Solomon ibn Adret, Abulafia, Acre, and the Ten Sefirot

By

Sampson Iroabuchi Onwuka

Immanuel Velikovsky ;  Peoples of the Sea, 1975, argued on the resurfacing of Egyptian building was due to the efforts made by the Greeks who occupied the land after Alexander. He cited Sachau’s Aramaic Papyri and Ostraka, (p.21) that a certain Egyptian Papyrus mentioned that “when Cambyses came to Egypt, he found the (Jewish) temple (of Elephantine) already built. The temples of the gods of Egypt were demolished, all of them; only the said temple suffered no harm”, and by his argument it would seem impossible to accept that after the buildings in the time of Cambyses was torn down, they miraculously manifested for the modern times. In this argument he reached for what he called Asia influence in the remodeling Egypt, particularly the role that Assyria played and the role of the Greeks – who in his view brought their ingenuity to Africa. 

The whole book by Velikovsky is wonderful with such insinuations, particularly his restating of the facts of Adolf Erman’s in M.S Williams (1907), ‘The Historians’ History of the World’, 195, that “…if we did not read the inscriptions, we could never guess that the temples of Esneh, of Edfu, of Denderah, and of Phalie belong to the time of Lagides (from Lagus, father of Ptolemy I), the Caesars, and the Antonines”. The Antonines is usually a record of the Caesars from Nerva to Commodus, both of whom along with other Equestrians were enormously appreciated by the Priests of Edfu and Phalie for the generous contributions towards rebuilding the temple, a point that would have mattered if it was raised by Velikovsky and a point that proves that the rebuilding of these important temples in old Memphis and in the Saite was instrumental in the early years of Architecture in Rome.  

 Temple Emmanu-el New York, N.Y

These commentaries on Jewish Hebrew Bible or Pentateuch was a source of contentions for the 8 Jewish parties between Jerusalem and Babylon, and between these other important areas and Alexander which salvaged the surviving religious empires of Judaism after Moses and the Laws, Christianity after Christ, and eventually in much later years, Islam after Mohammed. 

There is no doubt that these early exercises with the Hebrew Bible and Laws of God 'infallible' Word of God flowered in Egypt because of Alexander, to a point that Christianity and the Gnostic religion proved their existence in the Middle East adds or removes nothing from general common point that commentaries which would later be called the 'Torah' and the character of Early Christian Church and its survival, was a footnote to these essential approach to divinity. 

General point that nearly all of Christian doctrines from those who saw Christ face to face and who like Clement of Alexander saw John the Baptist and Ignatius, Valentinus, Iraneus, Origen, Tertellus, Didymus the Blind, Hippolytus,  Aristophanes,  Aristobolus, Cyprian, Cyril, were mainly Africans from Alexander or Syria, or at least studied in Africa such as Eusebius is not primary to the overall theme that the character of Christianity from the Logos of John Baptist concerning the indwelling word which proceeded from the father on which Egyptians from White and Red Monastery, or Kom Ombo - Habur, and the Karnak Temple which became Christian from Pagan Temple,  to the Divinity of Christ and Mary as the mother of God were based of Biblical commentaries of early church fathers - nearly all of them Africans. 

In all reality, these Mizrayim Jews who were also followers of Christ and others from Indo-European nations and of mixed parentage such as Origen and Valentinus, attempted to separate the Egyptian myths of the indwelling Kah which proceeded from Rah from the ideological purview of the Gnostic who were Jewish in essence but awaited the coming of Christ 'the suffering servant of God' in order of Isaiah 53, to Christ as a son of God desperately opposed by Jews of Egypt and by Alexander of other religious backwaters. 

It will seem to indicate that the influence of Alexander on Judaism  is to be taken as essentially dissimilar to Babylonian Jews who never made it back to Jerusalem and may considered sinecure to Jerusalem and the Christian Churches that only survived in secret following the Roman takeover of the area they eventually Palestine and reduced to three main district, two of which were the control of a quasi-group associated with Arabs but called Dux, a strictly military junta of the two incorporating districts of the three, effectively separating Christianity in Egypt and North Africa from the Church - mainly Jewish Christian Churches in Jerusalem whose head, or as believed founded by James, the Half Brother of Christ.

