Sunday, December 27, 2015

Early Jewish Understanding of Marriage in the World to Come

Origen (185-253), an early Christian theologian, describes a group of Jewish Christians that held to a belief in a futuristic Jerusalem where marriage would continue in the resurrection: “they say, that after the resurrection there will be marriages, and the begetting of children”
(Roberts and Donaldson, eds., Ante-Nicene Fathers  (ANF), Vol.4, p. 297)

In Falasha’s, Fifth Baruch, Baruch is taken up to the different gates of heaven by the angel Raphael, who tells him of the blessed who enter a special gate, of those he says “the husband remains with his wife and the wife remains with her husband”]. The angle (Raphael) then said, “Blessed are those who enter though this gate.”
(Wolf Leslau, Falasha Anthology, Yale Judaica Series, Vol. VI, Yale University Press. p.65);


Babylonian Talmud,  Sanhedrin 92b: Has Ezekiel reviving the dead that goes into Palestine, marrying and begetting children: " R. Eliezer the son of R. Jose the Galilean said: The dead whom Ezekiel revived went up to Palestine, married wives and begat sons and daughters. R. Judah b. Bathyra rose up and said: I am one of their descendants, and these are the tefillin 10 which my grandfather left me [as an heirloom] from them.


 Seder Eliyahu Rabbah ch.4:19: Describes the “world-to-come” with family in God’s presence: "What will that life be like? The Holy One will be seated in His great academy and seated in His presence will be the righteous of the world, they, their wives, their sons, their daughters…" ( Braude and Kapstein, trans., Tanna Debe Eliyyahu: The Lore of the School of  Elijah, (The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1981) p.81)

Ketav Tamim, Otsar Nehmad ed., 91: From the thirteenth century Tosafist, Rabbi Moshe Taku talks about marriage in the resurrection:
“And [after the resurrection] the righteous will take wives in accordance with their deeds, for each one will not marry the wife he had in this world unless the two of them are of equivalent righteousness…A wholly righteous man [who had been married to] a non-wholly righteous woman, or a wholly righteous woman [who had been married to] a nonwholly righteous man, will not be rejoined in the future, for death severs their bonds. When they are resurrected, each person will marry the partner who is appropriate for them, in accordance with their deeds.” (Ketav Tamim, Otsar Nehmad ed., 91)., trans., by David I. Shyovitz, in his Doctoral Dissertation in History, “He Has Created a Remembrance of His Wonders’: Nature and Embodiment in the Thought of the Hasidei Ashkenaz,” (University of Pennsylvania, 2011) p.317, fn.180

Midrash Alpha-Betot, Batei Midrashot, II, ed. S.A.Wertheimer: “Each righteous person will draw near his wife in the world to come…” cited in, David Nirenberg, “Posthumous Love in Judaism”, p.60  https://www.academia.edu/10305251/Posthumous_Love_in_Judaism 


http://www.ravaviner.com/2011/08/spouses-during-resurrection-of-dead.html
"In the book "Piskei Teshuvah" of Ha-Rav Avraham Pitrakovsky (#124).  He quoted the book "Shut Matzav Ha-Yashar" on the Zohar that there was a young woman who was married to a wonderful man who died at a relatively young age.  The young woman did not want to marry again.  She said, "Why should I get married to someone else?  During the Resurrection of the Dead I will be married to my second husband, and my first husband is dearer to me than anything.  I prefer to remain a widow all of my life and then be married to my true soul-mate."  There is a similar question in the book "Ha-Techiya Ve-Ha-Pedut" (question #6) of Ha-Rav Sa'adia Gaon: how will I find my wife during the Resurrection of the Dead?  Ha-Rav Sa'adia did not want to answer since it is forbidden to answer a halachic question before someone who is greater than him in wisdom.  Since this is a question of the Resurrection of the Dead, Moshe Rabbenu will be there and it is therefore forbidden for me to answer.  If there are questions that arise now - what can we do?  We have to answer them.  Questions that have to do with the future, however, we leave for Moshe Rabbenu and the other prophets.  It therefore seems that the question in "Shut Matzav Ha-Yashar" cannot be answered, but this was before the Zohar was revealed.  After the Zohar was revealed, our question was answered.  Regarding a Jewish servant, the verse says, "If he arrives by himself, he leaves by himself; if he is the husband of a woman, his wife leaves with him" (Shemot 21:3).  This means that he enters the Resurrection of the Dead with his wife – his first wife.  There are commentators who explain that the meaning of the Zohar is that she will return to her true spouse, i.e. the most successful marriage (see note in Piskei Teshuvah).  Thus, she will return to the marriage which was filled with the most love, fraternity, peace, and friendship."



