Rabbi Jeremiah ben Eleazar said: When the blessed Holy One created the first human, he created an androgyne, as it is written “male and female he made them … and he called their name human.” (Gen. 5:2).
—Genesis Rabbah 8:1
One of the most captivating elements of the theology associated with the medieval kabbalah is the notion that God exemplifies both male and female attributes. This idea, which is expressed variously throughout a diverse library of texts, has gripped the curiosity of scholars for generations. Lore concerning primordial beings at once endowed with the qualities of opposing sexes are known from a host of ancient cultures.Footnote 1 The archaic motif of the androgyne has elicited significant interest in modern studies of religion.Footnote 2 In early Jewish sources, Philo of Alexandria as well as the ancient rabbis of the Land of Israel accommodated the motif of primordial androgyny to the scriptural accounts of humanity’s monogenesis from Adam.Footnote 3 Rashi and Maimonides are the most prominent examples of medieval rabbinic thinkers who reprised the ancient lore before the advent of kabbalah.Footnote 4 Much of the kabbalistic speculation based on the rabbis’ accounts of Adam’s androgyny turns on the theomorphic implications of the human’s creation in the divine image. If God created Adam as an androgyne, and God created Adam in God’s likeness, then God too may be understood in terms of androgyny. On the basis of this syllogism, the kabbalists developed their unique theosophical speculation concerning a divinity endowed with both male and female attributes, which they often identified with God’s classical attributes of compassion and judgment respectively.
The present article is not intended to rehash the history of scholarship on the androgynous divinity, but to expose and then to resolve a fundamental problem elided by virtually all historical research on medieval kabbalah. The problem is that scholars have upheld obsolete research from the 1940s on the origins of kabbalah by putting a single fragmentary text to a task that, as I will show in some detail, it is unfit to perform.Footnote 5 More than eighty years ago, Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) adduced a short text copied in sixteenth-century Italy to prove that the doctrine of divine androgyny goes all the way back to the earliest medieval rabbinic authority to whom the wisdom of kabbalah is traditionally ascribed. I am referring to the twelfth-century Provençal figure Rabbi Abraham ben David of Posquières (Vauvert), known by his acronym as the Rabad (ca. 1125–1198). Quite independently of his reputation as the earliest exponent of kabbalah in the Middle Ages, the Rabad was renowned as a towering authority of Talmudic jurisprudence and the author of novellae on the Babylonian Talmud and Baʿale ha-nefesh, an influential digest of laws concerning marital life and conjugal piety. He is also distinguished as a glossator on the code of Isaac al-Fasi (Rif), and the author of the bold animadversions against the code of Maimonides (Rambam). Concerning the fragment ascribed to the Rabad, one of the leading lights of research recently wrote: “One of the first Kabbalistic texts, perhaps the first extant extensive passage that represents the theosophical Kabbalah, was attributed to R. Abraham ben David … and so far this attribution of the text was accepted by all of the scholars.”Footnote 6 Even more recently, another authority stated of the fragment: “[T]he authenticity of its attribution to Rabad has been unanimously accepted by scholars, a conclusion with which I concur.”Footnote 7 Against this conclusion, which Scholem concocted over eighty years ago, and a line of scholarship seeking further corroboration for it, this article shows that all of the evidence for ascribing the fragment to the Rabad is faulty.
To remedy the problem, this study sets out in search of the provenance of the fragment. To state my conclusion from the outset, the text is a late theosophical extrapolation from Rabad’s Baʿale ha-nefesh that dates to a period long after the first percolations of kabbalistic writing. I will argue that the fragment belongs to a filiation of texts produced by one of the early fourteenth-century authors who claimed to possess rare knowledge transmitted to them from Solomon ben Abraham Ibn Adret (Rashba; c. 1235–1310) and Isaac ben Ṭodros (late thirteenth–early fourteenth century) concerning the esoteric allusions or remazim contained within the Pentateuchal commentary of the Catalonian sage Moses Naḥmanides (Ramban; 1194–1268).Footnote 8 This family of texts was composed during the first quarter of the fourteenth century, chiefly in Northern Spain, but one of its most conspicuous authors, Shem Ṭov ben Abraham Ibn Gaon (1283-ca. 1330), emigrated to the Upper Galilee and composed at least one important work there.Footnote 9 Attributing the fragment to a single author remains tentative, but Ibn Gaon, a major proponent of esoteric speculation in the Naḥmanidean tradition, is one of the disciples of the Rashba who cannot be ruled out.Footnote 10 This figure is best known outside of kabbalah studies as the author of Migdal ʿoz, a commentary on Maimonides’s Code, which, in fact, makes constant reference to the aforementioned animadversions against the same legal code composed by the Rabad. Ibn Gaon hailed from the Castilian enclave of Soria and emigrated to Safed some two centuries before the celebrated Safedian revival of the sixteenth century. In addition to his investment in the kabbalah of Naḥmanides, it is significant that the following factors characterize Ibn Gaon’s ideological profile. He is known for disseminating a narrative concerning the earliest transmission of kabbalistic knowledge (into which he claimed initiation via Solomon Ibn Adret and Isaac ben Ṭodros).Footnote 11 Per his account, it is an unbroken chain of transmission anchored in twelfth-century Provence. We know of his penchant for reading non-kabbalistic theology as if it harbored allusions to kabbalah and, relatedly, representing the knowledge and activities of major rabbinic authorities unfaithfully. This, I will argue, included Ibn Gaon’s identification of the Rabad as a disseminator of kabbalistic secrets by means of allusive writing.Footnote 12 Whether or not it is plausible at this phase to identify the author of the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment with such precision, the fragment demonstrates a commitment to an ideological agenda associated with the known personality of Ibn Gaon, as well as a set of ideas attested in Ibn Gaon’s oeuvre and cognate texts to which it is related. Once the late provenance of the fragment is established, the prospect of locating any elaborated notion of divine androgyny in Provence becomes untenable, as does the possibility of a twelfth-century dating for the doctrine.
The study will provide sufficient grounds for discounting the fragment’s ascription to the Rabad, and, more generally, the attribution of kabbalistic writing to the figure. It will reexamine the contents of the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment, establish its paratextual relationship to the Rabad’s Baʿale ha-nefesh, and raise further questions about texts ascribing—or appearing to ascribe—a doctrine of androgyny to the Rabad. It will then proceed to collate the fragment with the family of texts described above, writings which demonstrate similar or identical tendencies, ideas, and language. From the start, I make special note of the fact that recent advances in early kabbalah research provide a major impetus for what follows. The conclusions of Avishai Bar-Asher regarding the belated appearance of intensive theosophical speculation in thirteenth-century Catalonia emboldened my suspicions about the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment.Footnote 13 If it is no longer viable to locate such speculation in the writings of the Rabad’s son, Isaac “the Blind” of Posquières, it becomes all the less plausible to find it in the writings of Isaac’s father, the putative source of his son’s knowledge.
Doubts: The Rabad as an Exponent of Kabbalah
On what basis have scholars assumed that the Rabad authored kabbalistic material? What are the sources of this characterization? In his earliest assessment of the (Pseudo-)Rabad text, Scholem drew attention to two sources: the supercommentary on Naḥmanides printed under the name Meir ben Solomon Abi Sahula and Ibn Gaon’s Bade ha-aron u-migdal Ḥananel:
R. Meir Abi Sahula, associate of R. Shem Ṭov Ibn Gaon who testifies that [his] commentary on the Talmud the Rabad alludes here and there to matters of kabbalah, mentions the Rabad’s explanation of the rabbinic legend that Adam was created an androgyne. The text of this explanation is preserved for us in manuscript, testifying to its authenticity…Footnote 14
Neither or these sources can be dated any earlier than the turn of the fourteenth century and, for reasons detailed below, neither may be trusted to demonstrate that the Rabad committed kabbalistic knowledge to writing. Though writing the Rabad out of the annals of early kabbalah is not the express aim of the present study, it may well be one of its outcomes. Even the more cautious portrait of the Rabad as an oral font of secret knowledge who nonetheless refrained from disseminating the kabbalah in writing may prove inept.
