Abraham Abulafia's Mystical Theology of the Divine Name and its Philosophical Revision in Walter Benjamin. Issue 1 (May 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Miller, Michael T.
• Is Part Of: Medieval mystical theology. Volume 24:Issue 1(2015)
• Page Start: 80
• Page End: 94
• Publication Date: 2015-05
• Subjects: Church history -- Middle Ages, 600-1500 -- Periodicals; Mysticism -- History -- Middle Ages, 600-1500 -- Periodicals; Mysticism -- England -- History -- Periodicals; 248.2205
• DOI: 10.1179/2046572615Z.00000000033
• Languages: German
• ISSNs: 2046-5726

Abstract

<abstract> <title> <x content-type="archive" xml:space="preserve">Abstract</x> </title> <p>The thirteenth century kabbalist Abraham Abulafia held Hebrew to be the divine language, designed by God as an ontological aspect of reality. Through meditating on and deconstructing names into their letters, one could then engage in the process of reunifying reality into the primordial Name of God, the Tetragrammaton. This paper offers an original analysis, aligning Abulafia with Walter Benjamin's writings on language wherein the world speaks itself phenomenally to human beings, who must take an active role in translating this silent speech. Here the human, as name-giver, is finalizer of reality; by translating base phenomena into named entities humanity elevates them into a new realm, beyond the merely <italic>real</italic> into the <italic>true</italic>. This epistemic-soteriological theory speaks to common speculative questions about language and the world, offering a new way of understanding how human beings can come to know the world as-it-is, and as-it-should-be; a way that is philosophical, yet based firmly in Medieval Jewish theology.</p> </abstract>