The History of Christian Kabbalah Podcast explores the remarkable encounter between two religious traditions: the meeting of Jewish mysticism and Christian theology. From the Renaissance to the early Enlightenment, a wide range of Christian thinkers—humanists, theologians, visionaries, and scholars—turned to Kabbalah in search of hidden wisdom and deeper insight into the mysteries of their own faith.
What they found was a tradition rich in symbolic language, complex cosmologies, and bold interpretations of Scripture. For some, Kabbalah appeared as a confirmation of Christian doctrine; for others, it offered new ways of thinking about the divine, the structure of creation, and the destiny of the human soul. It could also serve as a powerful resource for religious reform and for projects of institutional or spiritual renewal. In Christian hands, Jewish mystical ideas were translated, transformed, and woven into the intellectual fabric of early modern Europe.
Through narrative episodes devoted to key figures such as Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Johannes Reuchlin, Francesco Zorzi, Guillaume Postel, and Princess Antonia of Württemberg, the podcast traces how Christian Kabbalah emerged, developed, and changed over time. Along the way, it situates these ideas within the wider historical, political, and cultural settings in which they took shape.
These historical narratives are complemented by interviews with leading scholars, offering deeper perspectives on the texts, contexts, and debates that shaped this tradition.
Combining academic research with engaging storytelling, the podcast opens a window onto a fascinating history of intellectual exchange, theological imagination, and cultural transfer between Judaism and Christianity, for anyone interested in the history of ideas, religion, and the unexpected paths through which traditions meet and transform one another.
The podcast logo depicts the Christian Kabbalists Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636–1689) and Princess Antonia of Württemberg (1613–1679) in an imagined conversation about Kabbalah. Seated at a microphone and wearing headphones, the two historical figures appear in a playful anachronism as hosts of a modern podcast. Books and a diagram of a kabbalistic tree evoke the texts and symbolic traditions that shaped their engagement with Jewish mysticism. At the same time, the two figures also stand in for the hosts of this podcast, linking the historical actors of Christian Kabbalah with the contemporary scholars who explore their ideas today.
About the creators of the podcast
Níels P. Eggerz is a historian of early modern Europe whose research focuses on Jewish-Christian relations, conversion narratives, Sabbatianism, and Christian Kabbalah. His forthcoming book, The Lutheran Rabbi, explores the entangled worlds of Jewish and Christian scholarship through the remarkable life of a former Sabbatian enthusiast who later emerged as a Lutheran Kabbalist in early eighteenth-century Sweden.
Elke Morlok is a scholar of Jewish thought whose research focuses on Jewish mysticism, Christian Kabbalah, the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah), and the religious and cultural exchanges between Judaism and Christianity from the medieval to the early modern period. She is the author of several books and numerous studies on Kabbalah and its reception, including Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s Hermeneutics (2011) and Kabbalah and Haskalah (2022, in German), which explore the encounter between Jewish mysticism and changing intellectual cultures.
The podcast is part of the research project Kabbalah as a Paradigm of Transfer between Judaism and Christianity at Goethe University Frankfurt, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The project received support from the research group Polycentricity and Plurality of Premodern Christianities (POLY) at Goethe University Frankfurt and was carried out within the framework of the DFG Priority Program Jewish Cultural Heritage.
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Níels Páll Eggerz (March 9, 2026). Announcing The History of Christian Kabbalah Podcast. Kabbalah & Christianity. Retrieved April 4, 2026 from https://cabala.hypotheses.org/311