According to traditional accounts of the Rabad as the earliest medieval sage to whom kabbalistic knowledge may be ascribed—these too date only from the early fourteenth century—either the Rabad himself or his father David received a revelation of secret wisdom directly from the Prophet Elijah.Footnote 15 Subsequently, sixteenth-century authors enshrined these fourteenth-century accounts as the origin story of kabbalah.Footnote 16 Yet Isadore Twersky (1930–1997) claimed that the Rabad never committed a single word of his kabbalah to writing due to his “unqualified esotericism.”Footnote 17 He wrote, “One type of literature, the kabbalistic … is not represented in his writings. It is known, however, that he exerted formative influence upon it through his children, who, having learned mystical teachings from him, became literary leaders and guides in the emergent kabbalah.”Footnote 18 For all of his interest in the Rabad’s vocation as a Talmudist, Twersky lent further credence to his image as a font of kabbalistic knowledge, an image he embellished with erudite hyperbole: “The Posquières school of Rabad and his son was practically an international center, from which kabbalistic teachings secretly emanated.”Footnote 19 To bolster the characterization of the Rabad as an oral disseminator of secrets, Twersky seized upon the single piece of living testimony related to the Rabad’s esotericism.Footnote 20 I am referring to this meager sentence from the pen of Rabbi Abraham’s son Isaac (“the Blind”):
My ancestors (avotay) were nobles of the land and disseminators of Torah among the people, but not a word [of hidden wisdom] escaped their mouths.Footnote 21
When assessing the testimonial value of this claim, there are at least two difficulties to consider. First, the claim comes in the moralizing context of Isaac’s letter, which urged a policy of esotericism on a younger generation of sages. According to Isaac, this was a policy modeled by the elders. Here, the specific claim that previous generations held fast to a code of secrecy has a chiefly hortatory rather than directly historiographic goal. Second, the claim refers to Isaac’s forebears generally, but not to the Rabad in particular. Nonetheless, if one reads this general claim as somehow refering to the specific figure of the Rabad, then it would seem to support the contention that Isaac’s illustrious father was a source of secrets transmitted, if at all, to his children. If the Rabad only conveyed secrets orally to a few people, this would militate against the conclusion that he circulated them in writing.
Yet, as Scholem pointed out, Ibn Gaon affirmed that the Rabad’s writings did contain allusions to hidden wisdom.Footnote 22 General statements about the latter’s knowledge of kabbalah are scattered throughout Ibn Gaon’s Migdal ʿoz. Footnote 23 Moreover, a specific tradition is ascribed to the Rabad in Ibn Gaon’s Keter shem ṭov (c. 1305).Footnote 24 But the most direct reference to the Rabad’s esoteric writing appears in Bade ha-aron u-migdal Ḥananel composed in Safed in 1325:
And the Rabad of blessed memory alluded in some of his commentary on the Talmud when he saw an instance requiring this [an allusion] but not more, and it was sufficient for him that the master’s son [Isaac] be informed in that wisdom, which he [that is, Isaac] received from his [that is, the Rabad’s] mouth.Footnote 25
Ibn Gaon made this claim with specific reference to the Rabad’s Talmudic glosses, a claim that Scholem adopted without scrutinizing its source. This late statement is likewise the source of the view that the Rabad entrusted secrets to Isaac specifically. But how does Ibn Gaon’s characterization of the Rabad as an esoteric writer weigh against the living testimony of Rabad’s son—that Isaac’s forebears never breathed a word of secret knowledge to the uninitiated? Where the testimonies of Isaac and Ibn Gaon conflict, it is only reasonable to favor the living witness of Isaac over the late claims of Ibn Gaon. This way of resolving the disagreement is all the more reasonable considering Ibn Gaon’s predilection for imaginative bibliography. I am referring, after all, to the figure who fostered the canard that Maimonides embraced the kabbalah late in life! Footnote 26 He is the same author who, according to Isaac of Acre, attributed teachings to Naḥmanides that he had improvised from his mind.Footnote 27 Ibn Gaon’s testimony is likewise dubious in view of his penchant for theosophical eisegesis (a point to which I will return) and the fact that the account of the Rabad’s written allusions appears in the context of a genealogy of knowledge intended to authorize Ibn Gaon’s own credentials.Footnote 28 One scholar has even reassessed the figure’s claims to initiation under the Rashba.Footnote 29 Indeed, doubts concerning the legitimacy of Ibn Gaon’s intellectual lineage could betray a motivation for resorting to self-authorizing rhetoric.
Writing before Ibn Gaon’s late portrayal of the Rabad as an esoteric writer and after Isaac’s early albeit non-specific statement regarding the secrecy of his predecessors, the Rabad’s grandson, Asher ben David, declared his intention in composing the mid-thirteenth century work Sefer ha-Yiḥud. He intended the work to publicize “the knowledge of our elders [and our teachers] (zeqanenu [u-morenu]), who taught us the ways of life, the paths of God.”Footnote 30 Asher’s reference to the knowledge of elders (and teachers, according to a textual variant) is decidedly more generic than Isaac’s reference to “ancestors.” Moreover, the reference is not an historical assertion, but rather a premise that served to sanction Asher’s literary endeavor. Even if, these factors notwithstanding, one accepts that the statement (a) substantiates the historicity of kabbalistic speculation two generations prior to Asher, and (b) refers to the knowledge of Asher’s grandfather, it would in no way serve to bolster the image of the Rabad as an author who committed secrets to writing. On the contrary, the statement would cast Asher as an amanuensis who transcribed the declaredly unwritten knowledge of the elders.Footnote 31
Ibn Gaon’s account of the Rabad alluding to secrets in his Talmudic glosses is certainly not, as Scholem believed, a reference to the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment on divine androgyny. It refers, however equivocally, to a single Talmudic gloss attributed to the Rabad by his grandson Asher.Footnote 32 This gloss may, in fact, be an authentic piece of writing composed by the Rabad. But contrary to Ibn Gaon’s account, there is no indication that it deals with the specific subject of the divine androgyne or that it contains any hint of kabbalistic ideation.Footnote 33 This fact comports well with Twersky’s conclusion that the Rabad did not commit kabbalah to writing and suggests that Ibn Gaon was accustomed to reading theosophical knowledge into supposed allusions he discerned in the Rabad’s comments on the Babylonian Talmud. The specific gloss in question concerns a famous rabbinic inquiry into the subject of anthropomorphism (b. Berakhot 6a): “How do we know that the blessed Holy One dons phylacteries (tefillin)?”Footnote 34
How do we know that the blessed Holy One dons phylacteries? The language of the great Rabbi, Abraham ben David, my grandfather: “This refers to the Prince of the [divine] Countenance [that is, Metatron], whose “name is like the name of his Master.”Footnote 35 And it is He who appeared to Moses and who appeared to Ezekiel in the vision of the man above (Ezek. 1:26) and to the other prophets. But the Cause of Causes did not appear to any man and no left or right, front or back [can be predicated of it]. And this is the secret, about which it is said in the account of creation (maʿaseh bereshit): “Whoever knows the measure of the creator of the beginning (yoṣer bereshit) can be assured [of his share in the world to come].”Footnote 36 And it is of him [that is, Metatron] that the verse speaks: “Let us make the human in our image” (Gen. 1:26).Footnote 37
While the teaching about Metatron concerns the problem of anthropomorphism, and though it certainly involves the creation of the human in God’s image, the text makes no reference to the matter of androgyny, whether human or divine.Footnote 38 Nor does it allude to a graduated divinity comprised of ten sefirot. The pre-kabbalistic speculation here concerns the spectacular and demiurgical character of the archangel Metatron. The fashioning of Adam in “our image” refers to the image of Metatron, the angel who, as prince of the Countenance, is the object of prophetic vision. The text thus seeks to explain the anthropomorphic appearance of God to the rabbis as the Jew donning phylacteries, to Moses as the warrior at the Red Sea (among other theophanies), and to Ezekiel as the charioteer, and so on. Accordingly, the prophets beheld this demiurge rather than the Cause of Causes. I find no criteria in this short passage for determining whether its author assigned the demiurge and the divine image to the realm of creation or whether he subsumed Metatron as a hypostasis within the divine domain. Yet, even if one reads the text in the latter sense as espousing something like a binitarianism or logos theology, there are no contextual cues for reading the gloss kabbalistically, that is, for treating the text as early evidence for the doctrine of a divinity comprised of ten sefirot. Footnote 39 The language of secrecy employed in the gloss does not diminish this fact, because, kabbalah is, after all, one of several discourses of medieval Jewish theology couched in such rhetoric, especially where demiurgical speculation is concerned.
