Shekhinah, the Virgin Mary, and the Song of Songs: Reflections on a Kabbalistic Symbol in Its Historical Context

AJS Review

Volumn 26, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 1-52

  Green, Arthur ^a  

^a BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 85012444559     PISSN: 03640094     EISSN: 14754541     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0364009402000016     Document Type: Article

References (197)

1. Keter: The Crown of God in Early Jewish Mysticism. (Henceforth: Keter) Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.
2. By this short phrase I mean the following: whether its origins are “secular,” a series of richly erotic poems about the love of men and women, or whether the Canticle bears a faded memory of cultic celebration of love involving diety or dieties, either in Israel or in the preceding/surrounding culture. The former view was first articulated in modern times by J. G. von Herder in 1778, a landmark event in the history of Song of Songs scholarship, marking the end of allegorical readings passing for peshat or “plain” meaning. This “secular” view of the Canticle is held by several modern Bible scholars, including Robert Gordis, The Song of Songs: A Study, Modern Translation, and Commentary. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1954, and Yair Zakovitch, Shir ha-Shirim. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1992. Others are more open to seeing cultic and mythic undertones in the Canticles text. See Marvin Pope's Song of Songs in the Anchor Bible series, Garden City NY: Doubleday, 1977 (see p. 145ff. and especially p. 191) and T. J. Meek in the Interpreter's Bible, v. 5. New York: Abingdon Press, 1956. Meek was among those who found and published, as early as the 1920's, Sumerian texts that bear parallels to the imagery of the Song of Songs. While the prominent Sumerologist Samuel Noah Kramer disagreed with some of Meek's specific readings, he too was a strong supporter of the cultic reading of the Canticle. See “The Sacred Marriage and Solomon's Song of Songs” in his The Sacred Marriage Rite: Aspects of Faith, Myth, and Ritual in Ancient Sumer. (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1969.)
3. Sid Z. Leiman, The Canonization of Hebrew Scripture: The Talmudic and Midrashic Evidence, Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, v. 47, February, 1976 (Hamden CT: Archon Books, 1976), tries to make a fine distinction between canonicity and inspiration. He claims that the canonicity (meaning authoritative status) of all Biblical books was resolved perhaps as early as the second century B.C.E., and that the discussions about which books “defile the hands,” continuing as late at Yavneh (5 Jamnia), c. 90 C.E. were about which books were “inspired.” I find the distinction a forced one. In order to be part of Scripture, the work needed to be considered inspired by the Holy Spirit. The authority of other, including halakhic, works seems secondary to this question.
4. y. Nedarim 9:4. See Judah Goldin, “Toward a Profile of the Tanna, Aqiba ben Joseph” in his Studies in Midrash and Related Literature. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1988) pp. 299- 324.
5. m. Yadayim 3:5.
6. Mekhilta de-Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai, ed. Horwitz-Melamed (Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1955) p. 143. See S. Lieberman, Mishnat Shir ha-Shirim, published as Appendix D to G. Scholem's Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition. (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1960), pp. 118-126. This view that the Song of Songs was “spoken” earlier is not a denial of the Solomonic superscription. The “event” of God and Israel proclaiming their love to one another at the Sea, at Sinai, or in the Tent of Meeting was described in poetic form, these rabbis would probably have said, by Solomon. Daniel Boyarin in “The Song of Songs, Lock or Key: The Holy Song as a Mashal,” in his Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 105-116, tempts one to want to read the reply shir ha-shirim be-X ne'emerah to mean “The Song of Songs is speaking of X” rather than “was spoken at X.” The phrasing of the preceding question, however (hekhan ne'emerah) does not lend itself easily to such a reading. Regarding the rabbinic use of the Canticle, however, I am in general agreement with Boyarin, as will be clear below, n. 34 and 92.
7. See my previous discussion of “The Song of Songs in Early Jewish Mysticism” in Orim: A Jewish Journal at Yale 2:2 (1987).
8. The singing of the Canticle in a profane context was strictly forbidden. Tosefta Sanhedrin 12:10; b. Sanhedrin 101a. I retain the term “allegory” here pace Boyarin.
9. A powerful statement of this ongoing polemic is found in Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah 1:41 (ed. Dunsky p. 36). This passage is discussed by E. Urbach in Tarbiz 32 (1961) 159f.
10. This was the innovative assertion of Saul Lieberman. See his “Mishnat Shir ha-Shirim” referred to above in n. 6. Lieberman's claim has been disputed by Daniel Boyarin “Two Introductions to the Midrash on the Song of Songs,” Tarbiz 56 (1987): 479-500, and others. Cf. my discussion of this controversy in Keter, p. 78f., n.3.
11. Thus of Rabbi Akiva's own successful entry and return from the pardes, (the “orchard” of mystical vision) the Talmud says: “Draw me after you; let us run. The king has brought me into His chambers” (Cant. 1:4). This is a rare direct application of the Canticle to an individual's own love and visionary experience of God.
12. See Shir Rabbah 8:6, for example, where “for love is as strong as death” is applied simply to the love of man and wife, and 4:31 (end), where “let my beloved come into his garden” is referred, in a probably non-allegorical context, to the bridal chamber. In Shemot Rabbah 24:3 use is made of Cant. 1:4 to describe the relationship between Moses and his flock.
13. Of the commentary in ten books that Origen wrote to the Song of Songs, only the prologue and commentary through vs. 2:15 survive. In addition, we have two homilies of Origen to the opening chapters of the Canticle. Origen's writings on the Song of Songs survive primarily through the Latin translations of Jerome and Rufinus, though some Greek fragments are preserved. For details see E. Ann Matter, The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity. (henceforth: Matter, Voice) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990, p. 25ff. They are translated into English by R. P. Lawson in the Ancient Christian Writings series, a26. Westminster: Newman, 1957.
14. On the contact with rabbinic interpretation reflected in Origen see E. Urbach, “Rabbinic Exegesis and Origen's Commentary on the Song of Songs and Jewish-Christian Polemics” (Hebrew). Tarbiz 30 (1960/61) 148-170 and in English translation as “The Homiletical Interpretation of the Sages and the Exposition of Origen on Canticles, and the Jewish-Christian Disputation.” Scripita Hierosolymitana 22 (1971) 247-275.
15. Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism, v.l: The Foundations of Mysticism. (henceforth McGinn, History, v.l) New York: Crossroad, 1992, pp. 140-150, 209f., passim.; Matter, Voice, p. 36ff.
16. Matter, Voice, p. 20ff.
17. Prologue to the Commentary on the Song of Songs. Lawson translation (see n. 13 above), p. 21. The “word of God” is Christ, bridegroom of the soul as well as of the ecclesia. It is interesting that Origen depicts Solomon writing as would the bride, rather than the bridegroom. The Solomon mentioned in the Song, including that of the superscription, is seen by the rabbis as referring alternatively to the historical Solomon and to God, the King of Peace (based on a Voice-literalist reading of Shelomo as “His peace.”). See b. Shevu'ot 35b. The divine Solomon is thus the bridegroom of the text, but the earthly Solomon speaks from the bride's point of view. The same is true of Moses in the Song at the Sea, where his opening line “then sang Moses” (Ex. 15:1) is repeatedly associated with the bride's words in the Canticle and other female expressions. See Shemot Rabbah 23:3, 4, 5, 10.
18. Homily on Cant. 1:7; tr. Lawson pp. 211-223; 229-238. While Song of Songs was not yet canonized when the New Testament was written, and therefore is not quoted as Scripture, the image of Christ as the bridegroom is well attested in New Testament writings. See especially John 3:29. On eros in Origen see also Matter, Voice, p. 32ff.
19. On the degree of Origen's indebtedness to Philo see D. Runia, Philo in Early Christian Literature, (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1993) pp. 157-183.
20. The four long-established (pre-twelfth century) feasts of the Virgin are: the Purification of the Virgin, February 2; the Annunciation of the Virgin, March 25; the Assumption of the Virgin, August 15; and the Nativity of the Virgin, September 8. The legend behind the Feast of the Nativity is told in the addendum to Honorius Augustodinensis’ Sigillum Beatae Mariae, trans. Amelia Carr (Toronto: Peregrina Publishing Company, 1991), p. 86f., about which we will have more to say below.
21. Matter, Voice, p. 151ff.
22. The nursing Madonna is well-known in Chrisian art of the Middle Ages. For depictions see Caroline Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 13-25. The other Mary of the New Testament tale, Mary Magdalene, also takes her place in some later readings of the Song of Songs. Pope Gregory the Great, in his 25th homily on the Gospels, repeats from John 20:11-18 the account of Mary Magdalene staying behind in the empty tomb after the male disciples had left. She is then described as the passionate beloved of the Canticle, the one who says: “I sought him but I found him not (3:1).” Here Mary Magdalene is a wounded lover with whom the Jewish reader could empathize: disappointed for now, but knowing that her lover will return to her. On this passage see Grover A. Zinn Jr., “Texts within Texts: The Song of Songs in the Exegesis of Gregory the Great and Hugh of St. Vistor” in Studia Patristica 25 (1991): 209-215.
23. J. Beumer, “Die marianische Deutung des Hohen Liedes in der Frueskolastik” in Zeitschrift fuer Katholische Theologie 76 (1954): 411-439. Beumer says the process of change begins as early as the seventh century, culminating in Rupert and Honorius. But the complexity is sometimes elegantly negotiated. In Honorius’ Sigillum to Cant. 4:7 (English translation p. 66), Christ, the male figure in the dialogue, refers to Mary as “My spouse,” but adds that he speaks this way “because I am one with the Father, to whom you, remaining closed, bore the Son.”
