Ezekiel 40-42 as Verbal Icon
Steven S. Tuell
Randolph-Macon College Ashland, VA 23005
The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 58, 1996
In the last great vision of the prophet Ezekiel, an angelic figure guides the- prophet through a temple complex, carefully (though selectively) measuring the walls, gates, and chambers. For all its detail and precision, the visionary report remains curiously laconic as to the appearance or purpose of the courts and chambers marked off by the guide, and nothing at all is said of the reason why this temple was revealed to Ezekiel. Readers of the text have filled the gap with a variety of proposals about the purpose of this vision report. Most scholars have deemed Ezekiel 40-42 to be either a pre-exilic temple blueprint ‘preserved in archival fashion by the prophet or a building proposal for the restored temple — although adherents of the latter view differ in their answers to the question whether the temple was meant to be built by the exiles upon their return to the land or by Yhwh, at the end of time. After these proposals have been considered, another one will be advanced in this study: that the text be seen as a report of an ascent to the heavenly temple by reading this report, Ezekiel’s audience could share in the prophet’s experience of transcendent reality and so be given access to the presence of Yhwh. Ezekiel 40-42 would have functioned, for them, as a verbal icon.
I. Ezekiel 40-42 as a Pre-exilic Blueprint
In Ezekiel 40-42 the various structures of the temple are generally measured in two-dimensional outline, as if on a blueprint. Indeed, complex three-dimensional descriptions in the vision report (such as 40:5; 41:5-15a; 42:1-12) are often regarded as secondary expansions.1 This has prompted many scholars to conclude that Ezekiel’s vision is in fact based on a plan or blueprint of the first temple which he had either preserved himself or found in the archives.2
It is unlikely, however, that Ezekiel was working from an actual pre-exilic blueprint. First, the prophet’s visionary experience is definitely three-dimensional. As he is guided through the eastern gate, he describes the palm trees carved on its pilasters and the windows set in the walls of the gate chambers; furthermore, Ezekiel observes that the width of the eastern gate was measured “from the roof of the chamber to its roof” (40:13), that is, across the ceiling of the gateway.3 We are dealing with a complex, three-dimensional structure, even if it is generally measured only in two dimensions.4 Second, the design found in Ezekiel 40-42 is highly impractical. The massive fortified gates of the complex, for example, are out of all proportion to its relatively scant walls.5 Finally, Ezekiel’s vision does not conform to the pattern of the first temple. While the tripartite structure of Ezekiel’s temple is reminiscent of the Solomonic temple, the temple complex Ezekiel describes is not Solomon’s: for instance, there is no bronze sea in the forecourt of Ezekiel’s temple.6 In fact, nothing like Ezekiel’s temple ever existed. Ezekiel’s temple plan is hybrid, combining different sorts of structures into a wholly unique form. As the prophet himself tells us (40:1), he is describing a vision, But granting that the vision of Ezekiel is a vision and not a blueprint, what is its purpose?
II Ezekiel 40-42 as a Post-exilic Building Proposal
Many commentators have understood Ezekiel 40-42 as an idealistic vision of the restored temple, to be built after the return from exile. If this is so, then the report of the vision is essentially a building proposal.7 The impracticality of the design does not in itself rule out this possibility. The temple complex depicted in the Temple Scroll from Qumran, for example, is architecturally realistic, despite its massive scale.8 However, information essential for the construction of Ezekiel’s temple (for instance, the height of the buildings) is lacking.9 Avigdor Hurowitz argues that not too much should be made of such gaps, which are also present in other biblical descriptions of a temple.10 “The degree to which the biblical author has achieved or missed his goal of concretization,” Horowitz urges, “should not influence our appreciation of what the goal actually was.”11 One must observe, nevertheless, that the temple vision, for all its detail, cannot serve as an adequate blueprint for an actual building. The detailed description serves to give us an overwhelming sense of the symmetry and order in the temple’s design. It also enables us to share in Ezekiel’s experience, to see in our mind’s eye what he sees. But we cannot even begin to construct Ezekiel’s temple on the basis of these measurements.
A. Stories of Building Projects in Israel and the Ancient Near East
The most decisive argument against reading Ezekiel 40-42 as a building program is that it nowhere claims to he a building program. Nowhere in this text do we find either a decision to build the temple or a divine permission given for its building. Horowitz, in his recent survey of Mesopotamian and Northwest Semitic stories of building projects, observes a typical pattern it in these accounts:
I. The circumstance of the project and the decision to build
2. Preparations, such as drafting workmen, gathering materials
3. Description of the building
4. The dedication rites and festivities
5. Blessing and (or) prayer of the king
6. Blessing and curses of future generations12
The form is flexible (in particular, parts 5 and 6 are often missing), but in every building story Horowitz considers, one finds a decision to build—either in response to divine decree, or as a result of the god responding favorably to the king’s desire to build. In the text of the Gudea cylinders the temple of Ningirsu at Lagash is built in accordance with a dream vision of Gudea interpreted by Nina, the main priestess of the gods.13 Similarly, in the Ugaritic Baal cycle Baal’s desire to build a temple cannot be carried out until a decree is issued by ‘El.14 This pattern also holds in the biblical temple building texts. Moses, like Judea, is shown the plan for a sanctuary and receives an explicit divine command to build it (Exod 25:8-9). Similarly, though Yhwh denies David permission to build a temple in Jerusalem (2 Sam 7:4-7; I Chr 22:7-8; 28:1-4), David’s son Solomon is appointed to this task (2 Sam 7:13; I Kgs 5:17-19; I Chr 22:5-6,9-19; 28:5-29:19,” 2 Chr 1:182:9).15 Even the Qumran Temple Scroll contains, implicitly, the decision to build the structure the scroll describes, in obedience to a divine decree.16 In Ezekiel 40-42 there is no such decision or decree. Though Horowitz describes Ezekiel 40 – 42 as “a detailed divine command concerning the rebuilding of the temple and the restoration of the cult,”(17) the text itself contains no such command, but simply presents the dimensions of the visionary temple.
B. An Alternate Genre: The Building Description
The closest parallels to Ezekiel’s description of the temple are not the mythological or biblical texts considered above but another set of descriptive texts, discussed by Horowitz, which are typified by the detailed measurement of structures.18 The first text of this type considered by Horowitz is from the Esagila Tablet. It is a detailed description of two temple chambers, and it appears to be a school text, perhaps an exercise in geometry or surveying.19 Two other examples are the description of the Temple of Resh in Uruk and a description of Babylon found on the obverse of a drawing of the city, both of which may be official surveyors’ reports20 The fourth building description of this type discussed by Horowitz, the description of Esagila and Ezida from Assur, may represent written instructions given to builders; however, it describes an existing structure, which is to be either repaired or duplicated21 The last building descriptions considered by Horowitz, three temple descriptions from Hall 115 at Mari, give the floor plans in two dimensions, for three temples.22 These texts too, according to Horowitz, are not building plans but appear to represent a descriptive inventory.
Note that all of these texts are descriptions of existing structures. While Horowitz cites them as background for understanding the concrete detail presented in all the biblical descriptions of a temple, the texts from Exodus, Kings, and Chronicles are explicitly presented as commands, to build. This command is lacking in Ezekiel, which, like the Mesopotamian descriptions mentioned above, simply presents the dimensions of a structure.23 I will argue that this similarity has great significance for the meaning and function of Ezekiel 40-42. For now, it is sufficient to observe that, judging from the comparison of Ezekiel 40-42 with stories of building projects in the Hebrew Bible and across the ancient Near East, Ezekiel’s vision does not fit into this genre.
III. Ezekiel 40-42 as an Eschatological Building Program
One way to salvage the idea of Ezekiel 40.42 as a building program is to project the vision upon the end time. 24 In this reading no command to build is required, for the temple Ezekiel describes is the eschatological temple which Yhwh will build in the last days. Certainly, there is much in the text to commend such a reading. Its very setting, atop a very high mountain, evokes the final transformation of the world, when Zion will at last be revealed as the cosmic mountain, the center of the earth (Ezek 40:1; cp. Isa 2:2-5; Mic 4:1-4; Zech 14:10).25 The absence of any command or decision to build also makes sense in this view, since the eschatological temple is to be built by Yhwh, not by human hands.26 Finally, the appropriation of Ezekiel’s visions in historical apocalypses such as those of Daniel (especially Daniel 7 and Daniel 10) and of Revelation (Rev I I :I; 21:10-21; 22:1-6) gives evidence that Ezekiel 40-48 was read eschatologically.
