Two Magnes books

NEW BOOKS FROM MAGNES PRESS:

David Golan, Soldier Caesars (in Hebrew)

The Biographies of this volume comprise the concluding part of the Scriptores Historiae Augustae.
Their main subjects are the events of the Roman Empire during the years 235-284.
These were the days of the so called Illyrian Caesars on the throne of Rome. The Empire was compelled in those days to face too often and too dangerous incursions of barbarians, as well as tireless efforts of various provincials trying to free themselves from Roman mastery.
Rome was forced to recruit more and more barbarians to fill up the ranks of her soldiery and even officer staff. Rome even experienced a strong shortage of silver and gold metals to coin her Denarii and Aurei. These deficiencies revealed Rome's weakness abroad and caused disquiet and instability within the borders of the Empire.
However in spite of inflation, overtaxing and blackmailing bureaucracy the people of Israel in their country managed to continue their recovery due to the failed uprising in the century passed.

The author-editor of these biographies remains anonymous. Although on may presume he had been a fifth century Roman of the senatorial circles. The author-editor did not pretend to be a professional biography writer. Nevertheless it is clear that he had been a man of letters who made great efforts to provide a vivid and reliable account of those stormy days, the last generations of pagan Rome.

Daniel Abrams, Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory Methodologies of Textual Scholarship and Editorial Practice in the Study of Jewish Mysticism (2nd edition)

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.

Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory was first published in 2010 and is reissued in this revised edition with a new chapter:

Textual Fixity and Textual Fluidity

Kabbalistic Textuality and the Hypertexualism of Kabbalah Scholarship
1. Hypertextualism and the Study of Jewish Mysticism

2. Recent Debates on Textual Methodology in Kabbalah Research

3. Kabbalists as Literary Critics: An Undocumented History

4. Re-Editing as a Religious Imperative: A Psychological Appreciation of the Theurgic Justification of Editorial Practice

5. The Cultural Agendas and Assumptions of the Methodologies Kabbalah Scholarship

6. Epilogue: Kabbalah as Textual Process

"This book is certainly monumental, offering in its seven hundred pages a wealth of documentation and distilled argument that manages to be both comprehensive in its materials and transparent in its critical insights. It is rare indeed that a work of such formidable scholarship can actually be a pleasure to read and convincing in its elucidation of what are often extremely complex documentary circumstances and editorial traditions."
– From the foreword by David Greetham