The Influence of Platonism on Jewish Philosophy

The Development of The Kabbalah from Greek Thought

The subject I am presenting to you is one that is very important to me; it is an
issue that I feel must be addressed in a formal manner. I have touched on this subject in
the past but feel that I have not done it justice enough. The subject of this article is in
regards to the development of The Kabbalah a Jewish Mysticism/Philosophy from the
philosophical traditions of the Greeks, specifically Platonic philosophy. Why is there an
issue between these two traditions? There is an issue because I have seen a blatant
campaign of misinformation and distortion of philosophical and religious history by the
Kabbalists on the origins of Kabbalah.

This is not an attack on Kabbalah, I myself enjoy reading about Kabbalah, the
goal of this article however is to set the story straight with what I see as
misrepresentation and the bending of facts with claim of who influenced who.

According the Kabbalist, Kabbalah is very ancient with claims that it was around
since the beginning of time, but the first written record of it was with The Book of
Formation around 4,000 years ago. The main body of Kabbalah was written 2,000 years
ago in a work called The Book of Splendor (The Zohar).
1
Since Kabbalah is so ancient it
influenced other philosophies and religions around the world. This came up while I was
reading The Power of Kabbalah by Yehuda Berg published by Kabbalah Publishing (the
official publisher of the Kabbalah Centre) that claimed that Greek philosophers like Plato
studied Kabbalah and that Kabbalah influenced Greek Philosophy. When I read this
statement I smelled something fishy in the air. I am someone who is very interested in
philosophy and religion so it was time I did some investigating. In this article I will
present how it was really Greek philosophy (specifically Neo-Platonism) that impacted
the development of Kabbalah.

To understand Kabbalah we need to understand the history of Jewish Mysticism.
Kabbalah was not perfectly formed as it is presented today. It developed over time. We
can see this because of changes in religion throughout history. The thing is that Jewish
Mysticism has different groups or stages and what I think the Kabbalist is doing is
claiming everything that came before it to be Kabbalah after Kabbalah came on the
scene. Which is the wrong thing to do. Kabbalah arrived in Judaism at a certain point,
anything before that was not Kabbalah, even though the Kabbalist would clam it to be.

Firstly I want to point out the misleading dating of two documents The Book of
Formation and the Book of Splendor (Zohar). The Book of Formation was actually
composed sometime in the 2
nd
or 3
rd
century CE. The Zohar which is said to have been
formed some 2,000 years ago written by Shimon bar Yochai, a rabbi of the 2nd century

1
http://www.kabbalah.com/about/what-is-kabbalah
CE but was in fact produced in 13
th
century Spain by a fellowship of mystics associated
with Moses de Leon
2
. The word Kabbalah did not even exist until the Middle Ages.
However Kabbalistis reject this scholarship, stating that the Zohar must have come from
someone with a higher spiritual status like Shimon bar Yochai
3
. Which is lazy reasoning
and disregard of facts. According to the facts these two key books to Kabbalah were
created after the works of Greek philosophy.

The earliest texts from any Jewish Mysticism that we have a written record of
are called Merkabah mystics. Merkabah is chariot, which comes from the vision that the
prophet Ezekiel had about the Chariot of God. This is also known as Throne Mysticism
these mystics flourished in Palestine and Babylon in the first few centuries of the
Common Era. Again not predating Greek philosophy.

Jewish mysticism is something that develops in the first few centuries of the
Common Era when notably the Temple in Jerusalem is destroyed in 70 CE. It was during
this time that Jews became persecuted; they wanted to escape this world where they
suffered. Jewish mysticism was an immediate answer to help the Jews return to the
One. Throne Mysticism flourished alongside rabbinic academies until it was finally
incorporated into Kabbalah, during the 12
th
and 13
th
centuries
4
.

Kabbalah can be described as a Midrash (a way of interpreting biblical stories
that goes beyond simple distillation of religious, legal or moral teachings. Midrash
started after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, it was at this point that all focus
went from the Temple to the synagogue with the Rabbis start writing rabbinic
literature.
5
Again the time frame for this has us in the first century CE. So now we have
ourselves situated with Jewish Mysticism with time frames. Lets now head into the
Greek section.

