On the Nature and Origin of the Doctrine of Emanation among the Kabbalists

A small decorative horizontal woodcut ornament featuring a central branch with leaves and small berries extending to the left and right.

...people, in whom one would initially believe so little could be found that would lead to such a thing?

Has there always existed among the Hebrews, alongside their public religion, a secret system to which the doctrine of emanation belonged—as the Kabbalists stubbornly maintain?

Or was this doctrine only adopted and transplanted into it during the later periods of a degenerated Hebraism: the religious and cultural system of the Hebrew people?

Where, how, and when did this happen?

To answer this question in the way I believe it must be answered, I will:

First, present the emanation system: the belief that the universe flows out of the Divine essence like light from a flame of the Kabbalists themselves, so that I may show in what sense an actual and genetic: referring here to a literal "birth" or genealogical descent of the universe from the divine source descent of all things from God is taught here. This is done so that the Kabbalists can just as well say: "God is everything!" as: "God is nothing of everything that is not God himself!" The author is pointing out a central paradox in Kabbalism: God is the source of all things (Pantheism), yet God remains fundamentally distinct from the created world (Transcendence).

Second, I will investigate how this system relates both to the fundamental teachings of the Biblical books (which were holy to the Hebrews at all times) and to the philosophies, light-systems, and secret teachings of those peoples among whom the Hebrews lived since the destruction of their first Temple The First Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, a pivotal moment that led to the Jewish diaspora and contact with Persian and Babylonian ideas., and among whom they—for the...