Pre-Adamic Civilizations

Secret of the Kabbalistic Shemitot

By R. Ariel B. Tzadok

Copyright © 2000, 2019 by Ariel Bar Tzadok. All rights reserved.

"For six years you shall plow your fields, but the seventh year shall be holy to YHWH, in that year you shall do no work." Lev. 25:3-4

One of the most controversial teachings among Kabbalists is the doctrine of the Shemita(ot), the cosmic Sabbatical epochs of pre-Adamic times.

According to many of the great Rabbis, Adam was not the first human to have walked the earth. These Rabbis teach that there were full pre-Adamic human civilizations that had arisen, and were eventually destroyed.

Among the earlier generations of Kabbalists, prior to the Ari'zal (R. Yitzhak Luria of Safed, d. 1572), the doctrine of the Shemita was written about by all Kabbalists, including the Ari'zal's Kabbalistic teacher, Rabbi David Ibn Zimra. These Kabbalists taught that not only is the source for doctrine of the Shemita to be found in the Oral tradition, they went directly into the simple and plain words of the Torah text to show that the history of time is not fully told in the Bible.

In the very beginning it is written, "In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth" (Gen. 1:1). Immediately, the following verse states, "And the Earth was without form and empty" (Gen. 1:2). The Kabbalists have noticed that the prophet Isaiah has written (45:18) that "the Earth was not created empty," revealing an apparent contradiction between Genesis, and Isaiah. Yet, as it is known to every faithful believer of Torah, there can be no contradictions between what Genesis says, and what Isaiah says.

Something, however, is definitely missing. For when God created the Earth it was not empty upon its creation, as per Isaiah. How then did the Earth become empty, as related in Gen.1:2? This leads us to the inevitable conclusion that something is missing; not that part of the text is missing, but rather something has been intentionally left out of the narrative. This is glaringly obvious to any student of the Bible.

I have even spoken to one ex-Christian minister, (now an Orthodox Jew) who, upon learning about this anomaly, had mentioned that he had heard of this before from reading Christian Biblical commentaries. Therefore, it seems that we have a mystery, the secret solution of which, of course, is known to the Rabbis and Kabbalists.

In the Midrash (Gen. R. 3:7), a question is posed as to what was God occupied with, prior to His creation of our world? The Midrash relates that God was busy building, and destroying other worlds.

It is written in Leviticus that, "for six years you shall plow your fields, but the seventh year shall be holy to YHWH, in that year you shall do no work." It is also taught by our Sages in the Talmud (San. 98A), "six thousand years shall the world last, then for one thousand years shall it remain desolate." Our Sages have learned from the secret meaning of the verse in Leviticus that the days of our world, meaning our civilization, will be measured in the same way, as is the Biblical Sabbatical year. Six years shall we labor, and in the seventh shall we rest. So, our civilization will grow for six thousand years, and then for a thousand years shall it "remain desolate" which means to be left alone to rest. After this time, it is said that God renews his creation.

The Bible proceeds to speak about the Jubilee year. We are instructed to count seven times seven years, and then to proclaim a Jubilee, a year of complete release. The Kabbalists have revealed that just as our civilization will last for the Sabbatical period of six thousand years, and one thousand years of desolation, so will there be seven cycles similar to this, corresponding to a cosmic cycle of Sabbaticals, and Jubilee. Therefore, according to this calculation, human civilization will rise and fall seven times, each for a period of six thousand years, with a rest period of a thousand years between.

Now arises the question, which Sabbatical are we in today? Many Kabbalists look back to the verse in Genesis, and notice the discrepancy. They answer the problem of the emptiness of the land (Gen. 1:2), when this was not the way it was created (Is. 45:18), by saying that we are not in the first Shemita. The earth was indeed created full. It only became empty as a result of the previous civilization. They are the ones who left the land "empty and desolate." According to many of the Kabbalists, therefore, we are in the second Shemita.

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Ariel B. Tzadok