This ferment was crystallized in writings such as the First Book of Enoch. Almost none of it was retained in Pharisaic (rabbinical) Judaism, which became the normative Jewish tradition after the Roman conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple. The Talmud and the Midrash (rabbinical legal and interpretative literature) touched these themes only with great reserve, often unwillingly, and more often in a spirit of negative polemic.
As early as the 1st century ce and probably even before the destruction of the Second Temple, there were sages or teachers recognized by the religious community for whom meditation on the Scriptures—especially the creation narrative, the public revelation of the Torah on Mount Sinai, the Merkava vision of Ezekiel, and the Song of Solomon—and reflection on the end of time, resurrection, and the afterlife were not only a matter of the exegesis of texts recognized to be of divine origin but also a matter of inner experience. However, speculation on the invisible world and the search for the means to penetrate it were probably carried on in other circles. It is undeniable that there was a certain continuity between the apocalyptic visions (i.e., of the cataclysmic advent of God’s kingdom) and documents of certain sects (Dead Sea Scrolls) and the writings, preserved in Hebrew, of the “explorers of the supernatural world” (yorde merkava). The latter comprise ecstatic hymns, descriptions of the “dwellings” (hekhalot) located between the visible world and the ever-inaccessible Divinity, whose transcendence is paradoxically expressed by anthropomorphic descriptions consisting of inordinate hyperboles (Shiʿur qoma, “Divine Dimensions”). A few documents have been preserved that attest to the initiation of carefully chosen persons who were made to undergo tests and ordeals in accordance with psychosomatic criteria borrowed from physiognomy (the art of determining character from physical, especially facial, traits). Some theurgic efficacy was attributed to these practices, and there was some contamination from Egyptian, Hellenistic, or Mesopotamian magic. (A curious document in this respect, rich in pagan material, is the Sefer ha-razim, the “Treatise on Mysteries,” which was discovered in 1963.)
The similarities between concepts reflected in unquestionably Jewish texts and those expressed in documents of contemporary non-Jewish esoterism are so numerous that it becomes difficult, sometimes impossible, to distinguish the giver from the receiver. Two facts are certain, however. On the one hand, gnosticism never ceases to exploit biblical themes that have passed through Judaism (such as the tale of creation and the speculation on angels and demons), whatever their original source may have been; on the other hand, though Jewish esoterism may borrow this or that motif from ancient gnosis or syncretism and may even raise a supernatural entity such as the angel Metatron—also known as “little Adonai” (i.e., little Lord or God)—to a very high rank in the hierarchy of being, it still remains inflexibly monotheistic and rejects the gnostic concept of a bad or simply inferior demiurge who is responsible for the creation and governing of the visible world. Finally, during the centuries that separate the Talmudic period (2nd–5th centuries ce) from the full resurgence of Jewish esoterism in the middle of the 12th century, the texts that were preserved progressively lose their density and affective authenticity and become reduced to the level of literary exercises that are more grandiloquent than substantial. Sefer yetzira
In the ancient esoteric literature of Judaism, a special place must be given to the Sefer yetzira (“Book of Creation”), which deals with cosmogony and cosmology. Creation, it affirms with a clearly anti-gnostic insistence, is the work of the God of Israel and took place on the ideal, immaterial level and on the concrete level. This was done according to a complex process that brings in the 10 numbers (sefirot, singular sefira) of decimal notation and the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The 10 numbers are not understood merely as arithmetical symbols: they are cosmological factors—the first of which, signified by the multiply ambiguous term ruaḥ, is the spirit of God, while the nine others seem to be the archetypes of the three elements (air, water, fire) and the spatial dimensions (up, down, and the four cardinal points). After having been manipulated either in their graphic representation or in combination, the letters of the alphabet, which are considered transcriptions of the sounds of the language, are in turn instruments of creation. The basic idea of all this speculation is that speech (that is, language composed of words, which are in turn composed of letters or sounds) is not only a means of communication but an operational agent destined to produce being; it has an ontological value. This value, however, does not extend to every language; it belongs to the Hebrew language alone.
The Sefer yetzira does not proceed entirely from biblical data and rabbinical reflection upon them; Greek influences are discernible, even in the vocabulary. What is important, however, is its influence on later Jewish thought, down to the present time: philosophers and esoterists have vied with one another over its meaning, pulling it in their own direction and adjusting it to their respective ideologies. Even more important is the fact that Kabbala borrowed a great deal of its terminology from the Sefer yetzira (e.g., sefira), making semantic adaptations as required.
The speculation traced above developed during the first six centuries of the Common Era, both in Palestine and in Babylonia. Babylonian Judaism had its own social and ideological characteristics, which put it in opposition to Palestinian Judaism with regard to esoterism and other manifestations of the life of the spirit. The joint doctrinal influence of the two centres spread from the mid-8th to the 11th century among the Jews of North Africa and Europe; mystical doctrines also filtered in, but very little is known about the circumstances and means of their penetration. The Arabic-Islamic influence (7th–13th century)
Arabic Islamic culture was another important influence on Jewish mystical development. A considerable part of Jewry, which had fallen under Muslim domination in the 7th and 8th centuries, participated in the new Arabic-Islamic civilization; the Jews of Asia, Africa, and Spain soon adopted Arabic, the language of culture and communication. Arabic-language culture introduced elements of Greek philosophy and Islamic mysticism into Judaism and contributed to the deepening of certain theological concepts that were of Jewish origin but had become the common property of the three religions of the Book (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam): affirming the divine unity, purging anthropomorphism from the idea of God, and following a spiritual path to the divine that leads through an ascetic discipline (both physical and intellectual) to a detachment from this world and a freeing of the soul from all that distracts it from God. Greek philosophy and Islamic mysticism moreover raised serious questions that threatened traditional beliefs about the creation of the world, the providential action of God, miracles, and eschatology. Even in the Christian West, where cultural contacts between the majority society and the Jewish minority were far from reaching the breadth and intensity of Judeo-Arab relations, Jewish intellectuals were unable to remain impervious to the incursions of the surrounding civilization. (Jewish biblical scholars were at times sought out by Christian theologians for help in understanding the Hebrew Scriptures.) Moreover, at the beginning of the 12th century if not earlier, European Judaism received part of the intellectual Arabic and Judeo-Arab heritage through translations or adaptations into Hebrew, its only cultural language. The making of Kabbala (c. 1150–1250)