Kabbalah - A Very Short Introduction by Joseph Dan

Author:Joseph Dan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

K A B B A L A H

7 The Kabbalah Denudata was an extensive anthology of kabbalistic

works for the Christian world.

60

M O D E R N T I M E S I : T H E C H R I S T I A N K A B B A L A H

5

Modern Times I:

The Christian Kabbalah

The kabbalah was transformed from a uniquely Jewish reli-

gious tradition into a European concept, integrated with Chris-

tian theology, philosophy, science, and magic, at the end of the

fifteenth century. From that time to the present it has contin-

ued its dual existence as a Jewish phenomenon on the one hand

and as a component of European culture on the other hand.

The failure to distinguish between the two different—actually,

radically different—meanings of the kabbalah in the intrinsic

Jewish context and in the European-Christian context is a key

reason for the confusion surrounding the term and concept of

the kabbalah today. Readers are disappointed when they do

not find the characteristics of the Jewish kabbalah in the writ-

ings of Christian kabbalists, and vice versa. The confusion is

increased by the fact that there is no unanimity in the usage

of the term either within Judaism or outside of it, so that vari-

ous, different and conflicting conceptions of what the kabbalah

is prevail in both cultures. The following paragraphs are not

intended to explain what the kabbalah—or even the Chris-

tian kabbalah—“really” is. They constitute an attempt to

present the main outlines of the development of the different

meanings and attitudes that contributed to the multiple faces

of the kabbalah in European (and, later, American) Christian

culture.

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K A B B A L A H

The development of the Christian kabbalah began in the

school of Marsilio Ficino in Florence, in the second half of the

fifteenth century. It was the peak of the Italian Renaissance,

when Florence was governed by the Medici family, who sup-

ported and encouraged philosophy, science, and art. Florence

was a gathering place for many of the greatest minds of Eu-

rope, among them refugees from Constantinople, which was

conquered by the Turks in 1453. Ficino is best known for his

translations of Plato’s writings from Greek to Latin, but of much

importance was his translation to Latin of the corpus of eso-

teric, mysterious old treatises known as the Hermetica. These

works, probably originating from Egypt in late antiquity, are

attributed to a mysterious ancient philosopher, Hermes

Trismegestus (The Thrice-Great Hermes), and they deal with

magic, astrology, and esoteric theology. Ficino and his follow-

ers found in these and other works a new source for innovative

speculations, which centered around the concept of magic as

an ancient scientific doctrine, the source of all religious and

natural truth.

A great thinker who emerged from this school was Count

Giovani Pico dela Mirandola, a young scholar and theologian,

who died at age thirty-three in 1496.Pico took a keen interest

in the Hebrew language, and had Jewish scholars as friends and

teachers. He began to study the kabbalah both in Hebrew and

in translations to Latin made for him by a Jewish convert to

Christianity, Flavius Mithredates. His best-known work, the

“Nine Hundred Theses,” included numerous theses that were

based on the kabbalah, and he famously proclaimed that

Christianity’s truth is best demonstrated by the disciplines of

magic and kabbalah.

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