It is critical to note that this same gloss on b. Berakhot 6a appears in full, adduced in the name of the Rabad, in the early fourteenth-century work Maʿarekhet ha-elohut. Footnote 40 The latter is an anonymous work that bears a close relationship to the signed writings of Ibn Gaon.Footnote 41 It is a systematic exposition of kabbalistic theology in the tradition of Naḥmanides composed by an adherent of Ibn Adret and Isaac ben Ṭodros. The author’s comment on the Rabad’s gloss reflects an agenda—like that of Ibn Gaon—of pinning kabbalistic teachings on the Rabad. The comment recounts the author’s initial alienation from the gloss and only later his acceptance thereof:
At first, I did not understand what [Rabad] meant because his words seemed to contradict our own. But afterwards, I [studied it more] carefully, and he who knows about prophetic vision, what I have mentioned [earlier] in this chapter [in a kabbalistic vein], will understand our words. And [its meaning] is very deep and true.Footnote 42
It appears that the author of this comment succeeded at assimilating the Rabad’s gloss because he read the language as allusive rather than plain and direct. The hermeneutic exhibited by this comment is consistent with the agenda of Shem Ṭov Ibn Gaon, whose authorship of the Maʿarekhet ha-elohut remains an open question.Footnote 43 The hermeneutic facilitated the author’s translation of the gloss into an extraneous theosophical idiom.Footnote 44 Another translation of the gloss into such an idiom, one that is roughly contemporaneous with Maʿarekhet ha-elohut, appears in Meʾirat ʿenayim of Isaac of Acre, who is another kabbalistic author of the early fourteenth century invested in the tradition of Naḥmanides.Footnote 45
The (Pseudo-)Rabad Fragment
It is immediately curious that a text that scholars have placed in the twelfth century is not attested, let alone quoted, prior to the sixteenth century. The late attestation is all the more suspect considering the stature of its supposed author. The fragment is attested in three different manuscripts with no significant variation, all of which were copied during the sixteenth century in Italy (or perhaps during the seventeenth century in the case of the Manchester manuscript).Footnote 46
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1. London, British Library, Add. 27003 (ALM 114; alternately 768), fols. 14a–b; produced in Ancona in 1546 by Judah ben Solomon de Bolognese.Footnote 47
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2. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Mich. 236 (Neubauer 1956), fol. 7a; copied 1581–83 by Abraham ben Meshullam at Asti; the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment appears likewise in an elected anthology of texts arranged according to the pericopes of the Pentateuch.Footnote 48
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3. Manchester, John Rylands Library, Gaster Hebrew Add 11 (previously: Gaster 1811; Gaster Unidentified 11), fols. 39b–40a; kabbalistic material ordered to the pericopes.Footnote 49
In all three cases, the fragment is located within eclectic anthologies of kabbalistic material ordered to the pericopes of the Pentateuch, including thematic excerpts from the greater literature of the Zohar and material in the tradition of Naḥmanides (for example, Sefer ha-Temunah, Judah ben Solomon Campanton, Menaḥem ben Benjamin Recanati, Isaac ben Samuel of Acre, and a teaching attributed to Pinḥas ha-Levi [of Barcelona]).Footnote 50 Fittingly, our account of the divine androgyne appears in the material ordered to Parashat Bereshit.
In the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment, the opposing attributes of compassion and judgment constitute the male and female facets of the divinity. The text appropriates the term du parṣufin (literally “two-faces”) to name the divine androgyne, a term used in only some of the ancient rabbinic accounts of the Adamic androgyne.Footnote 51 From a historical perspective it is striking that the early texts from Provence and Catalonia rarely use the language du parṣufin. Had the Rabad composed the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment in the late twelfth century, one would expect to observe the term’s ubiquity throughout the early material. In fact, du parṣufin is not a term that texts apply to the divinity with any regularity until sources composed in Castile during the final quarter of the thirteenth century.Footnote 52 Where the topos does appear within thirteenth-century sources—whether early or late, Catalonian or Castilian—it is nowhere, to the best of my knowledge, adduced on the authority of the Rabad.
According to the fragment, the androgyne’s opposing attributes are named “agents of truth whose actions are truth” (no. 2, below). This phrase is a liturgical reference to the sun and the moon derived from one version of the rabbinic sanctification of the full moon (qiddush levanah).Footnote 53 The fragment thus tropes the sun and moon as symbols for God’s male and female attributes respectively, that is, the attributes of compassion and judgment. The male and female attributes are further correlated in the text with the two most common theonyms in the Hebrew Bible: YHVH, corresponding to compassion, and Elohim, corresponding to judgment.
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1. The Rabad explained that Adam and Eve were created [as] an androgyne (du parṣufin) so that the woman would obey her husband, her life depending upon him, lest he go his way, and she go her way. Rather, affinity and friendship shall exist between them, and they shall not separate from one another, and peace will rest upon them and tranquility in their citadels (based on Ps. 122:7).
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2. And it is likewise concerning “the agents of truth whose actions are truth.” The secret of the androgyne refers to two matters. First, (a) it is well-known that two opposites were emanated, one of them complete judgment (din gamur), and its counterpart, complete compassion (raḥamim gamurim). Were they not emanated [as] an androgyne (du parṣufin) and were each to work out its actions [autonomously] according to its [individual] character, it would be possible to see [them] as if they were two [divine] powers acting [autonomously], without any connection with its partner and without its aid. But now, since they were created [as] an androgyne, their actions are performed in cooperation and equipollence and in a total union without any separation. And (b) furthermore, if they had not been created [as] an androgyne, no union would result from them and the attribute of judgment would not converge with [that of] compassion, nor would the attribute of compassion converge with [that of] judgment. But now, since they were created [as] an androgyne, each of them may approach its partner and unite with it, and its desire is willingly to unite with its partner, that the Tabernacle may be one (Exod. 26:6, 36:13). A proof for this [view] is found [in instances where] a [divine] name refers to the one [that is, the attribute] to which it is conjoined, since [on some occasions the name] YH[VH] refers to the attribute of judgment and [the name] Elohim to the attribute of compassion [instead of what is typically attested], as in “Then YHWH rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah” (Gen. 19:24). YHWH rained [means that] “he passed from attribute to attribute (u-va lo mi-middah le-middah).”Footnote 54
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3. This is the abridged rationale (zehu ha-ṭaʿam be-qiṣur). Go see for yourself.
Only the first sentence of this fragment concerning the androgyny of Adam and Eve may be ascribed to the Rabad, albeit, as a paraphrase of what was, in fact, a well-known text from the first pages of Baʿale ha-nefesh. Footnote 55 It is helpful to delineate the various elements of this passage:
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1. The opening paraphrase of Baʿale ha-nefesh: human androgyny is the anthropological basis for sanctioned relations between men and women.
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2. Human androgyny is analogous to God’s androgyny.
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3. God’s androgyny is constituted by the active coordination of compassion (male) and judgment (female).
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4. The sun and moon’s supernal archetypes, the male and female “agents of truth whose actions are truth,” constitute an androgynous union (this is close to Naḥmanides’s characterization of Adam and Eve’s prelapsarian status that is equivalent to the natural constancy of the heavenly bodies likewise named “agents of truth whose actions are truth”).Footnote 56
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5. Androgyny averts heretical testimony to two autonomous divine powers.
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6. The attributes cooperate in an equipollent manner.
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7. The androgynous union of male and female attributes unifies the supernal Tabernacle; this is likely based on Sefer ha-Bahir § 172, which adopts an Aramaic rendering of the biblical term ṣelaʿ (“side”) that is already present in the Genesis Rabbah discussion of Adam’s androgyny. There, Adam’s “side” from which God fashioned Eve’s body refers to a side of the Tabernacle (see Exod. 26:20) and thus our text refers to the reunion of the primordial androgyne as constituting a single Tabernacle.Footnote 57
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8. The correspondence of divine names and attributes is not fixed, which proves the essential unity of opposing attributes.
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9. Scripture’s use of the Tetragrammaton to indicate the divine subject of the punishment of Sodom demonstrates the conjunction of opposing attributes (compare Naḥmanides’s exegeses of Gen. 11:2, 18:20–21, and 19:24; and Deut. 34:12).
A critical datum ignored in previous assessments of this fragment is that all three witnesses end with two curious sentences: (1) a statement of abridgement (zehu ha-ṭaʿam be-qiṣur), which may suggest that the author of this fragment was reconstructing a tradition ascribed to the Rabad loosely from memory; and (2) a rabbinic directive indicating that the reader may verify the reference independently: “go and see for yourself (doq ve-tishkaḥ).” In two of the three witnesses, this statement is written using the same indented or marginal formatting reserved (at the end of other texts in the anthology) for bibliographic references.Footnote 58 The locution, one often used by Ibn Gaon in Migdal ʿoz (sometimes in reference to the Rabad), is initially puzzling in the absence of any bibliographic data save for the opening words (“Rabad explained”).Footnote 59 But because of the context in which the fragment is positioned to elucidate Parashat Bereshit, and since the source is meant to be evident to the reader, one may fairly conclude that the reference is to the single most conspicuous text composed by the Rabad dealing with the creation of Adam and Eve, namely, the well-known introduction of Baʿale ha-nefesh. More than merely communicating the source glossed in the fragment, however, the directive may be a prompt to its readers to verify the interpretation offered by harnessing their hermeneutical ingenuity when reading the Rabad’s words anew. That is, by reviewing the (non-theosophical) account of Adam and Eve from the initial pages of Baʿale ha-nefesh and mining it theosophically under the (erroneous) assumption that the Rabad concealed kabbalistic allusions there for resourceful readers.
The ideational contents of the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment are dense, and its theosophy is highly developed. It is, in fact, more developed than any esoteric traditions that may be readily ascribed to the sages of twelfth-century Provence whose known teachings primarily concern kavvanot (meditative direction of consciousness during worship).Footnote 60 As already mentioned, the fragment employs a vocabulary of divine androgyny not attested until a later period. Moreover, its author bases himself on traditions from Naḥmanides’s Torah commentary, traditions attested from the third quarter of the thirteenth century. The evidence I offer below suggests that the fragment’s author lived at least three generations after Naḥmanides. Before examining that evidence, however, or turning to the preliminary task of scrutinizing the image of Rabad as an author of hidden wisdom, it will be fitting to analyze the text from Baʿale ha-nefesh from which the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment takes its cue.