Greek philosophy is very rich and has a long history, starting some point in the
6
th
centaury BCE. Our concerns are with the classical Greek philosophies of Plato and
Aristotle. The philosophy of Plato is called Platonism. At the core of Platonism is the
distinction between reality that can perceived but not intelligible and reality which is
intelligible but not perceivable. This is expressed in Platos theory of the forms (Ideas).
The Theory of the Forms states that the non-physical abstract forms or ideas and not
the material world of change is the true reality. Forms are like the blueprints for all
things in the material world. The world is constructed by way of the Forms. So there is a
Form of a horse, of a chair, a tree and so on. Above all the Forms is the Form of the

2
Unterman, Alan. The Kabbalistic Tradition: An Anthology of Jewish Mysticism. London: Penguin, 2008. Print.

3
Berg, Rav. Kabbalah for the Layman. N.p.: Research Centre of Kabbalah, 2012. Print.

4
Armstrong, Karen. "Chapter 7 - The God of the Mystics." A History of God: The 4,000 Year Quest of Judaism,
Christianity and Islam. N.p.: Ballantine, 1993. N. pag. Print.

5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbinical_literature
Good, which everything else that can be known derives its being. The Form of the Good
is the First Principle, which gives intelligibility to the whole world.

Sometime in the 3
rd
century AD Neo-Platonism took form with a man named
Plotinus as one of the founders. Neo-Platonism is seen as the perfection of Platonism in
a pure pagan form, with no outside non-pagan influence. Plotinus systemizes Platonic
and Aristotelian philosophies together. With Plotinus, The idea of The Form of the Good
becomes The One or The Good however it is not a Form. The One or the Good is
above being and essence, which makes it above the Forms. The One is above
understanding, definition, all structure and limitations. Our human minds can never
understand The One, for it is beyond our minds. Plotinus says The One is infinite and
simple. Simple being that it has no parts and infinite being no limitations.

We can see certain concepts of Platonism appearing inside the Kabbalah which
has its developments in Spain in the 12
th
and 13
th
century. Spain at this time was Muslim
controlled; The Muslims had carried over with them the Greek philosophies, preserving
them. But we can go back earlier in history to see the Greek/Jewish combination of
philosophy and religion with Philo of Alexandria (20 BCE 50 CE). Philo was a Hellenistic
Jewish (Neo-Platonist) who fused Greek philosophy with Judaism. Philo read the Bible as
allegorical, for it was through allegorical interpretation you would gain the true
knowledge. This is the case with the later development of Kabbalah that the symbolic
and not the literal meaning of the bible is where the real meaning is found.

Now that we see that Greek philosophy predates Jewish mysticism, where do we
find the influence in Kabbalah? We can see a strong influence of Neo-Platonism with the
Divine Attributes (Sefirot) and the Ein-Sof. Ein-Sof is the divine as infinite,
undifferentiated and unknowable. The Ein-Sof corresponds to if you remember, what
Plotinus calls The One or The Good. It is limitless, simple and infinite. You cannot define
it or understand it. The Sefirot are the attributes like Hokhmah (Wisdom) or Binah
(Thought). They are the attributions and activities, which reveal the divine. This
corresponds with the Neo-Platonic divine attributions like the Nous (Divine Mind), which
is lower than The One. Creation occurs with Ein-Sof emanating downward through each
Sefirot until it reaches the material world. This creation through successive emanations
is a clear neo-platonic idea from Plotinus in his work the Enneads.

