Jewish mythology
|
|
Jewish mythology is the body of mythology of the Jewish people. A narrow interpretation of this term would be limited to religious mythology of early Judaism. A wider interpretation of this term would extend to cover what is known as folklore.
The Torah and Tanakh contain writings that often serve much the same function as the mythology of other religions, telling how the Earth began, what humans are supposed to do, and various historical and legendary tales. As such, they are seen by scholars of religion as presenting a Jewish mythology.
Examples of Jewish mythology include the Creation narratives. In Hebrew they are called Maaseh Breshit ("The Act of Creation"), which explain how God created the world ex nihilo ("out of nothingness".) Similar subjects are Maaseh Merkava ("The Act of the Chariot".)
The Aggadah literature contains a great deal of material that is generally viewed by scholars of religion as mythology and/or folklore. The same is true for the literature of Kabbalah, esoteric Jewish mysticism.
Religious Jews, especially Orthodox Jews, strongly object to the use of the term "myth" to refer to any part of Judaism.
They view all the books of classical Judaism, and all the books of Kabbalah, as holy works. They see these works as authentic sections of divine Torah. In this view, the Lilith narrative is part of a serious spiritual interpretation of the inner meaning of the Adam and Eve. Some Orthodox Jews hold that these tales are far beyond normal rational thinking, and thus modern western people cannot relate to such strange issues. In this view, non-Orthodox Jews are unable to correctly understand the subject, so they dismiss all such tales as mythology, whereas those who correctly accept the importance of the same information understand it to be Torah-true Judaism.
Terminology: Mythology versus mysticism
Whilst Jewish mythology is often a field of study for mostly secular scholars, Jewish mysticism is an inherent part of large parts of Sephardic Jews and of all Hasidic Judaism Jews as they follow the teachings of some of the greatest rabbis respected by ALL Jews. Thus, Sephardic Jews have incorporated readings from the main mystical text the Zohar into their prayers and rituals but they do view themselves as believers in mythology.
Hasidic Judaism Jews study mystical texts because the Baal Shem Tov, the father of Hasidism was a renowned mystic and Kabbalist, his ardent followers would never refer to him as a mythologist as to them he neither a teacher of myths nor teaching mythology. In Orthodox Judaism, for the most part, mysticism is part of Judaism whereas mythology is a pejorative term applied by critics of Judaism to denigrate what Orthodox Jews consider to be their faith's true teachings. Similarly, the famous Rabbi Joseph Karo, the author of the Shulkhan Arukh, which is the pillar of Jewish Law (known as halakha), was at the same time also a mystic, and he sought out the teachings of his favorite mystic of his time, Rabbi Isaac Luria. Neither of these great Jewish sages were considered to be devotees of mythology, on the contrary, they were classical rabbis who believed that Judaism incorporates within itself a whole strata of mysticism such as in the Kabbalah. Many Orthodox Jewish defenders of "mysticism" believe that Jewish mysticism has nothing to do with secular or non-religious notions of mythology. Judaism actually forbids belief in such things as Greek mythology, Roman mythology, and Norse mythology (the greatest and best known mythologies in the Western World). This prohibitive attitude is allegedly because of the mutiple deities of polytheistic religions, and what Jewish people, in general, consider to be the immoral behavior of so many of the mythological gods who Jews consider to be very far removed from the God that Jews have always worshipped, a worship rooted in the Torah and the Monotheism at its core defined by the Ten Commandments, which explicitly forbids recognizing the mythological gods. (Practicioners of Judeo-Paganism might beg to differ.) According to many observant Jews, Judaism embraces mysticism, (even though it may have its own debates about it), whereas Judaism rejects mythology of any kind.
See also
External links
- Hebrew Mythology Library (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/3025/lbible.htm)
- The Golem of Prague: Miracles of the Maharal (http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~jewsoc/prague.html)
- Background on the Golem Legends (http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~kvander/golem/backgroundgolem.html)de:Jüdische Mythologie