Antiquitopia

Last time in our daily Hekhalot we learned a little about adjuring an angel named Anafiel to do one's bidding--and a very interesting part of the adjuration is that the instructions for it are given by Anafiel himself. This leads to a question: why would an angel willingly bind himself to a human's will? Really that is two questions: why would an ANGEL bind himself willingly to a HUMAN's will? Usually angels and humans are rivals in the Hekhalot literature--at least to some extent--although sometimes they are cooperative. And why would an angel WILLINGLY bind himself to a human's will? Why would an angel--or any being--willingly instruct another how to bind them to the other's will? Today's text, which will be unusually short, continues the trend of cooperation, of the angelic assistance when called. Text: וכל מי שהוא מספר עליו לשון הרע מיד אני מכה אותו ומשחיתו חוץ ממלאך שהוא שליח מלך הכבוד Translation: And everyone who speaks slander upon him im...

Having finished a preliminary textual apparatus, translation, and notes for Hekhalot Zutarti §420, we now turn to an equally preliminary glimpse at the subsequent pericope. Text: אמר ענפיאל כל מי שהוא מבקש להתפלל התפילה הזאת ולהתבונן במעשה יוצרו זכור לו אות אחת מן האותיות האילו שוב אינו נפנה לא לימינו ולא לשמאלו עד שאפנה ואעשה לו את חפצו Translation: Anafiel said: Everyone who seeks to pray this prayer and to contemplate the works of his Creator should remember one sign/letter among these signs/letters: again we will not turn either to the right or to the left until I turn and I do for him his concern. Variants: N8128 includes השר after ענפיאל, and omits מי after כל. M22 adds את before התפילה. N8128 uses זו instead of זאת. N8128 and M22 use יזכור rather than זכור. M22 has לנו rather than לו. O1531 has אחד rather than אחת. O1531 has האותות rather than האותיות. N8128 has הללו instead of האילו. M40 and N8128 have איני. O1531 has לו instead of לא after נפנה. M40 an...

Before proceeding to Hekhalot Zutarti §421, I want to take stock of pericope 420. Having discussed it in three parts-- part a , part b , and part c --I want to synthesize it into one continuous post. And, due to secondary considerations prompted by the conversations in the comments, I also want to alter the translations and consider the implications of the alterations. As usual, I will place the Hebrew script first and then proceed to the new translation. For the variants and additional interpretations, see the previous posts. Text: אמר רבי ישמאל על מי שתק השר שהוא קורא אותו מגיהשה שאין בריה בכל משרתים שיקרא אותו בשם הזה ואת קורא אותו מגיהשה מפני שהוא שני להדרירון הדר תוב הדר טהור הדר זיו אוריה יה יה אלהי ישראל והוא עומד בפתח ראשון ומשמש בשער הגדול וכשראיתיו נשרפו ידי והייתי עומד בלא ידים ובלא רגלים עד שנראה לי פני יון השר ממשרתי עליונים והוא עומד לפני כסא הכבוד נוכח דיבר שרפים ששמו כשמו ושם אחד הוא‪. והוא עומד מכסא הכבוד ומתקן את הכסא ומלביש את החלוק ומהדר את החשמל ופותח שערי יש...

Having discussed the first two parts of Hekhalot Zutarti §420 here and here , today we complete this particular pericope. I want to thank those who have commented on these previous posts to suggest emendations and alternative interpretations--they have been quite helpful. This portion of the pericope designated in Schäfer's Synopse zur Hekhalot as §420 reaches a climactic moment of disclosure of this particular angel's heavenly position and heavenly duties. In the post on §420a, we already learned that he is in charge of crowning(?) or perhaps adorning(?) the divine crown. The in the second post on §420b, we discovered that he dwells at the entrance to the heavenly courtroom and even burns the hands (and feet) of the mystic seeking entrance, although we do not know why. Now we finally see this angel in his fully heavenly duties before the throne itself, and a much more general human response to the sight of him: Text: והוא עומד לפני כסא הכבוד נוכח דיבר שרפים ששמו כשמו ושם ...

Several individuals and the anti-defamation league have filed lawsuits against the current ballot initiative that would criminalize circumcision for boys under 18 years old. From CNN.com: "Existing California law is clear," said Nancy Appel, Anti-Defamation League associate director in San Francisco, in a statement. "Only the state can make rules about medical procedures and this initiative violates that law. Not only does this initiative waste time, energy and expense, but it also offends the notions of parental rights and freedom of religion. It is unconstitutional and, as we allege in this lawsuit, contrary to California law." See the rest here .

