TY - JOUR
TI - The Symbolism of the Number Seven in the Kabbalistic Treatise Sefer ha-Temunah
AU - Górnicz, Dominika
TI - The Symbolism of the Number Seven in the Kabbalistic Treatise Sefer ha-Temunah
AB - 
	In recent decades, there has been increasing criticism of the dichotomy which is deeply rooted in research on religion and Judaism, namely the dichotomy between linear and cyclical notion of time with categories of history and myth respectively related to them. The aim of this article is to point out how in one religious tradition different models of time can coexist and be inextricably intertwined. The text which supports this idea is the anonymous kabbalistic treatise entitled Sefer ha-Temunah, probably composed in the mid-14th century within areas of the Byzantine Empire. The main topic of this treatise is the kabbalistic doctrine of cosmic cycles (shemittot and yovel), which is an idea of worlds periodically created and returning into a state of chaos. In this work I adapt Moshe Idel’s view, according to which the elementary structure of time in Judaism in its ritual dimension is based not on relations between precisely defined events, but on the central role played by the number seven and the process of counting to seven itself. The paper examines what role is played by the number seven and the system of associations constructed over it in the cyclical concept of time presented in Sefer ha-Temunah. I also adopt the assumptions of theory of ritual by Roy A. Rappaport to indicate that the source of the idea of cyclical time in cosmic scale is the experience of repeatability of events in ritual. This view is confirmed on the basis of the hermeneutics of Sefer ha-Temunah and allows a better understanding of this text.
VL - 2016
IS - Volume 49 Issue 2
PY - 2016
SN - 0137-2432
C1 - 2084-4077
SP - 161
EP - 178
DO - 10.4467/20844077SR.16.011.5232
UR - https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/studia-religiologica/article/symbolika-liczby-siedem-w-traktacie-kabalistycznym-sefer-ha-temuna
KW - symbolism of numbers in Judaism
KW - kabbalistic cosmology
KW - cyclical time in Jewish Mysticism
KW - Sefer ha-Temunah
KW - cosmic cycles
KW - sefirah Binah
KW - menorah
KW - astrology in Kabbalah