The widening gaps between Christianity as a struggling group in Palestinian and Jews who the Dux of mainly Arab origins, Barbarini and others such as the Gauls, established land and sea locked connections going from Palestinian into Europe. This group and the confusion with them is due to their fracture by Romans but who were eventually replaced in Palestine and In Espelia (Spain) by the remnant of the Nomads and the descendants of Jurguthan. This military separation was also applause by the Schism between the Eastern Christianity and those eventually called Western Christian. Both parties are called Christian Churches - meaning Catholic, originated in ideas and in person in Egypt, and the first people to adopt Christianity as a national religion (which they argue was a continuation of their ancient religion) was Egyptians, and they proceeded in the 3rd century A.D in converting all Ancient Egyptian Temples into Christian Church, most peculiar and to the surprise of the Priest was the National Temple or the Karnak with the same decade. 

First Christian Church was found in Jerusalem and remained in Jerusalem under the administration of James the half-brother of Jesus. The followers of Christ were first called Christian in Antioch in what is now Syria. The Architectural caveat is that both White and Red Temple (monasteries) in Egypt, in Medinat Harbor and Coptos, were models for Byzantine Buildings and Roman Cathedral half a century after Constantine the Great and his new visions of Christianity. The word Catholic was first used in Egypt during the first three hundred years, referring to the holy church or ecclesiastical history of the Christian Church.

But with problem of the divinity of Mary and the idea of Trinity and Resurrection which the Egyptians refused to adopt, the Jews themselves pointed out that it was not part of overall theology, the Schism dividing the Eastern (Misi) and Western Christians or those after the Graeco-Roman interpretation of divinity who accepted the divinity of Mary and the Virgin Birth of Christ led to the use of Imperial Powers of Rome to smash, burn, suppress the supposed Anti-Party, may well be said that offshoots of these early years, did not forbid its existence to Rome but proved critical to the behavioral aptitudes of Catholic Churches or Roman Catholic Churches in the threshold of Toledo and Barcelona, Spain, to 'Wulfilas' (Ufilas)Bishop of German (?) and the incorporation of German (Gothic) elements into Aramaic mistaken as Latin and Greek called Runic...., and Ireland, accepted the notions of Imperial Church authority over the others including those who were non-believers. 

This point is central to all the adoptions of Western Christianity and Theology as summarized by several Africans including Pope Leo I or Leo the Great who compounded the 'Tome' (Tome of Leo) and challenged by other Africans up to the 6th century A.D including, Sixtus Empirus, Pelagius, but were necessarily settled in the writings of St. Augustine of Hippo (Algeria) who accepted the Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy-ghost, the Divinity of Christ and Mary, and the divinity of 12 Apostles and accepted the Nicaea Creed. St Augustine is also called the Founder of Western Intellectual to Education, connecting and correcting some assumptions in the Eastern (Misri) interpretation including the role of his mother Monica.                             

The translations of the interpretations of the Bible and the Hebrew liturgy, and 72 Rabbis called Septuagint in Mizrayim (Alexander, Egypt), from which the commentaries on the Laws of Moses called 'Torah' in Egypt - that is commentaries began to enter the Jewish Liturgy. These Halakat and Hagadat which are supposedly Rabbinic commentaries on bad translation of Hebrew into Greek and vice versa or mere translations called Targum such as Syrian Peshita which survived in fragments following the end of the Jewish wars in the middle of the 3rd Centruy A.D and the surviving , bad translation themselves,  it will mean to suggest that the arrival of these Mizraa 'Mizrayim' - literally Egyptian Jews, survived in various forms in foreign lands especially in Spain, was considered to be slightly dysfunctional to the basic standards of Hebrew teachings, to the point that advent of Christianity in parts of Europe such as France, Spain and Holland, also led to the modifying of the Mishnah and the commentaries of Mishnah called Torah. 


It is over time that the language of the earlier repartee from France where they were expelled to Spain swelling up the numbers of new émigré and Spanish Jews that some dissent gradually evolved. It is possible to most theoretical challenged doctrines had more to do with the teachings of Nahmanides and Maimonides in Barcelona, which was not originally written down as their tradition demanded, which from the 13th century took on an added meaning.

