This edited volume is reviewed with the joy and enthusiasm of a medieval disciple presented with a custom-made manuscript: a miscellany of recent works by their most learned teachers, fresh from the scriptorium. Published in 2024, Editing Kabbalistic Texts impresses through the variety of subgenres and forms of kabbalistic literature it addresses, approached from a wide range of perspectives, while consistently maintaining the central focus of the collection on methodological approaches to the production and study of editions of kabbalistic texts. What makes this collection of essays particularly relevant for students and scholars of Jewish mysticism and editorial practices in kabbalistic literature is the contributors’ engaged and intellectually honest scholarship. None of the authors attempts to gloss over or explain away the complex challenges inherent in textual editing; instead, all provide critical evaluations of the secondary literature, grounded in carefully selected case studies drawn from primary sources. This approach renders the volume valuable not only for specialists in kabbalistic texts and Jewish studies but for philologians more broadly. Indeed, Editing Kabbalistic Texts deserves a dedicated shelf mark in every university library in the Humanities.
The volume opens with three chapters that clarify methodological conundrums and discuss the most appropriate types of scholarly editions for kabbalistic texts. The next three chapters present further case studies, situating kabbalistic texts within their historical contexts of transmission and reception. Two additional contributions address the Christian reception of Kabbalah, illustrating how theological reinterpretations can shape editorial decisions. The volume’s two final chapters shift attention to less commonly discussed issues, such as the influence of archival practices on textual transmission, and the circulation of kabbalistic knowledge through letters.
The volume opens with Daniel Abrams’ eighty-page incursion into the history of kabbalistic text editing. His reflections on scholarly editorial practices go well beyond the dos and don’ts of textual scholarship. Abrams extends his inquiry to scribal practices, the implications of the printed press for textual reception and transmission, 20th-century scholarship on the Kabbalah and its present echoes, and the political and pragmatic (funding-related) ramifications of these processes. The chapter ‘Why Editions? And Other Uncomfortable Questions for Kabbalah Scholarship’ is structured around a series of pitfalls that Abrams has noted in the production of contemporary editions of kabbalistic texts.
In Abrams’ view, pre-determined assumptions about the medieval scribe’s work – the practising kabbalist himself – shaped scholarly editorial practices that gave rise to the notion of the ‘kabbalistic text’. This sharp observation stems from a vast corpus of literature reviewed by the author, which goes beyond the texts themselves into the social history of kabbalistic groups, knowledge transmission, and power dynamics. Abrams presumes that, to many scholarly text editors, it is not immediately obvious that the production of texts was largely a circumstantial by-product of lived traditions within restricted kabbalistic circles. By referring to the different hermeneutical goals of the scribe–kabbalist and the modern scholar (11), Abrams draws attention to contemporary fallacies in the quest for the most complete, appropriate, or telling witness of a textual unit. This ‘romanticism of recovery’ (38) fails to consider the mechanisms at play in the production of medieval assemblages, which became miscellanea with the printing press and texts with 20th-century academic editions. Abrams also rightly calls into question the centrality of texts themselves in mystical movements, where written evidence can be residual to performative acts, mystical experiences, and reports thereof. He observes that manuscript transmission of kabbalistic texts is not a product of duplication for the sake of ‘textual continuity of a tradition’ (9) but rather a form of ‘loose reception’ (11) in oral contexts or scribal attempts to construct authority through ‘envisaged discipleship’ (74–75). Abrams contends that modern-day editions often fail to historicise textual content, with consequences for how these texts are received in contemporary scholarship. This, in turn, leads to textual canonicity which equals to ‘acts of political and cultural power’ (63).
