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Gnosis and History: Polemics of German-Jewish Identity from Graetz to ScholemAuthor(s): Michael BrennerSource: New German Critique, No. 77, Special Issue on German-Jewish Religious Thought(Spring - Summer, 1999), pp. 45-60Published by: New German CritiqueStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/488521 .

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Gnosis and History: Polemics of German-Jewish Identity from Graetz to Scholem*

Michael Brenner

During the first century after the establishment of Wissenschaft des Judentums as an academic discipline, contemporary ideology and poli- tics often colored the work of Jewish historians. As Immanuel Wolf, one of the founders of the Verein fiir Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden, declared in his outline of Wissenschaft des Judentums in 1819, "scientific knowledge of Judaism must decide on the merits or demerits of the Jews, their fitness or unfitness to be given the same status and respect as other citizens."' More directly, the scholarly studies of Leopold Zunz served as instruments of emancipation for German Jews. Like Wolf, Zunz believed that "the equality of the Jews in customs and life will follow from the equality of Wissenschaft des Judentums."2 In his Gottesdienstliche Vortrage der Juden, historisch entwickelt (1832), he documented the long tradition of Jewish sermon literature. Thus, he rebutted the claims of the Prussian government, which dismissed Ger- man-language synagogue sermons as illegitimate innovations of Jewish liturgy. Zunz's later scholarship also intervened in contemporary poli- tics. In reaction to a decree that forbade Jews from adopting Christian names, Zunz wrote Die Namen der Juden to demonstrate that many

* I would like to thank Susannah Heschel, Michael A. Meyer, Nils Roemer, and Elliot Wolfson for the valuable comments I received on earlier drafts of this paper.

1. Immanuel Wolf, "On the Concept of a Science of Judaism," Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 2 (1957): 204.

2. Leopold Zunz, Zur Geschichte und Literatur (Berlin: Veit, 1845) 21.

45



46 Gnosis and History

ostensibly "non-Jewish" names were, in fact, of ancient origin. Gnosticism, a seemingly remote and obscure religious phenomenon of

late antiquity, became another disputed topic in Jewish scholarship, where present interests and conceptions often overshadowed the research into the past. This may be related in part to the new insights into Gnosticism from that time as well as its supposedly subversive elements. More importantly, the controversies over Jewish Gnosticism were born out of the very vagueness of Gnosticism as a religious phenomenon. Because of its ambiguity it lent itself to a variety of interpre- tations and applications. Whoever looked for a historical battlefield to fight contemporary wars was well served by scholarly discussion concerning the relationship between Judaism and Gnosticism.

In this essay I will show three different approaches taken by scholars in their pioneering studies on Gnosticism and Judaism. For Heinrich Graetz, the early contacts between Gnosticism and Judaism were the infiltration of heretical ideas into the Jewish religion, a process he saw manifest in his own time in the early Reform movement. Just as Rabbi Akiba fought successfully against the intrusion of heresy into the Juda- ism of his time, so Graetz and other conservative Jews sought to counter the threat from Abraham Geiger and other leaders of Liberal Judaism in Germany.

Fifty years later Moriz Friedlander, a prolific writer and secretary of the Austrian section of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, published a very different evaluation of Judaism and Gnosticism. He praised the encounter between Gnostic and Jewish ideas as the beginning of a uni- versalization of the Jewish religion, which challenged the narrow- minded nationalistic outlook of the Pharisees in Palestine. The Hellenis- tic Jewish community of Alexandria, where he located the earliest beginnings of Gnostic ideas, was Friedlander's role model for modem Liberal Judaism.

A generation later, Gershom Scholem took up the subject and went one step further than both Graetz and Friedlander. Where Graetz had viewed Gnosticism as a dangerous element foreign to Judaism, Friedlander had stressed the Jewish origins of Gnosticism, but he had restricted them to antinomian groups within the Jewish Diaspora community of Alexandria. Scholem, however, argued for a Gnostic influence on Judaism from its very heart, in Palestine. His argument was not part of a political or religious debate in the same sense as with Graetz



Michael Brenner 47

or Friedlander. Rather, it was part of Scholem's scholarly agenda to point to the heterogeneous character of Judaism, from which movements such as Sabbatianism could not be excluded. The integration of Gnosticism into ancient Judaism was a foundational stone in the com- plex building of Judaism he (re)constructed in his many publications.

