Confronting Kabbalah: Studies in the Christian Hebraist Library of Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter

Maximilian de Molière is an assistant researcher at the Universities of Halle and Munich who specializes in the history of the Jewish book, Kabbalah, and Digital Humanities. He obtained his Dr. phil. in Jewish History and Jewish Studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (University Munich).

• AcknowledgmentsList of FiguresList of TablesAbbreviations and Transliteration1 Introduction1 Widmanstetter’s Life and Library2 Kabbalah and Its Christian Interpreters3 Jewish Books in Christian Hands4 The Book as a Material Object2 Christian Hebraist Book Collecting in the Era of Expulsions of Jews1 Chronology of Acquisition2 Traces of Late Medieval Jewish Libraries3 Books Acquired from Private Libraries4 Booksellers and Book Agents5 The Habsburg Ambassadors in Constantinople6 Conclusion3 Coveted Kabbalah: Widmanstetter’s Collaboration with Jewish and Convert Scribes1 The Availability of Kabbalistic Books2 Editing a New Recension of the Zohar: Francesco Parnas (1536–1537)3 Compiling Kabbalistic Anthologies: Paulus Aemilius (1537–1538)4 Receiving the Manuscript of an Expert Scribe: Hayyim Gatigno (1553)5 Losing Control: Moses Gad ben Tobiah (1555)6 Conclusion4 Barrels of Books: The Care of a Christian Hebraist Library1 Protecting and Presenting: The Materiality of Christian Hebraist Books2 Writing the History of Jewish Books: Title Inscriptions3 Sorting Jewish Books into Christian Libraries4 Conclusion5 Exceeding Piety: Widmanstetter’s Hebraitas1 Writing and Translating Hebrew2 Reading the Talmud3 Wider Perspectives on Hebrew Texts4 Conclusion6 “Muhammad’s Jewish Heresies”: Reading the Quran through Kabbalistic Books1 Studying Arabic in Early Modern Europe2 Widmanstetter’s Polemic on the Quran3 Muhammad’s Alleged Jewish Sources4 Conclusion7 Revisiting Kabbalah: The Sefirotic Tree in the Syriac New Testament1 The Christian Elements of the Plate2 The Printing of the Syriac New Testament3 Guillaume Postel and Or Nerot ha-Menorah4 Widmanstetter and the Ten Sefirot5 ConclusionConclusion1 The Afterlife of the Library2 Confronting KabbalahAppendix A: Widmanstetter’s CorrespondenceAppendix B: The Books of Bomberg’s 1543 Catalog in Widmanstetter’s LibraryAppendix C: Widmanstetter’s Itinerary from 1539 to 1557Appendix D: Catalog of Widmanstetter’s Hebraist LibraryBibliographyIndex of AuthorsIndex of TitlesIndex of PlacesIndex of BindingsIndex of Previous OwnersIndex of ScribesGeneral Index