1677–1684. Whether the learned Knorr Baron von Rosenroth knew of the extravagances of Sabbatai Zevi or not is difficult to say. At all events this accomplished Christian scholar believed that Simon b. Jochai was the author of the Sohar, that he wrote it under divine inspiration, and that it is most essential to the elucidation of the doctrines of Christianity. With this conviction he determined to master the difficulties connected with the Kabbalistic writings, in order to render the principal works of this esoteric doctrine accessible to his Christian brethren. For, although Lully, Mirandola, Reuchlin and Kircher had already done much to acquaint the Christian world with the secrets of the Kabbalah, none of these scholars had given translations of any portions of the Sohar.
Knorr Baron von Rosenroth, therefore put himself under the tuition of R. Meier Stern, a learned Jew, and with his assistance was enabled to publish the celebrated work entitled the Unveiled Kabbalah (Kabbala Denudata), in two large volumes, the first of which was printed at Sulzbach, 1677–78, and the second at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, 1684, giving a Latin translation of the Introduction to and the following portion of the Sohar—the Book of Mysteries (ספר דצניעותא); the Great Assembly (אדרא רבא); the Small Assembly (אדרא זוטא); Joseph Gikatilla’s Gate of Light (שער אורה); the Doctrine of Metempsychosis (הגלגולים), and the Tree of Life (עץ חיים), of Chajim Vital; the Garden of Pomegranates (פרדס רימונים), of Moses Cordovero; the House of the Lord (בית אלהים), and the Gate of Heaven (שער השמים), of [[223]]Abraham Herera; the Valley of the King (עמק המלך), of Naphtah b. Jacob; the Vision of the Priest (מראה כהן), of Issachar Beer b. Naphtali Cohen, &c., &c., with elaborate annotations, glossaries and indices. The only drawback to this gigantic work is that it is without any system, and that it mixes up in one all the earlier developments of the Kabbalah with the later productions. Still the criticism passed upon it by Buddeus, that it is a “confused and obscure work, in which the necessary and the unnecessary, the useful and the useless are mixed up and thrown together as it were into one chaos,”[39] is rather too severe; and it must be remembered that if the Kabbala Denudata does not exhibit a regular system of this esoteric doctrine, it furnishes much material for it. Baron von Rosenroth has also collected all the passages of the New Testament which contain similar doctrines to those propounded by the Kabbalah.
1758–1763. Amongst the Jews, however, the pretensions and consequences of the Kabbalistic Pseudo-Messiah, Sabbatai Zevi, and his followers, produced a new era in the criticism of the Sohar. Even such a scholar and thorough Kabbalist as Jacob b. Zevi of Emden, or Jabez (יעב״ץ), as he is called from the acrostic of his name (יעקב בן צבי), maintains in his work, which he wrote in 1758–1763, and which he entitled The Wrapper of Books, that with the exception of the kernel of the Sohar all the rest is of a late origin.[40] He shows that (1) The Sohar misquotes passages of Scripture, misunderstands the Talmud, and contains some rituals which were ordained by later Rabbinic authorities (פוסקים). (2) Mentions the crusades against the Mohammedans. (3) Uses [[224]]the philosophical terminology of Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew Translation of Maimonides’ More Nebuchim, and borrows the figure of Jehudah Ha-Levi’s Khosari, that “Israel is the heart in the organism of the human race, and therefore feels its sufferings more acutely” (Khosari, ii, 36, with Sohar, iii, 221 b, 161 a); and (4) Knows the Portuguese and North Spanish expression Esnoga.
