hylic matter, which is brought from potentiality into actuality, but his soul is derived from the light of the Throne of Glory.

-Zohar Hadash, Bereshit 17b, Midrash ha-Ne'elam.

On the Symbolic Lessons of Nature

Kings are anointed only near a spring, that their kingship may run long and smooth, as it is said (1 Kings 1:33): 'And the king said unto them, Take with you the servants of your lord... and bring him down to Gihon.'

- The Babylonian Talmud, Horayot 12a.

Whether or not kings were actually anointed only near a spring (which appears doubtful), this midrash shows how everything could be linked to a lesson, to a blessing.

A Curious Custom of Kurdish Jewry

I saw a very curious custom in practice among the Jews of Kurdistan. On Rosh ha-Shanah they all go to a river that flows at the foot of a hill, and say the prayer of the Casting [Tashlich].
Afterward they all jump into the water and swim around like the fish of the sea, instead of only shaking the hems of their clothing on the bank of the river, as our brothers the children of Israel do in Europe. And when I inquired of them the reason for this curious custom, they answered that by this act they were purified of all their sins, for the waters of the river wash away all the sins they have commited during all the past year.

-Israel ben Joseph Benjamin, Masae Yisrael, Lyck, 1859.

Love Thy Neighbour as Thyself

LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR AS THYSELF (Lev. 19:18). R. Akiva says, "This is the great principle of the Torah." Ben Azzai says, "THIS IS THE BOOK OF THE GENERATIONS OF ADAM (Gen. 5:1), an even greater principle!"

-Sifra Weiss 88b.

R. Akiva hardly needs any introduction. Calling him one of the most significant figures of early Judaism is no exaggeration. More on him in later posts.
Simeon ben Azzai (or simply Ben Azzai) was a younger contemporary of Akiva's, and at one point betrothed to his daughter. Though he died young before he could be formally ordained as a rabbi, ben Azzai enjoyed long-lasting fame as a preacher and expounder of scripture.
In the midrash quoted above, r. Akiva defines the principle behind all of the Torah, or law, as loving one's neighbour. The laws contained in the Torah are meant to encourage love one for another. That is their raison de etre.
At first glance, Ben Azzai's scripture seems to have little relevance.
Why, indeed, how, is a book listing Adam's descendants a greater principle than loving one's neighbour as one's self?
for Ben Azzai, this verse refers to the Torah being about all of Adam's descendants. If one bears that in mind, the question won't arise, who is my neighbour? Ben Azzai does not contradict r. Akiva, but makes sure that there is no room for narrowly interpreting 'thy neighbour' as meaning only the house of Israel.

Moses vs. Moses, or Two Medieval Jews on Idolatry

Towering over the history of Jewish thought in the medieval age are the two Moseses- the son of Maimon (Rambam), and the son of Nahman (Ramban). In the West they are known as Maimonides and Nahmanides, respectively.
I have introduced Maimonides in a previous post. Nahmanides was born in Girona, then part of Christian Spain. He was a mere child when Maimonides passed away, but in his adult years was embroiled in the controversies surrounding the supporters and detractors of Maimonides. He was heavily influenced by Maimonides' thought, but rejected his extreme rationalism and allegorisation of miracles. Here I'll let Josef Stern present one of the differences between their views.

We know what Maimonides thinks is wrong with idolatry. Even if the idolator does not believe that the idols themselves, the artificial icons, have power, he believes that they are images of gods or celestial beings who are worthy of worship because they have power over humans. In fact, however, Maimonides argues, these purported beings are powerless or unreal. Therefore, their worship is based on a false and empty presupposition. What is fundamentally wrong with idolatry, then, is that it is founded on a cognitive error of the highest magnitude (Guide of the Perplexed, I:36:82-83).

For Nahmanides, in contrast, what is wrong with idolatry is not that it is based on a false presupposition about its objects of worship.
Just the opposite: idolatry is forbidden (to Israel) precisely because its objects are real entities and powers.
In his Commentary on Exod. 20, 3, Nahmanides describes an elaborate metaphysical hierarchy, consisting of three classes of celestial beings each of which has dominion over certain peoples and places on earth, ranked in an order of power that also corresponds to the chronological order in which their representative kinds of idolatry historically emerged. The first, highest, and earliest objects of idolatry were the immaterial separate intellects, or angels. Some of these were originally believed to have power over specific nations and were therefore worshipped even when their respective nation recognized that there is a deity superior to them. Israel, however, was absolutely forbidden to worship any of these angels because it is the specially treasured people (segulah) of God who alone has power over them. Were the people of Israel to worship these “other gods” [‘elohim ‘aherim], it would be tantamount to a rejection of the one God for the others.

The second class of objects of idolatry were the visible heavenly bodies:
the sun, moon, stars, and constellations who were also known to have power over specific nations. Unlike the idolatry associated with the first class, this second kind was also theurgic: by worshipping their respective star or constellation, its worshippers believed that they could strengthen it and help it "victor" over its rivals, thereby improving their own fortune. These idolators were also the first to make physical shapes and idols whose timing was astrally significant. Through this elementary form of astrology, this brand of theurgic idolatry came to be associated with magic and to include the worship of certain humans whose power seemed closely linked to constellations.

