The Rise of Kabbalah in Late Antiquity

Kabbalah isn't some kind of out of nowhere separate thing, although it may well be a reaction to another flavor of what's going on. There was already one of the official rabbinic hermeneutical tools that were developed in the Medrashim and in the Talmudim. What the Kabbalah later did was magnifying the sod, which was only one part of rabbinical tools,. But they said, okay, it's all about sod. We are the experts on that. And we tell you that forget the literal, forget the allegorical. This is the only, this is the main thing.