24. See McGinn's perceptive reading of Ambrose's On Isaac in History, v. l, p. 209ff. and especially his note on p. 210 regarding gender transformation.
25. Of course, Isaac himself is not present at all in the Genesis account, which tells of Rebecca's meeting with Abraham's servant who has come to seek a wife for Isaac. Ambrose's erotic portrayal requires him to eliminate the middleman.
26. On Isaac 1:2 in Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, Seven Exegetical Works, trans. Michael P. McHugh (Washington: Catholic University Press, 1972), p. 11.
27. On Isaac 4:11-12 (p. 18).
28. McGinn, History, v. 1, 209ff.
29. Moshe David Herr, writing in the Encyclopedia Judaica (s.v. Midrash) dates it between 500-640, the later period of “classical” Midrash.
30. Shir ha-Shirim Zuta was first published from a Cairo Genizah manuscript by L. Gruenhut. Jerusalem: W. Gross, 1897. It has been reprinted with a new introduction by Y. H. Wertheimer. Jerusalem: Ketav Yad va-Sefer, 1971. Wertheimer dates it before the payyetan R. Eleazar ha-Kallir, who he claims used it. Kallir's own dates are a matter of some controversy, but a seventh-eighth century date for this Midrash seems likely. Aggadat Shir ha-Shirim was published by Solomon Schechter from a Parma (De Rossi) manuscript (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell and Co., 1896). He dates it (p. 102) to the mid-tenth century.
31. p. 5, line 22-23. My reading is based on an emendation of the Hebrew text that as it stands makes no sense. The letter bet needs to be moved from before the word “Torah” to the next word “shir.” This line, even if not Akiva's own, stems directly from the school of R. Akiva. It may even have originated as a gloss on Akiva's statement quoted above.
32. That is to say that neither the Church nor the Synagogue would have understood “the world conducted by the Song of Songs alone” as a call to abandon the slightest bit of the ever-growing legal structures within which both were operating. Rabbi Akiva is also the one, it should be remembered, who derived “heaps and heaps of laws from the crown-points” that surmount certain letters as written in the Torah scroll.
33. This is the key subject of the opening discourse in Midrash Shir ha-Shirim. On Christian agreement with this approach to the Song as a joint divine/human creation, see Ann Astell, The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages; (henceforth: Astell, Song) Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1990, p. 25f.
34. Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah 1:8; ed. Dunsky p. 5. See the article by D. Boyarin cited in n. 6 above.
35. On Piyyut, see A. Mirsky, Ha'Piyut [!]: The Development of Post-Biblical Poetry in Eretz Israel and the Diaspora (Hebrew). Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1990.
36. For Yannai, see Z. M. Rabinovitz’ edition of The Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Yannai, Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1987. There survive two long poems almost completely based on the Song of Songs, a shiv'ata le-pesah, in v.2, pp. 265-272 and a qerovah le-pesah v.2, pp. 272-289.
37. See Tractate Sofrim 14:1; 14:16.
38. On the influence of older piyyut on Spanish Hebrew poetry and the continuity of themes between them, see A. Mirsky, Ha'Piyut, pp. 522-652, and especially p. 617ff.
39. Mirsky (see previous note), p. 590 finds surprisingly little direct use of the Song of Songs in Spanish Hebrew Poetry. The poets “took from the Song of Songs a few concepts and images, like the deer and the gazelle, appelations for the beautiful lover… “ Indeed in Gabirol's religious love poetry there is less of Song of Songs than one might expect. The images of betrayal, wounded love, and abandonment that predominate seem to lead him more to the prophets and Lamentations. Among the clearer examples of Song of Songs influence are poems a31 and 32 in the Bialik-Ravnitzky edition of Gabirol's poetry Sha'ar asher Nisgar and Shalom Lekha Dodi (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1925). The same may be said of Judah Ha-Levi. For extensive use of the Song of Songs, see his Yafah ka-Tirtsah, poem a144 in H. Brody, ed., Diwan des Abu-l-Hasan Jehuda ha-Levi (Berlin: Mikize Nirdamim, 1930). Of course, occasional language and setting reminiscent of the Canticle are found throughout the writings of these and other Spanish Hebrew poets.
40. About half the religious poetry of Gabirol, collected in the above-mentioned volume, is specifically liturgical. In the case of Judah Halevi Shirey Qodesh (Jerusalem: D. Yarden, 1980), all of that published as the “sacred verse” is within the framework of liturgy. This variance may be attributable, however, to different principles of editing.
41. Piyyutim based on the Song of Songs predominate for the opening days and intermediate Sabbath of Pesah. See Mahzor le-Pesah, ed. Y. Frankel (Jerusalem: Koren, 1993), pp. 60-91, 94-105, 139-152, 245, 291-300, 304-330.
42. See n. 8 above.
43. The pseudo-Sa'adya commentary was first published in the collection Sheloshah Perushim le-Shir ha-Shirim. (Constantinople: Yabez, 1577?). The Arabic original was published by Y. Kapah in Hamesh Megillot, Jerusalem: Ha-Agudah le-Hatsalat Ginzey Teman, 1962. On the commentary see H. Malter, Saadia Gaon: His Life and Works (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1921), p. 322f.
44. RaSHI's commentary was first published in Perush Hamesh Megillot, Bologna, 1477. A critical edition by J. Rosenthal was published in the Samuel K. Mirsky Jubilee Volume, ed. S. Bernstein and G. Churgin (New York: Jubilee Committee, 1958), pp. 130-188.
45. On the question of RaSHI and “allegory” see Sarah Kamin, “Dugma in Rashi's Commentary on the Song of Songs” in her collected essays Jews and Christians Interpret the Bible (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1991), pp. 13-30.
46. A complete “Annotated Bibliography of Medieval Jewish Commentaries on the Song of Songs” by Barry D. Walfish is found in Ha-Miqra’ bi-Re'i Mefarashav: The Sarah Kamin Memorial Volume. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1994, pp. 518-571. Walfish's work replaces the former standard, but very dated work on the subject, S. Salfeld's Das Hohelied Salomo's bei den juedischen Erklaerern des Mittelalters (Berlin: J. Benzian, 1879).
47. This is hardly the right word for the likes of Alexander Neckam (Nequam) (1157-1217), an English theologian and exegete who expressed terrible disdain for the “modern” Jews, referred to them as “pigs,” thoroughly disapproved of their understanding of Scripture, and yet quoted them when useful. See A. Saltman, “Jewish Exegetical Material in Alexander Nequam's Commentary to the Song of Songs” in The Bible in the Light of Its Interpreters: The Sarah Kamin Memorial Volume. (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1994), pp. 421-451. Interestingly, Nequam's (as yet unpublished) commentary is mostly Mariological. For an earlier treatment see R. J. Loewe and R. W. Hunt, “Alexander Neckam's Knowledge of Hebrew” in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4. (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1958).
48. See the anonymous Latin paraphrase of RaSHI's commentary, Expositio hystorica Canti Canticorum secundum Salomonem, edited by S. Kamin and A. Saltman; Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1989. Kamin is also author of “Rashi's Commentary on the Song of Songs and the Jewish- Christian Polemic” in her Jews and Christians Interpret the Bible (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1991), pp. 31-60. See also Michael A. Signer, “Thirteenth Century Christian Hebraism: The Expositio on Canticles in MS Vat. Lat. 1053” in D. Blumenthal, ed, Approaches to Judaism in Medieval Times. (Atlanta: Scholars’ Press, 1988) pp. 89-100.
49. Ibn Ezra's commentary on Canticles exists in two recensions. The standard edition appearing in Mikra'ot Gedolot was first published in Perush ‘al Hamesh Megillot in Constantinople, 1505. A second shorter version is that published by H. J. Matthews, London, 1874. The various super-commentaries to Ibn Ezra are listed by N. Ben-Menahem in Areshet 3 (1961): 71-92.
50. The Hebrew ‘al ha-matkonot is obscure. I suggest that it refers to a way of learning the language of love, the poetics of erotic expression.
51. See the list of Walfish mentioned in n. 46. There are quite a few grammatical and some philosophical commentaries that preceded Ibn Ezra, including several by Karaite authors, in whose works Ibn Ezra often took a particular interest. See Walfish p. 528ff.
52. Hitgallut ha-Sodot ve-Hofa ‘at ha-Me'orot: Perush Shir ha-Shirim. Ed. A. S. Halkin. (Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1964).
53. While Ibn ‘Aqnin's primary influences are Islamic thinkers whom he knows directly, not via Maimonides, he does mention RaMBaM several times and once (f. 102b) makes specific reference to the Guide to the Perplexed.
54. The Ibn Tibbon commentary was first published in Lyck: Mekize Nirdamim, 1874. The fact that neither of these commentaries was printed before modern times is witness to their relative unpopularity.
55. Gersonides’ commentary was first published in Perush Hamesh Megillot, Riva di Trento, 1560. Another Aristotelian commentator was Joseph Ibn Kaspi (1279-1340). His commentary first appeared as Hatsotserot Kesef, Constantinople, 1577 [?] and again in ‘Asarah Keley Kesef, ed. J. Last, Pressburg, 1903 [photo. ed. Jerusalem, 1970].
56. J. LeClercq, Monks and Love in Twelfth-Century France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979); J. C. Moore, Love in Twelfth-Century France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972). See especially “The Varieties of Love,” pp. 131-155. The best example of the thorough mixing of sacred and worldly longings in quest of the ideal is found in “The Quest for the Holy Grail.” This thirteenth century text (discussed briefly in Matter, Voice, p. 55f.) includes references to the Song of Songs. It is published in English in the translation of P. M. Matarasso (London: Penguin Books, 1969). The complex interplay of the rhetoric of sacred and profane love is depicted by Peter Dronke in “The Song of Songs and Medieval Love-Lyric,” The Bible and Western Culture, ed. W. Lourdaux and D. Verhelst (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1979), pp. 236-262. See also J. I. Wimsatt, “Chaucer and the Canticle of Canticles” in Chaucer the Love Poet, ed. J. Mitchell and W. Provost. (Athens GA: University of Georgia Press, 1973).
57. The Latin text is found in Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. Jean Leclercq et al., (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1955-77), v. 1-2. An English edition in four volumes is translated by K. Walsh et al., Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1976-1980. See the extensive treatment by B. McGinn in The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. v. 2: The Growth of Mysticism (henceforth: McGinn, History, v.2). (New York: Crossroad, 1996), pp. 158-224. The popularity of Bernard's work is attested by the survival of more than 900 manuscripts, as reported by McGinn, p. 487, n. 21.
58. Gilbert's works in Latin are published in the Patrologia Latina (5PL) 184: 11-298. Gilbert's sermons in three volumes have been published in the English translation of L. Braceland, along with a fourth volumes of other collected writings (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1978-81). John of Ford's sermons, in seven volumes, are translated by W. Beckett (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1977-84). The Latin original, edited by E. Mikkers and H. Costello as Ioannis de Forda: Super Extremam Partem Cantici Canticorum Sermones CXX, is in the series Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis (5CCCM) (Turnhout: Brepols, 1970), pp. 17-18. For discussion of Gilbert and John's works see McGinn, History, v.2, pp. 298-309.
59. A critical edition and French translation by J. M. Dechanet is in Sources chretiennes 82 (Paris: Cerf, 1962). English translation by Mother Columba Hart (Spencer, MA: Cistercian Publications, 1970).
60. Rupert's Commentum in Cantica Canticorum is in CCCM 26. On him see John Van Engen, Rupert of Deutz. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). Regarding Honorius, I refer here to his first commentary on the Canticle, the Sigillum Beatae Mariae, to be quoted below. The Latin text is found in PL 172. There is an English translation by A. Carr (Toronto: Peregrina Publishing Company, 1991). His later commentary, the better-known Expositio in Cantica Canticorum, reverts to more of the ecclesial and tropological modes. Other Marian interpreters include Philip of Harveng (d. 1183; PL 203) and William of Newburgh (d. 1198), ed. J. C. Gorman, Spicelegium Friburgense 6, Fribourg, 1960. See E. Ann Matter, “Eulogium sponsi de sponsa: Canons, Monks, and the Song of Songs.” The Thomist 49:4 (1985), p. 552, n.5.
61. G. Scholem's Origins of the Kabbalah (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1987) already points in this direction. See pp. 180-187 and index, s.v. “German Hasidim.” Further steps in this identification of the Franco-German area as the primary source of Kabbalistic symbolism have been taken by more recent scholarship. See M. Idel, “The Intention of Prayer in the Beginning of Kabbalah: Between Germany and Provence,” Porat Yosef: Studies Presented to Rabbi Doctor Joseph Safran, eds. B. and E. Safran. (Hoboken: Ktav, 1992), pp. 5-14, as well as several other studies by Joseph Dan, Idel, and Elliot Wolfson. See also my prior discussion in Keter, chapter 10.
62. The Hebrew text of the Bahir has recently been published in a highly useable edition by Daniel Abrams (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 1994), reproducing and transcribing the Munich manuscript as well as reprinting the first printed edition (Amsterdam, 1651) of the Bahir. This edition renders that by R. Margulies (Jerusalem: Rabbi Kook Institute, 1951) obselete. For scholarship on the Bahir through the early 1990's, see the fine bibliography in the Abrams edition. An English translation by Aryeh Kaplan is only partially reliable, tending to smoothe over real problems in the text. Selections from the Bahir in a better translation are included in J. Dan and R. Kiener's The Early Kabbalah, NewYork: Paulist Press (Classics of Western Spirituality Series), 1986.
63. The Song of Songs Commentary under the name of R. Eleazar, first published in Lublin, 1608, as Yeyn ha-Reqah, is of dubious attribution and unfortunately not particularly helpful in this context.
64. See I. Ta-Shma, Ha-Nigle sheba-Nistar: The Halachic Residue in the Zohar (Israel: Ha-Kibbutz ha-Me'uhad, 1995), pp. 19-34.
65. M. Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 156ff and passim. His position is not quite identical with that of Raphael Patai's The Hebrew Goddess, which posits a direct historical connection between the ancient cult of Inana/Ishtar in Babylonia and the female shekhinah of the Zohar and later Kabbalah. That thesis simply lacks any evidence for a period of over a thousand years.
66. This is not to deny a certain maternal strain that runs through Biblical descriptions of that “almost exclusively” male deity. Recent feminist-inspired Bible studies have treated this subject extensively. See Mayer Gruber, “The Motherhood of God in Second Isaiah” in Revue Biblique 90 (1983): 351-359, reprinted in his The Motherhood of God and Other Essays (Atlanta: Scholars’ Press, 1992). See also J. J. Schmidt, “The Motherhood of God and Zion as Mother” in Revue Biblique 92 (1985): 557- 569. My thanks to George Savran for these references. I also do not deny that in the popular cult of ancient Israel there may have been elements of goddess worship. This is obvious from the negative references in Jeremiah to “the Queen of Heaven.” and possibly from archaeological evidence. But none of this denies the central thrust of Biblical and rabbinic Judaism's insitence that God's only “female” partner or beloved is His people Israel. Interestingly the Zohar (1:49a) subsumes the Biblical asherah among the names of shekhinah, linking its own female diety figure to the ancient and forbidden one. For the Kabbalist the essential sin of ‘avodah zarah is not the worship of “foreign” deities but the separation of the sefirot from one another, especially of the female from her mate. That is the thrust of this Zohar passage. Raphael Patai's quotation of it in The Hebrew Goddess, p. 318, n. 51, does little to strengthen his argument for historical continuity from ancient Near Eastern goddess worship to Kabbalah.
67. Chapter 12, pp. 134-150. On this point I differ from the view of Peter Schaefer in the article to which I will refer in n. 88 below.
68. The two important extant early Kabbalistic commentaries to the Song of Songs are those of R. Ezra of Gerona and R. Isaac Ibn Sahula. The former was first published under name of Nahmanides in Altona, 1764. (A Berlin edition supposedly published in the same year is lacking this text, despite the promise of it on the title page, in both copies examined in the Scholem Library in Jerusalem-a rather strange bibliographic curiosity. Scholem wrote a note about the rare Hrubyszow, 1820 edition of this text in Kirjath Sefer 1, 167f.) This same rather poor version is included in C. Chavel's edition of Kitvey RaMBaN, Jerusalem: Rav Kook Institute, 1963. An English translation by Seth Brody (completed by A.G.), partly based on manuscript readings, is now available (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1999). I published the Sahula text from a unique surviving manuscript in Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 6:3-4 (1987). Unfortunately lost is the commentary of Moses of Burgos, a document that would probably have offered important insight into the early history and development of this symbol.
69. Early Kabbalah is much interested in the divine origins of the human soul, including both the specific locus of origin and the process by which souls become embodied. One famous source in the Bahir depicts souls flying off the cosmic tree; others see them flowing in a divine river. Rabbi Isaac the Blind identifies the soul's ultimate source as binah, the mother/womb of the sefirotic world. It proceeds to journey through the sefirotic world and thus into malkhut, whence it goes on to enter into the human body. See R. Ezra's Commentary to the Aggadot Ms Vatican 294, f. 48b. Here there is no mention of divine copulation or of a birth-process, nor is there yet any distinction between various parts of the soul. From the Gerona period (mid-thirteenth century) onward, Kabbalistic notions of the soul become tied to the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions of tri-partate soul division; sometimes only neshamah, the highest portion of the soul, is taken to come from the world of the sefirot. In Castilian Kabbalah, especially the Zohar, the main view seems to be that neshamot are born of the coupling of tif'eret and malkhut, the male and female principles within the Godhead. See the discussion by I. Tishby in Wisdom of the Zohar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Littman Library, 1989), p. 697f.
70. See Zohar 1:8a. Both Israel and the angels are depicted as shushbinin, attendants, at the divine marriage. These passages may be influenced by the older tales of angels as shushbinin at Adam and Eve's wedding. See Pirke Rabbi Eliezer 12 and Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1925), v. 5, p. 90. See also Zohar 3:98 a-b, quoted in my Keter, p. 159f.
71. Shekhinah is of course a feminine noun in Hebrew and that can lead the casual reader to certain wrong impressions. My re-checking of the rabbinic sources confirms Scholem's view. Even in the very powerful passage in Echah Rabbah, where shekhinah is seen in bitter weeping and mourning (texts which were later rewritten by the Zohar [Zohar Hadash on Lamentations. This text has also been translated by Seth Brody and is published along with his translation of R. Ezra's Commentary to the Song of Songs. See n. 69 above.] to beautifully describe Mother Shekhinah) the single parable given in the original Midrash compares the mourning shekhinah (5 God) to an earthly king! See Echah Rabbah, petihta 25. There are other scattered passages in which shekhinah seems to be separate from God's own self (see b. Sukkah 5a, for example-“He spread over [Moses] the glow of His shekhinah… “), but there is no real separation and certainly no evidence of femininity here, unless one projects it back from the later Kabbalistic readings. The same is true of Devarim Rabbah 11:3, sometimes quoted in this context, where Moses is said to “speak with the shekhinah face-to-face.” Face-to-face conversation can of course take place between God and man, as the Biblical text in question (Deut. 34:10) makes clear, while they are yet two male figures. When one of the two is female, however, as will come to be in Kabbalah, “face-to-face” contact is read as sexual intimacy, leading to mystical union.
