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アブラハム・ベン・サムエル・アブラフィア（ヘブライ語: אברהם בן שמואל אבולעפיה ）は、「預言的カバラ」学派の創始者である。彼は1240年にアラゴン王国のサラゴサで生まれ、マルタ諸島のコミノ島に滞在した後、1291年以降のある時期に亡くなったと考えられている。[ 1 ]
幼い頃、彼は両親に連れられてナバラ王国のトゥデラへ行き、そこで老父サムエル・アブラフィアからヘブライ語聖書とタルムードを教わった。1258年、アブラフィアが18歳の時に父が亡くなり、その後まもなく彼は絶え間ない放浪生活を始めた。1260年の最初の旅はイスラエルの地へで、伝説のサンバティオンと失われた十部族を探し始めるつもりだった。しかし、最近の十字軍の混乱による聖地の荒廃と無法状態のため、彼は港町アッコまでしか進むことができなかった。その年にモンゴル帝国とマムルーク朝スルタン国の間で起こった戦いにより、彼はギリシャ経由でヨーロッパへ戻らざるを得なかった。彼はローマに行くことを決意していたが、カプアで立ち止まり、1260年代初頭に、ヒレルという名の哲学者で医師の指導の下、情熱的に哲学とマイモニデスの『迷える者の手引き』の研究に専念した。このヒレルはおそらく、ヴェローナの有名なヒレル・ベン・サムエルであろう。
彼は常にマイモニデスを高く評価し、しばしば彼の著作から文章を引用したが、他のどの分野の知識にも劣らず、マイモニデスの哲学にも満足していなかった。彼は非常に雄弁で、教えることに長けており、また熱心であった。カバラ、哲学、文法といった主題について精力的に執筆し、多くの弟子に囲まれ、彼らに自身の情熱を惜しみなく伝えた。
On his return to Spain he became subject to visions, and, at the age of thirty-one, in Barcelona, began to study a particular kind of Kabbalah whose most important representative was Barukh Togarmi, and received a revelation with messianic overtones. He immersed himself in the study of the Sefer Yetzirah ("Book of Creation"), which explained the creation of the world and humankind as based on Hebrew letter combinations, as well as its commentaries. The Sefer, and particularly the commentary and method of the German Jewish mystic Eleazar of Worms, exercised a deep influence upon Abulafia and had the effect of greatly increasing his mystical bent. Letters of the alphabet, numerals, and vowel-points all assumed mystical meaning to him, and their combinations and permutations, supplementing and explaining one another, possessed an illumining power most effectively disclosed in a deep study of the divine names (especially of the consonants of the Tetragrammaton). With such auxiliaries, and with the observance of certain rites and ascetic practices, men, he said, may attain the highest aim of existence and become prophets; not in order to work miracles and signs, but to reach the highest degree of perception and be able to penetrate intuitively into the inscrutable nature of the Deity, the riddles of creation, the problems of human life, the purpose of the precepts, and the deeper meaning of the Torah.
He soon left for Castile, where he disseminated his prophetic Kabbalah among figures like Rabbi Moses of Burgos and his most important disciple, Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla. However, it bears mention that Abulafia is not mentioned in any of Gikatilla's works.[2]
Some time around 1275; he taught The Guide for the Perplexed and his Kabbalah in a few cities in Greece. He wrote the first of his prophetic books, Sefer haYashar ("Book of the Upright/Righteous"), in Patras in 1279. That same year, he made his way through Trani back to Capua, where he taught four young students.
He went to Rome in 1280 in order to convert Pope Nicholas III to Judaism on the day before Rosh Hashanah. The Pope was in Soriano when he heard of it, and he issued orders to "burn the fanatic" as soon as he reached that place. The stake was erected in preparation close to the inner gate; but Abulafia set out for Soriano all the same and reached there August 22. While passing through the outer gate, he heard that the Pope had died from an apoplectic stroke during the preceding night. He returned to Rome, where he was thrown into prison by the Order of Friars Minor but was liberated after four weeks' detention. He was next heard of in Sicily.
He remained active in Messina for a decade (1281–91), presenting himself as a "prophet", "messiah" and "son of God".[3] He had several students there as well as some in Palermo. The local Jewish congregation in Palermo energetically condemned Abulafia's conduct, and around 1285 addressed the issue to Shlomo ben Aderet of Barcelona, who devoted much of his career to calming the various messianic hysteriae of the day. Shlomo ben Aderet subsequently wrote a letter against Abulafia. This controversy was one of the principal reasons for the exclusion of Abulafia’s Kabbalah from the Spanish schools.
