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E-book
Author Idel, Moshe, 1947-

Title Absorbing perfections : Kabbalah and interpretation / Moshe Idel
Published New Haven : Yale University Press, ©2002

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Description 1 online resource (xvii, 668 pages)
Contents 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
Summary 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
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 493-645) and index
Notes Print version record
SUBJECT Bible. Pentateuch -- Criticism, interpretation, etc., Jewish
Bible. Pentateuch fast
Subject Cabala -- History
RELIGION -- Judaism -- Kabbalah & Mysticism.
RELIGION -- Judaism -- Sacred Writings.
Cabala
Jodendom.
Mystiek.
Kabbala.
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780300135077
0300135076
1281734861
9781281734860