72. Midrash Mishle (ed. S. Buber, f. 47a-ninth-tenth century?) depicts the shekhinah as speaking to the blessed Holy One. In Bereshit Rabbati, a still later Midrashic compilation (ed. H. Albeck, p. 27-School of R. Moshe ha-Darshan, twelfth-century Provence) God threatens to remove “Himself and His shekhinah” from the world in response to human sin ('atsmo u-shekhinato), a locution not to be found in earlier sources. But this phrasing may reflect the influence of Sa'adya's theology which insisted on the distinction between God and His “created glory.” A much earlier Midrashic source, Va- Yiqra Rabbah 6:1, uses ruah ha-qodesh (“the holy spirit”) in a clear intermediary role, but not shekhinah.
73. The term shekhinta, even in its plural form (non-existent in Jewish sources) is widely used in Mandaean religious texts. The Mandaeans of Iraq are descended, as their name indicates, from ancient gnostics, probably of the pagan variety, and their writings, which date from the early Middle Ages, have often been used as a source for otherwise lost gnostic traditions. Their sources indicate knowledge of various Hebrew terms alongside significant hostility toward the Jews. Scholars have long debated whether these indicate origins in or close to Judaism, or whether this information and attitude could have come entirely through Islam and its reports on Judaism and the Jews. The term shekhinta in the Mandaean sources refers to a dwelling, sometimes to a sanctified or ritual hut where ceremonies are performed. See Kurt Rudolph, Die Mandaeer, v.2 (Der Kult, Goettingen: Vaendenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961), p. 21, n.6. There are places, however, where the term refers also to heavenly forces. See Edwin Yamauchi, Mandaic Incantation Texts (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1967), text 31, line 21 (p. 290) for one example. The question of the Mandaeans’ connection to Judaism in any period is an open one. To assert any connection specifically to Kabbalah would be highly speculative.
74. According to rabbinic sources Israel at least “occured in thought” before Creation itself, which is sometimes described as having taken place for their sake. This sounds like a Jewish parallel to the notion of a primordial ecclesia, found already in the early church, and perhaps even its source. Ephraim Urbach treats kenesset yisra'el strictly as a locution rather than as a hypostasis, dismissing the parallel to early Christianity. See The Sages (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1975), p. 646ff. He notes that the phrase does not appear at all in the Tannaitic Midrashim and later it is “chiefly found in Homilies on verses of the Prophets that liken Israel to a woman… or on passages of Canticles that were interpreted allegorically as referring to Israel” (p. 647). It should be said that this approach is general to Urbach, who tended to minimalize both Hellenistic influences and parallels with Christianity in his reading of the rabbis. If we accept his view with regard to the early sources, the question becomes one of tracing the evolution of the locution into a hypostasis, something it has clearly become before the spread of Kabbalah.
75. The phrase kenesset yisra'el is also (like shekhinah) grammatically female, and one must beware of over-reading simple grammatical gender usages. On the other hand, the choice of kenesset over ‘am or beney was made by the rabbinic authors, and perhaps that in itself is significant. While kenesset yisra'el is commonly the bride/spouse of God in Midrashic sources, see Shir Rabbah 6:18 (5Shemot Rabbah 15:10) for an occurance of kenesset yisra'el as daughter.
76. See E. Wolfson, “Female Imaging of the Torah: From Literary Metaphor to to Religious Symbol” in From Ancient Israel to Moden Judaism: Intellect in Quest of Understanding, Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox, ed. J. Neusner et al., vol. 2 (Atlanta: Scholars’ Press, 1989), pp. 271-307 and A. Green “Bride, Spouse, Daughter: Images of of the Feminine in Classical Jewish Sources” in On Being a Jewish Feminist, ed. S. Heschel (New York: Schocken, 1983), pp. 248-260. The relationship of the sages to the female Torah is depicted in many aggadot, especially in the Babylonian Talmud.
77. Shabbat is to be greeted as a bride. Cf. b. Shabbat 119a and Bava Qama 32a-b. The first Sabbath after Creation was the moment when the bride entered her bridal canopy. See Bereshit Rabbah 10:9, ed. Theodor-Albeck p. 85. One has the impression there that the King has prepared a canopy for His own bride. In the following chapter of Bereshit Rabbah, however (11:8; p. 95f.), shabbat is the bride of Israel. See E. Wolfson in the Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 6:2 (1997): 302f. This is the rabbinic source for what much later (late sixteenth century) developed into the Kabbalat Shabbat service. The Sabbath is God's queen in an important passage in Va-Yiqra’ Rabbah 27:10 (ed. Margalioth, p. 643) where the readiness of an animal for sacrifice is delayed until the eighth day so that one see the queen (i.e., pass a Sabbath) before coming in to see the king. This may indicate an intercessory role for the queen. In various other parables comparing God to a human king, it is the queen who intercedes with him on behalf of her wayward son. On the prerogatives of queens and grand ladies in rabbinic literature, see S. Kraus, Paras ve-Romi ba-Talmud uva-Midrashim (Jerusalem: Rabbi Kook Institute, 1948), p. 128ff. A female figure of “Sabbath Princess” or “an Angel of the Sabbath” is found in the Midrash Seder Rabba de-Bereshit (ed. Wertheimer, Battey Midrashot 1, chapter 155P. Schaefer, Synopsis a852, quoting MS Oxford 1531, translated here: “The blessed Holy One brought sarah shel shabbat and seated her upon the Throne of Glory. He brought before her the prince of each one of the heavens and of each one of the depths; they danced and rejoiced before Him, [each] proclaiming: “Shabbat unto the Lord!” and all the other great princes responding: “Unto the Lord, Shabbat!” This certainly seems like the wedding feast of God and Shabbat. Is it possible that there is some relationship between this odd collection of esoteric midrashim and the Philonic traditions to be discussed in n. 79 and 83?
78. See Vita Mosis 2:210 (Loeb Philo Series 6:553): “… the prophet magnified the holy seventh day… for he found that she was in the first place motherless, exempt from female parentage, begotten by the father alone, without begetting, brought to birth yet not carried in the womb. Secondly he saw… that she was also ever virgin, neither born of a mother nor a mother herself, neither bred from corruption nor doomed to suffer corruption. Thirdly… he recognized in her the birthday of the world, a feast celebrated by heaven, celebrated by earth and things on earth as they rejoice and exult in the full harmony of the sacred number [seven].” See also De Spec. Leg. 2:56-58 (Loeb 7:343, 345). Quoted by Patai, The Hebrew Goddess, p. 248f. It is certainly interesting that Philo's virgin Sabbath (seven being the only number in the decad that is neither the dual of any other nor capable of redoubling within the decad) should combine with the Virgin Mary in in the emergence of Kabbalistic symbolism.
79. See W. Leslau, ed, The Falasha Anthology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951), pp. 3-39. Leslau dates the text as no earlier than the fourteenth century, but with possibly earlier elements. There is much controversy over the age of the Ethiopian Jewish traditions and their connection to other sources.
80. This female figure of wisdom is identified with Torah throughout rabbinic literature. The wisdom tradition stands behind the notion of primordial Torah, which scholarly opinion today sees more as an inner development from Jewish/Semitic sources than as a reflex of the Hellenistic logos. The relationships here are complex, however. The interplay of traditions is manifest in Philo, who depicts the “Wisdom” of Prov. 8:22 as copulating with the Father and giving birth to the visible universe. See On Drunkeness 8:30 (Loeb Philo series v.3, p. 333, 335). Philo designates this primal pair also as “reason” and “instruction;” it is not hard to see why attempts have been made (none convincing to date) to connect this pair to the male hokhmah/wisdom and the female binah/understanding, the primal pair in Kabbalah as it emerges in the twelfth century. On the primal syzygy in Philo see also his De Cherubim 9:27 and 14:49, Loeb v. 2, p. 25 and 39.
81. See Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, v.1, pp. 371-387 and Scholem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead (New York: Schocken Books, 1991), pp. 140-196. The German original was first published in Eranos Jahrbuch 21 (1952) 45-107 as “Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der kabbalistischen Konzeption der Schechinah.”
82. On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead, p. 147.
83. On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead., p. 146f.
84. On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead., p. 160f.
85. This conclusion is also that of Peter Schaefer, “Tochter, Schwester, Braut und Mutter: Bilder der Weiblichkeit Gottes in der fruehen Kabbala,” Saeculum: Jahrbuch fuer Universalgeschichte 49:2 (1998), 259-279. In very brief form (pp. 274-279) Schaefer anticipates several of the conclusions of this study. An English version “Daughter, Sister, Bride, and Mother: Images of the Femininity of God in the Early Kabbala” has appeared the in Journal of the American Academy of Religion 68 (2000) 221- 242.
86. This dimension of reality is still often under-emphasized by Judaica scholars, who tend to look more for internal Jewish continuities than for extra-Jewish factors in determining practices. A refreshing change from this tendency is I. G. Marcus’ Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996).
87. A critical edition of the never-published paraphrase, called Pitron Sefer Emunot, is soon to appear, edited by Ronald Kiener. The first portion of this project constituted his doctoral dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania (1984), under my supervision.
