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A very good introduction to the Kabbalah for the novice and the dabbler. If you're an "expert" then a bunch of this will sound familiar. It covers the history, the basic tenets, various schools of Kabbalah, thumbnail biographies of kabbalists, etc. I have several books on the Kabbalah, and even found useful stuff here.

Goldwag only goes off the tracks in his "conclusion," where he interviewed a candidate for rabbi in the Jewish Renewal, which is a sort of New Age, egalitarian reform movement in Judaism. The interviewee, and interviewer, push Kabbalah towards a "one source, many wells" philosophy of religion that standard Kabbalah would not brook. They mock the ideas of an aged, old-school kabbalist in Israel. The interviewee disregards biblical laws. It's funny that they can make fun of the unorthodoxy of Kabbalah Centre, yet revel in their own unorthodoxy. It gave a bad aftertaste to an otherwise good book.

Get it for cheap if you can. A useful glossary, endnotes, a serviceable bibliography, a few explanatory illustrations.… (meer)

A light book, much more an overview of the varieties of Christian belief in the first few centuries. Sethians and Valentinians were gnostic because of their focus on secret knowledge. Other Christianities may have had elements of gnostic thought, but Valantasis doesn't categorize them as Gnostic, merely alternative strands of thought. He does a fairly good job of showing how diverse thought was concerning the Christ in those first few centuries, going right back to disagreements between Paul and Peter. I appreciated the albeit brief discussions of Marcion, the Manicheans, the Hermetic tradition, Plotinus and the NeoPlatonists.
The book loses points for me because it far too frequently states something definitively, when in fact it there remains a lot of ambiguity concerning the subject. I first noticed this in the dating of the books of the bible - instead of giving a range of possible dates for their creation, he gives a single year and never indicates that there is often wide disagreement amongst scholars (even excluding the fundagelicals, who want everything to be way earlier than they probably are). As a fer instance: Acts was most likely written after 94 CE, as "Luke" is almost definitely cribbing from Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, but the date given in the text is 115, and no reason given as to why it's that late. This is somewhat sloppy, and if I can find problems like this in the stuff I know, what sort of wrong impressions am I getting in the stuff I don't?
Still, it's a handy guide to have, and a good place to get an overview for further research.
2.5 stars oc.… (meer)

From Booklist:
"This comes under the everything-you-wanted-to-know umbrella. Goldwag does an excellent job of introducing a complicated subject, neatly balancing the history of the topic with more practical application. The text begins with an informative overview and then backtracks into the origins of kabbalah and a discussion of its later adherents. It also includes a description of kabbalistic practices (no easy task since many of the writings are almost impenetrable) and some nicely chosen short meditations, inspired by kabbalah, "some dating back to the Zohar, some as contemporary as the Internet." The personal conclusion takes readers to the heart of Jewish mysticism and what it means to individual lives. A well-rounded and eminently readable account; an extensive bibliography leads readers further." Ilene Cooper
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