APPENDIX A
A NOTE ON THE SOURCES

The sources of the myths drawn upon in this book include the full range of Jewish texts. These include texts that are both within accepted Jewish tradition (and therefore regarded by most Jews as “sacred”) and those, primarily the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, that are outside that tradition . These texts include the Bible, as well as the rabbinic, kabbalistic, and hasidic texts, and a wide range of additional sources. The rabbinic texts consist of the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, which contain traditions that continued to evolve until about the end of the fifth century CE, plus the collections of rabbinic commentaries and legends known as the Midrash, compiled from about the third to at least the twelfth centuries CE. Each of the Talmuds contains the same core text, the Mishnah, and separate commentaries on it, known as the Gemara. To a large extent, rabbinic sources consist of commentary on the Hebrew Bible. Text and commentary are closely linked, and prooftexts—biblical verses—are offered in order to demonstrate the truth of an assertion. Even the pre-Christian translation of the Bible into Greek, known as the Septuagint , and early Jewish biblical translations into Aramaic, known as Targums , often reflect interpretations of a mythic nature.

What we think of as mainstream Judaism is the Pharisaic/rabbinic reading of the biblical tradition, which became normative Judaism after the fall of the Second Temple. The texts that are outside the mainstream are either early alternatives to the Pharisaic/rabbinic tradition, such as Samaritanism, the writings of the Qumran sectarians and the Enoch literature, or rebellions against it, such as Karaism.

The Jewish mystical tradition extends from the ancient period to the modern era. It includes the Zohar , * the primary kabbalistic text, edited (or perhaps written) in the thirteenth century, with especially important developments related to the teachings of Rabbi Isaac Luria of Safed in the sixteenth century. The primary Hasidic texts, beginning with the teachings of the Ba’al Shem Tov, and including other great Hasidic masters, such as Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev and Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, date from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Together the Bible, Talmuds, Midrash, kabbalistic and hasidic texts constitute a large part of the sacred teachings of Judaism. There are also many mythic fragments preserved in the early biblical translations, and in the many biblical commentaries written by some of the greatest rabbis of the medieval and early modern periods, from Rashi in the eleventh century, to Nachmanides in the thirteenth, to Rabbi Moshe Alshekh in the sixteenth, and Rabbi Hayim ben Attar, known as the Or ha-Hayim, in the eighteenth.

Outside the tradition are the texts of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. The Apocrypha are ancient Jewish books found in the early Greek translation of the Bible (Septuagint) but absent from the Hebrew. Most of these books are treated as canonical by Catholics but not by Jews or Protestants. In addition, there is an enormous pseudepigraphal literature, that is, texts falsely attributed to biblical figures. These texts generally date from between 200 BCE and 200 CE and usually represent the teachings of a particular Jewish sect. It is possible that they were written in hope of being added to the Bible at some future time—but were not. Thus the texts of the Pseudepigrapha are those texts that the mainstream Jewish tradition repudiated; little effort was made to preserve them, and many exist only in translation into languages like Geez or Slavonic. Many of them show evidence of Christian interpolation. Nevertheless, these are important texts that often preserve Jewish myths not to be found anywhere else, and for this reason they have been recognized here as legitimate sources of Jewish mythology. Some of these long-lost texts were collected in the Apocrypha, but there are a great many others, as readers of James Charlesworth’s Old Testament Pseudepigrapha will soon discover. This literature includes the post-Edenic lives of Adam and Eve, the books of Enoch, which describe the ascent of Enoch into heaven, and testaments of all the patriarchs and the 12 sons of Jacob—and much more.

