Major Trends in Rabbinic Cosmology

Hekhalot Literature in Context

Between Byzantium and Babylonia

Edited by

Ra‘anan Boustan, Martha Himmelfarb, and Peter Schäfer

Mohr Siebeck

Digitaler Sonderdruck des Autors mit Genehmigung des Verlages

Ra‘anan Boustan, born 1971; 2004 PhD; Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Martha Himmelfarb, born 1952; 1981 PhD; since 2007 William H. Danforth Professor of Reli-gion at Princeton University.

Peter Schäfer, born 1943; 1968 PhD; since 1998 Ronald O. Perelman Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of Religion at Princeton University; since 2005 Director of Princeton’s Program in Judaic Studies.

ISBN 978-3-16-152575-9 ISSN 0721-8753 (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism)

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© 2013 by Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, Germany. www.mohr.de

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Table of Contents

Achnowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . V

Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IX

Introduction: Hekhalot Literature at the Intersections of Jewish Regional CulturesRa‘anan Boustan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XI

Section IThe Formation of Hekhalot Literature:

Linguistic, Literary, and Cultural Contexts

1. The Language of Hekhalot Literature: Preliminary ObservationsNoam Mizrahi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2. Metatron in BabyloniaPeter Schäfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

3. Hekhalot and Piyyut: From Byzantium to Babylonia and BackMichael D. Swartz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

4. The Emperor’s Many Bodies: The Demise of Emperor Lupinus RevisitedAlexei Sivertsev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

5. Jewish Mysticism in Byzantium: The Transformation of Merkavah Mysticism in 3 EnochKlaus Herrmann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

6. Between 3 Enoch and Bavli Hagigah: Heresiology and Orthopraxy in the Ascent of Elisha ben AbuyahDavid M. Grossberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

7. Hekhalot Literature, the Babylonian Academies, and the tanna’imMoulie Vidas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141


VIII Table of Contents

Section IIThe Transmission and Reception of Hekhalot Literature:

Toward the Middle Ages

8. The Hekhalot GenizahPeter Schäfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

9. Observations on the Transmission of Hekhalot Literature in the Cairo GenizahGideon Bohak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

10. A Prolegomenon to the Study of Hekhalot Traditions in European PiyyutOphir Münz-Manor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231

Section IIIEarly Jewish Mysticism in Comparative Perspective:

Themes and Patterns

11. Major Trends in Rabbinic CosmologyReimund Leicht . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

12. Women and Gender in the Hekhalot LiteratureRebecca Lesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279

13. “What is Below?”Mysteries of Leviathan in the Early Jewish Accounts and Mishnah Hagigah 2:1Andrei A. Orlov . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313

14. Rites of Passage in Magic and MysticismMichael Meerson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

15. Rethinking (Jewish-)Christian Evidence for Jewish MysticismAnnette Yoshiko Reed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379

Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411

Index of Primary Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413Index of Proper Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429Index of Modern Scholars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432


Section III

Early Jewish Mysticism in Comparative Perspective: Themes and Patterns


11

Major Trends in Rabbinic Cosmology

Reimund Leicht

Cosmology was not a major concern of the Jews in antiquity, and not a single Jewish work from the pre-Gaonic period devoted exclusively to the description of the world has come down to us. Accordingly, modern scholars became interested in Jewish cosmologies mostly within the context of two other intellectual strands, apocalyptic (for the late Second Temple period) and early Jewish mysticism and Hekhalot literature (for rabbinic Judaism).1 In both strands, however, the place of cosmology is precarious. Although a certain interest in the structure of the world as a whole can be discovered in many apocalyptic texts (especially the so-called ascent apocalypses) and in Hekhalot literature, in neither of these textual corpora is cosmological thinking predominant. Cosmology appears to be an epiphenom-enon of other intellectual developments and religious strands in ancient Judaism rather than a phenomenon of its own.

This situation is mirrored by modern research. Only a relatively small number of modern studies devoted to Jewish cosmologies has been published during the last five decades. In more recent years, however, a slowly growing interest in this topic can be discerned, and it has yielded considerable progress in our under-standing of the relevant sources. Whereas earlier studies on Jewish cosmology often tried to reconstruct a coherent picture of how Jews in antiquity imagined the world as a whole, more recent studies tend to pay attention to the diversity of cosmological models and motifs.

Hans Bietenhard’s study of the celestial realms in Judaism and early Chris-tianity published in the early 1950s can be seen not only as the beginning of systematic interest in Jewish ideas about the cosmos but also as a paradigm for the “synthetic” approach.2 His book tried to put together a great mosaic out of pieces gleaned from Jewish literature of the Second Temple period and rabbinic literature. Published two decades later, Hans-Friedrich Weiss’s book on cos-mology in ancient Hellenistic and Palestinian Judaism focuses on more specific

1 On the special case of Philo’s contribution to Jewish cosmology see below.2 Hans Bietenhard, Die himmlische Welt im Urchristentum und Spätjudentum (Tübingen:

Mohr Siebeck, 1951).


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aspects than Bietenhard did and discusses the concepts of creatio ex nihilo and of possible mediators in the process of creation (“Schöpfungsmittler”), mainly in the writings of Philo and in Palestinian Judaism. His main result is the thesis that the former deeply influenced the latter.3

A different approach was adopted by Gad Ben-Ami Sarfatti, the only linguist with a special interest in the history of sciences among the scholars who have dealt with Jewish cosmology so far. In his 1965 article on “talmudic cosmogra-phy” he provides a detailed analysis of Jewish sources from late antiquity and compares them to sources from the ancient Near East and the Hellenistic world.4 His survey reveals the extent to which Jewish concepts about the cosmos lagged behind the scientific standards of the Hellenistic world in late antiquity and the degree to which Jewish sources reproduce ancient oriental models. Nicolas Sed’s La mystique cosmologique juive is largely informed by religious concepts.5 Its author, who stresses more than his predecessors the fact that a comprehensive reconstruction of rabbinic cosmology encounters insurmountable difficulties,6 is mainly interested in the description of Jewish “cosmological mysticism” – a brand of esotericism that expresses itself in forms of cosmic symbolism.7

In two other studies the interest in Jewish cosmology originates more in the attempt to better understand various aspects of Jewish literature in the Second Temple period. Martha Himmelfarb’s Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses analyzes the changing attitudes towards the secrets of nature, pri-meval history, and the order of the cosmos in the ascent apocalypses (especially 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, and 3 Baruch). She points out that the earlier strata of this literature reveal a more positive interest in nature, whereas later on “nature falls out of favor as a subject of revelation in the apocalypses and the texts descended from them.”8

One of the most comprehensive descriptions of Jewish images of the heavenly realm, however, was published a decade ago by J. Edward Wright.9 In his Early History of Heaven he discusses Jewish and Christian descriptions of the celestial realms within a broad cultural context ranging from the ancient Near East and Egypt to early Islam. Wright stresses perhaps more than any of his predecessors the diversity of models that prevailed in ancient Jewish and Christian world

3 Hans-Friedrich Weiss, Untersuchungen zu Kosmologie des hellenistischen und palästinischen Judentums (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1966).

4 Gad Sarfatti, “Talmudic Cosmography” [in Hebrew], Tarbiz 35 (1965–66): 137–48.5 Nicolas Sed, La mystique cosmologique juive (Paris: Éditions de l’École des Hautes Études

en Sciences Sociales, 1981).6 Sed, La mystique cosmologique juive, 9.7 Sed, La mystique cosmologique juive, 9.8 Martha Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (New York;

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 94.9 J. Edward Wright, The Early History of Heaven (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2000).


Major Trends in Rabbinic Cosmology 247

images. However, his somewhat dichotomic or typological distinction between “single heaven cosmographies,” which are to be seen as conservative continua-tions of more ancient models,10 and “multiple heaven cosmographies” adopted in one way or another from Greco-Roman models,11 probably requires more discussion and some qualification. These questions notwithstanding, Wright’s book is a very valuable tool for its extremely rich description of the variety of Jewish and Christian sources that have survived from late antiquity.

Cosmological issues in rabbinic thought have generally attracted less atten-tion than those of the later Second Temple period. Ephraim E. Urbach devotes a whole chapter to the “Work of Creation” in his classic The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs,12 in which he tries to reconstruct the rabbinic doctrines about cre-ation. Urbach’s lengthy interpretation revolves around two major poles. One is the assumption that foreign influence prompted the esoteric character of ma‘aseh vereshit speculations in the tannaitic period, which was weakened in the amoraic period. The second, even more dominant, pole is the use of Gnostic concepts as a negative foil for almost all rabbinic statements about creation, prime matter, angelic mediators, time etc.13 Urbach’s description of rabbinic speculations about the “Work of Creation” thus tries to make the case for the assumption that the Sages’ main concern was to limit the influence of foreign ideas (Gnostic, Iranian, or Hellenistic, for that matter) on Judaism, and that they unshakably adhered to the belief in divine creation as a fundamental principle of faith.14 Interestingly enough, one looks in vain for a more detailed discussion of rabbinic ideas about the structure of the cosmos in Urbach’s book.

Some of Urbach’s concepts and ideas about Jewish cosmology were subse-quently questioned by Alon Goshen-Gottstein.15 In an analysis of m. Hag. 2:1 Goshen-Gottstein argues that ma‘aseh vereshit originally had little in common

10 Wright, Early History of Heaven, 137–38.11 Wright, Early History of Heaven, 183.12 Ephraim E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, trans. I. Abrahams (Jerusalem:

Magnes, 1975), 184–213.13 The strong influence of Gnosticism as a major factor in the intellectual and religious history

of Late Antiquity is also prominent in other scholarly works of the twentieth century such as Alexander Altmann, “Gnostic Themes in Rabbinic Cosmology,” in Essay Presented to J. H. Hertz, ed. Isidore Epstein and Cecil Roth (London: Goldston, 1942), 19–32; Altmann, “The Gnostic Background of the Rabbinic Adam Legends,” JQR New Series 35 (1944/45), 371–91; Bietenhard, Die himmlische Welt, 257–66; S. Lieberman, Tosefta Ki-Fshutah. A Comprehensive Commentary on the Tosefta, vol. 5 (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1962), 1286–96 (on t. Hag. 2:1–7); and Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnos-ticism (Leiden: Brill, 1977).

14 Urbach, The Sages, 213.15 Alon Goshen-Gottstein, “Is Ma‘aseh Bereshit Part of Ancient Jewish Mysticism?” JJTP 4

(1995): 185–201; see also Goshen-Gottstein, “Mitos Ma‘aseh Bereshit be-Sifrut ha-Amora’it,” Eshel Beer Sheva‘ 4 (1996): 58–77.


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with merkavah speculations, with which it became associated later on. Moreover, he shows that there is no evidence that ma‘aseh vereshit was an esoteric discipline.

In two recent papers and his book on the Origins of Jewish Mysticism, Peter Schäfer tackles similar questions related to Jewish cosmology. In a detailed inter-pretation of the cosmological material found in b. Hag. 12b–13a, he shows that cosmological ideas were integrated into a distinctly theological context, and that the rabbis considered cosmology to be a most “dangerous science” that “must be condemned if it serves the despicable purpose of ascending to God in his highest heaven.”16 In a later analysis of the early Geonic treatise Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit he comes to the conclusion that the cosmological model of this work is based upon the central idea of a system of heavens and earths mirroring one another,17 and that this model may reveal, perhaps for the first time in Jewish thought, an echo of acquaintance with the Ptolemaic cosmos.18

The growing interest in the diversity of cosmology in rabbinic Judaism has also triggered discussion about the relation between rabbinic Judaism and sci-ence in general. Following the discussion between Jacob Neusner19 and Mena-hem Fisch20 about rabbinic Judaism’s attitude towards science, and studies like Philip S. Alexander’s “Enoch and the Beginnings of Jewish Interest in Natural Sciences,”21 Annette Yoshiko Reed has recently tackled the question whether the common (largely dichotomic) concepts of “science” and “religion” are appro-priate terms for a historical interpretation of the sources, and whether we need to develop more refined conceptual tools if we wish to understand the complex and changing perceptions of “science” in Second Temple and rabbinic Judaism.22

Thus, even though Jewish cosmology is still not a central concern in Jewish Studies, recent research shows a growing interest in the topic and its highly elusive character. The study of Jewish cosmologies requires well thought out methodological approaches if one wishes to achieve sound results. Whereas

16 Peter Schäfer, “From Cosmology to Theology: The Rabbinic Appropriation of Apocalyptic Cosmology,” in Creation and Re-Creation in Jewish Thought: Festschrift in Honor of Joseph Dan on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Rachel Elior and Peter Schäfer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 39–58, at 58; cf. also Schäfer, The Origins of Jewish Mysticism (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 222–42.

17 Peter Schäfer, “In Heaven as It Is in Hell: The Cosmology of Sefer Rabbah di-Bereshit,” in Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions, ed. Ra‘anan Boustan and An-nette Yoshiko Reed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 233–74.

18 Schäfer, “In Heaven as It Is in Hell,” 270.19 See, e. g., Jacob Neusner, “Why No Science in Judaism?” Shofar 6 (1988): 45–71. 20 Menahem Fisch, Rational Rabbis: Science and Talmudic Culture (Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1997). 21 Philip S. Alexander, “Enoch and the Beginnings of Jewish Interest in Natural Science,”

in The Wisdom Texts from Qumran and the Development of Sapiential Thought, ed. Charlotte Hempel, Armin Lange, and Hermann Lichtenberger (Leuven: Peters, 2002), 223–44.

22 Annette Yoshiko Reed, “Was there science in ancient Judaism? Historical and cross-cultural reflections on ‘religion’ and ‘science,’” SR 36 (2007): 461–95.



Bietenhard’s study was still based upon the rather optimistic assumption that it is possible to reconstruct from the sources a coherent image of what Jews in late antiquity thought about the world, more recent research underlines, on a historical scale, the diversity and change in the Jewish cosmological models, and it stresses, on a methodological scale, the need for more precise conceptual tools.

It is the purpose of this paper to contribute to this trend of research, and to discuss once again some of the most important rabbinic sources for Jewish cos-mological thinking. The basic assumption of this re-reading of these well-known and oft-studied sources from the Mishnah, Tosefta, Yerushalmi, Genesis Rabbah, the Bavli, and treatises of the Geonic period is that they reveal an even greater variety of different trends and approaches to cosmology than hitherto assumed. There is not one Jewish or rabbinic cosmology. Underneath the surface of the rabbinic works lie hidden fragments of cosmological discussions held within rabbinic Judaism, between different segments of Jewish culture, or between Jews and non-Jews. The selectivity of the redaction and the reorganization of the material in rabbinic literature sometimes make it difficult to fully reconstruct the historical and cultural background of these cosmological discussions, but a careful analytical approach to these texts will both avoid the pitfalls of premature syntheses about what “rabbinic cosmology” should look like and lead to a more precise understanding of the complexity of the variegated material from Palestine (Mishnah, Tosefta, Yerushalmi, and Genesis Rabbah), Babylonia (the Bavli), the so-called cosmological treatises of the Geonic period (Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit, Midrash Konen), and finally Hekhalot literature.

The Foundations: Ma‘aseh Vereshit and Cosmology in the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Yerushalmi

The natural starting point for any study of rabbinic cosmology is m. Hag. 2:1. The primary concern of this text is to restrict the study and/or public exposition of three problematic subjects: illicit sexual relations (‘arayot) as described in Lev 18 and 20; “cosmology” (ma‘aseh vereshit), based upon Gen 1; and speculations about the godhead and the divine realm (merkavah), apparently connected with Ezek 1.

One does not expound the ‘arayot before three,nor ma‘aseh vereshit before two,nor merkavah before one,unless he is wise and has understanding.Whoever looks at four matters,it would have been better for him not to have come into this world:what is above, what is below, what is in front and what is behind.And whoever has no regard for the honor of his creator,it would have been better for him not to have come into this world.


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As in many other cases, the laconic character of this text leaves modern inter-preters with numerous riddles.23 One of the most controversial issues is the exact meaning of the term ma‘aseh vereshit and its relation to merkavah. Whereas earlier scholars took it for granted that these terms must refer to some kind of fully developed esoteric lore about the godhead (ma‘aseh merkavah) and creation and structure of the world (ma‘aseh vereshit), P. Schäfer has convincingly argued that the Mishnah probably refers to nothing more than the public exposition of the three above mentioned chapters from the Hebrew Bible.24 The scarcity of evi-dence for the presumed esoteric speculation enhances this interpretation. Yet the clear-cut opposition between an interpretation of ma‘aseh vereshit and merkavah as full-fledged esoteric traditions on the one hand and as simple interpretation of the biblical text on the other might lose a bit of its acuteness if one takes into consideration that the terms may well have referred originally primarily to the exposition of the biblical texts but have evolved into speculation that went be-yond the mere exposition.

Whatever the exact meaning of the terms, it is quite obvious that the mishnaic text about the study of ‘arayot, ma‘aseh vereshit, and merkavah is patched together from different traditions and partly conflicting concepts. Whereas the first sen-tence of the halakhah deals with a purely quantitative restriction of the exposi-tion of certain topics (“not three, not two, not one unless …” etc.), the Mishnah supplements this idea with two others, which envisage qualitative restrictions regarding the content of the teachings involved (“above, below, in front, behind”; teachings affecting the “creator’s honor”). It seems highly probable that the redac-tor added the first of these traditions to supplement the restriction concerning the study of ma‘aseh vereshit, whereas the second refers to the study of merkavah. He thus created a twofold, quantitative and qualitative, restriction for the study of both topics.25 Nothing indicates, however, that any of the traditions were orig-inally designed for the present context, even if they now appear as appropriate elaborations of the regulations about the exposition and study of ma‘aseh vereshit and merkavah. Accordingly, there is no conclusive evidence that they originally had this meaning rather than expressing a more general concern about human intellectual hubris or the lack of religious decency. In other words, whereas the final redaction attempts to create two distinct exegetical disciplines, the study of which needs to be restricted both quantitatively and qualitatively, the traditions

23 E.g., Goshen Gottstein, “Is Ma‘aseh Bereshit Part of Ancient Jewish Mysticism?”24 Cf. Schäfer, Origins of Jewish Mysticism, 210–13. The context of the injunctions against the

public exposition of certain biblical texts becomes obvious in t. Meg. 3:31–41.25 Goshen Gottstein, “Is Ma‘aseh Bereshit Part of Ancient Jewish Mysticism?” 190–95, argues

that the first supplement (“Whoever looks at four matters …”) refers in the Mishnah to the merkavah and was connected with ma‘aseh vereshit in the Tosefta only. I do not find this inter-pretation fully convincing, although it is in accordance with some of the interpretations found in rabbinic literature.



themselves may well have originated in totally different contexts. Therefore, little can be said about the relevance of these traditions for the reconstruction of early rabbinic cosmologies prior to the redaction of the Mishnah. What can be said, however, is that the redactional move of the Mishnah indicates that the redactors already had a more complex problem in mind than merely the problem of the public exposition of Gen 1 and Ezek 1.

Whereas the Mishnah largely keeps us in the dark about the exact meaning and contents of the ma‘aseh vereshit speculations, t. Hag. 2:1–7 allows itself to become a bit more explicit and fleshes out the dry bones of the material found in m. Hag. 2:1. The backbone is, once again, the mishnaic restriction of study of ‘arayot, ma‘aseh vereshit, and merkavah, although it stresses the positive licence to study these topics in front of quantitatively limited audiences (“but one does expound it in front of two” etc.). The Tosefta then elaborates upon the two latter subjects while leaving aside the study of the illicit sexual relations (‘arayot). It does so, however, in an inverted order: The rest of halakhot 1–6 provides more details about the study of the merkavah, whereas halakhot 6–7 deal with ma‘aseh vereshit. The sections reveal a parallel structure: They begin with an aggadah (ma‘aseh) about rabbis who studied merkavah and ma‘aseh vereshit respectively (R. Yohanan b. Zakai–R. Elazar b. Arakh and R. Joshua–Ben Zoma) followed by other related material.

If we leave aside the merkavah part of the text, one can easily discern that the ma‘aseh about R. Joshua and Ben Zoma in halakhah 7 is only loosely connected to the initial discussion about the quantitative restriction for the study of ma‘aseh vereshit. The redactor has not even bothered to create a unified terminology (dorshin vs. tsofeh/mistakkel) since he is exclusively interested in the qualitative side of the problem, i.e., the content of Ben Zoma’s speculation. Quite surprising-ly, this content is described in terms of a visual experience,26 although his actual occupation seems to have been a more exegetical one.27 Based upon an interpre-tation of Gen 1:2, Ben Zoma speculates about the state of the cosmos prior to the creation of light, obviously an activity not approved of by Rabbi Joshua. This observation corroborates the assumption that there exists a close connection between the speculative exegesis of Gen 1 and the restrictions for the public exposition of ma‘aseh vereshit. But more than that, the choice of this piece also helps the redactor to prepare the grounds for the exposition of the central idea of the following tradition, i.e., the statement that “whoever looks at four matters,

26 MS Vienna has tsofeh and MS Erfurt mistakkel.27 It is difficult to decide how much of the ma‘aseh about Ben Zoma belongs to the original

tradition and how much of it are accretions effected by the redactional integration into the Tosefta. The hard core of the text is the exegesis of Gen 1:2 with the help of Deut 32:11. Whether this tradition ever existed independently of the narrative embellishment found here is impossi-ble to say. At any rate, Ben Zoma’s explicit self-designation as somebody dealing with ma‘aseh vereshit could well be the outcome of an attempt to terminologically connect the ma‘aseh with the halakhah in 2:1.


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it would have been better for him not to have come to this world: what is above, what is below, what is in front and what is behind.” This dictum, which again has a direct parallel in the Mishnah, is interpreted by the Tosefta in a topographical and a temporal sense. Consequently, Ben Zoma’s meditations about the state of upper and lower waters prior to the creation of light now clearly fall under the prohibition of speculating about the primordial state of the world in general. On the other hand, it is obvious that this result derives from the tendentious usage of one specific piece of ma‘aseh vereshit exegesis, which does not provide us with any conclusive evidence that Ben Zoma’s exegesis was in any way representative for the form and/or contents of the early rabbinic discourse about ma‘aseh vereshit in general.