Against this reading must be posed the literary setting of the temple vision in Ezekiel’s prophecy. This may seem a strange claim: one could argue that the literary setting of the vision report requires a futuristic interpretation. The vision comes, after all, as the climax of the messages of hope in Ezekiel 33-39, and it immediately follows the description of Yhwh’s final victory over Gog and Magog (Ezekiel 38-39). Indeed, Joseph Blenkinsopp argues that this vision is the fulfillment of the eschatological promise in Ezek 37:26b-27 (NRSV): “I will bless and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary among them forevermore. My dwelling place shall be with them; and I will be their God, and they stall be my people.” 27
We have a still more compelling literary connection, and Ezekiel 40-42 must be understood in terms of it. Ezek 40:1 opens with an introductory formula common in Ezekiel’s prophecy, a date formula specific to the day,28 but in this case the date is followed by the formula for expressing prophetic ecstasy (“the hand of Yhwh was upon me”) and the specification “in visions of God.” 29 These three formulas appear together only two other times in Ezekiel: in 1:1-3 (the call vision) and 8:1-3 (the vision of the abominations). Chapters 1-3, 8-11, and 40-48 are also linked both by mutual reference (8:2 recalls the vision by the river Chebar; 43:3 refers to the river and to the vision of Jerusalem’s destruction) and by the image of the glory (kavod). Chaps. 40-48 and 8-11 are further linked in a pattern of exit and entrance: the kavod exits the Jerusalem temple by the eastern gate in 11:22, and it enters the visionary temple by the eastern gate in 43:4-5. We have, then, an interconnected network of three visions which stand as the milestones of Ezekiel’s ministry and as key points in the structure of his hook. The vision in Ezekiel 40-48 is closely related to the earlier visions, and it demands interpretation on the same terms.
The central issue in all three visions appears to be the divine presence, expressed in priestly terms as the 11=. In his inaugural vision Ezekiel experiences the kavod as a commissioning agent calling him to he a prophet (2:3 3:1 I). In his second vision, the TM] is removed from the temple in Jerusalem (9:3; 10:4,18-19; 11:22-23), an act which leaves the city open to judgment at the hands of the destroyers (9:1-1 IT Now, in his final vision, the prophet sees the mix once more, entering the visionary temple and issuing a promise: “0 human, this is the place of my throne and my footstool, where it will dwell in the midst of the people Israel forever” (43:7a). The explicit reference to the throne of God calls up the imagery of the throne-chariot in 1:15-25 and 10:9-19. The footstool of Yhwh is ordinarily the ark; thus, 43:7a recalls the departure of Yhwh from the cherub throne over the ark in the most holy place (9:3). Significantly, there is neither cherub throne nor ark in the inner room of Ezekiel’s visionary temple (41:3-, 4,15b-20): they are not needed, for Yhwh arrives already on the throne in his chariot. The promise in 43:7a marks the climax of Ezekiel’s book. Now at last the divine presence is manifested among Yhwh’s people, never to be withdrawn.
Given the close association of the three visions, one is prompted to look among them for a parallel to this promise. We find a likely point of contact in11:14-16.30 Here, the prophet addresses the arrogant claims of those who remain in Jerusalem. The inhabitants of the city say that the exiles are now far from ‘The heritage of these outcasts has been abandoned for those left behind to claim. To this Yhwh says,”l will be for them a sanctuary in small measure in the lands where they gone.”31 Far from abandoning the exiles, Yhwh has abandoned Jerusalem. Yhwh will be found instead in the midst of the true house of Israel, which now consists of the community in exile (I 1:15). The vision in Ezekiel 40-42 represents the fulfillment of these words. Despite the collapse of state and cult, Yhwh resolves to be with the exiles, just as he had promised.
IV. Ezekiel 40-42 as a Heavenly Ascent
As has already been observed, Ezekiel in his vision walked through an existing structure. Among the numerous texts cited by Hurowitz, the closest formal parallels to the building description itself appear likewise to be descriptions of existing structures. While one could of course argue that the prophets frequently speak of future events as already accomplished (the famous “prophetic perfect”), one must at any rate acknowledge that Ezekiel’s vision is not explicitly given a future setting. Those elements in the vision that have been so interpreted, particularly the very high mountain and the river of life, are capable of another interpretation that has been little explored. Ezekiel in his vision is guided through a “real” structure, though not an earthly one. The temple of the vision is, I propose, the heavenly archetype, the real temple, of which the temple of Jerusalem was but a shadow. 32
A. The Idea of the Heavenly Plinth’ in Israel and the A anent Near East
The concept of the heavenly temple has deep roots in the temple ideologies of the ancient Near East. The earthly temple was understood to be the material counterpart of the divine dwelling place and, hence, to correspond symbolically to the cosmic mountain where the god lived, the mythic center of the world. This correspondence was guaranteed by precise adherence of the earthly temple to the pattern of the heavenly temple. Hence, in Babylon, the foundation lines of a temple could not be disturbed. When a temple was repaired or rebuilt, the dimensions of the former structure had to he duplicated; otherwise, the temple failed to correspond to its ideal counterpart and could not function as a connecting point with divine reality. 33
That the idea of a heavenly original for the earthly shrine was present in ancient Israel as well is demonstrated in the revelation of the shrine’s pattern (man) to Moses (Exod 25:8-9). Cross and others have propose MB the him was a depiction of the heavenly shrine itself, the very dwelling of Yhwh.34 On the basis of I Chr 28:11-12 (where man refers to a written text) and extrabiblical parallels, Hurowitz argues that the tavnit cannot be an actual structure but must refer rather to a model or plan35 Even if this is the case, the model was presumably not chosen at random.
Numerous illustrations can be cited from the Hebrew Scriptures for the idea that the earthly temple corresponds to the heavenly temple. The ancient poem in 1 Kgs 8:12-13 explicitly describes the temple of Jerusalem as an earthly dwelling place for Yhwh corresponding to the Sell’, the incomprehensible, inaccessible cloud of God’s heavenly dwelling (cf. Exod 20:18; Ps 97:2; Job 22:12-14). In Ps 46:5, Zion is described as a source of waters, calling to mind the dwelling place of ‘El as it is described in CTA 4,4.2I-22: mbk nhrm/ qrb apq thmtm, “at the source of the twin rivers; in the midst of the pools of the double deep.” Ps 48:2 explicitly identifies Zion with Zaphon, the mythic home of Bag. Presumably, then, the man was understood as corresponding to the ideal shrine, whether Moses was given a vision of that structure or not.
B. Heavenly Ascents in Biblical and Extrabiblical Literature
The idea of a journey to the heavenly temple is not without parallel. In Isa 6:1, Isaiah ben Amoz is evidently transported from the temple of Jerusalem into the divine original temple, which vastly surpasses its earthly counterpart; the prophet says that the mere edge of Yhwh’s royal robes filled the earthly temple. Most explicitly, the Enochic literature of the second century B.C.E. describes journeys into the heavenly regions, including the heavenly temple where God dwells (I Enoch 14:8-25). As Martha Himmelfarb observes, “there are numerous close parallels between the ascent of Enoch and the visions of Ezekiel: the imagery of cloud, wind, water, and fire; the presence of the cherubim; the lofty chariot-throne with its wondrous wheels.” 36 It is particularly intriguing that the first temple entered by Enoch (which somehow opens into the second, greater, temple) is empty, as is the temple of Ezekiel’s vision.
Himmelfarb insists that while “Ezekiel is the only one of all the classical prophets to record the experience of being physically transported by the spirit of God … even Ezekiel does not ascend to heaven. The throne of God comes to him while he is standing by the river Chebar (Ezek I-3). Enoch’s is the first ascent in Jewish literature.” 37 Ezekiel 1-3 certainly does .UN describe an ascent, but that is exactly the experience described in VAS*”Ezekiel is taken by the hand of Yhwh to a very high mountain. 38 There, he is guided by an angel through a standing structure. Clearly, this structure does not stand on the earthly Zion. Where, then, is it? I suggest that it stands atop the heavenly Zion, that Ezekiel has been taken by the spirit into the heavenly reality.
