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

759 Pages·2011·70.2 MB·English

by  Daniel Abrams

Sources andStudiesinthe LiteratureofJewish Mysticism
editedbyDanielAbrams
26
Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory
Methodoloqies ofTextualScholarship and
EditorialPractice in the Study ofJewish Mysticism
DanielAbrams
with a forewordby
DavidGreetham
TheMagnes Press, TheHebrew University, Jerusalem
Cherub Press
Jerusalem - Los Angeles
©Copyright2010 byCherub Press
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embodiedincriticalarticlesandreviews.
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ISBN1-933379-18--9
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Contents
Forewordby David Greetham
Preface 1
Introduction 3
1 The History and DevelopmentofModern Editing Techniques
ofJewishMystical Literature 17
1. TheIllusionofDistance: EditorialPracticeintheAcademy 17
2. Early Text Editing: From the Middle Ages through the
NineteenthCentury 25
3. Gershom Scholem and Textual Scholarship in the University
Setting 28
4. NewMethodsofCritical Editing: FromScholemto Schafer 37
5. Editors and their Audiencefs): Academic, Traditional and
Popular 48
6. ComputersandthePrintedFormatofCriticalEditions 68
7. PhotographicReproductions 71
8. New Tools and Methods of Textual Scholarship of Jewish
Mystical Literature 75
9. MajorText Projects: MethodologyandCooperation 81
10. Rewritten Texts in the Early Kabbalah: Multiple Versions and
Editorial Practice 89
2 The Interpolation of Marginal Glosses: 'The Shekhinah' and
Theosophic Revisions ofEarly Manuscripts oftheBookBahir 118
1. Condensation and Displacement: The Production and Use of
Symbols 126
2. MythandSymbol: PositioningtheSubject 129
3. Misplacing Clarity: An 'Open Book' Emerging from Ashkenaz
(NotProvence) 135
4. ChoosingaMethodology: PhilologywithGender 144
5. The CurrentGenderDebate 149
6. TheShekhinaliandtheVirgin Mary 154
7. Did the Bahir Introduce Sexual Symbolism to the Jewish
Mystical Tradition? 157
8. The Erotic Language of the Book Bahir: Exegesis or
Eisegesis? 162
9. 'Shekhinah'as aTechnicalTermin theBookBahir 165
10. Righteousnessas Israel'sShekhinali (§§49-51) 169
11. The TreethatBears Fruit§8S 175
12. The 'End of the Shekhinah' (§§ 115-116): The Gendered
ContinuumofOntology 179
13. LaterGlosses andAccretionsto theManuscriptWitnesses: The
TransformationoftheText oftheBahir 183
14. From Condensationto Displacement: TheReception of Bahiric
LanguageandParablesin Thirteenth-CenturyKabbalah 186
15. Conclusion 191
16. Passages from the Bahir that Contain the Term 'Shekhinah'
Accordingto Ms. Munich 209andMs. Zurich173 193
3 The Textualization of Orality: The Reception and
InterpretationofNahmanides' KabbalisticTraditions 198
1. PreservingandInterpretingEsotericTraditionsandTexts 198
2. Nahmanides and his Stand on the Dissemination of his
Kabbalah 199
3. AHistoryoftheInterpretationsto Nahmanides''Secrets' 204
4. Transmission vs, Interpretation: Problems in Defining the
NatureofaSupercommentary 207
s.
