The Kabbalah: its doctrines, development, and literatureGinsburg, Christian D. (Christian David)
Religion
The Kabbalah: its doctrines, development, and literature
Ginsburg, Christian D. (Christian David)
Cabala
Book III, the exponent of which is Capnio, endeavours to shew that the
most essential doctrines of Christianity are to be found by the same
method. Let a few instances of this method suffice. Thus the doctrine
of the Trinity is to be found in the first verse of Genesis. If the
Hebrew word ברא which is translated created, be examined, and if each
of the three letters composing this word be taken as the initial of a
separate word, we obtain the expressions בן רוח אב Son, Spirit,
Father. Upon the same principle we find the two persons of the Trinity
in the words, “the stone which the builders refused is become the heed
stone of the corner” (Ps. cxviii, 22), inasmuch as the three letters
composing the word אבן stone, are to be divided into אב בן Father,
Son. Orpheus, in his hymn on the night, described the Trinity of the
New Testament in the words, νὺξ, οὐρανὸς, αἰθὴρ, for night which begets
everything can only designate the Father; heaven, that olyphus which in
its boundlessness embraces all things, and which proceeded from the
night, signifies the Son; whilst ether, which the ancient poet also
designates fiery breath, is the Holy Ghost. The name Jesus in Hebrew
י״ה״ש״ו״ה the πενταγράμματον yields the name יהוה Jehovah; and the
ש which in the language of the Kabbalah is the symbol of fire or
light, which St. Jerome, in his mystical exposition of the alphabet,
has made the sign of the Λόγος. This mysterious name therefore contains
a whole revelation, inasmuch as it shows us that Jesus is God himself,
the Light or the Logos. Even the cross, which is the symbol of
Christianity, is plainly indicated in the Old Testament, by the tree of
life which God planted in the midst of the garden; by the praying
attitude of Moses, when he raised his hands towards heaven in his
intercession for Israel during the combat with Amalek; and by the tree
which converted the bitter waters into sweet in the wilderness of
Marah. [105]
The Treatise de Verbo Mirifico is, however, only an introduction to
another work on the same subject which Reuchlin published twenty-two
years later, entitled De Arte Cabalistica. Hagenau, 1516. This
Treatise, like the first, is in the form of a dialogue between a
Mohammedan named Marrianus, a Pythagorean Philosopher named Philolaus,
and a Jewish doctor named Simon. The dialogue is held in Frankfort,
where the Jew resides, to whom the Mohammedan and Pythagorean resort to
be initiated into the mysteries of the Kabbalah. The whole is a more
matured exposition and elaboration of the ideas hinted at in his first
work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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