We may find early evidence for this understanding of Ezekiel 40-48 in the Songs of Sabbath Sacrifice from Qumran (4Q400-407). Ezekielian words and images recur- these songs.39 Most striking, however, is the way in which the poets have used Ezekiel 40-48 to structure their portrayal of the heavenly temple and its liturgy, particularly in the second half of the song cycle.” 40 As Carol Newsom observes, “it is clear that these chapters … play a central role in informing the conception of the heavenly temple and the Sabbath worship conducted there.” 41
C. Earthly Liturgy and Cosmic Reality
Julie Galambush finds evidence within the text of Ezekiel itself that chaps. 40-48 should be understood as a vision of heavenly reality. She identifies in Ezekiel 8-47 the pattern of the old entrhonement festival. Because of the circumstances of the exile, this ritual could not be enacted cultically. Thus, Galambush proposes, “rather than the ritual being a symbolic reenactment of a cosmic reality, in Ezekiel the prophet witnesses the actual cosmic event.” 42 The numerous correspondences cited by Galambush between the festival and the Book of Ezekiel are compelling: the departure of the ark or throne in Ezekiel 8- I I, the [negative] rehearsal of salvation history in Ezekiel 20, the “visit to the graveyard” in Ezekiel 37, and the final enthronement in Ezekiel 40 48.43 Indeed, Marvin Sweeney has suggesed, that one might expand this thesis to find in Ezekiel I.- ,3 an aspect of another autumn festival: the priest’s entrance into the divine presence on Yom Kippur. 44
The theme throughout this rehearsal of Israel’s sacred calendar is the problem of the divine presence. How can Yhwh be said to be present among the exiles, who are removed from land and temple and liturgy? The answer given in Ezekiel, it seems, is that Yhwh can be wherever Yhwh wants to be. The presence has forsaken Jerusalem: the earthly Zion and the heavenly Zion have become disassociated. Ezekiel, however, has been given access to the cosmic reality, where Yhwh’s true enthronement lakes place.
V. The Function of Ezekiel 40-42
A. The Jerusalem Temple as icon
What purpose is served by the description of this ideal heavenly shrine? We can get at this question by asking another: What purpose was served by the earthly shrine? As is observed above, the temple was deemed a connecting point between heaven and earth. By extension, the iconography of the temple could itself become a medium of divine presence. The clearest expression of this idea is Ps 48:13-14 (NRSV): “Walk about Zion, go all around it, count its towers, consider well its ramparts; go through its citadels, that you may tell the next generation that this is God, our God forever and ever. He will be our guide forever.” Here, Zion functions in a manner Vet)) much like the icon in Eastern Orthodoxy. The Orthodox icon is understood to be a window into heaven. Reverence paid to the icon passes through to the heavenly realm, while the icon communicates to the worshiper an experience of heavenly reality. Similarly, in ancient Israel the temple itself appears to have been understood as a means of experiencing God. Pilgrim songs and songs of Zion describe the longing for the sight of the temple—which is also, in areal sense, a vision of God (so Psalm 84, especially v 8; also Ps 42:2-6). Mark Smith has proposed that the frequent biblical motif of “seeing” God reflects a connection between Yhwh and solar imagery. 45 While this may well be so, I would propose that this idea could be connected more concretely with the vision of Yhwh in the liturgy of the temple, or even with the sight of the temple itself.
For Ezekiel and the other exiles, the devotional function served by, the iconography of the temple was lost forever. Even prior to the temple’s literal destruction, the corruption of Jerusalem’s liturgy had severed the shrine’s connection with the divine world. Yet Yltwh had promised to he present, in however small a measure, among the exiles. Ezekiel’s detailed report of his vision would appear to be, at least in part, the means of this presence. 46
B. Ezekiel 40-42 as Verbal Icon
At least since Smend, scholars have remarked on the explicitly literary character of the Book of Ezekiel: 47 The unique function of Ezekiel as a written text has been a particular concern of Ellen Davis, who sees Ezekiel as a liminal figure between prophet and scribe. 48 The point may be overstated, of course; certainly written prophecy did not originate with Ezekiel. Still, one can legitimately ask how the function of the report of Ezekiel’s temple vision as a written text may differ from its function as an oral performance.
Margaret Rader observes that writing, as opposed to speech, “tends toward syntactic complexity and lexical elaboration,” elements which enable the composer “to control and make possible the development of a complex image in the mind of the reader.”49 This is precisely what we see in Ezekiel 40-42. The reader of the text is able to experience what the prophet experienced, independent pf the original visionary; however, this (admittedly indirect) experience is disciplined and controlled by the fixedness of the written text. “Only in writing,” Rader asserts, “can the inference-suggesting information be so carefully controlled and restricted even as inferring and imagining are given full rein.” 50 The text of Ezekiel’s vision, thus, could become an aid to devotional piety, like the icon in Orthodoxy.
A similar function could be argued for the heavenly ascents in Jewish and Christian apocalypses. Scholars such as Jershom Scholem, Morton Smith, and James Tabor have understood the ascents as literary devices providing directions for would-be mystics who wish to repeat the ecstatic experience of the visionary. 51 Himmelfarb, however, observes that the evidence for rites or mystical practices designed to induce a heavenly ascent is scant in Jewish and Christian circles.52 She cites studies by Schafer and Halpern to the effect that by reciting given texts from the hekhalot literature the student was able to achieve the same results as those who actually experienced the ascent.53 Himmelfarb concludes, then, that “the heavenly ascents of the hekhalot literature functioned not as rites to be enacted but as stories to he repeated:54 If, however, we view the texts as having a devotional function analogous to that of the icon, the distinction between ecstatic religious experience and literary imagination becomes less significant. The text itself may be understood to give the reader access to the transcendent realm. Consider, for instance, that the Qumran covenanters, who preserved and revered the Enochic literature with its heavenly ascents, evidently believed that in their worship they participated in the angelic liturgy of the heavenly realm, a realm envisioned in images drawn from Ezekiel. 55
Susan Niditch has also pointed toward the possibility that the temple vision of Ezekiel served a devotional function for the exilic community, doing so by comparing Ezekiel’s vision to the mandalas of Tantric Buddhism.56 Like the temple, the mandala is a microcosm: an expression of the central structure of reality in symbolic form.57 Meditation upon the mandala therefore centers the devotee, putting her or him in connection with the true reality. Niditch notes that mandalas need not he two-dimensional representations; they may he actual structures, “palaces of the deities, built with real materials.”58 Tantric literature contains numerous detailed descriptions of such mandalas, with directions for their construction. Niditch finds in these texts parallels to Ezekiel’s temple vision.
While the parallels Niditch draws between Ezekiel 40 48 and the mandala are evocative, I would suggest that the icon is an analogy more in keeping with Ezekiel’s report of his vision. The mandala, after all, is always a visual symbol.59 The descriptive texts from Tantric literature cited by Niditch are not themselves mandalas. However, a written text can serve as an icon. In Eastern Orthodox tradition, the Gospels are a “verbal icon” of Christ. The stories of Jesus make the Christ present to the faithful hearer of the word, in a way rather like the presence mediated by a painted icon. Similarly, Ezekiel’s temple vision can be understood as a verbal icon by which a people who had thought themselves separated from God could experience and celebrate the divine presence.
In Ezekiel 40 42, the prophet describes his ascent to the real temple, situated atop the real Zion. By means of Ezekiel’s report of his vision the exiles could share in this extraordinary experience, seeing in their mind’s eye the heavenly temple that Ezekiel saw. Though the earthly temple was no more, the heavenly temple would stand forever. Through Ezekiel’s words the community of exiles was given access to this eternal, cosmic reality. Indeed, the reader in any time or place can marvel at this temple, and experience thereby the connection with the sacred that Ezekiel experienced.
Notes
1 Ezekiel 40:5 is held suspect by John Wevers (Ezekiel [NCB; Greenwood, SC: Attic, 19691 209). While W. Eichrodt (Ezekiel [071); Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970] 547) holds 41:13-14 to be original, with the element of guidance lost in the text’s redaction, he otherwise considers all of 41:5-42:14 secondary (pp. 546-48), as they run counter to the “purely two-dimensional geometric arrangement which, without a word about the elevation of the buildings, produces its effect solely through the symmetry of the plan” (p. 549). While Ronald Hals (Ezekiel [FOTL 19; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 19891298) considers it generally impossible "to get behind the present text to some reconstructed, trouble-free original," he notes that in 41:5-12,15W26 and in 42:1-14 "a decided difference in style appears."
2 For instance, G. A. Cooke, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Ezekiel (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936) 425; Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel (IHermeneia; The Structuring of Biblical Books: Studies in the Book of Ezekiel," ASTI 10 (1975-76) 139.
3 No emendation such as "from back to back," suggested by the MS on the basis of the Septuagint's "from the wall of the chamber [Greek On here is a transliteration of the Hebrew an] to the wall of the chamber;” and followed by the RSV is necessary. Given the barriers across the front of the ski, chambers (40:12), the easiest way for the guide to measure the breadth of the gateway was to measure along the ceiling.