Heinrich Graetz: Reform Judaism as Modern Gnosticism The argument for a Gnostic character of Jewish heretics was first pre-

sented by the most important Jewish historian of the nineteenth century, Heinrich Graetz, in his doctoral dissertation on Gnosticism and Judaism (1846). Graetz wrote his dissertation in Breslau, at a time when the aftershocks of the "Tiktin-Geiger debate" of 1838 still divided the local Jewish community. In several anonymous articles, Graetz had backed the position of the Orthodox rabbi of the community, Gedaliah Tiktin, and had polemicized against the Reform "newcomer" Abraham Geiger. As is clear from Graetz's diary notes, he intended to draw historical parallels between Jewish heretics of talmudic times and the contemporary German Reform movement in his dissertation.3 In its preface he left no doubt that this work, which was dedicated to the founder of modem Neo-Orthodoxy, Samson Raphael Hirsch, and in whose house he lived as a student, was intended as a polemic against "modem Pan- theism." Graetz argued that just as Gnosticism had tried to subjugate rabbinic Judaism in the Tannaitic era, so did nineteenth-century "Pan- theism." "The gnostic and antignostic movements within Judaism con- stitute an exact mirror image of the present time,"4 he wrote. Recalling his opposition to the Reform movement, it is not difficult to figure out

3. Only shortly before the completion of his dissertation, Graetz published the first articles signed with his name, in which he criticized Geiger's "Lehrbuch zur Sprache der Mischna" (his series of articles in Orient begins in 52 [1844]). A remark on the genesis of his dissertation in his diary (29 June 1845) underlines the real purpose of this work: "One rainy night I was strolling around Oldenbourgstrasse [where Graetz lived with S.R. Hir- sch], and not far from the pastor's house the thought occurred to me to describe Acher's apostasy and to lay out its relations with a parallel." Heinrich Graetz, Tagebuch und Briefe, ed. Reuven Michael (Ttibingen: Mohr, 1977) 149. The original Latin title of his dissertation was: De auctoritate et vi, quam gnosis in Judaismum habuerit.

4. "From this perspective the epoch presents an undeniable analogy with our own time; for gnostic dualism one need only substitute modem pantheism along with its direct or indirect emanations, to which Judaism should accordingly be subsumed, as either sophisticated accomodation or as apostasy; thus in the gnostic and anti-gnostic movements that are internal to judaism one has... a true mirror of the present." Graetz, Gnosticismus undJudenthum (Krotoschin: B.L. Monasch, 1846) vi-vii. (my emphasis).




whom Graetz had in mind when speaking about contemporaries who wanted to "adjust Judaism to modem Pantheism." For Graetz, the Jew- ish Reform movement was a modern version of Jewish Gnosticism, whose leader, Abraham Geiger, was a nineteenth-century heretic. Gra- etz envisioned himself as a modem Rabbi Akiba who came to rescue the traditional values of Judaism.

In spite of some methodological flaws, his polemical style and his strong biases against "latter-day Gnostics," Graetz's work is still useful for academic purposes. Once the reader becomes aware of the meaning between the lines, it - like many others of his writings - remains a pioneering attempt of scholarship.

Graetz discussed in particular two concrete examples of Gnostic traits in the Talmud which shall be mentioned only briefly here. First, he pointed to the similarities between Gnostic terminology for the creation of the world and the expressions used in the discussions on Ma'asse Bereshith in the Talmud. Second, he mentioned the Gnostic doctrine of aeons and its Jewish counterpart in the form of Midot. For Graetz, Gnosticism was definitely a non-Jewish phenomenon,

rooted in syncretistic Hellenism. Relying on Ferdinand Christian Baur as his authoritative scholarly source, Graetz stated that Gnostic teachings had developed earlier than similar Jewish phenomena.5 Although Gnosticism had a non-Jewish character, not all Jewish Gnostics were necessarily antinomians. A central piece in Graetz's work was the well- known talmudic story of the four who entered Paradise:

Four entered Paradise, and these are they: Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, the Outsider [Aher], and R. Aqiba. Said to them Rabbi Aqiba, "When you get to stones of pure marble [that look like water], don't say, 'Water, water,' for it is said, 'He who speaks falsehood shall not be established before my eyes."' (Ps. 101:7). Ben Azzai peeked and died. In his regard the scripture says, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints" (Ps 116:5). Ben Zoma peeked and was smitten, and of him the Scripture says, "You have found honey? Eat so much as is enough for you, lest you be filled up with it and vomit it out" (Prov. 25:16). The outsider cut down the shoots. R. Aqiba got out in one piece.6

According to Graetz, only the most radical of the four, Elisha ben Abuya (Aher), developed a distinct antinomian position within Judaism.

5. Graetz 35-36. 6. Hagigah 14b, trans. Jacob Neusner.



Michael Brenner 49

The influence of Gnosticism on Ben Azzai resulted in his asceticism, most notably his celibacy. Ben Zoma's interest for Gnostic theories did not result in practical implications for his way of life. Finally, Rabbi Akiba rose as a strong opponent of this "Gnostification" of Judaism, who was able to vanquish these heretical tendencies.

Thus for Graetz, there existed a group of Jewish Gnostics who did not entirely leave the ground of Halakhic Judaism. Although Graetz never used the term "heretics" in describing the group represented by Ben Zoma or Ben Azzai, he left no doubt that the Jews "contaminated" by Gnostic ideas were lost for Judaism. Their identification with the non- Jewish culture had removed them from the heart of Judaism and turned them into minim - Gnostic heretics.7 Graetz would categorize Geiger in this group.

