Texts of Judaism

Zohar: Genesis: Chapter XVI. A Symposium of Rabbi Simeon's Students

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This is an excerpt from the Zohar, the foundational text of Jewish Kabbalah (mystical tradition), presented as a series of rabbinic disputations on the opening chapters of Genesis. The rabbis interpret the creation narrative not as a literal account but as an encoded system of mystical correspondences between earthly and heavenly realms, using numerology and Hebrew letter symbolism as interpretive tools. A central claim is that Lilith — not a rib — was originally taken from Adam's androgynous body and that she, identified with the "living creature" (nephesh hayah) the waters brought forth, was Adam's first and unsuitable mate; her separation made way for Eve. The text argues that Adam and Eve were initially androgynous and only became distinct, face-to-face individuals when the divine union of heaven and earth was "completed" — symbolized by rain and the mist rising from the earth. The rabbis also interpret the Tree of Life (given a precise cosmic height of 1,825,000 miles and identified as the source of all waters) and the Tree of Knowledge as dual-natured: the latter yields good or evil depending on the moral state of whoever partakes of it. Distinctively, the text reads the divine command "let us make man" as God disclosing to the angels an occult doctrine encoded in the Hebrew letters of Adam's name, linking humanity structurally to both visible and invisible worlds.

Zohar: Genesis: Chapter XVI. A Symposium of Rabbi Simeon's Students

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