1 Andrei A. Orlov Marquette University Golem’s Education: Descent Pedagogy in the Apocalypse of Abraham 6.1 Mysteries of Evil Some Jewish legends relate that Adam, in his state as a lifeless mass, or a golem, was uniquely educated by the deity. This divine instruction included a comprehensive vision of the entire human history. 1 Later Jewish mystics often received a similar vision on the heavenly curtain Pargod, which showed them the course of human history together with all its generations and leaders. According to Scholem, “even before Adam has speech and reason, he beholds a vision of the history of Creation, which passes before him in images.” 2 Genesis Rabbah 24:2 underlines the comprehensiveness of this revelation when it tells that the first-formed beheld every generation and its sages, judges, scribes, interpreters, and leaders: R. Tanhuma in R. Banayah’s name and R. Berekiah in R. Eleazar’s name said: He created him a shapeless mass, and he lay stretching from one end of the world to the other; as it is written, “Thine eyes did see my shapeless mass.” R. Judah b. R. Simon said: While Adam laid a shapeless mass before Him at whose decree the world came into existence, He showed him every generation and its sages, every generation and its judges, scribes, interpreters, and leaders. Said He to him: Thine eyes did see unformed substance: the unformed substance [viz. thy potential descendants] which thine eyes did see have already been written in the book of Adam. 3 1 A reference to this vision may be hinted already in Ps 139:15-16, where a possible reference to Adam’s golem coincides with the revelation about all days of humankind: “My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.” 2 Scholem, “The Idea of the Golem,” 162. 3 Freedman and Simon, Midrash Rabbah, 1.200. According to the Babylonian Talmud and the Book of Zohar, the protoplast was the first human being who received a vision of every generation and its leaders. B. Sanh. 38b reads: “And that is what Resh Lakish meant when he said: What is the meaning of the verse, This is the book of the generations of Adam? It is to intimate that the Holy One, blessed be He, showed him [Adam] every generation and its thinkers, every generation and its sages. When he came to the generation of Rabbi Akiba, he [Adam] rejoiced at his learning but was grieved at his death and said: How weighty are Thy friends to me, O God. ” Epstein, The Babylonian Talmud. Sanhedrin, 38b. In Zohar I.90b-91b, this tradition takes the following form: “Come and see: Rabbi Shim’on said, This is the book of the generations of Adam (Gen 5:1). Was there really a book? Rather they have established that the blessed Holy One showed Adam every generation with its expounders.… How did He reveal them? You might say he saw through Holy Spirit that they were destined to enter the world, like someone foreseeing the future through wisdom. Not so! Rather he saw them all with his very eyes, witnessing the image in