Jewish Mysticism: Merkavah

The question of what religion is has always been a debatable issue. Scholars argue over what constitutes a religion, as opposed to a practice. Some scholars, like Dale Cannon, argue that religion can be defined within certain frameworks, and that all practices within a religion can be understood by outsiders using a framework such as his six generic paths of being religious. Others, such as Gershom Scholem, argue that the different paths inside of a religion can only be understood within the context of the parent faith, and not by use of a generic framework. The truth is, however, that both answers are correct. The best way to understand the practices within a faith is to recognize the differences between them using a generic framework within the context of the parent tradition.

Gershom Scholem argues that the only way to understand Jewish mysticism is within the Jewish context. He describes mysticism as a stage in the development of religion, rather than a separate path of religious expression. The only way to fully understand that stage is by understanding the culture and the traditions surrounding it. He describes mysticism as being purely philosophical and evolutionary, as opposed to the mainstream versions of Judaism which are also philosophical, but the entire basis of the tradition is not solely philosophical. By evolutionary, he means the mystic reaches a post-religion state of consciousness where the gap is healed between God and the world by pre-religious means.