Error in Kabbalistic Manuscripts

• In Event: Error, Doubt and Anxiety in Kabbalistic Manuscripts

Abstract

One of the stated aims of kabbalistic writing is the recovery and transmission of esoteric knowledge. Statements about the truth value of the secrets uncovered in the texts preserved in kabbalistic manuscripts dot the literary landscape in many periods and regions. Are these rhetorical statements offered to buttress the importance of kabbalistic interpretations relative to other rabbinic works, or should they be taken more literally, posed against some conception of error? Kabbalistic manuscripts were copied and recopied and kabbalists took into account questions of the correct text. The kabbalists were aware, and at times reflected in writing, about errors that were introduced into either the classical texts they received or the copies of the esoteric interpretations about them that they composed. My talk will seek to advance an important topic in the field of kabbalah research by theorizing kabbalistic constructions of truth and error by analyzing examples from kabbalistic manuscripts of how kabbalists and scribes constructed the truth value of textual readings and traditions (discursively formulated ideas) about what was seen to be the proper or correct version, versus those that went beyond the pale by being destructive to the textual tradition and could thereby cause harm to the practitioner or the world above. In this discussion, philology and psychology come together as questions of certainty and doubt are brought to bear on the correct formulation of an idea and text. In my talk, I will focus on self-aware statements and attempt to periodize the various attitudes to truth and error amongst the kabbalists, including statements about the boundaries of the limits of textual and ideational pluralism since many kabbalists understood quite well that their contemporaries held alternative views.

Author

• Daniel Abrams, Bar-Ilan University