The Kabbalah

The Kabbalah, by Christian D. Ginsburg, describes the Kabbalah as a system of religious philosophy, or more properly theosophy, that has influenced the Jews for hundreds of years and captivated some of the greatest thinkers of Christendom in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Among the people it names are Raymond Lully, John Reuchlin, John Picus di Mirandola, Cornelius Henry Agrippa and John Baptist von Helmont.

The pages sampled also deal with the Sohar. One passage says the Sohar was originally called the Midrash, Let there be Light, that its name means Light or Splendour, and that it is also called the Midrash of R. Simon b. Jochai, who is its reputed author. Another describes the Sephiroth: a first Sephira that contains the other nine, with Wisdom proceeding from it as a masculine potency and Intelligence as a feminine one, called Father and Mother. A further passage reports that Jellinek published a treatise in 1851 arguing that Moses b. Shem Tob de Leon is the author of the Sohar.