Key Texts
The ascent texts are extant in four principal works, all redacted well after the third but certainly before the ninth century CE. They are: 1) Hekhalot Zutartey ("The Lesser Palaces"), which details an ascent of Rabbi Akiva; 2) Hekhalot Rabbati ("The Greater Palaces"), which details an ascent of Rabbi Ishmael; 3) Ma'aseh Merkabah ("Account of the Chariot"), a collection of hymns recited by the "descenders" and heard during their ascent; and 4) Sepher Hekhalot ("Book of Palaces," also known as 3 Enoch), which recounts an ascent and divine transformation of the biblical figure Enoch into the archangel Metatron, as related by Rabbi Ishmael.
A fifth work provides a detailed description of the Creator as seen by the "descenders" at the climax of their ascent. This work, preserved in various forms, is called Shi'ur Qomah ("Measurement of the Body"), and is rooted in a mystical exegesis of the Song of Songs, a book reputedly venerated by Rabbi Akiva. The literal message of the work was repulsive to those who maintained God's incorporeality; Maimonides (d. 1204) wrote that the book should be erased and all mention of its existence deleted.
While throughout the era of merkabah mysticism the problem of creation was not of paramount importance, the treatise Sefer Yetzirah ("Book of Creation") represents an attempted cosmogony from within a merkabah milieu. This text was probably composed during the seventh century, and evidence suggests Neoplatonic, Pythagoric, and Stoic influences. It features a linguistic theory of creation in which God creates the universe by combining the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, along with emanations represented by the ten numerals, or sefirot.
Read more about this topic: Merkabah Mysticism
Famous quotes containing the words key and/or texts:
“It so happened that, a few weeks later, “Old Ernie” [Ernest Hemingway] himself was using my room in New York as a hide-out from literary columnists and reporters during one of his rare stopover visits between Africa and Key West. On such all-too-rare occasions he lends an air of virility to my dainty apartment which I miss sorely after he has gone and all the furniture has been repaired.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“A book is not an autonomous entity: it is a relation, an axis of innumerable relations. One literature differs from another, be it earlier or later, not because of the texts but because of the way they are read: if I could read any page from the present time—this one, for instance—as it will be read in the year 2000, I would know what the literature of the year 2000 would be like.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)