The Root of Later Kabbalah

Gershom Scholem's scholarship in the twentieth century established Merkavah mysticism as a serious object of academic study and argued for its historical importance as the deep root from which later medieval Kabbalah eventually grew, even though the two traditions differ substantially in method and emphasis, Merkavah mysticism centered on visionary ascent and angelic encounter, medieval Kabbalah centered on a more systematic, symbolic theology of divine emanations, the sefirot.

Scholars continue to debate how direct the historical line of transmission actually was between the Hekhalot circles and the emergence of Kabbalah in medieval Provence and Spain, since a substantial gap in surviving textual evidence separates the two periods, but the shared concern with a hidden, higher structure to reality accessible through disciplined religious practice is treated as a meaningful continuity regardless of exactly how it was transmitted. The Hekhalot texts themselves remain a distinct field of study, valued for what they reveal about early Jewish mystical practice, angelology and liturgy independent of their later influence, and are read today as primary evidence for a stage of Jewish religious life that predates and differs from the philosophical Kabbalah most people associate with the term Jewish mysticism.