Author: James Davila
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004496998
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 358
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Book Description
The Hekhalot literature is a bizarre conglomeration of Jewish esoteric and revelatory texts in Hebrew and Aramaic, produced sometime between late antiquity and the early Middle Ages and surviving in medieval manuscripts. These texts claims to describe the self-induced spiritual experiences of the "descenders to the chariot" and to reveal the techniques that permitted these magico-religious practitioners to view for themselves Ezekiel's Merkavah as well as to gain control of angels and a supernatural mastery of Torah. Drawing on epigraphic and archaeological evidence from the Middle East, anthropological models, and a wide range of cross-cultural evidence, this book aims to show that the Hekhalot literature preserves the teachings and rituals of real religious functionaries who flourished in late antiquity and who were quite like the functionaries anthopologists call shamans.
Author: James Davila
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004252169
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 451
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Book Description
The Hekhalot literature is a motley collection of textually fluid and often textually corrupt documents in Hebrew and Aramaic which deal with mystical themes pertaining especially to God's throne-chariot (the Merkavah). They were composed between late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, with roots in earlier traditions and a long and complex subsequent history of transmission. This volume presents English translations of eclectic critical texts, with a full apparatus of variants, of most of the major Hekhalot documents: Hekhalot Rabbati; Sar Torah; Hekhalot Zutarti; Ma'aseh Merkavah; Merkavah Rabba; briefer macroforms: The Chapter of R. Nehuniah ben HaQanah, The Great Seal-Fearsome Crown, Sar Panim, The Ascent of Elijah ben Avuyah, and The Youth; and the Hekhalot fragments from the Cairo Geniza.
Author: Ilit Ferber
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110395312
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 431
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Book Description
Lament, mourning, and the transmissibility of a tradition in the aftermath of destruction are prominent themes in Jewish thought. The corpus of lament literature, building upon and transforming the biblical Book of Lamentations, provides a unique lens for thinking about the relationships between destruction and renewal, mourning and remembrance, loss and redemption, expression and the inexpressible. This anthology features four texts by Gershom Scholem on lament, translated here for the first time into English. The volume also includes original essays by leading scholars, which interpret Scholem’s texts and situate them in relation to other Weimar-era Jewish thinkers, including Walter Benjamin, Franz Rosenzweig, Franz Kafka, and Paul Celan, who drew on the textual traditions of lament to respond to the destruction and upheavals of the early twentieth century. Also included are studies on the textual tradition of lament in Judaism, from biblical, rabbinic, and medieval lamentations to contemporary Yemenite women’s laments. This collection, unified by its strong thematic focus on lament, shows the fruitfulness of studying contemporary and modern texts alongside the traditional textual sources that informed them.
Author: Andrei A. Orlov
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000465969
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219
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Book Description
This book explores the early Jewish understanding of divine knowledge as divine presence, which is embodied in major biblical exemplars, such as Adam, Enoch, Jacob, and Moses. The study treats the concept of divine knowledge as the embodied divine presence in its full historical and interpretive complexity by tracing the theme through a broad variety of ancient Near Eastern and Jewish sources, including Mesopotamian traditions of cultic statues, creational narratives of the Hebrew Bible, and later Jewish mystical testimonies. Orlov demonstrates that some biblical and pseudepigraphical accounts postulate that the theophany expresses the unique, corporeal nature of the deity that cannot be fully grasped or conveyed in some other non-corporeal symbolism, medium, or language. The divine presence requires another presence in order to be transmitted. To be communicated properly and in its full measure, the divine iconic knowledge must be "written" on a new living "body" which can hold the ineffable presence of God through a newly acquired ontology. Embodiment of Divine Knowledge in Early Judaism will provide an invaluable research to students and scholars in a wide range of areas within Jewish, Near Eastern, and Biblical Studies, as well as those studying religious elements of anthropology, philosophy, sociology, psychology, and gender studies. Through the study of Jewish mediatorial figures, this book also elucidates the roots of early Christological developments, making it attractive to Christian audiences.
Author: Ruth Kara-Ivanov Kaniel
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004462198
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
In The Feminine Messiah, Ruth Kara-Ivanov Kaniel explores the theosophical revolution that is reflected by the identification of the figure of King David and the image of the divine presence, the Shekhina, in medieval kabbalistic literature.
Author: Vita Daphna Arbel
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791457238
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
A wide-ranging exploration of the Hekhalot and Merkavah literature, a mystical Jewish tradition from late antiquity, including a discussion of the possible cultural context of this material's creators.
Author: Mladen Popović
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047420462
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 365
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Book Description
This study deals with physiognomic and astrological texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls that represent one of the earliest examples of ancient Jewish science. For the first time the Hebrew physiognomic-astrological list 4Q186 (4QZodiacal Physiognomy) and the Aramaic physiognomic list 4Q561 (4QPhysiognomy ar) are comprehensively studied in relation to both physiognomic and astrological writings from Babylonian and Greco-Roman traditions. New reconstructions and interpretations of these learned lists are offered that result in a fresh view of their sense, function, and status within both the Qumran community and Second Temple Judaism at large, showing that Jewish culture in Palestine participated in the cultural exchange of learned knowledge between Babylonian and Greco-Roman cultures.
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900440595X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 267
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Book Description
Ritual Dynamics in Jewish and Christian Contexts investigates questions that arise in modern ritual studies concerning Jewish and Christian religious communities: How did their religious rituals develop? Where did different ritual communities and their ritual texts interact? How did religious communities and their authoritative texts respond to change, and how did change influence religious rituals? The volume is a product of the interdisciplinary and international research efforts taken by the Research Centre “Dynamics of Jewish Ritual Practices in Pluralistic Contexts from Antiquity to the Present” at the Universität Erfurt (Germany) and unites the voices of important senior and emerging scholars in the field. It focuses on antiquity and the medieval period but also considers examples from the early modern and modern period in Europe
Author: Paul B. Fenton
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004119130
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
The present volume deals with the phenomenon of Writing and the Mystical Experience in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Particular emphasis is laid on this theme within Jewish mysticism in the various stages of its historical development. Methodological and phenomenological studies deal with the question in Antiquity, the Mediaeval period and Modern times.
Author: Joseph Dan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 488
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Book Description
A monumental event in the publishing history of English-language reference books on the subjects of Jewish mystical thought and practice.
