352 A History of Judaism
scrupulously. The kabbalists of Provence had led the opposition to the
philosophy of Maimonides which ended in the disastrous book burning
of 1232, but we have seen that Maimonides’ Aristotelianism had not
prevented Avraham Abulafia seeing his own prophetic kabbalah as
founded on Maimonides’ teaching. More positively, the Neoplatonic
tradition in Jewish philosophy, which can be traced back to Isaac b.
Solomon Israeli in Kairouan in the first half of the tenth century and the
citations of Plato by ibn Gabirol in Andalusia in his Fons Vitae, had a
direct influence on the author of Sefer haBahir through the twelfth-
century Spanish philosopher Avraham bar Hiyya. The theory of
emanations, which was to have a long history in the speculation of kab-
balists about the sefirot, was an intrinsic element of Neoplatonic
thought, and Neoplatonism would play an important role in Christian
appropriation of kabbalah in the Renaissance.^54
The images and concepts of the kabbalah, and especially the Zohar,
were gradually adopted in almost all streams of medieval Judaism from
the early fourteenth century, even among those who declined themselves
to indulge in mystical introspection or theosophical speculation but
who accepted the insights of earlier generations as part of the Torah.
Individual kabbalists continued to add to the complexity of the kab-
balistic system as they struggled with the intractable problem at its
core – the relation of God to the material world – while most Jews
accepted kabbalist ideas as symbolic images to enhance the liturgy in
their prayers.
The popularity of such images attests to a widespread yearning
among Jews for a complex theological framework for their practical
Judaism in accordance with halakhah, in order to provide a sense of
something more numinous and mysterious than the concrete promises
and threats in the biblical covenant between God and Israel. It may well
have been precisely the prohibition on discussing and analysing kab-
balistic notions with those outside the rabbinic elite which lent power
and mystique to these ideas among the non- rabbinic laity, so that, how-
ever little it was understood by most Jews, the kabbalah became in
effect the theological framework for all rabbinic Judaism in the early
modern period.