Baʿale ha-nefesh
In contrast to the reading proposed here, previous scholars have exploited Baʿale ha-nefesh to corroborate the purported authenticity of the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment.Footnote 61 The most lucid articulation of this distorting position maintains that, in the exoteric text translated below, the Rabad hid away the secrets that he revealed in our esoteric fragment on divine androgyny. According to this position, the correspondence between the former and latter texts proves that the author of the former also authored the latter. But, in fact, the Rabad authored only the former text, whereas the latter is but a paratext on Baʿale ha-nefesh composed by an author living at least five generations after the sage from Posquières. Careful comparison of the two texts does not authenticate Scholem’s ascription of the fragment, but on the contrary, overturns it.
The reader may here examine the translated text from the introduction of Baʿale ha-nefesh, which is the passage paraphrased and glossed by the author of the fragment:
What is the wonder of the work of creation? And who will understand their [that is, the creatures’] secrets? For all of those [creatures] were created from the earth male and female [that is, they were created as two separate sexes from the beginning]. But the human [ha-adam] was created one, and [only] afterwards, God created from him a helpmate. And who can stand above the greatness of His works and His wonders and reach the end of the wisdom of His works? For the human must consider with the poverty of his understanding and the dearth of his intellect that every work the deity made, he made everything with wisdom, understanding, and knowledge.Footnote 62 And I say, by the weakness of my intellect, that for the goodness of the human and for his wellbeing He created him one. For if they [that is, humans] were created male and female from the earth like all the rest of the creatures, the women would [conduct herself] toward the man like the female beast [conducts herself] toward the male, not submitting to the authority of the male, nor remaining [by his side] to serve him. Rather this one seizes that one before the other, and that one seizes this before the other, and that one strikes this, and this one strikes that. [If that were the case] man would be turned in his own direction [that is, away from the women]. And they [that is, humans] would not unite with one another because in the beginning they would have been created this one unto himself, and that one unto herself. Accordingly, in their beginning, this [human] was created in a singular fashion. And [thus] He took one of his ribs and built from it the woman. And He brought [her] to the man (ha-adam) to be a wife for him and for him a helpmate and his aid, and to aid him because she is considered as one of his limbs which were created to serve him so that he shall rule over her as he rules over one of his limbs, because she shall be desirous towards him just as one of his limbs would desire the wellbeing of his body.
And this is the explanation of the verse: “and for the human He did not find a helpmate [that is, from the beginning]” (Gen. 2:20). In other words, if He had created the human in the same way he formed the beast, he would not have found a helpmate.Footnote 63 And [so] He said, “it is not good that the human be alone” (Gen. 2:18), which is to say, like the beast in which case the female does not unite [monogamously] with the male; and thus “I shall make for him a fitting helpmate” (Gen. 2:18), that she will serve him in all of his needs, that she will remain always beside him. And it is good that the man (ha-adam) unites [monogamously] with the woman, for [by contrast] the beasts are isolated and the females do not unite [permanently] with the males. And thus, “I shall make for him a fitting helpmate” (Gen. 2:18), as if to say, “We will create in a manner that will be an aid to him from her,” that she unites [permanently] with him. And this is [the explanation of the preposition] “fitting (kenegdo; literally, against him),” that is, that she shall remain beside him day and night. And thus [the Torah] mentions the formation of the beast, and the animal beside the creation of the women, to say that if the women were created for man in the manner of the formation of the beast and the animal, Adam would not have had a helpmate from a woman. After the Creator created her from the body of the man (mi-guf ha-adam), and about this the man said, when seeing her, He knew she was taken from him, it says: “Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife [so that they are one flesh]” (Gen. 2:24).
In other words, it is fitting for her to unite with the man and the man to unite with her [in matrimony]. And thus, it is fitting for the man to love his wife as his [own] soul, and to console her, and to protect her, just as the man protects his limbs.Footnote 64 Thus, she is obligated to serve him, and to love him like her soul, since she was taken from him. Thus, the Creator commanded the man concerning his wife: “he shall not withhold her food, her clothing or her conjugal rights” (Ex. 21:10).Footnote 65 And so that the man shall know that he has a Creator who rules him; He set down an ordinance and a law (ḥoq u-mishpaṭ), which applies when he couples to his wife, likewise he set down ordinances concerning all the gifts [bestowed] to man.Footnote 66
When reviewing this passage, the reader will begin by noting that the Rabad represented his account of the ordo creationis as the fruit of his own intellectual exertion.Footnote 67 That is, when elucidating the creation of the human, the author neither claimed possession of an esoteric tradition nor what some kabbalists claimed for the Rabad, namely, knowledge revealed directly by the deathless Prophet Elijah.Footnote 68 What is equally important: Baʿale ha-nefesh makes no allusion to the isomorphic idea that the created order mirrors the divine order. It is true that the Rabad marveled at the wondrous integrity of God’s intention to create Eve from Adam’s body, but nowhere does his account coax the reader to read between the lines or allude to matters not fully explicated. There is likewise no indication in the passage that the Rabad professed the doctrine of God’s androgyny. Nor does Baʿale ha-nefesh make any use the key term du parṣufin.
In view of these reasons and the general doubts I have raised about the ascription of kabbalistic knowledge to the Rabad and additional doubts I will go on to outline concerning the supposed attribution of a doctrine of divine androgyny to the same authority, it is necessary to scale back the attribution of the (Pseudo-)Rabad passage and limit it to the fragment’s first sentence. This sentence explains the domestic partnership of the human male and female in terms of their original androgyny by paraphrasing Baʿale ha-nefesh. The paraphrase is unfaithful, however, because Baʿale ha-nefesh is not based on the rabbinic account of Adam’s androgyny, but instead on the scriptural account of God forming Eve from Adam’s side. The latter only serves the Rabad to marvel at the anthropological grounds for male-female monogamy and rabbinic marital norms.Footnote 69 The first sentence of the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment is not an allusion to a secret oral tradition possessed by the Rabad or, as Scholem believed on the basis of Ibn Gaon’s testimony, a lost fragment from the Rabad’s comments on the Babylonian Talmud (b. Eruvin 18a). The fragment’s transition from its initial sentence to establishing an analogy between the Adamic androgyne on the one hand and the divine order on the other marks the start of an extrapolation upon the paraphrase. Again, the extrapolation indulges in an esoteric reading of Baʿale ha-nefesh that blurs the boundaries between the words written by the Rabad in the twelfth century and a late theosophical reading thereof.
Doubts: The Rabad as an Authority on Divine Androgyny
I turn now to examine additional material related to the supposition that Rabad espoused teachings dealing with the subject of divine androgyny. The first item comes from an anonymous supercommentary on Naḥmanides’s Commentary on the Pentateuch datable to the first quarter of the fourteenth century. This work of kabbalah in the Naḥmanidean tradition is the source of the statement Scholem ascribed to Meir ben Solomon Abi Sahula, which he deemed sufficient for the purposes of authenticating the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment. The work was printed in Warsaw in 1875 in the name of Abi Sahula.Footnote 70 Although scholars have attributed the work to both Abi Sahula and Joshua Ibn Shuʿeib, doubts beset both attributions.Footnote 71 Whoever the author, the text, which is unsigned in the manuscripts, bears many similarities to Keter shem ṭov of Ibn Gaon.Footnote 72 It is the product of a kabbalistic author who presented himself as an initiate into the hidden wisdom of Naḥmanides as well as a disciple of both Ibn Adret and Isaac ben Ṭodros.
After affirming that the creation of the human androgyne follows a divine model, the text abruptly states that an explanation for this may be found in the writings of the Rabad:
And behold, the human was created, like the [supernal] pattern of male and female—an androgyne. And Rabbi Abraham ben David of blessed memory already wrote the reason (ukhevar katav ha-Rabad zikhrono li-verakhah ṭaʿam ha-davar). And behold, the Rav [that is, Naḥmanides] of blessed memory alluded to the matter …Footnote 73
Scholem read this statement as an indication that its author knew that Rabad avowed the doctrine of divine androgyny and thus argued in error that it served to authenticate our late fragment. Careful reading determines that the reference to Rabad’s writing is but an equivocal reference to Baʿale ha-nefesh—a work that I have shown contains no mention of kabbalistic wisdom in general or God’s androgyny in particular. It appears, nonetheless, that the anonymous author of this supercommentary fits the profile of an early fourteenth-century kabbalist in the Naḥmanidean tradition overeager to wring theosophical significance from Baʿale ha-nefesh. When bearing in mind this aspect of the author’s profile, it is apt to recall the hermeneutical ingenuity I have highlighted among kabbalistic authors who had no compunction about reading allusions into writings of the Rabad. Here again I detect an anachronistic mode of reading that foreshortened the historical and ideational distance between the writings of the Rabad and a nexus of kabbalistic ideation current over a century after his death.
