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In exploring the social background of early Jewish mysticism, Scholastic Magic tells the story of how imagination and magic were made to serve memory and scholasticism.
In the visionary literature that circulated between the fifth and ninth centuries, there are strange tales of ancient rabbis conjuring the angel known as Sar-Torah, the "Prince of the Torah." This angel endowed the rabbis themselves with spectacular memory and skill in learning, and then taught them the formulas for giving others these gifts. This literature, according to Michael Swartz, gives us rare glimpses of how ancient and medieval Jews who stood outside the mainstream of rabbinic leadership viewed Torah and ritual.
Through close readings of the texts, he uncovers unfamiliar dimensions of the classical Judaic idea of Torah and the rabbinic civilization that forged them.
Swartz sets the stage for his analysis with a discussion of the place of memory and orality in ancient and medieval Judaism and how early educational and physiological theories were marshaled for the cultivation of memory. He then examines the unusual magical rituals for conjuring angels and ascending to heaven, as well as the authors' attitudes to authority and tradition. He shows them to have subverted essential rabbinic values even as they remained beholden to them.
The result is a ground-breaking analysis of the social and conceptual background of rabbinic Judaism and ancient Mediterranean religions in the ancient and medieval world, ritual studies, and popular religion.
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Showing 6 featured editions. View all 6 editions?
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1
Scholastic Magic: Ritual and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism
2016, Princeton University Press
in English
0691634785 9780691634784
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2
Scholastic Magic: Ritual and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism
2014, Princeton University Press
in English
1306984203 9781306984201
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3
Scholastic Magic: Ritual and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism
2014, Princeton University Press
in English
1400864410 9781400864416
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4
Scholastic Magic: Ritual and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism
1996, Princeton University Press
in English
0691605912 9780691605913
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5
Scholastic magic: ritual and revelation in early Jewish mysticism
1996, Princeton University Press
in English
0691010986 9780691010984
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6
Scholastic magic: ritual and revelation inearly Jewish mysticism
1996, Princeton University Press
in English
0691010986 9780691010984
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