1767. Whilst the Jews were thus shaken in their opinion about the antiquity of the Sohar, learned Christians both on the Continent and in England maintained that Simon b. Jochai was the author of the Bible of the Kabbalah, and quoted its sentiments in corroboration of their peculiar views. Thus Dr. Gill, the famous Hebraist and commentator, in his work on the Antiquity of the Hebrew Language, adduces passages from the Sohar to shew that the Hebrew vowel points were known A.D. 120, at which time he tells us “lived Simon ben Jochai, a disciple of R. Akiba, author of the Zohar.”[41]
1830. Allen, in the account of the Kabbalah in his Modern Judaism, also premises the antiquity of the Sohar. Taking this pseudonym as the primary source of the primitive Kabbalah, Allen, like all his predecessors, mixes up the early mysticism and magic, as well as the later abuse of the Hagadic rules of interpretation, denominated Gematria, Notaricon, Ziruph, &c., which the Kabbalists afterwards appropriated, with the original doctrines of this theosophy.[42]
1843. Even the erudite Professor Franck, in his excellent work La Kabbale (Paris, 1843), makes no distinction between the Book Jetzira and the Sohar, but regards the esoteric doctrines of the latter as a development and continuation of the tenets propounded in the former. He moreover maintains [[225]]that the Sohar consists of ancient and modern fragments, that the ancient portions are the Book of Mysteries (ספרא דצניעותא), the Great Assembly or Idra Rabba (אדרא רבא), and the Small Assembly or Idra Suta (אדרא זוטא), and actually proceeds from the school of R. Simon b. Jochai, while several of the other parts belong to a subsequent period, but not later than the seventh century; that the fatherland of the Sohar is Palestine; that the fundamental principles of the Kabbalah, which were communicated by R. Simon b. Jochai to a small number of his disciples, were at first propagated orally; that they were then from the first to the seventh century gradually edited and enlarged through additions and commentaries, and that the whole of this compilation, completed in the seventh century, owing to its many attacks on the Asiatic religions, was kept secret till the thirteenth century, when it was brought to Europe. To fortify his opinions about the antiquity of the Kabbalah, Franck is obliged to palm the doctrine of the Sephiroth upon passages in the Talmud in a most unnatural manner. As this point, however has been discussed in the second part of this Essay, (vide supra, p. 183, etc.) there is no necessity for repeating the arguments here.[43] Still Franck’s valuable contribution to the elucidation of the Sohar will always be a welcome aid to the student of this difficult book.
1845. A new era in the study of the Kabbalah was created by the researches of M. H. Landauer, who died February 3rd, 1841, when scarcely thirty-three years of age. This learned Rabbi, whose premature death is an irreparable loss to literature, in spite of constitutional infirmities, which occasioned him permanent sufferings during the short period of his earthly career, devoted himself from his youth to the [[226]]study of Hebrew, the Mishna, the Talmud, and the rich stores of Jewish learning. He afterwards visited the universities of Munich and Tübingen, and in addition to his other researches in the department of Biblical criticism, determined to fathom the depths of the Kabbalah. It was this scholar who, after a careful study of this esoteric doctrine, for the first time distinguished between the ancient mysticism of the Gaonim period and the real Kabbalah, and shewed that “the former, as contained in the Alphabet of R. Akiba (אותיות בר׳ עקיבא), the Dimensions of the Deity (שיעור קומה), the Heavenly Mansions (היכלות), and even the Book of Jetzira (ספר יצירה) and similar documents, essentially differ from the later Kabbalah, inasmuch as it knows nothing about the so-called Sephiroth and about the speculations respecting the nature of the Deity, and that, according to the proper notions of the Kabbalah, its contents ought to be described as Hagada and not as Kabbalah.”[44] As to the Sohar, Landauer maintains that it was written by Abraham b. Samuel Abulafia towards the end of the second half of the thirteenth century. Landauer’s views on the Kabbalah and on the authorship of the Sohar, as Steinschneider rightly remarks, are all the more weighty and instructive because he originally started with opinions of an exactly opposite character. (Jewish Literature, p. 299.)
1849. D. H. Joel, Rabbi of Sheversenz, published in 1849 a very elaborate critique on Franck’s Religious Philosophy of the Sohar, which is an exceedingly good supplement to Franck’s work, though Joel’s treatise is of a negative character, and endeavours to demolish Franck’s theory without propounding another in its stead. Thus much, however, Joel positively states, that though the Sohar in its present form [[227]]could not have been written by R. Simon b. Jochai, and though the author of it may not have lived before the thirteenth century, yet its fundamental doctrines to a great extent are not the invention of the author, but are derived from ancient Jewish sources, either documentary or oral.[45]
1851. After a lapse of seven years Jellinek fulfilled the promise which he made in the preface to his German translation of Franck’s la Kabbale ou la philosophie religieuse des Hébreux, by publishing an Essay on the authorship of the Sohar. And in 1851 this industrious scholar published a historico-critical Treatise, in which he proves, almost to demonstration, that Moses b. Shem Tob de Leon is the author of the Sohar.[46] Several of his arguments are given in the second part of this Essay (vide supra, p. 174, &c.), in our examination of the age and authorship of the Sohar.
1852. Whilst busily engaged in his researches on the authorship and composition of the Sohar, Jellinek was at the same time extending his labours to the history of the Kabbalah generally, the results of which he communicated in two parts (Leipzig, 1852), entitled Contributions to the History of the Kabbalah. The first of these parts embraces (1) the study and history of the Book Jetzira, (2) diverse topics connected with the Sohar, and (3) Kabbalistic doctrines and writings prior to the Sohar; whilst the second part (1) continues the investigation on the Kabbalistic doctrines and writings prior to the Sohar, as well as (2) discusses additional points connected with the Sohar, and (3) gives the original text to the history of the Kabbalah.[47]