One might question whether anxieties about Western cultural hegemony are productively translated into self-awareness regarding one’s academic position in relation to the studied communities. Rather than fostering such self-reflection, these anxieties may instead delegitimise intellectual curiosity as a valid motivation for editing kabbalistic texts, dismissing it as an act of power from the part of the scholar precisely because it can never fully align with an emic approach to mystical traditions.1 Puzzling is also the insistence that modern academics would conflate – even unintentionally – their scholarly goals with those of the practising mystic. While this is an invitation to raise awareness of academic limitations when studying mystical movements, scholars have, in fact, produced a series of prolegomena, articles, and books justifying their approaches and methods for editing mystical texts.2 The volume reviewed here is the most poignant effort in this regard, and the progress made by 21st century scholarship can hardly be discounted, despite the inherent difficulties in rendering obscure texts with complicated transmission histories in formats more accessible to contemporary scholars.
However, the implications of textual canonisation pointed out by Abrams do stand, and the rich examples that substantiate his claims represent a welcome preamble to the solutions he suggests for addressing the shortcomings of critical editions. Abrams proposes editorial practices grounded in ‘a literary theory of kabbalistic textuality’ (37) and ‘a history of reading kabbalistic texts’ (26). In this respect, his contribution is an intellectually honest and academically grounded plea for engagement with kabbalistic literature beyond the pragmatic selection of texts deemed worthy of scholarly edition. The chapter invites a dialogue with the process of textual transmission, describing scholarly editions as ‘opportunities for the editor to flag the volatile moments in a text’ (77). Considering this quote, it is surprising that the potential of digital editions to facilitate such aims has not been discussed in this chapter. Nevertheless, Daniel Abrams’ contribution in this volume will remain essential reading in the field of textual criticism and the study of mystical literatures more broadly.
In the next chapter, ‘The One and the Many: The Structure and Versions of Keter Shem Tov According to the New Synoptic Edition with a Special Focus on MS Jerusalem, NLI, 8° 541’, Gerold Necker and Bill Rebiger exemplify precisely what Daniel Abrams meant by the treatment of medieval kabbalistic treatises as assemblages. In an admirably concise fashion, the authors explain the rationale for editing Keter Shem Tov (henceforth KST) and their understanding of this text’s unit after collating more than 100 manuscript witnesses. Necker and Rebiger identify five versions of KST in their corpus, based on the redaction history of the textual unit, which appears to have been compiled in thirteenth–century Catalonia from six initially independent units. The loose identification of five versions of the work relies on the presence, absence, or order of the six textual units in KST copies; paratextual and visual elements, such as diagrams or permutation tables, are also considered in the analysis. In this respect, Necker and Rebiger demonstrate their extensive engagement with codicological aspects, ‘a turn to material philology’ endorsed by Abrams already in the early 1990s.3
In the second part of the chapter, they reevaluate Scholem’s understanding of the KST corpus, which relied heavily on a handful of manuscripts. Hence, Necker and Rebiger imply, there is a necessity for a digital edition that would ‘build a network of key concepts’ (94) to describe the building blocks of such a complex text as KST, including all the textual units found independently in the broader kabbalistic literature. In this respect, digital tools help visualise ‘the relationships of different “hubs” in such a network’ (94), alongside a synoptic edition. Necker’s and Rebiger’s contribution encapsulates the ideal case study for all the methodological issues highlighted by Abrams in the first chapter, which are characteristic of the kabbalistic genre: the redaction history from assemblage to text, modern text editions, methods and tools for collating information from a large corpus, scribal practices, and the transmission of knowledge in pre–modern book history. The authors conclude that ‘the ideal starting point’ is ‘a synoptic edition as part of an expandable database’ (94).
Marcus Pöckelmann works towards implementing this idea digitally. In the chapter immediately following, he considers solutions to the methodological difficulties posed by a large number of variants. The chapter, ‘Extensions of the Digital Collation Tool LERA for the Scholarly Edition of Keter Shem Tov’, introduces the functionalities of digital tools for collating witnesses into digital editions. It begins by highlighting key points in digital humanities research, notably the aim to create editions as complete as possible. This goal is now achievable digitally in ways impossible with analogue editions. Pöckelmann rightly notes the increasingly fuzzy boundaries between editor and reader in digital editions. This brief introduction, worthy of further expansion, is followed by a discussion of the technical challenges of producing a digital synoptic edition in Hebrew. The non–Latin alphabet and right–to–left writing direction are addressed through modifications to the web–based collation tool LERA, which allows manuscript data to be collated by textual segments for each witness. The corpus synopsis presents the same textual segments of the work in multiple witnesses. Force–directed graphs (108), while well explained, do not fully achieve their intended goal of clustering closely related witnesses, and their configuration may distract from the initial editorial aims. Pöckelmann’s contribution, as a digital humanities scholar, is valuable while also highlighting internal discontinuities in editing a peculiar genre – Kabbalah – in a lesser-taught language – Hebrew – in the digital age.