Taken from Nissan Dovid Dubov's book, To Live and Live Again, chap.12 (fn. 24)

The author of Rav Pe’alim holds that she will return to her first husband; the author of Sefer HaNitzachon holds that she will return to the second. The author of Piskei Teshuvah (sec. 124) first cites the reply of Sefer HaTechiyah of R. Saadiah Gaon — that this question will be resolved by Moshe Rabbeinu upon his resurrection — and then proceeds to cite the Zohar (I, 21b) as evidence that a woman in this situation will return to her first husband. (The question of where a remarried widow should be buried is discussed in Gesher HaChaim, Vol. I, ch. 27, sec. 7:3.)



Zohar III 283b: It is already been stated that all spirits issue from heaven in pairs male and female, and then separate. Sometimes the spirit of the female goes forth before the male which is her mate, and as long as the time of the male has not come to be united with her another can come and marry her, but when the time of the first arrives to marry her, when righteousness arises to visit the sins the first comes and marries her. ; Zohar vol.5:370 (Zohar III 283b) in Harry Sperling, Maurice Simon, trans., in 5 Vols., 2nd edition, (Soncino Press 1984).

 

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

THE PRE-EXISTENCE


Ode: Intimations of Immortality

      by, William Wordsworth

 

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting

 The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

 Hath had elsewhere its setting,

 And cometh from afar:

 Not in entire forgetfulness,

 And not in utter nakedness,

 But tailing clouds of glory do we come

 From God, who is our home:”                                                         



Reference to, us being referred to as children of God: Hosea 1:10; Acts 17:28-29; Romans 8:16-18; John 10:35-36 (making reference to Psalm 82:6-7, as being Sons of God)

 
 Reference to God being are father:  Heb.12:9; Matt. 5:48; Matt. 6:9; Eph. 4:6

 In the Apocalypse of James, Jesus tells his disciple if they ask you who you are or where are you from, “You say to him, I am a son and I am from the preexistent father.”  The First Apocalypse of James (V,3) 33:15-25, trans., William Schoede, in James Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library, p.246 (NHL)

 In the Gospel of Thomas: Jesus said, “If they say to you: ‘(Who) are you?’, say: ‘We are His sons and we are the elect of the Living Father.’” From, Guillaumont, Puech, Quispel, Till and Al Masih, trans., The Gospel According to Thomas, (Harper Row, 1959) p. 29, also in Robinson, NHL. p.123, Gospel of Thomas (II,2) 41:49-50-42:1-6

 

Reference to coming to earth: Psalm 82:6-7, Midrash Tanchuma, Shemos II, Pekudei 3, trans., Rabbi Avraham Davis, pp.404-405, 409-413 also in Barnstone, The Other Bible, pp.26-28 and Ginzberg. Legends of the Jews vol.1:56-58; Howard Schwartz, Tree of Souls, the Mythology of Judaism, (Oxford Univ. Press, 2004) pp. 166-167

In the Ginza Rba, “Arise, go, descend to the place where there are no skinas or worlds. Call forth and create a world for yourself, just like the sons of perfection, whom you saw.” In, Werner Foerster, trans., ed., Gnosis II: A Selection of Gnostic Texts. (Oxford Clarendon Press 1974) p.171; Also in the Midrash Rabbah, God takes council from the angels before creating the world. Freedman and Simon, eds.,  Midrash Rabbah Vol.1:59 (Gen.R 8.7); Vol.8:28 (Ruth R 2.3)

 In the Gospel of Thomas: “Jesus said, ‘If they say to you, Where did you come from?, say to them, We came from the light, the place where the light came into being…’”    In, Robinson, NHL. pp.123, Gospel of Thomas (II,2) 41:49-50-42:1-6; The Mandaeans also used “light”  in describing where the soul came from, before coming to earth: “When the Soul came from worlds of light and fell into the Body…” E.S. Drower, The Secret Adam, A Study of Nasoraean Gnosis, (Oxford Univ.Press 1960) p.49 (as quoted from: Thousand and Twelve Questions, p.215)

 
Reference to death as a return to God: Eccl. 12:7, John 3:13.
In the Manichaean Psalm Book, Adam is being greeted by an angel, called a news bearer, who is to take Adam home now that he has died. One of the first questions asked by Adam is:  How are my heavenly parents, the father of light and the mother of all living. (Allberry, ed., Manichaean Psalm-Book II pp.189-199)