88. See I. G. Marcus, Piety and Society: The Jewish Pietists of Medieval Germany, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981.
89. Mishneh Torah, hilkhot teshuvah 10:3. See also Guide 3:51. Note the obliviousness to the issue of gender in this description: one [presumably the male reader] is to love God with the same passion that one has for love of woman. Of course Maimonides’ God is without gender.
90. Ed. Lyck, f. 21a.
91. Matter, Voice, p. 137.
92. This is a Midrashic reading, if you will, of the Canticle, just like the application of the Canticle to the Exodus narrative pointed out by Daniel Boyarin. See “The Song of Songs, Lock or Key: The Holy Song as a Mashal” in his Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 105-116. In this way I find Boyarin's interesting distinction between the Midrashic reading of the Song of Songs and the Christian allegorization somewhat inadequate. All premodern Christian readings of the “Old Testament” must be seen through the New Testament (NT) prism, even if there is another layer of allegory laid atop a particular text. I would thus see Origen's reading as a Hellenistic allegory superimposed on a Jewish-Christian NT Midrash on the Song of Songs. This is true even though the NT authors themselves do not quote the Canticle; later Christian readers nevertheless inevitably read it through the NT prism.
93. The consumption of Christ's body and its mystical understandings is an important theme in Caroline Walker Bynum's Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). See especially chapter five: Food in the Writings of Women Mystics.
94. Bernard McGinn in his History, v. 2 often shows awareness of the complex reverberations of these issues. See especially his treatment of Bernard of Clairvaux ‘s references to bodily eros, pp. 175-177, 196. On the theological plane, he shows how a theology of incarnation makes true, even on a literal level, the anthropomorphic references apparently to God in the Song of Songs and other texts. See History, v.2, p. 167f. See also the sophisticated discussion of modern responses to medieval “spiritual eroticism” in Matter, Voice, pp. 138-142 as well as the works of Caroline Walker Bynum, both that quoted in the preceding note and “The Body of Christ in the Later Middle Ages: A Response to Leo Steinberg” in her Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1991), pp. 79-117, and elsewhere in that volume. Many of the same (O.T.) Scriptural passages treated in these works were the crux of painstaking reinterpretation by medieval Jewish rationalists, culminating in Maimonides’ Guide, part I, where their literal meaning was set aside in order to reduce anthropomorphism. They were to be reclaimed, though on a symbolic level, by the Kabbalists.
95. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs 20:6, speaks of the need to attach oneself first to a bodily love of Christ, thence to be raised higher. See the discussion by Michael Casey, Athirst for God: Bernard of Clairvaux's Sermons on the Song of Songs (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1988). Bernard's friend William of St. Thierry also seems to show such awareness, which may also be traced as far back as Origen's prologue to his Commentary on the Song of Songs.
96. See for example the wonderful anonymous late-eleventh-century Latin poem quoted in McGinn, History, v.2, p. 145.
97. See for example the beautifully and unabashedly erotic passage from Hugh of St. Victor discussed by Grover Zinn in his “Texts within Texts: The Song of Songs in the Exegesis of Gregory the Great and Hugh of St. Victor” in Studia Patristica 25 (1991): 209-215. Commenting on a passage from pseudo-Dionysius, Hugh tells the tale of the disciples from Emmaeus walking with Christ, only gradually realizing that it is he who accompanies them (Luke 24:13-35). Their hearts are so burning with love that they realize the one with whom they walk can be none other. On this burning passion Hugh quotes from Canticles 3:4, “I will seize him and not let him go until I have brought him to my mother's house, into the chamber of her who bore me.” Such a usage would be unthinkable in pre-Kabbalistic Judaism; only the Zohar could find a way to re-introduce the passion of that line into its intra-divine reading of the text. See below. In fact the great love among the disciples of Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai as depicted in the Zohar is reminiscent of the fellowship of the Apostles. See Liebes, “Christian Influences on the Zohar,” (Hebrew) p. 70f.; idem., “Mashiah shel ha-Zohar” 162ff. and English translations in his Studies in the Zohar (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993).
98. See. S. Rawidowicz, “Saadya's Purification of the Idea of God” in Saadya Studies, ed. E. R. Rosenthal (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1943), pp. 139-165; H. A. Wolfson, “Maimonides on Negative Attributes” in The Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1945), pp. 411-446; J. Guttmann, Philosophies of Judaism (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1964), p. 134ff.; C. Sirat, A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 141ff., 180ff.
99. Much has been made of this by Caroline W. Bynum in Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). Not only Jesus, but abbots and bishops are seen as taking maternal roles in many passages quoted from monastic literature, and monks are trained to be comfortable with the feminizing of their spiritual roles. Ann W. Astell, The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell Univsity Press, 1990), follows Bynum's lead with specific regard to readings of the Canticle. The medieval (male) reader of the Song, she claims, is being taught to retrieve his own inner female, since “the reversal of the Fall depends metaphorically on the action of a new Eve, the woman within each one, the Bride of God.”
100. The fact that Moses alone is given this designation in the Zohar (once alongside Jacob; cf. Zohar 1:21b) by no means precludes the possibility that others might experience something of that role. Moses is present, after all, in the righteous of each generation, according to a much quoted passage in Tiqquney Zohar 69 (112b). The Biblical paradigms of such intense mystical experiences are offered by the Kabbalists more as ways to stimulate latter-day copiers than to forbid their attempts. The soul of R. Simeon is also the soul of Moses; he (like Rabbi Akiva in the later rabbinic sources; see Be-Midbar Rabbah 19:4, Pesikta Rabbati 14:13) reveals that which Moses could not. Might not he-and those Kabbalists who identified with him-also rise at least as high in their coupling with shekhinah as did Moses?
101. In the twelfth through fourteenth centuries the Gothic Cathedrals of Chartres, Amiens, Laon, Paris, Reims and many others throughout France were built and dedicated to “Notre Dame.” The fact that a certain group of these cathedrals appears on the map to imitate the constellation virgo was taken as an earthly representation of the Virgin's heavenly powers. See. E. Ann Matter, “The Virgin Mary-A Goddess?” in C. Olson, ed, The Book of the Goddess: Past and Present (New York: Crossroad Books, 1985), p. 86.
102. Penny Schine Gold, The Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude, and Experience in Twelfth Century France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 61. For a Kabbalistic passage just slightly reminiscent of this pose, see the most surprising parable in Zohar 2:140b, where Moses and the Matronita appear as king and queen.
103. Mary's Assumption as Queen of Heaven is sculpted, for example, on the West Facade of the Cathedral of Chartres. Reproduced in Christian Spirituality II, ed. J. Raitt, p. 399.
104. Judith Glatzer Wechsler, “A Change in the Iconography of the Song of Songs in Twelfth and Thirteenth Century Latin Bibles” in Texts and Responses: Studies Presented to Nahum N. Glatzer (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975), pp. 73-93. Wechsler examined 120 Latin Bibles of the period, focussing on the usually illuminated initial “C” of Cantica Canticorum. (That letter and “O” of Osculetur [“Let him kiss”] were the most frequently illuminated.) She suggests that the shift from a single woman, depicting ecclesia, or a couple, representing either Solomon and the Queen of Sheba or Christ and the Church, to the Virgin and Child, reflects the growth of Mariological interpretation in the latter twelfth century. Wechsler also suggests that Virgin and Child may be a “safe” way of depicting the love between the Lover and the Virgin, obviously portrayed in erotic terms in the text of the Canticle. On the broader setting of this change see R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), p. 238ff.
105. Ivan Marcus notes in the Leipzig Mahzor, a twelfth-thirteenth century illuminated Hebrew manuscript, a depiction of Moses with a school child on his lap that is very like depictions of Mary as nursing mother. See his Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 88 (and see illustration, p. 82). The breasts of the bridegroom, according to an ancient Christian exegetical tradition (based on the Septuagint reading of the Masoretic dodekha [“your love” or “your affections”] in Cant. 1:2 as dadekha, “your [m.] breasts”) are filled with milk. See Honorius, Sigillum (English trans., see n. 60 above) p. 53
106. On Christianity as idolatry in the eyes of most medieval Jewish authorities, see J. Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Studies in Jewish-Gentile Relations in Medieval and Modern Times (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 24ff.
107. Bahir a52, based on b. Baba Batra 16b and Bereshit Rabbah 59:7. This Bahir passage is quoted and discussed at length by Nahmanides in his commentary to Genesis 24:l. From there it became widely known and influential throughout Kabbalistic literature.
108. Matter, Voice, p. 15.
109. The classic Kabbalistic lexicon of symbols is Joseph Gikatilla's Sha'arey Orah (first editions, Mantua and Riva di Trento, 1561; Latin translation published 1516); now available in the standard edition of Y. Ben-Shelomo (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1981). Sha'arey Orah is translated into English by Avi Weinstein as Gates of Light (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1994). The first chapter is a beautifully written and highly accessible account of the symbols associated with shekhinah.
110. De Oratione 2:198-200. See J. Plumpe, Mater Ecclesia: An Inquiry into the Concept of Church as Mother in Early Christianity (Washington: n.p., 1943). Professor Elaine Pagels has suggested to me that this identification is already found in the New Testament, in the female figure of Revelation 12. The symbolic associations there remain somewhat obscure, however.
111. J. Beumer suggests that the associaton of Mary and the Church goes back to Augustine. Thence is derived the importance of this symbolic linkage for the Western Church. See his “De mari anische Deutung des Hohen Liedes in der Frueskolastik” in Zeitschrift fuer Katholische Theologie 76 (1954) p. 414.