The paradise [pardes] story is an allegory for the fate of such think- ers and, of course, a hint to what might happen to modem Ben Azzais. Graetz always had contemporary parallels in mind when writing about Jewish Gnostics. Just as he distinguished between Ben Azzai/Ben Zoma and Elisha ben Abuya, he also juxtaposed two different kinds of modem Jewish heretics: those who tried to "adjust Judaism to modem Pan- theism" (meaning the Reform movement as led by Geiger) and those who "tried to subjugate it [under modem Pantheism] by apostasy."8

The role of Rabbi Akiba in Graetz's interpretation still has to be explained. Graetz equated the term pardes with Gnosis, and since Rabbi Akiba was included among those who entered the pardes, it means he must have had access to Gnostic teachings. Graetz does not deny this fact. His argument was that Rabbi Akiba had to be exposed to Gnostic teaching in order to oppose it successfully. (When Graetz wrote his dissertation he still believed that Rabbi Akiba was the author of the Sefer Yetsirah and that this treatise was an anti-Gnostic polemic using Gnostic language.9)

7. Since Graetz had identified the term minim with Gnostics, the discussion about this issue has not yet come to an end. Schuerer has criticized Friedliinder for making this equation. Recent critics of this identification include Ithamar Gruenwald, "The Problem of the Anti-Gnostic Polemic in Rabbinic Literature," From Apocalypticism to Gnosticism. Studies in Apocalypticism, Merkavah Mysticism and Gnosticism (Frankfurt: P. Lang, 1988) 237ff. and Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1977) cf. 67 on Elisha ben Abuya.

8. Graetz vi. 9. Graetz 110. Graetz revised his ideas about the authorship and background of the

Sefer Yetsirah in Geschichte der Juden , 4th ed., vol.5 (Leipzig: Oskar Leiner, 1886) 297. There he claimed that it was written in Gaonic times.




We may draw the historical parallel a bit further. Just as Rabbi Akiba had to get acquainted with Gnostic ideas, Graetz had to use the culture and the language of his environment in order to counter its "pantheis- tic" influence on Judaism. And like Rabbi Akiba, who led Jewish heretics back into mainstream Judaism, Graetz's own writings were intended to create a more conservative Jewish consciousness among nineteenth-century German Jews on the road toward religious reforms and assimilation.

In conclusion, one has to read Graetz's version of Jewish Gnosticism carefully. He perceived variations within Jewish Gnosticism and was very well aware that it was not a monolithic phenomenon. Neverthe- less, for Graetz, Gnosticism was essentially alien to Judaism and the two were therefore incompatible. Any attempt at a synthesis was doomed to fail. Tragic illustrations of this failure were the different fates of Aher, Ben Azzai and Ben Zoma. David Biale aptly summarized Graetz's view as follows: "Gnosticism was a foreign philosophy - it attempted to infiltrate Judaism but was decisively defeated."l0

The Debate over the Origins of Gnosticism: Moriz Friedlander and the Hellenistic Jewish Role Model

Graetz was not much troubled with the question of Gnostic origins. It was clear to him that they came to Judaism as a foreign element. There- fore the question of origins was irrelevant in the relationship between Judaism and Gnosticism. However, for future generations of Jewish and non-Jewish scholars this was to become one of the most debated issues in their research on Judaism and Gnosticism. Although the founder of modem research on Gnosticism, Ferdinand Christian Baur, claimed an "Oriental" origin for Gnosticism, he also suggested that Gnostic religion could have developed only where the Jewish religion had come into contact with pagan religion and philosophy.11 This latter thesis was elaborated further by Moriz Friedlander in his not very scholarly mono-

10. David Biale, Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History, 2nd. ed. (Cam- bridge: Harvard UP, 1982) 53. Graetz's view was basically accepted by Manuel Joel who tried to show the influence of Gnosticism on both Palestinian and Diaspora Judaism. See esp. Joel's detailed treatment in his Blicke in die Religionsgeschichte zu Anfang des zweiten christlichen Jahrhunderts, vol.1 (Breslau: Schottlander, 1880) 103-70.

11. Ferdinand Christian Baur speaks about the Herkunft aus dem Morgenland in his Die christliche Gnosis oder die christliche Religions-Philosophie in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung (Tilbingen: C.F. Osiander, 1835). In this work Baur divided Christian, Jewish and Eastern sources of Gnosticism. See esp. 36-68.