If the author of the text just adduced were able to place his finger on a known text by the Rabad that made clear reference to the doctrine of the divine androgyne, why would he not quote it? Rather, after alluding to the Rabad, the author turned immediately to quoting ideas related to androgyny from Naḥmanides. This move betrays the insufficiency of his reference to the Rabad. The most likely motivation for including the equivocal reference to the Rabad in this context seems to be its author’s personal interest in substantiating Naḥmanides’s supposed position within a chain of esoteric transmission leading back to the Rabad (via Isaac “the Blind”) and, more emphatically, in staking an authority-conferring agenda squarely on the Rabad’s supposed knowledge of divine androgyny.Footnote 74 It is also worth noting that the author’s supercommentary was fond of the key phrase “go and see for yourself” (doq ve-tishkaḥ) that, as seen above, concludes the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment.Footnote 75 Moreover, Jonathan V. Dauber analyzed the citation practices of this author—in particular, his attributions of knowledge to Provence—and proved their deficiency.Footnote 76
Further testimony comes from another anonymous supercommentary on Naḥmanides, a work preserved in two manuscripts belonging to the same family of kabbalistic texts as the work just discussed. As with the latter, and Maʿarekhet ha-elohut, I have in mind an additional composition related in style and content to the signed writings of Ibn Gaon whose author bases himself on the authority of Ibn Adret.Footnote 77 The work mentions a written account by the Rabad that explains the creation of the female from the side of the male in terms of the female serving as an extension of the male’s body. The text does not go so far as to affirm, however, that the figure composed a text concerning either a human or a divine androgyne (du parṣufin):
And the Rabad of blessed memory wrote that the woman was created from the side of the man to become as one of his limbs, since each one of them [that is, Adam’s limbs] desires and seeks the [desire] of its fellow.Footnote 78
Immediately after referring to this tradition, which is a clear reference to, though not a quotation from, Baʿale ha-nefesh, the text proceeds to expand on the psychological implications of the Rabad’s anthropology. In doing so, it marks a clear transition from (a) the reference to the anthropology of Baʿale ha-nefesh to (b) the author’s extrapolation therefrom. Thus, the text proceeds:
But to his words it must be added (va-yesh lehosif ʿal devarav) that Eve was not created after the soul was blown into him [that is, Adam] (compare Gen. 2:7), and she existed in a state of potential within Adam’s body from that time …Footnote 79
The text goes on to explain that the pre-created potential of the female comports with the same divine archetype of androgyny as the moon, which is female, and the sun, which is male. The androgynous pattern of the two luminaries is illustrated by the fact that moonlight subsists in a state of potential within the sun. In this way, the text endorses a theosophical doctrine close to that of the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment, according to which both the cosmological binary of the sun and the moon, and the human binary of the male and female typify a supernal pattern of androgyny. Nonetheless, the anonymous supercommentary distinguishes between the Rabad’s anthropology on the one hand and the author’s extrapolation therefrom on the other, making the text more faithful in its representation of the Rabad’s ideas and their limits.
Still another item of relevance is a paraphrase of the Rabad’s account of why heterosexual monogamy accords with the order of creation:
“They shall be one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). Rabbi Abraham ben David explained “one flesh”: and she will not be wanton with other men like animals, since she and her husband are one flesh; in other words, a man who consorts with the wife of another man, it is as though he is consorting with her husband.Footnote 80
This text is preserved in an anthology of tosafist glosses on the Hebrew Bible containing material dating from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. It shows that even non-kabbalistic texts with no interest in promoting a doctrine of divine androgyny nonetheless treat the anthropology of Baʿale ha-nefesh paraphrastically. Here the author’s point is to underscore the mandate of monogamy at the heart of the Rabad’s idea that God’s creation of the human as “one flesh” distinguishes the human as a species in a class unto itself.
When interrogating the image of the Rabad as a disseminator of the doctrine of divine androgyny, there is an additional piece of evidence that surpasses those yet adduced: an esoteric responsum composed by Ibn Adret himself, the figure on whom Ibn Gaon and associated authors based their claims of initiation. The responsum contains both (1) a kabbalistic account of human creation, and (2) a paraphrase from the portion of Baʿale ha-nefesh containing the two ideas accurately attributed to the Rabad in evidence just adduced: (a) that the female’s designation as a limb of the male explains heterosexual desire; and (b) that the distinctive creation of the male and female human as “one flesh” set it apart from all other species.
A truncated version of the responsum appears in the Torah commentary of Baḥya ben Asher Ibn Halawa.Footnote 81 In that context, Baḥya misrepresented the responsum as something it is not. That is, he framed it as a rejoinder to Naḥmanides’s interpretation of Gen. 2:18 (“It is not good for the human to be alone; I will make a fitting helpmate for him”). Naḥmanides’s interpretation of said verse quotes the Talmudic account of the Adamic androgyne (du parṣufin) to relate the primordial situation prior to the separation of Adam and Eve.Footnote 82 But in its full context, the responsum does not engage Naḥmanides directly nor does it explicate the term du parṣufin (neither are mentioned in the quaestio).Footnote 83 Rather, the springboard for the inquiry is a dictum of Rabbi Abbahu intended to reconcile conflicting information in the Genesis creation narratives:
At first it arose in [the divine] thought to create two, but in the end none but one was created.Footnote 84
The inquirer’s concern is that Abbahu’s words imply that God changed His mind. Did God renew His will and revert to his original “thought” of creating two sexes when He said: “It is not good for the human to be alone; I will make a fitting helpmate for him”?
At first it arose in [the divine] thought to create two, but in the end none but one was created. But after one was created, the blessed Lord saw that the human was not formed according to the good of perfection [that is, he had no means to procreate], and [thus] he took one of his ribs and built the rib into a woman. And this [means of creation] is exceptional among the creatures of the blessed Lord.Footnote 85
Ibn Adret assured the inquirer that his concern was unfounded:
There was no renewal of the work [of creation] or will. What you saw in the words of our rabbis of blessed memory about the thought of two and creation of one is not as you reason—that at first it arose in thought that they be two, and subsequently He did not create but one, but thereafter he reverted and saw that the first thought was good for them to be two. Far be these things from the blessed Lord … I will tell you two things about this and both are true according to my knowledge.Footnote 86
The first explanation that follows is a highly esoteric account constructed of arcane theosophical references; the second is an extensive paraphrase of Baʿale ha-nefesh whose title is named explicitly.Footnote 87
Ibn Adret prefaced his first explanation by proposing an allusive mode of reading Rabbi Abbahu’s words. In so doing, he assumed his addressee’s endowment with knowledge requisite for that task, indicating later in the responsum that his allusions would suffice for such an adept reader (ve-day la-ish kamokha bi-meʿaṭ min ha-remizot).Footnote 88 In particular, Ibn Adret expected the addressee’s familiarity with a theosophical interpretation of the midrashic legend of the sun and moon’s primordial equality, prior to the moon’s diminution—an outstanding legend within the Naḥmanidean tradition.Footnote 89
Know that the word of scripture and the words of the rabbinic homilies are allusions and corporeal forms [intended] to illustrate the spiritual matters (derekh remizot ve-ṣiyyurim gashmiyyim leṣayyer ha-ʿinyanim bi-nefashot) and to inform that everything was created providentially by the Blessed One according to the purpose of perfection … as you will find in many instances in the homilies of our rabbis of blessed memory on the account of creation.Footnote 90
And he [Rabbi Abbahu] said the creation of the human occurred as if it transpired after [the divine] thought and contemplation, which was the [initial] thought to create two [autonomous sexes], that is, this one unto itself and that one unto itself, and for them to stand unto themselves without one receiving from the other and without one engendering children from the other because the [noetic] form of the male and the female [in the divine thought, as two autonomous creatures] was like the sun and moon [respectively, when they were luminaries equal in their light]. But afterward wisdom necessitated that “it was not good that the human,” who is the root of creation, “should be alone,” but rather that he be the agent (poʿel) and the female be as a vessel assisting him in his undertakings (peʿulotav). And it is like the matter of the thought and the action with the sun and the moon. And the sages taught that the moon spoke before the Blessed Holy One, “Master of the Universe, it is impossible for two kings to serve a single crown.” And the blessed Holy One said to her, “Go and diminish yourself.” Thus, she is but a vessel for the sun to act upon; and she receives from him. And according to Joseph’s dream Jacob and Rachel allude to sun and moon, who are like them without a doubt. But for a man like you a few allusions will suffice (ve-day la-ish kamokha bi-meʿaṭ min ha-remizot). And this is what Rabbi Abbahu clarified, for the verse that says “male and female He created them” refers to the thought to create two, this one to itself, and that one to itself. But subsequently, they were created in action (be-maʿaseh) but one, which is the male. And the female is not counted in the creation but as something inessential, “and she was taken from him” for the needs of his service. And this is what the sages of blessed memory interpreted, “a tail.”Footnote 91 As in the verse, “[The Lord will make you] like the head and not the tail” (Deut. 28:13). If it was truly a tail, she was built therefrom.Footnote 92
This cagy passage assails the addressee with clusters of loosely coordinated, highly allusive information. It leaves much work for its reader to reconstruct the pieces of the author’s argument, which serves, ultimately, to advance a theosophical account of human creation vindicating Rabbi Abbahu’s contention that only one sex was created (notwithstanding the appearance of Adam’s “helpmate”). Ibn Adret availed himself of an epistemological distinction between “thought” (maḥshavah) and “action” (maʿaseh) to delineate a threshold between (a) events describing emanatory processes internal to the divinity, and (b) events within the concrete domain of creation. Thus, the initial “thought” to create two sexes corresponds to the same phase of God’s pre-creative process as the primordial equality of sun and moon. On the other hand, the diminution of the moon for the purposes of rendering right service to the one crown is necessitated by the same “wisdom” that requires indenturing the female to the male to facilitate procreation. According to this account, which effectively excludes women from the created order, only the male sex is created “in action” with the female explained away as a mere appendage.
