Simeon ben Setach and others.1 It is, to say the least of it, strange that it should have been perpetually lost and revealed until about the time when it was first forged.

It is tolerably clear that the abstruse and mysterious doctrines of the Cabbala could not have been developed from the simple principles of the Mosaic Law, and must have been derived from an admixture of Greek, Egyptian, and Oriental fancies. It is indeed true that many have imagined that in the Cabbala they have discerned a near resemblance to the doctrines of Christianity, and have therefore concluded that the fundamental principles of this mystical system were derived from Divine revelation. But this is traceable to a prejudice beginning with the Jews and continued by the Christian Fathers, that all Pagan wisdom had an Hebrew origin; a notion which probably took its rise in Egypt, where, as we have seen, Pagan tenets first crept in among the Jews. When they first embraced. these tenets, neither national vanity nor their reverence for the law of Moses would permit their being under any obligation to the heathen, and they were therefore forced to derive them from a fictitious account of their own sacred writings, and supposed that from them all other nations had derived their learning. Philo, Josephus, and other learned Jews, to flatter their own and their nation's vanity, industriously propagated this opinion, and the more learned Christian Fathers adopted it without reflection, on the supposition that if they could trace back the most valuable doctrines of heathenism to a Jewish origin, they could not fail to recommend the Jewish and Christian religions to Gentile philosophers, and unfortunately many in modern times, on the strength of these authorities, have been inclined to give credence to the idle tale of the Divine origin of the Cabbala.

The real truth, as far as can be ascertained, is briefly as follows: The Jews, like other Oriental, and indeed many Western, nations, had from the most remote period their secret doctrines and mysteries. It was only Christianity which laid open the whole scheme of salvation to the meanest, and therein showed more conclusively than by any other possible proof its Divine origin. It had no strange mysteries that it feared to disclose to the eye of the world, and, secure in its immeasurable majesty, it could not be derogatory to stoop to the meanest of creation. When the sects of the Essenes and Therapeuta were formed, foreign tenets and institutions were borrowed from the Egyptians and the Greeks, and, in the form of allegorical interpretations of the law, were admitted into the Jewish mysteries. These innovations were derived from the Alexandrian schools where the Platonic and Pythagorean doctrines had already been much altered from being mixed with Orientalism. The Jewish mysteries thus enlarged by the addition of heathen dogmas, were conveyed from Egypt to Palestine, when the Pharisees, who had been driven into Egypt under Hyrcanus, returned to their own country. From this time the Cabbalistic mysteries continued to be taught in the Jewish schools, till at length they were adulterated by Peripatetic doctrines and other tenets which sprang up in the Middle Ages, and were particularly corrupted by the prevalence of the Aristotelian philosophy.2 The Cabbala itself may be divided into three portions, the Theoretical, which treats of the highest order of metaphysics, that relating to the Divinity and the relations of the Divinity to man; the Enigmatical, consisting of certain symbolical transpositions of the words or letters of the Scriptures, fit only for the amusement of children;

1 Buxtorf, Bib. Rabb., p. 184; Reuchlin de Arte Cabb., 1. i., p. 622; Wolf, Bib. Heb., pt. i., p. 112.

2 Knorr, Cabb. Denud., t. ii., p. 389; Wachter, Elucid. Cabb., c. ii., p. 19.