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
Knorr Baron von Rosenroth, therefore put himself under the tuition of
R. Meier Stern, a learned Jew, and with his assistance was enabled to
publish the celebrated work entitled the Unveiled Kabbalah (Kabbala
Denudata), in two large volumes, the first of which was printed at
Sulzbach, 1677–78, and the second at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, 1684,
giving a Latin translation of the Introduction to and the following
portion of the Sohar—the Book of Mysteries (ספר דצניעותא); the Great
Assembly (אדרא רבא); the Small Assembly (אדרא זוטא); Joseph
Gikatilla’s Gate of Light (שער אורה); the Doctrine of Metempsychosis
(הגלגולים), and the Tree of Life (עץ חיים), of Chajim Vital; the
Garden of Pomegranates (פרדס רימונים), of Moses Cordovero; the House
of the Lord (בית אלהים), and the Gate of Heaven (שער השמים), of
Abraham Herera; the Valley of the King (עמק המלך), of Naphtah b.
Jacob; the Vision of the Priest (מראה כהן), of Issachar Beer b.
Naphtali Cohen, &c., &c., with elaborate annotations, glossaries and
indices. The only drawback to this gigantic work is that it is without
any system, and that it mixes up in one all the earlier developments of
the Kabbalah with the later productions. Still the criticism passed
upon it by Buddeus, that it is a “confused and obscure work, in which
the necessary and the unnecessary, the useful and the useless are mixed
up and thrown together as it were into one chaos,” [120] is rather too
severe; and it must be remembered that if the Kabbala Denudata does not
exhibit a regular system of this esoteric doctrine, it furnishes much
material for it. Baron von Rosenroth has also collected all the
passages of the New Testament which contain similar doctrines to those
propounded by the Kabbalah.
1758–1763. Amongst the Jews, however, the pretensions and consequences
of the Kabbalistic Pseudo-Messiah, Sabbatai Zevi, and his followers,
produced a new era in the criticism of the Sohar. Even such a scholar
and thorough Kabbalist as Jacob b. Zevi of Emden, or Jabez (יעב״ץ),
as he is called from the acrostic of his name (יעקב בן צבי),
maintains in his work, which he wrote in 1758–1763, and which he
entitled The Wrapper of Books, that with the exception of the kernel of
the Sohar all the rest is of a late origin. [121] He shows that (1) The
Sohar misquotes passages of Scripture, misunderstands the Talmud, and
contains some rituals which were ordained by later Rabbinic authorities
(פוסקים). (2) Mentions the crusades against the Mohammedans. (3) Uses
the philosophical terminology of Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew Translation of
Maimonides’ More Nebuchim, and borrows the figure of Jehudah Ha-Levi’s
Khosari, that “Israel is the heart in the organism of the human race,
and therefore feels its sufferings more acutely” (Khosari, ii, 36, with
Sohar, iii, 221 b, 161 a); and (4) Knows the Portuguese and North
Spanish expression Esnoga.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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