An interesting further elaboration of similar ideas and concepts can be found in the gemara of y. Hag. 2:1 (77a–d). The structure of this sugya is rather com-plex. After a very brief discussion about ‘arayot, there follows a short section about ma‘aseh vereshit (77a) and a much longer one about merkavah (77a–d). The distribution of the material to each of these sections, however, is somewhat surprising. One example is the ma‘aseh about Ben Zoma and R. Joshua attested also in the Tosefta. In the Yerushalmi it forms part of the material related to the merkavah (77a–b) and not to ma‘aseh vereshit–even though the term ma‘aseh vereshit is preserved in the text itself. Much of the material assembled at the end of the merkavah section of the sugya also seems to belong thematically to the discussions about ma‘aseh vereshit rather than merkavah (77c–d).

It seems rather unlikely, however, that this surprising reorganization of the material in the Yerushalmi is the outcome of inattentiveness on the part of the redactor(s). It seems rather that it has grown out of a different concept of what the injunctions against the public exposition of ma‘aseh vereshit and merkavah actually refer to. The thread unifying the choice of the material in the merkavah section is that of the dangers inherent in unrestricted speculation about cre-ation. These, the Yerushalmi believes, might affect the creator’s honor. Subjects closely connected to this problem are value judgments about the matter out of which God created the world and questions such as the relative value of heaven and earth.28 Accordingly, the final redaction of the Yerushalmi considers much of the discussion about creation as belonging to the “theological” (merkavah) realm rather than to “cosmology.”29 Conversely, and as a consequence of this, “cosmology,” or ma‘aseh vereshit in the proper sense of the word, is restricted by

28 It is interesting to see that for that reason the ma‘aseh vereshit argument that in the begin-ning the world was “water within water” (77a) can reappear in the merkavah discussion about the creator’s honor in 77c: “Whoever says that in the beginning the world consisted of water within water does damage [to God’s honor].”

29 Much of the material used at the end of the merkavah section of y. Hag. 2:1 (77c–d) reap-pears in Gen. Rab. 1–12. On the relation between the Talmud and Genesis Rabbah, see below.



the Talmud Yerushalmi to theories about the genesis and physical structure of the world and does not include speculation about the divine acts of creation.

The ma‘aseh vereshit section of y. Hag. 2:1 (77a) opens with a tradition that attributes the restriction imposed on the public exposition of this subject to R. Aqiva whereas R. Ishmael approved of it, at least under certain conditions. The general acceptance of R.Ishmael’s more lenient approach to ma‘aseh vereshit can be inferred from the fact that R. Judah bar Pazzi taught on this subject. The starting point for the Yerushalmi’s exposition of cosmology thus becomes one of Judah bar Pazzi’s teachings about the genesis of the basic constituents of the world:

Rabbi Judah bar Pazzi expounded:

“In the beginning the world consisted of water within water.” What is the proof? And the Spirit (ruaḥ) of God hovered over the face of the waters (Gen 1:2). Then he made it snow. He casts forth his ice like morsels (Ps 147:17). Then he made it earth. For to the snow he says: ‘Become earth’ (Job 37:6).

And the earth rests on water. To him who spread out the earth on the water (Ps 136:6). And the water rests on the mountains. The water stood on the mountains (Ps 104:6). And the mountains rest on the air/wind (ruaḥ). For behold, he forms the mountains and he creates the wind (Amos 4:13). And the air/wind (ruaḥ) is suspended upon the whirlwind (ruaḥ se‘arah). The whirlwind fulfills his command (Ps 148:8).

And the Holy One, blessed be he, made the whirlwind like a sort of amulet hanging on his arm, as it is said:And underneath the arms – the world (Deut 33:27).

Judah bar Pazzi’s ma‘aseh vereshit theory consists of three parts. First, he de-scribes the genesis or rather divine creation (‘asah) of one of the basic elements of the cosmos, earth, which was made out of water through an intermediary stage of snow. The second, “cosmological,” part deals with the fixed structure of the world, according to which the earth rests (‘omed) upon water, and the water rests on air/wind (ruaḥ). The air/wind is then somehow suspended (teluyyah) upon a whirlwind. Lastly, in the “theological” part of the text, it is stated that the whirlwind resembles an amulet, which is hanging on God’s arm.

Judah bar Pazzi’s cosmology is a good example of the difficulties inherent in the interpretation of rabbinic texts on cosmology. How should one do justice to the complexity of the rabbinic discussion without over-interpreting the textual evidence? If we consider, for example, Nicolas Sed’s interpretation of Judah bar


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Pazzi’s model of the cosmos,30 it becomes clear that the spherical model Sed proposes is far from a necessary conclusion from the textual evidence:

From: Nicolas Sed, La mystique cosmologique juive (Paris: Éditions de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1981), 22.

Nothing in y. Hag. 2:1 speaks about a concentric or spherical structure of the cosmos. It seems rather that Sed was simply unable to free himself from the tacit assumption that rabbinic cosmologies must have resembled in one way or another the basic pattern of the Ptolemaic cosmos.

Alternatively, it seems much closer to the textual evidence to imagine Judah bar Pazzi’s cosmos as consisting of four different layers (earth, water, mountains, air/wind), one standing (‘omed) upon the other. These layers as a whole are then suspended (talui) on the whirlwind, which is said to possess the form of an ancient amulet.31

If this interpretation of Judah bar Pazzi’s cosmos is basically correct, it cor-roborates in a way the common assumption that rabbinic literature, which–it must not be forgotten–came into being in a region deeply influenced by Helle-nistic culture, displays a hopelessly antiquated cosmological worldview. Judah bar Pazzi’s world indeed seems to resemble ancient oriental models rather than contemporary Greek science.

30 Sed, La mystique cosmologique juive, 20–24.31 For a Jewish metal amulet from late ancient Palestine, see Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked,

Amulets and Magic Bowls (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1985), plate 1.



On the other hand, certain connections with ideas current in the Hellenistic world cannot be denied, even if they were not necessarily the scientific dernier cri of that period. The transformation of water into snow and earth, for example, is reminiscent of the discussions about primordial stuff, which occupied Greek cosmological thinking since the pre-Socratics. Thales is famous for propounding a cosmology according to which water was the basic element and the earth is floating on water like a log.32 The transformation of one element into another is discussed by Anaximenes, who further develops Anaximander’s ideas about the Indefinite (apeiron) and thought that air can be transformed into other substances by rarefaction and condensation. Similar to the present model, he believed that the whole earth rests upon air.33 Another point of contact is the motif of the amulet-like whirlwind (ruaḥ se‘arah), which surrounds the world. This is reminiscent of ancient theories about the vortex holding the earth found in Anaximander, Democritus, and others.34

32 Aristotle, Cael. B13, 294a28, and Metaph. A3, 983b6; cf. Geoffrey S. Kirk, John E. Raven, and Malcolm Schofield, eds., The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 1983), 88–95; Jonathan Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers (London: Routledge, 1982), 5–13.

33 Aristotle, Metaph. A3, 984a5; Theophrastus, in Simplicius, Commentaria in Physicam 24,26; Hippolytus, Haer. I, 7, 1; cf. Kirk et al., Presocratic Philosophers, 144–58; Barnes, Presocratic Philosophers, 38–56. Cf. also the parody of this idea in Aristophanes, Nub. 264.

34 Hippolytus, Haer., I, 6, 2; Aristotle, Phys. Θ1, 295a7; Aristotle, Cael. B13, 295a7; Kirk et al., Presocratic Philosophers, 126–28. For a popular reception of this idea in classical Athens, see also Aristophanes, Nub. 379.

The Cosmos according to y. Hag. 2:1 (77a) (diagram: © Susan Schepe-Leicht / www.susan-schepe.de)


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In spite of these similarities, the overlapping must not be overemphasized: Nothing indicates that the Yerushalmi in fact advocates any kind of strict ma-terial monism. Prima facie it only makes an attempt to describe the genesis of the earth out of water – a question that is bound to arise from a close reading of Gen 1:2. Moreover, unlike in the Greek sources, the general outlook of Judah bar Pazzi’s cosmolgy is clearly creationist and theistic. But even if this is the case, one has to admit that the cosmological ideas displayed in the Yerushalmi do not have any textual foundation in the biblical text, nor do they reflect ideas known from earlier Jewish cosmologies of the Second Temple period (Paul, 2 Enoch, or 3 Baruch). Therefore, it is rather unlikely that this rabbinic speculation about the creation of the world came into being without any external influence of Greek natural philosophy.

The interpretation of the following passage yields similar results. Judah bar Pazzi’s cosmological model is followed by a midrashic section connected to Amos 4:13, one of the verses used in the preceding passage. These lines have no direct relevance for the cosmological issues discussed before and obviously are found there only because the redactor redesigned an earlier source. At its end, however, he leads the reader back to a tradition associated with R. Haggai and R. Yabets according to which the word tohu (Gen 1:2) was interpreted in Seppho-ris as “darkness and gloomy place.” The second, more detailed tradition added here is an aggadah about Hadrian and Aquilas the proselyte:

Rabbi Judah bar Pazzi said in the name of Rabbi Yosse b. Judah:

Hadrian asked the proselyte Aquilas: “Is it true that you say that the world stands on wind/air (ruḥa)?” He said to him: “Yes!” Hadrian asked him: “How will you prove this to me?” Aquilas said to him: “Bring me young camels!” He brought him young camels. He loaded and raised them up. He made them sink down, took them, and strangled them. Then he said to him (Hadrian): “See your camels, raise them up!” Hadrian said to him: “After you have strangled them?!” He said to him: “What do they lack except that the wind/air (ruḥa) has gone out of them?”

The narrative setting of this aggadah makes it clear from the outset that the cosmological discussion between Hadrian and Aquilas is part of an encounter between Jewish and non-Jewish discourses. It remains uncertain from where Hadrian should have heard about Jewish cosmology, but it seems to have been the central position of ruaḥ within it that startled him. Concomitantly, it was this element that allowed the redactor of the Talmud to insert this piece at this place after the midrash on Amos 4:13.



The central position of ruaḥ (either in the sense of “spirit” or “wind/air”) in the following cosmological argument by Aquilas may reflect something that was conceived as specifically Jewish,35 but nothing indicates that the theory defended by Aquilas was developed directly from biblical foundations.36 Accordingly, if one tries to look for possible external sources for Aquilas’ argument, at least two paral-lels lend themselves for a comparison. The first is the Stoic concept of the pneuma. Based upon pre-Socratic traditions, the Stoics developed the idea that the cosmos is filled with a pneuma as an all-pervading substratum (sometimes identified with fire), which holds the world together and renders it into a continuous whole. At the same time, the pneuma fulfills the function of an active element in the world.37 Now, if ruaḥ stands for pneuma, the camel analogy would work perfectly as an illustration of Stoic ideas about the cosmic function of pneuma.