Noteworthy is also Pöckelmann’s implicit proposal for new terminology, such as ‘hybrid scholarly edition’ (96), which, from the context and Necker and Rebiger’s chapter, appears to refer to a print synoptic edition of KST, accompanied by a digital edition. This is the only reference to hybrid editions in the volume, a topic that deserves more attention. It is unclear what the hybrid edition entails – one might assume a simultaneous digital and analogue edition, each serving distinct purposes, yet several pages later, Pöckelmann implies that identifying different textual versions (perhaps the five versions mentioned by Necker and Rebiger) aims to create ‘similar textual witnesses – in order to make a (print) edition possible at all’ (101). Consequently, it is difficult to determine whether LERA was developed primarily for producing a detailed print synoptic edition or to assist in identifying the ‘different versions’, which Necker and Rebiger appear to have determined philologically without digital aid.
Questions remain about the relationship between print and digital editions: how they complement each other, and how scholars should cite them concurrently. The goals, use, and integration of non–philologians’ work, most notably computer scientists, in hybrid editions should be clarified. Otherwise, digital editions risk producing an intensified form of ‘digital hegemony’ (if we adopt Abrams’ vocabulary) – a type of cultural hegemony in which each user of a digital edition generates their own version of a text without fully understanding the collation processes or LERA’s methodology, let alone the variant or the historical dynamics involved in its transmission. Interestingly enough, this mirrors the rhizomatic transmission of knowledge in medieval kabbalistic circles. While the threat of radical deconstruction should not be downplayed, personalised editions can be a valid option, provided that all participants are aligned with the project’s methodology. Cross–references in the volume between Pöckelmann and Necker and Rebiger could have helped raise these questions; however, the absence of such cross–references is paradigmatic for the work dynamics in the field of digital humanities more broadly.4
The following three chapters shift the focus from the modern case study of textual editions to a historical overview of medieval and early modern editions of kabbalistic texts in their reception contexts. Na‘ama Ben–Shachar’s extensive chapter, ‘The Reception of Early Kabbalistic Sources in Ashkenaz: Rabbi Menaḥem, the Student of Rabbi Eleazar of Worms’, illustrates how sefirotic Kabbalah was adopted into what she calls ‘Ashkenazi thought’ (what Abulafia would term קבלת השמות – ‘Kabbalah of the Names’).5 In the first part of the chapter, Ben-Shachar offers a clear and concise evaluation of the most relevant modern scholarship on the origins of Kabbalah in Ashkenaz. She classifies the types of kabbalistic works circulating in the Ashkenazi milieu alongside the recensions of Sefer ha-Bahir found in that context. She also points to desiderata in the study of Ashkenazi Kabbalah, including its emergence within Ashkenazi culture, its role in shaping Ashkenazi thought, and the fourteenth-century literary activity of kabbalistic figures connected to Ashkenaz but active elsewhere (115–16). This succinct introduction provides a solid foundation for understanding the Ashkenazi kabbalistic corpus.
The chapter is then divided into three sections and a conclusion tracing the figure of Rabbi Menaḥem and his work. Ben-Shachar convincingly argues that Rabbi Menaḥem was a student of Rabbi Eleazar of Worms, contrary to other scholarly hypotheses. She suggests that Rabbi Menaḥem, to whom two kabbalistic works are attributed, brought together sefirotic Kabbalah and the Kabbalah of the Names, which she defines as ‘esoteric traditions concerning the letters of the alphabet’ (119). She situates these practices within Ashkenazi techniques such as ‘gematria calculations in the Ashkenazi style’ and acronyms characteristic of the German Pietists (120). The second part examines the relationship between Divrei Menaḥem and KST, advancing the hypothesis that Divrei Menaḥem was originally an independent work later incorporated into KST (124–25). The (inter)textual analysis presents Divrei Menaḥem as what Abrams would call an assemblage: a commentary on the seventy-two-letter name that integrates gematric, geometric-astronomical, and kabbalistic interpretive methods. Ben-Shachar concludes by suggesting lines of transmission from Ashkenaz to other Jewish cultural regions and raises pertinent historical questions concerning the author’s relationship to Rabbi Eleazar of Worms, the place of redaction, and the treatise’s departures from earlier kabbalistic traditions.
A valuable complement to the chapter is the appendix – written entirely in Hebrew – which briefly outlines textual variants and differences among the witnesses of Divrei Menaḥem, followed by an outline of the corpus and a critical edition of the text. The edition is based on a lead manuscript and includes an apparatus presenting salient variants, allowing readers to assess differences and reconstruct manuscript families. While the edition would benefit from a more streamlined apparatus to avoid repetitive formulations in the footnotes, the chapter makes a significant contribution to the study of Kabbalah and its subgenres.
The next chapter, ‘Editing Commentaries on the Ten Sefirot: An Example of a Commentary on the Left Emanation’ complements the discussion of kabbalistic subgenres by bringing into focus the history of redaction of a lesser-known sixteenth-century Sephardic commentary on the sefirot. Through this case study, Tzahi Weiss and Na‘ama Ben-Shachar set out to demonstrate the extent of intertextuality among the building blocks of sefirotic commentaries, arguing that the degree of interdependence between such works is much higher than has previously been assumed, and that significant overlaps between different commentaries have therefore gone unnoticed. Their analysis centres on a commentary entitled The Ten Sefirot and their Opposites, which they identify in a number of kabbalistic manuscripts in order to trace its redaction history. By examining textual units that combine different perspectives on the ten sefirot, Weiss and Ben-Shachar identify variants reflecting distinct kabbalistic readings of earlier works, finding affinities with Gikatilla’s ideas in one variant and with Moses of Burgos in another. They then trace the transmission of the latter variant across generations, into the work of Joseph ibn Waqar and further along the chronological line into an adaptation by Samuel ibn Motot. This precise generational lineage is reconstructed through the analysis of textual variations generally considered minor, and through their evaluation within a broader literary corpus that extends beyond the editing of a single text. This chapter, too, demonstrates that the historical investigation of kabbalistic works belonging to the same subgenre or intellectual current is not only relevant but an essential step in the production of critical editions. In this sense, the chapter implicitly substantiates Abrams’ claims concerning authorship, discipleship, and material dissemination in medieval kabbalistic circles.
Avishai Bar-Asher makes a welcome contribution to this volume through his focus on the Zoharic corpus. ‘Emendation, Editing, Elucidation: Preliminary Remarks on the Historical Editing of Zoharic Texts’ stands out as a valuable synthesis of the status quaestionis in the editing of the Zohar in several respects. Not only does Bar Asher provide an overview of modern scholarship on this corpus but also classifies editorial methodologies according to overarching principles: higher criticism, lower criticism, and language reception. While the first two approaches deal with the organisation of textual units and their comparison, respectively, the third – focused on language reception – has not been the subject of extensive study. Bar-Asher reminds us of the medieval revival and popularisation of Aramaic as a scholarly language, with all the complications entailed by the transposition from the more natural Hebrew to an artificially revitalised Aramaic.
