Theos-Talk Archives (August 2008 Message tt00119)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "Frank Reitemeyer" <dzyan@...> wrote:
>
> Gershom Sholem writes that the Book of Dzyan is a pirate copy of
Jewish holy books.
> 

To put the Frank quote in context, here is what Gershom Sholem wrote
on the subject :

"There can be little doubt in my opinion that the famous stanzas of
the mysterious Book Dzyan on which Madame H.P. Blavatsky's magnum
opus, The Secret Doctrine, is based owe something, both in title and
content, to the pompous pages of the Zoharic writing called Sifra
Di-Tseniutha. The first to advance this theory, without further proof,
was L.A. Bosman, a Jewish Theosophist, in his booklet The Mysteries of
Qabalah (1916) p. 31. This seems to me, indeed, the true "etymology"
of the hitherto unexplained title. Madame Blavatsky has drawn heavily
upon Knorr von Rosenroth's Kabbala Denudata (1677-1684), which
contains (vol. II p. 347-385) a Latin translation of the Sifra
Di-Tseniutha.The solemn and magniloquent style of these pages may well
have impressed her susceptible mind. As a matter of fact, H.P.B.
herself alludes to such a connection between the two "books" in the
very first lines of Isis Unveiled (vol.I p.1) where she still refrains
from mentioning the Book Dzyan by name. But the transcription used by
her for the Aramaic title shows clearly what she had in mind. She says
: "There exists somewhere in this wide world an old book . . . It is
the only original copy now in existence. The most ancient Hebrew
document on occult learning - the Siphra Dzeniuta - vwas compiled from
it." The Book of Dzyan is therefore nothing but an occultistic
hypostasy of the Zoharic title. This "bibliographical" connection
between the fundamental writings of the modern and of Jewish Theosophy
seems remarkable enough.

On the subject (Siphra Dzeniouta), Eliphas Levi wrote in his "Livre
des Splendeurs" : It is true that the Hebrews got a science that Saint
Paul guessed without knowing it, and that Saint Jean was both hiding
and revealing through the gigantic hieroglyphs from Apocalypse, mostly
borrowed from Ezechiel prophecies. It exist a dark and marvelous book
called the Zohar or "La Splendeur". This book immense and bigger than
the Talmud is but the development of a theogony which name is the
Siphra Dzeniuta.
Eliphas Levi book "Le Livre des Splendeurs" is a commentary of the
Siphra Dzeniuta by Schimeon Ben-Jochai.

Jacques