New Book: Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory

NEW BOOK:

Cherub Press is proud to announce the publication of
the 26th volume in the book series, “Sources and Studies in the Literature of Jewish Mysticism”

Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory
Methodologies of Textual Scholarship and Editorial Practice in the Study of Jewish Mysticism

by Daniel Abrams
foreword by David Greetham

* * *

Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory: Methodologies of Textual Scholarship and Editorial Practice in the Study of Jewish Mysticism, by Daniel Abrams, foreword by David Greetham, SSLJM 26; 2010, 761 pp., hardcover, ISBN 1-933379-18-9, in English, $49. Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory uncovers the unstated assumptions and expectations of scribes and scholars who fashioned editions from manuscripts of Jewish mystical literature. This study offers a theory of kabbalistic textuality in which the material book – the printed page no less than handwritten manuscripts – serves as the site for textual dialogue between Jewish mystics of different periods and locations. The refashioning of the text through the process of reading and commenting that takes place on the page – in the margins and between the lines – blurs the boundaries between the traditionally defined roles of author, reader, commentator and editor. This study shows that kabbalists and academic editors reinvented the text in their own image, as part of a fluid textual process that was nothing short of transformative.

Via the Agade list.