Michael Brenner 51

graph Der vorchristliche jiidische Gnosticismus, published in 1898. In Friedlinder's view, Gnosticism first emerged within the Jewish Diaspora community of Alexandria, out of the encounter between Juda- ism and Hellenistic culture. It was the task of Hellenized Jews, whom Friedlainder admired as a model for modem Jewry, to transform Juda- ism into a universal religion. The best medium to achieve this aim was the Gnostic doctrine, which was characterized by cosmogonic and theosophical speculations. The main source of Friedlinder's thesis for a pre-Christian Jewish

Gnosticism was Philo's description of antinomian parties within Diaspora Judaism (Migr. 86-93). Friedlainder equated these antinomian circles with Gnostic sects like the Ophites, the Cainites, the Sethians and the Melchezedekians. He tried to prove that the common basis for these different sects was the distortion of Jewish doctrines, while originally no essential Christian elements could be found in them. Thus the Cainites venerated Cain as the divine power, the Sethians held Seth to be the Messiah and, for the Melchizedekians, Melchizedek was a "Son of God," higher than the Messiah. (Jesus, incidentally, entered the doctrines of the Gnostic sects only much later.) While Friedlainder regarded Gnosticism as an Alexandrian Jewish product, he also claimed that it soon entered Palestine. The Mishnah passage, which restricted esoteric learning to a small group of people (Hagiga Jer.77a), was for him proof that cosmogonic and theosophical speculations had taken a heretical turn among Palestinian Jews at an early date.12

Friedlander had a clear agenda, evident in other works as well. He claimed that the Judaism of the Greek Diaspora followed "the original traditions, which had been transplanted from the times of the prophets and were wide-spread in the time of the Maccabees, while the traditions of the Pharisees [in Palestine] were the more recent ones, which had been artificially implanted into the law by a now dominant nation- alism."l13 While Orthodox Judaism still followed this wrong and recent path of the nationalistic Pharisees, Friedlainder called upon his Jewish contemporaries to return to the older and "genuine" Judaism he saw embodied in the world of Hellenistic culture that was under the influence of Gnostic ideas.

12. Moriz Friedlnder, Der vorchristliche ji]dische Gnosticismus (G6ttingen: Van- denhoeck & Ruprecht, 1898) 46.

13. Friedlander, Die religibsen Bewegungen innerhalb des Judentums im Zeitalter Jesu (Berlin: Reimer, 1905) vi.




Friedliinder's study was rejected by most scholars when it appeared, and it was ignored when the discussion on the sources of Gnosticism was revived at the beginning of the twentieth century.14 Most participants in this discussion found the origins of Gnosticism neither in Judaism nor in Christianity, but in "Eastern" cultures. This theory was part of a larger trend which, based on archaeological findings, argued for the revision of traditional views as to the origin of ancient culture. The main source of civilization was now seen in the "East" - meaning Iran and Babylon. The most popular expression of this new approach was doubtless Friedrich Delitzsch's book Babel und Bibel (1902) which characterized Israelite traditions as mere copies of more ancient "Eastern" myths.15 The new emphasis on the Eastern origin of Gnosticism, as expressed mainly in the works of Richard Reitzenstein16 and Wilhelm Bousset,17 must be seen against this general background of the development of the German Religionswissenschaftsschule at the turn of the century. In a later search for a more integrative definition of Gnosticism,

another German Jew, Hans Jonas, saw philosophical and mythological elements combined in his description of a "Gnostic religion" which had exercised a strong influence upon "the spirit of late antiquity," a time he called the "Age of Gnosticism."l18 For Jonas, the essence of this religion was the alienation from the cosmos, a concept which never left Western culture and was most recently expressed by the philosophy of existential- ism. Jonas, it should be noted, was then under the influence of both Heidegger and Spengler, and identified himself as an existentialist.

Research on Gnosticism in the second half of the twentieth century is based on the discoveries made near the Egyptian village of Nag Hammadi

14. See esp. Emil Schuerer's review in Theologische Literaturzeitung 24 (1899): 167-70, in which he opposed Friedlander's narrow definition of minim as Gnostics. With regard to the Jewish origins of Gnosticism in general, Schuerer mainly criticized Friedltinder's lack of proofs for this thesis. But note that Schuerer did not reject the thesis of the pre-Christian origins of Jewish mysticism: "To be sure, it is beyond dispute that the beginnings of a Jewish 'Gnosis' (mysticism, kabbalah) extend into the pre-Christian period. However, the contours of these beginnings are too difficult for us to perceive clearly. We cannot, therefore, sketch them with any certainty," (168).

15. See Klaus Johanning, Der Bibel-Babel-Streit.: Eine forschungsgeschichtliche Studie (Frankfurt/Main: P. Lang, 1988).

16. Richard Reitzenstein, Poimandres: Studien zur griechisch-dgyptischen und friihchristlichen Literatur (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1904).

17. Wilhelm Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis (GSttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1907).

18. Hans Jonas, Gnosis und spdtantiker Geist, vol.1 (GSttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1934).



Michael Brenner 53

in 1945. Previously, the main material for scholarship on Gnosticism had been Christian anti-Gnostic polemics. Now vast amounts of Gnos- tic literature, written in Coptic, could be read. One of the results of this discovery was another revision of the theories on Gnostic origins. The extent to which Biblical motifs pervaded the Nag Hammadi documents led scholars to suspect stronger Jewish origins of Gnosticism than had been previously believed. Adopting this position, they deviated from Jonas who, like the Religionswissenschaftsschule before him, rejected the notion of Jewish origins of Gnosticism. Indeed, in his epochal work Gnosis und spdtantiker Geist, Jonas had not even mentioned the possibility of Jewish origins in Gnosticism. For Jonas, Judaism and Gnosti- cism were incompatible and opposed.19

