Note 432 — Chapter VI
Neil Buchanan translation
Footnote 432:
(return)
No reliance can be placed on Jewish sources, or on Jewish scholars, as a rule. What we find in Joël, l. c. I. Abth. p. 101 ff. is instructive. We may mention Grätz, Gnosticismus und Judenthum (Krotoschin, 1846), who has called attention to the Gnostic elements in the Talmud, and dealt with several Jewish Gnostics and Antignostics, as well as with the book of Jezira. Grätz assumes that the four main dogmatic points in the book Jezira, viz., the strict unity of the deity, and, at the same time, the negation of the demiurgic dualism, the creation out of nothing with the negation of matter, the systematic unity of the world and the balancing of opposites, were directed against prevailing Gnostic ideas.