On the Art of the Kabbalah/De Arte Cabalistica

Rating:
Summary: Valuable edition of a seminal work
Review: Johannes Reuchlin (1455-1522) wrote _De arte cabalistica_ (1517) as a kind of synthesis of his Kabbalistic thought. It is constructed in the form of a conversation among three thinkers, the most important being Simon, the Jewish explicator of Kabbalah. This work is in a sense a sequel to Reuchlin's _De verbo mirifico_ [On the wonder-working word], but focuses almost entirely on the Kabbalistic side of things.

As an introduction to Kabbalah in an ordinary sense, the text is not particularly useful, since Reuchlin has his own somewhat idiosyncratic spin on what is most important. As an introduction to Christian Kabbalah, however, it is a seminal work, and along with _De verbo mirifico_ and Pico's _900 Theses_ required reading. Reuchlin's opinions probably did more than anything else to encourage the spread of Jewish mystical thought into the Christian West, and this is one of the books at the heart of that movement.

The edition is useful, including both an English translation and a facsimile of the Latin text. Unfortunately the layout is poor, so that the translation often ends up several pages off from the Latin, preventing direct comparison. The translation itself is good, although it would be improved by more scholarly apparatus and notes, which are conspicuously thin. Fortunately the volume is inexpensive, which makes up for quite a bit.

A decent library of early modern occult thought should have this book. The modern practitioner will not, I suspect, find it terribly useful, nor will those interested primarily in Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah. The principal value of the book is that it makes available a text which greatly influenced later Christian occult thinkers, notably Agrippa, Dee, Bruno, Fludd, and others.

Rating:
Summary: Valuable edition of a seminal work
Review: Johannes Reuchlin (1455-1522) wrote _De arte cabalistica_ (1517) as a kind of synthesis of his Kabbalistic thought. It is constructed in the form of a conversation among three thinkers, the most important being Simon, the Jewish explicator of Kabbalah. This work is in a sense a sequel to Reuchlin's _De verbo mirifico_ [On the wonder-working word], but focuses almost entirely on the Kabbalistic side of things.

As an introduction to Kabbalah in an ordinary sense, the text is not particularly useful, since Reuchlin has his own somewhat idiosyncratic spin on what is most important. As an introduction to Christian Kabbalah, however, it is a seminal work, and along with _De verbo mirifico_ and Pico's _900 Theses_ required reading. Reuchlin's opinions probably did more than anything else to encourage the spread of Jewish mystical thought into the Christian West, and this is one of the books at the heart of that movement.

The edition is useful, including both an English translation and a facsimile of the Latin text. Unfortunately the layout is poor, so that the translation often ends up several pages off from the Latin, preventing direct comparison. The translation itself is good, although it would be improved by more scholarly apparatus and notes, which are conspicuously thin. Fortunately the volume is inexpensive, which makes up for quite a bit.

A decent library of early modern occult thought should have this book. The modern practitioner will not, I suspect, find it terribly useful, nor will those interested primarily in Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah. The principal value of the book is that it makes available a text which greatly influenced later Christian occult thinkers, notably Agrippa, Dee, Bruno, Fludd, and others.

Rating:
Summary: An important text of Christian Cabala...
Review: Reuchlin was one of the first Christian authors to attempt to make the Jewish Kabbalah accessible to a Latin-reading audience. The publishers of this work are to be thanked for printing such a classic.

However, this edition is not without its faults. As others have noted, there is no scholarly apparatus, which would have helped the reader make sense of what admittedly is a difficult text. The format of the text on the page is poor (although the Latin pages seem to be reproducing the pages from the first printed edition, so for that half of the book, the formatting is excuseable). I find the English translation to be idiosyncratic, and just plain erroneous in points. Fortunately, with the Latin right there, these mistakes are not that difficult to spot.

But for someone willing to put up with these problems, this edition of Reuchlin's work can be a helpful entre into the world of Christian Cabala.