4 As Hats (Ezekiel. 299) also observes.
5 The wall is six cubits deep and tall (40:5), while the gate complexes are each fifty cubits deep and twenty-five cubits broad (40:13-15; the height of the gate complexes is not given). The study of Carl Gordon Howie (“The East Gate of Ezekiel’s Temple Enclosure and the Solomonic Gateway of Megiddo” BASOR 117 [1950] 13-18) was seminal in this regard. Ile himself was inclined to view the structure as a memory of the first temple’s eastern gate. Zimmerli (Ezekiel. 2. 352 with 2.353 [the illustration]) has a neat, brief summary of the more recent work on similar gateways uncovered at Hazor and Gezer and the conclusions drawn from them, which lead him to conclude that the gateways described in Ezekiel 40-42 are Solomonic city gates, not temple structures. Frank Moore Cross, however, finds this a false distinction: in a private communication he writes, The temple area of Solomon was an ‘independent citadel, a fortified bastion, and probably even on the south where it joined the City of David was independently fortified the entrances to the temple are in fact city gates, gates to [the] citadel.” Still, as Cross observes, the temple vision applies this plan of a fortified gate to inner as well as outer structures of the gate, which seems unlikely as does the pairing of a fortified gate with what, for purposes of defense, seems only a token wall.
6 This point has been examined by Steven Tuell, “‘And the Sea Was No More :Lhe, Absence of the ‘sea’ in Ezekiel 40)47-49 and Revelation 211,” a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, 1990.
7 So Herbert May, 18. 6. 53; R. E. Clements, God and Temple (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1965) 106, Victor Gold, The Oxford Annotated Revised Standard Version (ed. Herber) May and Bruce Metzger; New York: Oxford University Press, 1973) 1052; Wevers, Ezekiel. 208; Moshe Greenberg, “The Design and Themes of Ezekiel’s Program of Restoration,” Int 38 (1984) 182; idem, Ezekiel 1-20 (AB 22; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983) 15. Cooke (Ezekiel. 425) describes Ezekiel as “the most practical of reformers”; however, Ezekiel was also sensitive to an eschatological element here which will be considered below: the time of the return from exile is also a new age.??
8 Johann Maier, “The Temple Scroll and Tendencies in the Cultic Architecture of the Second Commonwealth,” Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls (ISOT/ASOR Monograph Series 2; JSPSup 8; ed. Lawrence H. Schiffman; Sheffield: JSOT, 1990) 67, 75.
9So Eichrodt, Ezekiel. 542; Hats, Ezekiel, 299. Indeed, Hats (pp. 301-3) deems it impossible to recover any kind of positive program from these verses; the report of the vision, in his view, is intended to negate past practices and abuses.
10 Avigdor Hurowitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House: Temple Building in the Bible in Light of Mesopotamian and Northwest Semitic Writings, JSOTSup 115, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992) 244-47. According to Horowitz. a comparison of the biblical texts with Mesopotamian building descriptions, particularly those found in royal inscriptions, reveals that the Mesopotamian inscriptions are high-flown and poetical, while the biblical texts tend to be concrete and practical. By reading a biblical building description one can actually visualize the structure described something not always possible with the Mesopotamian inscriptions.
11 Horowitz, I have Built. 247 n. 2, To demonstrate the concreteness of biblical temple descriptions, Horowitz (p. 247) cites the numerous sketches and models of the temple of Jerusalem that have been based on these descriptions. No such model, however can be made of Ezekiel’s temple complex or its contents- The best one can do is present a bare outline. The sole exception is the altar of burnt offering (43:13-17), which is described in such detail that it can be modeled with ease, but the description of the altar was not a part of the prophet’s original vision xenon. and it appears to derive from an older description of the Solomonic altar (see the discussion in Steven S. limit, The 2aw of the Temple M Ezekiel 40 48 [HSM 49; Atlanta: Scholars, 19921 46-51).12
12 Horowitz, I Have Built. 64.
13 Gudea Cylinder A, col. 4 line 8 to col. 7 line 10.
14 CTA 4.4.62-63.
15 Note in I Chr 28:11-12 the explicit mention of the tabnit, which in this case evidently refers to a written document. Yigael Yadin (The Temple Scroll [2 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983] I. q7, 182) has suggested that the Temple Scroll presents itself as just such a document, originally revealed to Moses, then handed on to Solomon by David.
16 As Yadin has argued, on the basis of 1 IQT 29.8-9: /9 ‘TIM nu Yadin (temple Scroll, 2. 128-29) translates this passage, And I will consecrate my (t)emple by my glory, (the temple) on which will settle my glory, until the day of on which I will create my temple” Yadin (Temple Scroll I. 183)
compares this st between a present temple (evident y t ‘emu described in the scroll) and
a future, eschatological to be Yhwh’s creation) with the “old house” and “new
house” of 1 Enoch 90:29.17
17 Horowitz, I Have Built 25; cf. 138, 159, 255.
18 Ibid., 251.
19 Ibid., 251-52. Horowitz bases his assessment of the text as an exercise on the use of the expressions assum/ki. . . la tidi, “since you do not know,” and ana amari, “in order to calculate.”
20 Ibid., 252-53.
21 Ibid., 253-55.
22 Ibid., 255.
23 As Eichrodt (Ezekiel, 184) observes, Ezekiel 40-42 is neither instruction for nor narrative of building, but a vision of an already built complex.
24 Eichrodt, Ezekiel, 542; Yadin, Temple Scroll.1.198; Maier, “Temple Scroll and Tendencies in the Cultic Architecture,” 69; Jon Levenson, Theology of the Program of Restoration of Ezekiel 40-48 (HSM 10; Missoula, MT: Scholars, 1976) 33: J. J. M. Roberts. “A Christian Perspective on Prophetic Prediction,” Int 33 (1979) 247; Joseph Blenkinsopp, Ezekiel (IBC; Louisville: John Knox, 1990) 193-99.
25 For the mythic significance of the cosmic mountain, see Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return; or, Cosmos and History (Bollingen Series 46; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1911) 12-21; Richard J. Clifford, The Cosmic Mountain in Canaan and the Old Testament (HSM 4; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972) 3. Levenson (Theology. 14) identifies the mountain of Ezekiel 40:1 with the mythic Zaphon, but he also identifies it with Sinai (Theology 41).
26 Yadin ( Temple Scroll, I. 185) suggests that the idea of a future temple built by Yhwh, which he finds also in the Temple Scroll, derives from [nod 15:17. The future temple is also mentioned in 4QFIorilegium. which describes the house which [he will create) for [himself at the end of days" One might also note Jub. 1:15-17,26-29. Eichrodt (Ezekiel, 542) similarly observed that in Ezekiel's vision "the temple makes its appearance as a heavenly reality created by Yahweh himself and transplanted to stand on the earth," and that "there is nothing to suggest that it should have a human builder." Cf. also Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2. 327-28.
27 Blenkinsopp (Ezekiel, 177-78; 179-80; 194) further argues that the temple vision originally followed Ezekiel 37.
28 of an oracle. Of these, eleven are precise to the year, month and day (I:I; 8:1; 20:1; 24:1; 29:1; 29:17; 30:20; 11:1;32:1; 33:21; 40:1). Three others are precise to the year and day (I:2; 26:1: 32:17), while two date by reference M some fixed event (3:16 refers back to the date of the call vision and sets its vision seven days later, while a second date in 40:1 specifies the year as the fourteenth after the fall of Jerusalem). Interestingly, both 1:1,2 and 40:1 are double dates, though in light of the troublesome "thirtieth year" of 1:1 not much can be made of this parallel.
29 This formula occurs seven times in Ezekiel, always in a visionary context (1:3; 3:14,22: 8:1; 33:22: 37:1; 40:1), Zimmerli (Ezekiel, I. 42) rightly regards the phenomenon of prophetic ecstasy as a point of continuity between Ezekiel and the preclassical prophets. The word mar'ah is relatively rare, occurring only eleven times (Gen 46:2; Num 12:6 [both El; 1 Sam 3:15; Dan 10:7 [twice],8,16; Ezek 1:1; 8:3; 40:2; 439).
30 Most scholars (for instance, Cooke, Ezekiel, 121; May. IB, 6. 118; Eichrodt, Ezekiel, 142-43; Zimmerli, Ezekiel. 1.256; Donald E. Gowan, Ezekiel [Knox Preaching Guides; Atlanta: John Knox, 19851 50; Hats, Ezekiel, 68-69; Blenkinsopp, Ezekiel. 52, 62-64) have argued that this text is not original to the vision, and that it may indeed represent a later editorial expansion of Ezekiel's prophecy. However, despite the presence of an additional oracular heading at 11.14, the content of this oracle fits quite well into its context: Yhwh's condemnation of Jerusalem's inhabitants and abandonment of Jerusalem itself. Further, as Wevers observes (Ezekiel. 79). this text presupposes that Jerusalem is still standing, which makes it unlikely that 11:14-16 has been added by a later editor, or even by Ezekiel himself, at a time following the city's destruction. If it was not originally connected to the vision of the temple's destruction, the connection was made very early in the composition of the book, doubtless by Ezekiel himself.
