seekinghokmah

Thanks Freedom07 for the interesting link.

With all due respect to CARM…this type of “scholarship” amongst the Christian community is precisely why I brought up the subject. A brief response to the CARM assessment of “Kabballah” as they (or the author of that particular article) defines it:

-The scope of the articles assessment is incredibly broad, lumping New Age nuts together with Orthodox Jews as though they are all from the same camp…that non-biblical kabbalah cult (tongue firmly in cheek).

-He quotes extensively (almost exclusively) fom David Cooper…who is more New Age than Jewish and in no way representative of kosher kabbalah as found in Orthodox Judaism. You cannot take Kabbalah out of traditional Judaism and still call it Kabbalah any more than you can cite Mormonism as representative of main stream Christianity.

-He lists the term kavanah (I suspect right out of Coopers subject headings) as meaning “awareness of implications of things we do”…the author of the article studied Hebrew in seminary and should have recalled that it means “intention”…in other words we should examine our inner motivations in all that we do and act-pray ect. with corrected “intentions” and pure motivation.

-He does almost no original research and simply quotes non-kosher sources as representative of kabbalah as a whole or quotes Kabbalistic texts with no context are interpretation…then labels it as not Christian and not Biblical.

-He makes numerous charges that Kabbalah is unbiblical or that its teachings contradict scripture…but gives no specific examples (other than a few quotes from New Agers or references with no context or interpretation)

Example: He mentions (correctly) that there are four levels of interpretation, but then states that this gives rise to all manner of contradictions. This is a common error made by those not familiar with Judaism. Yes there are four levels of interpretation that can be applied to any give passage of scripture…but the KEY is that they MUST NOT give rise to contradictions with any of the other levels…all must agree or you are clearly off track!

-the article constantly states that Kabbalah is entirely subjective and therefore un-testable. This is absolutely untrue. Kabbalah by its nature is engaged in examining things that typically transcend our ability to express in human language (take Ezekiel’s vision for example)…therefore in order to understand what they are actually talking about you have to learn their terms and what they mean by certain phrases and concepts (called the language of the branches by some) if you are to have any hope of accurately assessing the teachings. Obviously the only way to do this is to go to actual kabbalists and their sources…which this article never does. Genuine kabbalah is very scientific and consistently systematic once you begin to understand it…but this can take years. I have been studying ABOUT kabbalah for over 16 years…and I can now unequivocally say I know squat ;-) But I can definitely spot the counterfeits in most cases.

Note that the nature of kabbalah is rooted in altruism and absolute humility…so if someone tells you they are a kabbalist that is probably the surest way to know that they AREN’T one. At the least you should be very suspicious. None of the “genuine” kabbalists I am aware of ever claimed to be kabbalists or (heaven forbid) actually advertised it or sought students from the general population. They certainly never sold kabbalah water LOL.

-the author lists karma as a kabbalistic teaching…not a chance, that is eastern mysticism not Judaism and it may be a pet concept in David Coopers teachings but not Judaism.

-the article includes a “list of what kabbalah teaches”…unfortunately this list is just the authors cherry picking from his incredibly brief and subjective look into the subject and is hardly representative of what kabbalah is really about.

-the worst part is his online “dialogue with a kabbalist”, this one really makes me cringe. He goes online…grabs the first guy claiming to be a kabbalist (note my comment above) and takes him as a valid representative of genuine kabbalah!!!! The guy tells him throughout the conversation that his primary influences came from the Hermetic Dawn…a western occult system in now way associated with actually Jewish Mysticism…and the guy’s not even Jewish. The fact that he says he has started leaning towards genuine Jewish Kabbalah literature doesn’t make him a kabbalist, or suggest that he would interpret said literature correctly. Good grief! (sorry…but that part just burns me)

I’m all for Christian apologetics…but CARM deserves a firm slap on the wrist for that horrible example of pseudo scholarship…regardless of whether anyone thinks kabballah should be studied at all by Christians…we should at least do our homework accurately and not grossly misrepresent the subjects we address.

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Good questions, when answered, innevitably lead to better ones. The light is in the search, and the search itself is the destination.