157Chapter 10
Concepts of Scripture in Jewish Mysticism
Moshe Idel
Th e correlation between any Jewish theology and the conception of scrip-
ture that accompanies it is one of the most characteristic features of Jew-
ish thought.1 All theological systems in Judaism have produced their own
conceptions of Torah. Th ese varied conceptions of Torah provide a lens
through which one can study the development of Jewish concepts of God.
Biblical and midrashic theologies, in both legal and narrative texts, re-
fl ect a God who gives law and who directs the processes of history. Mai-
monides’s God is a much more abstract, philosophical deity, and his under-
standing of the Torah assumes the presence of philosophical concepts. Th e
Jewish mystical movements concerned with what is known as kabbalah
began to arise in Europe in the twelft h century, and in these movements
a conception of God as Ein Sof — infi nite, transcendent, yet related to the
world through several manifestations known as sefi rot — came to the fore.
Together with this understanding of God, a view of the Torah as infi nite,
transcendent, yet connected with the world (or better, connecting to it)
emerged as well. Similarly, earlier mystical theologies of heikhalot litera-
ture (that is, prekabbalistic Jewish mysticism of the Talmudic era) entailed
their own conceptions of Torah related to magical powers. Th is chapter de-
scribes connections among these earlier and later conceptions of Torah in
various types of Jewish mysticism.
Torah as God’s Name and Body
One of the most prominent and infl uential concepts of Torah that occurs
in Jewish mystical literatures is that the Torah contains or even consists of