The Sabbatean Prophets

174 Notes to Pages 3–8
8. See Raphael Patai, The Messiah Texts (New York: Avon, 1979), 247–57.
9. On all this see especially Scholem, Sabbatai àevi, 146–47. My interpretation follows
Scholem along many lines but diverges in several ways.
10. This aspect of Kabbalah has been explored particularly by Elliot Wolfson. See
Wolfson, Circle in the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), esp. chaps. 3–4. See also,
e.g., Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, trans. R. Manheim
(New York: Schocken, 1965), 106–09.
11. Coenen, Ydele verwachtinge.
12. Scholem, Sabbatai àevi, 109 n20.
13. Ibid., 113. My short interpretation of this passage follows that of Scholem
closely, though I am not as convinced as Scholem was that the dream of the
burnt penis occurred at the age of sixteen rather than six as it is reported.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., 124, 159.
16. Ibid., 161.
17. See Elliot Wolfson, “The Engenderment of Messianic Politics: Symbolic
Significance of Sabbatai àevi’s Coronation,” in Toward the Millennium, 203–58;
quotation from 246.
18. See Scholem’s provocative discussion of this matter in Sabbatai àevi, 7.
19. Ibid., passim.
20. Moshe Idel, “‘One from a Town, Two from a Clan’—The Diffusion of Lurianic
Kabbala and Sabbateanism: A Re-evaluation,” Jewish History 7:2 (1993): 79–
104. Even Scholem admits that most Jews did not know the Kabbalah of Luria.
“Luria’s name was freely used because the Lurianic legend as well as the popular
hagiography Shibhey ha-’ARI was widely known by that time, whereas
Lurianic theories were still unknown to the majority of kabbalists.” Scholem,
Sabbatai àevi, 84. It is hard to know how to fit this with Scholem’s insistence on
the centrality of Lurianic Kabbalah in all of Sabbateanism.
21. Amazingly, Scholem himself admits this as well. See Sabbatai àevi, 252.
22. See Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
(Boston: Little, Brown, 2000).
1. Messianic Prophecy in the Early Modern Context
1. The literature on this topic is enormous, but some places to start include Norman
Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium (New York: Oxford University Press,
1961); LeRoy Edwin Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, 4 vols. (Washington,
D.C.: Review and Herald, 1948); Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, 3 vols., ed.
B. McGinn, J. J. Collins, and S. J. Stein (New York: Continuum, 1998); and
Tom McIver, The End of the World: An Annotated Bibliography (Jefferson, N.C.:
McFarland, 1999).
2. Scholem, Sabbatai àevi, 8–15.
3. Moshe Idel presents a far more variegated and complex view of the messianic