Abulafia had to take up the pilgrim's staff anew, and under distressing conditions compiled his Sefer haOt "Book of the Sign" on the little island of Comino, near Malta, between 1285 and 1288. In 1291 he wrote his last, and perhaps his most intelligible work, the meditation manual Imrei Shefer "Words of Beauty"; after this, all trace of him is lost.
Abulafia’s literary activity spans the years 1271–1291 and consists of several books, treatises on grammar, and poems, but amongst which only thirty survive.[4] He wrote many commentaries: three on the Guide of the Perplexed – Sefer ha-Ge’ulah (1273), Sefer Chayei ha-Nefesh, and Sefer Sitrei Torah (1280); on Sefer Yetzirah: – Otzar Eden Ganuz (1285/6), Gan Na'ul, and a third untitled; and a commentary on the Pentateuch – Sefer-Maftechot ha-Torah (1289).
More influential are his handbooks, teaching how to achieve the prophectic experience: Chayei ha-Olam ha-Ba (1280), Or ha-Sekhel, Sefer ha-Cheshek, and Imrei Shefer (1291).
Of special importance for understanding his messianology are his "prophetic books" written between 1279 (in Patras) and 1288 (in Messina), in which revelations including apocalyptic imagery and scenes are interpreted as pointing to spiritual processes of inner redemption. The spiritualized understanding of the concepts of messianism and redemption as an intellectual development represents a major contribution of the messianic ideas in Judaism. As part of his messianic propensity, Abulafia become an intense disseminator of his Kabbalah, orally and in written form, trying to convince both Jews and Christians.
In his first treatises, Get ha-Shemot and Maftei’ach ha-Re'ayon, Abulafia describes a linguistic type of Kabbalah similar to the early writings of Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla. In his later writings, the founder of prophetic Kabbalah produces a synthesis between Maimonides' Neoaristotelian understanding of prophecy as the result of the transformation of the intellectual influx into a linguistic message and techniques to reach such experiences by means of combinations of letters and their pronunciation, breathing exercises, contemplation of parts of the body, movements of the head and hands, and concentration exercises. Some of the elements of those techniques stem from commentaries on Sefer Yetzirah of Ashkenazi. He called his Kabbalah "the Kabbalah of names," that is, of divine names, being a way to reach what he called the prophetic experience, or "prophetic Kabbalah," as the ultimate aims of his way: unitive and revelatory experiences. In his writings expressions of what is known as the unio mystica of the human and the supernal intellects may be discerned. Much less concerned with the theosophy of his contemporary kabbalists, who were interested in theories of ten hypostatic sefirot, some of which he described as worse than the Christian belief in the trinity, Abulafia depicted the supernal realm, especially the cosmic Agent Intellect, in linguistic terms, as speech and letters.
In his later books, Abulafia repeatedly elaborated upon a system of seven paths of interpretation, which he used sometimes in his commentary on the Pentateuch, which starts with the plain sense, includes also allegorical interpretation, and culminates in interpretations of the discrete letters, the latter conceived of as the path to prophecy. Abulafia developed a sophisticated theory of language, which assumes that Hebrew represents not so much the language as written or spoken as the principles of all languages, namely the ideal sounds and the combinations between them. Thus, Hebrew as an ideal language encompasses all the other languages. This theory of language might have influenced Dante Alighieri. In his writings Abulafia uses Greek, Latin, Italian, Arabic, Tatar, and Basque words for purpose of gematria.
Abulafia's Kabbalah inspired a series of writings which can be described as part of his prophetic Kabbalah, namely, as striving to attain extreme forms of mystical experiences. The most important among them are the anonymous Sefer ha-Tzeruf (translated into Latin for Pico), Sefer Ner Elohim, and Sefer Shaarei Tzedek by Rabbi Nathan ben Saadiah Harar, who influenced the Kabbalah of Rabbi Isaac of Acre. The impact of Abulafia is evident in an anonymous epistle attributed to Maimonides; Rabbi Reuven Tzarfati, a kabbalist active in 14th century Italy; Abraham Shalom, Yohanan Alemanno, Judah Albotini, and Joseph ibn Zagyah; Moses Cordovero and Chaim Vital's influential Shaarei Kedushah; Sabbatai Zevi, Joseph Hamitz, Pinchas Horowitz, and Menahem Mendel of Shklov.
