Kabbalistic Manuscripts And Textual Theory

Author : Daniel Abrams
Publisher : Hebrew University Magnes Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 772 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory written by Daniel Abrams and published by Hebrew University Magnes Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 772 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory uncovers the unstated assumptions and expectations of scribes and scholars who fashioned editions from manuscripts of Jewish mystical literature. This study offers a theory of kabbalistic textuality in which the material book the printed page no less than handwritten manuscripts serves as the site for textual dialogue between Jewish mystics of different periods and locations. The refashioning of the text through the process of reading and commenting that takes place on the page in the margins and between the lines blurs the boundaries between the traditionally defined roles of author, reader, commentator and editor. This study shows that kabbalists and academic editors reinvented the text in their own image, as part of a fluid textual process that was nothing short of transformative. This book is certainly monumental, offering in its seven hundred pages a wealth of documentation and distilled argument that manages to be both comprehensive in its materials and transparent in its critical insights. It is rare indeed that a work of such formidable scholarship can actually be a pleasure to read and convincing in its elucidation of what are often extremely complex documentary circumstances and editorial traditions. From the foreword by David Greetham

Author : M. Segol
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 113704313X
Total Pages : 197 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Word and Image in Medieval Kabbalah written by M. Segol and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-10-29 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sefer Yetsirah (the Book of Creation ) is a core text of the early kabbalah, yet scholars have struggled to establish even the most basic facts about the work. This project attempts to discover the ways in which diagrams accompanying the text and its commentaries show trends in the development of the kabbalistic tradition as a whole.

Author : Jonathan Dauber
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004234268
Total Pages : 286 pages
Book Rating : 4.60/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Knowledge of God and the Development of Early Kabbalah written by Jonathan Dauber and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-08-01 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Knowledge of God and the Development of Early Kabbalah, Jonathan Dauber offers a fresh consideration of the emergence of Kabbalah against the backdrop of a re-evaluation of the relationship between Kabbalistic and philosophic discourse.

Author : Jonathan Dauber
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 1512822760
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Secrecy and Esoteric Writing in Kabbalistic Literature written by Jonathan Dauber and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2022-08-24 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Secrecy and Esoteric Writing in Kabbalistic Literature examines the strategies of esoteric writing that Kabbalists have used to conceal secrets in their writings, such that casual readers will only understand the surface meaning of their texts while those with greater insight will grasp the internal meaning. In addition to a broad description of esoteric writing throughout the long literary history of Kabbalah, this work analyzes kabbalistic secrecy in light of contemporary theories of secrecy. It also presents case studies of esoteric writing in the work of four of the first kabbalistic authors—Abraham ben David, Isaac the Blind, Ezra ben Solomon, and Asher ben David—and thereby helps recast our understanding of the earliest stages of kabbalistic literary history. The book will interest scholars in Jewish mysticism and Jewish philosophy, as well as those working in medieval Jewish history. Throughout, Jonathan V. Dauber has endeavored to write an accessible work that does not require extensive prior knowledge of kabbalistic thought. Accordingly, it finds points of contact between scholars of various religious traditions.

Author : Moshe Idel
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110598779
Total Pages : 636 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Abraham Abulafia’s Esotericism written by Moshe Idel and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-10-12 with total page 636 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on Abraham Abulafia's esoteric thought in relation to Maimonides, Maimonideans, and Islamic thought in the line of Leo Strauss' theory of the history of philosophy. A survey of Abulafia's sources leads into an analysis of the esoteric meaning on the famous parable of the three rings, considering also the possible connection between this parable, which Abdulafia inserted into a book dedicated to his student, the 13th century rabbi Nathan the wise, and the Lessing's Play "Nathan the Wise." The book also examines Abulafia's universalistic understanding of the nature of the Bible, the Hebrew language, and the people of Israel (or the Sinaic revelation). The universal aspects of Abulafia’s thought have been put in relief against the more widespread Kabbalistic views which are predominantly particularistic. A number of texts have also been identified here for the first time as authored by Abulafia.

Author : Maurizio Mottolese
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004499008
Total Pages : 239 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Cultic and Further Orders: Semiotics of a Kabbalistic Culture written by Maurizio Mottolese and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-01-31 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through an unusual investigation of kabbalistic commentaries on prayer and ritual from the viewpoint of cultural semiotics, this book attempts to illuminate the features of a lasting Jewish tradition, showing in particular the relevance of ordering structures in Sephardi Kabbalah.