31 The JPSB reads 11:14-25 as a single connected oracle, so that 11:14-16 becomes an introduction to the promise of return in 11:17-21 (a reading also proposed by Cooke, Ezekiel, 124-25). Though the exiles have been removed far away and Yhwh has "become to them a diminished sanctity in the countries whither they have gone" the day of their return will one day come. Against this reading must be posed the separate oracular heading at 11:17 and the scribal tradition inserting a break seluma between vv 16 and 17, both of which suggest that 11:16 and 11:17-21 represent two separate divine responses to the words of the Jerusalemites in 11:14. Further, the general rendering "sanctity" for Inn is without precedent; everywhere, miqdas is used for a sanctuary. Note that in the Targum of Ezek 11:16, on non is understood as a reference to the synagogue. Ezek 11:16 does not represent a concession to the diminished sanctity of Yhwh in Babylon—quite the contrary: it is only among the exiles that Yhwh's presence will be manifested at all, albeit in small measure.
32 This proposal was first advanced by the author of the present study in Steven S. Tuell, The Temple Vision of Ezekiel 40-48: A Program for Restoration?" Proceedings of the Eastern Great Lakes Biblical Society 2 (1982) 101-2. Something similar is proposed by Gowan (Ezekiel, 140), save that he understands the vision symbolically, as a "theology in visual terms." While Ezekiel 40-42 is certainly filled with theological insight, it remains the report of a vision: Ezekiel describes what he and his contemporaries would have understood as an actual visionary journey to the heavenly temple.
33 A. Leo Oppenheim, The Mesopotamian Temple," BAR, 1. 163. Indeed, one of the accusations raised later against Sennacherib was that with evil intentions against Babylon he let its sanctuaries fall into disrepair, disturbed the(ir) foundation Imes and let the cultic rites fall into oblivion" (from the stela of Nabonidus in Istanbul, t E A. Len Oppenhcim. A NET 309; emphasis mine).
34 Frank Moore Cross, "The Priestly Tabernacle," BAR. 1 220.
35 Hurowitz, I Have Built. 168-70.
36 Martha Himmelfarb, “From Prophecy to Apocalypse: The Book of the Watcbers and Tours of Heaven,” Jewish Spirituality: From the Bible tbrough the Middle Ages (World Spirituality 13; ed. Arthur Green; New York: Crossroad, 1988) 149-50.37
37 Ibid., 150.38
38 The mention of Sing' (Pa in Ezek 40:2 should not mislead the reader. Since the term "Zinn" is never used in the Book of Ezekiel (Yhwh having abandoned Zion's earthly referent, the acropolis of Jerusalem), this phrase serves to indicate that the mountain in question is indeed Zion, the mountain of God. Elsewhere in Scripture, heavenly "geography" is indicated by reference to corresponding earthly geography. For example, Ps 48:2 identifies the divine dwelling place with Zaphon, and in Dan 10;20-21 Michael, the angelic prince of Israel, does battle with the angelic princes of Persia and Greece. One might also cite in this connection the place names in Judg 5:4, where Yhwh marches to war from the south (cf. also Hab 3:3).
39 For instance, the description of the throne-chariot of Yhwh in 4Q404 Iii 1-16; 4Q405 20-22 (Carol Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice: A Critical Edition [HSS 27; Atlanta: Scholars, 1985] 226,303) obviously derives from Ezekiel I, as Newsom (pp. 52, 55-56) has noted.
40 Note particularly that the interest of Ezekiel 40 42 in the temple gates appears to find a parallel in the Songs. the words used to describe the entrances and exits of the heavenly temple in 4Q405 (x18′, 824,91A3 Prat appear together only in Ezekiel, as Newsom (Songs. 42) has noted: the first two are found in 40:11,38,40 and 46:3; all are found together in 46:2-3.
41 Ibid., 58.
42 Julie Galambush, “The Last Enthronement Festival: Ezekiel 43 as 4.5444144 2199 Year’s Celebration: presented at the Annual Meeting Of the Society of Biblical Literature. 1992.
43 Galambush also suggests a tenuous connection between the taus vim of 11:16 and the akitu house, the smaller shrine where the image of Marduk was placed upon removal from Esagila in the New Year’s Festival.
44 Statement made in response to Galambush’s presentation at the meeting referred to in n. 42. Galambush is inclined to reject Marvin Sweeney’s proposal that Ezekiel I 3 represents Yom Kippur, since the dates are wrong; further, she proposes that Yom Kippur is absent from the cultic calendar in Eyck 45:21-25, where it has been replaced by a ceremony of cleansing linked to Passover. Without doubt, the dates, both for the initial vision of call and for the temple cleansing in the calendar, do not lit the calendar of P. but that in itself need not rule out such an identification. Elsewhere Quell, Law of tbe Temple. 145-48) I have argued that. Ezekiel 45 represents an alternate calendar, from a time prior to the adoption of a single, fixed liturgy. The ritual described in 45:18-20 is explicitly performed to atone for the Temple and for the inadvertent sin of the people. ThiS festival despite its variant date, is functionally, Yom Kippur. If the initial vision of Yhwh’s Kavod is understood to represents the priest’s entrance into e
The Jerusalem Temple in Devotional and Visionary Experience
Jon D. Levenson
Temple and TentA CENTRAL PARADOX of Jewish spirituality lies in the fact that so much of it centers upon an institution that was destroyed almost 1 two millennia ago, the Jerusalem Temple. The enduring centrality of the Temple in Jewish consciousness and the tenacity of it’s hold upon it are attested by the tendency of modern students of Jewish history to periodicize distant antiquity in terms of the First Temple period (ca. 960-587 B.C.E.) and the Second Temple period (ca. 515 B.C..E.-70 C.E.). In ‘fact, the existence or absence of the Temple is a point of great relevance even to the observance of Jewish law. To cite only one example from among many, the Mishnah, a law code promulgated about 200 C.E., stipulates that the prohibition of the slaughter of an animal and its young on the same day (Lev 22:28) applies both “in the presence of the Temple and in the absence of the Temple” (m. Hui. 5:1). But other commandments, especially many found in the last of the six “orders” of the Mishnah, which deals with matters of ritual purity, apply only when the Temple is standing.
The paradox is compounded when one considers that the Pentateuch has been, in principle, the foundational document of Judaism since some point in that Second Temple period. For the Pentateuch neither names Jerusalem nor refers directly to the sacred building(s) that were erected there. Instead it treats at length the construction of the ‘ohel mo’ed, the Tent of Assembly or Tent of Meeting, which served as a portable temple during the period between the revelation at Sinai (e.g., Exod 25-30; 35-40) and the entrance into Canaan, or perhaps even the construction of Solomon’s Temple, the First Temple (1 Kgs 8:4). Modern critical scholarship has tended to doubt the historicity of that portable temple and to regard it as a retrojection of a later institution, usually the Second Temple, which the text thus anchors in primordial events.
Steven S. Tuell
Randolph-Macon College Ashland, VA 23005
The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 58, 1996
In the last great vision of the prophet Ezekiel, an angelic figure guides the- prophet through a temple complex, carefully (though selectively) measuring the walls, gates, and chambers. For all its detail and precision, the visionary report remains curiously laconic as to the appearance or purpose of the courts and chambers marked off by the guide, and nothing at all is said of the reason why this temple was revealed to Ezekiel. Readers of the text have filled the gap with a variety of proposals about the purpose of this vision report. Most scholars have deemed Ezekiel 40-42 to be either a pre-exilic temple blueprint ‘preserved in archival fashion by the prophet or a building proposal for the restored temple — although adherents of the latter view differ in their answers to the question whether the temple was meant to be built by the exiles upon their return to the land or by Yhwh, at the end of time. After these proposals have been considered, another one will be advanced in this study: that the text be seen as a report of an ascent to the heavenly temple by reading this report, Ezekiel’s audience could share in the prophet’s experience of transcendent reality and so be given access to the presence of Yhwh. Ezekiel 40-42 would have functioned, for them, as a verbal icon.