For our daily Hekhalot, we are continuing to work through §§420-421 in Hekhalot Zutarti. Today we are on §420b. For §420a see here . Last time we discovered that the descender to the chariot encounters an important angelic figure, whose name is a privileged disclosure. This angel's importance--so far--relates to being in charge of the divine crown. There was much difficulty in the previous passage in terms of pronoun usage--who's doing what to whom?--the translation of a couple key words, and so forth. Today is a little more straightforward in some respects. We are still in the middle of the speech by R. Ishmael about the same angel. The pronouns are a little clearer--instead of a proliferation of he's and him's, we now get a nice differentiation between I and he. We also get a reaction from the descender to the chariot--his hands (and likely feet) are curiously burned! Text: והוא עומד בפתח ראשון ומשמש בשער הגדול וכשראיתיו נשרפו ידי והייתי עומד בלא ידים ובלא ר...

I just saw this in NPR: archaeologists are studying the graffiti in the ancient Beit Shearim necropolis: Aramaic is the lingua franca of the ancient Middle East, the linguistic root of modern day Hebrew and Arabic. "Once you understand Aramaic," says Karen Stern, "you can read anything. You can read Hebrew, you can read Phoenician. I always call it the little black dress of Semitic languages." Stern, 35, is an archaeologist and an assistant professor in the history department at Brooklyn College. Her passion is the tomb graffiti of the ancient Jews in what was then Roman Palestine. Graffiti has been "published, but sort of disregarded," she says. "Whereas I think it is intimate, vocal and spontaneous, and adds to the historical record." .... "They were grapho-maniacal," Jonathan Price, head of the classics department at Tel Aviv University, says of the ancient Jews who were entombed here in the first and second centuries. Over the next ...

For today's--and for days' to come--reading Rebecca Lesses of Mystical Politics has suggested a difficult passage in Hekhalot Zutarti (the "lesser palaces") §§420-421 because it is baffling. And so, while I started off with a passage that was relatively straightforward, we are delving into one that has left many baffled. It has a great deal of textual difficulties, so we will spread this over several posts. Hekhalot Zutarti is perhaps even more literarily disorganized than Hekhalot Rabbati. Its disparate materials, however, are indispensable because much of it is highly unique in the Hekhalot texts. For example, it has the lone reference in the Hekhalot literature to the so-called "posture of Elijah," which after Gershom Scholem's reading of Hai Gaon that placed it at the center of merkavah mystical practice received a great deal of attention. I think most now find Scholem's emphasis rather extreme since it does only occur in this one passage w...

It appears there is some interest in some sporadic posting of Hekhalot pericopae . Rebecca Lesses has expressed some interest and Jim Davila is hoping I proceed--if anything to save us from angelic attacks. Rebecca has suggested a look at Hekhalot Zutarti §§420-421, which I have glanced at and has a great deal of textual difficulties. It might take a while to get through these sections, but I will try in my spare moments. If you want to join in, please connect to these posts with your own readings.

I have a quick question on formatting. When I write in Hebrew online, everything turns out fine. But when I go into my microsoft word program, it scrambles everything up. It is like it can't handle the right-to-left. For example, when I copy and paste something from my blog to a word document, it reverses everything so that it reads left-to-right rather than right-to-left. When I try to write, sometimes it will sometimes allow right-to-left within a single word, but when I space it makes me go left-to-right. When I worked from a PC, I never had this problem. But with a mac, now I have it. By the way, it is clearly a problem with word itself. If I go to a notepad or rich text editing pad, it has NO PROBLEM moving back and forth between different directional writing types (the problem is, it is much more difficult to type up a full formal paper with footnotes, etc., in that program). Anyone have a solution?

One of the unfortunate consequences of completing graduate school and beginning to teach full time is that it is difficult to find a reading buddy. One of my memories of my late advisor, Alan Segal, is sitting around a table in his office with him and perhaps one or two other graduate students and working through some passages from the Hekhalot material. Alas, even if one is lucky enough to land in an institution where someone has the requisite language abilities, they may or may not have time, interest in that particular literature, or be willing to delve into some very difficult text with grammatical and literary difficulties and a great deal of disparity from manuscript to manuscript. So, seeking a reading partner, I am putting a reading--a short one--of the first lines of the "macroform," as Peter Schäfer calls it, of Hekhalot Rabbati (the "Greater Palaces"). I will be working from Peter Schäfer's Synopse zur Hekhalot , where he presents seven different...

