"The dissertation is the first book length study of the intellectual links between Judaism and Shi‘ism in the Middle Ages. It is dedicated to Rabbi Judah Halevi's treatise al-Kitāb al-khazarī, (Book of the Kuzari), one of the most...
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"The dissertation is the first book length study of the intellectual links between Judaism and Shi‘ism in the Middle Ages. It is dedicated to Rabbi Judah Halevi's treatise al-Kitāb al-khazarī, (Book of the Kuzari), one of the most renowned and important treatises in Judeo-Arabic culture. This central treatise is a fascinating test-case instance of a Jewish writer drawing from Shī‘ī literary sources. At the core of his work, Judah Halevi examined the idea of the Chosen People. A wide-ranging textual and phenomenological investigation of the Judeo-Arabic text shows that the writer relies on terms and conceptions borrowed from the Shī‘ī Imām doctrine, in order to develop the principal motifs depicting the People of Israel as God's Chosen. Judah Halevi's inclination towards Shī‘ī literature seems to move upon the axis drawn between the central theme of Shī‘ī theology – the Imām doctrine - and the main idea of Halevi's thought – the idea of the Chosen People. Some of the terms, conceptions and structures characteristic of the Shī‘ī Imām doctrine and of the way in which Shī‘ī theology shape the status of the Prophets and Imāms as God's Chosen appear in Halevi's work in the theological context of shaping the status of Israel's progenitors and the People of Israel as God's Chosen.
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