Note 40 — III.

1758–1763. Amongst the Jews, however, the pretensions and consequences of the Kabbalistic Pseudo-Messiah, Sabbatai Zevi, and his followers, produced a new era in the criticism of the Sohar. Even such a scholar and thorough Kabbalist as Jacob b. Zevi of Emden, or Jabez (‏יעב״ץ‎), as he is called from the acrostic of his name (‏יעקב בן צבי‎), maintains in his work, which he wrote in 1758–1763, and which he entitled The Wrapper of Books, that with the exception of the kernel of the Sohar all the rest is of a late origin.40 He shows that (1) The Sohar misquotes passages of Scripture, misunderstands the Talmud, and contains some rituals which were ordained by later Rabbinic authorities (‏פוסקים‎). (2) Mentions the crusades against the Mohammedans. (3) Uses the philosophical terminology of Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew Translation of Maimonides’ More Nebuchim, and borrows the figure of Jehudah Ha-Levi’s Khosari, that “Israel is the heart in the organism of the human race, and therefore feels its sufferings more acutely” (Khosari, ii, 36, with Sohar, iii, 221 b, 161 a); and (4) Knows the Portuguese and North Spanish expression Esnoga.