Alan Brill interviews Professor Fishbane on his new book, The Art of Mystical Narrative: A Poetics of the Zohar (Oxford University Press, 2018). There is also a survey of recent scholarship on the Zohar. Excerpt from the long interview:
12) If this is the Zohar, then why read Zohar instead of Lord of Rings, Harry Potter, or Game of Thrones?I noted a panel discussion on the book here. And for many, many past posts on the Zohar, start there and follow the links. Cross-file under Zohar Watch.
Certainly, it is a unique literary world unto itself, which is not reducible to these later instances of fantastic storytelling. But it does share certain features with the magical classics you mention here, the creation of a paranormal universe in which characters are transported beyond the bounds of our normal expectations within natural law.
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