proper noun
definition
A body of mystical Jewish teachings based on an esoteric reading of the Hebrew scriptures.
Examples of kabbala in a Sentence
In the later and developed form of the Kabbala, the origin of the world is represented as a gradually descending emanation of the lower out of the higher.
This Palestinian town was in the 16th century the headquarters of the Kabbala.
One of Leon's most effective works was his attack on the Kabbala ('Ari Nohem, first published in 1840), for in it he demonstrated that the "Bible of the Kabbalists" (the Zoltar) was a modern composition.
He was associated with the promoters of the New Learning within Judaism, and wrote on the history of the Kabbala.
Later Jewish and Christian speculation followed on the lines of the angelology of the earlier apocalypses; and angels play an important part in Gnostic systems and in the Jewish Midrashim and the Kabbala.
He was one of the evil demons of the seven planets, the Maskim of the ancient Akkadian religion, a conception transmitted through the Chaldeans, the Babylonians and the Jewish Kabbala to medieval and modern astrologers and magicians.
His eagerness to understand the relationship of man to the universe led him to the Kabbala, where these mysteries seemed to be explained, and from these unsubstantial materials he constructed, so far as it can be understood, his visionary philosophy.
He occupies an important position in the history of the acceptance by medieval Jews of the Kabbala (q.v.); for, though he made no fresh contributions to the philosophy of mysticism, the fact that this famous rabbi was himself a mystic induced a favourable attitude in many who would other- 'wise have rejected mysticism as Maimonides did.
A similar translation of Ecclesiastes, followed by treatises on the Karaites, on the Essenes and on the Kabbala, kept the author prominently before biblical students while he was preparing the first sections of his magnum opus, the critical study of the Massorah.
His fame is due to his authorship of the most influential Kabbalist work, the Zohar (see Kabbala), which was attributed to Simon b.