With Letters of Light: Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Early Jewish Apocalypticism, Magic, and Mysticism

465 Pages·2010·2.59 MB·English

by  Daphna V. Arbel

With Letters of Light
rwa lç twytwab
Ekstasis
Religious Experience
from Antiquity to the Middle Ages
General Editor
John R.Levison
Editorial Board
David Aune · Jan Bremmer · John Collins · Dyan Elliott
Amy Hollywood · Sarah Iles Johnston · Gabor Klaniczay
Paulo Nogueira · Christopher Rowland · Elliot R.Wolfson
Volume 2
De Gruyter
With Letters of Light
rwa lç twytwab
Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Early Jewish
Apocalypticism, Magic, and Mysticism
in Honor of Rachel Elior
rwayla ljr
Edited by
Daphna V. Arbel and Andrei A. Orlov
De Gruyter
ISBN 978-3-11-022201-2
e-ISBN 978-3-11-022202-9
ISSN 1865-8792
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Withlettersoflight:studiesintheDeadSeascrolls,earlyJewishapocalypti-
cism,magicandmysticism/AndreiA.Orlov,DaphnaV.Arbel.
p. cm. - (Ekstasis, religious experience from antiquity to the Middle
Ages;v.2)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
Summary:“Thisvolumeoffersvaluableinsightsintoawiderangeofscho-
larly achievements in the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish apocalypti-
cism, magic, and mysticism from the Second Temple period to the later
rabbinic and Hekhalot developments. The majority of articles included in
the volume deal with Jewish and Christian apocalyptic and mystical texts
constitutingthecoreofexperientialdimensionofthesereligioustraditions”
-ECIPsummary.
ISBN978-3-11-022201-2(hardcover23x15,5:alk.paper)
1. Dead Sea scrolls. 2. Apocalyptic literature - History and criticism.
3. Jewish magic. 4. Mysticism - Judaism. 5. Messianism. 6. Bible.
O.T.-Criticism,interpretation,etc. 7.Rabbinicalliterature-Historyand
criticism. I.Orlov,AndreiA.,1960- II.Arbel,Daphna.
BM487.W58 2010
2291.91-dc22
2010025722
BibliographicinformationpublishedbytheDeutscheNationalbibliothek
TheDeutscheNationalbibliothekliststhispublicationintheDeutscheNationalbibliografie;
detailedbibliographicdataareavailableintheInternetathttp://dnb.d-nb.de.
”2011WalterdeGruyterGmbH&Co.KG,Berlin/NewYork
Paintingonthecover:“firefox”byElliotR.Wolfson,NewYorkCity,2007,
oiloncanvas,24*24.
Printingandbinding:Hubert&Co.GmbH&Co.KG,Göttingen
(cid:2)Printedonacid-freepaper
PrintedinGermany
www.degruyter.com
Contents
Daphna Arbel and Andrei Orlov
Rachel Elior – An Appreciation from her Colleagues and
Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Frances Flannery
The Consideration of Religious Experience in the Work of
Rachel Elior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
I . Exegesis
Kelley Coblentz Bautch
Peter and the Patriarch: A Confluence of Traditions? . . . . . . . . . 13
Silviu N. Bunta
In Heaven or on Earth: A Misplaced Temple Question about
Ezekiel’s Visions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
James R. Davila
Scriptural Exegesis in the Treatise of the Vessels, a Legendary
Account of the Hiding of the Temple Treasures . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Dan Merkur
Cultivating Visions through Exegetical Meditations . . . . . . . . . 62
Sergey Minov
“Serpentine” Eve in Syriac Christian Literature of Late
Antiquity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Annette Yoshiko Reed
From “Pre-Emptive Exegesis” to “Pre-Emptive Speculation”?
Ma‘aseh Bereshit in Genesis Rabbah and Pirqei deRabbi Eliezer . . . 115
Mark Verman
Earthly and Heavenly Jerusalem in Philo and Paul:
A Tale of Two Cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
vi Contents
II . Ritual
Crispin Fletcher-Louis
The Book of Watchers and the Cycle of New Year Festivals . . . . . 159
Yuval Harari
A Different Spirituality or ‘Other’ Agents?: On the Study of
Magic in Rabbinic Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Rebecca Lesses
“They Revealed Secrets to Their Wives”: The Transmission of
Magical Knowledge in 1 Enoch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Jodi Magness
The Impurity of Oil and Spit among the Qumran Sectarians . . 223
Andrei Orlov
“The Likeness of Heaven”: The Kavod of Azazel in the
Apocalypse of Abraham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
Pieter W. van der Horst
Mystical Motifs in a Greek Synagogal Prayer? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
III . Transformation
Daphna Arbel
“A Chariot of Light Borne by Four Bright Eagles”:
Eve’s Vision of the Chariot in the Greek Life of Adam and Eve 267
Joseph Dan
“Messianic Movements in the Period of the Crusades” . . . . . . . 285
April D. DeConick
Jesus Revealed: The Dynamics of Early Christian Mysticism . . 299
Celia Deutsch
Aseneth: Ascetical Practice, Vision, and Transformation . . . . . 325
Naomi Janowitz
“You Are Gods”: Multiple Divine Beings in Late Antique
Jewish Theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
Contents vii
Alan F. Segal
Transcribing Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449

Rachel Elior – An Appreciation from
her Colleagues and Students
Daphna Arbel and Andrei Orlov
In one of her recent books, The Three Temples, Professor Rachel Elior
quotes the words of Thomas Mann at the beginning of his novel
Joseph and his Brothers:
Very deep is the well of the past . Should we not call it bottomless? Bot-
tomless indeed if – and perhaps only if – the past we mean is the past
merely of the life of mankind, that riddling essence of which our own
normally unsatisfied and quite abnormally wretched existences form a
past; whose mystery, of course, includes our own and is the alpha and the
omega of all our questions .
Without a doubt, the work of Professor Rachel Elior reclaims surviv-
ing works from the well of the past to explore the history of Jewish
Mysticism, from its earliest manifestations up to the modern period .
She constantly considers textual evidence, paying close attention to
changing cultural contexts, attending to multiple voices and raising
challenging questions related to the foundation and crystallization of
Jewish mystical thought . This volume reflects the deep respect, grati-
tude, and appreciation of colleagues and students who share some of
her wide ranging scholarly interests and areas of research related to
the Dead Sea Scrolls, apocalypticism, magic, and mysticism .
Rachel Elior is the John and Golda Cohen Professor of Jewish
Philosophy and Jewish Mystical Thought at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem . She was born and raised in Jerusalem, and earned
her Ph . D . summa cum laude in 1976 from the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, where she has taught from 1978 until today . She has also
served as a visiting professor and research scholar at many univer-
sities and institutions in the United States and Europe, including
Princeton University, Tokyo University, Yeshiva University, Case
Western University, Shalom Institute in the University of New
South Wales in Sydney, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor,
Oberlin College, and University College London . She has also been
a research fellow at the Oxford Center for Jewish Studies in Oxford
University .