{"collection":"Judaism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/jud/rph/index.htm","path":"jud/rph/index.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/jud/rph/index.htm","text":"This is a scholarly study of the origin and evolution of the Kabbalah.\nOriginally published in French in 1843, with a second\nFrench edition in 1889, this book traces the origins\nof the philosophical concepts of the Kabbalah to the ancient\nZoroastrians.\nFranck goes into fascinating detail about the doctrine of the Kabbalah,\nas expressed in the Sepher Yetzirah and the Zohar.\nHe uses internal evidence to trace the origins of these texts\nmany centuries prior to their first\nknown publication in the thirteenth century C.E.\nFranck carefully compares the philosophy of the Kabbalah with\nGreek philosophy, the Alexandrians, Philo, and the Gnostics, and\nconcludes that, although there are similarities, none of them can claim\nto be the source of the Kabbalah.\nHowever, he does find many more similarities with the ancient\nZoroastrian beliefs.\nBy this process of elimination, he comes to the conclusion that\nthe doctrines of the Kabbalah had their origin during the\nBabylonian exile circa 500 B.C.E., which was also the\ntime when Zoroaster was active in the same geographical region.\nThis thesis is worth considering, and potentially adds more weight to the\nalready numerous contributions of\nZoroastrianism to world culture.\n--John Bruno Hare\nPRODUCTION NOTES:\nThis text has extensive quotes in Hebrew and Greek.\nViewing the Hebrew and Greek\ntext requires that your browser be set up correctly to view\nUnicode: for more information, please refer to\nthe Unicode instruction page.\nIn particular, please follow the instructions on that page\nbefore firing off an email to me that the file is defective: it isn't,\nif you can't see the Hebrew or Greek text,\nthe problem is your browser.","title":"The Kabbalah Index","type":"page"}