The chapter rightly notes that scholarship on the linguistic aspects of the Zoharic corpus has overly relied on witnesses contemporary with or later than the printed editions. The fallacy of this ‘reductive approach’ (177) lies in the assumption that the Zohar constitutes a uniform work, which in turn leads to an insufficient appraisal of textual variants. By refocusing on the earliest witnesses, Bar-Asher uses two case studies to demonstrate that a more productive synoptic comparison of smaller textual units can reveal emendations resulting from censorship as well as problematic translations from Hebrew into Aramaic. The chapter also proposes synoptic solutions for particularly opaque Zoharic units, such as the invented apocryphon ‘The Book of King Solomon’, which survives in divergent versions across witnesses. Bar-Asher considers several factors behind omissions and emendations, including scribal interpretation, palaeographic misreading, and alternative understandings of the systematised Aramaic employed.
Although the analysis in the second section of the chapter feels speculative at times, the third section illustrates more convincingly the Aramaic fragments doubled by Hebrew renderings (and/or vice-versa!). Bar-Asher shows how different renderings of the same Zoharic unit reflect distinct schools of thought and differing approaches to linguistic transfer, a process that frequently confronts modern readers of parallel versions with interpretative difficulties. Finally, Bar-Asher argues for renewed attention to manuscript witnesses in order to situate each variant within its historical context. He endorses digital synoptic editions as a promising means of advancing the study of Zoharic literature, even though explicit references to existing attempts at such editions remain absent. The chapter thus functions as a valuable prolegomenon to future digital editions of Zoharic texts, albeit implicitly.
The following two chapters in the edited volume bring into focus Christian interest in kabbalistic texts and the ways in which it affected the redaction, transmission, and interpretation of Kabbalah at the beginning of the Renaissance. Emma Abate’s and Bill Rebiger’s chapter, entitled ‘The Christian Reception of Keter Shem Tov: Egidio da Viterbo’s Annotations in MS London, British Library, Harley 5510’, examines Egidio da Viterbo’s reading of a specific manuscript version of KST. MS Harley 5510, the manuscript in question, is analysed in relation to other comparable witnesses, with attention paid to both its contents and its paracontent, including annotations by other users and owners. An introduction to Egidio da Viterbo’s intellectual activity, interests, and Hebraica collection is followed by a detailed palaeographic analysis of his handwriting across several manuscripts. Once the corpus of manuscripts owned by Egidio da Viterbo is established on palaeographic grounds, Abate and Rebiger identify the main Christian tenets as aligned with the sefirot in the cardinal’s thought. These associations are reflected in the idiosyncratic and ‘stenographic’ (197) marginal notes that Egidio added to the manuscripts, often as aide-mémoire. The chapter thus proves particularly valuable in tracing patterns of transmission of kabbalistic ideas between religious communities – not through Hebrew textual reproduction, but through autodidactic Latin syntheses.
Elke Morlok’s contribution fits particularly well within this section. Her foray into Christian Kabbalah is valuable in several respects. First, it offers a succinct yet clear account of the programmatic goals that shaped Christian definitions of and approaches to Kabbalah. Morlok argues that the Christian kabbalistic canon did not fully coincide with Jewish conceptions of kabbalistic material. At the same time, the programmatic uses of a specifically Christian kabbalistic corpus, whether apologetic, missionary, pedagogical, or at times even polemical within intra-Christian debates, prompted distinctive redactions and editions of kabbalistic texts. Second, the chapter examines two case studies – Christian Knorr’s Messias Puer and Gottfried Sommer’s Specimen theologicae soharicae – to trace the transmission of Christian kabbalistic works from manuscript to print. Morlok’s palaeographic and codicological analysis of the manuscript witnesses weaves a historical narrative of authorial involvement in the re-editing and printing of their own works and showcases the need for digital editions capable of displaying paratextual elements that are difficult to accommodate in printed formats. Her plea for a digital approach to the scholarly editing of Christian kabbalistic texts is further substantiated by her demonstration of how these works were used to promote Christian dogmatic theology and, concomitantly, to construct a unifying bridge between Christians and Jews. One is left to ponder whether the format of the digital edition of KST in Hebrew could be adapted for bilingual works, as is the case of the Christian Kabbalah works presented by Morlok, and what additional challenges this might pose from a purely technical perspective.
