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The understanding of the word Kabbalah undergoes a transformation of its meaning in medieval Judaism, in the books which are now primarily referred to as 'the Kabbalah': the Bahir, the Zohar, Etz Hayim etc. [29] In these books the word Kabbalah is used in manifold new senses.
Traditionalist Kabbalah and its development in Hasidic Judaism often took negative views of secular wisdoms. While some historical Kabbalists were learned in the canon of medieval Jewish philosophy, and occasionally mathematics and sciences, its relationship to medieval Jewish philosophy (built on Ancient Greek science and cosmology) was ambiguous.
Kabbalah means "received tradition", a term which was previously used in other Judaic contexts, but the Medieval Kabbalists adopted it as a term for their own doctrine in order to express the belief that they were not innovating, but were merely revealing the ancient hidden esoteric tradition of the Torah.
Religious adherents of Kabbalah and of Rationalism fought over their alternative claims to know the esoteric meaning. In Medieval Jewish Rationalism, the hidden truth within Scripture was human-centred Divine transcendence philosophical depths. In Kabbalistic mysticism, it was God's Persona-centred Divine immanence emanations.
Christian Kabbalists sought to transform Kabbalah into "a dogmatic weapon to turn back against the Jews to compel their conversion – starting with Ramon Llull", whom Harvey J. Hames called "the first Christian to acknowledge and appreciate kabbalah as a tool of conversion", though Llull was not a Kabbalist himself nor versed in Kabbalah. [4]
In Judaism, bible hermeneutics notably uses midrash, a Jewish method of interpreting the Hebrew Bible and the rules which structure the Jewish laws. [1] The early allegorizing trait in the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible figures prominently in the massive oeuvre of a prominent Hellenized Jew of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, whose allegorical reading of the Septuagint synthesized the ...
Medieval Kabbalah depicts a linear descending hierarchy of Ohr "Light", the ten sefirot or divine attributes emerging from concealment in the Ein Sof "Divine Infinity" to enact Creation, with the Four Worlds unfolding sequentially until physical creation. Lurianic Kabbalah, in contrast, describes dynamic processes of exile and redemption in the ...
In medieval Kabbalah, Chai is the lowest (closest to the physical plane) emanation of God. [2] According to 16th century Greek rabbi Shlomo Hacohen Soloniki, in his commentary on the Zohar, Chai as a symbol has its linkage in the Kabbalah texts to God's attribute of 'Ratzon', or motivation, will, muse. [3]