I. Ezekiel 40-42 as a Pre-exilic Blueprint
In Ezekiel 40-42 the various structures of the temple are generally measured in two-dimensional outline, as if on a blueprint. Indeed, complex three-dimensional descriptions in the vision report (such as 40:5; 41:5-15a; 42:1-12) are often regarded as secondary expansions.1 This has prompted many scholars to conclude that Ezekiel’s vision is in fact based on a plan or blueprint of the first temple which he had either preserved himself or found in the archives.2
It is unlikely, however, that Ezekiel was working from an actual pre-exilic blueprint. First, the prophet’s visionary experience is definitely three-dimensional. As he is guided through the eastern gate, he describes the palm trees carved on its pilasters and the windows set in the walls of the gate chambers; furthermore, Ezekiel observes that the width of the eastern gate was measured “from the roof of the chamber to its roof” (40:13), that is, across the ceiling of the gateway.3 We are dealing with a complex, three-dimensional structure, even if it is generally measured only in two dimensions.4 Second, the design found in Ezekiel 40-42 is highly impractical. The massive fortified gates of the complex, for example, are out of all proportion to its relatively scant walls.5 Finally, Ezekiel’s vision does not conform to the pattern of the first temple. While the tripartite structure of Ezekiel’s temple is reminiscent of the Solomonic temple, the temple complex Ezekiel describes is not Solomon’s: for instance, there is no bronze sea in the forecourt of Ezekiel’s temple.6 In fact, nothing like Ezekiel’s temple ever existed. Ezekiel’s temple plan is hybrid, combining different sorts of structures into a wholly unique form. As the prophet himself tells us (40:1), he is describing a vision, But granting that the vision of Ezekiel is a vision and not a blueprint, what is its purpose?
II Ezekiel 40-42 as a Post-exilic Building Proposal
Many commentators have understood Ezekiel 40-42 as an idealistic vision of the restored temple, to be built after the return from exile. If this is so, then the report of the vision is essentially a building proposal.7 The impracticality of the design does not in itself rule out this possibility. The temple complex depicted in the Temple Scroll from Qumran, for example, is architecturally realistic, despite its massive scale.8 However, information essential for the construction of Ezekiel’s temple (for instance, the height of the buildings) is lacking.9 Avigdor Hurowitz argues that not too much should be made of such gaps, which are also present in other biblical descriptions of a temple.10 “The degree to which the biblical author has achieved or missed his goal of concretization,” Horowitz urges, “should not influence our appreciation of what the goal actually was.”11 One must observe, nevertheless, that the temple vision, for all its detail, cannot serve as an adequate blueprint for an actual building. The detailed description serves to give us an overwhelming sense of the symmetry and order in the temple’s design. It also enables us to share in Ezekiel’s experience, to see in our mind’s eye what he sees. But we cannot even begin to construct Ezekiel’s temple on the basis of these measurements.
A. Stories of Building Projects in Israel and the Ancient Near East
The most decisive argument against reading Ezekiel 40-42 as a building program is that it nowhere claims to he a building program. Nowhere in this text do we find either a decision to build the temple or a divine permission given for its building. Horowitz, in his recent survey of Mesopotamian and Northwest Semitic stories of building projects, observes a typical pattern it in these accounts:
I. The circumstance of the project and the decision to build
2. Preparations, such as drafting workmen, gathering materials
3. Description of the building
4. The dedication rites and festivities
5. Blessing and (or) prayer of the king
6. Blessing and curses of future generations12
The form is flexible (in particular, parts 5 and 6 are often missing), but in every building story Horowitz considers, one finds a decision to build—either in response to divine decree, or as a result of the god responding favorably to the king’s desire to build. In the text of the Gudea cylinders the temple of Ningirsu at Lagash is built in accordance with a dream vision of Gudea interpreted by Nina, the main priestess of the gods.13 Similarly, in the Ugaritic Baal cycle Baal’s desire to build a temple cannot be carried out until a decree is issued by ‘El.14 This pattern also holds in the biblical temple building texts. Moses, like Judea, is shown the plan for a sanctuary and receives an explicit divine command to build it (Exod 25:8-9). Similarly, though Yhwh denies David permission to build a temple in Jerusalem (2 Sam 7:4-7; I Chr 22:7-8; 28:1-4), David’s son Solomon is appointed to this task (2 Sam 7:13; I Kgs 5:17-19; I Chr 22:5-6,9-19; 28:5-29:19,” 2 Chr 1:182:9).15 Even the Qumran Temple Scroll contains, implicitly, the decision to build the structure the scroll describes, in obedience to a divine decree.16 In Ezekiel 40-42 there is no such decision or decree. Though Horowitz describes Ezekiel 40 – 42 as “a detailed divine command concerning the rebuilding of the temple and the restoration of the cult,”(17) the text itself contains no such command, but simply presents the dimensions of the visionary temple.
B. An Alternate Genre: The Building Description
The closest parallels to Ezekiel’s description of the temple are not the mythological or biblical texts considered above but another set of descriptive texts, discussed by Horowitz, which are typified by the detailed measurement of structures.18 The first text of this type considered by Horowitz is from the Esagila Tablet. It is a detailed description of two temple chambers, and it appears to be a school text, perhaps an exercise in geometry or surveying.19 Two other examples are the description of the Temple of Resh in Uruk and a description of Babylon found on the obverse of a drawing of the city, both of which may be official surveyors’ reports20 The fourth building description of this type discussed by Horowitz, the description of Esagila and Ezida from Assur, may represent written instructions given to builders; however, it describes an existing structure, which is to be either repaired or duplicated21 The last building descriptions considered by Horowitz, three temple descriptions from Hall 115 at Mari, give the floor plans in two dimensions, for three temples.22 These texts too, according to Horowitz, are not building plans but appear to represent a descriptive inventory.
Note that all of these texts are descriptions of existing structures. While Horowitz cites them as background for understanding the concrete detail presented in all the biblical descriptions of a temple, the texts from Exodus, Kings, and Chronicles are explicitly presented as commands, to build. This command is lacking in Ezekiel, which, like the Mesopotamian descriptions mentioned above, simply presents the dimensions of a structure.23 I will argue that this similarity has great significance for the meaning and function of Ezekiel 40-42. For now, it is sufficient to observe that, judging from the comparison of Ezekiel 40-42 with stories of building projects in the Hebrew Bible and across the ancient Near East, Ezekiel’s vision does not fit into this genre.
III. Ezekiel 40-42 as an Eschatological Building Program
One way to salvage the idea of Ezekiel 40.42 as a building program is to project the vision upon the end time. 24 In this reading no command to build is required, for the temple Ezekiel describes is the eschatological temple which Yhwh will build in the last days. Certainly, there is much in the text to commend such a reading. Its very setting, atop a very high mountain, evokes the final transformation of the world, when Zion will at last be revealed as the cosmic mountain, the center of the earth (Ezek 40:1; cp. Isa 2:2-5; Mic 4:1-4; Zech 14:10).25 The absence of any command or decision to build also makes sense in this view, since the eschatological temple is to be built by Yhwh, not by human hands.26 Finally, the appropriation of Ezekiel’s visions in historical apocalypses such as those of Daniel (especially Daniel 7 and Daniel 10) and of Revelation (Rev I I :I; 21:10-21; 22:1-6) gives evidence that Ezekiel 40-48 was read eschatologically.
Against this reading must be posed the literary setting of the temple vision in Ezekiel’s prophecy. This may seem a strange claim: one could argue that the literary setting of the vision report requires a futuristic interpretation. The vision comes, after all, as the climax of the messages of hope in Ezekiel 33-39, and it immediately follows the description of Yhwh’s final victory over Gog and Magog (Ezekiel 38-39). Indeed, Joseph Blenkinsopp argues that this vision is the fulfillment of the eschatological promise in Ezek 37:26b-27 (NRSV): “I will bless and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary among them forevermore. My dwelling place shall be with them; and I will be their God, and they stall be my people.” 27
We have a still more compelling literary connection, and Ezekiel 40-42 must be understood in terms of it. Ezek 40:1 opens with an introductory formula common in Ezekiel’s prophecy, a date formula specific to the day,28 but in this case the date is followed by the formula for expressing prophetic ecstasy (“the hand of Yhwh was upon me”) and the specification “in visions of God.” 29 These three formulas appear together only two other times in Ezekiel: in 1:1-3 (the call vision) and 8:1-3 (the vision of the abominations). Chapters 1-3, 8-11, and 40-48 are also linked both by mutual reference (8:2 recalls the vision by the river Chebar; 43:3 refers to the river and to the vision of Jerusalem’s destruction) and by the image of the glory (kavod). Chaps. 40-48 and 8-11 are further linked in a pattern of exit and entrance: the kavod exits the Jerusalem temple by the eastern gate in 11:22, and it enters the visionary temple by the eastern gate in 43:4-5. We have, then, an interconnected network of three visions which stand as the milestones of Ezekiel’s ministry and as key points in the structure of his hook. The vision in Ezekiel 40-48 is closely related to the earlier visions, and it demands interpretation on the same terms.
