Through a Speculum That Shines (eBook)

Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism

Elliot R. Wolfson (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2020
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-21509-9 (ISBN)

Infos

A comprehensive treatment of visionary experience in some of the main texts of Jewish mysticism, this book reveals the overwhelmingly visual nature of religious experience in Jewish spirituality from antiquity through the late Middle Ages. Using phenomenological and critical historical tools, Wolfson examines Jewish mystical texts from late antiquity, pre-kabbalistic sources from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, and twelfth- and thirteenth-century kabbalistic literature. His work demonstrates that the sense of sight assumes an epistemic priority in these writings, reflecting and building upon those scriptural passages that affirm the visual nature of revelatory experience. Moreover, the author reveals an androcentric eroticism in the scopic mentality of Jewish mystics, which placed the externalized and representable form, the phallus, at the center of the visual encounter. In the visionary experience, as Wolfson describes it, imagination serves a primary function, transmuting sensory data and rational concepts into symbols of those things beyond sense and reason. In this view, the experience of a vision is inseparable from the process of interpretation. Fundamentally challenging the conventional distinction between experience and exegesis, revelation and interpretation, Wolfson argues that for the mystics themselves, the study of texts occasioned a visual experience of the divine located in the imagination of the mystical interpreter. Thus he shows how Jewish mystics preserved the invisible transcendence of God without doing away with the visual dimension of belief.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 30.6.2020
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Judentum
• Schlagworte: Abraham Abulafia • Abraham bar Azriel • Abraham Ibn Ezra • Aggadah • Allusion • Angel of the Lord • Anthropomorphism • Apophatic Theology • aqiva • Aristotelianism • Azriel (Jewish mystic) • Bahir • Bemidbar Rabbah • Berakhot (Talmud) • Bible prophecy • biblical canon • book of Deuteronomy • Book of Ezekiel • Book of the Pomegranate • Books of Kings • Cherub • Cherubim • Christianity • christian mysticism • Christian theology • Conceptions of God • Creator deity • deity • dimyon • Divine presence • Docetism • eating • Eleazar of Worms • Elijah • Elohim • El Shaddai • Enoch • Epistemology • Exegesis • Eyes • Ezekiel • Gabriel • Gadol • Gershom Scholem • Gnosticism • God • Hai Gaon • Halevi • Ḥayyat, Judah • Hekhalot literature • Hekhalot Rabbati • hermeneutics • Hosea • Ibn Ezra, Abraham • Ibn Gabirol, Solomon • Image of God • Isaac ben Samuel of Acre • Islam • israelites • Iyyun circle • Jacob ben Sheshet • Jewish History • Jewish Mysticism • Jewish philosophy • Jews • Joseph of Hamadan • Judah Halevi • Judaism • Kabbalah • Katz, Steven • Kohen • Late Antiquity • Literature • Maimonides • Manifestation of God • Me’irat ‘Einayim • Merkabah mysticism • Midrash • Midrash Tanḥuma • Midrash Tehillim • Mishnah • Moses of Burgos • Mysticism • names of god • Names of God in Judaism • Neoplatonism • ’Oṣar Ḥayyim • parable • Pardes (Jewish exegesis) • People of the Book • Perush Sodot ha-Tefitlah • Philo of Alexandria • pietism • Pleroma • Presence of God (Catholicism) • Prooftext • Prophecy • Rabbinic Judaism • rabbinic literature • Rashi • recitation • Religion • religious experience • religious text • Righteousness • Rite • Saadiah ben Joseph Gaon • Sefer ha-Bahir • Sefer (Hebrew) • Sefer Yeṣirah • Shabbat • Shekhinah • Shemot Rabbah • Shi'ur Qomah • Solomon Ibn Gabirol • SPIRIT • Spirituality • Sufism • Ten Commandments • The Divine Image • Theology • theophany • Theosophy • Torah • Vision (spirituality) • Western esotericism • Worship • Writing • Yevamot • Zohar
• ISBN-10: 0-691-21509-X / 069121509X
• ISBN-13: 978-0-691-21509-9 / 9780691215099