This book examines how mysticism can tell us about translation and translation can tell us about mysticism, addressing the ancient but ongoing connections between the art of rendering one text in another language and the art of the ineffable. The volume represents the first sustained act of attention to the interdisciplinary crossover of these two fields, taking a Wittgensteinian approach to language, and investigates how mystics and their translators manage to write about what cannot be written about. Three questions are addressed overall: how mysticism can be used to conceptualise translation; the issues that mysticism raises for translation theory and practice; and how mystical texts have been and might be translated. Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Translator’s Task’ is considered in detail as a controversial example of dialogue. Translation examples are given in a range of languages, and six major case studies are provided, including a close reading of Exodus and an analysis of a recent radical translation of Lucretius. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in translation studies, mysticism studies, theology and literary translation, as well as practising translators.

The Hekhalot literature is a motley collection of textually fluid and often textually corrupt documents in Hebrew and Aramaic which deal with mystical themes pertaining especially to God's throne-chariot (the Merkavah). They were composed between late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, with roots in earlier traditions and a long and complex subsequent history of transmission. This volume presents English translations of eclectic critical texts, with a full apparatus of variants, of most of the major Hekhalot documents: Hekhalot Rabbati; Sar Torah; Hekhalot Zutarti; Ma'aseh Merkavah; Merkavah Rabba; briefer macroforms: The Chapter of R. Nehuniah ben HaQanah, The Great Seal-Fearsome Crown, Sar Panim, The Ascent of Elijah ben Avuyah, and The Youth; and the Hekhalot fragments from the Cairo Geniza.

The words of the 4th-century monastics who founded the Desert Rule

This book provides translations of the earliest Arabic autobiography and the earliest theoretical explanation of the psychic development and powers of an Islamic holy man (Saint, Friend of God).

The treatise by the Pseudo-Dionysius De Mystica Theologia was translated into Latin in the ninth century, but it had to await the first decades of the thirteenth to receive interpretation and commentary. Thomas Gallus, a member of the Victorine School at Paris, glossed the Latin version of Iohannes Sarracenus in 1233. This new, critical edition and translation are based upon all five manuscripts, two of which are recent discoveries. The commentary by Bishop Grosseteste was made at Lincoln around 1242. It was based upon his new version of the Greek text. Both are published here with a translation. These earliest Latin commentators ventured a full-scale reappropriation of the contents of The Mystical Theology. They explored the trans-conceptual ecstasy of the individual soul that passes through purification and illumination to union with God by means of an exceptional grace of divine love. Between them they provided the context which not only the later mystical theology of monastery and university but also the actual spiritual experience of countless souls was formed.

Judah Ha-Levi (1075–1141), a medieval Jewish poet, mystic, and sophisticated critic of the rationalistic tradition in Judaism, is the focus of this ground-breaking study. Diana Lobel examines his influential philosophical dialogue, Sefer ha-Kuzari, written in Arabic and later translated into Hebrew, which broke religious and philosophical convention by infusing Sufi terms for religious experience with a new Jewish theological vision. Intellectually engaging, clear, and accessible, Between Mysticism and Philosophy is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the intertwined worlds of Jewish and Islamic philosophy, religion, and culture.

This book is written with the sincere conviction that it will convey a message other than the one we have been led to accept about Biblical and other ancient texts. It may change your experience in the way you view life and the concept of God and religion, as well as your relationship with those beliefs. This book is about ancient principles contained in the Bible and many other documents inscribed long ago, such as the Nag Hammadi Library and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Words paint mental pictures that enfold in our minds, and we call this "getting answers." At times, we take these images as the only truth there is, since we can see or imagine it. We base this personally conceived truth on what we learn in life. Should we not ask ourselves: what if all this is based on falsehoods? These mental illustrations - that we call "thoughts" - are founded solely on what we have seen or read. Most of the time, we compare them, and in this fashion, we develop personal beliefs according to our choices. This practice is not specifically reserved for the individual. It spreads throughout our society, when each and every human experiences the same event or feeling, or reads a similar book. As a result, the collective mindset - sometimes called the "over mind" - now generates large-scale belief systems that, in time, we have termed as "religion." Entire nations have been known to bond in the same creed. Even when founded with the best of intentions, these systems tend to bind us as a group, with one mindset going in one direction, while offering no other alternatives. In some respects, this direction may not necessarily be the best or ideal goal toward which we can journey. It does limit us in the centuries-old matter pertaining to God or the God Head, and it affects our individual experience. It also influences what we know about the ancient teachers and prophets of long ago.