The third species of idolatrous objects were the demons [sheidim], a class of spirits [ruhot] who, Nahmanides claims, are so-called because they dwell in destroyed or desolate [shadudim] places (C Lev. 17, 7).
These devils are material but invisible, compounded of fire and air, an ontologically intermediate kind of being with some angelic and some human properties. Thus they eat and drink, especially blood; decompose and die; fly and inhabit the sky; and know the near future (news of which they overhear from higher celestial beings). Like the higher powers, they are also assigned to specific peoples but with dominion only over ruined, wild places where they are empowered only to harm enemies and those who fall victim to them. Nahmanides treats these devils with some contempt, as nouveau deities who lack the power to benefit their worshippers, who were not worshipped by the ancients, and who were "discovered only by late Egyptian magicians. Yet he thinks that they are no less real than the others. Indeed the most important point about all three classes of objects of idolatrous worship is that they are all real beings with real power- which is precisely why they are forbidden to Israel who is commanded to worship only the one God.

--Josef Stern, Problems and Parables of Law: Maimonides and Nahmanides on Reasons for the Commandments (Ta'amei Ha-Mitzvot) (Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1998), 144-145.

On Jews and Oath-taking

When I served a mission in Russia, I lived for a few months in the city of Novorossiysk, along the shores of the Black Sea. Though the city itself was founded in 1840, the human history of the region stretches back far into antiquity.
Not far from Novorossiysk is the resort town of Anapa, built on the ruins of Gorgippia. This Greek city belonged to the kingdom of the Bosphorus which controlled most of the northern side of the Black Sea. Gorgippia, a wealthy city indeed, covered over 40 hecatres. Its wealth came mainly from the grain trade, but it also supplied Greece and Asia Minor with fish, fur and slaves.
Trade opportunities are what appear to have attracted the Jews to the Bosphoran Kingdom where, by Roman times, they had a substantial presence and influence.
Gorgippia's community was prosperous and seems to have had its own synagogue. Several decades ago, a rather intriguing inscription was found, which though brief, provides an unparalleled glimpse into ancient Jewish society.
I reproduce the translation given by Lee I. Levine in his book The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years.

To the Most High God, Almighty, blessed, in the reign of the king Mithridates, the friend of [?] and the friend of the fatherland, in the year 338 [= 41 C.E.], in the month Deios, Pothos, the son of Strabo, dedicated to the prayer-house, in accordance with the vow, his house-bred slave-woman, whose name is Chrysa, on condition that she should be unharmed and untroubled by any of his heirs under Zeus, Ge, Helios.

This inscription deals with manumission, or the freeing of a slave. It is a written testimony that Chrysa the slave-woman is now free and that Pothos' heirs have no claim on her.
The names of the two Jews mentioned in the text- Pothos and Strabo- indicate how Jews tended to adopt the names used by their neighbours, much like in 20th century North America, when a whole generation was named Irving and Ira.
While at first glance the typical Jewish formula of a threefold invocation of God's name might appear odd, nay, even shocking when combined with the blatantly pagan formula of an oath by Zeus, the earth and the sun, let us look at some other Jewish documents.

Maimonides, a staunch opponent of paganism and idoltary if there ever was one, in his Sefer Hamitzvot (the book of commandments) rules that swearing by astral bodies is acceptable if one has the Creator in mind.

In 1961, Yigael Yadin headed an archaeological expedition to the caves above the Dead Sea. The caves were the last refuge for some of Simeon bar Kosiva's (Bar-Kochba) rebels as they fled the Roman onslaught on Ein-Gedi. Among the astonishing finds in what became known as the "Cave of Letters" was an archive of documents belonging to Babatha, a wealthy widow and landowner in Ein-Gedi and Petra.
In the subscription to one document, we read, "I, Babtha, daughter of Simon, swear by the genius of our lord Caesar that I have in good faith registered as has been written above." Italics mine.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/scrolls/babatha.html

In page 215 of his Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, Saul Lieberman provides a translation of a responsum by a 9th century Babylonian, the Rab Hai ben Nahshon Gaon.

Heaven forbid that one should do so (i.e. to circumvent the law) in vow or oaths, for that is a serious matter. There came to us a pious, learned old man and taught in the school: It is written (Deut. 4:19), 'And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven and behold the sun' - that means to make a vow by it - 'and the moon' - that means to swear by it. If you transgress or circumvent either of them, then, 'thou hast gone astray' (ibid.) and are required to do the most severe penance. For the Lord will wreak vengeance upon you, and you will on this account be considered on a par with those who worship the sun and the moon. That is why it says further on (ibid. 26): 'I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day that ye shall utterly perish.'

Lieberman logically surmises that ignorant or crooked Jews abused a loophole in these kinds of oaths by sun and moon, which their gentile neighbours considered binding, but they themselves did not.
In fact, the closing formula in the Gorgippia inscription was standard legal fare in the Bosphoran Kingdom, and as such, seems to have lost most of its pagan connotations.

A final source from the last decade of the first century AD, though not a Jewish one, which Lieberman provided.
Martial's Epigrams, book XI.

XCIV. ON A JEW, A RIVAL POET.

As for the fact that you are exceedingly envious and everywhere carping at my writings, I pardon you, circumcised poet; you have your reasons. Nor am I at all concerned that, while carping at my verses, you steal them; for this too, circumcised poet, you have your reasons. This however, circumcised poet, annoys me, that, though you were born in the heart of Jerusalem, you attempt to seduce the object of my affections You deny that such is the case, and swear by the temples of Jupiter. I do not believe you; swear, circumcised poet, by Anchialus.

Martial seems aware of a Jewish prediliction for not taking gentile oaths seriously, and demands a stronger one, one that Jews would find binding.

For those interested in further reading on the subject, I highly recommend Saul Liberman and Lee I. Levine's books, mentioned above.