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The name Rabbi Abraham Abulafia is familiar to those interested in Kabbalah, but few have read his numerous writings. The works of this great master have almost never been published, annotated, or translated, for several reasons:
- The variety of existing manuscripts makes it difficult to establish reliable critical text.
- The difficulty of the text itself can give rise to various interpretations.
We propose for the first time the translation of a major text by Rabbi Abraham Aboulafia: The Light of the Intellect. This book, probably composed in 1285 in Sicily, is a major text to understand the author’s Kabbalah. It describes the light of the divine Influx – the Intellect – and the way to apprehend it: the knowledge of the Name, which is first and foremost the knowledge of language. It is therefore a book on language, grammar, conjugation, letters and vowel points that allow access to the knowledge of the Divine Name and its mention – in order to receive the impulse of the Intellect.
To translate this book we had to first select the best manuscripts, and we selected two:
- The manuscript Mun. 92 . This manuscript is famous because it was transcribed by Yossef Weiss at the request of Gershom Scholem. The text contains numerous erasures and illegible characters, and some pages are missing. Here is Yossef Weiss’s explanatory note at the beginning of his transcription, a page from the manuscript, and Y. Weiss’s transcription of it.
- Manuscript Vat.233 is a higher-quality manuscript, and its reading sheds light on many of the text’s difficulties. We have therefore chosen this manuscript as our reference manuscript and compared it to the Mun. manuscript. 92.
Manuscrit Vat. 233 Écriture
Manuscrit Vat. 233 Noms
