1767. Whilst the Jews were thus shaken in their opinion about the antiquity of the Sohar, learned Christians both on the Continent and in England maintained that Simon b. Jochai was the author of the Bible of the Kabbalah, and quoted its sentiments in corroboration of their peculiar views. Thus Dr. Gill, the famous Hebraist and commentator, in his work on the Antiquity of the Hebrew Language, adduces passages from the Sohar to shew that the Hebrew vowel points were known A.D. 120, at which time he tells us “lived Simon ben Jochai, a disciple of R. Akiba, author of the Zohar.” [122] 1830. Allen, in the account of the Kabbalah in his Modern Judaism, also premises the antiquity of the Sohar. Taking this pseudonym as the primary source of the primitive Kabbalah, Allen, like all his predecessors, mixes up the early mysticism and magic, as well as the later abuse of the Hagadic rules of interpretation, denominated Gematria, Notaricon, Ziruph, &c., which the Kabbalists afterwards appropriated, with the original doctrines of this theosophy. [123] 1843. Even the erudite Professor Franck, in his excellent work La Kabbale (Paris, 1843), makes no distinction between the Book Jetzira and the Sohar, but regards the esoteric doctrines of the latter as a development and continuation of the tenets propounded in the former. He moreover maintains that the Sohar consists of ancient and modern fragments, that the ancient portions are the Book of Mysteries (‏ספרא דצניעותא‎), the Great Assembly or Idra Rabba (‏אדרא רבא‎), and the Small Assembly or Idra Suta (‏אדרא זוטא‎), and actually proceeds from the school of R. Simon b. Jochai, while several of the other parts belong to a subsequent period, but not later than the seventh century; that the fatherland of the Sohar is Palestine; that the fundamental principles of the Kabbalah, which were communicated by R. Simon b. Jochai to a small number of his disciples, were at first propagated orally; that they were then from the first to the seventh century gradually edited and enlarged through additions and commentaries, and that the whole of this compilation, completed in the seventh century, owing to its many attacks on the Asiatic religions, was kept secret till the thirteenth century, when it was brought to Europe. To fortify his opinions about the antiquity of the Kabbalah, Franck is obliged to palm the doctrine of the Sephiroth upon passages in the Talmud in a most unnatural manner. As this point, however has been discussed in the second part of this Essay, (vide supra, p. 183, etc.) there is no necessity for repeating the arguments here. [124] Still Franck’s valuable contribution to the elucidation of the Sohar will always be a welcome aid to the student of this difficult book.