Esoterica Iudaica Antiqua: Some reflections

It is, of course, “old hat” to remark that one of the intriguing and influential outcomes of the meeting of Near Eastern religion, concepts and practices with Greek culture in its Hellenistic, particularly later Hellenistic form, was that the Near Eastern mythopoeic beliefs, practices, and ideas gained a theoretical structure. ¹ Thus, in a bold generalization, we may say that the religions of the ancient Near East gained a theology. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines theology as “The study or science which treats of God, His nature and attributes, and His relations with man and the universe; ‘the science of things divine’.” As far as Jewish thought is concerned, therefore, it is appropriate to remark that there is no theology in this sense in the Hebrew Bible but plenty of religion. Nor is there much theology in the literature written in the Land of Israel and in Hebrew and Aramaic texts during the last centuries B.C.E. and the first-century C.E.—perhaps one passage in one Dead Sea Scroll (1QS 3:13–4:26 the so-called “Treatise on the Two Spirits”). Where we find theology is where the religious ideas and practices are thought about in systematic, “logical” categories, so, exempli gratia, substantial part of the writings of Philo of Alexandria and many Christian writings from the second-century C.E. onward. It is precisely to the non-theologized and pre-second-century C.E. world of the Near East that I wish to turn my attention. In the coming page or so of text, I venture timidly into an area in which I am at least a neophyte, if not still an outsider, but in the course of preliminary reading, certain points have struck me as significant.

For those studying Western esotericism, Antoine Faivre’s definition in Access to Western Esotericism (1994) ² has been very important. ³ It includes consideration of a theoretical structure as well as certain experiential and epistemological dimensions. While the usefulness of this definition for the study of Western esotericism is undoubted, it has been challenged, and von Stuckrad pointed out that one weakness of this theory is

chiefly that Faivre extrapolated his typology from a very specific phase in modern religious history and thereby excluded other aspects from the outset. The result is tautology. To be specific: because Faivre mainly drew on Renaissance Hermeticism, philosophy of nature, Christian Kabbalah and Protestant theosophy to generate his taxonomy, some areas are excluded from research which might actually be decisive for a comprehensive survey. ⁴

However, it remains true that when von Stuckrad himself deals with ancient esotericism, he, too, starts basically from certain movements in the Hellenistic world that use conceptual structures predominantly derived from the common philosophy of that world, dominated by the Middle Platonic and later the Neoplatonic tradition. Such movements are in some way precursors of Western esotericism. ⁵

The above are remarks by someone, whose focus is the ancient world, and largely the pre-Hellenized, or at least pre-theoretical ancient world, rather than the history of Western esotericism. My perception of the ancient world is not through the prism of Renaissance European esotericism which, even when not being naively read back into antiquity, nonetheless tends to channel whatever writers in the new field of Western esotericism say about it. The last thing I wish to precipitate at this point is a discussion of issues of definition determined by the categories of Western esotericism or the question of its origins. I aspire here to raise issues of the function of secret traditions within pre-Western and, indeed, non-Western cultures. I realize that this field of research is even more in its infancy than the study of Western esotericism, and it is to the credit of Florentina Badalanova Geller that she has cast the net broadly enough to allow me to raise these issues. ⁶

The range of phenomena comprised by the term “esotericism,” which I shall use throughout this paper, must consequently be extended beyond its specific denotation in the study of Western esotericism. Nonetheless, the path to its study has been paved by historians of religion and of the ésprit in Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment Western civilization and not by scholars of ancient Judaism. In a review essay in 2010, Henrik Bogdan discusses the state of that game in the context of reviews of works by Wouter Hanegraaff, Kocku von Stuckrad, Arthur Versluis, and Hugh B. Urban. Others present at this innovative Berlin meeting will doubtless further discuss this burgeoning field of learning and the questions that it raises. Since my own interest focuses on the ancient period, however, I feel it necessary to regard the questions that I am raising as tentative incursions into the unknown, using ancient Judaism, of which I do know something, as a prime case for investigation. I wish to explore some aspects of ancient Jewish esotericism, especially in the Second Temple period, and more particularly in the last two centuries B.C.E. and the first-century C.E. Let us begin then with some historical or at least anecdotal evidence.

