The Kabbalah

The Kabbalah, or, The Religious Philosophy of the Hebrews is a book by French-Jewish philosopher Adolphe Franck, concerning Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism. First published in 1843 it is a scholarly study of the origin and evolution of the Kabbalah that traces the origins of the philosophical concepts of the Kabbalah to the ancient Zoroastrians. Franck goes into fascinating detail about the doctrine of the Kabbalah, as expressed in the Sepher Yetzirah and the Zohar. He carefully compares the philosophy of the Kabbalah with Greek philosophy, the Alexandrians, Philo, and the Gnostics, and although he finds many similarities with the ancient Zoroastrian belief, he concludes that none of them can claim to be the source of the Kabbalah. However, he also concludes that the doctrines were intially founded during the Babylonian era when Zoroastrianism was very active.