When Mt. Vesuvius encased the ancient city of Herculaneum, it preserved many things under its volcanic ash and heated pressure, including, as it turns out, ancient human excrement. Specialists involved in the Herculaneum Conservation Project have excavated the ancient sewers of the city and uncovered the largest deposit of organic material ever found in the Roman world. Layers of excrement that lay buried by volcanic mud for centuries are giving experts new clues about the diet and health of the city's ancient inhabitants. See further here and here .

In the NYTimes: Ninety years in the making, the 21-volume dictionary of the language of ancient Mesopotamia and its Babylonian and Assyrian dialects, unspoken for 2,000 years but preserved on clay tablets and in stone inscriptions deciphered over the last two centuries, has finally been completed by scholars at the University of Chicago. .... And the dictionary is more of an encyclopedia than simply a concise glossary of words and definitions. Many words with multiple meanings and extensive associations with history are followed by page after page of discourse ranging through literature, law, religion, commerce and everyday life. There are, for example, 17 pages devoted to the word “umu,” meaning “day.” Of course, the primary language covered in the dictionary is Akkadian. See entire article here .

Although since Paul (in Galatians and Romans) denied the necessity of circumcision for salvation for the early movement that became Christianity, the National Association of Evangelicals has come out against the San Francisco ballot measure that would ban circumcision for any male under the age of 17 by citing Abrahamic solidarity with Jews and Muslims. From CNN's Belief Blog: By Dan Gilgoff, CNN.com Religion Editor (CNN) - The nation’s largest evangelical Christian umbrella group has come out against San Francisco’s proposed circumcision ban, evidence that the voter initiative is beginning to galvanize national religious opposition. Thursday’s announcement from the National Association of Evangelicals was noteworthy because Christians are not religiously mandated to practice circumcision, as are Jews and Muslims. “Jews, Muslims, and Christians all trace our spiritual heritage back to Abraham. Biblical circumcision begins with Abraham,” said National Association of Evangelicals pre...

There come times when similar stories from different places emerge at the same time. Perhaps this phenomenon is real or perhaps it is in the eye of a particularly sensitized beholder--I am currently writing a piece that includes a segment on circumcision and divine visions and reading a collection of essays on circumcision. That seems to be the case with circumcision at the moment. While there are often occasional debates on circumcision's medical merits, as a religious rite, as mutilation, etc., it seems that such a debate has heightened in the past week. Firstly with the potential legal issues in San Francisco and now, as many newspapers have reported (not usually on their front page) that Russell Crowe has joined the fray on twitter, calling it "stupid," "moronic," and comparing it to human sacrifice. While the San Francisco ban, for the most part, is directed toward all circumcision without qualifying for Muslim, Jewish, or medical practices, Crowe ...

My 2010 Columbia Ph.D. dissertation, "Heavenly Sabbath, Heavenly Sanctuary: The Transformation of Priestly Sacred Space and Sacred Time in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and the Epistle to the Hebrews," directed by Alan Segal is now available as an open access document through ProQuest. You can download a pdf here . Here is the abstract: This dissertation investigates how the Sabbath and the sanctuary interrelate in Second Temple Jewish and early Christian literature. Studies of sacred time and sacred space have generally treated them as separate yet complementary categories in the study of religion. This has been equally true of those studying the Sabbath and the sanctuary in Second Temple Jewish and early Christian literature. Considerations of their coordination have tended to be rare momentary glimpses rather than extended treatments. This study focuses on the coordination of sacred time of the Sabbath and sacred space of the sanctuary through how they come togeth...

From the Washington Post's Blog, "On Faith": A right to ban circumcision? A proposal to ban the circumcision of boys will be on San Francisco’s ballot in November, even though the ritual procedure is sacred to Muslims and Jews. Lloyd Schofield, the author of the Male Genital Mutilation bill, claims that male circumcision is akin to female genital mutilation, stipulating, “People can practice whatever religion they want, but your religious practice ends with someone else’s body.” Opponents of the measure say that the ban violates their First Amendment right to the free exercise of their religious beliefs. Many view the ban especially skeptically after a seemingly anti-Semitic comic book emerged, penned by the ban’s supporters. Should San Francisco have the right to ban circumcision? Oddly, a lot of my research has, in an unforeseen way, been bumping up against different views of circumcision--particularly issues of being born circumcised as well as circumcision being the p...