The central issue in all three visions appears to be the divine presence, expressed in priestly terms as the 11=. In his inaugural vision Ezekiel experiences the kavod as a commissioning agent calling him to he a prophet (2:3 3:1 I). In his second vision, the TM] is removed from the temple in Jerusalem (9:3; 10:4,18-19; 11:22-23), an act which leaves the city open to judgment at the hands of the destroyers (9:1-1 IT Now, in his final vision, the prophet sees the mix once more, entering the visionary temple and issuing a promise: “0 human, this is the place of my throne and my footstool, where it will dwell in the midst of the people Israel forever” (43:7a). The explicit reference to the throne of God calls up the imagery of the throne-chariot in 1:15-25 and 10:9-19. The footstool of Yhwh is ordinarily the ark; thus, 43:7a recalls the departure of Yhwh from the cherub throne over the ark in the most holy place (9:3). Significantly, there is neither cherub throne nor ark in the inner room of Ezekiel’s visionary temple (41:3-, 4,15b-20): they are not needed, for Yhwh arrives already on the throne in his chariot. The promise in 43:7a marks the climax of Ezekiel’s book. Now at last the divine presence is manifested among Yhwh’s people, never to be withdrawn.
Given the close association of the three visions, one is prompted to look among them for a parallel to this promise. We find a likely point of contact in11:14-16.30 Here, the prophet addresses the arrogant claims of those who remain in Jerusalem. The inhabitants of the city say that the exiles are now far from ‘The heritage of these outcasts has been abandoned for those left behind to claim. To this Yhwh says,”l will be for them a sanctuary in small measure in the lands where they gone.”31 Far from abandoning the exiles, Yhwh has abandoned Jerusalem. Yhwh will be found instead in the midst of the true house of Israel, which now consists of the community in exile (I 1:15). The vision in Ezekiel 40-42 represents the fulfillment of these words. Despite the collapse of state and cult, Yhwh resolves to be with the exiles, just as he had promised.
IV. Ezekiel 40-42 as a Heavenly Ascent
As has already been observed, Ezekiel in his vision walked through an existing structure. Among the numerous texts cited by Hurowitz, the closest formal parallels to the building description itself appear likewise to be descriptions of existing structures. While one could of course argue that the prophets frequently speak of future events as already accomplished (the famous “prophetic perfect”), one must at any rate acknowledge that Ezekiel’s vision is not explicitly given a future setting. Those elements in the vision that have been so interpreted, particularly the very high mountain and the river of life, are capable of another interpretation that has been little explored. Ezekiel in his vision is guided through a “real” structure, though not an earthly one. The temple of the vision is, I propose, the heavenly archetype, the real temple, of which the temple of Jerusalem was but a shadow. 32
A. The Idea of the Heavenly Plinth’ in Israel and the A anent Near East
The concept of the heavenly temple has deep roots in the temple ideologies of the ancient Near East. The earthly temple was understood to be the material counterpart of the divine dwelling place and, hence, to correspond symbolically to the cosmic mountain where the god lived, the mythic center of the world. This correspondence was guaranteed by precise adherence of the earthly temple to the pattern of the heavenly temple. Hence, in Babylon, the foundation lines of a temple could not be disturbed. When a temple was repaired or rebuilt, the dimensions of the former structure had to he duplicated; otherwise, the temple failed to correspond to its ideal counterpart and could not function as a connecting point with divine reality. 33
That the idea of a heavenly original for the earthly shrine was present in ancient Israel as well is demonstrated in the revelation of the shrine’s pattern (man) to Moses (Exod 25:8-9). Cross and others have propose MB the him was a depiction of the heavenly shrine itself, the very dwelling of Yhwh.34 On the basis of I Chr 28:11-12 (where man refers to a written text) and extrabiblical parallels, Hurowitz argues that the tavnit cannot be an actual structure but must refer rather to a model or plan35 Even if this is the case, the model was presumably not chosen at random.
Numerous illustrations can be cited from the Hebrew Scriptures for the idea that the earthly temple corresponds to the heavenly temple. The ancient poem in 1 Kgs 8:12-13 explicitly describes the temple of Jerusalem as an earthly dwelling place for Yhwh corresponding to the Sell’, the incomprehensible, inaccessible cloud of God’s heavenly dwelling (cf. Exod 20:18; Ps 97:2; Job 22:12-14). In Ps 46:5, Zion is described as a source of waters, calling to mind the dwelling place of ‘El as it is described in CTA 4,4.2I-22: mbk nhrm/ qrb apq thmtm, “at the source of the twin rivers; in the midst of the pools of the double deep.” Ps 48:2 explicitly identifies Zion with Zaphon, the mythic home of Bag. Presumably, then, the man was understood as corresponding to the ideal shrine, whether Moses was given a vision of that structure or not.
B. Heavenly Ascents in Biblical and Extrabiblical Literature
The idea of a journey to the heavenly temple is not without parallel. In Isa 6:1, Isaiah ben Amoz is evidently transported from the temple of Jerusalem into the divine original temple, which vastly surpasses its earthly counterpart; the prophet says that the mere edge of Yhwh’s royal robes filled the earthly temple. Most explicitly, the Enochic literature of the second century B.C.E. describes journeys into the heavenly regions, including the heavenly temple where God dwells (I Enoch 14:8-25). As Martha Himmelfarb observes, “there are numerous close parallels between the ascent of Enoch and the visions of Ezekiel: the imagery of cloud, wind, water, and fire; the presence of the cherubim; the lofty chariot-throne with its wondrous wheels.” 36 It is particularly intriguing that the first temple entered by Enoch (which somehow opens into the second, greater, temple) is empty, as is the temple of Ezekiel’s vision.
Himmelfarb insists that while “Ezekiel is the only one of all the classical prophets to record the experience of being physically transported by the spirit of God … even Ezekiel does not ascend to heaven. The throne of God comes to him while he is standing by the river Chebar (Ezek I-3). Enoch’s is the first ascent in Jewish literature.” 37 Ezekiel 1-3 certainly does .UN describe an ascent, but that is exactly the experience described in VAS*”Ezekiel is taken by the hand of Yhwh to a very high mountain. 38 There, he is guided by an angel through a standing structure. Clearly, this structure does not stand on the earthly Zion. Where, then, is it? I suggest that it stands atop the heavenly Zion, that Ezekiel has been taken by the spirit into the heavenly reality.
We may find early evidence for this understanding of Ezekiel 40-48 in the Songs of Sabbath Sacrifice from Qumran (4Q400-407). Ezekielian words and images recur- these songs.39 Most striking, however, is the way in which the poets have used Ezekiel 40-48 to structure their portrayal of the heavenly temple and its liturgy, particularly in the second half of the song cycle.” 40 As Carol Newsom observes, “it is clear that these chapters … play a central role in informing the conception of the heavenly temple and the Sabbath worship conducted there.” 41
C. Earthly Liturgy and Cosmic Reality
Julie Galambush finds evidence within the text of Ezekiel itself that chaps. 40-48 should be understood as a vision of heavenly reality. She identifies in Ezekiel 8-47 the pattern of the old entrhonement festival. Because of the circumstances of the exile, this ritual could not be enacted cultically. Thus, Galambush proposes, “rather than the ritual being a symbolic reenactment of a cosmic reality, in Ezekiel the prophet witnesses the actual cosmic event.” 42 The numerous correspondences cited by Galambush between the festival and the Book of Ezekiel are compelling: the departure of the ark or throne in Ezekiel 8- I I, the [negative] rehearsal of salvation history in Ezekiel 20, the “visit to the graveyard” in Ezekiel 37, and the final enthronement in Ezekiel 40 48.43 Indeed, Marvin Sweeney has suggesed, that one might expand this thesis to find in Ezekiel I.- ,3 an aspect of another autumn festival: the priest’s entrance into the divine presence on Yom Kippur. 44
The theme throughout this rehearsal of Israel’s sacred calendar is the problem of the divine presence. How can Yhwh be said to be present among the exiles, who are removed from land and temple and liturgy? The answer given in Ezekiel, it seems, is that Yhwh can be wherever Yhwh wants to be. The presence has forsaken Jerusalem: the earthly Zion and the heavenly Zion have become disassociated. Ezekiel, however, has been given access to the cosmic reality, where Yhwh’s true enthronement lakes place.
