Tracing the Emanations

TRACING THE DOCTRINE OF EMANATION

EMANATIONS

There once was a man named Zarathustra. He was a priest of the indigenous religion of the high plains of the area of the world now known as Iran. He lived in a cave and spent much of his time contemplating. Now, his native religion like most religions of his time had a multitude of gods, all in charge of one or another of the various events, objects, and needs of his people. Zarathustra was an unusual indigenous priest because Zarathustra heard a Voice. That Voice and Zarathustra began to talk about the nature of good and evil. The result was the first great and revolutionary spirituality.

For Zarathustra, there were two G-ds, not many. He rejected the idea that there were gods of trees, water, rain, wind, etc. He said there was a Good G-d called Ahura Mazda and Bad G-d called Ahriman. He said that the Good G-d had six manifestations of His being and a Divine Spirit that came forth from His Being. The six manifestations were the active presence of the Good G-d in the various animal and vegetable kingdoms, but the Divine Spirit was in mankind and caused mankind to be capable of assisting the Good G-d.

Likewise, the Bad G-d had manifestations and helpers. These were called Daimons. They infused things and took possession of people.

In Zarathustra’s view, it was the duty of mankind to aid the Good G-d in his war with the Bad G-d to make sure that the Good G-d won. Mankind accomplished this task by right actions towards each other, right eating, right contemplation, right worship, and right living. The principal manifestation of this Good G-d was the purifying fire. Thus Zarathustra wanted Temples where the Sacred Fire was eternal. He believed that by contemplating the Divine in these sacred places one could understand how to live correctly. This concept of divine contemplation of the divine manifestations is the earliest spirituality in the Western Tradition and forms the basis of the Kabbalah. The Seven Manifestations approximate to the Seven Divine Emanations of the Little Face of G-d in the Tree of Life or Chaim Etz which are Mercy, Strength or Judgment, Beauty or Love, Victory, Glory, Foundation and Kingdom.

This well developed religion, Zoroastrianism, broke forth from the tiny kingdom of Zarathustra’s birth to become the unifying force that unified the Medes and Persians and in the sixth century before the common era; that force took Babylon and established the first great Persian Empire. The exiles from the tiny state of Yehudah (Judah) ran into this developed theology and began to contemplate how it fit into their understandings of life. One particular priest of Aaron, named Ezekiel, was sitting by a River called the Chebar one day and as he was contemplating there appeared a vision of a Divine Chariot holding a Throne upon which sat a Divine Being. Now this Divine Being seemed to Ezekiel to be very much like the Ancient of Days, the Good God Ahura Mazda, and he adopted the meditation practices of the Fire Worshippers. His goal was to recreate that Divine Communion that he felt when he saw his Vision of the Chariot or Merkabah.

The earliest stratum of Western Tradition, the contemplation of the Sephiroth or Manifestations of G-d now received an additional strata involving the contemplation of the Divine Being of G-d and his Holy Throne. When the Priesthood returned to Yisrael to rebuild the Temple, they took with them a commitment to right actions based upon the Torah, right eating based upon the kosher law, right contemplation based upon the contemplation of the Emanations of G-d and His Holy Throne, right worship which was now directed to the importance of the intent of the giver, and right living based upon the Torah’s ethical laws. They were certain that there was just one G-d, not even two, and they had become aware of three Dark Angels, one who was Evil, one who ruled the Daimons or Demons, and one who ruled the Evil Spirits. They even took on Persian and Babylonian names: Ahriman was the Shaitan, the Devil; Ba’al Zebul was the Lord of Flies or Demons; and Ashmodai or Ruler of the High Fire was the Lord of Evil Spirits.

The basic concepts of right action; right eating; right devotion, the private face of religion; right worship, the public face of religion; and right living, the correct way of treating the world became the basis of all Jewish spirituality. The principles of meditation and contemplation learned in Babylon became the necessary tool for all future spiritual growth. The concept of the ongoing war between Good and Evil became the raison d’etre for all future religion. No longer was righteousness limited to hospitality to strangers, widows and orphans. It had expanded to an entire philosophy of a good life.

TWO JUDAISMS

Margaret Barker in her book The Great Angel: The Study of Israel’s Second G-d puts forth a well developed theory on the nature of the pre-Josiah religion of Israel. She argues persuasively that the reason that the Decalogue is phrased -- You shalt not have any other gods beside me – is to denote that there were other g-ds, but that the national god of Israel was to be YHVH. The Yahwist recognized that El Shaddai, the G-d of the Mountain, the War G-d of the Cana’anites was the same G-d as YHVH. Now the Yahwist also recognized that there was a High G-d, El Elyon, which means G-d the Most High, who was the Father of the G-ds. He realized that El Shaddai was one of nine children of this G-d, including Ba’al Moloch, Astarte, and others. The Hebrew faith believed that this High G-d worked entirely through their G-d YHVH.

This idea of a Great G-d and a lesser G-d is further confused by the appearance in Exodus 23:20 of an Angel who took the form of fire and smoke and who could forgive sins. The second G-d was now seen as this Archangel and the first G-d was seen as the distant YHVH, the father of the G-ds. Slowly, but surely, the simple people called “ha am ha eretz” in Hebrew and meaning the rural or as the Romans would say, paganus, developed a rich theology based upon worshipping El Shaddai on mountains and worshipping Astarte as a pillar in the Temple yard.

All of this popular religion came into conflict with King Josiah who began what is known as the Josiac reform, which culminated in the Deuteronomic additions to the Scriptures. Josiah set out to eradicate the influences of the popular religion from the official religion of Israel. For two centuries or more, a war waged between the popular religion and the official religion resulting finally in Hezekiah’s suppression of all places of worship other than the Temple in Jerusalem and his destruction of Nehustan, the Brazen Serpent, because it was being worshipped. The war was not over until the Captivity.

The official religion went with the High Priest and the Heads of the Courses to Babylon and there the religion was changed by the orthodox leaders and by association with another rational religion, Zoroastrianism. The popular religion now was being organized by the country priests into a somewhat formal religion that included new alternative places of worship in the countryside.

When the Ezra the Scribe and Zerubbabel the Prince returned to Yehudah, the brought with them this new Priestly Judaism. They found that their influence was limited to just Jerusalem and it environs. Another Judaism was strong in what had been Israel and in the countryside. The tension continued for over two centuries between these two Judaisms until in the period around 300 BCE a book was written – 1 Enoch. Its impact upon the popular religion was dramatic. Enoch made no mention of the Temple or the Torah. It rather referred to 24 golden tablets in heaven upon which all truth was written. This book put forth a powerful eschatology and appealed directly to a more ancient, more perfect time. Enochian Judaism took over and reformed the popular religion and from it came forth two new Judaisms, Farsiism and Nasoreanism.

Farsiism took what was known from Enochian Judaism and added to it the rich spirituality obtained from Zoroastrianism during the captivity. Farsiism contributed a love for the Torah as its guiding principle. Farsiism (known also as Phariseeism) created the office of Rabbi, or spiritual guide. Farsiism while not rejecting the Temple wanted to reform the Official Religion so that it had a much more practical and pervasive effect on the worshipper.

Nasoreanism really was started when a High Priest, his name is unknown, was cast out of office by the Maccabeans under Jonathan. Antiochus V Epiphanes was defeated by the Maccabean revolt in 168 BCE and a new High Priest was installed. His name has not survived and is believed to have been erased purposefully by his opponents. He ruled from 168 BCE until 152 BCE when he was deposed by the Maccabeans. This High Priest took a number of scholars with him into the desert and there they established a holy life of contemplation and strict observance. They were scholars and priests and they loved books. From them was formed an academy of like minded men called the Essenes. They were the remnant of the Hasidim who had aided the Maccabeans in throwing out the Syrians.

The Essenes believed that a strict obedience to the Torah was necessary and so they kept themselves separated from those that did not maintain a strict observance. They taught that the Temple in Jerusalem governed by the Hasmonean High Priests of the family of Maccabi was a corrupt place. They believed that the true Temple would be one that descended from Heaven like the Temple described in Ezekiel. Until that time, they believed that they constituted the Temple on Earth, a living building, composed of true believers. Those that because of their circumstances could not join in this strict life lived instead in closed communities, in the cities and in the countryside. They looked to the Essenes for spiritual direction and authority. Because they were separated from the surrounding peoples, they were called Nasori or separated ones. It is from them that the name Nasorean comes.

There were some of the Essenes and many Nasoreans with them who believed that it was not sufficient to merely be separated from the surrounding people, but in addition they must free the Holy Land from the scourge of the Romans occupiers. From 37 BCE until 135 CE, these people called the Zealotes, formed an army allied with the Nasoreans that controlled the countryside and had significant power in the cities. They were financed by collections for protection and by marauding the caravans that came along the Via Maris and on the road to Jerusalem from the sea. A particularly violent branch of the Zealotes were the Sicarii, named for their knives, who practiced the art of assassination.

