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Scholastic magic : ritual and revelation in early Jewish mysticism
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Scholastic magic : ritual and revelation in early Jewish mysticism

Author: Michael D Swartz
Publisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, ©1996.
Edition/Format:   Book : EnglishView all editions and formats
Summary:
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
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Details

Genre/Form: Prayers and devotions
Material Type: Internet resource
Document Type: Book, Internet Resource
All Authors / Contributors: Michael D Swartz
ISBN: 0691010986 9780691010984
OCLC Number: 34547002
Description: x, 263 p. ; 25 cm.
Contents: Ch. 1. Mentalities of Ancient Judaism --
Ch. 2. Memory, Torah, and Magic --
Ch. 3. The Texts --
Ch. 4. Sar-Torah Narratives: Translation and Analysis --
Ch. 5. Sar-Torah Rituals and Related Texts --
Ch. 6. Ritual and Purity --
Ch. 7. Tradition and Authority --
Ch. 8. Scholastic Magic.
Responsibility: Michael D. Swartz.
More information:

Abstract:

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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