112. PL 172, c.494.
113. PL 172, c.499.
114. Thus my own long-range “History of Religions” view (in contrast to that of Raphael Patai) is that it is not Ishtar/Inana of the Ancient Near East but rather the Mediterranean goddess figures (Ceres/Demeter) who shaped early Christian views of Mary that find Jewish verbal and imaginative expression in the medieval Kabbalistic shekhinah. The fact that the Zohar's shekhinah has so large a piece of both judgment and violence about her has partly to do with the legacy of rabbinic Judaism (the importance of justice as balanced with love, etc.) but even more reflects the historical experience of Jewry and its need for a divine defender and avenger. The avenging God of post-Crusades Ashkenaz is attached in Kabbalah (especially that of the so-called “Gnostic” school in Castile, shaped in several ways by Ashkenazic influence) to the figure of shekhinah.
115. The worship of Mary was denounced at the Council of Ephesus in 431.
116. I have argued this briefly in my Keter, chapters 13-14. It is a key contention of the book by my late student Seth Brody, Cosmos and Consciousness: Worship and Mystical Experience in Thirteenth Century Kabbalah. This work, a revision of Brody's doctoral dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania, is currently being prepared for publication by SUNY Press.
117. See RaMBaN's commentary on such passages as Genesis 46:1; Exodus 23:20, 33:14; Leviticus 1:9, etc.
118. This formulation was well-liked by the early Kabbalists. Cf. Nahmanides to Genesis 24:l and Rabbi Azriel of Gerona's Commentary to the Aggadot, ed. Tishby, Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1945, p. 3 (f.1b). The Kabbalistic derivation of kallah (“bride”) from kol (“all”) is explained in Gikatilla's Sha'arey Tsedeq, ed. Cracow, 1881, f. 6b.
119. Shekhinah is of course a liminal figure. Though she is within the sefirotic world and thus an essential part of the ten-in-one that comprise it. she is often seen as tragically separated, exiled from the higher sefirotic realms, cut off from her sources of sustenance and light. In that mode she is subject to “capture” and subjegation by the “other side” of evil. But even short of her sometime alienation from God, shekhinah is seen as an “emissary” of divinity, a “lad” [na'ar] sent forth into the lower worlds. The relationship of shekhinah and her servant Metatron is thus complicated, since na'ar is his title as well. On this see the brief discussion by Tishby in Wisdom of the Zohar, p. 379.
120. Among the most blatant examples of medieval Mary-worship are the “Mirrors” and “Psalters” devoted to her name. In the latter, Psalms are actually re-written to be addressed to her. Elizabeth Johnson quotes from one of these: “Sing to our Lady a new song, for she has done wondrous things./ In the sight of the nations she hath revealed her mercy; her name is heard even to the ends of the earth.” Here Psalm 96 is essentially re-written in feminine form (some 900 years before Jewish feminists dared to do so!); Mary is clearly in the place of God. See The Mirror of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Psalter of our Lady (St. Louis: Herder, 1932), cited by E. A. Johnson in “Marian Devotion in the Western Church” in Christian Spirituality II (New York: Crossroad Books, 1988), p. 395.
121. Cf. E. Ann Matter, “The Virgin Mary-A Goddess?” in C. Olson, ed, The Book of the Goddess: Past and Present (New York: Crossroad Books, 1985), p. 80-96. My thanks to one of the anonymous readers of this paper for pointing out that the designation of Mary as goddess goes back to the thirteenth-century German mystic Mechtild of Magdeburg. See her The Flowing Light of the Godhead 1:22 and 3:9.
122. The association of David with shekhinah may seem strange to the modern reader. How is it that this most masculine of Biblical heroes is the human embodiment of the female? But we should recall that shekhinah is also frequently designated as malkhut, the “kingdom” of God, and that God's kingdom is represted on earth by the House of David. The medieval David is also more frequently the Psalmist than the warrior, and as Psalmist he is depicted as longing for God, calling out for divine closeness, very much as shekhinah does in her exile.
123. The replacement of rahamim by hesed as the “right side” of God is characteristic of Kabbalah and seems to be in place already in Sefer ha-Bahir a132. A fuller history of the relationship between these two terms in the later aggadic sources might prove interesting. They both appear in the old lists of “qualities that serve before the throne of glory” or “qualities with which God created the world,” indicating that at an early point there was a clear difference between them. See Avot de-Rabbi Natan 37. This is also the case, but quite differently, in Kabbalah, where rahamim (perhaps because of its plural form) is identified not with hesed, but with tif'eret/emet/shalom/Jacob, the sixth sefirah.
124. The Zohar is using the Biblical text's seeming inconsistency to show that the “angel” of Ex. 14:19 is “the Lord” of Ex. 13:21. The angel who is also the Lord can be none other than shekhinah, who is part of God yet sometimes acts as God's emissary.
125. The Zohar contains many passages where shekhinah, as lower manifestation of din, the divine force of judgment, is depicted as doing battle against the forces of evil.
126. The Zohar here is defending the Kabbalists’ identification of kenesset yisra'el with shekhinah; it is due to God's unique love for Israel that He has promoted them in this seemingly surprising way.
127. Zohar 2:51a. Lev. 16:3 is taken to mean that shekhinah is the single gateway to the divine world, the inner sanctum, beyond. See also Zohar 2:22b, where it is only the unmarried (i.e. virgin) daughter of the King who serves as intermediary. Once she is wedded to Moses, it is he who takes on that role since he, unlike the prior patriarchs, can speak to God “face to face.”
128. R. Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl, Me'or ‘Eynayim (Jerusalem: Yeshivath Meor Enaim, 1986), p. 251b.
129. See also Zohar 2:200b and R. Margulies’ Nitsotsey Zohar a3.
130. The text shifts into an anologic mode even though the prior statement does not quite take the form of parable.
131. J. Pelikan, Mary through the Ages (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 125ff.; Elizabeth A. Johnson, “Marian Devotion in the Western Church” in Christian Spirituality II, ed. J. Raitt (New York: Crossroad Books, 1988), p. 400-405.
132. Interestingly the same Psalm verse, 68:18 (“You went up above, took a captive; you brought gifts for man… “) that the rabbis interpret as referring to Moses’ ascent at Sinai is used in Christian tradition in praise of Mary. See Pelikan, Mary through the Ages., p. 35.
133. See Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, p. 379f., 423ff.
134. The relationship between Mary's roles as mediatrix and mater dolorosa is discussed by Pelikan in Interestingly the same Psalm verse., p. 125ff. Jeremy Cohen discusses the relationship of the mater dolorosa motif to the Biblical Mother Rachel and to the figure of a victim of the 1096 massacres named Rachel. See his “The ‘Persecutions of 1096'-From Martyrdom to Martyrology: The Sociocultural Context of the Hebrew Crusade Chronicles” in Zion 59 (1994): 169-208, especially pp. 200ff.
135. b. Megillah 29a. On the suffering of shekhinah in sympathy with human suffering, see also b. Hagigah 15b. Of course in the old rabbinic sources “shekhinah” here is nothing other than a way of saying “God suffers with them.” Indeed Psalm 91:15, “I am with him is sorrow,” is the usual proof-text.
136. b. Berakhot 32b.
137. We should add here that there is just a bit of evidence for the involvement of real women, the wives of Kabbalists, in thinking about or acting out sexual activity as an act of imitatio dei. (Generally the sources are silent about any such praxis and seem more interested in guarding against excess than in celebrating the human acting out of cosmic sexual joy.) The anonymous thirteenth-century Iggeret ha-Qodesh (ed. prin. Rome, 1546), serves as a manual for sexual conduct. While devoting much of its attention to the male partner, it does instruct him to “appease his wife and make her happy, preparing her and drawing her forth by such things [or “words”] as bring happiness to her heart, so that she agree with [his] pure and righteous thoughts. Thus they will be one regarding this mizvah [the sexual act]. Then their thought will be bound as one, shekhinah will dwell between them, and they will bring forth a son fitting to the holy form they have pictured.” Both partners are to concentrate on the divine anthropic form during intercourse, the beauty of the union above. The verb yetsayyeru [“have pictured”] indicates that they may do so in somewhat graphic terms, and the child of their union will be in the image of that beautiful divine form they have gazed upon during lovemaking. Kitvey RaMBaN, v. 2, p. 331 (Jerusalem: Mossad Ha-Rav Kook, 1964). The fact that this text was long attributed to Nahmanides certainly added to its prestige and influence over the course of many generations. In the same spirit is the report in Moshe Ibn Machir's Seder Ha-Yom (Israel: Mefitsey Or, n.d.; reprint of Lvov, 1858[?], 22a) that on Friday afternoons the “early hasidim” (i.e., the Kabbalists of Safed) “would immerse themselves together with their wives, to unite their hearts in a single place.” Seder Ha-Yom was first published in Venice, 1599. Insofar as we know, Kabbalistic sexuality is largely a world of symbolically laden fantasy, conceived and discussed in an entirely male setting. This point was first made by M. D. Georg [5Jiri] Langer in Die Erotik der Kabbalah, Prague: Dr. Josef Flesch, 1923. Much discussion of it is to be found in the writings of Elliot Wolfson (see following note).
