Hebrew Beliefs
Many of the visions in the Bible were most likely dream visits from God. Jacob’s ladder is a perfect example of God speaking in a dream. Jacob dreamed of a ladder between earth and heaven with angels at various levels on the ladder, moving up or down. God was above the ladder and told Jacob that his offspring would spread throughout the world, which was the answer to Jacob’s concerns at the time.
The Talmud is a Jewish scriptural text representing sixty-three volumes of contributions from over two thousand scholars from various countries. The Talmud connects the Old Testament of the Bible with contemporary Judaism. There are 217 references to dreams in the Talmud. However, there are many different viewpoints on dreams and it is not surprising because there were so many different contributors to this text.
There was the common belief that evil spirits, or demons, instigated dreams. Erotic dreams were thought to be instigated by a hairy demon resembling a goat. Another sexual demon was called Lilith, who appeared to men as a female and appeared to women as a male, when one was alone in a house. Lilith’s sisters called Naamah and Igrath, also caused “wet” dreams.
Good spirits were believed to instigate dreams, like angels. Gabriel was known as the prince of dreams. Angels were thought to be sent from different departments in heaven to deliver a message to the dreamer. If a dream was uplifting, powerful and clear, it was believed to be a visit from the divine.
Soul travel was thought to be a source for dreams. Part of the soul supposedly could travel during sleep and what it saw was the content of the dream.
The following statement is the most quoted Talmud statement about dreams, said by Rabbi Hisda: “An uninterpreted dream is like an unread letter.” The Jewish took their dreams seriously and dream interpretation was a common practice in Jerusalem. It is believed that there are several interpretations for a dream, as well. One rabbi went to twenty four different dream interpreters, each gave a different interpretation, and he found that each interpretation was in fact correct, depending on which angle one looked at the dream from.
The ancient Hebrews believed that dreams could come from heavenly angels or soul travel. Symbol interpretation in Biblical era dream translation was a task of priests and wise people for understanding vision meaning.