SupercommentariesofOtherOrientations 213
6. A Complete Edition of Supercommentaries: A Tool for All
FutureScholarship 215
7. Methodological Differences and Criticism of Recent
Scholarship 218
4 The Invention oftheZoharas aBook 224
1. On the Assumptions and Expectations of the Kabbalists and
ModernScholars 224
2. ANew Appreciation ofthe SemanticField ofthe Hebrew Book
(Sefer) andthe'OpenBook' inMedievalJewish Literature 228
3. The Invention of the Zohar as a 'Book' by the Kabbalists and
theEdinaPrinceps 232
4. Moses Cordovero's Commentary to the Zohar and the
InventionoftheZoharasaCorpus 245
5. Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Manuscripts of the
Zohar 256
6. TheFirstPrintingsandEarlyReactionsto its Format 262
7. Chaptersinthe HistoriographyoftheZoharasaBook 264
Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Scholarship:
Studies Prior to Gershom Scholem: ElyaqimMilzahagi;Adolph
Franck; Adolph Jellinek; Christian David Ginsburg; Heinrich
Graetz; Dubnow;Ernst Muller;MosesGaster.
From 'The Book and its Author' to the 'Circle of the Zohar':
Academic Research From Gershom Scholem through Present
Times: Gershom Scholem; Isaiah Tishby; Steven Wald; Moshe
Idel; Yehuda Liebes; Charles Mopsik; Daniel Matt; Arthur
Green; Michal Oron; Boaz Huss; Ronit Meroz; Elliot Wolfson;
AmosGoldreich
8. The ZoharisNot aBook- NorDoes It Have an 'Author' 360
9- Suggestionsfor FutureResearchofZoharicTexts 378
10. Form and Meaning: The Limits and Legitimacy of
Interpretation 399
11. More Zoharic than [the] Zohar: The Hyper-Animation of
NarrativeFigures 411
12. The Zoharas a FamilyofLiteraryPhenomena 423
13. Is there a Zohar in This Class? The Interface between Textual
InstabilityandHermeneuticIndeterminacy 424
5 TheorizingTextual Scholarshipin Kabbalah Research 429
1. Textual Theory in Editorial Practice of Kabbalah
Scholarship 429
2. Textual Idealism: Editing 'The Text that Never Was' and The
InventionofKabbalisticBooks 444
SeferYe$ira;TheBookBahir; TheZohar; TiqquneiZohar
3. In Pursuit of the Urtext: A Central Myth that Drives Editorial
Practice 475
4- The KabbalisticFootnote:The DescentoftheMarginalGlossto
theFootofthePage 490
5. Intention and the Subject: The Kabbalists in their Own Eyes
andtheirRe/Presentationin Scholarship 509
6. AuthorialIntentionandTextualIdealism 526
7. Uncovering the Author's Personality - Text as the Object of
Study: LocalizedHermeneuticsofKabbalahResearch 534
8. ChoosingaMethodofEditorialPractice 544
9. EditorialPracticeintheFieldofJewishMysticism 555
10. Biblioqraphia Kabbalistica: The Library of Jewish Mysticism
as aScholarlyConstruct 574
11. Scholem's Letter to Bialik Revisited: New Editions and the
FutureoftheField 585
The State of the Field, 1925; Kabbalistic Genres, Major Trends
and Subspecialties of the Study of Jewish Mysticism; Graphic
Images and KabbalisticTexts;TheJuxtaposition ofText,Jewish
Magicand NewScholarlyTools
12. Kabbalistic Hypertext and the Material Book: Technological
Advancesas aChallengeto Esotericism 637
13. Conclusion 644
Bibliography 651
Index 731
ForMichaelSchneider
14.ndon His rightisMichael, thearchonover alltheholyforms'
- TheBookBahir, §77
Foreword
When I received bye-mail a letter from Daniel Abrams describing his book on
Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory I was both surprised and
intrigued. Surprised by a book on kabbalistic manuscripts having been sent to
me at all,for I could claim nogenuine expertise in the first elementofthe title;
and intrigued by seeing these manuscripts linked to 'textual theory', a topic
with which I certainly felt more comfortable and for whose enlargement and
understanding I had been arguing (perhaps with more than a touch of
messianic conviction) over several decades. Given that my agenda had been
that someform oftextual theorylaybehindthe practiceofthe critical study of
manuscripts and printed books (and then electronic texts), Abrams' having
linked kabbalisticmanuscriptsto textual theory might be seen as evidence that
mylong projectwas indeed reachingfruition. Infact, as Ibeganto read intothe
text, I saw that Abrams had indeed insisted on embedding the complex
bibliographical and textual study of these manuscripts into the various
discussions of 'theory' that I and other scholars (Jerome McGann, D. F.
