Explaining the diversity of the Lurianic Corpus: the disparate hermeneutical approaches of R. Menahem Azaria da Fano and R. Menahem de Lonzano

The kabbalistic writings penned by the students of Isaac Luria contained diverse viewpoints that were often at odds. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, two major approaches emerged to contend with this diversity: R. Menahem Azaria da Fano proposed a harmonistic method in which divergent theosophical positions are not truly at odds but rather reflect a single truth. R. Menahem di Lonzano disagreed and instead viewed the diversity of the Lurianic corpus as reflective of the distinct personal opinions of Luria’s students. In this article, I show how these two kabbalists used their respective approaches to impose order upon the corpus and to elicit a unified message from the diversity.