On the other hand, it is also possible that ruaḥ stands for air/wind rather than pneuma. If this is the case, the whole analogy would serve rather as a proof that air is indeed capable of sustaining the whole world if it rests upon it. Such a proof becomes necessary not only in cosmological models like that of Judah bar Pazzi,38 but also in those favored by Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, and Democritus, who be-lieved that the flatness of the earth is responsible for its standing still on the air.39 This, however, presupposes that air is not “nothing” but a corporeal substance. As Aristotle reports, Anaxagoras tried to prove this by stretching out water-skins and by cutting air off in clepsydras in order to demonstrate the resistance of air.40 Now, if this is indeed the broader context of the talmudic argument, the camel analogy could well be seen as a proof that ruaḥ (i.e., air), cut off in a closed body, is indeed capable of sustaining heavy weights– ultimately even the whole world.

It is, of course, utterly unlikely that the rabbis had direct access to any of the sources about Greek natural philosophy known to us today. If at all, they prob-ably got their information indirectly, presumably orally.41 On the other hand, if we compare the texts found in the Yerushalmi with the earlier rabbinic texts, one

35 Hadrian’s question seems to insinuate this: “Is it true that you [i.e. the Jews] say that the world stands on wind/air (ruḥa)?”

36 A possible point of connection could be the concept of God’s spirit in Gen 1:2.37 Cf. Samuel Sambursky, Physics of the Stoics (London: Routledge, 1959), 1–7.38 It goes without saying that if the camel analogy put forward by Aquilas indeed functions

in the present form as a proof for the physical conceivability of Judah bar Pazzi’s cosmos, this is the work of the redactors and does not necessarily reflect the original intention of this tradition.

39 Aristotle, Cael. B13, 294b13; cf. Kirk et al., Presocratic Philosophers, 153; Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy. Two Types of Argumentation in Early Greek Thought (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press 1966), 317–19.

40 Aristotle, Phys. Δ6, 213a22; cf. Kirk et al., Presocratic Philosophers, 359n1; Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy, 331–32.

41 The chronological gap between the pre-Socratic philosophers and rabbinic culture is less important than the problem of the cultural distance between rabbinic and Hellenistic culture. Many of the early Greek thinkers were still accessible and part of vivid discussions in Late An-tiquity, as can be learned from the numerous quotations in later authors, which are almost the only source for our knowledge of pre-Socratic philosophy.


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cannot deny that they reflect a new trend in Jewish discussions about cosmology. Instead of speculating about ma‘aseh vereshit exclusively within the context of biblical exegesis, the Yerushalmi suddenly propounds cosmological arguments that are at least reminiscent of ancient Greek natural philosophy, not only with respect to the adaptation of certain motifs but also in enhancing a new method-ological stance. For the first time in Jewish intellectual history we find sources in which neither tradition nor exegesis is the primary concern but the employment of “analogies”42 or “observational analogies,” as Karl R. Popper called them.43 Aq-uilas the Proselyte tries to defend a position considered “Jewish”44 with the help of an analogy drawn from a thought experiment. In direct contact with foreign cul-ture neither tradition nor exegesis but only this “experiment”45 and the analogical argument drawn from it could prove the truth of the Jewish ruaḥ-cosmology.46

To sum up, in comparison to the Mishnah and Tosefta, the Yerushalmi not only eases the restrictions imposed upon the exposition and study of ma‘aseh vereshit. It also redefines its contents, which no longer refer exclusively to dan-gerous exegetical speculation about Gen 1 but also to scientific discussions that reveal a delicate interplay between Judaism and motifs, ideas, and methods cur-rent in the surrounding non-Jewish culture.

New Horizons: Cosmology in Gen. Rab. 1–12

The interpretation and analysis of the cosmological traditions in Genesis Rabbah is a difficult undertaking. Whereas the Mishnah, Tosefta, and even Yerushalmi

42 The role of analogies in the development of scientific thinking in antiquity was discussed by Otto Regenbogen, “Eine Forschungsmethode antiker Naturwissenschaft,” Quellen und Stu-dien zur Geschichte der Mathematik 1, no. 2 (1930): 131–82; repr. in Kleine Schriften, ed. Franz Dirlmeier (München: Beck, 1961), 141–94; Hans Diller, “ΟΨΙΣ ΑΔΗΛΩΝ ΤΑ ΦΑΙΝΟΜΕΝΑ,” Hermes 67 (1932): 14–42; Heinrich Gomperz, “ ΟΨΙΣ ΑΔΗΛΩΝ ΤΑ ΦΑΙΝΟΜΕΝΑ,” Hermes 68 (1933): 341–43; W. Kranz, “Gleichnis und Vergleich in der frühgriechischen Philosophie,” Hermes 73 (1938): 99–122; Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy, 172–420; Barnes, Presocratic Philoso-phers, 52–56, 536–41.

43 Karl R. Popper. “Back to the Presocratics,” in Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1974), 136–65, on 138.

44 The “Jewish” character of the cosmology finds its expression in Hadrian’s initial question: “Is it true that you [i.e., you, the Jews!] say that the world stands on wind/air (ruḥa)?”

45 The scientific status of scientific investigation through analogy and its relation to the mod-ern concept of experiments has been a matter of dispute; see F. M. Cornford, Principium Sapien-tiae (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952), 5–6; Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy, 331–33.

46 Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy, argues that with Aristotle’s classification of analogical argu-ments as “rhetorical” and “persuasive” their weakness became apparent, especially if compared to the syllogistic method (418). On the other hand, he also points out that “whereas Aristotle is, in certain respects, more critical in his use of analogies than most of his predecessors, analogy remained an extremely important, indeed an indispensable, method of elucidating obscure phenomena in many fields of inquiry long after the fourth century” (420).



organize their traditions in close connection to one question, i.e., that of the pub-lic exposition of ‘arayot, ma‘aseh vereshit, and merkavah in public, the structure of the material in Genesis Rabbah is less rigid. Although scholars have argued that Genesis Rabbah offers a coherent reading of the story of creation,47 it often remains uncertain whether certain passages of the text need to be interpreted as reflecting persistent conceptual ideas of the redactor or those of his sources. As Hans-Jürgen Becker has convincingly shown in his comparative study of Genesis Rabbah and the Yerushalmi, the two works were produced independently of one another but rely upon shared earlier sources.48 Accordingly, it seems that at least in some cases it was these earlier collections no less than the redaction of Genesis Rabbah that produced a couple of thematic threads that can still be discerned in the final stage of the text.49 On the other hand, it will be seen that most of the cosmological ideas found in Genesis Rabbah can be integrated into a rather coherent picture.

Generally speaking, cosmological issues in the narrower sense of the word do not play a very important role in the final compilation of Genesis Rabbah, and they do not seem to have done so in the preceding collections. Similar to the Yerushalmi, where much of the ma‘aseh vereshit material can be found in “theological” contexts at the end of the merkavah section, most of the traditions in Gen. Rab. 1–12 dealing with cosmological issues do so from a “theological” viewpoint.50 Among the most important topics are God’s role as the creator of the universe,51 the function of the Torah in creation,52 the role of mediators,53 the ref-

47 Cf. Philip S. Alexander, “Pre-Emptive Exegesis: Genesis Rabba’s Reading of the Story of Creation,” JJS 43 (1992): 230–45, at 233; more recently also Peter Schäfer, “Bereshit Bara Elohim. Bereshit Rabba, Parashah 1, Reconsidered,” in Empsychoi Logoi: Religious Innovations in Antiq-uity. Studies in Honour of Pieter Willem van der Horst, ed. Alberdina Houtman, Albert de Jong, and Magda Misset-van de Weg (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 267–89, at 267: “the Midrash presents itself as a carefully crafted document, composed by a sophisticated editor, who uses a wide variety of available exegetical material dealing with creation.”

48 Hans-Jürgen Becker, Die Großen Rabbinischen Sammelwerke Palästinas (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 16–60.

49 Alexander, “Pre-Emptive Exegesis,” 233–34, argues that “the fact that the text is built up from small, essentially self-contained units does not mean that it can be read only atomistically. The units, whatever their origin, have been marshalled in a highly skilful way in order to create a sustained discourse on a limited repertory of theological themes.” The “theological themes” he singles out are the problem of the study of ma‘aseh vereshit (m. Hag. 2:1), Creation and Torah, and the Natural and the Moral Order. Alternatively, H.-J. Becker believes that Genesis Rabbah has incorporated a collection of texts dealing with the restriction of esoteric speculations, a collection of aggadot about esoteric speculation, speculative midrashim on the letters of the alphabet and a revised version of t. Ker. 4:15.

50 The majority of relevant traditions are found in the parashot 1–6, 10 and 12. The following analysis of the material gives examples and is not meant to be exhaustive.

51 Gen. Rab. 1:12–13, 2:3–4, 3:1, 4:1, 4:4, 5:1.52 Gen. Rab. 1:1, 1:4, 4:2.53 Gen. Rab. 1:3, 3:8–9.


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utation of dualistic ideas,54 the creation of ideal things prior to the creation of the physical world,55 the value of the elements used in the creation,56 and the status of heaven and earth.57 Parashah 6 contains material on astronomy and calendar reckoning, which has – as we will see later on – some relevance for cosmology, but numerous other sections like those which draw parallels between the creation story and later biblical history and the fate of the righteous and the wicked, wipe out all connection to it.58 Genesis Rabbah has also preserved some material that originates in the mishnaic and talmudic discussions about restrictions imposed on the study of ma‘aseh vereshit, but the midrash neither reveals any specific interest in defining the term as such,59 nor does it attempt to creatively develop ideas of its own about the scope of these teachings.60 Finally, there are only dim echoes of the existence of heretical opinions connected with ma‘aseh vereshit such as those identified with Ben Zoma in the Tosefta.61 Genesis Rabbah thus preserves material of different origin and character, but the process of redaction may sometimes have destroyed earlier redactional contexts and topics that were dominant in the earlier sources but were no longer an urgent concern at the time of the redaction of Genesis Rabbah.

These observations notwithstanding, Genesis Rabbah has preserved a number of very interesting pieces of cosmological speculation. The most interesting col-lection of such traditions is found in parashah 4, which deals with the creation of the firmament amidst the waters (Gen 1:6). In that respect, Gen. Rab. 4:1–5 seems to form a rather coherent unity, which attempts to describe and to explain the conspicuous role of water in the cosmos. In doing so, the midrash tries both to respect the authority of the biblical text and to take objective physical facts duly into consideration. After having stated that God’s power as creator is char-acterized by his ability to build a “palace” with a roof made out of water (Gen. Rab. 4:1), the midrash adds six different traditions that attempt to specify how the creation of the firmament out of water can best be imagined (4:2):And God said: Let there be a firmament etc. (Gen 1:6).

Our Rabbis said the following in the name of R. Hanina, while R. Phinehas and R. Jacob b. R. Bun said it in the name of R. Samuel b. Nahman: When the Holy One, blessed be He, ordered Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, the middle layer of the water became solid, and the nether heavens and the uppermost heavens were formed.

