Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Early Mormonism and the Magic World View/Use of sources/Anthromorphism in Kabbalah

The FAIR Wiki Defending Mormonism by providing well-researched answers to challenging questions within a faithful context

Availability of cheap magic books?

A FAIR Analysis of: Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Early Mormonism and the Magic World View A work by author: D. Michael Quinn Use of sources, Anthromorphism in Kabbalah?

Note: This is a review of claims and/or responses to misrepresentations of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints found in this work. The inclusion of an author's work here does not imply that he or she is "anti-Mormon," or that none of his or her works have value. Those who do not wish to examine the claims contained in what some would consider an "anti-Mormon" work are advised to proceed no further.

Copyright © 2005–2013 Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research. This is not an official Web site of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The content of this page may not be copied, published, or redistributed without the prior written consent of FAIR.

Anthromorphism in Kabbalah?

The Claim

Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, page 298

• The author claims that Moshe Idel wrote that the Zohar 'is manifestly anthropomorphic'.
• The author claims that Gershom Scholem wrote of the Cabala's 'almost provocatively conspicuous anthropomorphism'

The References

Endnote 478 , page 569

• Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988), 107, 112, 121-22, 127, 135.
• Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New York: Quadrangle, 1974), 141.

The Problems

The author wants to attribute Joseph's idea of God having a physical human form (anthropomorphism) to the Jewish mystics who practiced Kabbalah. But, the author twists and distorts his source, which clearly states that the anthropomorphism of God is only allegorical in Kabbalah. From the first cited source:

"The latter [the lower sefirot] is an obvious anthropomorphic symbol, which in the Zohar refers to the second and lower divine head, that consisting of the Sefirah of Tiferet alone or of the Sefirot between Hokhmah and Yesod, whereas in the works of R. David [ben Yehudah he-Hasid, late thirteenth to early fourteenth centuries] it includes ten Sefirot or, as in the diagram, nine. In other contexts of R. David's thought, this configuration [of the diagram] is manifestly anthropomorphic; the fact that the concept appearing in the diagram differs from that of the Zohar does not obliterate its anthropomorphic character. . . . The process of [the mystical] visualization [of God] includes not only divine names, colors, and a circle or circles but also an anthropomorphic configuration symbolizing an aspect of the divine realm." ^[1]

From the second cited source:

Scholem notes that mystical descriptions of the body of God "[do] not imply that God in Himself possesses a physical form, but only that a form of this kind may be ascribed to 'the Glory.'”
And:
"Adam Kadmon in the form of concentric circles" that "rearranged themselves as a line, in the form of a man and his limbs, though of course this must be understood in the purely spiritual sense of the incorporeal supernal lights." ^[2]

Endnotes

1. [note] Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988), 107.
2. [note] William J. Hamblin, "That Old Black Magic (Review of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, revised and enlarged edition, by D. Michael Quinn)," FARMS Review of Books 12/2 (2000): 225–394. off-site PDF link; citing Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New York: Quadrangle, 1974), 17, 137

Further reading

A FAIR Analysis of Critical Works

• American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows— (Index of claims)
• An Insider's View of Mormon Origins — (Index of claims—Use of sources)
• Archaeology and the Book of Mormon
• Ashamed of Joseph: Mormon Foundations Crumble
• Becoming Gods: A Closer Look at 21st-Century Mormonism/Inside Today's Mormonism — (Index of claims—Use of sources)
• Behind the Mask of Mormonism
• Specific works/Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows
• Specific works/By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus
• Counterfeit Gospel of Mormonism
• Covering Up the Black Hole in the Book of Mormon
  • Answering Mormon Scholars, Vol. 1
  • Answering Mormon Scholars, Vol. 2
• Decker's Complete Handbook on Mormonism
• Early Mormonism and the Magic World View — (Index of claims—Use of sources)
• Specific works/Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Mormonism
• Faithful History: Essays on Writing Mormon History
• From Captain Kidd's Treasure Ghost to the Angel Moroni: Changing Dramatis Personae in Early Mormonism
• In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith — (Index of Claims)
• Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon
• Inventing Mormonism: Tradition and the Historical Record
• Is the Mormon My Brother?
• Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet
• Joseph Smith and the Origins of The Book of Mormon (2nd edition)—(Index of claims)
• Joseph Smith's New York Reputation Reexamined
• The Kingdom of the Cults (Revised) — (Index of claims)
• Leaving the Saints
• Letters to a Mormon Elder
• Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church — (Index of claims)
• Mormon America: The Power and the Promise — (Index of claims)
• The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power — (Index of claims)
• The Mormon Mirage: Seeing Through the Illusion of Mainstream Mormonism
• Mormonism 101—Index of claims
• Mormonism (Kurt Van Gorden)
• Mormonism: Shadow or Reality? — (Index of claims)
• The Mysteries of Godliness—A History of Mormon Temple Worship
• Nauvoo Polygamy — (Index of claims—Use of sources—Prejudicial language—Presentism—Mind reading—Censorship—Romance—Assumptions—Magick)
• New Approaches to the Book of Mormon
• New Mormon Challenge
• No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith — (Index of claims)
• One Nation Under Gods — (Index of claims—Use of Sources—Prejudicial language—Absurd claims—Presentism—Mind reading—Rewording—Omissions—Sarcasm)
• The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644–1844
• Same-Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example — (Index of claims)
• Sidney Rigdon: A Portrait of Religious Excess
• The Changing World of Mormonism — (Index of claims)
• Trouble Enough: Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon
• Under the Banner of Heaven — (Index of claims)
• Word of God: Essays on Mormon Scripture