SHABBETAI TSEVI [FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS]. A number of important new approaches and documents concerning the Shabbatean movement have appeared since the 1970s. Most are concerned with correcting aspects of Gershom Scholem's standard work, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah (1973). This supplementary article will follow the structure of R. J. Zwi Werblowsky's entry for the first edition of The Encyclopedia of Religion (1987), dealing with new developments in the background, life and movement, and aftermath of the Shabbatean outbreak.

Background

Scholem's insistence on the centrality of Isaac Luria's Qabbalah in preparing the ground for Shabbetai's success has been widely criticized. Among the problems raised are Scholem's near monocausal explanatory scheme, the presence of various other factors of obvious importance, and the fact that, whereas Shabbetai was indeed a qabbalist, he was not at all a follower of the Lurianic doctrine. Indeed the very notion that Lurianic...