1571–1648. Of the numerous opponents to the Kabbalah which the Sohar and Loria’s work called forth, Leo de Modena was by far the most daring, the most outspoken and the most powerful. This eminent scholar who is known to the Christian world by his celebrated History of the Rites, Customs and Manners of the Jews, which was originally written in Italian, published in Padua, 1640, and which has been translated into Latin, English, French, Dutch, &c., attacked the Kabbalah in two of his works. His first onslaught is on the doctrine of metempsychosis in his Treatise entitled Ben David. He composed this Treatise in 1635–36, at the request of David Finzi, of Egypt, and he demonstrates therein that this doctrine is of Gentile origin, and was rejected by the great men of the Jewish faith in bygone days, refuting at the same time the philosophico-theological arguments advanced in its favour. [114] It is, however, his second attack on this esoteric doctrine, in his work entitled The Roaring Lion (‏ארי נוהם‎), which is so damaging to the Kabbalah. In this Treatise—which Leo de Modena composed in 1639, at the advanced age of sixty-eight, to reclaim Joseph Chamiz, a beloved disciple of his, who was an ardent follower of the Kabbalah—he shows that the books which propound this esoteric doctrine, and which are palmed upon ancient authorities, are pseudonymous; that the doctrines themselves are mischievous; and that the followers of this system are inflated with proud notions, pretending to know the nature of God better than anyone else, and to possess the nearest and best way of approaching the Deity. [115] 1623. The celebrated Hebraist, Joseph Solomon del Medigo (born 1591, died 1637), a contemporary of the preceding writer, also employed his vast stores of erudition to expose this system. Having been asked by R. Serach for his views of the Kabbalah, del Medigo, in a masterly letter, written in 1623, shows up the folly of this esoteric doctrine, and the unreasonableness of the exegetical rules, whereby the followers of this system pretend to deduce it from the Bible. [116] 1635. We have seen that the information about the Kabbalah, which Mirandola and Reuchlin imparted to Christians, was chiefly derived from the writings of Recanti and Gikatilla. Now that the Sohar had been published, Joseph de Voisin determined to be the first to make some portions of it accessible to those Christian readers who did not understand the Aramaic in which this Thesaurus is written. Accordingly he translated some extracts of the Sohar which treat of the nature of the human soul. [117]