In the end, the gap between Abraham Abulafia who was not only a proven disciple of Maimonides and of those who were left in Gerona following the departure of Nahmanides of Sportas to Jerusalem in 1267 who some Rabbis call Ramban (?), although there is another Moses Nahmanides whose name clarify the problems of associated with Ramban, and may be the very individual that seem to have proposed the idea of written kabbalah. With the departure of Nahmanides as confirmed by Arabic Sources to Jerusalem, the gap in Barcelona and Gerona was filled by his disciples, which strangely enough involved others with esoteric teachings of the Astrological and comparative syncretism and to some degree ‘Necromancy’ (Negromansiya). Along the usual lines of comparative Kabbalah, initially between Isaac the Blind who seem to have existed at the same time Isaac Sagi Nahor, both of whom were espousing the inherited teachings of the Kabbalah which was received tradition and knowledge. The school owes a lot of credit to Barcelona but not necessarily Gerona, making it seems that preceding the Maimonides and his students who were mainly trained in Egypt there was hardly a very organized Jewish Institution in Spain or in West. The Cabal of learning was a rejoinder from  Egypt emphasis the Safri and Safra, which as a the Genoim (Gaon) as translated from Geniza in Egypt were given new meaning by Saadi Gaon and a certain R. Sherira Gaon, who were certified to relate the Hebrew and the teachings of the old Sepharad to Spain.

At no point is Sepharad similar and same as Spain although the heads of the Jewish Society penetrated Apamia or Spelia (Seville) before other parts of Spain, yet it was Barcelona and eventually Gerona, that retained some of these traditions given the long weight of the years of transition from Moorish Islam to Christians of Spain.  The other important figure, himself a product of learned experience and who poetry matured in Spain and not in Africa was Abraham Ibn Ezra, who we locate in the prospective generations as and may have helped to encourage the traditions either existing as product of Jewish experience in Spain for instance in Gerona or learned in relational composite to Egypt and North Africa as those In Barcelona. The main events of the years of Solomon Ibn Adret who had opposed the rise and pomposity or publicity of Abulafia, who was eventually associated with ecstatic reach or outreaches of Kabbalah and infused astrological meaning to some of the deductions from the letters which was though originated from the images as from older sources, may also represent numbers of some sort. 


The poverty of latter translators is that the different between the ten Chiros (whatever) as they are called ‘Sefirot’, with the new form of astrological infusion as it became was meaning enough to spoke objection which Solomon ibn Adret who was the known head or supposed head of Spain championed.  They were other realms of the letters of the old text, some of which are argued to contain the meaning of God, for instance Abulafia who motioned that there are 72 letters in the Laws that can combine to express the name of God, others mentioned that the whole Torah as they were called from here on, which is not just the commentaries for instance in the Mishnah or Mishneh, there is always the introit “this you do” or this “should be done” this way, commentaries passed from older generations to guide the realms of Leviticus which is the laws for the Priest, were taken with especially emphasis as if there was justification in following after the ways of the old.

But the Torah – if it means all of the written as if the Laws and Pentateuch is concerned, are said to be studied with meaning on the letters and that these letters combine for other meaning which was supposed hidden in the text itself. It is clearly understandable why there was a breach in the relationship between certain French Rabbi and others, for sure, inside of Europe and away from Babylon and from Egypt and Middle East of Damascus, one of the few places where the Jewish tradition could be studied well was in Spain and Barcelona which preceded Gerona, but in so far as Catalonia, which was the birth place of Nahmanides it is open to other forms of exposition which is separate from the Sefirot.  We can buy the argument that there was a new form of experimentation that the Abulafia and Isaac of Acre and Rabbi Barukh, that is obtained from the compilations of the Kabbalah by some anonymous and from these teachings, a new form of Sefer Yetzira, emerged which used the position of the numbers to enter some interpretation. 

Whatever may be comparative school of certain forms of reality or new forms of reality, there was a question that two schools which originally sheltered under two trees one, those of Nahmanides who studied in Barcelona and therefore learnt a commendable version of the teachings from Egypt as from Saadi Gaon, Ibn Ezra, and there was perhaps those who maintained a learning descent from R. Sherira and perhaps Isaac the Blind – if he be not the Isaac Sagi Nahor.  All the frontiers of Gerona where Nahmanides settled was moved to Jerusalem in 1267 or thereabout, and from here, we learn the real replacement of Nahmanides who is Solomon (Shlemo) ibn Adret who not only moved to Barcelona but attempted to consolidate the wandering teachings of all asunder. It is not improper to make believe that the appearing of Abulafia who is originally from France and who was interest in the Spanish Jewry until he ran into the works of Maimonides ‘Guide for the Perplexed’ (?) (Moreh Nebuchim) became an ardent provost of the teachings and ended up adding his own themes.