Philo of Alexandria, the first-century Alexandrian exegete and philosopher, talking of the Jewish sect of the Therapeutae that existed (so he claims) in Egypt in his day, says,

They have also writings of ancient men, the founders of their way of thought (αἱρέσεως), who have left behind them many memorials of the allegorical system of writing and explanation, whom they take as a kind of model, and imitate the method in which this principle is carried out. (On the Contemplative Life §29)

Josephus in the Jewish War 2.142, speaking about the Essenes, describes a final stage of the process of initiation into the sect as follows:

The initiant takes oaths, that he will neither conceal anything from those of his own sect ⁷ nor discover any of their doctrines to other, no, not though he be compelled to do this at the hazard of his life. Moreover, he [i.e., the initiate or postulant] swears to communicate their doctrines to no one any otherwise than as he received them himself; that he will abstain from robbery, and will equally preserve the books belonging to their sect, and the names of the angels. ⁸

Despite these Essene ⁹ oaths, the fact is that many non-Essene texts from this period survive that record angelic names. This apparent contradiction serves to highlight an important distinction that is basic to our analysis here. For us, esotericism or secrecy is not inherent in the content of the transmitted material but in the way it was regarded by society, and concomitantly, the way it functioned in society. ¹⁰

Thus, we see that the point at which actual secrecy enters the picture is the social context in which documents ¹¹ or teachings circulated. Concerning material regarded as occult (etymologically also meaning “hidden, secret”), long ago I remarked that

sciences that are occult for modern Western people may have been everyday and non-occult activities in other times and places. For example, in some societies astrology is occult; in others, it is a part of daily life . . . ¹²

It is how the material is regarded by society that makes it esoteric or secret or occult, not its having one or another type of content. Thus, being esoteric is a socially determined trait.

This is, of course, an oversimplification. In fact, in many instances in the history of Judaism and Christianity (and perhaps of other traditions with which I am less familiar), there is a complementary relationship between the publicly accepted and the secret traditions. The content of the secret tradition is determined in one way or another by the content of the publicly transmitted teachings, though the complexity of this relationship needs exploring. ¹³

Josephus’ stress on transmission of written documents, of books, contrasts with the orality that Florentina Badalanova notes as characteristic of esoteric transmission. She contrasts oral esoteric teaching with written school learning ¹⁴ and writes, “This distinction was also associated with orality and learning, in that the wisdom of a scholar or noted teacher was only allowed to be transmitted through Socratic dialogue or teaching but not written down” (conference statement, December 12, 2010). In certain cultural traditions, this may be true of secret teaching, but strikingly, the known late antique Jewish tradition stressed written books recording purported more ancient aural or visionary revelation. These revelatory books claimed ancient origin, yet their existence was not witnessed in Scripture. That made crucial both their designation as pseudepigraphy—their attribution to an ancient revealer—as well as a narrative explaining their transmission. These strategies were necessary for the books’ claim of their authenticity to be made apparent. The question may be posed of the border between a literary strategy and a recollection of some actual experiential happening, depending on the view taken of pseudepigraphy. ¹⁵

It seems very likely that there were also ancient Jewish secret oral traditions of teachings but we know virtually nothing about them. Such might have been, for example, those of magicians ¹⁶ or writers of amulets, which surface in one or two places in literary texts. ¹⁷ For example, Josephus, Antiquities 8.46–48 described an exorcism by a certain Eleazer. He used a magical ring inscribed with King Solomon’s name together with adjurations and incantations to expel a demon. ¹⁸ We may reasonably assume that here also esoteric teachings were involved, though the text does not state that explicitly. Josephus, Antiquities, 13.311 refers to the school of Judas the Essene where future prediction was taught. ¹⁹ However, we are unable to discuss these secret traditions in any way beyond noting their existence. ²⁰

As background to our discussion, we should bear in mind that in the Hellenistic age, pagan religions, like Judaism, underwent deep changes and actively developed new and diverse types of religious expression. ²¹ Profound philosophical expressions of religion existed alongside magic; ²² mystery religions alongside astrology. There were religions and cults in the Greco-Roman world whose teachings were secret and only revealed to initiates including those devoted to gods who promised release from the toils of the body-tomb-world. One form of these cults of redemption was those called “mysteries.” They typically promised their adherents salvation or illumination, gained by a process of gradual revelation of secrets corresponding to stages of initiation. Such cults may properly be described as “esoteric.”