Author : Harry Fox
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1527535037
Total Pages : 562 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book From Something to Nothing written by Harry Fox and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-05-24 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jewish mysticism approaches God as no-thing or nothing, reflecting Judaism’s traditional identification of God as incorporeal. Whereas technical philosophical language often employed to discuss Jewish mysticism has a tendency to ward off otherwise interested readers, this study sufficiently breaks down the technical language of Jewish mysticism in its various expressions to allow a beginner to benefit from what may otherwise be indescribable and only approached by consideration of what is not rather than what is. Integral to the title, From Something to Nothing, is the concept that God cannot be something, because that would be restricting, so God is simply no-thing. Ironically, the conventional religious expression for the biblical notion of creation is “something from nothing”, whereas the title of this volume is its precise opposite, which may at first seem to be illogical – creation in reverse. However, in a volume dedicated to various deliberations on magic and mysticism, the ultimate reality may receive expression as nothingness, that is, no-thingness, no quality associated with things. What adds to our difficulty today is that nothingness is inextricably linked with silence. Is silence also an element or indication of an ultimate reality or its absence? Or is it merely the reflection of nothing whatsoever? This is at the heart of modern debates between atheists and believers. Believers feel that even this silence speaks to this ultimate reality, whereas atheists claim that if you cannot show it, then you do not know it. In other words, believers are victims of their own wishful thinking. From Something to Nothing memorializes Canadian mystic and scholar Zalman Schachter Shalomi, z”l, engaging in particular aspects that he addressed at some phase of his colourful and erudite life, providing the reader with a broad spectrum of both phenomenological and intellectual topics.

Author : Alan Mittleman
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198796498
Total Pages : 252 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Holiness in Jewish Thought written by Alan Mittleman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Holiness is a challenge for contemporary Jewish thought. The concept of holiness is crucial to religious discourse in general and to Jewish discourse in particular. Holiness seems to express an important feature of religious thought and of religious ways of life. Yet the concept is ill defined. This collection explores what concepts of holiness were operative in different periods of Jewish history and bodies of Jewish literature and offers preliminary reflections on their theological and philosophical import today. The contributors illumine some of the major episodes concerning holiness in the history of the development in the Jewish tradition. They are challenged to think about the problems and potential implicit in Judaic concepts of holiness, to make them explicit, and to try to retrieve the concepts for contemporary theological and philosophical reflection. Not all of the contributors push into philosophical and theological territory, but they all provide resources for the reader to do so. Holiness is elusive but it need not be opaque. This volume makes Jewish concepts of holiness lucid, accessible, and intellectually engaging.

Author : Ivan G. Marcus
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812250095
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book "Sefer Hasidim" and the Ashkenazic Book in Medieval Europe written by Ivan G. Marcus and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2018-07-06 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In "Sefer Hasidim" and the Ashkenazic Book in Medieval Europe, Ivan G. Marcus proposes a new paradigm for understanding how Sefer Hasidim, or "Book of the Pietists," was composed and how it extended an earlier Byzantine rabbinic tradition of authorship into medieval European Jewish culture.

Author : Boaz Huss
Publisher : Liverpool University Press
ISBN 13 : 178962486X
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Zohar: Reception and Impact written by Boaz Huss and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-12 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Jewish Book Awards Finalist for the Nahum N. Sarna Memorial Award for Scholarship, 2016. From its first appearance, the Zohar has been one of the most sacred, authoritative, and influential books in Jewish culture. Many scholarly works have been dedicated to its mystical content, its literary style, and the question of its authorship. This book focuses on different issues: it examines the various ways in which the Zohar has been received by its readers and the impact it has had on Jewish culture, including the fluctuations in its status and value and the various cultural practices linked to these changes. This dynamic and multi-layered history throws important new light on many aspects of Jewish cultural history over the last seven centuries. Boaz Huss has broken new ground with this study, which examines of the reception and canonization of the Zohar as well as its criticism and rejection from its inception to the present day. His underlying assumption is that the different values attributed to the Zohar are not inherent qualities of the zoharic texts, but rather represent the way it has been perceived by its readers in different cultural contexts. He therefore considers not only the attribution of different qualities to the Zohar through time but also the people who were engaged in attributing such qualities and the social and cultural functions associated with their creation, re-creation, and rejection. For each historical period from the beginning of Zohar scholarship to the present, Huss considers the social conditions that stimulated the veneration of the Zohar as well as the factors that contributed to its rejection, alongside the cultural functions and consequences of each approach. Because the multiple modes of the reception of the Zohar have had a decisive influence on the history of Jewish culture, this highly innovative and wide-ranging approach to Zohar scholarship will have important repercussions for many areas of Jewish studies.