From Philo to Plotinus: The Emergence of Mystical Union

Abstract

Mystical union in Judaism has always been a controversial matter. Scholars of past generations, Christians and Jews alike, consistently denied the possibility of unio mystica in Judaism, citing as their reason that the Mosaic Law, rejecting incarnation on the one hand and pantheism on the other, maintained a fundamental gulf between man and God. A famous example from Christian scholarship is the oft-cited opinion of Edward Caird, writing on the evolution of religion, who argued that the “Jewish mind” is not capable of real contemplation and, consequently, not capable of reaching what he considered as the ultimate full mystical state of union. Caird contrasts Plotinus, “the mystic par excellence,” with Philo, for it was impossible “for a pious Jew like Philo to be a mystic or a pantheist and so to reduce the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to an absolute substance, in whom all the reality of the world is merged.” Similarly in the field of Jewish studies, a Hegelian-