Johan Kemper

Who was Johan Kemper?

Johan Christian Jacob Kemper, formerly Moshe ben Aharon of Kraków, was a Polish Sabbatean Jew who converted from Judaism to Lutheran Christianity. His conversion was motivated by his studies in Kabbalah and his disappointment following the failure of a prophecy spread by the Polish Sabbatean prophet Tzadok of Gordno, which predicted that Sabbatai Zevi would return in the year 1695/6, It is unclear whether he continued to observe Jewish practices after his conversion.

In March 1701 he was employed as a teacher of Rabbinic Hebrew at Uppsala University in Sweden, until his death in 1716. Some scholars believe that he was Emmanuel Swedenborg's Hebrew tutor.

During his time at Uppsala, he wrote his three-volume work on the Zohar entitled Matteh Moshe,. In it, he attempted to show that the Zohar contained the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

This belief also drove him to make a literal Hebrew translation of the Gospel of Matthew from Syriac.