Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism

Moshe Idel is Professor of Jewish thought at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an expert in kabbalah and recipient of the prestigious Israel Prize for excellence in the field of Jewish philosophy.

• Introduction; Chapter 1: Righteousness, Sonship, and Names in Rabbinic and Heikhalot Literature; Chapter 2: The Son [of God] in Ashkenazi Forms of Esotericism; Chapter 3: Son as an Intellectual/Eschatological Entity in Ecstatic Kabbalah; Chapter 4: The Sexualized Son of God in the Theosophical-Theurgical Kabbalah; Chapter 5: Christological and Non-Christological Sons of God in the Italian Renaissance; Chapter 6: Son of God as a Righteous in Hasidism Concluding Remarks; Appendix: Enoch the Righteous and Was There a Cult of Enoch/Metatron in the Middle Ages?; Abbreviations.

'With impressive scholarship and penetrating insight Moshe Idel, the foremost expert on Jewish mysticism, has excavated a long-neglected dimension of Jewish mysticism: the theme of divine sonship. Ranging from the Hebrew Bible to Freud and beyond, Idel's monumental work analyzes the distinctive character of Jewish mystical ideas of sonship, as well as their relation to Christian understandings of the incarnational sonship of Jesus. Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism is a tour-de-force of intellectual history, important for both the story of Jewish mysticism and for inter-religious dialogue.' Bernard McGinn, Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor Emeritus, Divinity School, University of Chicago, USA