The Tree of Life pictures as a diagram, is a Greek concept. It emerges from
geometry, which is a Greek mathematical discipline. Both Pythagoras and Plato used
geometry to teach their more abstract material. It is contrary to Orthodox Judaism
because it portrays images of God. This is blasphemous to Orthodox Jews.
6


There are other doctrines in Kabbalah that I have seen which are also taken from
Greek philosophy. I mentioned earlier the creation of Midrash by the Rabbis. Midrash is

6
http://www.crcsite.org/jewishgreek.htm
an interpretation of the biblical stories. There are instances where we can see Platonic
ideas popping into Midrash. Remember Platos Forms are like the blueprints for
creation. Everything has a Form from which it is created. This notion is borrowed in
Midrash Genesis Rabbah 1:1 which tells the parable of how an architect does not build a
building without a blueprint, so did God use the Torah has His blueprint for the World
7
.
The Torah has become the Jewish version of the Theory of the Forms.

Regarding the Soul In Kabbalah there are three parts of the soul Nefesh(lower
self/animal nature), Ruach (middle soul, spirit, contains morals) and Neshamah (super-
soul, holds intellect). This notion comes from Plato once again who said that the soul
had three parts. Eros (cravings and desires), Themos (spiritedness, emotion) and Logos
(reason and intellect, highest self).

In Kabbalah it is believed that all souls existed prior to the creation of the world.
This notion comes to from Plato, who said that the Soul is immortal, that our Souls
originate in the world of the Forms.

With regards to free will, Kabbalah says that humans have free will on a
mundane level but not on a higher spiritual level. This notion comes from Greek thought
not specifically Platonism but from Sophocles play Oedipus Rex, which expresses Greek
philosophy regarding free will. Oedipus is fated to kill is father and marry his mother.
The path he chooses is his own but the end result is the same. He cannot escape the end
fate but freely chooses events that occur before that fate. So we have the notion of free
will on the mundane level, but not on the higher spiritual level.

Reincarnation appears in Kabbalah, but yet again reincarnation appears before
Kabbalah with Pythagoras (570-495 BCE) in Greece, which is called Metempsychosis.

In Kabbalah the Hebrew alphabet is also used for numbers, words in the bible
are converted into numbers and vice versa is known as geometria, the same is true with
the Greek alphabet. Geomatria was passed on to the Jews by the Greeks. In his
Dialogues, Plato hints at gematria as a means of direct knowledge of Reality.

We see a lot of what my high school history teacher would call cultural
diffusion which is the spreading of cultural traits. It would make perfect sense for
Greek philosophy to have an impact on Jewish thought since there was a very close
relationship between the Greeks and the Jews after the conquest of Palestine and Egypt


7
Unterman, Alan. "Torah Is The Map of The World." The Kabbalistic Tradition: An Anthology of Jewish Mysticism.
London: Penguin, 2008. 57. Print.


by Alexander the Great. This relationship lasted from approximately 332 BCE until at
least the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. That is nearly 400 years of interaction.

So whats with the misrepresentation? It is my belief that there is a deliberate
misleading of facts by Kabbalists who want to give the appearance that Kabbalah is
older than Greek philosophy and all other philosophies to be exact. This would make
Kabbalah appear to the originator and source of all religious wisdom around the world.
This would be the goal for financial reasons, Kabbalah has become a product that is sold
and for marketing reasons doesnt it sound better to be selling original ancient
wisdom rather than a middle-age mysticism that was influenced by Neo-Platonism?

Footnotes

[1] http://www.kabbalah.com/about/what-is-kabbalah
[2] Unterman, Alan. The Kabbalistic Tradition: An Anthology of Jewish Mysticism.
London: Penguin, 2008. Print
[3] Berg, Rav. Kabbalah for the Layman. N.p.: Research Centre of Kabbalah, 2012. Print.
[4] Armstrong, Karen. Chapter 7 The God of the Mystics. A History of God: The 4,000
Year Quest of Judasim, Christianity and Islam. N.p.: Ballantine, 1993. N. pag. Print.
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbinical_literature
[6] http://www.crcsite.org/jewishgreek.htm
7] Unterman, Alan. Torah Is The Map of The World. The Kabbalistic Tradition: An
Anthology of Jewish Mysticism. London: Penguin, 2008. 57. Print.