The theologians of the Essene Order believed in a form of government that involved Three Pillars and 12 Elders and a Mebakker. It was believed that ultimately the Meshiach would appear together with a Priest and a King and a Prophet. One family, the Davidic family would be the source of these three Meshiachot. A particular Priest, the son of the Onian High Priest, Zechariah, became known for his strict observance of the Torah. He was said to have had miraculous events surround his birth and his mother and he had fled to the desert community of Qumran after his father, the High Priest, was murdered in the Temple by Herod the King. This child, Yochannan, was believed by many to be the High Priestly Meshiach that would fulfill that part of the prophecy. The Essenes began looking at two other young men, a Yeshua ben David and a Yakov ben David, as possibly the other two Pillars that they expected.

In 26 CE, Yochannan was murdered by Herod Antipas. Yeshua ben David went into the desert and when he returned he declared that he was the long awaited Meshiach of Melchizedek, the Priest-King of Salem, who had returned to his people. Nasoreanism quickly began to reorganize around those who supported Yeshua and those who did not. Finally, in 28 CE, Yeshua and the Zealotes decided to attack the Temple. They cast out the money changers and the official priests and levites and took control of the Temple. They held it for two weeks and then the Romans came in with battering rams and destroyed one of the Towers of the wall around the Temple and charged in. After they finished, ten thousand priests and worshippers were dead and Yeshua and his twelve disciples had escaped. Others were not so lucky, such as Judas Barabbas and Dismas. Seven days later, Yeshua was arrested for blasphemy in the Garden of Gethsemane and taken before the High Priest Annas. Unsuccessful in his charge of blasphemy, Annas took Yeshua to Pilate and charged him with treason and sedition. Pilate found him guilty and sentenced him to crucifixion. We know what happened next.

The risen Yeshua met first with Ya'akov, his half brother. Then with Peter and the Twelve. Then with the 500 members who attested to his resurrection. Because of this appearance to Ya'akov, the 120 members of the community that received the anointment of the Holy Spirit elected Ya'akov to be the Mebakker of Jerusalem, the head of the revised Nasorean movement, in 28 C.E. In the next 34 years, Ya’akov transformed the Essene-Nasorean movement into the most powerful force in Judaism and successfully challenged the Farsi for supremacy. In addition, Ya’akov began to formulate with the help of Essene scholars the most important of the philosophical concepts of Nasoreanism, Sefer Yetzirah, Bahir, and Zohar. These ideas were not yet sufficiently gelled nor in a proper form for writing but they were increasingly well known in the more learned circles of Nasoreanism.

In 62 CE, Ya’akov was executed by the High Priest during an interregnum period between procurators. Simon, the half brother of Yeshua, by Clopas his uncle and Mary his mother, became High Priest and Mebakker or Bishop of the Nasorean movement. Six years later, Simon fled the city of Jerusalem and moved the center of the faith to Pella in the Decapolis. The country was ravaged by the first Jewish Revolt and Jerusalem was destroyed. During the years that followed, Simon wrote the Didache, formulated the Sefer Yetzirah, organized the writing of the Bahir and Zohar, evangelized the countryside and turned Nasoreanism into a powerful religious force of over one million people. He was executed just before the Second Jewish Revolt. He was succeeded by an extremely aged Judas Thomas, another half brother of Yeshua by his uncle Clopas and his mother Mary. At the end of the second Jewish Revolt, the Romans were incited to believe that the Nasoreans had inspired the revolt by Rabbi Akiva. An estimated 980,000 Nasoreans were massacred by the Romans. The twenty thousand who escaped went further into Syria and many migrated to Cteisiphon-Seleucis and to Babylon.

One Judaism went under ground. Another collaborated with the Romans and became the foundation of Rabbinic Judaism.

PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERPINNINGS

In the second century BCE, there was a great Jewish philosopher named Philo. Margaret Barker in her Great Angel, before cited, says, that contrary to popular opinion Philo was not trying to bring Platonic thought into Judaism, but rather, was trying to present Jewish thought in a way that could be understood by Platonists. His works talked at considerable length about the First Principle, the True G-d. The idea of a true G-d, an Ain Sof, or Endless Being, was not unique to Philo. The Platonists had talked about it, but so had the Zoroastrians. He was not convinced that the Demiurge of the Platonists was bad. He saw the Demiurge as the Emanation to Mankind from the Zoroastrian point of view. He understood the underpinnings of Kabbalistic thought and recognized in the Demiurge, the First Adam, the Creator. He knew that the Light continued to descend but he was not clear on how that happened, but he called it the Holy Spirit.

