image of God, and the source of all subsequent emanations. This second principle sends forth, by the energy of emanation, other natures, which are more or less perfect, according to their different degrees of distance, in the scale of emanation, from the First Source of existence, and which constitute different worlds, or orders of being, all united to the eternal power from which they proceed. Matter is nothing more than the most remote effect of the emanative energy of the Deity. The material world receives its form from the immediate agency of powers far beneath the First Source of being. Evil is the necessary effect of the imperfection of matter. Human souls are distant emanations from Deity, and after they are liberated from their material vehicles, will return, through various stages of purification, to the fountain whence they first proceeded.”[1]
From this extract the reader will see the nature of the oriental doctrine of emanations, which, as here given in most, though not in all, respects, coincides with the oriental philosophy:[2] and the honest translation given by the Septuagint of Deut. xxxiii. 2—he shined forth from Paran with thousands of saints, and having his angels on his right hand,[3] proves that the Cabala was as old or older than Moses.
The ancient Persians believed, that the Supreme Being was surrounded with angels, or what they called Æons or Emanations, from the divine substance. This was also the opinion of the Manicheans, and of almost all the Gnostic sects of Christians. As might be expected, in the particulars of this complicated system, among the different professors of it a great variety of opinions arose; but all, at the bottom, evidently of the same nature. These oriental sects were very much in the habit of using figurative language, under which they concealed their metaphysical doctrines from the eyes of the vulgar. This gave their enemies the opportunity, by construing them literally, of representing them as wonderfully absurd. All these doctrines were also closely connected with judicial astrology. To the further consideration of the above-cited text I shall return by and by.
3. Perhaps in the languages of the world no two words have been of greater importance than the first two in the book of Genesis, ב ראשית b-rasit; (for they are properly two not one word;) and great difference of opinion has arisen, among learned men, respecting the meaning of them. Grotius renders them, when first; Simeon, before; Tertullian, in power; Rabbi Bechai and Castalio, in order before all; Onkelos, the Septuagint, Jonathan ben Uzziel, and the modern translators, in the beginning.
But the official or accredited and admitted authority of the Jewish religion, the Jerusalem Targum, renders them by Wisdom.
It may be observed that the Targum of Jerusalem is, or was formerly, the received orthodox authority of the Jews: the other Targums are only the opinions of individuals, and in this rendering, the Jewish Cabala and the doctrine of the ancient Gnostics are evident; and, it is, as I shall now shew, to conceal this that Christians have suppressed its true meaning. To the celebrated and learned Beausobre I am indebted for the most important discovery of the secret doctrine contained in this word. He says, “The Jews, instead of translating Berasit by the words in the beginning, translate it by the Principle (par le Principe) active and immediate of all things, God made, &c., that is to say, according to the Targum of Jerusalem, by Wisdom, (par la sagesse,) God made, &c."[4]
- ↑ Dr Rees’ Encyclopedia, art. Cabala.
- ↑ See Hist. Phil Enfield, Vol. II. Ch. iii.; Phil. Trans. No. CCI. p. 800; Burner’s Archæol. Lib. i. Cap. vii.
- ↑ See Beausobre, Liv. ix.
- ↑ “Il y a encore une réflexion à faire sur cette matière. Elle roule sur l’explication du mot Rasit, qui à la tête de la Genèse, et qui, si l’on en croit d’anciens Interprètes Juifs, ne signifie pas le commencement, mais le Principe
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