kabbalah Gershom scholem

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT
II
the Qumran writings have been solved. The Book of Enoch was followed by
apocalyptic writing up to the time of the tannaim, and, in diffe rent ways, even
later. Esoteric knowledge in these books touched not only upon the revelation
of the end of time and its awesome terrors, but also upon the structure of the
hidden world and its inhabitants: heaven, the Garden of Eden, and Gehinnom,
angels and evil spirits, and the fate of the souls in this hidden world. Above this
are revelations concerning the Throne of Glory and its Occupant, which should
apparently be identified with "the wonderful secrets" of God mentioned by the
Dead Sea Scrolls. Here a link can be established between this literature and the
much later traditions concerning the rna 'aseh bereshit and the rna 'aseh merkabah.
It is not just the content of these ideas which is considered esoteric; their
authors too hid their own individuality and their names, concealing themselves
behind biblical characters like Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Baruch, Daniel,
Ezra, and others. This self-concealment, which was completely successful, has
made it extremely difficult for us to determine the historical and social milieu of
the authors. This pseudepigraphical pattern continued within the mystical tradition
in the centuries that followed. The clear tendency toward asceticism as a
way of preparing for the reception of the mystical tradition, which is already
attested to in the last chapter of the Book of Enoch, becomes a fundamental
principle for the apocalyptics, the Essenes, and the circle of the Merkabah
mystics who succeeded them. From the start, this pietist asceticism aroused
active opposition entailing abuse and persecution, which later characterized practically
the whole historical development of pietist tendencies (l]asidut) in rabbinic
Judaism.
The mysteries of the Throne constitute here a particularly exalted subject
which to a large extent set the pattern for the early forms of Jewish mysticism.
It did not aspire to an understanding of the true nature of God, but to a
perception of the phenomenon of the Throne on its Chariot as it is described in
the first chapter of Ezekiel, traditionally entitled ma 'asel! merkabah. The mysteries
of the world of the Throne, together with those of the Divine Glory which
is revealed there, are the parallels in Jewish esoteric tradition to the revelations
on the realm of the divine in Gnosticism. The 14th chapter of the Book of
Enoch, which contains the earliest example of this kind of literary description,
was the source of a long visionary tr