Note 45 — III.

1849. D. H. Joel, Rabbi of Sheversenz, published in 1849 a very elaborate critique on Franck’s Religious Philosophy of the Sohar, which is an exceedingly good supplement to Franck’s work, though Joel’s treatise is of a negative character, and endeavours to demolish Franck’s theory without propounding another in its stead. Thus much, however, Joel positively states, that though the Sohar in its present form could not have been written by R. Simon b. Jochai, and though the author of it may not have lived before the thirteenth century, yet its fundamental doctrines to a great extent are not the invention of the author, but are derived from ancient Jewish sources, either documentary or oral.45