The Christian Interpretation of the Cabala in the Renaissance

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1944. This is a study of types of Christian interpretation of the cabala and represents the first attempt at an adequate, balanced treatment of Christian Cabalism. The general theme of the book is that the use of Cabala by Christian thinkers was a fad of no lasting significance; that, no matter what type of interpretation was momentarily aided by Cabalistic speculation, this type of speculation rapidly proved a blind alley. That this proved to be so is unquestionably due to the fact that during the very period in which Pico della Mirandola and John Reuchlin and their followers were attempting to utilize Cabalistic thought as a basis for their deductive systems, Copernicus, Kepler and Bruno were building the foundations of scientific systems whose value in use has proved to be so much greater than that of the old systems.