Sárospataki Füzetek 20. (2016)

2016 / 2. szám - ARTICLES / STUDIEN - György Kustár: Ont he Slopes of Sinai - Some Hermeneutical Questions in Light of the Kabbalistic and Historical Critical Exegesis

György Kustár

However, the ascent from the historical layer of the text to the mystical is only one direction of the two-way motion the mystic experiences. Through the descent from the divine to the historical, the Kabbalists went further by changing the codes and frame for understanding history that was used by Talmudic literature.29 From the perspective of the divine, the mystical texts and interpretations are constantly creating and recreating history. In a certain way they were not only opposing our historical sense, but also the society’s vision of historical perception. One case in the Revelation story is the distinction made between the first and second pair of tablets of covenant. In the present form of the story does not make distinctions between the stones and the law given on them. But for the author of the Zohar, something happened between the two revelations inside the divine realm. The sin of Israel by worshipping the idol of the golden calf induced a universal tragedy: the reinstating of evil and the return of the serpent.30 The first revelation that would have brought complete salvation and perfect union between God and his People was revoked by God. The possibility to see the divine eye to eye by contemplating the unified Torah engraved on the first pair of tablets that contained explicitly mystical and universal knowledge was terminated. Accordingly, the braking of the tablets was not driven by a psychodynamic factor, the “waxing anger of Moses”, but by the cosmic happenings. God revoked His words; according to a passage in the Zohar, the tablets fell by themselves;31 the letters took flight, and no word remained on the remnants of the broken stones.32 According to another interpretation, the white letters (referring to the secret or oral law) contracted into the black letters (the outward manifestation of the Torah, or the Written Torah), and remained hidden.33 “The malediction brought upon the world by the trespass, and removed for a moment as the people passed under the shadow of the Mount Sinai, descended upon them again.”34 The Zohar implies that the second revelation was different. The law given has its origin in the

29 Joseph Dan even defines this profound distinctiveness as a general character of mystical traditions. Cf. Dan, Joseph: The Ancient Jewish Mysticism, Galei ZahafTel Aviv University, 1993,168.

30 Waite, A. E.: The Holy Kabbalah, 307.

31 The Zohar, fol. 195a.

32 Ibid.

33 There was an extended disagreement about the exact nature of the original Torah revealed at Sinai. Some speculations held that Moses received the original divine order of Torah, according to others, the Torah descended and through this descent it reached its current form, although containing all the combinations of its form according to the stages of ascent. (Idel: Absorbing Perfections, 121.) Rabbi Joseph Al-Ashqar's dilemma is that the Torah revealed to the angels must be different from the one revealed to Moses. The final revelation thus was clothed in a lower form to make it attainable. (Idel: op.cit., 369.) According to magical sources, Moses, after winning the contest with angels about the giving or retaining the revelation, he was given the secret names contained by the Torah by each and every angel. (Idel: op.cit., 137, Swartz: Scholastic Magic, 166ff.) These speculations are all connected with certain Sefirotic constellations also.

34 Waite, A. E.: The Holy Kabbalah, 308.

36 Sárospataki Füzetek 20. évfolyam 2016-2