Medieval Kabbalah and the Transmission of Jewish Mysticism

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Kabbalah is the primary vehicle for the Hebrew sod (or secret wisdom) as written. Representing pre-medieval esoteric traditions, the SeferYetzirah (Book of Formation or Book of Creation) is one of the earliest extant texts in Jewish esotericism and a foundational influence on later Kabbalah. This short, cryptic text describes the universe’s emanative phases through the 32 paths of wisdom, combining the 22 Hebrew letters¹ plus the 10 sefirot². This emphasizes a linguistic cosmology with letters as building blocks of reality, combined for meditative or magical purposes (e.g., Talmudic stories of sages creating a calf or golem through its study). It bridges pre-Kabbalistic Jewish mysticism (e.g., Hekhalot or Merkavah traditions post-70 CE) and medieval Kabbalah, providing key terminology like sefirot and the power of Hebrew letters.

Early medieval kabbalists (e.g., Isaac the Blind, Nachmanides) produced commentary on it, adapting its ideas into theosophic systems. The Sefer ha-Bahir, which can be dated c. 1170-1180 CE (or late 12th century) builds directly on it, introducing more explicit emanation theology, leading to the developed sefirot system in 13th-century texts like the Zohar.

This speculative-theosophical Kabbalah crystallized in 12th–13th-century medieval Europe with that text called Sefer ha-Behir. The Sefer ha-Behir was the first book to present a full mystic theology using the term “sefirot.” This spread from Provençal and Girona Kabbalistic circles in Southern France and Catalonia (e.g. Rabbi Isaac the Blind, Rabbi Azriel, Rabbi Jacob ben Sheshet, Nachmanides), then to Castile (Spain) to Italy and then Safed (or Tzfat) in northern Israel. Theosophy and Rabbinical tradition insist that there is a such thing as the “unwritten” Kabbalah through oral initiatic tradition. H.P. Blavatsky insisted that the real Kabbalah has its roots in Chaldea and Egypt, and atleast two fragments of proof of the Chaldean source of the Kabbalah was known in her time. Many initiated occultists were Jewish Kabbalaists scattered throughout Europe. In the 17th century, the Christian Hebraist Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636–1689) published the Kabbala Denudata (“Kabbalah Unveiled”) in two volumes³. Knorr’s Christological approach to Kabbalah presented a period of reinterpretation of Kabbalah outside of Jewish circles.

According to modern Biblical scholarship from William G. Dever, Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Mark S. Smith, and others, early Israelite religion (c. 1200–600 BCE) was predominantly polytheistic or monolatrous Yahwism, and rooted in Canaanite traditions where Yahweh, likely originating from southern regions like Midian or Edom merged with attributes of El (the high god). Yahweh was often worshipped alongside his consort Asherah. Strict monotheism emerged gradually, particularly during or after the Babylonian Exile in 6th century BCE, through priestly reforms that prioritized Yahweh alone. There is no historical or archaeological evidence for a transmission of esoteric Mysteries (Sod) through Noah into Phoenician or Hebrew systems, or organized esoteric traditions, including apocalyptic revelations and mystical interpretations, because these appear later in Second Temple Judaism (c. 200 BCE–100 CE) influenced by Hellenistic and Persian ideas.

The Kabbalah’s core (e.g., sefirot as emanations not powers) draws from Neoplatonism and Gnosticism. Gershom Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941) dates Merkabah mysticism to post-70 CE, with Zohar (thirteenth-century) pseudepigraphically claiming antiquity to mask medieval innovations. Kabbalah’s later syncretism with other philosophical elements involve the introduction of Platonic emanations and Zoroastrian philosophy. Alexander Altmann in his 1936 essay on Jewish mysticism argued, that Jewish esotericism borrowed mystery secrecy from Hellenistic cults, not the reverse. Scholem, a 20th-century founder of academic Kabbalah study, refuted primordial claims, and carefully explained that Kabbalah in its classic form is a medieval creation. It is carefully recognized, that it draws from older Jewish mystical motifs and magical-esoteric practices from late antiquity through the Middle Ages. Kabbalah in this academic understanding is established in twelfth-century southwestern Europe, adapting apocalyptic literature and concepts of gnosis, but not originating them.

There are however pre-Medieval esoteric-magic traditions that fed into or influenced Kabbalah, drawing from oral and initiatory roots, that both Theosophical and Rabbinical tradition defend as pre-dating the 13th century. This contrasts sharply from scholarship, which views traditional Kabbalah as a medieval Jewish synthesis drawing from Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, and late antiquity Jewish motifs like the Sefer Yetzirah, 3rd–6th CE, without evidence of direct primordial Indian or Egyptian transmission. It is simply because it has not been researched in academic circles, or published in such format, despite the fact the comparisons exist.

There is a substantive case to be brought that argues for the Kabbalah’s pre-medieval oral and esoteric continuity across cultures against limiting its origin in speculative Kabbalah between the 12th–13th-century Europe.

The mystery traditions of the Jews were, despite any protestation, identical with those of India and the Greeks, which the Greek philosophers themselves explain, were influenced from Egypt. There does exist a trans-national secret sod uniting Jewish, Indian, Greek and Egyptian mysteries on a subtler level than clever academic titles can account for, which was transmitted in antiquity despite later exoteric and paradoxical constructions and divergences like monotheism, though this development is not simply linear.

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FOOTNOTES

1. Categorized as three “mother” letters, seven “double” letters, and twelve “simple” letters. ↩︎
2. Here meaning “numbers” or primordial enumerations, not the fully developed emanations of later Kabbalah. ↩︎
3. The first volume was published in 1677–1678 (Sulzbach), and the second in 1684 (Frankfurt). Knorr, a Christian Kabbalist was influenced by figures like Francis Mercury van Helmont and Henry More, and compiled it in Latin to reveal Jewish Kabbalah to Christian scholars with translations and commentaries on important Kabbalistic texts and teachings, interpreting it Christologically. This is demonstrating in Knorr equating Adam Kadmon with Jesus and the highest sefirot with the Trinity. The content of the translations and commentaries were comprised of portions of the Zohar (e.g., Idra Rabba, Idra Zuta, Sifra di-Tzeniuta or Book of Concealment); Lurianic writings from Isaac Luria’s school through Hayyim Vital; works by Joseph Gikatilla, Moses Cordovero, Abraham Cohen de Herrera, and others. It also touched on aspects from earlier texts like the Sefer Yetzirah through its broader exposition. ↩︎