Note 37 — II.

For this date of the Kabbalah (i.e., 1150–1190) we have the testimony of some of the earliest and most intelligent Kabbalists themselves. Thus R. Joseph b. Abraham Gikatilla (born about 1247, and died 1307) most distinctly tells us that R. Isaac the Blind, of Posquiers (flour. circa 1190–1210), the teacher of R. Azariel, was the first who taught the doctrines of this theosophy.37 R. Bechja b. Asher, another Kabbalist who lived soon after this system was made known, in his commentary on the Pentateuch, which he composed A.D. 1291, styles R. Isaac the Blind, as the Father of the Kabbalah.38 Shem Tob b. Abraham Ibn Gaon (born 1283), another ancient Kabbalist, in attempting to trace a Kabbalistic explanation of a passage in the Bible to its fountain head, goes back to R. Isaac as the primary source, and connects him immediately with the prophet Elias, who is said to have revealed the mysteries of this theosophy to this corypheus of the Kabbalah.39 Whilst the author of the Kabbalistic work entitled ‏מערכת אלהות‎ the contemporary of R. Solomon b. Abraham b. Adereth (flour. A.D. 1260), frankly declares that “the doctrine of the En Soph and the ten Sephiroth is neither to be found in the Law, Prophets, or Hagiographa, nor in the writings of the Rabbins of blessed memory, but rests solely upon signs which are scarcely perceptible.”40