Excerpt 41

I'm writing this rather fast without first consulting any references, so you'll have to forgive any inaccuracies. I've included a list of references at the end that may be perused for greater detail.

"Nowhere does it say in the beginning "the gods created heaven and earth". It says clearly (and for both tribal origin myths) there was only one God.. Genesis 1:1: In the beginning God created heaven and earth." There is only one creator God in Genesis."

Technically, and according to the Kabbalists, God itself is not mentioned in Genesis, if you refer to the Hebrew. (From what I've read, the texts of the Torah were originally written in Hebrew, translated into Aramaic which was more popular for a time, then put back into Hebrew at a later date, and standardised during an era when
Kabbalah was still studied by some Rabbis as an active and acceptable part of the Jewish religion. According to Jews and serious Kabbalists I've spoken with, the Torah/Old Test. isn't able to be read accurately in English due to the reduction of all God-names down to one word which does not adequately describe the particular force being referred to.)

While this may sound biased (and of course it is slightly), from an historical viewpoint, I think it's good to keep one very important thing in mind: Christian texts such as the Old Testament have been borrowed from the Jewish mystical tradition and taken out of context. In the Jewish mystical tradition, there was an oral aspect and a written aspect to their practice. The Old Testament is the written aspect (essentially a mystical handbook - if you take a close look at the vision of Ezekiel you'll see a fine account of Merkavah mystical practices, which were the ancestors of later Kabbalistic visionary work/methods), which was viewed as virtually worthless without the accompanying oral teachings. From what I've seen, the Jewish mystic's term for God (or I should say G-d) is usually Ain Soph; literally "no limit". The first word used for G-d in Genesis is Elohim, a word referring to the 3rd Sefirah Binah which was thought to be the forming/delineating intelligence. This term was also used at times to refer to the entire Tree of Life/Sefirot as a whole. G-d itself is usually seen as a non-differentiated unmanifest unity quite remote from the Sefirot, which are Its creation (see Lurianic Kabbalah for a nice description of the creation act). With this in mind, the phrase "let us make man in our own image" starts to make more sense. We are created in the image of, in a sense, less perfect creations and contain all the spiritual/energetic flows of emotion/intellectualism/form/force/mercy/judgement etc. that are found within the Sefirot (which are spiritual energy/power transformers).

"Elohim was also used to denote the angels, first recognized as "

I believe you're only partly correct here. See above. Angelic forces have been associated with Sefirot for centuries (I'm not a scholar or I'd be able to tell you when this first started), though it's interesting that most schools of practice can never completely decide on which angels to associate with which Sefirot. I myself prefer to look at the root words of angelic names to get a better idea of what forces/intelligences they represent rather than trying to force them into systems of attributions that don't reflect their true natures.

"YHVH and Elohim refer to the same Creator."

I disagree on the grounds that they refer to 2 different aspects/creations of the Unmanifest creator (according to Jewish mystical texts). YHVH itself is sometimes seen as a representation of the universe and all things in it, other times it is considered the essence of the Creator from which everything depends (see Joseph Gikatalia (1248-1323) "Shaaray Orah" - "Gates of Light"). In this term there is also implied a 4-fold universe (see info on the 4 Kabbalistic worlds)

Interestingly, according to a past conversation with one native Hebrew speaker on this e-list, YHVH might be a combination of 3 words (AHIH - "will be"; Hoveh - "I am"; Hayha - "I was") synthesized together to imply the concept of Eternal Existence.

"The Bible is not in code as such ..."

I used to think that, but after doing some more reading of the Jewish texts I can see where certain ideas could easily have been hidden by the people who wrote down the Torah.

"that is only a fancy/invention of some people always looking for what is hidden in what is plain to see if one has the eyes to see it."

And can use them to read Hebrew :)

 

Some recommended reading for anyone interested in the esoteric roots of Judaism (and indirectly, Christianity):

Path of the Kabbalah - David Sheinkin, M.D. (has an excellent discussion of Genesis)

Mysteries of the Kabbalah - by Marc-Alain Ouaknin.

Sefer Yetzirah : The Book of Creation - In Theory and Practice - Aryeh Kaplan.

Meditation and Kabbalah - Aryeh Kaplan.

God Is a Verb : Kabbalah and the Practice of Mystical Judaism - David
A. Cooper.

Kabbalah : The Way of the Jewish Mystic - Perle Epstein.

Kabbalah: A definitive history of the evolution, ideas, leading figures, and extraordinary influence of Jewish mysticism - Gershom Scholem.

 

As always, while we will likely never completely agree on some points, it's been fun debating with you :)

Amoris