{"collection":"Texts of Judaism","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_jud_zdm_zdm052_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_jud_zdm_zdm052_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_jud_zdm_zdm052_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/jud/zdm/zdm052.htm","summary":"This is a passage from the Zohar, the central text of Jewish Kabbalah, presented as a series of rabbinic dialogues among sages including Rabbi Eleazar, Rabbi Simeon, Rabbi Jehuda, and Rabbi Isaac. The discussions move through several biblical episodes \u2014 David's vision, the destruction of the Temple, the Flood \u2014 offering esoteric interpretations that read literal scripture as encoding mystical truths about the divine, humanity, and cosmic structure. A core theological argument is that \"The Angel of the Lord\" in scripture is always a metaphoric designation for God himself, not a separate being, and that all historical catastrophes befalling Israel \u2014 including the Temple's destruction \u2014 occurred only by divine permission and according to a plan God devised at creation, illustrated through a parable of a king who pre-plans destroying his own treasured vase if his son misbehaves. The text makes the distinctive claim that the Flood was specifically a *watery* punishment because the antediluvians' sin of \"self-pollution\" (onanism) had obstructed the mystical union of the \"upper waters\" and \"lower waters\" \u2014 male and female cosmic principles \u2014 so the punishment mirrored the crime on a metaphysical level. It also develops a tripartite anthropology in which Noah's three sons allegorize the three components of the human person (spirit, intellect, and animal nature), with the pure spiritual self remaining unknowable and unseen, accessible only to those who live virtuously. Readers interested in medieval Jewish mysticism, Kabbalistic scriptural hermeneutics, or the theology of divine justice and human sinfulness will find this a dense but representative specimen of Zoharic thought.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"Zohar: Genesis: Chapter XLIII.","tradition":"Texts of Judaism","translated_text":null,"word_count":3380}