The Kabbalah
The Kabbalah Jewish Mysticism.
The basis of the Kabbalah is the Zohar. The Zohar first appeared in Spain in the 13th century. It is written in ancient Aramaic which was common around the second temple period.
Shimon bar Yochai, a rabbi of the 2nd century during the Roman persecution who, according to Jewish legend, hid in a cave for thirteen years studying the Torah, was inspired by the Prophet Elijah to write the Zohar.
The Kabbalah explores hidden wisdom in the Scriptures concerning the attributes of God, the Messiah, Creation, and the inherent powers of certain combinations of Hebrew letters and numbers, a system known as Gematria.
How did The Zohar develop?
The Zohar was kept secret until the 1270’s, when the first manuscripts began to circulate. Thereafter, more and more Kabbalistic works were written, and with the invention of printing they became more readily available.
After the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, many sages made their way to the land of Israel, where the city of Safed became major center of Kabbalistic learning.
The Deception of Kabbalah
The definition and history of Kabbalah
Kabbalah is:
– An area of ancient Jewish tradition, based on a mystical, esoteric interpretation of the Old Testament, as a means to define God, man, nature, and the universe.
It presents methods and rituals to attain spiritual realisation.
– Evidence of mystical theory and method in Judaism are found in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. The earliest existent book of Kabbalah is the Sefer Yetzirah.
– Kabbalah emerged in Southern France and Spain in the 12th-13th centuries, developing further in the 16th century, in Ottoman Palestine. It’s teachings from this period are found in the Zohar. They became the foundation of later Jewish mysticism.
– More recently, Kabbalah has become very attractive to New Age ‘seekers’. There is a level of Kabbalah in which the practice of magical arts is prevalent. In this, Kabbalists endeavour to alter both the Divine realm and the world (including people!).
The ‘power’ that this promises is seductive.
– In a most disturbing way, some Christians, eager to explore their Hebrew roots, have fallen into Kabbalistic teaching and have mistaken it for Biblical Hebrew thought.