Often mystery cults were associated with various Oriental gods, such as the Egyptian goddess Isis, and Mithras, who derived from Mithra, an Iranian deity associated with contracts and social structures. The Mithras cult was a favorite of Roman soldiers and very popular in the Empire in the time before Constantine. ²³ We have a little, not quite secure information about the Isis cult, because the second-century author Lucius Apuleius (who may himself have been an initiate of the cult) included an allegory of redemption through Isis in his book called the Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass. ²⁴ But we know nothing at all of the actual teaching or mysteries of the Mithra cult, certainly not from the inside, and the Mithra Plaques (reliefs adorned with symbolic figures that were, apparently, significant in Mithraic cult) and other monuments ²⁵ provide thin information as to its teaching. An earlier Greek mystery cult, the Eleusinian mysteries, was still alive in the Greco-Roman period and remains equally unknown. ²⁶ And there were other esoteric cults and sodalities in the Greco-Roman world.

Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the only information we had about the Essenes were the relatively superficial descriptions preserved by Josephus and Philo, and certain other brief ancient references. ²⁷ That information is of general character and shows no specific familiarity with the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered by the Bedouin and by archeologists. ²⁸ Some of the Qumran scrolls contain documents sharing distinctive and largely unparalleled language, terminology and concepts that modern scholars describe as “sectarian.” ²⁹ Recent estimates set the sectarian scrolls at about 25 percent of the Qumran library. ³⁰ They seem to be the writings of one single group or two or more closely allied groups. ³¹

The two main texts throwing light on the organization of the Essene group or groups are the Rule of the Community and the Damascus Document. ³² It is clear that the groups for which these two documents legislate differed in some organizational ways, but they share much more than that in which they differ. ³³ The Rule of the Community as well as a considerable number of other documents would have remained unknown but for the chance of archeological discovery. This is also true of the Damascus Document, which is known in three very fragmentary manuscripts from Qumran and also in manuscripts from the Cairo Geniza apparently deriving from a documented fortuitous find of manuscripts near the Dead Sea in the eighth-century C.E. ³⁴

The find at Qumran contained not only these sectarian works but also hymns and prayers and biblical commentaries, sapiential and legal works that are completely unknown either in the Jewish tradition directly transmitted from antiquity or in Jewish material mediated by Christian transmission. The unknown works also included some allied astrological, physiognomic, and brontological writings, not all of which were written by the sect.

To summarize these points, then, we may say that we have distinguished two major categories of esoterica. First, there are those traditions the esoteric character of which is determined by sociological factors: the groups that transmit them regarded them as secret and forbade their circulation, and this ban seems to have been generally observed. We have evidence of the existence of such material from the stories of the school of Judas the Essene in Josephus and of Eleazer’s exorcism, which is of magical character. Similarly, literary texts relate the existence of secret Essene teachings and archeological chance has turned up a sectarian, probably Essene library containing, among others, what may be assumed to be such secret books. ³⁵

Josephus says that as part of initiation of members into the sect, the Essenes transmitted to them secret books and the names of the angels. It is far from self-evident that books like the apocalypses which claim to have been secretly transmitted to the wise or initiates are what the Essenes taught to the initiates into their sect under the sanction of oaths. It is more than likely that the sectarian writings that have been recognized among the Dead Sea Scrolls were included in the secretly transmitted books. Since the sectarian writings and their typical terminology are not known outside Qumran, they apparently came under the ban included in the oaths taken by the initiates. ³⁶

The absence from the general transmission of Second Temple Jewish literature, not only of the writings that have been characterized as “sectarian” but of any of the characteristic sectarian terminology, indicates that members of the sect indeed obeyed the strictures of their oaths not to reveal the writings. The only way we know of these books is through archeological chance. ³⁷ Therefore, the Dead Sea Scrolls constitute a “parade example” of socially determined esotericism and we most likely have, thanks to the luck of the find, some of the actual documents that were considered esoteric or secret. ³⁸ For the most part, they do not have an “occult” character in the common, Western sense, but are concerned with the sect, its organization and its self-conscious position in the eschatological timetable. ³⁹ Consequently, we conclude that the Essenes of the Qumran sect ⁴⁰ may be regarded as a group that cultivated and transmitted secret teaching and that the sectarian scrolls from Qumran constituted part of that secret teaching.