In addition, there is another category of writings, known as the Hekhalot texts, dating from around the second century CE to the eighth century, which describe heavenly journeys of great sages such as Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiba. There are also the Dead Sea Scrolls, which provide early versions of biblical material and some texts not found anywhere else. The writings of the Samaritans, an early sect related to Judaism that refused to accept any books of the Bible except for the Pentateuch, have also been drawn upon, as well as those of the Karaites, who accepted the Tanakh , the entire Bible, but rejected the Talmud and other rabbinic traditions. All of these texts overflow with mythic motifs. There are even folktales with mythological motifs found among those collected in Eastern Europe by S. Ansky from 1911-1914, and among the 20,000 tales collected by the Israel Folktale Archives (IFA) over the past 40 years. These are remarkable sources not only for folklore, but also for mythology, which has been preserved in an oral tradition that is still flourishing. Note that there are many texts inspired by the Bible that are not Jewish. These include Gnostic, Christian, and Muslim texts. Of the Gnostic texts unearthed at Nag Hammadi, some, such as On the Origin of the World , preserve traditions of Jewish origin.

Although some folktales with strong mythic elements have been included in this book, it was not possible, for reasons of space, to include as many as might be wished. For this reason, the editor’s prior collections of Jewish folklore, Elijah’s Violin & Other Jewish Fairy Tales, Miriam’s Tambourine: Jewish Tales from Around the World, Lilith’s Cave: Jewish Tales of the Supernatural , and Gabriel’s Palace: Jewish Mystical Tales , might be regarded as supplements to this book, as they include many examples of such mythical folktales. Where appropriate, reference to mythic tales from these books will be found in the commentaries.

The structure of this book, focusing on the ten primary categories of Jewish mythology and organizing the entries in mythic cycles, inevitably results in placing all of these sources—biblical, rabbinic, kabbalistic, hasidic, folk, and pseudepigraphal—side by side. Even though they are not regarded by all Jews as having equal value, they all grow out of the same mythical tradition. The individual myths, compiled from existing variants, are followed by commentaries and by sources .

In general, the reader can assume that the biblical texts are by far the best known and most influential, while the texts drawn from the sacred sources represent the teachings of mainstream Judaism. The myths drawn from the Pseudepigrapha, while noncanonical, still represent authentic Jewish sources, and the variations they offer are often enlightening.

Of course, all of these sources constitute an enormous library, of which the myths included in this book should be viewed as representative, not comprehensive. Here the words of Rabbi Meir ben Yitzhak Nehorai in the piyyut (liturgical poem) known as Akdamut come to mind: “If all the heavens were parchment, if all the trees were pens, if all the seas were ink, and if every creature were a scribe, they would not suffice to expound the greatness of God.”

* The Zohar itself claims to represent the theosophical discussions of a small group of mystically-minded sages in second century CE Palestine, the foremost of them being Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai. Gershom Scholem, following nineteenth century scholars like Heinrich Graetz, argued that the Zohar was a pseudepigraphic work written by Moshe de Leon in the thirteenth century, and Isaiah Tishby supported this view by pointing out words of Spanish origin in the text. More recently, Moshe Idel and Yehuda Liebes have argued that the text of the Zohar was compiled and edited by members of the kabbalistic circle to which de Leon belonged. A third view, suggested by Abraham Joshua Heschel and conveyed by Byron Sherwin, is that there were small circles of mystics in many generations, possibly going back as far as Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, who studied privately and orally for hundreds of years, and traditions coming out of these mystical circles were drawn upon to compile the Zohar . According to Heschel, it is possible that some of these traditions, probably the core traditions, are traceable back to Shimon bar Yohai. In that sense, bar Yohai may have been the initial author of the Zohar , and the teachings initiated in his mystical circle were passed down orally for hundreds of years until Moshe de Leon and his group decided they should be written down, possibly because of the upheaval in Spain at that time. This would indicate that some of the mystical motifs of the Zohar were not original to the thirteenth century, but may have been considerably more ancient. In Heschel’s view, it was not possible that de Leon himself wrote the Zohar , for his other writings demonstrate that he did not have the necessary skill or imagination. Instead, Heschel considered the possibility that while Moshe de Leon did not write the Zohar , he may have had a major hand in editing it. See “How the Zohar Was Written” by Yehuda Liebes in Studies in the Zohar , pp. 85-138.