54 Gen. Rab. 1:7, 1:14.55 Gen. Rab. 1:4, 1:13.56 Gen. Rab. 1:4, 1:9.57 Gen. Rab. 1:15, 2:2.58 Gen. Rab. 2:3–5, 3:8, 4:6, 5:5–6, 6:1.59 The term itself appears in Gen. Rab. 1:5, 1:10, 2:4 and 4:2.60 Cf. Gen. Rab. 1:5–6, 1:10, 3:4, 8:2, 9:1. 61 Gen. Rab. 2:4, 4:6, 5:4.



Rav [said]: God’s handiwork [the heavens] was in fluid form, and on the second day it congealed; thus Let there be a firmament means “Let the firmament be made strong.”

R. Judah b. R. Simon said: Let a lining be made for the firmament, as you read And they did beat the gold into thin plates (Ex 39:3).

R. Hanina said: The fire came forth from above and dried up the face of the firmament. When R. Yohanan came to the verse By his breath [sc. fire] the heavens are smoothed (Job 26:13), he would say, “R. Hanina taught me well.”

R. Yudan b. R. Simon said: The fire came from above and burnished the face of the firmament.

R. Berekhiah and R. Jacob b. R. Abina in R. Abba b. Kahana’s name said: The creation story was used [by the prophet] to throw light upon revelation, but was itself explained thereby. Thus: As when fire burns through its parts (Isa 64:1), which intimates that they divided [between the upper and the nether waters]. Now when did the fire divide between the upper and the nether: surely at the revelation! So it was, too, at the creation of the world.

The first two traditions found here are somehow reminiscent of the ideas about the transformation of elements found in Judah bar Pazzi’s cosmology as it is re-ported in the Yerushalmi, although the context is slightly different.62 The general impression one gets from all these traditions, however, is that the firmament was created from and in between the waters (either by solidification or a “line”), and that the firmament was then dried by divine fire. This automatically leads to a bipartite structure of the cosmos consisting of the upper waters and the lower waters, separated by a firmament.

Such a model, however, entails some obvious problems, because – at least for exegetical reasons – the rabbis were convinced that the upper waters cannot rest directly on the firmament but must be suspended above it (4:3):

R. Phinehas said in R. Oshaya’s name: As there is a void between the earth and the firmament, so there is a void between the firmament and the upper waters, as it is written: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters (Gen 1:6) meaning midway between them.

62 It should be noted that an echo of the Judah b. Pazzi tradition from the Yerushalmi can be found also in Gen. Rab. 1:6.


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R. Tanhuma said: I will state the proof. If it said, And God made the firmament and He divided between the waters …which are upon the firmament, I would say that the water lies directly upon the firmament itself. Since, however, it is stated, “And between the waters which are above the firmament,” it follows that the upper waters are suspended by the word [of God].

R. Aha said: It is like the flame of a lamp, and their fruits are the rain.

In other words, the rabbis were facing the exegetical problem that they had to assume that the upper waters are somehow suspended above and not upon the firmament, although the latter would definitely be the easier to imagine from a physical point of view. Now, it is interesting to see that the rabbis again resort to an analogical argument in order to solve this problem. Similar to Aquilas’ camel argument in the Yerushalmi, R. Aha employs the analogy of the lamp not only as an illustration of the rabbinic theory about the upper waters as being suspended above the firmament but also as an argument for its physical possibility: Like the flame that is suspended above the lamp, the upper waters can be suspended by the word of God above the firmament.

The theory of the suspension of the upper waters by the word of God is then further corroborated by another observational analogy designed as a dialogue between R. Meir and a Samaritan (4:4):

A Samaritan asked R. Meir: “Is it possible that the upper waters are suspended by [God’s] word?” “Yes,” he answered. “Bring me a clepsydra (hydrarpax),”63 he added. When he brought it, he placed a gold plate upon it, but the water did not stand still; then a silver plate, but the water did not stand still. But as soon as he placed his finger [upon the aperture], the water stood still. “But you have put your finger there,” he objected.

undoubtedly designates the instrument commonly called clepsydra – a (אפרכס .v.l) ארפס 63conic object with one or more perforations below and an air-vent above, which can be used, if the air vent is closed with the thumb, for transferring small quantities of liquids (see LSJ, 958b). Samuel Krauss, Griechische und lateinische Lehnwörter im Talmud, Midrasch und Targum (Ber-lin: S. Calvary, 1888–1899; Hildesheim: Olms, 1987), 2:116, argues that this is a loanword from the Greek prochoos (i.e., “jug”, or “funnel”). J. Theodor mentions in his commentary that the word may be derived from Greek harpagion, but notes that the meaning has not yet been clar-ified. Harpagion aggeion is in fact used for clepsydra in Ps.-Alexander Aphrodisias, Problemata 1:95 (ed. Julius L. Ideler, Physici et Medici Graeci [Berlin, 1841], 33). It seems more likely, howev-er, that linguistically the word here is derived from Greek hydr-arpax, which is also a synonym for clepsydra (see LSJ, 1844). Quite interestingly the Aristotelian commentators Simplicius and Philoponos (sixth century) explicitly state that in their days the words harpagion and hydrarpax are being used instead of the ancient word clepsydra (see below).



“If my finger stays the water, though I am but flesh and blood, how much more so the finger of the Holy One, blessed be He! Hence the upper waters are suspended by [God’s] word.”

This passage is followed by two other analogical arguments taken from the ob-servation of reflections in concave and convex mirrors and the preservation of a person’s weight after perspiration in a bathhouse. These pieces are not pertinent to the cosmological discussion and show once again how the compiler of Genesis Rabbah made use of earlier collections, but the use of the clepsydra experiment deserves some more attention.

Arguing from experiments with the clepsydra was extremely common in Greek science and philosophy.64 It is attested for the pre-Socratic philosophers Anax-imenes and Demokritos,65 Empedocles,66 Anaxagoras,67 Theophrastus,68 the Aristotlian Problemata,69 Hero Alexandrinus,70 Ps.-Plutarch,71 and finally also the Aristotelian commentators in late antiquity72 and the Byzantine period.73 Accordingly, there are good reasons to assume that the rabbinic clepsydra argu-ment preserved in Gen. Rab. 4:4 is also the product of an intellectual interchange between rabbinic and Hellenistic culture.

The final section of this cosmological sequence in Gen. Rab. 4:1–5 deals with a couple of details of the physical structure of the bipartite cosmos outlined before. The world consists, as we have seen, of the upper waters and the lower waters, separated by a firmament, and this firmament, according to another tradition, has a vault-like form (4:5):

64 For a general survey and some of the relevant sources see Max Carl Paul Schmidt, Die Entstehung der antiken Wasseruhr, in Kulturhistorische Beiträge zu Kenntnis des griechischen und römischen Altertums, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Dürr’sche Buchhandlung, 1912), 2:3–30, 84–91.

65 Cf. Aristotle, Cael. B13, 294b20; Kirk et al., Presocratic Philosophers, 153.66 Aristotle, Resp. 7, 473b8; Kirk et al., Presocratic Philosophers, 359.67 Aristotle, Phys. Δ6, 213a27; cf. Kirk et al., Presocratic Philosophers, 359–60.68 Theophrastus, fr. 9 (= Athenaios, Deipnosophistae 42 B).69 Aristotle, Probl. II 1, 866b12 and XVI 6, 914b9–915a24; based on this is Ps.-Alexander

Aphrodisias, Iatrika Problêmata kai Physika Problêmata 1:95 (ed. J. L. Ideler [Berlin, 1841], 33).70 Heron, Pneumatica I 7.71 Ps.-Plutarch, Aetia Physica 14 A 3; Ps.-Plutarch, Placita Philosophorum 903 E 6.72 Themistius, Paraphrasis in Aristotelis Physica, Δ6 and 8 (ed. H. Schenkel, CAG, vol. 5

[Berlin, 1900], 123, 133); Johannes Philoponos, Commentaria in Aristotelis Physicorum Libros Quinque Posteriores, Corollarium de loco and Δ5 and 6 (ed. H. Vitelli, CAG, vol. 17 [Berlin, 1888], 569, 571, 600, 608, 612); Simplicius, Commentaria in Aristotelis Physicorum Libros Quattuor Priores, Δ4 (ed. H. Diels, CAG, vol. 9 [Berlin, 1882], 573); Commentaria in Aristotelis De Caelo, B13 (ed. I. L. Heiberg, CAG, vol. 7 [Berlin, 1894], 524); see also the scholia quoted in Schmidt, Entstehung der antiken Wasseruhr, 88.

73 Michael Psellos, Commentria in Aristotelis Physica, Δ6 (ed. L. G. Benakis, Kommentar zur Physik des Aristoteles [Athens: Acadmia Atheniensis, 2008], 185); Ilias N. Pontikos, ed., Anonymi Miscellanea Philosophica: A Miscellany in the Tradition of Michael Psellos (Codex Baroccianus Graecus 131) (Athens: Academia Atheniensis, 1992), 5; Michael Ephesius, Commentaria in Parval Naturalia (ed. P. Wendland, CAG, vol. 22 [Berlin, 1903], 123–27).


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R. Yohanan said: The Holy One, blessed be He, took all the primeval water and poured half into the firmament and half into the ocean; hence the word peleg (the river), meaning palga (half).

The firmament is like a bathhouse (berekhah), and above the lake is a vault, and through the heat of the lake the vault exudes moisture; it exudes heavy drops of water, which descend into the salt water yet do not combine with it.

Finally, two quantitative aspects of these cosmological images are dealt with:74

The thickness of the firmament equals that of the earth: Compare He that sits above the circle (ḥug) of the earth (Isa 40:22) with And He walks in the circuit (ḥug) of the heaven (Job 22:14). The use of ḥug in both verses teaches that they are alike.

R. Aha said in R. Hanina’s name: [It is but as] thick as a metal plate. R. Joshua b. R. Nehemiah said: It is about two fingers in thickness.

Bar Pazzi said: The upper waters exceed the lower ones by about thirty xestes, [for it is written:] and let it divide the waters from the waters (la-mayyim), lamed is thirty.

Our Rabbis said: They are half and half.

The tradition preserved in parashah 4 reflects only parts of what Genesis Rabbah has to tell us about the firmament(s). Parashah 6 also deals with the creation of the luminaries and the stars in Gen 1:14–19, and in this context one can find some illuminating discussions about the place of the sun and the moon in the cosmic order (6:6):

74 It is possible that the dictum of Ben Zoma about the upper and lower water reported in t. Hag. 2:7 (parr. y. Hag. 2:1 [77a–b], Gen. Rab. 2:4 and b. Hag. 15a), which we had occasion to discuss above, is related to this complex of traditions, although in all the versions preserved it seems to refer to the primordial state of the water before the act of creation rather than to the structure of the cosmos afterwards.



Where are the wheel of the sun75 and the moon set?

Phinehas said in R. Abbahu’s name: This verse is explicit, and the men of the Great Assembly further explained, You are the Lord, you alone; you have made the heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host (Neh 9:6). Thus, where are all their hosts set? In the second raqia‘, which is above the heaven.