Agata Paluch’s chapter impresses through her reflection on scholarly work in manuscript studies in the digital age. ‘On Loss and Recovery: Manuscript Remediations, Digital Simulacra, and the Conditions of Kabbalistic Material Text’ expands the inquiry to the broader issues of digitised archival records, academic interaction with digital manuscript images, and shifts in scholarly narratives about the past in light of digital approaches to materiality. Paluch’s critical analysis of reproductions of written materials on microfilm and, later, as digital images on databases underscores that ‘methods and tools possess a significance’ (223). Their implementation often reflected political concerns regarding the preservation of culturally significant materials, while their accessibility and low cost encouraged researchers to study microfilms and manuscript images rather than the original manuscripts themselves. Paluch argues that overreliance on digital reproductions has left a lasting imprint on manuscript studies, often divorcing intrinsic material features from the texts they present. She also cautions against equating high-quality colour images of manuscripts with primary sources, emphasising that they are themselves ‘already a result of layered interpretative decisions’ (230).
Alongside her attention to the loss of sensory complexity when working with digital images, Paluch highlights how philological terminology, ‘along the lines of agnate relationships’ (242), is grounded in a heteronormative paradigm. Applied to the study of textual transmission, such terminology risks obscuring the more complex interactions between text and material features. Her analysis of the ‘deluxe but mass-produced handwritten books’ of Ets Hayyim in eighteenth-century East-Central Europe illustrates this point: stable variants of the unannotated text, adorned with high-end decorative elements (in the Ashkenazi style of the time), survive in pristine condition as collectibles, having never served as objects of personal or communal study. The chapter also merits praise for its thorough exposition of the scholarly literature on archives, book history, and digitisation, presenting a critical status quaestionis successfully applied to the study of lesser–known uses of kabbalistic manuscripts.
The final contribution in the volume directs attention to a broadly overlooked genre of kabbalistic texts: letters. In a welcome enquiry into epistolary studies, Gerold Necker provides a critical bibliography on letter-writing and their role in the transmission and reproduction of kabbalistic knowledge. Stressing the function of letters in legitimising esoteric knowledge within the circles that produced and consumed kabbalistic literature, Necker focuses specifically on Moses Zacuto’s letters, preserved in both manuscript form and eighteenth-century printed editions. The chapter ‘The Author, the Reader, Their Text, and Its Editor: The Case of R. Moses Zacuto’s Kabbalistic Correspondence’ engages with the figures involved in the edition and re-edition of Zacuto’s letters. Necker reminds of the editor of the editio princeps, who also held collectanea of letters in manuscript form, and thus reveals the tensions between authorial, editorial, and readership uses of letters containing practical kabbalistic guidance. The chapter highlights, for example, how Zacuto’s 1671 letter responding to Benjamin Kohen’s query on the circumcision ceremony in relation to Adam Yashar eventually entered Pinaqsei Mohel (community circumcision registers) after several stages of transmission. Although Zacuto’s letters retain the stylistic features of the epistolary genre, when edited alongside other texts, they become part of pedagogical literature, functioning as exegetical commentary, authoritative advice, and philological glosses. In two final appendices, Necker shows the need for future editions conceived as ‘dynamic and expandable databases’ (264). The fact that his edition of the Hebrew texts is accompanied by explanatory notes on text layout and intertextuality illustrates the need for digital tools capable of integrating similar textual units across genres to clarify the multifaceted ways in which kabbalistic knowledge was transmitted in the early modern period.Haut du formulaire
Overall, this volume serves as an excellent companion for scholars in Jewish Studies, textual criticism, and the study of mysticism beyond Judaism. At this point, the novice can only sigh at not having had the opportunity, as a student, to encounter such a rich bibliographic engagement and critical appraisal of the topic, while readily recommending the volume to newcomers to the field as well as to those already resharpening their methodological tools.
