Cabbala. The word (which is also written Cabala, Caballa, Qabbalah) means 'that which is received,' i.e. 'tradition,' and is from the Hebrew kabbalah, which again is from the verb kabal, 'to receive.' In itself, the word might be used for any Jewish doctrine which is not explicitly contained in the Hebrew Bible since the present form of the Biblical text; the moral and ritual precepts of the Talmud are all ascribed to a tradition which can be traced back step by step. But in its technical sense, the Cabbala signifies a secret system of theology, metaphysic, and magic prevalent among the Jews. The Cabbalists taught a pantheistic doctrine, which came to them from the later and degenerate philosophies of Greece—viz. those of the Neoplatonists and Neopythagoreans. But, being Jews, they shared the common Jewish belief that their Scriptures are the fountainhead of all knowledge, and accordingly they read their doctrines into the Bible in all kinds of artificial ways, especially by the mystic significance which they attached to numbers, and the advantage they took of the fact that each Hebrew letter also stands for a numeral. They held that their so-called science was both speculative and practical, because the knowledge of metaphysical laws was supposed to clothe the adept with supernatural power. Thus like the school of the Essenes, like the Alexandrian philosophy, like Christianity itself, the Cabbala sprang from weariness of the dead letter, from a reaction against the petrified Judaism of the Rabbis. It substituted an immanent God, a God who is in nature and one with it, for the strict monotheism of the orthodox Jews.
In the Talmudic treatise 'Chagiga' there is frequent mention of secret knowledge, and in particular of a cosmogony called the 'Work of Genesis,' and a theosophy called, in allusion to the opening chapter of Ezekiel, the 'Work of the Chariot.' We are told that this knowledge is at once very sacred and very perilous, but no details are given. The authoritative documents of cabbalistic doctrine are the 'Sepher Yetsirah,' or 'Book of Creation,' ascribed to Rabbi Akiba, who died 120 A.D., and the 'Sepher Hazzohar,' the 'Book of Brightness' (see Dan. xii. 3), ascribed to Sineon-ben-Jochai, a contemporary of Akiba's. The real dates are very difficult to fix. A book with the title Yetsirah is mentioned by the Gemara in the 5th or 6th century, and by Saadia in the 10th. Possibly the book intended may be substantially identical with that which now bears the name. Zohar, which refers to the Talmud, the Arab empire, &c., cannot be older than the 8th century, and is ascribed by some eminent critics to the 13th. 'Yetsirah' is written in the Neohebraic of the Mishna, Zohar in the Neo-aramaic of the Gemara.
The kernel of the cabbalistic teaching is that all emanates from God, and at every turn we are reminded of the fanciful pantheism of the Gnostics.
There is no creation in the common acceptance of the term, and on the other hand no eternal matter. All that we see is due to the self-development of the Deity. In himself he is the absolute without any attribute, since all attributes limit the being of whom they are predicated. God as the absolute being is also called Adam Kadmon, 'the first or ideal man' (see Ezek. i. 26; Dan. vii. 13). Next he becomes determined by ten attributes, 'wisdom and understanding,' 'mercy and judgment,' &c. These are conceived as male and female, and they are formed into three triplets or Trinities. They constitute 'the world of emanation,' and they are the 'channels' through which the world of pure spirits, the world of angels and heavenly bodies, and the lowest world, that in which we live, have come into being. Man's body represents in its different parts the realities of the upper worlds: his soul has pre-existed, realises its own nature on its descent to this earth, and after transmigration from body to body, returns to God. The sacred character of certain numbers—e.g. of three, of seven, of ten—regulates the mode in which these ideas, half mythological, half philosophical, wholly pantheistic, are arranged; and an interpretation of the Bible based likewise on the significance of numbers, and entirely removed from all rational exegesis, adjusted the Cabbala to the letter of the written word.
The chief cabbalistic writers flourished between the 13th and 16th centuries. Of these R. Moses ben Nachman (1195-1270), better known as Ramban, is the most eminent. More and more, the philosophic were obscured by the magical elements, and orthodox Rabbis justly objected that the worship of ten divine attributes as real beings was an abandonment of Jewish monotheism. Further, cabbalistic sects attached themselves to pretended Messiahs, such as Sabbatai Zevi, born at Smyrna in 1640. The followers of Jakob Frank in Germany (1713-98), and the sect of Chasidim—i.e. 'Pious'—in Poland, were also connected with the Zoharites or Cabbalists. On the other hand, the resemblance between certain features in the emanation doctrine and the Christian Trinity induced some Jews to turn Christian, and made Christians favourable to the Cabbala. Pico della Mirandola (Conclusiones Cabbalistiche, 1486) and the truly great Reuchlin (De arte Cabbalistica, 1517) were both eager Cabbalists. The chief cabbalistic writings have been done into Latin and expounded by Knorr (3 vols. Salzburg, 1677). The chief monographs on the subject are by Freystadt, Philosophia Cabbalistica (1832); Frank, La Kabbale (1843); Ginsburg, The Kabbala (1865). See TALMUD.