Now we shall examine the second category of ancient Jewish literature that claims to be secretly transmitted, although it actually circulated rather widely. ⁴¹ The Jewish apocalypses ⁴² and certain pseudepigraphical testaments claim in many places to have been received from antiquity by secret transmission, though usually the actual chain of transmission is only set forth in part. ⁴³ Yet, these apocalypses seem to have circulated widely. ⁴⁴

It is essential to bear the above distinction between the two categories of esoterica in mind when we approach the soi-disant esoteric, ancient Jewish apocalypses. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, in addition to the sectarian works, many other ancient Jewish books were found. These include the books of the Hebrew Bible (all but Esther), some of the biblical Apocrypha, such as Tobit and ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus). Moreover, Second Temple Jewish works including some apocalyptic writings turned up there—most notably Jubilees, parts of 1 Enoch and some works associated with Daniel. ⁴⁵ The pseudo-Ezekiel document found at Qumran was known to and cited by Clement of Alexandria in the late-second-century C.E. ⁴⁶ These known apocalypses and other writings, however, do not bear the marks of sectarian origin. ⁴⁷

“Secret books of the Jews” is a name given by the thirteenth-century Armenian savant, Mekhitar of Ayrivank (1222–1290?) to the apocrypha he lists as being outside the Canon of Scripture. “Secret” is, of course, a translation of Greek ἀπόκρυϕα, but Mekhitar’s list is not of the biblical apocrypha but of books not published with or included in the scriptural Canon. ⁴⁸ In Daniel 12:4, however, after the seer has been told the meaning of his vision, the angel adds, “But you, Daniel, keep the words secret and the book sealed until the time of the end” (c.f. 12:9). ⁴⁹ So, according to this text, the book containing the things revealed to Daniel is to be kept sealed until the end. Moreover, observe that the things revealed to Daniel are to be written in a book. Yet, the book of Daniel, with this clear admonition at its conclusion, circulated early and rather widely. ⁵⁰

Chapter 14 of the Fourth Book of Ezra relates that the seer underwent a “Moses-like” revelatory experience during which he received books from heaven. At the end of this experience, the text says,

The Most High spoke to me, saying, “Make public the twenty-four books that you wrote first and let the worthy and the unworthy read them; but keep the seventy that were written last, in order to give them to the wise among your people. For in them are the springs of understanding, the fountains of wisdom and the river of knowledge.” And I did so. (4 Ezra 14:45–48)

The 24 exoteric books are those of the Hebrew Bible, while the 70 secret books are not specified, though they are said to have saving power. It nowhere says that 4 Ezra itself is part of the 70 secret books to be given to the “wise among your people.”

The apocalypses claim to be transmitted from antiquity; to have been revealed to ancient sages in the course of heavenly ascent or in divinely dispatched dreams. Thus, in 4 Ezra 12 when the seer receives a dream interpretation from an angel, the angel concludes, “This is the dream that you saw, and this is its interpretation. And you alone were worthy to learn this secret of the Most High” (12:35–36; c.f. 13:53–55). The dream and its interpretation are said to be secret. Yet, of course, they are recorded in 4 Ezra which circulated widely.

Some of the apocalypses account explicitly for the perdurance of the books containing them from antiquity to the contemporary present. The Testament of Moses describes the placing of the scroll in a jar, its treatment with anti-fungal and insect-repellent cedar oil, ⁵¹ and it’s being sealed until found in later generations, uncannily like the preservation certain of the Scrolls from Cave 1 and Cave 11 at Qumran. 4 Ezra provides for the writing down of “the secrets,” that is, the vision, and for its transmission when the angel says,

Therefore write all these things that you have seen in a book, and put it in a hidden place; and you shall teach them to the wise among your people, whose hearts you know are able to comprehend and keep these secrets. (4 Ezra 12:38–39)

So here, like other apocalypses, 4 Ezra provides an explanation of its transmission down the centuries and its existence at a later date. In the Enochic Book of Luminaries, which is several centuries older than 4 Ezra, we read,