Abrams never uses the term ‘emic’ in his chapter – it does seem, however, that his understanding of the scholar’s versus the ‘practitioner’s’ transmission of a kabbalistic work is considered in juxtaposition, very much like the distinction between emic/etic, insider/outsider. The importance of both points of view in academic endeavours to ‘translate’ other cultural or historical concepts has been highlighted especially in Headland, Pike, and Harris, Emics and Etics, esp. 133 ff.⬑
Going beyond strictly kabbalistic treatises, there is valuable academic literature that attempts to address the conundrums mentioned by Daniel Abrams in this chapter. Rebiger, ‘Zur Redaktionsgeschichte des Sefer Razi’el ha–Mal’akh’, 1–22 addresses precisely the transmission, in both manuscript and print, of a work composed of building blocks whose scholastic uses are complemented by their amuletic repurposing. Leicht, Astrologumena Judaica is another fitting example of a sound understanding of textual blocks at the intersection of mystical, magical, and astrological Jewish traditions, based on a close analysis of manuscript witnesses. To mention yet another work – this time in the field of Christian Kabbalah in the Renaissance – Campanini, Four Short Kabbalistic Treatises deals primarily with a single Latin manuscript but does so with a deep awareness of the dynamics of reception surrounding the texts he edits, from the Renaissance through the twentieth century.⬑
Abrams, ‘Prolegomenon to a New Edition of the Book Bahir’, 131–62.⬑
Despite the inherent advantages of digital humanities projects created by eclectic teams, the overall impression is that the methodological understanding and goals of computer scientists and philologists often do not overlap sufficiently in such collaborations. It is enough to compare the conception of scholarly editions presented in this volume with that of digital humanists O’Sullivan and Pidd, ‘The Born–Digital in Future Digital Scholarly Editing and Publishing’. At the same time, the distinction between a digitised edition and a ‘born–digital’ edition offers valuable insight for the future production of scholarly editions from the perspective of computer scientists. Similarly, the epistemological shift entailed by the production of digital editions, while addressing potential solutions to challenges posed by large, fluctuating corpora, renders the treatment of Kabbalistic texts as data strings still a largely unfamiliar territory for philologists. See Cugliana et al., ‘Computational Approaches and the Epistemology of Scholarly Editing’.⬑
While the idea of ‘Kabbalah of the Names’ is absent from the volume, and the phrase itself can be contested in the academic literature, its use by Abrams Abulafia remains descriptive of the type of hermeneutics behind the treatises who made it in this textual subgroup. See especially Idel, Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia.⬑
Abrams, Daniel. ‘Prolegomenon to a New Edition of the Book Bahir – Editorial Practice in the Presentation of Ms. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek 209: An Essay on Method’. Journal for the Study of Mystical Texts (2020): 131–62.
Campanini, Saverio, ed. Four Short Kabbalistic Treatises: Aser ben David, Perus Sem ha–Meforas; Isaac ben Jacob ha–Kohen, ’Inyan Gadol; Two Commentaries on the Ten Sefirot. The Kabbalistic Library of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola 6. FPBP–Fondazione Palazzo Bondoni Pastorio, 2019.
Cugliana, Elena, Alastair Ward, Joris J. van Zundert, et al. ‘Computational Approaches and the Epistemology of Scholarly Editing’. International Journal of Digital Humanities 6 (2024): 169–88.
Headland, Thomas N., Kenneth L. Pike, and Marvin Harris, eds. Emics and Etics: The Insider/Outsider Debate: Symposium, 87th Annual Meeting: Selected Papers and Discussions. Sage Publications, 1990.
Idel, Moshe. Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia. Translated by Menahem Kallus. SUNY Series in Judaica: Hermeneutics, Mysticism and Religion. State University of New York Press, 1989.
Leicht, Reimund. Astrologumena Judaica: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der astrologischen Literatur der Juden. Texts and Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Judaism 21. Mohr Siebeck, 2006.
O’Sullivan, James, and Michael Pidd. “The Born–Digital in Future Digital Scholarly Editing and Publishing.” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 10 (2023): Article 930.
Rebiger, Bill. “Zur Redaktionsgeschichte des Sefer Razi’el ha–Mal’akh.” Frankfurter Judaistische Beiträge 32 (2005): 1–22.