Oddcast Episodes Themed "Gershom Scholem"

Charles Stang and Jason Josephson-Storm on Theosophy and the Study of Religions

What if the scientific study of religions, a.k.a. Comparative Religions, History of Religions, and so forth – the academic discipline wherein the academic study of western esotericism largely finds its home – was founded by, well, western esotericists? In this interview we examine the history of the history of religions with two historians of religions and find the Theosophical Society right there at the beginning.

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Tzvi Langermann on the Sefer Yetsira: Cosmology, Science, and Kabbala

We discuss the extraordinary reception-history of the extraordinary text known as Sefer Yetsirah, the ‘Book of Formation‘. The Sefer Yetsirah would eventually become a foundational text for the Kabbalist movements of the high middle ages, but it was (and is) much more than that. Professor Langermann lays out the evolutions in reading this text from Sa‘adia Gaon to Aryeh Kaplan.

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