From the earth to the raqia‘ it is a five hundred years’ journey, and the thickness of the raqia‘ is a five hundred years’ journey, and from the first raqia‘ to the next raqia‘ is a five hundred years’ journey. See then how high it is!

This statement provides an important modification of the cosmological model expounded in Gen. Rab. 4:1–5, but the traditions are not incompatible. Genesis Rabbah 6:6 seems to assume that the world consists not only of the earth below covered by a first firmament at the altitude of a five hundred years’ journey; this firmament is itself also a five hundred years’ journey thick. It also adds a second one, which is found at a distance of another five hundred years’ journey, and it thus creates a space between itself and the lower firmament. The luminaries and the stars are explicitly located in the second firmament, i.e., at a distance of a journey of about a thousand five hundred years.

At this point, however, another exegetical problem arises: If there are two fir-maments, which of the two is the one created on the second day of creation (Gen 1:7)? If it was the second one, the upper firmament, one would have to assume that the upper waters are to be found suspended somewhere far away above the second firmament, which contains the luminaries and the stars. Underneath it, one would find a space that would contain the lower waters, followed by the first, lower firmament, which covers the earth at the altitude of a five hundred years’ journey.

It seems hard to imagine, however, that the “lower waters” are indeed to be located so far away from the earth. Therefore, it seems more likely that the firma-ment created on the second day is in fact to be identified with the first, lower fir-mament. In that case, the earth (and the lower waters) would be covered by a first firmament (created on the second day), whereas the second, upper firmament, which presumably was created together with the “heaven and the earth” on the first day of creation (Gen 1:1), encompasses the earth and the lower firmament. It also enfolds the empty space, which can now be found between the first and the second firmament. The upper, second firmament, made by God at the very begin-ning of the creation, also houses the luminaries and the stars from the moment

75 In Genesis Rabbah the term galal ha-hammah designates the sun (“wheel of the sun”) as such, not its “sphere”; see Gen. Rab. 6:1, 6:6, 6:8.


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of their creation on the fourth day. Since the first firmament divides between the upper and the lower waters, the upper waters must then be located somewhere in the “empty” space between the first and the second firmament. One could even go one step further and harmonize this image with pieces of information culled from Gen. Rab. 4:3–4 and argue that the upper waters were probably imagined to be suspended in the upper part of the space right below the second firmament.

The tradition preserved in Gen. Rab. 6:6 does not make it clear what the upper firmament, which houses the luminaries and the stars, actually looks like, but other traditions describe it as a vault. Gen. Rab. 6:8, for example, discusses some details about the movement of the stars,76 and it transpires from this (ultimately aporetic) discussion that a vault-like structure of the firmament is implicitly supposed here:

How do the wheels of the sun and the moon set?

R. Judah b. R. La‘i and the rabbis disagree.

R. Judah said: Behind the vault and above it.

The rabbis maintained: Behind the vault and below it.

R. Jonathan said: The view of R. Judah b. R. La‘i that it is behind the vault and above it is preferable in respect to summer, when the whole world is hot while the wells are cold; and the opinion of the rabbis that it is behind the vault and below appears correct in respect to winter, when the whole world is cold and the wells are tepid.

R. Simeon b. Yohai said: We do not know whether they fly through the air, glide in the heaven, or travel in their usual manner. It is an exceedingly difficult matter, and no person can fathom it.

All these traditions come from different sources. They have different chains of transmission, and their original context cannot be properly assessed. Accord-ingly, any attempt to create a synthesis requires a strong caveat that the synthesis reflects primarily what the redaction has made out of these bits of information, not what the traditions originally meant. On the other hand, as we have already seen before, the material transmitted by Gen. Rab. 4 and 6 lends itself to a sur-

76 A clear awareness of some of the difficulties connected with the movements of the plan-ets and stars can also be discerned in Gen. Rab. 10:4; see below on the problem of planetary astronomy.



prisingly coherent reconstruction of a cosmological model, which consists of an earth surrounded by an ocean with a first vault-like firmament above it. From this vault rain drips down to earth and into the sea. Above the first firmament, which covers the earth, there is a space that contains the upper waters suspended in close proximity to the vault-like second firmament. The latter contains the sun, moon and the stars. Since one of the theories about the movement of sun, moon and stars propounded in Gen. Rab. 6:8 is based on the assumption that the latter can heat the water of the wells on earth, we have to conclude that at some spot the firmaments must come into close contact with the earth. Otherwise the warming up of the wells as an effect of the heat of the sun, moon and other stars would be difficult to explain. Whether this means, however, that the firmaments are actually connected to the earth, or rather have a spherical form and surround it from all directions, remains uncertain.77

Cosmos according to Genesis Rabbah 4 and 6 (diagram: © Susan Schepe-Leicht / www.susan-schepe.de)

This is not the place to analyze all the other cosmological ideas discussed in Gen-esis Rabbah such as the question of time and the singularity or plurality of worlds (3:7), the role of “elements” in the act of creation (10:2–3), and the elemental character of the heaven and the earth, all of which would deserve a detailed study of their own and may also echo discussions going on in ancient Greek science. However, what is most striking in the rabbinic cosmologies from the Yerushal-mi and Genesis Rabbah is, first of all, their intellectual distance from the Jewish

77 It is an open question whether there is any historical basis for combining the cosmology reconstructed from the material found in Genesis Rabbah with the cosmological model put for-ward by Judah bar Pazzi in y. Hag. 2:1 (77a). If so, one would simply have to add layers of water, mountains and air under the earth.


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cosmologies found in the ascent apocalypses of the later Second Temple period. Nothing indicates that concepts of a cosmos consisting of several heavens or firmaments in the form of different layers or “storeys” served as a starting point of the arguments in Genesis Rabbah. They cannot even be spotted anywhere as a latent counterpoint.78

The eradication of the “seven-storey cosmology” becomes even more conspic-uous if we take into consideration that other midrashim from late ancient Pal-estine in fact do contain brief references to the existence of seven firmaments.79 But apparently the redactors of the Yerushalmi and of Genesis Rabbah adhered to an outlook clearly distinct from the apocalyptic cosmologies both as regards content and methodology. Their cosmological thinking was nurtured by other sources and it had other goals. Admittedly, we cannot go so far as to say that contemporary trends such as the Ptolemaic cosmos with its concentric spheres for the planets and the stars were ever wholeheartedly endorsed, but there is no intrinsic reason why the cosmological model described in Genesis Rabbah could not be further developed so as to assign separate spheres or “firmaments” to the different planets within the second firmament. Whether this was ever done with-in the rabbinic circles remains unknown, but an echo of such tendencies might be found in two additional sources.

The first is a dictum of Palestinian origin transmitted in the Bavli, which dis-cusses questions about the physical structure of the heavens and mentions the “pagan” theory of moving spheres (“wheels”).80 The second, even more telling source is a piyyut of the seventh- to eighth-century Palestinian payyetan Judah, who for the very first time in Jewish literature explicitly assigns different firma-ments (reqi‘im) to each of the seven planets.81 Now, in view of the intellectual developments that found their way into the Yerushalmi and Genesis Rabbah, Ju-dah’s innovation looses much of its revolutionary character. From the intellectual world of Jewish ascent apocalypses and of the Babylonian Talmud, Seder Rabbah

78 It should be noted that even the passage that provides an exegetical foundation for the assumption that there exist more than one firmament in Neh 9:6 (= Gen. Rab. 6:6) does not preserve the slightest reminiscence of possibility of a the seven-firmament cosmos, although the editor of Genesis Rabbah, J. Theodor, faithfully reports all the occurrences of the latter model as “parallels” in his commentary (p. 45).

79 Cf. Lev. Rab. 29:11; Avot R. Nat. A 37; Pesiq. Rab. Kah. 23; Deut. Rab. 2:23; cf. Schäfer, “In Heaven as It Is in Hell,” 261–67.

80 b. Pesah. 94b: “Our rabbis taught: ‘The wise men of Israel say that the wheel (galgal) is fixed (qavua‘) and the mazzalot move (ḥozrim), and the wise men of the peoples of the world say that the wheel moves and the mazzalot are fixed’” (ת"ר חכמי ישראל אומרים גלגל קבוע ומזלות חוזרין וחכמי .([ed. Vilna] אומות העולם אומרים גלגל חוזר ומזלות קבועין

81 Piyyut for Hanukkah, ed. Wout Jac. van Bekkum, Hebrew Poetry From Late Antiquity. Liturgical Poems of Yehudah. Critical Edition with Introduction and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 124–25; cf. Reimund Leicht, “Planets in Ancient Hebrew Literature,” in Giving a Dia-mond: Essays in Honor of Joseph Yahalom on the Oaccasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Wout Jac. van Bekkum and Naoya Katsumata (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 15–38, at 36–38.



di-Vereshit and Hekhalot literature, Judah’s piyyut might appear as a giant leap, but from Genesis Rabbah it is only a small step.

Rabbinic cosmological thinking as it is documented in the Yerushalmi and Genesis Rabbah thus stands somewhere halfway between tradition and exegesis on the one hand, and rational, scientific cosmology on the other. It is striking to see, however, that it does not hold this position alone in that period of time. This is not the place for a detailed comparative study, but it is worth mentioning that some patristic authors of Late Antquity endorse approaches very similar to those found in the Yerushalmi and Genesis Rabbah. A starting point for this develop-ment was Basil of Caesarea (ca. 330–379 CE), who tried in his Hexaemeron to present a Christian cosmology that is in harmony with the biblical text but does not totally shun the encounter with external sciences. Even more striking are the similarities to John Philoponos (ca. 490–575), who endorses a spherical model of the cosmos compatible with the biblical account in his De Opificio Mundi, and Cosmas Indicopleustes, who polemically refutes it on the same grounds. In spite of numerous differences in detail, Cosmas’ model in his Topographia (ca. 550), consisting of no more and no less than two firmaments, comes very close to the model described in Genesis Rabbah. This holds true not only for the final results but also for the intention to argue for biblical cosmology on a rational basis.82

Both texts consider the biblical account of creation to be a universally acceptable theory, which can be defended on rational grounds, and deserves to be.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Ma‘aseh Vereshit and the Cosmological Discourse in the Babylonian Talmud

If one faces serious problems in reconstructing the cosmologies of the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Yerushalmi due to the scarcity of information, and if the reconstruc-tion of the cosmological thinking of Genesis Rabbah is fraught with difficulties connected with transmission, redaction, and compilation, b. Hag. 11b–16a surely presents us with a skilfully designed sugya that conveys a surprisingly coherent image of the cosmos.

The Bavli divides its interpretation of m. Hag. 2:1 into three sections, the first and shortest one dealing with the study of ‘arayot (11b), followed by a longer section on ma‘aseh vereshit (11b–13a), and the longest about the merkavah (13a–16a). If we leave aside the section on ‘arayot, the second and third parts of the sugya obviously attempt to construct a description of the world that runs from the beginning of creation to the structure of the earth, and from there to the

82 Topographia 2:20–23; 3:14–15; 3:55–58; 4:1–25; 7:9; see also the diagrams reproduced in Cosmas Indicopleustès: Topographie Chrétienne, ed. Wanda Wolska-Conus, 3 vols. (Paris: Édi-tions du Cerf, 1968–1937), 2:533, 535, 537, 543.


