Medieval alchemy, Kabbalah and Islamic esotericism
Nachmanides
Moses ben Nachman · Ramban · Bonastruc ça Porta
The most authoritative rabbi of his generation, who scattered kabbalistic allusions through a Torah commentary that every later Jewish reader had on the shelf. Kabbalah became respectable largely because he used it.
- Dates
- 1194 – 1270
- Dating
- approximate dates
- Born
- Gerona
- Died
- Acre
The life
He led the Jewish side of the Disputation of Barcelona in 1263, was prosecuted for the account of it he then wrote, and left Spain for the Land of Israel.
Place in the tradition
He never expounds the doctrine openly — the allusions are deliberately brief — but his standing is what carried it from a Provençal circle into the mainstream.
a note on the record
History and later legend
He is not an 'occultist' in any sense he would have recognised, and his own rule was that these matters are not to be understood from a book.
the written record
Principal works
-
completed in the Land of Israel, c. 1267–1270
Commentary on the Torah
A mainstream biblical commentary carrying brief kabbalistic allusions, flagged as 'by way of truth' and deliberately left unexplained.