Description
Book SynopsisHow did medieval Jewish scholars, from Saadia Gaon to Rabbi Isaac Abarbanel, imagine a world that has experienced salvation? Is the Messianic reality identical to our current world, or is it a new world entirely? This work explores how a rationalist can remain calm in light of the seductive promises of the various apocalyptic teachings of Antiquity regarding the Messianic world. This book deals with the encounter between thinking based on pure reason, on the one hand, and the imagination seeking a vision of the future, on the other. The tension between a naturalistic approach and an apocalyptic approach to the history of the messianic idea--which is fundamental to this history of Jewish philosophy in the Middle Age--is surveyed here expansively, relying on dozens of print sources as well as manuscripts
Trade Review“Dov Schwartz is undeniably one of the most prolific, wide-ranging, and profound scholars of medieval Jewish philosophy and modern Jewish thought active today. In 1997 he published in Hebrew a ground-breaking study on the history of an idea: messianism among medieval Jewish theologians. That work remains unsurpassed today and its appearance in English, in an elegant translation by Batya Stein, is greatly to be welcomed. No one before Schwartz, and no one since, has sought to follow the permutations of the messianic idea (as Gershom Scholem famously called it) from R. Sa’adia Gaon through Don Isaac Abravanel. Given the salience of messianism in contemporary Judaism, be it in Habad circles or among (Orthodox) religious Zionists (about whom Schwartz has also written several influential works), this important study proves itself to be of great contemporary relevance.” -- Menachem Kellner, Shalem College, Jerusalem; University of Haifa (Emeritus), author of
Science in the Bet Midrash: Studies in Maimonides and
Torah in the Observatory: Gersonides, Maimonides, Song of SongsTable of Contents
- Preface
- Chapter One: Methodological Introduction
- Chapter Two: Apocalyptic Messianism in a Rationalist Garb
- Chapter Three: Individual Redemption and Naturalism
- Chapter Four: The Resurgence of Apocalyptic Messianism
- Chapter Five: The Decline of Collective Naturalism
- Chapter Six: Between Naturalism and Apocalyptic Messianism
- Chapter Seven: Clarifying Positions: The Last Stage
- Chapter Eight: Conclusions: Redemption, Models, and Decisions
- Appendix: History, Ideas, and the History of Ideas
- Bibliography
- Index