In the Ginza, Adam is visited by an angel to take him home now that he has lived a thousand years, Adam objects and sends the angel to take Saureil, his son, the angel says “come die as if you were never created,…your soul yearns to return to the great home, from which she came.Ginza Left (GL) Book 1, pp. 5, 3-7, in GINZA RABBA, trans., Prof. Dr. Qais Mughashghash Al-Saadi and Hamed Mughashghash Al-Saddi (Drabsha 2012); Werner Foerster, trans., ed., Gnosis II: A Selection of Gnostic Texts. (Oxford Clarendon Press 1974) p.261: “Rise up, rise up, soul, ascend to your first earth.”

In the Discourse on Abbaton, fol.12a: “And He took the clay from the hand of the angel, and made Adam according to our image and likeness, and He left him lying for forty days and forty nights without putting breath into him.  And he heaved sighs over him daily, saying  'If I put breath into this [man], he must suffer many pains.’  And I said unto my Father, ‘Put breath into him;  I will be an advocate for him.’ And my Father said to me ‘If I put breath into him, My beloved Son, Thou wilt be obligated to go down into the world, and suffer many pains for him before Thou shalt have redeemed him. And made him to come back to his primal state.’ And I said to My Father: ‘Put breath into him, I will be his advocate, and I will go down into the world and will fulfill Thy command.’”  Discourse on Abbaton, fol.12a, by Archbishop of Alexandria, in A.E. Wallis Budge, Coptic Texts, Vol. IV, Coptic Martyrdoms Ect. In the Dialect of Upper Egypt, (AMS reprint 1914)  p.482

 Reference to coming to earth as a test:
In the  Zohar III 61b: “We have learnt, too, that all men of all generations stood before Him in their likeness before they came into the world, and even all the souls of men…in the firmament in the similitude of their shape in this world…  Those who did not turn out virtuous in this world…whence they came down into the world…proved to be stiff-necked in this world…”    Sperling and Simon, trans., Zohar, Vol. 5, (Soncino Press 1984) p.47

Midrash Tanchuma, Shemos II, Pekudei 3, trans., Rabbi Avraham Davis, pp.404-405, 409-413; The account is also in Barnstone, The Other Bible, pp.26-28 and Ginzberg. Legends of the Jews vol.1:56-58;

Book of Abraham 3:35 : "We will prove them here-with to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord there God shall command them."  Joseph Smith Jr., trans., The Pearl of Great Price, (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1981) p.38
 
  Reference to the veil of forgetfulness over those coming to earth:
In the Apocryphon of John (II, 1) 22:20-30; 23:1-10, in James Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library, p.111 (NHL) : “And I said to the savior, What is the forgetfulness…the veil which lay over his (Adam) mind”

 The Pistis Sophia, G.R.S. Mead, trans., Pistis Sophia (University Books, Inc. Secaucus, NJ. 1974) pp. 278: “then the rulers of the region of that head gave the old soul a cup of forgetfulness… And straightway , when that soul shall drink out of the cup, it forgetteth all the regions to which it hath gone,”  

Willis Barnstone, ed., The Other Bible, (Harper & Row) pp. 28: “But the soul is reluctant to leave her place. Then the angel fillips the babe on the nose, extinguishes the light at his head, and brings him forth into the world against his will. Immediately the child forgets all his soul has seen and learnt, and he comes into the world crying…”   (Rabbi Avraham Davis, trans., Midrash Tanchuma, Shemos II, Pekudei 3, p.410; Ginsberg. Legends of the Jews vol.1:58)

 

 


 

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Prodigal Son compared with the Allegory of the Pearl, by David Werden


   
    In a new look at the parable of the Prodigal Son, I would like to explore another theme apart from repentance, that is almost taken for granted in the story, As with most of Jesus’s parables an analogy is used to show our relationship with God. In this parable a father representing Heavenly Father has a son that represents all of mankind, is used to show how coming to earth is like the boy that leaves home and loses his inheritance. In leading up to this parable, Jesus tells us how much the heavens rejoice over one soul who is lost, then found, demonstrated in the story by the Father waiting for his returning son with the ring and robe that represent his former glory.   Both Jewish and Christian accounts talk about a time before we came to earth.[1] In the Acts of Thomas[2], a very similar story is told in The Pearl  showing how the theme of coming to earth as a boy leaving home[3]  was understood by his listeners.

