From Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Kabbalah
The Renaissance saw the birth of Christian Kabbalah (also Christian Cabbala, Christian Cabala). Interest grew among some Christian scholars in what they saw to be the magical and occult aspects of Judaic Kabbalah.
Background
The movement was influenced by a desire to interpret aspects of Christianity more mystically, and a wish to convert Jews to the Christian faith,
Greek Neoplatonic documents came into Europe from Constantinople in the reign of Mehmet II. Neoplatonism had been prevalent in Christian Europe and had entered into Scholasticism since the translation of Greek and Hebrew texts in Spain in the 13thC. The Renaissance trend was a relatively short-lived phenomenon, ending by 1750.
After the 18th century. Kabbalah became the province of European occultism, some of which had a religious basis; but the main thrust of Christian Kabbalah was by then dead. A few attempts have been made to revive it in recent decades, particularly in relation to the Neoplatonism of the first two chapters of the Gospel of John, but it has not entered into mainstream Christianity.
Christian Kabbalists
Christian Kabbalah arose during the Renaissance as a result of continuing studies of Greek texts, and translations by Christian Hebraists. The invention of the printing press also played its part in the wider dissemination of texts.
Pico della Mirandola
Among the first to promote the knowledge of Kabbalah beyond exclusively Jewish circles was Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463 - 1494)[3] a student of Marsilio Ficino at his Florentine Academy. His syncretic world-view combined Platonism, Neoplatonism, Aristotelianism, Hermeticism and Kabbalah[4].
Mirandola's work on Kabbalah was further developed by Athanasius Kircher (1602 – 1680), a Jesuit priest, hermeticist and polymath, who wrote on the subject in Oedipus Aegyptiacus, 1652. Though they both worked from within the Christian tradition, both were more interested in the syncretic approach. Their work led directly into Occult and Hermetic Qabalah.
That could not be said of Reuchlin, Rosenroth and Kemper.
Johann Reuchlin
Johann Reuchlin, (1455 - 1522), was a German humanist and a scholar of Greek and Hebrew. For much of his life, he was the centre of Greek and Hebrew teaching in Germany. Having met with Mirandola in Italy, he later studied Hebrew with a Jewish physician, Jakob ben Jehiel Loans, producing thereafter De Arte Cabbalistica in (1517).
Athanasius Kircher
Main article: Athanasius Kircher
The following century produced Athanasius Kircher, a German Jesuit priest, scholar and polymath. He wrote extensively on the subject in 1652, bringing further elements such as Orphism and Egyptian mythology to the mix in his work, Oedipus Aegyptiacus,. It was illustrated by Kircher's own adaptation of the Tree of Life.[1]
Christian Knorr von Rosenroth
Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, (1631–1689) was a Christian Hebraist who studied Kabbalah, in which he believed to find proofs of the doctrines of Christianity.
Johan Kemper
Johan Kemper was a Hebrew teacher, whose tenure at Uppsala University lasted from 1697-1716[2]. Kemper, formerly known as Moses ben Aaron of Cracow, was a convert from Judaism and Swedenborg's probable Hebrew tutor.
During his time at Uppsala (1697-1716), he wrote his three-volume work on the Zohar entitled Matteh Mosche (The Staff of Moses)[3]. In it, he attempted to show that that the Zohar contained the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.[4]
This belief also drove him to make a literal translation of Matthew's Gospel into Hebrew and to write a kabbalistic commentary on it.
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