The Essential Works of Kabbalah. Bernhard Pick

The Essential Works of Kabbalah - Bernhard Pick


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rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_99da18dc-9094-5ffa-a39b-3b84501f143e">11 For a strange interpretation of scripture in modern times, the reader is referred to Canon Wordsworth's Commentary on Genesis and Exodus, London, 1864, p. 52.

      CHAPTER VI.

      THE CABALA IN RELATION TO JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY.

       Table of Contents

      Judaism.—It must be acknowledged that the Cabala intended to oppose philosophy and to intensify religion. But by introducing heathenish ideas it grafted on Judaism a conception of the world which was foreign to it and produced the most pernicious results. In place of the monotheistic biblical idea of God, according to which God is the creator, preserver and ruler of the world, the confused, pantheistically colored heathenish doctrine of emanation was substituted. The belief in the unity of God was replaced by the decade of the ten Sephiroth which were considered as divine substances. By no longer addressing prayers directly to god, but to the Sephiroth, a real Sephiroth-cult originated. The legal discussions of the Talmud were of no account; the Cabalists despised the Talmud, yea, they considered it as a canker of Judaism, which must be cut out if Judaism were to recover. According to the Zohar, I, 27b; III, 275a; 279fr, the Talmud is only a bondmaid, but the Cabala a controlling mistress.

      And as the Cabalists treated the Talmud, they likewise treated philosophy, which defined religious ideas and vindicated religious precepts before the forum of reason. Most Cabalists opposed philosophy. She was the Hagar that must be driven from the house of Abraham, whereas the Cabala was the Sarah, the real mistress. At the time of the Messiah the mistress will rule over the bondmaid.

      But the study of the Bible was also neglected, Scripture was no longer studied for its own sake, but for the sake of finding the so-called higher sense by means of mystical hermeneutical rules.


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