     In the Pearl there is also a youth ready for his journey to come to earth to prove himself, a robe representing his pre-existent glory is removed, in other places it is couples with a loss of memory of his former state, a veil of forgetfulness[4] is imposed so the test will be complete before he comes to earth to look for his pearl of great price.[5]

Below is a comparison of the two stories to show the similarities. (The Pearl: starting in verse 20, is taken from, Hennecke-Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha vol 2 pp.498-503) Luke is taken from the King James.

 

    Luke ch. 15                                                                             Pearl

 11. And he said, A certain man had two sons:                     1-2: In my first primeval childhood I was nurtured in                         12. And the younger of them said to his Father,                          the royal house of my Father with loving care… [6]

    Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth              11. And they made a Covenant with me, and wrote in my

   to me. And he divided unto them his living.                             heart lest I go astray.                                        

13. And not many Days after the younger son                      20 I went down into Egypt                                     

     Gathered all together and took his journey into              32. And they dealt with me treacherously.

    a far country, and there wasted his substance                       and gave me to eat of their food.

   with riotous living.                                                             33. And I forgot that I was a kings son and served their

14.And when he had spent all, there arose a might                    king.

   Famine in that land; and he began to be in want.              35. And because of the heaviness of their [food]

16. And he would fain have filled his belly with the                  I fell into a deep sleep.

    Husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave                 36. [And all this] that befell me.

   unto him.                                                                                  My parents observed and were grieved for me

17. And when he came to himself, he said, How many           40. And they wrote to me a letter. 

     hired servant of my father’s have bread enough               43. [Awake] and rise up from thy sleep,…

   and to spare, and I perish with Hunger!                            44. Remember that thou art a son of kings.

18. I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto            46. Remember thy splendid robe.

     Him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and               47. That thou mayest put them on…

    before thee,                                                                          48. And thou with thy brother, our crown prince,

19. And am no more worthy to be called thy son:                       [be heir] in our kingdom.

    make me as one of thy hired servants.                                 56. I remembered that I was a son of kings…

20. And he arose, and came to his father.                               65. As with its voice it had awakened [me]…

     But when he was yet a great way off, his father                 68. And [drawing] me with its love.

    saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and                      72. And my splendid robe which I had taken off…

   fell on his neck, and kissed him.                                           98. I clothed myself with it…

21. And the son said unto him, Father, I have                         99. I bowed my head and worshipped

    Sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and                            the splendor of the father [who] had sent

   am no more worthy to be called thy son.                                    [the robe] to me.

22. But the father said to his servants, Bring                         102. For he rejoiced over me and received me,

     forth the best robe, and put it on him; and                                And I was him in his kingdom.

    put a ring on his hand, and  shoes on his feet:                   103. And with sound [of the organ]

23. And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it,                              All his servants praise him.

     And let us eat, and be merry:                     

                                                            

 

 




[1] Jeremiah 1:5; Job 38:7; Eccl.12:7; John 3:13; Heb12:9; Freedman and Simon, Midrash Rabbah Vol.1:59 (Gen.R. 8:7);  R.H. Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Vol.2:444 fn.5; James Hastings, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics Vol.10 pp.235-240; Babylonian Talmud, Yebamoth 62a (see end of tractate for "Guf" where souls are kept before coming to earth); Hamerton-Kelly, Pre-Existence, Wisdom & The Son of Man; Terryl L.Givens, When Souls Had Wings, Oxford; Joseph F. McConkie in Apocryphal Writings and the Latter-day Saints ed.C.Wilfred Giggs
[2] Edgar Hennecke and Wilhelm Schneemelcher, trans. R. McL Wilson,  New Testament Apocrypha vol 2 pp.498-503
[3] Acts 17:28-29; Romans 8:16-18 (Talking about us being sons of God)
[4] Barnstone, The Other Bible,pp.28; the Apocryphon of John (II, 1) 22:20-30; 23:1-10, in James Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library, pp.111 (NHL)
[5] Midrash Tanchuma, Shemos II, Pekudei 3 by Rabbi Avraham Davis, pp.404-405, 409-413; The account is also in Barnstone, The Other Bible,pp.26-28 and Ginzberg. Legends of the Jews vol.1. In the six-day of creation; Pistis Sophia, by Mead pp.278  
[6] Verse one is taken from Hugh Nibley, Appendix III in Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: Egyptian Endowment, pp.267-272