Extant in many manuscripts, Abulafia's writings were not printed by kabbalists, most of whom banned his brand of Kabbalah, and only by chance introduced in their writings a few short and anonymous fragments. Scholarship started with an analysis of his manuscript writings by M. H. Landauer, who attributed the book of the Zohar to him. Adolf Jellinek refuted this attribution and compiled the first comprehensive list of Abulafia's writings, publishing three of Abulafia's shorter treatises (two epistles, printed in 1853/4, and Sefer ha-Ot in 1887), while Amnon Gross published 13 volumes, which include most of Abulafia's books and those of his students' books (Jerusalem, 1999–2004). Major contributions to the analysis of Abulafia's thought and that of his school have been made by Gershom Scholem, Chaim Wirszubski, Moshe Idel, and Elliot R. Wolfson. Some of Abulafia's treatises were translated into Latin and Italian in the circle of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, mostly by Flavius Mithridates, and Pico’s vision of Kabbalah was significantly influenced by his views. This is the case also with Francesco Giogio Veneto's De Harmonia Mundi.
Abulafia's life inspired a series of literary works such as poems by Ivan Goll, Moses Feinstein (not Rabbi Moshe Feinstein) and Nathaniel Tarn; Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum; and a play by George-Elie Bereby; in art, Abraham Pincas' paintings and Bruriah Finkel's sculptures; and several musical pieces.
Abulafia's writings include:
アブラフィアは数多くの著作の中で、神の名を唱えること、呼吸法、浄化法などを通して、能動知性、すなわち神と一体化するための複雑な手段に焦点を当てている。アブラフィアの神秘主義的な方法の一部は、アシュケナージ・ハシディズムによって取り入れられた。モーゼス・マイモニデス（1135/8年～1204年）の形而上学的・心理学的体系を枠組みとして、アブラフィアは霊的体験を追求した。彼はそれを、古代ユダヤの預言者たちのそれと類似した、あるいは同一の預言的状態とみなした。
アブラフィアは、絶えず変化する刺激に基づいた方法を提唱している。彼の意図は、瞑想によって意識をリラックスさせることではなく、同時に多くの動作を行うことを必要とする高度な集中力によって意識を浄化することにある。そのため、彼はヘブライ文字を用いる。
アブラフィアの方法にはいくつかのステップが含まれている。
精神的イメージの最終段階では、神秘家は4つの体験を連続して経験します。最初の体験は身体光覚または啓示の体験で、光が身体を包み込むだけでなく、身体内部にも拡散し、身体とその臓器が光になったような印象を与えます。恍惚状態にあるカバラ実践者が文字を組み合わせたり、生理的な動作を行ったりしながら実践を続けると、2番目の体験、つまり「吸収」的な方法で身体が弱まるという体験がもたらされます。続いて、神秘家は思考力と想像力の向上を感じるかもしれません。これが3番目の体験です。4番目の体験は主に恐怖と震えによって特徴づけられます。
Abulafia emphasizes that trembling is a basic and necessary step to obtain prophecy (Sitrei Torah, Paris Ms. 774, fol. 158a). In another place he writes: ‘all your body will begin to tremble, and your limbs begin to shake, and you will fear a tremendous fear […] and the body will tremble, like the rider who races the horse, who is glad and joyful, while the horse trembles beneath him’ (Otzar Eden Ganuz, Oxford Ms. 1580, fols. 163b-164a; see also Hayei Haolam Haba, Oxford 1582, fol. 12a).
For Abulafia the fear is followed by an experience of pleasure and delight. This feeling is a result of sensing another ‘spirit’ within his body, as he describes in Otzar Eden Ganuz: ‘And you shall feel another spirit awakening within yourself and strengthening you and passing over your entire body and giving you pleasure’ (Oxford Ms. 1580 fols. 163b-164a).
Only after passing these successive experiences does the mystic reach his goal: the vision of a human form, which is closely linked to his own physical appearance and generally experienced as standing in front of the mystic. The experience is increased when the mystic experiences his autoscopic form (or ‘double’) as speaking: the double begins to talk to the mystic, teaching him the unknown and revealing the future.