138. The section of the Zohar specifically devoted to the Song of Songs, Zohar Hadash 60b 75a, is but a small portion of the Zohar's treatment of the Canticle, covering only the first ten verses of Chapter One. Another extended discussion of the Song is found in Zohar 2:143a-145b. A collection of the many Zohar passages that interpret the Song of Songs is found in Isaac Crispin's Zehorey Hamah (Salonkia, 1738). Something similar (with Hebrew translation) is contained in the seventh volume of Yudl Rosenberg's Zohar Torah (Bilgoray, 1930). The role of eros in the Zohar literature, significantly underplayed by such earlier scholars as Scholem and Tishby, has been a key subject of recent scholarship. Yehuda Liebes’ essay Zohar ve-Eros, Alpayyim 9 (1994): 67-119, is the pioneering work in this field, presenting a nuanced view of the erotic fantasy that he sees as underlying a great deal of the Zohar mythology. Eliot Wolfson goes significantly farther than Liebes in claiming that obsession with the phallus and with gender transformation (the absorption of the female within the male) is the very center of Kabbalistic esotericism. Both Liebes and I have been critical of some of his views. See my review of his Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism in History of Religions (1997): 265-274. Wolfson's rejoinder appears in his “Occultation of the Feminine and the Body of Secrecy in Medieval Kabbalah” in E. Wolfson, ed., Rending the Veil (New York: Seven Bridges Press, 1999), p. 353, endnote 6. My agreement with some of Wolfson's readings of the sources (as well as my great respect for his scholarship) is greater than is obvious from the polemical expressions of our positions in those statements.
139. Part of the problem in claiming Jews read Christian commentaries has to do with language. It is generally thought that very few Jews, even among the educated elite, were able to read Latin. It should also be noted, however, that there were vernacular Christian commentaries on the Canticle as early as the twelfth century. Most famous is the St. Trudperter Hohelied, made for female monastics. The Trudperter Hohelied, which makes use of both Bernard and Honorius, was widely distributed in the southern part of the German-speaking lands and influenced many vernacular sermons and popular tracts. See the recent edition by F. Ohly and N. Kleine, St. Trudperter Hohelied: eine Lehre der liebenden Gotteserkentnis (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1998), and the study by H. E. Keller,Wort und Fleisch: Koerperallegorien, mystische Spiritualitaet, und Dichtung des St Trudperter Hoheliedes im Horizant der Inkarnazion (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1989). See also J. Van Engen, Rupert of Deutz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), p. 180ff. On the Jewish side there were vernacular old-Yiddish paraphrases of the Song of Songs by the fourteenth century. These have been studied primarily by Karl Habersaat. That the Christian vernacular literature came into the hands of Jews is by no means implausible, although oral conversation, including disputation, seems the more likely route for passing this sort of awareness.
140. Rather than claiming Christian influence on Kabbalah, Pico della Mirandola (1463-94) and others saw the Kabbalistic teachings as stemming from a lost ancient revelation that would provide the true key to understanding Christianity itself, along with Orphic and other ancient esoteric texts. Christian Kabbalists in the sixteenth century identified Mary with shekhinah, a natural move in their attempt to unite the two traditions. See Genevieve Javary, “A propos du theme de la Sekina: Variations sur le nom de Dieu,” in Kabbalistes Chretiens, ed. A Faivre and N. Tristan (Paris: Albin Michel, 1979), p. 294 and 302ff. See also her full-length treatment in Recherches sur l'utilisation du theme de la Sekina dans l'apologetique chretienne du quinzieme au dix-huitieme siecle (Paris: Champion, 1977).
141. A great deal has been written on the Christian Kabbalah. The essential introductions to the subject are those of Joseph Blau, The Christian Interpretation of the Cabala in the Renaissance (Port Washington NY: Kennikat Press, 1944) and Francois Secret, Les Kabbalistes Chretians de la Renaissance (Paris, n.p. 1964). For a bibliography through the 1960's see G. Scholem in Encyclopedia Judaica, v. 10, p. 652f. Major writings in more recent times include Philip Beitchman, Alchemy of the Word: Cabala of the Renaissance (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998); Allison P. Coudert, The Impact of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century: The Life and Thought of Francis Mercury van Helmont (1614- 1698) (Leiden: Brill, 1999); Essays collected by Joseph Dan in The Christian Kabbalah: Jewish Mystical Books and Their Christian Interpreters (Cambridge, MA: Harvard College Library, 1997); Moshe Idel, “The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations of the Kabbalah in the Renaissance,” Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, ed. Bernard D. Cooperman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 186-242 (Reprinted in Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, ed. D. Ruderman (New York: NYU Press, 1992); Kabbalistes Chretiens, essays edited by A. Faivre and F. Tristan (Paris: Albin Michel, 1978); Catherine Swietlicki, Spanish Christian Cabala: The Works of Luis de Leon, Santa Teresa de Jesus, and San Juan de la Cruz (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1986); Hayyim Wirszubski, Three Chapters of Christian Kabbalah, Jerusalem, 1975 and A Christian Kabbalist reads the Torah, Jerusalem, 1977 (both in Hebrew).
142. See Adolph Franck, The Kabbalah or the Religious Philosophy of the Hebrews (New York: Kabbalah Publishing Co., 1926). The French original, published in 1843, was a landmark quasi-modern study of Kabbalah. Franck sees Kabbalah's origins in the “oriental philosophy” or mystery religions of late antiquity. The commonalities of Kabbalah and Christianity are explained by the fact of this common age and source. Arthur E. Waite (The Secret Doctrine in Israel; London: Wm Rider and Son, 1913), the most important and critical of the “occultist” writers in the early twentieth century entertains but rejects as “misleading” the notion that “[shekhinah] occupies in Kabbalah the same position of intercessor as is ascribed to the Blessed Virgin by the devotion of the Latin Church, yet having regard to shekhinah's incorporation with the Divine Hypostases.” (p. 215) Much of Waite's effort in this book, however, is to provide a counterweight to De Pauly's then recently published French translation of the Zohar, which treated the work openly as one filled with secret Christian content.
143. The most perceptive of these was Adolph Jellinek. See his Beitraege zur Geschichte der Kabbala (Leipzig: C. L. Fritzsche, 1852), and especially part 2, p. 51ff, “Christlicher Einfluss auf der Kabbala.” This view was shared by Heinrich Graetz and others who were less sympathetic than Jellinek toward Kabbalah. It played a major role in emerging modern Jewry's placing of Kabbalah in the “margins” of Jewish religious history, outside the “mainstream.”
144. See the article by Amnon Raz-Krokotzkin discussed in n. 104 above. On the place of Kabbalah in Scholem's Jewish cultural nationalist ideology, see also David Biale, Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979).
145. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 2 (1982/83) 43-74 (Hebrew). English translation in his Studies in the Zohar (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), pp. 139-161.
146. To Liebes’ list of such references I would like to add Zohar 2: 147a: “Attachment to the Father is through His Son.” The Zohar is speaking the language of sefirotic symbolism; the “Son” is Jacob, the sixth sefirah, while the Father is the recondite hokhmah, the second sefirah. Still the passage is remarkably reminiscent of John 3:35-36 and 14:6, “No man comes to the Father but through me.” The Zohar context depicts Jacob, God personified as a male figure, as the one through whom kisses come from the hidden God who is beyond all personification. This is related to the well-known change in person in the opening verse of the Song of Songs: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your kisses are better than wine.” “Him” here would refer to the hidden Godhead, while “your” is God in the form of Jacob, surpringly referred to as the “son.” There is also likely an unspoken reference here to Psalm 2:12: “kiss the son,” interpreted Christologically throughout the history of Christian exegesis. As Liebes makes clear, the point of noting such passages is not to claim that the Zohar's authors were crypto-Christians, but rather that they were aware of Christian Scripture and enjoyed teasing with the possibilities it afforded to the Kabbalistic mind.
147. A mosaic in the church of S. Maria Trastevere in Rome, dated c. 1140, shows in its lower panels scenes from the life of Mary. Above them the Virgin is seated at Christ's right hand, crowned, and holding a copy of the Song of Songs.
148. Michael Casey, Athirst for God: Bernard of Clairvaux's Sermons on the Song of Songs, (Kalamazoo, Cistercian Publications, 1988), p. 192f.
149. Christ is bridegroom or husband of the church already in the writings of Paul; cf. Ephesians 5, where the relationship of husbands and wives is compared to that of Christ and the church. The heavenly Jerusalem is Christ's bride in Revelation 21.
150. Bernard, Homilies on the Song of Songs 27:6.
151. Referring to Revelation 21:9ff.
152. Bernard, Homilies on the Song of Songs 27:7.
153. See the discussion of this passage by McGinn in History, v. 2, p. 178f. Although noting the parallel to the Jewish mystical interpretation, McGinn does not deal with the seeming parallel to the Kabbalistic notion of primordial divine androgyny. On the androgyny of Christ's body in some medieval depictions, see Caroline W. Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1991), p93ff. and extensive notes there. See also other writings of Bynum cited throughout this essay.
154. b. Berakhot 61a.
155. Although this “secret” is not discussed explicitely in the Bahir, it may lie in the background of such passages as a55 and a116-117, where reference is made to the original oneness of the divine male/female syzygy. For a more open Kabbalistic discussion of this myth see Todros Abulafia's Otsar ha-Kavod to the Berakhot 61a passage; ed. Warsaw, 1879, 9a.
156. Kabbalists understand this myth as referring to the sixth and tenth sefirot, the second male/ female syzygy of their symbolic universe. The primal male/female pair, hokhmah and binah, exist in a properly ordered and eternally undisturbed flow, that of “two lovers never separated.” But the relationship of the sixth sefirah, often called tif'eret (“glory”), and the tenth, malkhut or shekhinah, is the chief subject of the Zohar and other works of Castilian Kabbalah. These two emerged as a single entity, were separated, turned face-to-face, and exist in a state that alternates between harmonious marital union and exile/alienation of the female. Much of the reality of Jewish history is reflected in the instability of this symbolic configuration, including the old rabbinic claim that “wherever Israel were exiled, shekhinah was exiled with them.” Shekhinah's exile from her spouse is the divine prototype of Israel's exile.
