Note 37 — I.

That these opinions favour, to a certain extent, the doctrines of the Trinity and the Atonement, though not in the orthodox sense, is not only admitted by many of the Jewish literati who are adverse to the Kabbalah, but by some of its friends. Indeed, the very fact that so large a number of Kabbalists have from time to time embraced the Christian faith would of itself show that there must be some sort of affinity between the tenets of the respective systems. Some of these converts occupied the highest position in the Synagogue, both as pious Jews and literary men. We need only specify Paul Ricci, physician to the Emperor Maximilian I; Julius Conrad Otto, author of The Unveiled Secrets (‏גלא רזיא‎), consisting of extracts from the Talmud and the Sohar, to prove the validity of the Christian doctrine (Nürenberg, 1805); John Stephen Rittengal, grandson of the celebrated Don Isaac Abravanel, and translator of The Book Jetzira, or of Creation (‏ספר יצירה‎), into Latin (Amsterdam, 1642); and Jacob Frank, the great apostle of the Kabbalah in the eighteenth century, whose example in professing Christianity was followed by several thousands of his disciples.37 The testimony of these distinguished Kabbalists, which they give in their elaborate works, about the affinity of some of the doctrines of this theosophy with those of Christianity, is by no means to be slighted; and this is fully corroborated by the celebrated Leo di Modena, who, as an orthodox Jew, went so far as to question whether God will ever forgive those who printed the Kabbalistic works.38