After adducing its kabbalistic explanation of Abbahu’s dictum, the responsum turns to its second explanation: “there is an additional explanation (ʿod yesh lefaresh) of [the dictum] ‘at first it arose in [the divine] thought to create two’.” With this statement, the responsum introduces an extensive paraphrase of the passage from Baʿale ha-nefesh, translated above, that drives home the Rabad’s opinion that the female “helpmate” is but a limb belonging to the male body. Whether the woman is viewed as a non-essential appendage or regarded as an extension of the male, Rabbi Abbahu’s interpretation stands: the human was effectively created “one,” which, according to the Rashba, means one male.Footnote 93 The responsum then seals the quotation with a sentence absent from the truncated version of the text adduced in Baḥya’s commentary: “the master Rabbi Abraham of blessed memory already anticipated this explanation (u-kevar qadam le-ferush zeh) in the book Baʿale ha-nefesh and it is correct.”Footnote 94 This statement echoes in one of the supercommentaries discussed above (“And Rabbi Abraham ben David of blessed memory already wrote the reason”).Footnote 95
To be sure, a reader coming upon this reference to Baʿale ha-nefesh on the heels of Ibn Adret’s initial theosophical explanation would naturally suppose that the Rabad’s words must likewise be read “to illustrate the spiritual matters.” In fact, the flow of the responsum would suggest that Ibn Adret actively encouraged the theosophical interpretation of the Rabad’s account of human creation. At the very least, it shows that Rashba promoted a theosophical rationale of female subordination and prompted at least one of his kabbalistically-initiated students to study the introduction to Baʿale ha-nefesh. Rashba thus set the stage for precisely the kind of theosophical reading of Baʿale ha-nefesh found in the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment that would surface in the writings of his adherents, texts which nonetheless attest to many kabbalistic interpretations of the Rabad’s account of human creation often without any direct mention of the Rabad or Baʿale ha-nefesh. Moreover, the simultaneous circulation of the two recensions of Rashba’s responsum—(1) the fuller recension with its explicit citation of the Rabad, and (2) Baḥya’s truncation thereof, lacking express reference to the Rabad—helps to explain why some of the theosophical eisegesis of Baʿale ha-nefesh cites the Rabad whereas much of it does not. It may be that some fourteenth-century authors basing their accounts on Baḥya’s version of the responsum were, like the modern scholars who neglected to cite Baḥya’s source text, unaware that Baʿale ha-nefesh served as a springboard for the Rashba’s responsum.Footnote 96
My examination of the first three allusions to Rabad’s knowledge of Adam and Eve found only pithy statements associating the author with an anthropology that defines the male-female relationship in terms of the created order. This, of course, is the known theme of Baʿale ha-nefesh. Although the latter is a work devoid of kabbalistic content, the first of the three initial examples equivocated on this point. As I suggested, such equivocation also characterizes Ibn Adret’s responsum, where an explicit reference to Baʿale ha-nefesh stands out. Unusual is the length of the Rabad paraphrase in Rashba’s responsum, since shorter paraphrases are evident elsewhere. The pattern of paraphrasis in these cases supports my insistence on isolating the first sentence of the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment as another iteration of the pattern. Perhaps most importantly, none of the evidence yields a single quotation from the Rabad’s writings dealing expressly with the subject of androgyny. There is thus no means to verify the consensus view that the great halakhist composed a text about the divine androgyne, much less the human androgyne. More broadly, there is no proof that the Rabad engaged in any writing whatsoever that disclosed—whether directly, allusively, or by dint of intentional contradiction—secret knowledge of kabbalah.Footnote 97 All of this is more than adequate to withdraw the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment from the dossier of early theosophical texts. Where then does it belong?
Placing the Text
Previous research on the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment has suggested an active reception of its ideas in a lineage of authors belonging to a Naḥmanidean school of kabbalah.Footnote 98 It is these very authors who produced most of the material examined in the preceding section. More specifically relevant is a smaller cohort within this broader school: Ibn Gaon and the authors of early fourteenth-century texts closely aligned with his agenda. These writers claimed initiation by Ibn Adret and/or Isaac ben Ṭodros into the knowledge that Naḥmanides, they averred, had received through a chain of transmission in which the Rabad served as a key tradent. These authors possessed clear motives for propagating what would become the authorized narrative of kabbalah’s origins. Indeed, they did so with such resounding success that modern academic historiography adopted their story’s basic contours. It is incorrect, however, to view the family of texts produced by these authors as the main conduit for a doctrine of divine androgyny stemming from twelfth-century Provence. Rather than the conduit, it is this nexus of texts that may be considered as the source of the para-Rabad speculation attested in our fragment. This suggestion is supported by the evidence showing that Ibn Adret paved the way for the kabbalistic interpretation of Baʿale ha-nefesh among his adherents. It is reinforced by exposing the interpretive-historiographic agenda of the specific cohort of Ibn Adret devotees, namely, Ibn Gaon and associated authors. It is borne out, moreover, by evidence of acute parallels between the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment and the family of texts to which, I argue, it belongs. I turn now to the task of adducing such parallels by examining the speculative motifs around which they constellate.
The fragment’s opening paraphrase of the Rabad iterates the following motifs, which are well attested in the writings presently indicated: (a) the anthropological basis of women’s obedience to men; (b) the distribution of obligations within the male-female partnership; and (c) the notion that non-human creatures are constitutionally incapable of heterosexual monogamy. These motifs receive theosophical treatment—without explicit reference to the account in Baʿale ha-nefesh—in Maʿarekhet ha-elohut, where they intertwine with other characteristic ideas present in the fragment:
The beginning of thought is for the perfection of what is required by the end of the action. At the beginning of this thought [the attribute of judgment] was joined together with compassion. In other words, the attribute of judgment was contained in compassion potentially but not in actuality. This is the reason that the man rules in his house, and “all the glory of the king’s daughter is within” (Ps. 45:14). From here the enlightened will discern … what they [the rabbis] said regarding the creation of Adam and his wife.Footnote 99 Initially the thought arose to create two, but in the end only one was created. Through this process, Adam and Eve were created an androgyne (du parṣufin) below, even though it [initially] arose in thought that they would really be two. If they had been created as two from the first, the one would turn hither and the other would turn tither in the manner of animals, and the man would not have been able to derive his desire from the woman, and to be aided by her in propagating the species, and in the worship of his Creator. But since they were first an androgyne, this is the reason that even when they are separated, “they shall be one flesh” and they pursue one another with the love of adolescents.Footnote 100
In both the fragment and this passage, the desire between male and female results from their primordial unity as an androgyne. In both instances, the explanation of heterosexual desire is based on the archetypal unity of the opposing attributes, demonstrating the ‘kabbalization’ of the Rabad’s anthropology and ethos.Footnote 101 An especially noteworthy parallel is the rhetorical structure of the explanation, which is clearly informed, both here and in the fragment, by the specific argument from Baʿale ha-nefesh that is paraphrased in Ibn Adret’s responsum opposing the creation of beasts to the creation of the human.
Another text that exhibits a corresponding set of ideas by means of a similar rhetoric is found in an unpublished collection of traditions belonging to the loose corpus of material under consideration:
You know that the attribute of judgment is conjoined with the attribute of compassion, since they are rulers (manhigim) of the lower beings. And know that if Adam and Eve were not created an androgyne (du parṣufin), joined one to another at the beginning of creation, they would be like beasts and would not heed one another.Footnote 102
The text seems to presume a basic analogy between the divinity’s superiority to the angels and humanity’s standing in relation to other animals that pertains to the capacity of the ruling being/species to internally subjugate female to male. The divinity’s capacity to rule over angels is predicated on its internal ordering of female and male attributes, that is, of judgment and compassion. Likewise, the human ability to couple in marriage and cooperate socially mirrors the divine pattern, setting them apart from beasts rather than angels.
