Authors: Moshe Idel, Harold Bloom
ISBN-13: 9780300083798, ISBN-10: 0300083793
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Yale University Press
Date Published: June 2002
Edition: (Non-applicable)
In this wide-ranging discussion of Kabbalah - from the mystical trends of medieval Judaism to modern Hasidism - one of the world's foremost scholars considers different visions of the nature of the sacred text and the methods used to interpret it. Moshe Idel takes as a starting point the fact that the postbiblical Jewish world lost its geographical center with the destruction of the Temple and so was left with a textual center, the Holy Book. Idel argues that a text-oriented religion produced language-centered forms of mysticism.
Idel displays his grasp of a wide-ranging and deep body of material.
Foreword | ||
Preface | ||
Introduction | 1 | |
1 | The World-Absorbing Text | 26 |
2 | The God-Absorbing Text: Black Fire on White Fire | 45 |
3 | Text and Interpretation Infinities in Kabbalah | 80 |
4 | The Book That Contains and Maintains All | 111 |
5 | Magical and Magical-Mystical Arcanizations of Canonical Books | 137 |
6 | Torah Study and Mystical Experiences in Jewish Mysticism | 164 |
7 | Secrecy, Binah, and Derishah | 202 |
8 | Semantics, Constellation, and Interpretation | 221 |
9 | Radical Forms of Jewish Hermeneutics | 250 |
10 | The Symbolic Mode in Theosophical-Theurgical Kabbalah | 272 |
11 | Allegories, Divine Names, and Experiences in Ecstatic Kabbalah | 314 |
12 | Tzerufei'Otiyyot: Mutability and Accommodation of the Torah in Jewish Mysticism | 352 |
13 | Tradition, Transmission, and Techniques | 390 |
14 | Concluding Remarks | 410 |
App. 1 | Pardes: The Fourfold Method of Interpretation | 429 |
App. 2 | Abraham Abulafia's Torah of Blood and Ink | 438 |
App. 3 | R. Isaac of Acre's Exegetical Quandary | 449 |
App. 4 | The Exile of the Torah and the Imprisonment of Secrets | 461 |
App. 5 | On Oral Torah and Multiple Interpretations in Hasidism | 470 |
App. 6 | "Book of God"/"Book of Law" in Late-Fifteenth-Century Florence | 482 |
Notes | 493 | |
Bibliography | 619 | |
Index | 647 |