Messianic Mysticism
Isaiah Tishby
March 3, 2008 DOI: 10.3828/liverpool/9781874774099.001.0001 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis |
|---|---|
| Topics | Mysticism |
| Key points | The essays describe and annotate recovered manuscripts of Moses Hayim Luzzatto and his circle, giving full text of some prose works and all the poems, and correcting and adding detail to the incomplete picture of Luzzatto and his mystical world. Key reproduced documents include Luzzatto's version of his ketubah, or marriage contract, and the mystical diary kept by his second-in-command, Rabbi Moses David Valle, in the margins of his own Bible commentary. |
Abstract
Moses Hayim Luzzatto (1707–1746) gathered around him an inner circle of devout Jews who shared his belief in the imminent arrival of the messianic age and who privately identified members of their circle as divinely ordained to usher in the Redemption. To the rabbis of Venice and Frankfurt, however, Luzzatto was a heretic, whose claims to have written works at the dictation of a messenger from heaven could not be genuine. Under pressure from them he was obliged to withdraw a number of such works, and the manuscripts were either lost or destroyed. Yet his known works came to earn him admiration: as a literary figure among the adherents of the Enlightenment, as a great kabbalist and profound mystic by hasidim and even by some of their leading opponents, and as a great ethical teacher by all religious streams. The author of this book spent many years in the study of Luzzatto and his group, and succeeded in tracing a number of the lost manuscripts. In the essays translated in this volume, the author described and annotated the manuscripts which he found, giving the full text of some of the prose works and of all the poems. He was able to correct and add detail to the incomplete picture of Luzzatto and his mystical world. One of the most illuminating documents reproduced here is Luzzatto's version of his ketubah or marriage contract. A second key document is the personal, mystical diary which Luzzatto's second-in-command, Rabbi Moses David Valle, wrote in the margins of his own commentary on the Bible.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on mysticism, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The mystical mind: probing the biology of religious experience | 2000 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Religious and Mystical Experiences as Artifacts of Temporal Lobe Function: A General Hypothesis | 1983 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy | 1993 | Edited collection of essays | |
| Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century | 2020 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mysticism and schizophrenia: A phenomenological exploration of the structure of consciousness in the schizophrenia spectrum disorders. | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |