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R. Joseph Angelet and the Doctrine of Seven Cosmic Cycles: Between the Zohar and Naḥmanides's Kabbalah

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2019

Shifra Asulin*
Affiliation:
Hebrew University Shalem College

Abstract

Type
Abstract of Hebrew Article
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 2019 

The doctrine of seven cosmic cycles (torat ha-shmitot) is described in Kabbalah research as a topic of controversy between the Zoharic school and Naḥmanides's Kabbalah. The Zoharic literature in most part rejected the cyclic time concept and described a linear, progressive, and messianic notion of time. R. Joseph Angelet's unique view on the cosmic cycles has not yet received scholarly attention. In his writings, especially in Livnat ha-sapir, Angelet combines ideas and concepts from those different kabbalistic traditions on time and history, and creates a special synthetic doctrine. In this study, I attempt to scrutinize, through the perspective of the cosmic cycles, R. Joseph Angelet's Kabbalah and his place between the Zohar and the Naḥmanidean Kabbalah, as well as to reexamine the relations between the two kabbalistic schools at the first half of the fourteenth century.