Cabala

From KIAwiki

The Cabala or Christian Kabbalism arose during the Renaissance as a result of the studies of, and translations by, Christian Hebraists. The invention of the printing press also played its part in the wider dissemination of texts. Among the first to promote the knowledge of Kabbalah beyond exclusively Jewish circles was Pico della Mirandola (1463 - 1494), a student of Marsilio Ficino at his Florentine Academy. His syncretic world-view combined Platonism, Neoplatonism, Aristotelianism, Hermeticism and Kabbalah.

Mirandola's work on Kabbalah was further developed by Athanasius Kircher (1602 – 1680), a Jesuit priest, Hermeticist and polymath, who wrote on the subject in Oedipus Aegyptiacus, 1652. Though they both worked from within the Christian tradition, both were more interested in the syncretic approach. Although Kircher was more concerned with restraining Occultism within Catholic Theology. Their work led however directly into Occult and Hermetic Qabalah.

That could not be said of Reuchlin, Rosenroth and Kemper. Johann Reuchlin, (1455 - 1522), was a German humanist and a scholar of Greek and Hebrew. For much of his life, he was the centre of Greek and Hebrew teaching in Germany. Having met with Mirandola in Italy, he later studied Hebrew with a Jewish physician, Jakob ben Jehiel Loans, producing thereafter De Arte Cabbalistica in (1517).

The following century produced Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, (1631–1689), a Christian Hebraist who studied Kabbalah, in which he believed to find proofs of the doctrines of Christianity, as did Johann Kemper, whose tenure at Uppsala University lasted from 1697-1716. Kemper, formerly known as Moses ben Aaron of Cracow, was a convert from Judaism and Swedenborg's probable Hebrew tutor. During his time at Uppsala (1697-1716), he wrote his three-volume work on the Zohar entitled Matteh Mosche (The Staff of Moses), in which he tried to show that it contained the Christian doctrine of the trinity. This belief also drove him to make a literal translation of Matthew's Gospel into Hebrew and to write a Kabbalistic commentary on it.

The above text is a modified version of the current Wikipedia article.