Antiquitopia

Rebecca Lesses, a few days back, has posted on a book from Mohr Siebeck that she contributed to called Hekhalot Literature in Context, edited by Ra'anan Boustan, Peter Schäfer, and Martha Himmelfarb.  Her own piece is "Women and Gender in the Hekhalot Literature."  Here is the info from the Mohr Siebeck website : Hekhalot Literature in Context Between Byzantium and Babylonia Ed. by Ra'anan Boustan, Martha Himmelfarb and Peter Schäfer Over the past 30 years, scholars of early Jewish mysticism have, with increasing confidence, located the initial formation of Hekhalot literature in Byzantine Palestine and Sasanian or early Islamic Babylonia (ca. 500–900 C.E.), rather than at the time of the Mishnah, Tosefta, early Midrashim, or Palestinian Talmud (ca. 100–400 C.E.). This advance has primarily been achieved through major gains in our understanding of the dynamic and highly flexible processes of composition, redaction, and transmission that produced the He...

Jim Davila reports that his translation of an eclectic text of the macroforms Hekhalot Rabbati, Sar Torah, Hekhalot Zutarti, Ma'aseh Merkavah, and Merkavah Rabbah as well as some microforms and the Geniza Fragments will be published by Brill.  His current title is Hekhalot Literature in Translation: Major Texts of Merkavah Mysticism.   Congrats Jim!  I will be looking out for this one!  Maybe I will get back to my old series of "Daily Hekhalot."

I wanted to continue my discussion of God and the senses with Hekhalot Rabbati for a couple reasons.  Firstly, I have been sitting on this passage for a while and wanted a forum to discuss it.  Secondly, it contributes to two series of posts at once:  resuming (at least briefly) my "Daily Hekhalot" discussions from last summer and the series of posts on "God and the Senses," for which my primary concern has been and will be after this for the most part with early Christian texts.  Hekhalot Rabbati has many series of hymns set within various narrative frameworks throughout (though usually they are set within a series of other hymns).  If Michael Swartz's conclusions in his analysis of Ma'aseh Merkavah (another Hekhalot work) are at all transferable, then we might consider that the hymnic portions of the work are older than the other portions.  The passage I want to discuss is quite notable for several reasons:  (1) it engages at least 4 out of 5 senses;...

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 ...

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...

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.

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...

I am participating in a conference at Union Theological Seminary this Thursday on "See the God." I am speaking on ancient, with an emphasis on late ancient Judaism. Here is a talk-teaser: There is an uncritical assumption that often circulates in scholarship and popular belief that Judaism is a religion of hearing to the exclusion or ignoring of seeing. This assumption operates by pointing to Jewish aniconism and reducing Jewish encounters with the divine to the Deuteronomistic emphasis on audition. Did not God say that humans could not see God—or literally God’s face—and live (Exod. 33:20)? Nonetheless, this reductive maneuver ignores the rich ambivalences of the Bible and later Jewish views concerning whether and how one can see God and live. Some follow Exod. 33:20 and categorically claim its impossibility. In this case, numerous intermediary figures fill the ocular gap, allowing appearances of aspects of God—like God’s Memra, Shekhinah, Glory, or even God’s tefilli...