The Cluster of Henna: On Creation

This excerpt from The Cluster of Henna (Eshkol ha-kofer) ostensibly addresses the second of the Ten Commandments, not to worship other gods. Using this commandment as a springboard, however, Hadassi explains God’s utter uniqueness and how God created the world. Hadassi uses Psalms, Job, and other scriptural verses to shed light on the creation account in Genesis 1. In this passage, he cites biblical verses that describe creation as deriving from “clods,” a term that apparently denotes atoms. For Hadassi and other Karaite atomists, the basic atoms of the world possess properties known as accidents, such as color or taste. Many proponents of kalām (rationalist theology) rejected this understanding of atoms. Despite this perspective, Hadassi’s physics was more Aristotelian in nature than other, earlier proponents of kalām, and elsewhere he adopted Aristotle’s idea of the four basic elements.