[Avodah] Does God Change His Mind?

[Michael Makovi]

> > Michael Makovi wrote:
> > I guess because we've found many other Chazalic
> > Maaseh Merkavah works (the Hekhalot), and Shiur Koma > > fits in with these texts perfectly, and there's no basis for > > doubting its authenticity, AFAIK.

> R' David Riceman wrote:
> This is not true.  As far as I know Shiur Koma is the only
> merkava text which purports to describe God rather than a > lesser creature.

> Furthermore it misses the main point.  It is true that there
> was a group of Merkava mystics in EY at some point.
> Their relationship with Hazal is (as far as I know) unknown. > For example, Shiur Koma purports to have been written by > R. Yishmael (R. Akiva's bar plugta, not his grandfather the > mystic).  I sincerely doubt that you will find any scholar
> who accepts this.

You'll also be hard-pressed to find a scholar who accepts that Daniel
was not written in the Hashmonean era. I mean only that this defense
cuts both ways. If you try to appeal to disputed authorship of an
apocryphal(-like) mystical work, you've exposed yourself.

In any case, I haven't yet found a scholar who can seriously
distinguish between Daniel on the other hand, and the other
apocryphal/apocalyptic works on the other, without simply resorting to
mesorah. We've got mesorah that Daniel is kosher and the other works
are not, and otherwise, the two are difficult to distinguish. See the
introduction to the Soncino Daniel, first edition. True, there are
differences, but they are very small - Daniel is less concerned with
pure unadulterated gross eschatology, and is on a higher
literary/textual level. The Soncino Daniel basically says, the problem
is intractible, and the only solution is to wait for Daniel to be
fulfilled and all the questions will be answered.

> If I understand the Rambam's position, he doesn't doubt
> that Shiur Koma was written during the times of Hazal, he > doubts it was written by someone mentioned in Talmud or > Midrash, someone we would recognize as one of Hazal.

But this only brings us to the question of who qualifies as Chazal
and/or Chazal-ic teaching. Chazal naturally cut a wide swath, after
all. I'll elaborate on this after the following paragraph.

I suspect that much of the Chazalic Merkava mysticism's nature would
surprise Rambam had he seen it. Rambam was surrounded by a
rationalistic Aristotelian environment, and AFAIK he took this
learning (e.g. tone down anthropormorphisms) for granted. Had he seen
Kabbalah, I would bet he would be astounded and have a very very
difficult time confronting it. I wouldn't be surprised then if Shiur
Koma and other Merkava works alike would provoke a similar reaction
from him, even if the former is treif and the latter kosher - I'm not
sure how well he'd be able to tell a difference. It's like my trying
to tell a kosher Hindu (from the Hindu perspective) document from a
treif Hindu document - what do I know about Hinduism?, and it'll all
look the same to me.

Prof. Urbach's Chazal/The Sages shows that some of our rabbis had
positions on eschatology not so far from the Apocalyptic view. Now, to
be sure, there are differences. But it's not black and white.

I have not seen anyone else who confronts these in the manner Urbach
does, and so I am forced to rely on what he says. The similarities are
undeniable, so I cannot simply brush them aside; one way or another,
one needs to have an answer to all this. If anyone knows of someone
who seriously confronted these, with full knowledge of their nature
(no apologetics from someone with no expertise), I'd be overjoyed to
hear it.

>From what I understand (which is very little), Shiur Koma is close
enough to the other Heikhalot, that it cannot be rejected as easily as
say, an apocryphal work that espouses original sin (Enoch). It's in
the grey area, that one could declare treif, but just as well declare
kosher. It's not obviously within black or white, from what I
understand.

(I know preciously little about these matters. Anyone who knows more,
PLEASE chime in.)

It could very well be that any similarities (which DO exist) between
Chazal and the Apocalypses are evidence that the minim did have some
truth, that they inherited from mesorah; they weren't totally wrong -
surely they did receive some authentic Jewish knowledge; they weren't
totally wrong. After all, even if the Apocalypses and the Merkava have
many similarities, the fact remains that Chazal polemicized against
the minim, so it cannot be that the similarity automatically shows
fellowship. But exactly who wrote what, and what their legitimacy was,
is unclear. For example, some say the Essenes wrote the Dead Sea
Scrolls (filled with things like the war between the Sons of Light and
the Sons of Darkness; sound familiar?), but others say the Dead Sea
Scrolls were simply a geniza from some library in Jerusalem, and the
owner could have been anyone, Pharisee, Sadducee, etc.

Still, the situation is far from pashut. More than this, I really do not know.

Anyone who knows more, please. If anyone can't tell, this is an issue
that has been...troubling me.

Mikha'el Makovi