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heavens and up to the feet of the divine throne (ma‘aseh vereshit). It then embarks on discussions about the divine realm (merkavah). The whole section is finally supplemented by a short paragraph on demonology (16a).

The ma‘aseh vereshit section can be roughly divided into three parts. The first explains the mishnaic restrictions imposed upon the study of the topic (11b), the second is primarily interested in questions related to the acts of divine creation (11b–12b), and the third and last section provides a more or less detailed descrip-tion of the “finished product”: the world from its most basic foundations up to the feet of the divine throne (12b–13a). For the sake of brevity, the following analysis will concentrate only on this “cosmological” part of the ma‘aseh vereshit section.

The first complex of traditions created by the Bavli (12b) basically consists of a variation of the cosmology attributed to Judah bar Pazzi in y. Hag. 2:1 (77a). The major differences in the Bavli’s version are the attribution of this tradition to R. Yose, the addition of a moralizing admonition at the beginning, the omission of the creation of earth out of water, and the addition of the statement that the earth is standing on columns. To this core, the redaction has added two other tra-ditions which further develop the idea that the earth is standing on columns. One is attributed to the anonymous sages, who say that it stands on twelve columns; the other, to R. Elazar b. Shammu‘a, who argues for one column only, the tsaddiq.

From there, the Bavli goes directly to a dictum attributed to R. Judah that there are two firmaments (reqi‘im), which is of course strongly reminiscent of Gen. Rab. 6:6, but immediately opposes it to the position of Resh Laqish, who believes that there are seven firmaments (12b). Although this is not explicitly stated, one gets the impression that the redaction of the Bavli sides with the latter opinion, because it adds a long tradition with detailed descriptions of the seven firmaments and their contents. This passage then leads to a moralizing statement attributed to Aha bar Jacob, that it is forbidden to extend the inquiry to the firma-ments, which are above the ḥayyot (12b–13a). The whole section culminates in a dictum attributed to R. Yohanan ben Zakkai, which castigates human hubris il-lustrated by a description of the cosmos. The starting point is the tradition known also from Gen. Rab. 6:6 that the distance between the earth and the firmament is a five hundred years’ journey, the same size as the thickness of the firmament itself. But whereas Genesis Rabbah contents itself with mentioning a second firmament, the Bavli speaks about more firmaments of this size (seven?), and it appends a description of the ḥayyot, the throne of glory, and the King himself.

The ma‘aseh vereshit section of b. Hag. 12b–13a is at least as interesting for what it says as for what it does not say. Regarding what it says, it can be observed that the Babylonian Talmud reveals strong moralizing and religious inclinations at the expense of a properly scientific outlook. A good example is Judah bar Pazzi’s cos-mology, which comes to life in the Babylonian Talmud in a redactional garb that focuses on a moralizing admonition to properly understand the structure of the world. The literary climax of this passage is the dictum that the world rests upon



the tsaddiq, again a religious concept, and the traditions about the dimensions of the world, which take up motifs known from Gen. Rab. 6:6, are remodelled so as to demonstrate the nullity of man in face of the creation.

The most interesting difference, however, is the predominant role of the sev-en-firmament cosmology in the Babylonian Talmud. Whereas this model was absent from both the Yerushalmi and Genesis Rabbah, and only dim echoes of it could be heard in other rabbinic texts from late ancient Palestine, it experiences an impressive comeback in the Bavli. Due to the length of the description and the prominent position it holds, one is strongly tempted to surmise that this must have been the opinion held by the redactors of the Bavli. Competing cosmolog-ical models are either commented on critically, redactionally neutralized (e. g., the two-firmament theory), or simply remain unmentioned.

This new intellectual profile finds its expression not only in the cosmological model that was ultimately adopted, but also in the methods applied. The Bavli omits all those traditions from the Yerushalmi and Genesis Rabbah that rely on the method of observational analogies. Whereas the two great amoraic works from ancient Palestine were prepared to supplement tradition and exegesis by rational argument, the Babylonian redactors of the Talmud again rely exclusively on the former. This approach seems to have yielded the dogmatic adoption of a seven-firmament cosmology, which is devoid of any explicative value for the actual phenomena of the physical world. The sun, moon, stars, rain, hail, snow, etc., all find their place in one of the seven firmaments, but no thought is wasted upon hypotheses about their physical nature. Tradition and exegesis alone are sufficient arguments for the cosmology of the Bavli, which thus ignores the com-plex developments that occurred in ancient Palestine and reverts to the modes of thinking that were characteristic of Second Temple apocalypticism.

Unifying the Diversity: Cosmological Tracts in the Geonic Period

The bulk of literary sources related to Jewish cosmology from the post-talmudic period are assembled in the two tracts Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit and Midrash Konen, which will be briefly analyzed in the following paragraph. In fact, neither of these two works is a homogeneous entity. Both are multifarious compilations of different, partly overlapping, partly contradictory, literary strata. The presum-ably older compilation of cosmological texts is the one known under the title Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit. As Peter Schäfer has pointed out in his recent study, not only does this work (“macroform”) consist of at least four different literary units (“microforms”), but also the manuscript tradition of the macroform is not consistent in itself.83 Some microforms are missing in certain manuscripts,

83 Cf. Schäfer, “In Heaven as It Is in Hell,” 237–52.


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whereas others are also transmitted independently. Moreover, a large section of Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit also appears as part of other works such as Sefer Razi’el and Midrash Konen.

The first literary unit integrated into Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit is a short mid-rash on Gen 1.84 Even this short text, however, is not homogenous. Whereas the first paragraphs consist of a collection of different interpretations of Gen 1:1 and related verses,85 the last paragraphs contain a description of the days of cre-ation.86 Between these two sections stands a paragraph that functions as a kind of “connecting link” between the two.87 From a literary and stylistic point of view, it is the continuation of the midrashic interpretations of Gen 1:1, but as regards content it contains a description of the first day of creation and thus belongs to the second part of the text. Accordingly, it is difficult to determine whether this paragraph originally belonged to the collection of interpretations in the first part and was later supplemented by a creation midrash truncated at its beginning, or whether the first sentences of an originally independent creation midrash were revised so as to tally with the literary structure of the midrash on Gen 1:1.

The most important idea conveyed in the first section of Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit is based upon an interpretation of the biblical statement that in the beginning God created “heaven(s) and earth.” This has to be interpreted, the midrash believes, as a proof that a multitude of heavens and earths must have been created. Therefore, obviously incorporating older traditions,88 the midrash enumerates seven firmaments and seven earths that were created on the first day, and it further states that the heavens and the earths mirror one another. Peter Schäfer has argued that “the most likely graphical representation is seven concen-tric semicircles representing the seven heavens completed by seven semicircles representing the seven earths, which meet each other at a central horizontal axis.”89 This is an attractive interpretation, because if correct it would reflect a certain acquaintance with spherical cosmological models such as that developed by Ptolemy.90 On the other hand, the text does not say anything explicit about the spherical structure of the world, so that alternatively one could also argue for a model of seven vault-like firmaments completed by seven floor-like earths. The different terms used to describe God’s creative act when the text speaks about the heavens and the earths (God “stretches” [natah] the heavens but builds the earth like basements [yasad]) leave room for a model with heavenly semicircles

84 ed. Wertheimer §§ 1–16; Peter Schäfer, ed., Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1981), §§ 429–36, 832–54; cf. Schäfer, “In Heaven as It Is in Hell,” 238–40.

85 Wertheimer §§ 1–8; Schäfer, Synopse, §§ 428–30, 832–41.86 Wertheimer §§ 10–16; Schäfer, Synopse, §§ 432–36, 843–54.87 Wertheimer § 9; Schäfer, Synopse, §§ 431, 842.88 Especially from Gen. Rab. 13:12 and Avot Rab. Nat. A 37; cf. Schäfer, “In Heaven as It Is

in Hell,” 267–70.89 Schäfer, “In Heaven as It Is in Hell,” 239.90 Cf. Schäfer, “In Heaven as It Is in Hell,” 273.



closed at the bottom by flat earths. At any rate, the present midrash endorses a seven-storey cosmology without revealing much interest in other physical de-tails of the cosmos. Neither the creation of the firmament (raqia‘) on the second day nor that of the luminaries and stars on the fourth has prompted any more far-reaching cosmological speculation.91

The second source incorporated into Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit is a midrash on the dimensions of the world.92 In some of the manuscripts this is the open-ing section of the whole work, but it has also been incorporated into Midrash Konen, presumably as part of a larger portion of text adopted from there.93 As to the content, the midrash consists mainly of free developments of motifs known from other sources. To start with, the dimensions of the world are described on the basis of the almost symbolic distance of a five hundred years’ journey.94 The world is round and, according to some sages, surrounded by an ocean and a moving vault from above.95 As in the Bavli, the whole earth is standing on a column, the tsaddiq.96

The entire structure of different layers mentioned here is strongly reminiscent of the cosmology presented by Judah bar Pazzi97 and later adopted in the Bavli under R. Yose’s name,98 but the lower parts of the world are extended by means of a detailed structure of additional cosmological entities unknown in the other texts.99 They ultimately lead to an enumeration of the seven firmaments and the seven earths, which are said to be interconnected. The general impression one gets from this text is that it is strikingly close to the traditions preserved in the Bavli in both motifs and methods. There is no rational argument about the physical probability of this model, and even where elements from the Yerushalmi are adopted, they are skilfully transformed into an almost mythological image.

The third section of Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit further develops similar concepts and ideas.100 This is, as Peter Schäfer has shown, “the most important part of the composite tractate SRdB.”101 The basic cosmological idea is that of a world that consists of heavens and earths that mirror one another, but this unit develops it

91 Wertheimer §§ 10 and 12; Schäfer, Synopse, §§ 432/843, 434/845. 92 Wertheimer §§ 17–18; Schäfer, Synopse, §§ 437–39. 93 ed. Jellinek, pp. 32–33. The quotation from Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit in Midrash Konen

covers to the following section as well. 94 Cf. Gen. Rab. 6:6 and b. Hag. 13a (some variae lectiones in the manuscripts). 95 Cf. Gen. Rab. 4:5. 96 Cf. b. Hag. 12b. 97 Cf. y. Hag. 2:1 (77a). 98 Cf. b. Hag. 12b. 99 The midrash uses among other things an interpretation of tohu wa-vohu also attested in

b. Hag. 12a. 100 Wertheimer §§ 19–42; Schäfer, Synopse, §§ 440–62, 743–76. Part of this section is also

quoted by the Midrash Konen (Jellinek, pp. 33–37), where the scribe added a comment at the end that his source was incomplete (לא מצאתי יותר).