Now my son Methuselah, I am telling you all these things and am writing (them) down. I have revealed all of them to you and have given you the books about all these things. My son, keep the book written by your father so that you may give (it) to the generations of the world. Wisdom I have given to you and to your children and to those who will be your children so that they may give this wisdom which is beyond their thought to their children for the generations. (1 En. 82:1–2)

Here, as in 4 Ezra, there is the command to write down things revealed and transmit them to future generations. The examples of this phenomenon could be multiplied. ⁵²

Samuel Thomas sets “traditional wisdom” in counter-point to “revealed wisdom” and considers the revealed information of the apocalypses to be “revealed wisdom.” ⁵³ These categories do not relate to our own primary distinction between secrecy or esotericism determined by social use and attitudes and “literary” esotericism often typified by both a transmission story and by pseudepigraphical authorship. Thomas’ distinction relates only to the written content of the apocalypses; that is to say, it highlights a distinction within the literary texts. In accordance with it, in a book like Wisdom of Solomon, then, one might contrast the quasi-philosophical argument of the first chapters with the lists of things revealed to Solomon in chapters 7 and 9 in response to his prayer for wisdom. In the apocalypses, when the seer reaches the highest heaven, when he sees the face of God, when he receives the books from God’s treasury, or when he takes dictation from an angel, the teaching that was revealed is enumerated in lists of revealed things. When these lists are examined, we see that their teaching was not primarily about the eschatological matters that form such a major part of the apocalypses. ⁵⁴ Instead, they are catalogs of cosmological and cosmic secrets that include some temporal and eschatological elements. ⁵⁵ I noted long ago the lack of fit between the subjects included in the lists and the contents of the apocalypses. ⁵⁶ The present context now stimulates me to hypothesize that some or all of those subjects mentioned in the lists but not revealed in the apocalypses may be those which the authors considered inappropriate to reveal, that is, which were secret or esoteric.

If this is indeed the case, we must distinguish between an inner, secret teaching, mentioned briefly in lists of revealed subjects, and the apocalypses with their detailed revelations, which were exoteric though presented as if esoteric. We do not know the content of this inner teaching, while that of the apocalypses circulated quite widely. ⁵⁷ Thus, the explicit teaching of the apocalypses may be called “pseudo-esoteric.” Pseudo-esotericism can only function as a literary device in a social context in which secret traditions are a familiar or at least a known phenomenon.

Next, we shall discuss in more detail evidence for the hypothesis that in apocalypses secret knowledge is evidenced that is not expressed in their overt contents. As a point of departure, we consider again 4 Ezra (late-first-century C.E.). Three additional points emerge from it that support our claim. First, in the early chapters of the book, by means of a series of riddle questions, Ezra’s angelic interlocutor deflects his questions about the incomprehensibility of the divine management of the world. Basically, the argument is that Ezra cannot understand the heavenly secrets because he is an earthly being (4 Ezra 4:20). This is a denial of the ability to know what is beyond our ken, yet it implies that such knowledge exists but that humans cannot readily achieve it. 4 Ezra’s denial is in general reminiscent of a statement in ben Sira (300 years earlier) who says,

Neither seek what is too difficult for you,

nor investigate what is beyond your power.

Reflect upon what you have been commanded,

for what is hidden is not your concern. (Sir 3:21–22) ⁵⁸

Scholars have taken Sir 3:21–22 to mean that the wise man is too busy himself only with the things of this world. ⁵⁹ Of course, in a period when traditions of secret knowledge were current, this could be read as a parallel to 4 Ezra’s statements three centuries later. ⁶⁰

In chapter 10 of 4 Ezra, after the vigorous denial of human ability to know the celestial earlier in the book, and in apparent contradiction to that denial, the visionary receives the revelation of the heavenly Jerusalem. At the end of this Jerusalem vision and the angel’s explanation of its meaning, he commands Ezra:

Therefore do not be afraid, and do not let your heart be terrified; but go in and see the splendour and vastness of the building, as far as it is possible for your eyes to see it, and afterward you will hear as much as your ears can hear. For you are more blessed than many, and you have been named before the Most High, as but few have been. (4 Ezra 10:55–57)

