Sefer HaTemunah, "The Book of the Image," is an anonymous Kabbalistic text associated with a circle of thirteenth century Spanish Kabbalists. It teaches that the whole of cosmic history unfolds across seven vast eras called shemittot, cosmic sabbatical cycles, each ruled by one of the seven lower sefirot and each lasting many thousands of years. Our own era, the doctrine holds, falls under the sefirah of Din, judgment, which is offered as the reason a world made by a good God nonetheless contains harshness, suffering and death. When all seven shemittot have run their course, a great Jubilee completes and a new cycle begins.
Facts
Origins
Held ByA specific school of thirteenth century Kabbalists centered on Sefer HaTemunah and its later commentators, not normative rabbinic Judaism as a whole, which does not teach cosmic shemittot. 1 Historical OriginThirteenth century Spain, within the same broader circle of early Kabbalists that produced the Zohar, though Sefer HaTemunah's shemittot doctrine developed as a distinct strand rather than the Zohar's own dominant approach to cosmic time. 1 Doctrinal category (class)Myth and Sacred Narrative 1 Status
Status Within the TraditionA minority position within the tradition 1 Standing as a Comparative CategoryA standard analytic category in the study of religion 1 Controversy
Point in DisputeThe doctrine's implication that Torah might read or apply differently across different shemittot troubled later authorities, since it seemed to suggest that the Torah as given is not fixed for all time. The shemittot doctrine never displaced the Zohar's own, non-cyclical account of cosmic structure and remained a minority current within Kabbalah rather than an accepted mainstream position. 1 Structure
StructureSeven shemittot of seven thousand years each, corresponding to the seven lower sefirot from Chesed to Malchut, for a total cycle of forty nine thousand years before a Jubilee restarts the pattern. Each shemittah is held to color the way Torah itself is understood and applied within it. 2 Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteMoshe Idel situates the shemittot doctrine within the wider history of Kabbalistic speculation on cosmic cycles, distinguishing Sefer HaTemunah's specific scheme from other, looser Kabbalistic uses of cyclical imagery. 2 Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Corresponds To
Both describe cosmic time as a repeating cycle of enormous, fixed-length eras; Sefer HaTemunah's shemittot are a specific Kabbalistic scheme within the wider pattern of eternal return that Mircea Eliade describes across archaic religion generally.
Source The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and HistoryMircea Eliade; Willard R. Trask (trans.)
Related To
Sources
1. Origins of the Kabbalah
Gershom Scholem, translated by Allan Arkush, Princeton University Press, 1987View the Source 2. Kabbalah: New Perspectives
Moshe Idel, Yale University Press
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