Abraham Abulafia describes the experience of seeing a human ‘form’ many times in his writings. However, initially it is not clear who this ‘form’ is. As the dialog between the mystic and the ‘form’ proceeds, the reader understands that the ‘form’ is the image of the mystic himself. Addressing his students and followers in Sefer haKheshek, Abulafia further elaborates the scenario:
[A]nd sit as though a man is standing before you and waiting for you to speak with him; and he is ready to answer you concerning whatever you may ask him, and you say "speak" and he answers […] and begin then to pronounce [the name] and recite first "the head of the head" [i.e. the first combination of letters], drawing out the breath and at great ease; and afterwards go back as if the one standing opposite you is answering you; and you yourself answer, changing your voice[.][6][7]
Apparently, by utilizing the letters of ‘the Name’ with specific breath techniques, a human form should appear. Only in the last sentence Abulafia suggests that this form is ‘yourself’.
しかし、彼は別の著書『Sefer haYei haOlam haBa』でも説明しているように、 「彼の返答をよく考え、あたかも自分自身が自分自身に答えたかのように答えなさい」（オックスフォード写本1582、56b頁）と明確に述べている。アブラフィアの記述のほとんどは、同様の方法で書かれている。『セフェル・ハオト』の中で、アブラフィアは同様のエピソードを、明確な自己視点から描写している。「私は西から大軍を率いてやってくる男を見た。彼の陣営の戦士の数は2万2千人であった。[…] そして、その光景の中で彼の顔を見たとき、私は驚き、心は震え、その場を離れ、神の名を唱えて助けを求めたいと切望したが、それは私の心から逃れた。そして、その男は私の大きな恐怖と強い畏敬の念を見て、口を開いて話し、私の口も開かせて話させた。私は彼の言葉に従って答え、その言葉の中で私は別人になった（ 81-82頁）。」
アブラフィアの地下に潜む影響力は、彼の主要な瞑想マニュアルの膨大な数の写本に明らかであり、それらは今日まで繁栄を続け、最終的に1990年代にエルサレムのメア・シェアリムで彼の全作品が出版された。
アブラフィアの預言者的、救世主的な主張は、有名な法学者であるシェロモ・ベン・アブラハム・アドレットの激しい反発を招き、彼はスペインにおけるアブラフィアの恍惚カバラの影響力を根絶することに成功した（応答集第1巻第548項）。
ベッサーマンの著書『シャンバラ・ガイド：カバラとユダヤ神秘主義』によると、アブラフィアの「瞑想に対する預言的なアプローチには、宗派にとらわれない文脈でヘブライ文字を操作することが含まれており、それがユダヤ教の権威との対立を招き、異端審問を引き起こした」という。
しかしイタリアでは、彼の著作はラテン語に翻訳され、キリスト教カバラの形成に大きく貢献した。
中東では、恍惚状態を特徴とするカバラが何の留保もなく受け入れられた。アブラフィアの教義の明確な痕跡は、アッコのイサク・ベン・サムエル、イェフダ・アルボティニ、ハイム・ベン・ヨセフ・ヴィタルの著作に見られる。イスラエルでは、アブラフィアの思想はスーフィーの要素と融合し、その起源はイブン・アラビーの学派にあるとみられる。こうして、スーフィーの思想がヨーロッパのカバラに取り入れられたのである。
After the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Spanish theurgical Kabbalah, which had developed without any significant influence from ecstatic Kabbalah, was integrated with the latter; this combination became, through the book Pardes Rimmonim by Mosheh Cordovero, part of mainstream Kabbalah. Hayyim Vital brought Abulafian views into the fourth unpublished part of his Shaarei Kedushah, and the eighteenth-century qabalists of the Beit El Academy in Jerusalem perused Abulafia's mystical manuals. Later on, mystical and psychological conceptions of Kabbalah found their way directly and indirectly to the Polish Hasidic masters. The influence of ecstatic Kabbalah is to be seen in isolated groups today, and traces of it can be found in modern literature (e.g., the poetry of Yvan Goll), mainly since the publication of Gershom Scholem's researches, and subsequently the groundbreaking studies of Moshe Idel.
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906). "Abulafia, Abraham Ben Samuel". The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906). "Abulafia, Abraham ben Samuel". The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.