Problèmes du mysticisme juif d’expression grecque : l’exemple des textes liturgiques

Abstract

This contribution deals with the question of mysticism in ancient Greek-speaking Judaism, in particular with the interpretation of some Jewish prayers in Greek. I discuss recent tendencies in the study of the origins of Jewish mysticism. In my opinion these tendencies go back to two fundamental and opposite trends: that of Erwin Goodenough and that of Gershom Scholem. The scholars following the first tendency analyse the mystical traditions of Ancient Judaism (namely the traditions appearing in Jewish writings in Greek) because they are interested in the milieu in which Christian communities arose. The second tendency explores the antecedents of the Hekhaloth literature consciously neglecting Jewish literature in Greek. These different perspectives however both raise the following question: what is – if it exists – the common denominator between the different texts labelled as ‘mystical’ by modern scholars? In other words, which are the criteria for establishing whether a text is mystical or not? With this question in mind I analyse two case studies: a prayer containing the quedusha included in the Apostolic Constitutions VII,35 and the ‘Prayer of Jacob’ found in P. gr. 13 895 Staatl. Mus. Berlin. The study of these prayers shows that in order to establish the mystical character of a text, we need to know not only its wording and its content, but also the context in which it was created and used.