Christian Kabbalah
Neoplatonism had been prevalent in Christian Europe and had entered into Scholasticism since the translation of Greek and Hebrew texts in Spain in the 13th century.
[2] Alternatively, they "would make Kether the Creator (or the Spirit), Hokhmah the Father, and Binah – the supernal mother – Mary", which placed her "on a divine level with God, something the orthodox churches have always refused to do".
A few attempts have been made to revive it in recent decades, particularly regarding the alleged Neoplatonism of the first two chapters of the Gospel of John, but it has not entered into mainstream Christianity.
[4] Not interested in the possibilities of scholarly Jewish influence, which began later in the Renaissance, his reading of new interpretations of Kabbalah was solely for the sake of theological debate with religious Jews; i.e., proselytizing.
Heredia's Epistle of Secrets is "the first recognizable work of Christian Kabbalah", and was quoted by Pietro Galatino who influenced Athanasius Kircher.
[6] Among the first to promote aspects of Kabbalah beyond exclusively Jewish circles was Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494)[7] a student of Marsilio Ficino at his Florentine Academy.
[11] Francesco Giorgi, (1467–1540) was a Venetian Franciscan friar and "has been considered a central figure in sixteenth-century Christian Kabbalah both by his contemporaries and by modern scholars".
In 1598–1599, Walther undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to learn about the intricacies of the Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism from groups in Safed and elsewhere, including amongst the followers of Isaac Luria.
He wrote extensively on the subject in 1652, bringing further elements such as Orphism and Egyptian mythology to the mix in his work, Oedipus Aegyptiacus.
The Kabbala denudata contains Latin translations of, among others, sections of the Zohar, Pardes Rimmonim by Moses Cordovero, Sha’ar ha-Shamayim and Beit Elohim by Abraham Cohen de Herrera, Sefer ha-Gilgulim (a Lurianic tract attributed to Hayyim Vital), with commentaries by Knorr von Rosenroth and Henry More; some later editions include a summary of Christian Kabbalah (Adumbratio Kabbalæ Christianæ) by F. M. van Helmont.
