Absorbing perfections : Kabbalah and interpretation / Moshe Idel.
Material type: TextPublication details: New Haven : Yale University Press, �2002.Description: 1 online resource (xvii, 668 pages)Content type:- text
- computer
- online resource
- 9780300135077
- 0300135076
- 1281734861
- 9781281734860
- Bible. Pentateuch -- Criticism, interpretation, etc., Jewish
- Bible. Pentateuch -- Criticism, interpretation, etc., Jewish
- Bible. A.T. Pentateuque -- Critique, interpr�etation, etc. juives
- Cabala -- History
- Kabbale -- Histoire
- RELIGION -- Judaism -- Kabbalah & Mysticism
- RELIGION -- Judaism -- Sacred Writings
- Jodendom
- Mystiek
- Kabbala
- 296.1/6 21
- BM526 .I295 2002eb
Includes bibliographical references (pages 493-645) and index.
The world-absorbing text -- The God-absorbing text : black fire on white fire -- Text and interpretation affinities in Kabbalah -- The book that contains and maintains all -- Magical and magical-mystical arcanizations of canonical books -- Torah study and mystical experiences in Jewish mysticism -- Secrecy, binah, and derishah -- Semantics, constellation, and interpretation -- Radical forms of Jewish hermeneutics -- The symbolic mode of theosophical-theurgical Kabbalah -- Allegories, divine names, and experiences in ecstatic Kabbalah -- Tzerufei otiyyot : mutability and accommodation of the Torah in Jewish mysticism -- Tradition, transmission, and techniques -- Concluding remarks -- Appendix 1. Pardes : the fourfold method of interpretation -- Appendix 2. Abraham Abulafia's Torah of blood and ink -- Appendix 3. R. Isaac of Acre's exegetical quandary -- Appendix 4. The exile of the Torah and the imprisonment of secrets -- Appendix 5. On oral Torah and multiple interpretations in Hasidism -- Appendix 6. "Book of God"/"book of law" in late-fifteenth-century Florence.
Print version record.
In this wide-ranging discussion of Kabbalah - from the mystical trends of mediaeval Judaism to modern Hasidism - this book considers different visions of the nature of the sacred text and of the methods to interpret it. It takes as a starting point the fact that the post-biblical Jewish world lost its geographical centre with the destruction of the temple and so was left with a textual centre, the Holy Book. The author argues that a text-oriented religion produced language-centred forms of mysticism. Against this background, he demonstrates how various Jewish mystics amplified the content of the Scriptures so as to include everything: the world, or God, for example.
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