The quarrel between him and Adret is possibly a matter of power and control, since the traditions passed to Adret who insisted on writing some of it down, inveighed against ecstatic at that Age of Spanish Judaism, including the gemara. It would seem that these people who were attracted by the seemingly exemplary teachings of Samuel Abulafia needed to exercise the exterior knowledge of these themes from biblical numbers and what was eventful, but the fact that there was hardly any useful institution until the Moors of peculiar kind got control over other Muslims in Spain, also suggest that Shlemo Ibn Adret was compulsively concerned about the extra materials that were entering the Jewish Liturgy, some of which came from the school of the seers Isaac the Blind and Isaac Sagi Nahor, and some other were product of learned experience which were present in Catalonia at least in Seville, nearly of all of the teachings came from Egypt. 

It will make sense to indicate that there was a disconnect in Spain between the Babylonian Jews who made it to Spain in the 6th century and 7th century and who brought other records of Babylonian practice to Spain. It is uncommon that to connect Isaac the Blind and Isaac Sagi Nahor to Babylonian groups, not the departures of Nahmanides would not suggest a linking to this group rather, we may consider that simultaneous rise of Nahor and others in Spain is probably after the departures to East Europe following a conversion of a Kara group and the Karzan in Itil, where they are said to speak Hebrew. But of this movement and what happened as people move from East Europe to parts of West and largely on a very difficult transportations, there was also the stories of a much older Jewish Groups in Russia and Kiev whose neck were branded by Kharzas until the coming of Muslims from what is now called the Nordic Circle.  

That the French also mentioned the outrages teachings of some of these Rabbis in Spain, would mean that there was hardly any control over the schools of learning in Spain, that there were not themselves together suggest that the relapse into the past or is it became, the ways of their father sin 1391 and after, indicate that these Spanish Jews themselves were already shifted from the language of the Torah, that if not all, at least a sizable amount of the Spanish Jews were not entirely educated. Comparatively speaking the myth of a luxuriant Jewish society itself deserving a topical treatment may seem to be relatively untrue, perhaps only a group of the Jews were necessarily wealthy and the rest of the resources from all Jewish Aljamas in Spain give reason that only a small percentage of their kind earned over Spain, that there we mirror the kind of society that was necessarily obtainable in Spain and in Aljamas, or Ama(s) as the Igbo called it meaning ‘communities’ or squares.

There was a difference between the Ten Sefirots and the Peshers (?) which is not the ten lost tribes in spite of the Asylum that was granted the Jews in Egypt by one of the Greek emperors Ptolemy III, consisting of ten quorums, of ten men where the title is written in a Pesher  - carved rock - in Egypt. The meaning of these Ten writings dealing with families and names of people granted this Asylum has been taken as the Ten tribes, as we have mentioned, it seems that there is something about the continuation of these names and their stories in what is not called Peshers yet from the rocks that were used elsewhere and eventually in Spain and France, it is not possible to connect these ten rocks to the lost tribes of Israel. In Igbo, there was what we call ‘oru’ which means ‘servants’ or ‘devotees’, a term which may remind us of Egypt and the Horus mistaken as ‘warriors’, but ultimately a Horus is a faithful servant by all accounts Khemit and from accounts ‘Horus’ was a reference to someone faithful.

From Jose Faure essays we read a reaction of Abraham Abulafia (1240 after 1291) to R. Solomon ibn Adret concerning the ten Sefirot that “…let me inform you that the masters of mysticism (and) the Sefirot though to profess the unity of God, and escape the doctrine of Trinitarians, and (in fact) they made him ten. In the same fashion that the gentiles say ‘He is three and three are one’ some masters of mysticism say that the divinity is ten Sefirot and the ten are one.” In Faur commentary, the root causality was an attempt at unifying the essence of God, just like the Christians had Trinity that there was nothing peculiarly wrong in the Jews interpreting the Sefirots  are since they are believed to explain the aspects of God. 

