The Cluster of Henna: On Atomism

This excerpt from The Cluster of Henna (Eshkol ha-kofer) sets forth Hadassi’s view of divine attributes. The character of divine attributes attracted much attention from medieval theologians, who were concerned that their descriptions of God’s nature would be misunderstood as asserting that God was comprised of divisible traits and, therefore, that they would be proclaiming multiplicity within God. Hadassi here insists that God’s attributes, unlike those of all created beings, did not come about from an external force. Instead, and in keeping with long-held positions of kalām theologians, God’s wisdom, power, existence, and being all stem from God’s essence. Many of the claims in this excerpt flow from this proposition. Hadassi’s assertion at the end of this composition, that God has no origin, leads him to challenge certain atomist theories adopted by other theologians. The Cluster of Henna is divided into numbered “alphabets” with each of the paragraphs arranged in an alphabetical acrostic; this passage comes from the twenty-eighth alphabet.