McKenzie, Peter L. Shillingsburg, G. Thomas Tanselle, for example) had laid
out aswhat Ihad called a'matrix"forthepracticeofbibliographicaland textual
analysis.
The collocation of 'textual theory' and 'manuscripts' (kabbalistic or
otherwise) therefore posed a particularly complex challenge for a scholar
working primarily, though not exclusively, in the Anglo-American tradition.
Having laid out one of the principles to which Abrams' book was a response,
how effectively and accurately could I return the favour by assessing not only
the final section on 'TheorizingTextual Scholarship in Kabbalah Research' but
also by using the opportunity presentedby earlierparts ofthebook to educate
myselfin amanuscripttraditionwith which I oughtto have been more familiar,
D. C. Greetham, 'Textual and Literary Theory: Redrawing the Matrix', Studies in
1
Bibliography42 (1989),pp. 1-24. Repr. Anglo-AmericanScholarlyEditing, 1980-2005,
ed.Paul Eggert andPeterL.Shillingsburg,Ecdotica6(2009),pp. 174-197.Theuseofthe
termmatrixis,ofcourse,areferencetothe printer's'mould'forcastingtype.
ii KabbalisticManuscriptsandTextual Theory
as well as mining these sections ofthe book for examples that could prove apt
and salutary to any forthcoming work I might later undertake? Abrams' book
therefore arrived at a particularly significant moment: it allowed this Anglo
American readerto reflect on the 'theory'ofeditingandtextuality and to scour
the rich materials presented on kabbalistic manuscripts for illuminating that
'theory'.
How did this expectation work out? It should first be emphasized that, as I
take it, Abrams' purpose in that final section on 'Theorizing Textual
Scholarship' is not to present a comprehensive view of developments in this
field as a whole, but rather, working under specifically problematic or even
contentiousrubrics ('Textual Idealism',the 'Urtext','Intention andtheSubject',
'Hypertextand the Material Book'), to select from arguments addressing these
topics those that might help to bring a theoretical 'matrix' to bear on the
particular historical, documentary, and transmissional problems of the
Kabbalah.
For example, while numerous examples of the role of intention (authorial,
scribal, social) occur throughout the book, it is in that part ofthe final section
devoted to'AuthorialIntention and Textual Idealism'thatAbramscanintegrate
the earlier documentary study with several of the basic principles invoked by
contemporaryintentionalistcritics, for example, that'[tjhemeetingofauthorial
intent and textual idealism is based on a presumption of a single personality
who produces a unified work that reflects a uniform system ofthought' (651).
Whileseveral oftheterms ofthisformula ('unified', 'system ofthought') would
requireagood deal ofunpackingtodojusticetotheenormouscritical literature
in this area, I would doubt that any faction in the idealist/intentionalist
controversy would quarrel with this deftly worded summation of the
'presumption' that underlies the debate. To do this effectively,Abrams must
adopt a sort of rhetorical ventriloquism, creating locutionary space for a
position that he neither adopts nor rejects. Thus, he can go on to propose (or
rather state, in a fairly neutral tone) that '[ijt could be argued that the starting
point of such an inquiry is the cognitive experience ofthe reader who imposes
expectations on the work by fashioning the text through acts ofinterpretation'
(526), where the introductory disclaimer Citcould be argued') allows Abrams'
ventriloquism to present what is again a complex ofcritical stances ('cognitive
experience', 'expectations', 'acts ofinterpretation'), each one ofwhich might be
the focus ofwhat has often been a highly contentious debate, but which taken
cumulatively in Abrams' apparently neutral rhetoric, can be seen as an
eminentlyfair andeven-handedpresentationoftheproblem.