In connection with these passages, one may consider the account of another fourteenth-century exponent of Naḥmanidean kabbalah, namely, Judah ben Solomon Campanton (or Canpanton; apparently a student of Ibn Adret’s disciple Yom Ṭov ben Abraham of Seville), whose writings lie just beyond the scope of texts under primary scrutiny. Nonetheless, Judah’s Leqaḥ ṭov explains the secret of the androgyne by way of several motifs related to the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment. One example is the text’s narration of a transition from (a) a primordial equality that had originally obtained between the human male and female to (b) a later phase of female subordination:
And the explanation of “this instance (zot ha-paʿam) is bone of my bone” is to say (Gen. 2:23), at the first instance [in which] there were two facets (du parṣufin), there was truly one bone. The two of them [male and female] were equal in will and status. But since they separated, the Creator apportioned her a measure of his bones, and a single limb of his limbs, so that she would obey him and he would rule over her, and all of his desire would incline to her.Footnote 103
In addition to the general themes of female obedience and male-female desire, the texts at hand are likewise interested in the specific norms governing the differentiated labors and obligations of men and women in marriage. These are discussed, for example, in Maʿarekhet ha-elohut, and in the anonymous supercommentary ascribed to Abi Sahula.Footnote 104 Central in both contexts is the man’s obligation to provide his partner with “food, clothing, and conjugal rights,” a topic that anchors the discussion in Baʿale ha-nefesh. Footnote 105 According to the text, “there are labors in the way of marriage that are obligatory to perform, for the wife as well as the husband; he [must provide for her] food, clothing, and conjugal rights and shall not desist.”Footnote 106 Moreover, the language of obedience in the Maʿarekhet ha-elohut parallels that of the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment: “a woman shall obey her husband, but the husband [need not obey] the woman.”Footnote 107
Another key motif in the fragment is the specific allusion to the moon and sun—or the supernal attributes to which they correspond—as “agents of truth whose actions are truth.” This allusion, as already indicated, is based on Naḥmanides’s comment on Gen. 2:9. It appears several times in the anonymous supercommentary ascribed to Abi Sahula, as illustrated by this example: “The supernal powers to which the sun and the moon allude are the true rulers and theirs is complete governance, ‘agents of truth whose actions are truth,’ that is, the attribute of day and the attribute of night.”Footnote 108 Beyond the parallel usage of this liturgical phrase, the broader topos of the two luminaries and their original unity encompasses several motifs that track throughout the writings of Ibn Gaon and their cognate texts. In this context, the much-studied theme of equality versus subordination yields further parallels. As Moshe Idel has shown, texts from the “school of Naḥmanides” yield much speculation concerning the original equipollence of the opposing sexual attributes.Footnote 109 Although it does not use the specific language of equality, Ibn Adret’s responsum likely played some role in the broad diffusion of this topos. As in the responsum, the relevant texts express this topos in terms of the ancient legend that, before the moon’s diminution, the two luminaries shone with equal force like two kings serving a single crown.Footnote 110 The anonymous supercommentary ascribed to Abi Sahula assumes that the original equality of the male sun and female moon was subsumed within a singular androgynous illumination in which the opposite facets cooperated to function in a singular manner: “The first light was created androgynous, and [its two facets] shone equally and they performed a single function. And the intention of this was for them to be evenly tempered in compassion and judgment, for thus it is fitting for the world to be.”Footnote 111 Isaac of Acre adduced a passage from the enigmatic Qabbalat Saporta (that is, wisdom in the tradition of “ça Porta,” an attestation of Naḥmanides’ Catalan surname) that deals similarly with the topic of male-female equipollence.Footnote 112 Interesting too in this connection is a teaching of Judah Campanton in which the constellation Gemini (ha-teʾomim) is ruled by the archetypal image of the divine androgyne. The divinity thus models the pattern that is reiterated by the stars of a two-fold unity comprised of opposing attributes of equal power.Footnote 113
The following text likewise typifies speculation on the androgynous unity of the sun and moon. It is an explanation from Yalquṭ he-ḥakham ha-maskil (or Daʿat he-ḥakham), yet another anonymous collection of glosses on Naḥmanides’s Pentateuch commentary interpolated into the first partial printing of Ibn Gaon’s Keter shem ṭov. Footnote 114
The knowledge of the sage [Naḥmanides] is that during the first three days [of creation] the [two facets of the] androgyne were completely equipollent. And from their power illumines the night and day. And they [initially] served a single crown. The explanation is that they received their light from [the sefirah called] repentance (teshuvah; that is, binah), which is the repentance that is possible for the two kings who served a single crown. He [Naḥmanides] explained that they received the power of the two of them as one, to act within the world. If not, they [humans] would come to error upon seeing within the world two [autonomous] powers, one not higher than another, lest they say, heaven forbid, there are two powers in the world, and would [thus] cut down the shoots.Footnote 115
This dense text, which cannot be elucidated thoroughly, evinces another important idea presented in the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment. This is the subtle notion that the original equipollence and androgynous unity of the opposite sexual attributes has the function of averting heretical testimony.Footnote 116 Thus, God created the sun and moon as a single androgyne to prevent humans from lapsing into dualism, that is, the paradigmatic offense of the legendary heretic Elisha ben Abuya (Aḥer), who, according to rabbinic lore, “cut down the shoots.”Footnote 117 Presupposed by the author of the anonymous collection of glosses on Naḥmanides is the notion that two separate-but-equal celestial bodies would not reflect a hierarchically ordered cosmos ruled by a single sovereign creator and would thus confound the avowal of monotheism.
In the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment, the goal of averting heretical, dualistic testimony is referred to a discussion of divine names. Why? According to the text, the names YHVH and Elohim constitute a male-female pair that corresponds to the androgynous unity of compassion and judgment, as well as sun and moon. The reader will recall that the fragment offers a “proof” for the unity of YHVH and Elohim with a terse explanation of the punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah. As seen above, the exegesis wants to explain the fact that the theonym ordinarily corresponding to the attribute of compassion is the subject of a verse relating a horrific episode of divine judgment. When judgment prevails, scripture may invoke an apparently merciful name to teach that opposing attributes are subsumed within an equipollent, cooperative unity. The apparent discrepancy between name and attribute is resolved by a theology of androgyny that prevails over any false testimony to two autonomous powers.
To be sure, the fragment’s exegesis takes its cue from two interreferential passages in Naḥmanides’s commentary that explain the use of unexpected theonyms in Pentateuchal accounts of punishment. The first of these passages takes the humbling of Babel as its springboard, whereas the second comments on the punishment of Sodom:
They [the generation of the Tower of Babel] thought an evil thought, and the punishment that came over them—to be divided in their languages and countries—was meted out measure-for-measure (middah keneged middah) because “they cut the shoots” [that is, they undermined the principle of divine unity by thinking God to be divided into autonomous attributes] … And one will find that in the entire account of the flood, Torah mentions [only the theonym] Elohim [associated with judgment], while in the entire account of the division [at Babel] it mentions the Tetragrammaton [associated with compassion]; the flood came on account of the corruption of the land, but the division came because “they cut the shoots” and thus their punishment was meted out by His Great Name. This explains the “descent” and also the divine attribute meted out in Sodom. And the enlightened will understand.Footnote 118
According to Naḥmanides, the administration of divine justice functions similarly in all cases involving the sin of “cutting the shoots”—the cardinal offense he alleged against both the generation of the Tower of Babel and the Sodomites. It is explained that God’s measure-for-measure punishment had the effect of dividing the sinners who offended precisely by dividing their mental representation of God. The exegesis also articulates the hermeneutical principle that the Torah indicates God’s punishment for the sin of “cutting the shoots” when YHVH appears as the punitive subject, rather than Elohim.
The precise rationale for this principle is not indicated until elsewhere, when Naḥmanides comments directly on the “descent” of God when judging the Sodomites, a mode of judgment involving the cooperation of His opposing attributes. YHVH is indicated in the verse because it both initiates and completes the operation of judging the case, a process that is mediated by YHVH’s “descent” to Elohim, that is, the coupling of the attribute of compassion with the attribute of judgment. Although Naḥmanides’s rationale does not depend expressly on the topos of androgyny, his exegesis does provide a theological basis for understanding the coordination of counterpoised attributes. Moroever, his exegesis invokes the very language of a tannaitic dictum that appears in the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment: “He comes forth and goes from attribute to attribute (yoṣe lo mi-middah le-middah). He comes forth from the attribute of compassion and goes to the attribute of judgment.”Footnote 119
I shall now intimate to you the opinion of those who received the truth. Our Rabbis have exposited from the verse, “For behold, YHVH comes forth out of His place, and will come down, and tread upon the high places of the earth” (Mic. 1:3).Footnote 120 “He comes forth and goes from attribute to attribute (yoṣe lo mi-middah le-middah); He comes forth from the attribute of compassion, and goes to the attribute of judgment.” We interpret this subject similarly. “And YHVH said”—in His heart—“the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah, because it is great, I will go down,” from the attribute of compassion to the attribute of judgment, “and I will see,” in compassion, “if they have done according to the cry of it which is come unto Me” through the attribute of judgment, and if so, “punishment; and if not, I will know” and “I will show compassion,” just as in the verse, “And God knew” (Exod. 2:25).Footnote 121
In the supercommentary tradition, this passage serves as a locus classicus of Naḥmanides’s concern with divine names whose functions would appear to conflict with the attributes to which they conventionally correspond. More is yet required to situate this concern within the family of texts to which the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment belongs.