This promise has no fulfillment; Ezra’s entry into the Heavenly Jerusalem is not described and what he saw and heard is not reported in the text. This is analogous to enumerating subjects as revealed in a summary list, but not setting them forth in the narrative of detailed revelation. I have proposed that 4 Ezra 10:55–57 draws upon an esoteric understanding of the heavenly Jerusalem as a metaphor for the presence of God that may be compared to the Palace and Chariot metaphors for the Divinity in early Jewish mystical literature. The emphasis on Ezra’s being blessed and on his admission into the mystery, yet his inability to comprehend it all (“as far as it is possible for your eyes to see . . . as much as your ears can hear”), clearly indicates heavenly or mystical secrets. ⁶¹

The above ben Sira passage continues,

Do not meddle in matters that are beyond you,

for more than you can understand has been shown you. (Sir 3:23)

This speaks of the revelation to ben Sira of more than his mind can comprehend, and again foreshadows 4 Ezra 10:55–56. Admittedly, this whole passage of ben Sira 3:21–23 may be understood in a non-portentous way: devote your attention to whatever you can understand, do not overreach your human capacities. I hesitate to decide, in ca. 190 B.C.E. between such an interpretation and the one that discerns here realms of esoteric knowledge that are forbidden on one hand but potentially revealed on the other hand.

4 Ezra, written 300 years later, is even more unambiguous. We have noted three distinct points: (1) In the Torah revelation vision (chap. 14) and elsewhere there is an explicit dual tradition, of exoteric and esoteric books. ⁶² It is not certain that 4 Ezra itself belongs among the esoteric books; (2) a tradition of secret transmission is invoked to explain how the book of 4 Ezra itself reached the reader’s time, comparable with Daniel 12 and Revelation 22 and other apocalypses; ⁶³ and (3) at the end of chapter 10, the book refers to a tradition of an ascent to the Divinity using the metaphor of Jerusalem and speaking of the limited human ability completely to comprehend this visionary revelation. ⁶⁴ Early in the book, these varied forms of esoteric learning are combined with the denial of human ability to achieve heavenly knowledge. Moreover, among the things denied are some subjects included elsewhere in the lists of revealed things, central to apocalyptic revelations. ⁶⁵

A second point also supports 4 Ezra’s familiarity with a secret tradition. We have pointed out elsewhere that in two places, 4 Ezra seems to draw on or refer to a tradition of mystical or allegorical exegesis of Song of Songs, a standard text that provided a basis for mystical contemplation not much later. Of course, it is not surprising that in the last decade of the first-century C.E., an allegorical and potentially mystical interpretation of Song of Songs was current or that it made its way into some apocalyptic writings. What is striking, however, both in this instance and in that of Jerusalem as a metaphor for the Godhead that is discussed earlier, is that these specific traditions are not to be found in contemporary Rabbinic witnesses. Indeed, it is that mystical interpretation of the heavenly Jerusalem that constitutes the third esoteric tradition with which 4 Ezra is familiar.

I think, therefore, that we must take into account the possibility that the apocalypses, and certain of the wisdom books, preserved hints at the existence of inner, secret traditions of various sorts. Such traditions are included within “revealed wisdom” but are not coextensive with the contents of the apocalypses, though they overlap with them. This still leaves one issue open, and it is not certain that it can be resolved. Do traditions like those about Enoch and Ezra transmitting their books reflect any social reality? Was there really a group of the “wise among the people” and, if there was, did these apocalypses constitute its teachings? ⁶⁶ We have too little information about the apocalypses’ social function to answer. ⁶⁷

A long time ago, with respect to apocalyptic literature, I concluded, “it is not possible to show that the books functioned as vessels of esoteric teaching within clearly organized socio-religious groups in the Second Temple period.” ⁶⁸ The discovery of secret traditions within the apocalypses does not invalidate this, though the tension between revelation and hiding, between revealed and hidden knowledge, brings us more fully to realize complexities involved. ⁶⁹

Were there time, other aspects of esotericism could be discussed, such as the danger associated with esoteric knowledge and the change of the character of religious knowledge once a secret tradition or secret traditions are admitted to exist within its ambit. ⁷⁰ A third has to do with the old argument about the relationship of apocalyptic literature and the early mystical Hekhalot and Merkabah books.

These secrets are hidden still from our eyes. Perhaps the future will draw the veil aside.