157. The inclusion or reabsorption of the female within the male is a key theme in E. Wolfson's understanding of Kabbalah. See discussion in his Circle in the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995) and more recently in the essay referred to in n. 142 above.
158. b. Pesahim 54a and Nedarim 39b.
159. See the Zohar's Midrash ha-Ne'elam for an extended allegory of Abraham as soul and Sarah as body. The parallel of this text to Philo's reading has been noted and was the subject of a study by Samuel Belkin, “The Midrash Ha Naeelam [!] of the Zohar and Its Sources in Alexandrian Literature” in Sura: Israeli-American Annual 3 (1957-58): pp. 25-92 (Hebrew). There is apparently no historic connection between Philo and the Midrash ha-Ne'elam other than that borne by Christianity. Philo's work was unknown to post-Alexandrian Jews until Azariah Di Rossi's reclamation of it in the sixteenth century. The seeming Philonic influence then becomes a question of parallel and independent typologies of thought or else some possible influence by Christian neo-Platonic interpretation of Genesis. The latter seems possible but has not yet been demonstrated.
160. Sermon 29; p. 109. It is noteworthy that the “dart” or “polished arrow” of Isaiah 49:2 is associated with the exegesis of the Song of Songs already by Origen. See his Commentary, book three, Lawson translation p. 198. Of course this Christian reading of Isaiah may have behind it the arrows of Cupid, an association not to be found among the Jewish interpreters. Unlike Christians, Jews did not see themselves as heirs to the world of classical mythology. The wounding of Mary with the arrow of love is the scene commemorated by Bernini in the well-known statue in Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. This is also the arrow or dart of love with which St. Teresa of Avila was wounded: “an arrow… driven into the very depths of the entrails, and sometimes into the heart, so that the soul does not know either what is the matter with it or what it desires… The arrow seems to have been dipped in some drug which leads it to hate itself for the love of this Lord so that it would gladly lose its life for Him.” Vida 29:13; English translation from The Complete Works of Saint Teresa of Jesus, tr. E. Allison Peter (London: Sheed and Ward, 1944), p. 191. See the treatment of this “arrow of love” by Bernard McGinn in “Tropics of Desire: Mystical Interpretation of the Song of Songs” in That Others May Know and Teach: Essays in Honor of Zachary Hayes (Franciscan Institute, 1997).
161. See Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, p. 161.
162. Hyman's Ha-Torah ha-Ketuvah veha-Messurah (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1939) lists twenty-five citations of this verse in the Zohar. See also Gikatilla's Sha'arey Orah, ed. Ben-Shelomo, p. 61f.
163. On the Song of Songs I, p. 87f. Emphasis mine.
164. Bernard of Clairvaux, De aquaeductu, cited in E. A. Johnson's “Marian Devotion in the Western Church,” p. 413, n. 9.
165. See Scholem's discussions in On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (index, s.v. “allegory”) and Tishby's in “Ha-Semel veha-Dat ba-Kabbalah,” the opening essay in his collection Netivey Emunah u-Minut (Tel Aviv: Massada, 1964).
166. See the very important discussion by Susan Handelman in Fragments of Redemption, p. 105ff. See also the earlier comments by Frank Talmage in “Apples of Gold: The Inner Meaning of Sacred Texts in Medieval Judaism” in Jewish Spirituality I, ed. A. Green (New York: Crossroad Books, 1988), p. 341.
167. See the treatment in Matter, Voice, pp. 49ff.
168. In this regard I have some reservation about the claims of Kalman Bland's most interesting The Artless Jew: Medieval and Modern Affirmations and Denials of the Visual (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). I fear that in the course of polemic he tends to underestimate the toll taken by the strictures of the second commandment (even in its narrow reading). Because of it, the Kabbalists were prevented from displaying their image-laden and richly pictorial conceptions of the Godhead in visual media. Imagine how different the cultural legacy of Jewry would be if we had representations on canvas or in stained glass of shekhinah and her maidens, the divine bridegroom and the bride, the streams of divine grace flowing forth from Eden, down from the patriarchal hills of Lebanon, and into the great sea!
169. Although the incarnate Christ obviously has a body, two hands, and therefore a right and left, the risen Christ or the second person of the trinity spoken of here is incorporeal and entirely simple (in the sense of indivisibility), thus without such corporeal distinctions as “right” and “left.”
170. Sermons on the Song of Songs 51:7-8, English edition p. 45f.
171. Bernard, Although the incarnate Christ obviously has a body, two hands, and therefore a right and left, the risen Christ or the second person of the trinity spoken of here is incorporeal and entirely simple. 51:10 (p. 47f.).
172. McGinn, History v. 2, p. 590, n. 150, referring to pp. 964a-67d in the text.
173. See for example Zohar 3:98a-b.
174. Such is the claim in various sources quoted by Rachel Fulton in her “Mimetic Devotion, Marian Exegesis, and the Historical Sense of the Song of Songs,” p. 87ff.
175. Indeed Alexander Neckham referred to the Marian reading as “partly historical and partly mystical.” Fulton, Such is the claim in various sources quoted by Rachel Fulton in her “Mimetic Devotion., p. 98.
176. Honorius, p. 57.
177. According to the Talmud (b. Shevu'ot 35b), every reference to Solomon (Shelomo) in the Canticle, except for one (8:12), refers to God, the King of Peace. This play on the Hebrew meaning of the name Solomon was adapted for Christian use to refer to Christ, who was much earlier referred to as the “prince of peace,” itself undoubtedly a translation of the Hebrew sar shalom (Is. 9:5).
178. For Mary as tent see also Bernard, Sermons 53:7 (English ed., v. 3, p. 64f.).
179. Rupert of Deutz in PL 932C, based on Cant. 6:10. See also Philip of Harvengt (d. 1183) who refers to Christ as the rising sun, Mary as the birth-giving moon. PL 203:182 as cited by R. Fulton in “Mimetic Devotion, Marian Exegesis, and the Historical Sense of the Song of Songs,” p. 95. These are directly parallel to the Kabbalistic symbolizations of tif ‘eret as the sun and the east and malkhut as night, moon, mother/birther of lower worlds, and west, except for the crucial difference that tif'eret and malkhut are bridegroom and bride, not son and mother. The Kabbalistic association of moon with shekhinah is based primarily on other texts, including Is. 30:26 and the famous aggadah in b. Hullin 60b.
180. Honorius p. 78f. Cf. also his comment on 5:4 (p. 70): “My beloved put forth his hand through the hole”-Therefore my beloved… put his hand through the keyhole, that is, his son, into the world through me, who became a hole through which he came unto men, narrow by humility, but shining in chastity, and therefore accessible to him alone.” Similarly on p. 71 Mary is a “door” through which Christ entered the world.
181. Honorius, p. 71.
182. Honorius, p. 50. Cf. Alan of Lille (as cited by R. Fulton, “Mimetic Devotion,” p. 96) who, in likening Mary to the Tabernacle, humbly presents his commentary as a mere offering of “goat skins” after the gold, silver, and precious stones she has already received. See Ex. 25:3-5.
183. Addresses to Mary, PL 198: 367D. The Latin text reads: “Ipsa patris tabernaculum, filii cubiculum, Spiritus santi umbraculum, Trinitatis reclinatorium, coeleste habitaculum, incarnati Verbi domicilium, Dei templum.” See also the sources quoted by C. W. Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1991), p. 338, n. 53 and 355, n. 120-121.
184. Honorius, p. 51.
185. Honorius, p. 61
186. Elizabeth A. Johnson, “Marian Devotion in the Western Church” in Christian Spirituality II, ed. J. Raitt (New York: Crossroad Books, 1988), p. 397.
187. Cf. Zohar 1:4a; 2:7a; 3:21b etc.
188. “Sun” and “moon” here are symbolic entities within the realm of the sefirot, sun representing tif ‘eret or male principle and moon shekhinah or female. The fact that the earth is daily blessed with sunlight is celebrated in the daily Jewish liturgy. The lowered status of the moon is the subject of a well-known aggadic passage in b. Hullin 60b.
189. Zohar 2:88a. This passage is recited by pious Sephardic and Hasidic Jews at the Sabbath Eve table.
190. Bynum, “Sun” and “moon” here are symbolic entities within the realm of the sefirot, sun representing tif ‘eret or male principle and moon shekhinah or female., p. 102.
191. PL 168: 837-8. Cited by Astell, Song, p. 33.
192. Van Engen, Rupert of Deutz, pp. 50-52.
193. It should be noted that the Venerable Bede had expressed opposition to the Marian reading of the Canticle. It may be in part due to his influence that Bernard mostly avoids it. Cf. Van Engen, Rupert, p. 293. But the Marian reading was mostly associated with liturgy and was simply not thought of before Honorius and Rupert as a framework for consistent Biblical interpretation.
194. It should be noted that the Venerable Bede had expressed opposition to the Marian reading of the Canticle., p. 294.
195. De Spirito Sancto 1:8. Cited by Henri de Lubec, The Splendour of the Church (New York, 1956), p. 243.
196. William of Newburgh, Explanatio sacri epithalamii in matrem sponsi: A Commentary on the Canticle of Canticles, ed. J. Gorman, Fribourg, 1960 (Spicilegium Friburgense 6).
197. William of Newburgh., p. 280f. Cited by Rachel Fulton in “Mimetic Devotion,” p. 107.