19. Since the 1950s, however, scholars have been reviving Friedlander's basic assumption from half a century before, and are pointing - in more sophisticated ways - to the Jewish origins of Gnosticism. One of the first modem representatives of the "Friedlainder approach" was the Dutch scholar Gilles Quispel. Quispel's first systematic treatment of this topic was his article, "Der gnostische Anthropos und die jildische Tradition" Eranos Jahr- buch 12 (1954): 195-234. Although Quispel argues for the Jewish origins of Gnosticism, he differs on many essential points from Friedlander. For him, Gnosticism is not a product of Diaspora Judaism, but of heterodox streams in Palestinian Judaism. However, Palestinian Judaism was highly Hellenized, too, and thus Gnosticism was - similar to Friedlander's thesis - the product of the combination of Jewish religion and Greek vulgar philosophy [Vulgarphilosophie]. More specifically, he found in Gnosticism a combination of Greek views on the universal soul and Jewish ideas concerning ruah and hokhmah. The diverging positions in Gnosis scholarship clashed at the hundredth general assembly of the Society of Biblical Literature in 1964, where both Jonas and Quispel expressed their views. Those papers were published in The Bible in Modern Scholarship, ed. J. P. Hyatt (Nashville: Abingdon, 1965) 252-93. While Jonas argued that monotheistic Judaism and dualistic Gnos- ticism were incompatible, Quispel emphasized the Gnostic motifs in the esoteric traditions of the Palestinian Pharisees. In recent decades the thesis of a Jewish origin of Gnosticism has been adopted by so many scholars that they are no longer concerned with the question whether Judaism was the basis for Gnosticism, but rather if it was Diaspora (Friedlander) or Palestinian (Quispel) Judaism. Thus, in 1973, Birger A. Pearson published an article "Friedlander Revisited," (Studia Philonica 2 [1973]: 23-39) in which he tried to strengthen Friedlander's arguments with new evidence from the Nag Hammadi documents. See also Pearson's study, "Jewish Haggadic Traditions in the Testimony of Truth from Nag Ham- madi," Ex Orbe Religionum: Festschrift G. Widengren I (Leiden: Brill, 1972) 457-70. Even Simone Petrement, who rejects the thesis of a pre-Christian Jewish Gnosticism, had to admit: "Until 1950, this orientalizing and Iranizing theory had been accepted by a good number of scholars. But following that point its success declined. One now elaborated a new hypothesis: Gnosticism had been the offspring of Judaism, to be sure, but of a dissident Judaism. It is this hypothesis that has dominated in nearly all research to this very day." Le Dieu separd. Les origines du gnosticisme (Paris: Cerf, 1984) 11-12. A brief summary of those arguments can be found in John G. Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes Toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity, (New York: Oxford UP, 1983) 167-70.




Gershom Scholem: Gnosticism and the Concept of a Heterogeneous Judaism As a result of its drive to prove to the Christian world that pure

monotheism was an essential idea of Judaism, the nineteenth-century Wissenschaft des Judentums could not accept the idea of Gnosticism as part of a "normative" Judaism. Therefore, it was left to a critic of traditional Wissenschaft des Judentums, Gershom Scholem, to identify "Jew- ish Gnostics" with esoteric circles within normative Judaism. For Scholem, Gnosticism and Messianism were the two chief forces behind the development of Jewish mysticism, which his oeuvre reestablished as a central tenet of Judaism itself. But what did Scholem mean by Gnosti- cism? As several critics have noted, Scholem's discussion of "Jewish Gnosticism" demonstrates the importance of a proper definition of Gnosticism. Edwin Yanauchi has rightly stated that "this one man's Gnosticism may be simply another man's Mysticism, Esotericism, or Eucratism."20 Scholem would probably have agreed. At a conference at Dartmouth in 1965 Scholem was reported to have said that it did not matter whether one used the term "Jewish Gnosticism" or "Jewish Eso- tericism" or "Merkabah Mysticism."21 Certainly his broad definition of the term "Gnosticism" left much room for speculation. For him, it was "a convenient term for the religious movement that proclaimed a mystical esotericism for the elect based on illumination and an acquisition of a higher knowledge of things heavenly and divine."22

It is no wonder that leading scholars in the field of Gnosticism have criticized Scholem's lack of clarity in his definition of Gnosticism. Although there is no general agreement on a definition of Gnosti- cism,23 most scholars do not question that the dualism between two Godheads - the "good" hidden God and the "evil" Creator - is a central element of Gnostic teaching. Thus Jean Danielou has stated that "it is this radical dualism, therefore, which is the properly Gnostic

20. Edwin M.Yamauchi, Pre-Christian Gnosticism. A Survey of the Proposed Evi- dences (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973) 14.

21. Yamauchi 150. 22. Gershom Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism and Talmudic Tra-

dition (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1960) 1. 23. Compare for example the different definitions proposed at the Congress on the

origins of Gnosticism at Messina in 1966. While a scholar like T. P. van Baaren provided a list of not less than 16 points to define the term, other participants offered much broader definitions. T. P. van Baaren, "Towards a Definition of Gnosticism," Le Origini dello Gnosticismo, ed. U. Bianchi (Leiden: Brill, 1967) 174-80.