Likewise, the Nasoreans believed in this Demiurge. They picked up the term that Philo used to describe it – Logos – Word or Idea. The Nasoreans had a similar concept called Dabir – Word or Idea. When Ya’akov began to contemplate all that had happened from 20 C.E. until 28 C.E., he began to understand the Jewish scriptures in a new way. Ya’akov was striving to answer the ultimate question of the believers, “Who do you say that I am?” Yochannan the Prophet begins to formulate the answer and as Ya’akov’s close associate they began to theologize their thoughts. 1 John 1:5 gives the most important theological clue; it says: God is Light. The Nasoreans already understood that to mean Ain Sof is G-d. The ancient hymn attached to Yochannan’s Gospel expresses the theology of Ya’akov and Yochannan:

In the beginning was the Dabir, and the Dabir was with G-d.

For them it was self-evident that the Idea pre-existed with the Ain Sof and within Ain Sof just as the Zohar states.

And the Dabir was G-d.

Here Ya’akov and Yochannan contemplate the meaning of the Sefer Yetzirah when it says:

Mishnah Tet: Ten Sefiroth of nothing, one Spirit, living angels, blessed from blessed is the Name of He, for all worlds. Voice, Spirit, and Speech, this is the Holy Spirit.

Mishnah Yodh: Two, Spirit from Spirit. He engraved and hewed in her twenty-two letters of foundation, three mothers, seven doubles, twelve singles, and Spirit is one of them.
The Two Pillars understand the Nothing as Ain Sof. They understand the One Spirit as the Archangel of the Presence, the Demiurge or Dabir. When it says Blessed from Blessed is the Name of He, they think that means that the Dabir, the Voice, emanated from the Nothing, Ain Soph. They are struggling with the cosmology of the beginning.
He was in the beginning with G-d. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.
Here Ya’akov and Yochannan see the truth. The Dabir emanates from G-d and the Dabir creates all things. The Colossian author reiterates this truth at Col. 1:15 et seq.
These ideas did not die when the Nasoreans went underground. Others were still in contact with them. One man about 65 years later begins to hear about these things from his Hebrew teacher and from secret Nasoreans he met. Origen, the great church father finally sets forth the ideas again and formulates the idea of a Trinity. But this Trinity is not like the triangle of the Nicenes. It is like the Trinity of Kabbalah. The Light is G-d. He emanates the Son who emanates the Holy Spirit. Sefer Yetzirah and Zohar say that Ain Sof sent forth the First Ray, the Dabir, if you please, and it created the Universe. Then from the Dabir as Kether, the Crown descends Chochmah or in Greek Sancta Sophia. Sancta Sophia has been long associated with the Holy Spirit. For Origen, Yeshua is not divine; the Logos is divine. Only when Yeshua is resurrected does he put on Divinity. Likewise, the Nasoreans say that the Archangel is the King of the Angels, YHVH. Only when Yeshua arises does he put on the Kingship and High Priesthood that allows him to be the Only Intercessor between G-d and Man.
ARIUS
St. Lucian of Antioch was a student of Origen and the headmaster of an Academy in Antioch, the ancient center of Christianity in the early third century. One of his students was Arius. Lucian taught faithfully the teachings of his teacher Origen and Arius listened well.
Arius was a brilliant student but without any particular flair for original thought. He took refuge in the particularization of theories. Arius was not able to find a way out of the conundrum that was created by Origenian thought and the Western Church’s insistence upon the consubstantial character of the being of Jesus. Arius taught that G-d the Father and the Son were not co-eternal because the pre-existent Jesus was a divine being but nonetheless had a beginning. The Father had no such beginning but was forever. Therefore the Father was by nature superior to the Son and the Son was subordinated to the Father. Now this idea was well supported by all of Eastern Christian tradition as has been shown. But those who were in Alexandria for political reasons took exception with these ideas and the rift between Bishop Alexander of Alexandria and Arius became increasingly tied up with the general fight between the Bishops of the West and the Bishops of the East. The Eastern Church supported tradition. The Western Church knew nothing of tradition.
By the end of this controversy, emanationism was dead among the Christians. It still lived on in the secret doctrine of the Kabbalah and reasserted itself in 16th century England among those of the Royal Academy including Sir Isaac Newton.
What I have tried to do in this essay is trace the history of the doctrine of emanations from its ancient roots in Iran to its modern presence in the Kabbalah and the renewed Arianism of the Nasoreans and the Arian Catholics.