All the Names of the Lord: Lists, Mysticism, and Magic (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780226388700)

Christians face a conundrum when it comes to naming God, for if God is unnamable, as theologians maintain, he can also be called by every name. His proper name is thus an open-ended, all-encompassing list, a mystery the Church embraces in its rhetoric, but which many Christians have found difficult to accept. To explore this conflict, Valentina Izmirlieva examines two lists of God's names: one from The Divine Names, the classic treatise by Pseudo-Dionysius, and the other from The 72 Names of the Lord, an amulet whose history binds together Kabbalah and Christianity, Jews and Slavs, Palestine, Provence, and the Balkans.

This unexpected juxtaposition of a theological treatise and a magical amulet allows Izmirlieva to reveal lists' rhetorical potential to create order and to function as both tools of knowledge and of power. Despite the two different visions of order represented by each list, Izmirlieva finds that their uses in Christian practice point to a complementary relationship between the existential need for God's protection and the metaphysical desire to submit to his infinite majesty--a compelling claim sure to provoke discussion among scholars in many fields.

Author: Valentina Izmirlieva
ISBN-10: 0226388700
ISBN-13: 9780226388700
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Language: English
Published: 07/15/2008
Pages: 224
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.07lbs
Size: 9.27h x 6.30w x 0.84d

Review Citation(s):
Chronicle of Higher Education 10/24/2008 pg. 22