Michael Brenner 55

element."24 Hans Jonas confirmed this point of view: "A Gnosticism without a fallen god, without benighted creator and sinister creation, without akin soul, cosmic captivity and acosmic salvation, without the self-redeeming of the Deity - in short: a Gnosis without divine trag- edy will not meet specifications."25 And for Kurt Rudolf, Gnosticism was a "dualistic religion" consistin of several schools and taking up a negative attitude towards the world.26

However, in his definition of Gnosticism Scholem did not even men- tion the issue of dualism. The reason for this becomes clear when one understands his principal thesis regarding Jewish Gnosticism. Accord- ing to Scholem, the Jewish Gnostics - and this means first and fore- most the Merkabah mystics - modified the dualistic principle and harmonized it with the basic ideas of Judaism. This approach was rejected, by Hans Jonas amongst others, who criticized "the semantic disservice which Scholem did to clarity when he called his Palestinian Hekhaloth mysticism a 'Gnosis."'27

Scholem's definition of Gnosticism reflects the dilemma of a perceived incompatibility between monotheistic Judaism and a dualistic

24. Jean Danielou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity trans. and ed. John A. Barker (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1964) 73.

25. Hyatt 293. See also Shaul Magid, "Gershom Scholem's Ambivalence Toward Mystical Experience and His Critique of Martin Buber in Light of Hans Jonas and Martin Heidegger," Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 4 (1995): 245-69.

26. Kurt Rudolf, Gnosis. The Nature and History of Gnosticism (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987) 2. Modem scholarship tends to distinguish between the term "Gnosis" which stands for the broader meaning of a secret knowledge and "Gnosticism" which characterizes a specific heretical movement in early antiquity. Ithamar Gruenwald accused Scholem of confusing these two terms. See his "Jewish Merkavah Mysticism and Gnosticism," From Apocalypticism to Gnosticism: Studies in Apocalypticism, Merkavah Mysticism and Gnosticism 192. But if he did so, he did it consciously, as the following statement by Scholem reveals: "The discussion as to what exactly is to be understood by 'gnosis' has gained in prominence in scholarly literature and at conferences during the last decades. There is a tendency to exclude phenomena that until 1930 were designated gnostic by everyone. To me it does not seem to matter greatly whether phenomena previously called gnostic are now designated as 'esoteric,' and I for one cannot see the use or value of the newly introduced distinctions (for example, gnosis-Gnosticism and the like)." Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah (Princeton: JPS and Princeton UP, 1987) 21, n.24.

27. A similiar criticism can be found in David Flusser's review of Scholem's book: "What the patristic writers included within the term Gnosis was something revolutionary - the rebellion against the God of Israel; and the reviewer can see no point in extending this clear concept into one that is blurred. ... It would consequently seem more profitable to abandon the terms Gnosis and Gnosticism as a title for esoteric doctrines preserved in talmudic literature as in the Heykhaloth." David Flusser, Journal ofJewish Studies XI (1960): 65.




Gnosticism. If one accepts a strict dualism as the basic premise of Gnosticism and at the same time monotheism as the basic definition of normative Judaism, one cannot argue for Gnostic streams within normative Judaism. To solve this dilemma, one must either define the Jewish Gnostics as heretics or modify the dualistic element in the definition of Gnosticism. Before Scholem, the former was usually preferable: Gra- etz, who argued that Gnosticism exercised a negative influence upon Judaism, and Friedla*nder, who, contrary to Graetz, saw Gnosticism as a positive force for Judaism, both agreed that Gnosticism and Judaism were not originally the same. Scholem, however, chose to elaborate upon the latter possibility.

According to Scholem, the earliest form of Jewish Gnosticism was Merkabah mysticism. Scholem rejected Friedlander's equation of heretical Jewish Gnostics with Minim and adopted Schuerer's broader definition of this term. For Scholem the Jewish Gnostics were not the heretics against whom normative Jews had to fight, they were themselves part of normative Judaism. Thus he placed them "near the center of rabbinic Judaism, not on its fringes" and spoke about a "truly rabbinic Gnosis." Scholem did not find any heretical traces in Merkabah Mysticism, the speculations around the Holy Throne connected with the Book of Ezek- iel, which he identified with Jewish Gnosticism. On the contrary, "all these texts go to great length to stress their strict conformity, even in the most minute detail, to Halakhic Judaism and its prescriptions."28

Scholem had already argued that the Merkabah texts were older than previously assumed.29 In Jewish Gnosticism, Scholem elaborated this thesis and stated: "The truth of the matter is that in many respects I was not radical enough."30 Here he brought evidence that the roots of what he called Jewish Gnosticism went back at least to Mishnaic times. He cited the story of the Four who entered Paradise, which we know already from Graetz's analysis, and demonstrated that it can only be understood in connection with Hekhaloth literature. For Scholem, Rabbi Akiba's warning not to say "water! water!" when they come to the place

28. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism 10-12. Scholem revealed his ambivalent stand toward Friedlander by remarking that in his writings "quite a grain of truth has been overshadowed by many inconsequential and misleading statements," (9). Compare also his remark where he protects Friedlander against scholars who "have been poking fun" at him (3).

29. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, third ed. (New York: Schocken, 1961) 40-79.

30. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism 8.



Michael Brenner 57

of "pure marble plates" resembled the description of the gate of the sixth palace in the descent of the Merkabah mystics. Further evidence for the antiquity of Merkabah mysticism can be found in the "Song of the Kine" (Aboda Zara 24b) and its resemblance to celestial hymns used in the Hekhaloth literature. The story of Paul's ascent to Paradise in 2 Corinth. 12:2-4 constitutes, according to Scholem, a link between older Jewish texts and the Gnosis of Tannaitic Merkabah mysticism.

Antiquity can also be proven for the second major type of Jewish Gnosticism - Shiur Komah speculation. Scholem derived this argument from Origen's inclusion of the Song of Songs in the mystical teachings, the study of which was allowed only after reaching full matu- rity. Scholem rejected the usual Christological interpretation by claim- ing this was only established after Origen's writings. Instead, the answer must be found in connection to Jewish Shiur Komah speculation. Since the "Song of the Songs" contains a detailed description of the limbs of the lover, who was identified with God, it served as the basic Scrip- tural text on which the doctrine of Shiur Komah leaned; therefore it was considered as a mystical teaching.31

Scholem's conclusions relevant to our discussion can be summarized in two main points: First, he placed Jewish Gnosticism within normative Judaism and rejected the previous equation of Jewish Gnostics with Jew- ish heretics. Second, he attempted to prove the antiquity of Jewish Gnosti- cism, which according to him reached back at least until the second century C.E. Scholem did not try to prove, however, that Gnosticism per se was a Jewish phenomenon. He made clear that Jewish Gnosticism pre- dated Christian Gnosticism, but his remark "that, initially, Jewish esoteric tradition absorbed Hellenistic elements" was taken as proof of Scholem's identification of the origins of Gnosticism within the Hellenistic culture.32

This issue, however, deserves more reflection. It is true, that in his writings Scholem would not go beyond the thesis of a pre-Christian Jew- ish Gnosticism and claim that Gnosticism had its roots within Judaism. The reason for this was the lack of evidence and not a belief that Gnos- ticism ultimately had non-Jewish roots. Some remarks Scholem made

31. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism 37-39. Modem scholarship opened anew the question of the character and the antiquity of Hekhaloth literature and reassesses Scholem's earlier understanding of Merkabah mysticism. For new approaches see esp. the work of Peter Schaefer.

32. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism 34; Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale UP, 1988) 31. For a similar statement by Scholem see his Major Trends 35. Cf. also Idel's reply to the review article by Y. Tishby, Zion LIV (1989): 224.




privately point to the assumption that he actually believed in the Jewish origins of Gnosticism. Birger Pearson concludes his essay on Friedlander with a footnote referring to a recent letter which Scholem had sent him in which "Professor Scholem stated his belief that the Gnostic revolt did indeed arise from within Judaism."33 Another statement Scholem made in a discussion with Harold Bloom may be very vague, but reveals much more about Scholem's actual thoughts than the scholarly treatment of the matter in his writings. Bloom recalled: "When, in my puzzlement, I attempted to remind him that Gnosticism itself seemed as much a misreading of Plato as of the Hebrew Bible, so that in some strange sense Gnosticism and Neoplatonism both derived from Plato, Scholem replied triumphantly: 'Exactly so. And where did Plato get everything from? Egypt, who had it from us!"'34

Even in his Jewish Gnosticism the reader can detect Scholem's sympa- thy toward an "inner-Jewish" understanding of Gnostic origins. This becomes clear in his polemics against "scholars who have been looking far and wide to establish the source from which it all has come [and] have been remarkably reluctant, or rather, unwilling to allow the theory that Gnostic tendencies may have developed in the very midst of Juda- ism itself, whether in its classical forms or on its heterodox and sectarian fringes."35 Scholem explicitly pointed to the Samaritan origins of mythi- cal Gnosticism and argued that if there was a Gnostic tradition in Jewish heretical circles, the same might have been true for orthodox Judaism at an early time as well.36 After these few remarks, however, he abruptly stopped the discussion of this particular question by writing: "Important and promising as all these alleys of inquiry are, it is with that other aspect of the problem, mentioned above, that I propose to deal here."37 All these remarks lead to the conclusion that Scholem did not oppose

the thesis of the Jewish origins of Gnosticism. His reluctance to answer the questions related to the origins of Gnosticism must be explained solely by his conviction that he did not have any evidence to prove either Jewish or non-Jewish origins of Gnosticism. He stated that the theories of Jewish origins of Gnosticism38 are of a "highly hypothetical,

33. Pearson 39, n. 51. 34. Harold Bloom, "Scholem: Unhistorical or Jewish Gnosticism" Gershom

Scholem (New York: Chelsea House, 1987) 216. 35. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism 2. 36. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism 4. 37. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism 5. 38. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism 3.