The problem however is the misconception of Ein Sof, which is the Sefirot, which they say has ‘no end’ which it is clear at least from linguistic comparison of Igbo to Hebrew – assuming this will prevail – that the Ein Sof is no different Nso Ofor, in Igbo and from a decade and half critical study of Jewish History- especially Theological History that Nsofor which is Igbo for pure and clean conscience is next Godliness but in Igbo, it is not equal to God. The aspect of determining the ones conscience involves a fate in choice of equal rocks (ehsha) by means known to who the Igbos call Dibia, may explain an Individual state of mind, either through confession, expectations and other kinds of fate, but is not even a replacement of the Odinani (ordinance) and may be used to clarify the possessing meaning of the Sefirot whose diagrams are probably a drawing of these elder rocks or stones, may even show some degree of relational to the Exodus 20 and the Ten Commandment but not perhaps a mystery in of itself as derived from the new interpretations of what became the Kabbalah.

As such the whole idea of Ten Mystical Spheres, which as Faur summarizing the deist of the elders of Spain, make the argument that the Mystical Spheres (Sefirot)“….was further strengthened by those who maintained that the ten “Mystical Spheres” (Sefirot) represent the very essence of God.”, as a reassuring theory, and resolution based perhaps on the Age that had problems understanding some of the basic meanings of the Old Hebrew texts, that it is this Age that lived was matured in Alphabets and not in scripture of old letters,…but these letters has origins that is not far from what is available from older times, seem at least to me that a new meaning was realized from the connection between the letters or alphabets of the Bible and realized practice of Gnostic meaning, hence a new form of expositions of would have been a Kabbalah of traditions.  

The quorum as it is called in Hebrew concerning the ten who are said to be people of promise, suggest some of promise, at least an attempt to keep alive some practice, may be a number close to ten for a reason but there is no doubt that the presence of Jews in the 3rd century Egypt, would have meant that the number is indicative of some reserved group, for instance the ten (10) missing tribes of Israel, that this refers either to the very remnant of the older Israel as some argument will have us believe or that the 10 refers to a new which are best known to the pharaohs. In terms of the commandment whose interpretation is the root of human conscience and meaning of God with us, it makes more sense that certain people place faith on the number and the people at large, a number that have no real meaning under any circumstances. 

There were Jewish Temples in Egypt, may have also meant that there was hardly any reason why any group could be an Asylum from the Pharaoh over Egypt despite his Greek and Macedonian ancestry. The other hints of the opulence of these groups in from the tinkering that a group of people separated themselves from the world, and spent a long period of desert traveling and for reasons why we became sure of, lived in the desert and in the confines Of Nag Hammaddi (Egypt) who were waiting for the lord and for a time the redemption of Israel, are mainly Essenes and among them the Eboins (Ibian) whose scripts containing the Isaiah 53 concerning the Suffering Servant of God and other parchment of Isaiah were discovered intact leading to the breaking up of Isaiah Corpus into three major departures (I-III) enforcing that the 66 books were written over a period of time and by several authors. 

Eboins (unlike the similar but diagram displaces Therapeutic group) are believed to have recited Isaiah 53 as a hymn. The Eboins are called the Poor in Spirit since according to their script ‘friendship with the World was enmity with God’, that those who in love with the current world could be friends of God, but from other Jewish Rabbis and teachings these are called the Pious Ones – who wore ropes and believed in extreme piety and in refusing to fight back when struck. There others who indicated that the presence were visible in Jerusalem and the practice away from those who were the Rachabites (The Wailers) and initially only women, wore Blacks from head to toe and like Rachel wept for Jerusalem, whereas the Eboins wore White from head to toe, held no property and no special title accept for the head of the group, among whom was James the Half-brother of Christ who was pushed from the top end of the Church of Jerusalem and died with unshaven heads and these group literarily turn the other cheek. But there were other group of Essenes who were ‘Warlike Order’ and were called the Zealots.

Perhaps we read from these whole meaning, the idea of Paul the Apostle of Christ as someone essentially a Zealots – that is his Zeal was known who violently prosecuted others.  These does not explain the Ten men, either for reasons which this period explains, or that Jewish temples were initially sacked and then returned, and the number if not for a specific meaning, were just those families and the representatives which remained and which Ptolemy Euergetes III 246 – 221 granted Asylum – hence there were either born elsewhere or seem to have earned a special consideration – and there was the citations of Pesher Habakkuk.