BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND MYSTICISM
Subtitle: A STUDY OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL-QABBALISTIC WRITINGS OF JOSEPH GIQATILA (1248-C. 1322) (SPAIN; JEWISH MYSTIC).
Publisher: Jewish Theological Seminary of America (also University Microfilms 1987)
Published: 1983
Place of publication: ANN ARBOR
Subjects: Kabbalah; Gikatilla; Jewish Philosophy; Medieval
Genres: Academic
First sentence: Medieval qabbalah had its literary debut in twelfth-century France with the appearance of Sefer Ha-Bahir, a mythically oriented Gnostic work which was the first Jewish text to conceive of the Deity in terms of Sefirot, which the author of Sefer Ha-Bahir understood as emanated divine powers or forces.
Description: Joseph Giqatila is known to students of Jewish mysticism primarily as the author of several important theosophical qabbalistic works, most of which he composed in the 1280s and 1290s. But during the seventies of the thirteenth century, he wrote several theological treatises in which the fundamental theosophical qabbalistic doctrine of the sefirotic pleroma is entirely absent. Instead, the theology of these early writings is rooted in a system which combines certain ontological principles of creation derived from Sefer Yeẓirah with metaphysical elements drawn from Maimonides as well as various Jewish Neoplatonic thinkers. Giqatila, nonetheless, refers to his early, non-sefirotic works as “qabbalah,” and also mentions the existence of a group of like-minded Jewish mystics (“bacale ha-qabbalah”). An examination of the early, non-theosophical writings of Abraham Abulafia, Moshe de Leon, and Sefer Mafteḥot Ha-Qabbalah of Barukh Togarmi indicates that these four mystics constituted a distinct school or circle of Spanish qabbalah.

Giqatila's magnum opus of his early mystical period is Ginnat ‘Egoz (1273-74). In this treatise, Giqatila advances an original thesis which explains the origins of the universe through a principle of cosmological emanation called hamshakhah. Giqatila used this principle to show how the entire universe, in its formative, ontological stage, emanated from the letters of the Divine Name (YHWH). This theory is based on Sefer Yeẓirah which states that the physical universe is ontologically constituted from letters and numbers. In large measure, Giqatila wrote Ginnat ‘Egoz as a commentary on Sefer Yeẓirah and tried to integrate many of his rational ideas and his notion of hamshakhah into the creation theory of Sefer Yeẓirah. Giqatila borrowed the term hamshakhah from the Gerona (theosophical) qabbalistic school and, most likely, from Jacob ben Sheshet. But in contrast to these theosophical qabbalists, Giqatila maintained that the letters of the Divine Name from which the universe emanated were created in time. It is in this sense that Giqatila "de-theosophized" the term hamshakhah. He was thereby able to combine a largely Maimonidean metaphysics regarding the transcendental nature of God with a Neoplatonic qabbalistic metaphysics regarding the origins of the phenomenal world. Giqatila may have "de-theosophized" other qabbalistic terms but there is no evidence that he wrote Ginnat ‘Egoz with the intent of polemicizing against theosophical Jewish mysticism.
Table of contents: label: I
class: section
title: INTRODUCTION; label: II
title: GIQATILA'S PHILOSOPHICAL-QABBALISTIC WRITINGS; title: THE CENTRAL THEME AND STRUCTURE OF GINNAT ‘EGOZ
label: III; title: THREE MAJOR THIRTEENTH-CENTURY INFLUENCES ON JOSEPH GIQATILA
label: IV; label: V
title: THE PHILOSOPHICAL-QABBALISTIC CIRCLE; title: FROM PHILOSOPHICAL-QABBALAH TO THEOSOPHICAL QABBALAH
label: VI; title: WHEN DID GIQATILA FLOURISH? THE HISTORY OF THE CONTROVERSY
label: Excursus I; label: Excursus II
title: ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL QABBALISTIC WRITINGS OF JOSEPH GIQATILA