Michael Brenner 59

if sometimes plausible character." Thus, Harold Bloom states correctly:

Scholem desired Kabbalah to be wholly Gnostic and yet wholly Jew- ish, which resulted in his shrewdly desperate insistence that Gnosti- cism was essentially Jewish in its origins.39

In a similar vein, Robert Alter commented on a passage from Idel: "I suspect that if Idel were able to produce convincing proof of Gnosti- cism as an indigenous Jewish doctrine (as perhaps he may yet do), Scholem would have been delighted by the idea."40

Conclusion Apart from their scholarly value, the writings on Gnosticism and its

relationship to Judaism discussed here must also be read as historical documents of three German-Jewish intellectuals. Heinrich Graetz's dissertation was a weapon on the battlefield against the growing influence of the Reform movement in Germany. By drawing a dark picture of the Gnostic threat to ancient Judaism he warned against what seemed to him an obvious parallel in his own time. Like Graetz, Moriz Friedlander identified Jewish Gnosticism in the Hellenistic world with the contemporary Jewish Reform movement. Yet he came to the opposite conclusion. An opponent of Orthodox Judaism, Friedliinder hailed the successful symbiosis of Gnostic and classical Jewish ideas as the proto- type of a liberal and open-minded modem Jewish religion. Perhaps because of their blatantly apologetic character, neither Graetz's nor Friedlander's work on Gnosticism succeeded in exercising any signifi- cant influence on the future research in the field.

This, of course, was not the case for Gershom Scholem, who argued from a quite different position. He had left the German-Jewish world of Graetz's and

Friedli.nder's heirs after completing his dissertation at the University of

Munich in the early 1920s and was no longer an integral member of Ger- man-Jewish scholarship. We should keep in mind, however, that he contin- ued to write many of his works in German both before and after the war,

39. Bloom 215. 40. Robert Alter: "Jewish Mysticism in Dispute," Commentary (Sept. 1989): 56. Two

of the "new perspectives" in Moshe Idel's challenge to Scholem's outlook on Kabbalah are related to the topics of the previous discussion and can be summarized as follows: a. In view of the new evidence in Gnosis scholarship Jewish sources have to be regarded as highly influential on the origins of Gnosticism; b. these sources were at the same time transmitted in Jewish circles and served ultimately as the Urquelle for medieval Kabbalah.




and that his German-Jewish intellectual background formed his scholarly oeuvre in a dialectical way. As a rebellious son of Wissenschaft des Juden- tums he would again and again point to its apologetic character and demand a fundamental revision of its principles. Only Zionism and a Jewish society, he argued, made it possible to leave the narrow path of a "legit- imate" view on Judaism and create a scholarship that would not be ori- ented towards the concrete needs of Jews in a non-Jewish environment.

Scholem's work is characterized by a repeated effort to refute any concept of a clearly defined essence of Judaism. He planted those phenomena, which previous scholars had regarded as marginal to the Jew- ish experience, into its very heart. Just as Zionism radically transformed the Jewish society of his time, modem Jewish scholarship as Scholem understood it had to radically alter the understanding of the Jewish past. While the early representatives of Wissenschaft des Judentums singled out a hypothetical "essence of Judaism," Scholem and other scholars of his generation - confronted with a very different present situation of Jewish society -were eager to prove that Judaism was always heterogeneous. In Scholem's agenda, which David Biale described as a Jewish counterhistory, Jewish Gnosticism played an important part. This may also explain why he insisted on the central role of Gnosticism within Jewish mysticism despite his obvious problems with defining the term in general and in respect to Judaism.41 In more general terms, Biale has shown that Scholem's research was influenced by a contemporary agenda and was in many ways comparable to the tasks of the predeces- sors from which he had distanced himself so often:

Scholem's pluralistic conception of Jewish history and Jewish nation- alism was opposed to the [earlier] search of identity. What his oeuvre showed was not the 'essence' of Judaism, but an anarchical undermin- ing of all essences. Seen in historical context all of his studies of the 'back side' of Jewish history were an 'anarchical blast of wind,' which tried to shake the self-complacency and self-righteousness affecting all nations. But like other national historians he also partook in the 'inven- tion of traditions': His form to embed the Kabbalah within larger struc- tures of Jewish history was the conscious attempt to connect the national rebirth with the forces he regarded as vital in Jewish history.42

41. Moshe Idel has pointed this out in detail in a recent article. Idel, "Subversive Katalysatoren: Gnosis und Messianismus in Gershom Scholems Verstlindnis derjiidischen Mystik," Gershom Scholem: Zwischen den Disziplinen eds. Peter Schaifer und Gary Smith (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1995) 80-121.

42. Biale, "Scholem und der moderne Nationalismus," Gershom Scholem 271.



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