The Renaissance saw the birth of Christian Kabbalah/Cabbalah (From the Hebrew קַבָּלָה reception , often transliterated with a 'C' to distinguish it from Jewish Kabbalah and Hermetic Qabbalah), also spelled Cabbala/Cabala. Interest grew among some Christian scholars in what they saw to be the mystical aspects of Judaic Kabbalah, which was compatible with Christian mystical thought. Although somewhat obscure, the tradition of Christian Kabbalah or Catholic Kabbalah still persists today.[citation needed]
A perfect example of this change is the Christianization of kabbalistic ideas by mystics who sought to preserve the early Jewish writings when they were in danger of being destroyed by the Inquisition, as well as find practical uses for what was contained within them. For this reason a kind of Christian Kabbalah (often spelled cabala) developed in the 15th century. It had as its goal the harmonization of Kabbalah with Christian doctrines, and found ripe justification for the Christian Doctrine of the Trinity in the Kabbalah's first three sepheroth, or "Holy Upper Trinityv".
Throughout the 16th century Christian cabala focused its own internal theosophical development, and not upon evangelizing among the Jewish populations of Europe. However, such a cause could be justification enough for studies that might otherwise get one arrested or killed. With the development of these increasingly Christ-centric theosophical speculations, less and less time was spent with original Hebrew sources or their Latin translations. One of the few exceptions to this was Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter (1560-1557) who amassed a large collection of kabbalistic source materials for his studies.
With the writings of Jacob Boehme and Knorr von Rosenroth in 17th century Germany, Christian Cabala took a definite turn away from Hebrew source material, a turn that would last for some time to come. While Rosenroth's Kabbalah Denudata (1677-84) made much of the Zohar available to Christian readers for the first time, his essay on the Adam Kadom and its relationship to the 'primordial man Jesus' in Christian theology seemed to upstage the Zohar in many respects. The essay appearing at the end of Denudata by the Dutch theosophical speculator, Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont, is particularly strong on this point. The essay is entitled i"Adumbratio Kabbalae Christinae/" and is anonymously authored.