This is accomplished readily enough, however, as Naḥmanides’s theology of divine names is a prominent concern of the indicated texts. For instance, Ibn Gaon’s Keter shem ṭov exemplifies this concern, as does the anonymous commentary attributed to Abi Sahula.Footnote 122 The two following examples from the latter text comment directly on the exegeses of Naḥmanides:
Do not ask concerning the accounts of Sodom and the generation of division [that is, the generation of the Tower of Babel] that mention the unique name [YHVH] if [the attribute of] judgment, and all of the judgments were manifest thereby. For the [attribute of] judgment is together therewith because they [the Sodomites and the generation of division] “cut down its shoots.”Footnote 123
A second example from the same source concerns the use of the Tetragrammaton in verses recounting the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah:
According to the tradition of the master, there is an explanation [for many verses like these in which name and attribute do not seem to correspond], as he expounded [in his commentary] each in its place with God’s help … the names alternate to change the deeds that need to be executed in the world.Footnote 124 And in this the cutter [of shoots] cuts [by assuming the theonyms are rigidly fixed according to autonomous functions], thus you will find the master expounded the name Elohim sometimes in lieu of the unique Name [YHVH], and sometimes the unique name in lieu of Elohim.Footnote 125
Striking a similar chord as the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment, this elaboration of Naḥmanides’s comment on Gen. 18:20–21 suggests that proper knowledge of the alternation of divine names in the Torah thwarts heresy. In another instance, the anonymous supercommentary claims, “the Torah will sometimes mention the name YH[VH] in lieu of Elohim, and sometimes Elohim in lieu of YH[VH] … in order to indicate the complete unity, since everything is one and the names alternate according to the functions.”Footnote 126 The phrase “the complete unity (ha-yiḥud ha-gamur)” is the same used in the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment to qualify the equitable cooperation of the androgyne’s two facets (kol peʿullatam be-yaḥad be-shaveh uve-yiḥud gamur).
The subject of alternation between opposite theonyms also occupied the author of Maʿarekhet ha-elohut, for whom androgyny was an apt means of clarifying the primordial unity in which the opposites are rooted: “The agents are the opposing names in actuality… But know that the root of the agents is an androgyne (du parṣufin).”Footnote 127 Elsewhere, the author inveighed against the confessional dangers of fixing an absolute set of correspondences between names and attributes based on one-sided schemas:
It is not apt to fix for Him names or attributes—not a fixed name nor a fixed attribute, such that one might say a [particular] name of God indicates compassion but not judgment, or that [a particular name indicates] judgment but not compassion; and likewise [saying] in [such and such] attribute is compassion but not judgment or vice versa. [This is not apt] because the equipollent aspect is within them, in all of them, whether in His names or in His attributes. For they [the opposing attributes] are the overseers and the rulers that are unified and contained within the divinity [literally “the blessed Name”]. They are emanated, but their oppositional character appears [only] from the vantage of the [lower] entities which receive them.Footnote 128
This interdiction against absolute fixity illustrates, once again, the concern to avert heretical testimony by disseminating knowledge of the equipollence and integration of the divinity’s apparent opposites. Without this knowledge, the manifestation of individual names and attributes is liable to conceal from the untutored beholder the other names and attributes with which the overt names and attributes are bonded and unified. This reading is supported by an additional passage from the same source:
Verily the [divine] things (devarim) reverse themselves when emanating like forms submerged in [the relief of] their seal, so that they are reversed to eyes beholding them; and when they appear in the seal, the forms become prominent, and they reverse their order: if their order was [on] the right, they will become left.Footnote 129
Just as in the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment, it is understood that the fluid alternation of divine names verifies the androgynous unity that is the basis of right faith. Also, as seen in the fragment, and in other sources collated here, the androgynous unity of opposing attributes serves as the ontological basis for the configuration of the luminaries, for the carriage of divine providence, and for heterosexual monogamy. Through the confluence of highly specific exegetical and theological nuances, the sources reviewed here agree that patterns of androgyny emanating from the divine order dictate aspects of the cosmic order, the social order, and the fidelity of religious testimony.
In conclusion, the foregoing analysis demonstrates the falsity of the consensus view that the entire tradition of kabbalistic writing was produced downstream of a text allegedly composed in twelfth-century France. Careful examination shows that the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment on God’s androgyny postdates all of the major watersheds of theosophical literature composed throughout the thirteenth century. Not one of the writings associated with Catalonia and Castile—Sefer ha-Bahir, the works of Ezra ben Solomon of Gerona, Jacob ben Sheshet, Naḥmanides, Isaac ha-Kohen of Soria, Moses Çinfa of Burgos, Ṭodros ben Joseph ha-Levi Abulafia of Toledo, Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla of Medinaceli, Isaac ben Solomon Abi Sahula, Moses ben Shem Ṭov de León of Guadalajara, and perhaps most importantly, the Zohar—may be viewed in its wake. The process of breaking down the hermeneutical privilege that the text has enjoyed throughout the course of eighty years of scholarship will take time and it is difficult to predict how it will unfold. It is nonetheless possible to anticipate at least four domains in which the results of this study will reverberate:
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1. The first is the ongoing project of reassessing the ambivalent impact of Gershom Scholem’s research agenda on the field of Jewish Studies, and especially its influence on the subfield of kabbalah scholarship. What the present study confronts is the scholarly tendency, recklessly modeled by Scholem, of inverting and antagonizing the evidentiary standards of historical positivism for the purposes of researching secrets. To put the matter with greater urgency, the viability of critical kabbalah research depends on relinquishing the confused presupposition it inherits from Scholem, namely, that a lack of written evidence for a particular tradition in the past serves to verify its antiquity: the less evidence, the more authentic and venerable the secret. This presupposition has contributed to the distortion of historical facts. It also tends to confer an enchanted cult of authority around whomsoever pretends to divine the antiquity of secrets where they are unattested in the earliest sources.Footnote 130 A field in which such assumptions prevail is one that manufactures dogmatic consensus through the obsequious reproduction of scholarly authority. A salutary field of research, on the other hand, encourages the dynamic emergence of agreement impelled by the ongoing examination of evidence.
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2. The second domain is the research on the theological tradition of Naḥmanides in the wake of Ibn Adret (Rashba). This study helps to organize many texts and authors within this tradition around representative themes. It likewise exposes how the reading and citation practices of key authors in this tradition supported a wrongheaded historiographic orientation that continues to lead researchers astray.
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3. The third is early kabbalah research, and especially the study of Provençal kabbalah, the corpus of which is now considerably smaller than once posited. Provence not only loses a text that has assumed a dubious provenance and exaggerated role in the scholarship, but also one of its most overestimated authors: Abraham ben David of Posquières. Moreover, scholars err to indicate Provence as the geographical locus of gendered speculation concerning the sefirot. Footnote 131 This conclusion convenes with the allocation and deferment of a wealth of material once ascribed to the Languedoc. We have ceased, for example, to assign the ʿiyyun corpus to Provence.Footnote 132 Similarly, the inherited ascription of the Sefer Yeṣirah commentary once thought to have been authored by the Rabad’s son Isaac “the Blind” no longer stands.Footnote 133 Critical reassessments suggest an Iberian provenance for Sefer ha-Bahir, which had served as a centerpiece of Scholem’s intellectual “history” of Provençal kabbalah.Footnote 134 Now the (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment undergoes a comparable reassignment. None of this material may be located in Southern France without neglecting substantial evidence pointing to other locales.
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4. The fourth area to which this study contributes is the research on constructions of gender in kabbalah and its methods. The findings presented here lay the groundwork for a critical history of the doctrine of divine androgyny. They denude the error of judging a single text, or any one scholar’s interpretation thereof, as constitutional for the entire tradition of kabbalistic speculation. Placing the (Pseudo-) Rabad fragment in the first quarter of the fourteenth century—a text thought to exert an originary influence on virtually the entire tradition—opens the path for researchers to observe the relative heterogeny of perspectives on divine androgyny within the medieval sources. It likewise levels the terrain for scholars to build up a correspondingly variegated history of the doctrine, a history that begins, for all intents and purposes, in thirteenth-century Iberia.
Appendix: Hebrew Texts
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1. Abraham ben David, Baʿale ha-nefesh; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Canonici Or. 31 (Neubauer 555), fol. 2a (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Canonici Or. 31, fol. 2a. Image © The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.
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2. Solomon ben Abraham Ibn Adret, Responsum on Gen. 2:18; London, British Library, Add. 26983 (formerly ALM 95), fols. 121a–b (Figure 2).
Figure 2: London, British Library, Add. 26983, fol. 121a. Image used by the kind permission of the British Library.
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3. (Pseudo-)Rabad fragment; London, British Library, Add. 27003 (ALM 114; alternately 768), fols. 14a–b (Figure 3).
Figure 3: London, British Library, Add. 27003, fol. 14a. Image used by the kind permission of the British Library.
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