The influence of Abraham Cohen de Herrera's kabbalah on Spinoza's metaphysics /
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In this book the author seeks to find historiographical and textual evidence that Abraham Cohen de Herrera 's main kabbalistic work, Puerta del Cielo , influenced Spinoza's metaphysics as it is expounded in his later work, the Ethica . Many of the most important ontological topics maintained by the philosopher, like the concept of the first cause as substance, the procession of the infinite modes, the subjective or metaphorical reality of the attributes, and the two different understandings of God, were anticipated in Herrera's mystical treatise. Both shared a particular consideration of panentheism that entails acosmism. This influence is proven through a comparative examination of the writings of both authors, as well as a detailed research on previous Jewish philosophical thought.
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1 online resource (ix, 449 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004315686 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The serpent kills or the serpent gives life the kabbalist Abraham Abulafia's response to Christianity /
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Abraham Abulafia (1240 - c. 1291) founded an enormously influential branch of Jewish mysticism, referred to as the prophetic or ecstatic kabbalah. This book, from several perspectives, explores the impact of Christianity upon Abulafia. His copious writings evince an intense fascination with Christian themes, yet Abulafia's frequent diatribes against Jesus and Christianity reveal him to be deeply conflicted in his relationship to his southern European religious neighbors. This book undertakes a careful study of Abulafia's writings, suggesting that the recognition of an inner dynamic of attraction and revulsion toward the forbidden other provides a crucial key to understanding Abulafia's mystical hermeneutic and his meditative practice. It also demonstrates that Abulafia's uneasy relationship to Christianity shaped the very core of his mystical doctrine.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004194472 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
And they shall be one flesh : on the language of mystical union in Judaism /
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In "And They Shall Be One Flesh": On the Language of Mystical Union in Judaism , Adam Afterman offers an extensive study of mystical union and embodiment in Judaism. Afterman argues that Philo was the first to articulate the notion of unio mystica in Judaism and is the source of the henōsis mysticism in the later Neoplatonic tradition. The study provides a detailed analysis of the Jewish medieval trends that developed different forms of mystical union and mystical embodiment through the divine name and spirit. The book argues that the development of unitive mysticism in Judaism is the fruit of the creative synthesis of rabbinic Judaism and Hellenistic and Arab philosophy, and a natural outcome of the theological articulation of the idea of monotheism itself.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004328730 :
1873-9008 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Kabbalistic circles in Jerusalem (1896-1948) /
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This book endeavors to fill a lacuna in the literature on early twentieth-century kabbalah, namely the lack of a comprehensive account of the traditional kabbalah seminaries (Yeshivot) in Jerusalem from 1896 to 1948 as well as the various manifestations of kabbalah within traditional Jewish society. The foundations that were laid in the early twentieth century also paved the way for the contemporary blossoming of kabbalah in many and manifold circles. In this sense, retracing the pertinent developments in Palestine at the outset of the twentieth century is imperative not only for repairing the distorted picture of the past, but for understanding the ongoing surge in kabbalah study.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004321649 :
1871-1405 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Time and eternity in Jewish mysticism : that which is before and that which is after /
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Time and eternity are concepts that have occupied an important place within Jewish mystical thought. This present volume gives pride of place to these concepts, and is one of the first works to bring together diverse voices on the subject. It offers a multivalent picture of the topic of time and eternity, not only by including contributions from an array of academics who are leaders in their fields, but by proposing six diverse approaches to time and eternity in Jewish mysticism: the theoretical approach to temporality, philosophical definitions, the idea of time and pre-existence, the idea of historical time, the idea of experiential time, and finally, the idea of eternity beyond time. This multivocal treatment of Jewish mysticism and time as based on variant academic approaches is novel, and it should lay the groundwork for further discussion and exploration.
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1 online resource (xi, 228 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004290310 :
1568-5004 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Kabbalah and modernity : interpretations, transformations, adaptations /
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The persistence of kabbalistic groups in the twentieth century has largely been ignored or underestimated by scholars of religion. Only recently have scholars began to turn their attention to the many-facetted roles that kabbalistic doctrines and schools have played in nineteenth- and twentieth-century culture. Often, and necessarily, this new interest and openness went along with a contextualization and re-valuation of earlier scholarly approaches to kabbalah. This volume brings together leading representatives of this ongoing debate in order to break new ground for a better understanding and conceptualization of the role of kabbalah in modern religious, intellectual, and political discourse.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004182875 :
1871-1405 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The beginning of the world in Renaissance Jewish thought : Ma'aseh bereshit in Italian Jewish philosophy and kabbalah, 1492-1535 /
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In The Beginning of the World in Renaissance Jewish Thought , Brian Ogren offers a deep analysis of late fifteenth century Italian Jewish thought concerning the creation of the world and the beginning of time. Ogren's book is the very first to seriously juxtapose the thought of the great Jewish thinker Yohanan Alemanno, Alemanno's famed Christian interlocutor, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the important Iberian exegete active in Italy, Isaac Abravanel, and Abravanel's renowned philosopher son Judah, known as Leone Ebreo. By bringing these thinkers together, this book presents a new understanding of early modern uses of Jewish texts and hermeneutics. Ogren successfully demonstrates that the syntheses of philosophy and Kabbalah carried out by these four intellectuals in their quests to understand the beginning itself marked a new beginning in Western thought, characterized by simultaneous continuity and rupture.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004330634 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Knowledge of God and the development of early Kabbalah /
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In Knowledge of God and the Development of Early Kabbalah , Jonathan Dauber offers a fresh consideration of the emergence and early development of Kabbalah against the backdrop of a re-evaluation of the relationship between early Kabbalistic and philosophic discourse. He argues that the first Kabbalists adopted a philosophic ethos that was foreign to traditional Rabbinic Judaism but had taken root in Languedoc and Catalonia under the influence of newly available philosophical materials. In this ethos, the act of investigating God was accorded great religious significance, and it was its adoption by the first Kabbalists that helped spur them to engage in their investigations of God and, in so doing, develop Kabbalah.
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1 online resource (x, 275 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p.[253]-268 ) and index. :
9789004234277 :
1873-9008 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Francis Mercury van Helmont's "Sketch of Christian Kabbalism" /
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Sheila A. Spector's translation of the Sketch of Christian Kabbalism, by Francis Mercury van Helmont (1614-98), is the first English version of the foundational seventeenth-century treatise appended to Knorr von Rosenroth's compendium, the Kabbala Denudata. After a survey of the historical context in general, Jewish and Christian Kabbalah in particular, and a brief biography of van Helmont, Spector's introduction explains how the author adapted the original Jewish myth for Christian purposes. The bilingual text contains a facsimile of the original Latin on one side, facing the English translation on the other, with Van Helmont's footnotes supplemented by the translator's endnotes. The edition is essential for scholars, though of interest to the general reader as well.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004227248 :
1871-1405 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.