Concealment and revelation : esotericism in Jewish thought and its philosophical implications / Moshe Halbertal ; translated by Jackie Feldman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Halbertal, Moshe.

Standardized Title:

Seter ṿe-gilui. English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mysticism--Judaism.

Mysticism.

Cabala--History.

Cabala.

Judaism--History--Medieval and early modern period, 425-1789.

Judaism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (215 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N. J. : Princeton University Press, c2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, great new trends of Jewish thought emerged whose widely varied representatives--Kabbalists, philosophers, and astrologers--each claimed that their particular understanding revealed the actual secret of the Torah. They presented their own readings in a coded fashion that has come to be regarded by many as the very essence of esotericism. Concealment and Revelation takes us on a fascinating journey to the depths of the esoteric imagination. Carefully tracing the rise of esotericism and its function in medieval Jewish thought, Moshe Halbertal's richly detailed historical and cultural analysis gradually builds conceptual-philosophical force to culminate in a masterful phenomenological taxonomy of esotericism and its paradoxes. Among the questions addressed: What are the internal justifications that esoteric traditions provide for their own existence, especially in the Jewish world, in which the spread of knowledge was of great importance? How do esoteric teachings coexist with the revealed tradition, and what is the relationship between the various esoteric teachings that compete with that revealed tradition? Halbertal concludes that, through the medium of the concealed, Jewish thinkers integrated into the heart of the Jewish tradition diverse cultural influences such as Aristotelianism, Neoplatonism, and Hermeticisims. And the creation of an added concealed layer, unregulated and open-ended, became the source of the most daring and radical interpretations of the tradition.

Contents:

The paradox of esotericism : "and not on the chariot alone"

The hidden and the sublime : vision and restriction in the Bible and in the Talmudic literature

The ethics of vision : the attitude of early Jewish mysticism towards gazing at the chariot

Concealment and power : magic and esotericism in the hekhalot literature

Esotericism and commentary : Ibn Ezra and the exegetical layer

Concealment and heresy : astrology and the secret of the Torah

Double language and the divided public in the guide of the perplexed

The breaching of the limits of the esoteric : concealment and disclosure in Maimonidean esotericism

From transmission to writing : hinting, leaking and orthodoxy in early Kabbalah

Open knowledge and closed knowledge : the Kabbalists of Gerona Rabbi Azriel and Rabbi Yaakov Bar Sheshet

Tradition, closed knowledge and the esoteric : secrecy and hinting in Nahmanides' Kabbalah

From tradition to literature : Shem Tov Ibn Gaon and the critique of Kabbalistic literature

"The widening of the apertures of the showpiece" : Shmuel Ibn Tibon and the end of the era of esotericism

Esotericism, sermons and curricula : Ya'akov Anatoli and the dissemination of the secret

The ambivalence of secrecy : the dispute over philosophy in the early 14th century

Esotericism, discontent and co-existence

Taxonomy and paradoxes of esotericism : conceptual conclusion.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612159183

9781282159181

1282159186

9781400827961

1400827965

OCLC:

438753891