Gershom Scholem stands out among modern thinkers for the richness and power of his historical imagination. A work widely esteemed as his magnum opus, Sabbatai ?evi offers a vividly detailed account of the only messianic movement ever to engulf the entire Jewish world. Sabbatai ?evi was an obscure kabbalist rabbi of seventeenth-century Turkey who aroused a fervent following that spread over the Jewish world after he declared himself to be the Messiah. The movement suffered a severe blow when ?evi was forced to convert to Islam, but a clandestine sect survived. A monumental and revisionary work of Jewish historiography, Sabbatai ?evi details ?evi's rise to prominence and stands out for its combination of philological and empirical authority and passion. This edition contains a new introduction by Yaacob Dweck that explains the scholarly importance of Scholem's work to a new generation of readers.
- ISBN10 0691172099
- ISBN13 9780691172095
- Publish Date 4 October 2016 (first published 21 October 1973)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Princeton University Press
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 1096
- Language English
- URL https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10860.html