the Cabala by the Jews became the particular practice of Jewish miracle-workers, appears to have originated in Chaldea. Nor can the insistence on the Chosen People theory, which forms the basis of all Talmudic and Cabalistic writings, be regarded as of purely Jewish origin; the ancient Egyptians likewise believed themselves to be "the peculiar people specially loved by the gods." But in the hands of the Jews this belief became a pretension to the exclusive enjoyment of divine favour. According to the Zohar, "all Israelites will have a part in the future world," and on arrival there will not be handed over like the goyim (or non-Jewish races) to the hands of the angel Douma and sent down to Hell. Indeed the goyim are even denied human attributes. Thus the Zohar again explains that the words of the Scripture "Jehovah Elohim made man" mean that He made Israel. The seventeenth-century Rabbinical treatise Emek ha Melek observes: "Our Rabbis of blessed memory have said: 'Ye Jews are men because of the soul ye have from the Supreme Man (i.e. God). But the nations of the world are not styled men because they have not, from the Holy and Supreme Man, the Neschama (or glorious soul), but they have the Nephesch (soul) from Adam Belial, that is the malicious and unnecessary man, called Sammael, the Supreme Devil.'"
In conformity with this exclusive attitude towards the rest of the human race, the Messianic idea which forms the dominating theme of the Cabala is made to serve purely Jewish interests. Yet