Volume 20, Number 15 · October 4, 1973
Mystery in History
By D.P. Walker
Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah
by Gershom Scholem, translated by R.J. Werblowsky
Princeton, 1040, 15 plates pp., $25.00
I must begin this review with an apology. Being unable to read Hebrew and Aramaic, I have no firsthand knowledge of the main sources of professor Scholem's book; indeed what little acquaintance I have with Jewish religious thought comes almost entirely from his other works, supported by some reading of the inadequate and mostly incomplete English and Latin translations of a few Cabalistic writings. My only excuses for writing this review are that nearly all other historians of European thought are in the same boat and that I hope I may be able at least to encourage others to read this immensely important and fascinating book. Some encouragement may be necessary, since a book a thousand pages long is daunting, and its subject is not widely known. I shall not therefore attempt to criticize it—to do so would be presumptuous and silly; and I shall concentrate on those aspects which are of particular interest to the historian of Christianity.
Review, 3582 words
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