[2] Judah Loew ben Bezalel (16th century) expressed mystical ideas in the philosophical and scientific terminology of his day, appreciating the natural sciences if subservient to revelation.
Shneur Zalman of Liadi (18th century) expresses the dangers of impure secular wisdoms to common faith, yet also the concealed divinity within them for great sages like the philosophical Maimonides (12th century) and mystical Nachmanides (13th century), who can clarify their unity with Torah, disclosing new esoteric dimensions: "Occupying oneself with the sciences of the nations of the world is… included in the category of engaging in inconsequential matters insofar as the sin of neglecting the Torah is concerned… Moreover, the impurity of science is greater than the impurity of idle speech… Thus this is forbidden unless one employs [this knowledge] as a useful instrument, viz., as a means of [earning a livelihood] with which to be able to serve God… or unless he knows how to apply them in the service of God or to his better understanding of His Torah [i.e., in the manner of] Maimonides and Nachmanides…"Kabbalah (such as Nachmanides' commentary on the Torah) relates the 7 Days of Creation in Genesis chapter 1 to the 7 lower sephirot Divine attributes from Chesed to Malkuth.
The Zohar central text of Kabbalah (disseminated 13th-15th centuries CE) commenting on the verse "In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month, on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened" (Genesis 7:11), relates that in the 600th year (or 600 years-6th century, 500-600) of the 6th millennium, the floodgates of wisdom above and below will open up, to prepare the world for the messianic age: In the 6th century of the 6th millennium (ie in the years 5,500-5,600 in the Hebrew calendar corresponding to the years 1740-1840 CE) the gates of wisdom from above (Kabbalah) and the fountains of wisdom from below (science, technology, and secular thought) will be opened up and the world will make preparations to enter the 7th millennium just as one makes preparations on the 6th day of the week (Friday) when the sun is about to set (for the 7th day – the Jewish Shabbat).
Biological Evolution (developed since the 1860s from the foundations of Darwin and Mendel), while providing the basis of contemporary New Atheism, has been studied as potentially valid "fallen" aspects of Divinity by the traditional Kabbalist Yitzchak Ginsburgh.
By revealing the common Divine Essence within both spiritual and physical, Hasidic thought through its conceptual articulation in Chabad, is a foretaste of the messianic era.
[15] Traditionalist Kabbalah embraces a Mosaic authorship fundamentalist view of Torah revelation, and the revelatory early origins of Jewish mysticism such as the Zohar.
Nonetheless, contemporary traditional Kabbalists who understand secular thought can see a true Divine element animating what to them are mistaken critical views of Torah.
They see positive benefit in the development of historical Kabbalah and Judaism to contemporary concerns, while retaining the spirituality of Jewish tradition and observance.
They find fundamentalist and particularist notions problematic, welcoming non-fundamentalist views of Revelation in Judaism, and critical scholarship on the Biblical, Talmudic and mystical texts, including a late dating for the Zohar.