101 Schäfer, “In Heaven as It Is in Hell,” 241.


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into the idea of a complete balance between heaven and earth. As a consequence of this idea this unit suggests that there is not only a shekhinah above in the heavens, but also one in the lower part of the world.102

Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit concludes with a section about the area beyond the seventh firmament.103 This is quite remarkable because it blurs the borderlines between ma‘aseh vereshit and merkavah, which were respected in almost all the sources analyzed so far. Although the composition of the sugya in the Bavli is in some ways a prefiguration of this new trend, the compilation of Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit is the first work that clearly considers ma‘aseh vereshit and merkavah to be complementary aspects of one and the same enterprise: the coherent de-scription of the whole lower and upper world. Thus, in addition to the similarities in the use of motifs and the methodological outlook, Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit also agrees with the Bavli in its tendency to let the two traditional “esoteric dis-ciplines” merge into one.

If one has to cast doubts upon the internal coherence of Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit, this is certainly also the case for Midrash Konen.104 Adolph Jellinek had already identified four different strata in this work, the last and latest of which he believed to be the actual Midrash Konen on Prov 3:19.105 This is one possible interpretation, but it seems rather that the whole text is a compilation of differ-ent interpretations of this verse106 that were enriched with material taken from Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit107 and two other sources in redactional processes that cannot be reconstructed in detail anymore. One of these additional sources deals with the acts of creation,108 while the other provides a detailed cosmographical description of the whole world.109

From a cosmological point of view, only the midrash on creation in the first section of Midrash Konen is of any interest. Generally speaking, this text shows considerable similarity to the creation midrash integrated into the first part of Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit.110 Both texts are basically a rewritten form of the bibli-cal creation story of Gen 1. But whereas the midrash in Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit takes as its point of departure the words “heavens and earth” found in Gen 1:1 and develops its ideas about the multitude of heavens and earths from there, the present text relies on an interpretation of the word ḥokhmah (“wisdom”) in Prov

102 Schäfer, “In Heaven as It Is in Hell,” 243, who believes that “this is one of the core state-ments of SRdB.”

103 Wertheimer §§ 43–47; Schäfer, Synopse, §§ 518–24, 777–84; cf. Schäfer, “In Heaven as It Is in Hell,“ 250–52.

104 Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrash, 2:23–39.105 Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrash, 2:xii–xiv.106 Jellinek, 23, 37–39.107 Jellinek, 32–37.108 Jellinek, 23–27.109 Jellinek, 27–32.110 Wertheimer, §§ 9–16; Schäfer, Synopse, §§ 431–36, 842–53.



3:19, and combines it with the concept of divine names as agents in the process of creation. Since the numerical value of ḥokhmah is seventy-three, the midrash states that God created the world by means of seventy-three names. With three of them he created, in the very beginning, three primordial elements–light, fire, and water–and with the remaining names he created the worlds for the righteous. God then took drops of the water and light, mixed two of each, and thus created the upper world consisting of the heavens, the shelter (sukkah) of darkness and the clouds of glory (‘anane kavod) and the ḥayyot ha-qodesh.111 In a second step God partly hid this primordial light. Quite surprisingly, all this happens prior to the first day of creation, on which the earth is created from a piece of snow taken from underneath the throne of glory and thrown on the (lower) waters. Since people might draw the conclusion that the earth would thus sway like a boat on the sea, the midrash explicitly says that the earth rests on a firm foundation (’even shetiyyah). Apart from the brief remark that the waters were divided into two on the second day, the following sections do not add any substantial information about the structure of the cosmos.

Although this cosmology is no more rationalistic than that of Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit, the creation midrash of Midrash Konen reveals a clearly different outlook. This is the case not only because of its unique combination of specu-lation about the genesis of the world with the more mystical concept of divine names, but also because it is much more interested in the formation of primordial elements than in the physical structure of the earth below and the firmaments above. In that sense, this creation midrash is kindred to the cosmological teach-ing of Judah bar Pazzi in the Yerushalmi, whereas the seven-firmament cosmol-ogy so prominent in the Bavli and Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit has not attracted the authors’ interest. Typologically speaking, the creation midrash in the first part of Midrash Konen thus seems to be an offshoot of the traditions about creation that found their way into the Yerushalmi whereas there are no traces of the develop-ment these traditions underwent in the Bavli and Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit. These differences notwithstanding, the general outlook of Midrash Konen is much less rationalistic than that of the material preserved in Genesis Rabbah.

To sum up, we have seen that the rabbinic movements in Palestine and Bab-ylonia apparently produced various forms of cosmological thinking that cannot be subsumed under one heading. The Mishnah and the Tosefta preserve evidence for discussions about ma‘aseh vereshit as a kind speculative exegesis of Gen 1. This practice was considered problematic by some sages if it became a matter of public teaching and preaching, and occasionally also for dogmatic reasons. On the other hand, the Yerushalmi and Genesis Rabbah reveal traces of cosmological thinking

111 The printed text is corrupt, since it mentions the mixture of fire and water twice. The sec-ond instance has to be “fire and light,” which is also an appropriate stuff for the ḥayyot created thereof.


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that never totally severs its connection with exegesis–in fact, exegesis is always there!– but supplements it with a new form of discourse based upon analogies and rational argumentation. This is the context where, for the very first time in Jewish intellectual history, the method of observational analogies was applied in discussions about cosmological issues. Perhaps as a result of this new outlook, the great works of rabbinic Judaism from Palestine also endorsed cosmological ideas that bear little or no resemblance to their apocalyptic forerunners. In many respects they are rather reminiscent of Greek models, whatever the rabbis’ direct sources may have been. The Babylonian Talmud, on the other hand, ignores all these innovative trends and restores a cosmological model that revives tradi-tional, if not mythological, motifs from much earlier periods in a dogmatically presented worldview.

In view of this background it seems that the cosmological tracts of the Ge-onic period inherit a diversity of approaches and, at least to a certain degree, perpetuate it. Whereas most of the material in Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit follows intellectual trends that find their expression in the Bavli as well, Midrash Konen preserves some ideas that are much more reminiscent of the cosmological tradi-tions found in the Yerushalmi. In both cases, however, the argumentative meth-ods developed in the Yerushalmi and in Genesis Rabbah, most notably the use of observational analogies, were relinquished and gave place to approaches based upon tradition, exegesis, and mystical speculation.

Epilogue: Echoes of Rabbinic Cosmology in Hekhalot Literature

Although modern research often surmises a close connection between cos-mological speculations and Hekhalot literature, cosmological thinking actually plays only a marginal role in Hekhalot literature. Hekhalot Rabbati, for example, speaks only once about the “sun and moon” and “Kimah and Kesil, the star of Venus (kokhav Nogah), mazzerot and stars and mazzalot,” as part of a description of God’s crown and garment.112 In another passage it mentions that the “twelve signs of the zodiac, the sun and the moon” are fixed in a crown.113 So too in Hekhalot Zutarti only dim echoes of cosmological motifs can be found.114 The ascent of the mystic to the heavens, which served in Second Temple apocalyp-ticism as an outstanding method to gain knowledge about the structure of the world, only rarely does so in Hekhalot literature.115

The only exception in this respect is perhaps 3 Enoch, which explicitly enu-merates among the things revealed to R. Ishmael not only the secrets of the Torah

112 Schäfer, Synopse, § 105.113 Schäfer, Synopse, § 124.114 Schäfer, Synopse, §§ 366–67, 371.115 Cf. Ma‘aseh Merkavah (Schäfer, Synopse, § 545).



but also “the secrets of the world and the order of creation.”116 Accordingly, it is only in 3 Enoch that we find explicit reference to the seven firmaments,117 even if they appear there as part of a complex angelology, which mentions the names of the angels in charge of various cosmological and meteorological phenomena.118 The most interesting aspect of this angelo-cosmology is not the structure and names of the seven firmaments (reqi‘im), which are in fact quite conventional, but the fact that the stars are not to be found in any of them.119 This absence stands in stark contrast to the cosmologies of the Bavli120 and Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit,121 which mostly place the celestial bodies in the second firmament (raqia‘). It further transpires from the “sub-firmamental” hierarchy in 3 Enoch that the highest level there is occupied by the sun, followed by the moon, the mazzalot, and finally all the other stars.122 If this schema is to be taken literally and not metaphorically, it would create an extremely unusual cosmological mod-el both with respect to the placement of the celestial bodies and the function of the firmaments. It seems to reflect the theological idea that the seven reqi‘im need to be reserved for God and his ministering angels, not for elements belonging to the physical world.

The motif of the seven firmaments is also alluded to in a more traditional manner in a few other passages in 3 Enoch,123 but only a few paragraphs at the end of the book deal with a kind of apocalyptic revelation about cosmological entities in the precise meaning of the term, such as the letters with which the world was created,124 the places of the upper waters, fire, hailstones, thunderbolts, snow, and thunders,125 the souls of the righteous and wicked,126 and the spirits of the stars.127

The classical works of Hekhalot literature thus prove to be primarily inter-ested in God as the heavenly king and his angelic entourage, not in the creator and his creation, i.e., the world’s physical structure. Only 3 Enoch turns out to be slightly more interested in cosmological issues and can thus be called, cum grano salis, a remote continuation of the ascent apocalypses of the late Second Temple period.128 Whether the adoption of the seven-firmament cosmology also

116 Schäfer, Synopse, § 14.117 Schäfer, Synopse, §§ 15.118 Schäfer, Synopse, §§ 17–24.119 Schäfer, Synopse, § 21.120 Cf. b. Hag. 12b.121 Wertheimer, § 37; Schäfer, Synopse, §§ 457, 717.122 Schäfer, Synopse, § 22.123 Schäfer, Synopse, §§ 50, 56.124 Schäfer, Synopse, § 59.125 Schäfer, Synopse, § 60.126 Schäfer, Synopse, §§ 61–62.127 Schäfer, Synopse, § 66.128 A later development of the “apocalyptic” outlook of 3 Enoch can be found in the recently

published Midrash Sefer Zeh Sefer Toledot Adam, especially §§ 36 and 38; see Reimund Leicht


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reflects a specific closeness to traditions that manifest themselves in the Bavli and Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit or whether it reflects the use of common sources, is a question that requires further investigation. Unlike the Bavli and later on Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit, Hekhalot literature does not blur the borderline between ma‘aseh vereshit and merkavah, between “theology” and “cosmology.” Accord-ingly, cosmological thinking could not and did not find its proper place within the framework of Hekhalot literature, and it would be a futile undertaking to look for it there. Only from the “all-embracing“ perspective developed in the Bavli and Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit, which regard ma‘aseh vereshit and merkavah as complementary aspects of one and the same esoteric discipline, could one expect to find cosmological teachings in the direct surroundings of Hekhalot literature. The scribal combination of Hekhalot works with Seder Rabbah di-Vereshit may have reinforced such expectations, but they are based upon unwarranted prej-udices. The modern study of Jewish cosmologies in Late Antiquity has to free itself from the domination of specific trends of rabbinic thought. Otherwise a proper understanding of the diversity of trends in Jewish cosmological thinking that find their expression in the Mishnah, Tosefta, Yerushalmi, Genesis Rabbah, the treatises of the Geonic period, and, last but not least, in Hekhalot literature, will not be possible.

and Joseph Yahalom, “Sefer Zeh Sefer Toledot Adam: An Unknown Esoteric Midrash on Genesis 5:1 from the Geonic Period,” Ginze Qedem 4 (2008): 9*-82*.


Major Trends in Rabbinic Cosmology

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