The Transcendent Beloved: Platonic Eros and Its Graeco-Arabic Paths to Kabbalah

Platonism and Kabbalah share a prominent characteristic: the formulation of epistemological and ontological concepts in erotic terms.Plato envisions eros as creating and sustaining the permeability of the boundaries between the earthly and the divine.This motif accompanies the theme of love in philosophical and mystical writings from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, presupposing that true love always points to its divine, transcendent source.The exuberant religious language of Plato's eros, carried on by Plotinus, facilitates its adoption into Islamic and Jewish devotional systems. The Transcendent Beloved traces the course of Platonic and Neoplatonic concepts of eros as they shaped major patterns in medieval Islamic and Jewish thought.It shows the impact of the ancient Greek heritage on Arabic and Hebrew writings, culminating in the profound expression of the language of eros in the Zohar, the pre-eminent work of Jewish mysticism.Tanja Werthmann's study thus positions the rise of medieva