The Christian Reception of the Zohar from Late Renaissance to mid-19th Century
Final Report Abstract
The impact of the book of the Zohar on Western Christian culture extended for centuries, namely those that shaped modern European history, from the Italian Renaissance to the age of German idealism. Over this long span of time, several Christian philosophers, orientalists, philologists and theologians struggled to translate the hybrid language of the Zohar, and to unravel the meaning of the symbolical speculations entailed in it. Some authors praised it as a treasure of ancient and sacred wisdom, others debunked it as a literary forgery devised during the Middle Ages. The goal of this research was to give the first thorough account of this little-studied chapter of the history of the relationship between Christian and Jewish culture. We worked on printed books and on texts still preserved only in manuscripts. Most of our sources had not been translated so far. The analysis of this untapped sources helped to shed light on some of the most surprising and fascinating attempts at combining the knowledge of the Western tradition with a new symbolic universe. We were able to detect three main stages of the Christian reception of the Zohar. The first one can be traced back to the Humanist approach towards the Kabbalistic mysteries. It extends from 1486 (Pico’s Conclusiones) to the mid-17th century (Morin’s Exercitationes and Ciantes’ De sanctissima trinitate). Here the Zohar emerges as a treasure of concealed Christian truths, to be rescued from Jewish misuse and misunderstanding. While authors such as Pico, Reuchlin, and Postel expounded the Zohar, or some fragments of it, with clear Neoplatonic and mostly non-Jewish overtones, other authors such as Cicogna and Ciantes were at least in part influenced by Moses Cordovero’s pan-Zoharic understanding of the Kabbalah. What is most remarkable, though, is that the attitude of all these authors toward the Jewish mystical lore was deeply affected by their humanist and Catholic background. The second stage began with the project of Zoharic translations and commentaries that was developed during the second half of the 17th century in Sulzbach by Knorr von Rosenroth. Rosenroth’s works had a deep influence on the European reception of the Zohar over the following two centuries. This second stage was characterized by a less philosophical approach to Zoharic doctrines, and by a more devotional attitude, in tune with the Protestant background of the main authors of this new chapter of the history of Christian Kabbalah. Another feature of this stage is the combined influence of Lurianic Kabbalah and Sabbateanism, which stands out not only in Rosenroth’s works, but also in authors such as Johan Kemper, Andreas Norrelius and Christian Sommer. The third stage is characterized by the interpretation of the Zoharic mysteries according to the philosophical doctrines embraced by German idealists. For authors such as Schelling and Molitor, the Zohar was not the branch of the evergreen tree of wisdom, nor the symbolic manifestation of the process through which the grace of God reaches the soul of Christian devotees, but rather a key to understanding the overall theory of religious history. By transcribing and translating into English for the first time the most relevant texts belonging to these three stages of the Zoharic reception among Christians, and by providing thorough commentaries on them, we offer the first comprehensive account of a fascinating yet so far neglected chapter of European cultural history.
Publications
- Pico della Mirandola: Mito, Magia, Qabbalah, Einaudi, Torino 2014, pp. CVI-454
G. Busi, R. Ebgi
- Schelling a Samotracia: Il sonno della filologia produce dèi, in E. Severino, V. Vitiello (eds.) “Inquieto pensare. Scritti in onore di Massimo Cacciari”, Morcelliana, Brescia 2015, pp. 309-33
G. Busi, R. Ebgi
- Vincenzo Cicogna: A Forgotten Christian Kabbalist, «Materia Giudaica», 23 (2018), pp. 391-405
R. Ebgi
- Kabbalah and Philosophy: The Conclusiones of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, in G. Busi, S. Greco (eds.) “The Renaissance Speaks Hebrew”, Silvana Editoriale, Milano 2019, pp. 196-205
R. Ebgi
- The Renaissance Speaks Hebrew, Silvana Editoriale, Milan 2019
G. Busi, S. Greco
