Qabbalah
QABBALAH. The term Qabbalah is derived from the Hebrew root qbl, which means "to receive"; in early medieval texts, qabbalah commonly signified "reception," namely a received tradition, mainly concerning halakhic matters. Since the early thirteenth century it has become the main term for Jewish mystical traditions, which deal almost exclusively with (1) a theosophical understanding of God combined with a symbolic view of reality and the theurgical conception of religious life, and (2) the way to attain a mystical experience of God through the invocation of divine names. These two traditions had much earlier roots, but the term Qabbalah refers in general to Jewish mysticism from the twelfth century onward. The following presentation will discuss the history of Qabbalah and its phenomenological aspects.
Historical Survey
The first written evidence of the existence of theosophical and theurgical thought in Judaism comes from Provence, in southern France, in the second half of the twelfth century. A series of well-known halakhic authorities, beginning with Avraham ben David of Posquières and Yaʿaqov the Nazirite and later including Moses Nahmanides and his principal student, Shelomoh ben Avraham Adret, were full-fledged qabbalists, though their literary output in Qabbalah was minimal compared to their voluminous halakhic writings.
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