  Later Kabbalists were aware “of a possible connection between these ideas and the Christian Trinity,” but explained the latter as a corruption of the former. Jesus and his disciples were themselves “real Kabbalists, ‘only their Kabbalah was full of mistakes’”—their doctrine of the Trinity was the result of their misinterpretation of the doctrine of the three lights! Whatever one thinks of this, there are striking similarities between the two doctrines. But there are also important differences. The lights “are neither persons nor ‘hypostases’ in God,” for example, and there is no mention of “specific relationships” between them (such as begetting and being begotten, or “spiration” and “procession”) (Scholem 1987, 349–54).