ABSTRACT
In twelfth-century Provence the earliest kabbalistic text, the Bahir, reinterpreted the concept of the sefirot as depicted in the Sefer Yetsirah. According to ibn Latif, kabbalah is superior to philosophy, the highest intellectual understanding reaches only the 'back' of the Divine whereas the 'face' is disclosed only in supra-intellectual ecstasy. Some Spanish kabbalists were more attracted to Gnostic ideas. Isaac ha-Kohen, for example, elaborated the theory of a demonic emanation whose ten sefirot are counterparts of the holy sefirot. The mingling of such Gnostic teaching with the kabbalah of Gerona resulted in the publication of the major mystical work of Spanish Jewry, the Zohar, composed by Moses ben Shem Tov de Leon in Guadalajara. For the kabbalists the sefirot are dynamically structured; through them divine energy flows from its source and separates into individual channels, reuniting in the lowest sefirah.
