If God isn't Benevolent Doesn't that make God and the Devil?

[bananabrain]

yeah, i get that. the thing is, i do feel that kabbalah is at bottom a mystical way of understanding how the cosmos is constituted, so it must have application universally. however, that does not necessarily mean that it can be universally understood. i mean, le'havdil, particle physics also applies to everything, but that doesn't mean that every way of understanding it is correct. it reminds me sometimes of that howler of an advert by some over-priced face-cream vendor that it was "inspired by 25 years of genetic research"; a fancy phrase which sounds scientific, while at the same time not being remotely meaningful in any scientific sense.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[radarmark]

Yes, bb. The problem is that Kabbalah as such is much more than the texts Sefer Bahir, Sefer Raziel and Zohar. The medieval Christians who studied Ramban, ha-Kohen, de Leon and ARI knew that and were merely trying to understand the texts, not the system (that is the origin of “Christian Qabala”, a study of the concepts). In our own age, they were much akin to Scholem and not Ashlag (the former admitted as much).

Unfortunately in the late IXX and early XX century both Christian and liberal Judaism forgot that difference. So everyone up to Orlov really believes their work in in Kabbalah when (imho) it is merely influenced by some concepts underlying it and those only the ones of the classic texts listed above in their various (imho) bastardized translations.

If one is not a Hasid or a follower of Ashlag, it is contradictory to claim to be a Kabbalist … Christian Qablist, maybe. In this case Thomas’ often cited “one must be in the tradition” is valid. “Influenced by” or “studied academically” is really all the claims outside of the tradition are saying.

[fadded blue jeans]

whos God are you talking about ? since their are a lot of Jewish persons on the christianity site talking talmud stuff which is not of the Christian Triune God.

[radarmark]

Not all Christians believe in a Triune God. And the talmud is a good source for historically relevant information (that is why most for real Christian scholars read Hebrew).