The Kabbalah: The Religious Philosophy of the Hebrews
Adolphe Franck
9781465577665
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
None of the gnostic systems has so often been compelled, under the hands of the critics, to change its birthplace as the so-called Kabbalah; no monument of Oriental Philosophy has called forth such conflicting hypotheses as to the time and place of its composition, as the universal code of the Kabbalists, the Zohar; finally, no writer of the history of philosophy has until now undertaken to translate the picturesque, metaphorical language of Jewish gnosis into the reasoning mode of expression of abstract thinking. I shall leave out of consideration the great array of Jewish and Christian disciples of the Kabbalistic system; it is too strongly dominated by the essential mysticism that prevails in all parts of the Kabbalistic system, to be able to reach the necessary sobermindedness. The opinion of a Pico de la Mirandola, of a Reuchlin, has as much critical value as that of an ordinar oharist or of a Hassid; the presumptive higher illumination does not permit the intellect to come to its senses. Those critics who stand outside the sanctum of the Kabbalah have, indeed, brought to light wonderful conjectures bearing on the age and the origin of the same. Some (Buddeus, Kleuker, Osiander) set the Kabbalah in the age of the patriarchs, and let it march, side by side with the Mosaic teachings, on the road of oral tradition as an esoteric teaching, a Secret Doctrine. The Talmudic tradition (תורת שבעל פה) claims no less, indeed, for itself; it is maintained that this, too, is an oral part of the divine revelation descended from Moses (compare Maimonides, Introduction into the Mishnah). Yet,this tradition which bears only on the material, sensual side of the Law, could never have paved its way to the people, were it not sanctioned by descent and religious national custom. Others, (Basnage, Brucker) believed they had found the cradle of the Kabbalah in Egypt. This opinion is, as it were, a continuation of the one which holds that the Mosaic Law and Mosaic Doctrine is a property pilfered from the Egyptian priesthood. Richard Simon and Berger let the founders of the Jewish gnosis, in company with the Greek creators of the doctrine of Numbers and Ideas, be schooled by the Chaldeans; Wachter, Joachim Lang and Wolf (author of Bibliotheca Hebraea) looked for the source of the Kabbalah in Pagan philosophy. Yet, these opinions lack a definite historic foundation, and have justly been rejected by the author of this work. In company with another author of a French work (Matter, "Histoire Critique du Gnosticisme") Franck defends the view that the Kabbalistic science evolved from the theology of the Parsees. Against this opinion Gieseler (in the review of Matter's work, theologic studies and criticisms, year 1830, I, 381-383) made some objections referred to also by Baur. "Although," says Gieseler, "we fully recognize the proven influence of Parseeism upon Judaism, yet we would not explain it by any syncretic inclination of the latter, in so far as syncretism refers to an external union of materials innerly strange to one another. Never, indeed, were the Israelite people further away from mixing strange opinions with their religious belief, nor of recognizing any relationship to any other religion, like the Persian for instance, as just since the exile. The influence of the Persian system upon the Jews consisted in that it induced them to a development of analogous seeds resting in their doctrine by representing itself to them as a complete system in some points; at which the Persian doctrine development, unknown to them, surely helped to influence as a pattern. It is always the more developed doctrinal system which acts upon the less developed one, even when the latter places itself to the former in the most decided contrast. . . . We first take side with Massuet against Buddeus by denying the pre-Christian origin of the Kabbalistic philosophy.