V. The Function of Ezekiel 40-42
A. The Jerusalem Temple as icon
What purpose is served by the description of this ideal heavenly shrine? We can get at this question by asking another: What purpose was served by the earthly shrine? As is observed above, the temple was deemed a connecting point between heaven and earth. By extension, the iconography of the temple could itself become a medium of divine presence. The clearest expression of this idea is Ps 48:13-14 (NRSV): “Walk about Zion, go all around it, count its towers, consider well its ramparts; go through its citadels, that you may tell the next generation that this is God, our God forever and ever. He will be our guide forever.” Here, Zion functions in a manner Vet)) much like the icon in Eastern Orthodoxy. The Orthodox icon is understood to be a window into heaven. Reverence paid to the icon passes through to the heavenly realm, while the icon communicates to the worshiper an experience of heavenly reality. Similarly, in ancient Israel the temple itself appears to have been understood as a means of experiencing God. Pilgrim songs and songs of Zion describe the longing for the sight of the temple—which is also, in areal sense, a vision of God (so Psalm 84, especially v 8; also Ps 42:2-6). Mark Smith has proposed that the frequent biblical motif of “seeing” God reflects a connection between Yhwh and solar imagery. 45 While this may well be so, I would propose that this idea could be connected more concretely with the vision of Yhwh in the liturgy of the temple, or even with the sight of the temple itself.
For Ezekiel and the other exiles, the devotional function served by, the iconography of the temple was lost forever. Even prior to the temple’s literal destruction, the corruption of Jerusalem’s liturgy had severed the shrine’s connection with the divine world. Yet Yltwh had promised to he present, in however small a measure, among the exiles. Ezekiel’s detailed report of his vision would appear to be, at least in part, the means of this presence. 46
B. Ezekiel 40-42 as Verbal Icon
At least since Smend, scholars have remarked on the explicitly literary character of the Book of Ezekiel: 47 The unique function of Ezekiel as a written text has been a particular concern of Ellen Davis, who sees Ezekiel as a liminal figure between prophet and scribe. 48 The point may be overstated, of course; certainly written prophecy did not originate with Ezekiel. Still, one can legitimately ask how the function of the report of Ezekiel’s temple vision as a written text may differ from its function as an oral performance.
Margaret Rader observes that writing, as opposed to speech, “tends toward syntactic complexity and lexical elaboration,” elements which enable the composer “to control and make possible the development of a complex image in the mind of the reader.”49 This is precisely what we see in Ezekiel 40-42. The reader of the text is able to experience what the prophet experienced, independent pf the original visionary; however, this (admittedly indirect) experience is disciplined and controlled by the fixedness of the written text. “Only in writing,” Rader asserts, “can the inference-suggesting information be so carefully controlled and restricted even as inferring and imagining are given full rein.” 50 The text of Ezekiel’s vision, thus, could become an aid to devotional piety, like the icon in Orthodoxy.
A similar function could be argued for the heavenly ascents in Jewish and Christian apocalypses. Scholars such as Jershom Scholem, Morton Smith, and James Tabor have understood the ascents as literary devices providing directions for would-be mystics who wish to repeat the ecstatic experience of the visionary. 51 Himmelfarb, however, observes that the evidence for rites or mystical practices designed to induce a heavenly ascent is scant in Jewish and Christian circles.52 She cites studies by Schafer and Halpern to the effect that by reciting given texts from the hekhalot literature the student was able to achieve the same results as those who actually experienced the ascent.53 Himmelfarb concludes, then, that “the heavenly ascents of the hekhalot literature functioned not as rites to be enacted but as stories to he repeated:54 If, however, we view the texts as having a devotional function analogous to that of the icon, the distinction between ecstatic religious experience and literary imagination becomes less significant. The text itself may be understood to give the reader access to the transcendent realm. Consider, for instance, that the Qumran covenanters, who preserved and revered the Enochic literature with its heavenly ascents, evidently believed that in their worship they participated in the angelic liturgy of the heavenly realm, a realm envisioned in images drawn from Ezekiel. 55
Susan Niditch has also pointed toward the possibility that the temple vision of Ezekiel served a devotional function for the exilic community, doing so by comparing Ezekiel’s vision to the mandalas of Tantric Buddhism.56 Like the temple, the mandala is a microcosm: an expression of the central structure of reality in symbolic form.57 Meditation upon the mandala therefore centers the devotee, putting her or him in connection with the true reality. Niditch notes that mandalas need not he two-dimensional representations; they may he actual structures, “palaces of the deities, built with real materials.”58 Tantric literature contains numerous detailed descriptions of such mandalas, with directions for their construction. Niditch finds in these texts parallels to Ezekiel’s temple vision.
While the parallels Niditch draws between Ezekiel 40 48 and the mandala are evocative, I would suggest that the icon is an analogy more in keeping with Ezekiel’s report of his vision. The mandala, after all, is always a visual symbol.59 The descriptive texts from Tantric literature cited by Niditch are not themselves mandalas. However, a written text can serve as an icon. In Eastern Orthodox tradition, the Gospels are a “verbal icon” of Christ. The stories of Jesus make the Christ present to the faithful hearer of the word, in a way rather like the presence mediated by a painted icon. Similarly, Ezekiel’s temple vision can be understood as a verbal icon by which a people who had thought themselves separated from God could experience and celebrate the divine presence.
In Ezekiel 40 42, the prophet describes his ascent to the real temple, situated atop the real Zion. By means of Ezekiel’s report of his vision the exiles could share in this extraordinary experience, seeing in their mind’s eye the heavenly temple that Ezekiel saw. Though the earthly temple was no more, the heavenly temple would stand forever. Through Ezekiel’s words the community of exiles was given access to this eternal, cosmic reality. Indeed, the reader in any time or place can marvel at this temple, and experience thereby the connection with the sacred that Ezekiel experienced.
Notes
1 Ezekiel 40:5 is held suspect by John Wevers (Ezekiel [NCB; Greenwood, SC: Attic, 19691 209). While W. Eichrodt (Ezekiel [071); Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970] 547) holds 41:13-14 to be original, with the element of guidance lost in the text’s redaction, he otherwise considers all of 41:5-42:14 secondary (pp. 546-48), as they run counter to the “purely two-dimensional geometric arrangement which, without a word about the elevation of the buildings, produces its effect solely through the symmetry of the plan” (p. 549). While Ronald Hals (Ezekiel [FOTL 19; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 19891298) considers it generally impossible "to get behind the present text to some reconstructed, trouble-free original," he notes that in 41:5-12,15W26 and in 42:1-14 "a decided difference in style appears."
2 For instance, G. A. Cooke, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Ezekiel (ICC; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936) 425; Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel (IHermeneia; The Structuring of Biblical Books: Studies in the Book of Ezekiel," ASTI 10 (1975-76) 139.
3 No emendation such as "from back to back," suggested by the MS on the basis of the Septuagint's "from the wall of the chamber [Greek On here is a transliteration of the Hebrew an] to the wall of the chamber;” and followed by the RSV is necessary. Given the barriers across the front of the ski, chambers (40:12), the easiest way for the guide to measure the breadth of the gateway was to measure along the ceiling.
4 As Hats (Ezekiel. 299) also observes.
5 The wall is six cubits deep and tall (40:5), while the gate complexes are each fifty cubits deep and twenty-five cubits broad (40:13-15; the height of the gate complexes is not given). The study of Carl Gordon Howie (“The East Gate of Ezekiel’s Temple Enclosure and the Solomonic Gateway of Megiddo” BASOR 117 [1950] 13-18) was seminal in this regard. Ile himself was inclined to view the structure as a memory of the first temple’s eastern gate. Zimmerli (Ezekiel. 2. 352 with 2.353 [the illustration]) has a neat, brief summary of the more recent work on similar gateways uncovered at Hazor and Gezer and the conclusions drawn from them, which lead him to conclude that the gateways described in Ezekiel 40-42 are Solomonic city gates, not temple structures. Frank Moore Cross, however, finds this a false distinction: in a private communication he writes, The temple area of Solomon was an ‘independent citadel, a fortified bastion, and probably even on the south where it joined the City of David was independently fortified the entrances to the temple are in fact city gates, gates to [the] citadel.” Still, as Cross observes, the temple vision applies this plan of a fortified gate to inner as well as outer structures of the gate, which seems unlikely as does the pairing of a fortified gate with what, for purposes of defense, seems only a token wall.
6 This point has been examined by Steven Tuell, “‘And the Sea Was No More :Lhe, Absence of the ‘sea’ in Ezekiel 40)47-49 and Revelation 211,” a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, 1990.
7 So Herbert May, 18. 6. 53; R. E. Clements, God and Temple (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1965) 106, Victor Gold, The Oxford Annotated Revised Standard Version (ed. Herber) May and Bruce Metzger; New York: Oxford University Press, 1973) 1052; Wevers, Ezekiel. 208; Moshe Greenberg, “The Design and Themes of Ezekiel’s Program of Restoration,” Int 38 (1984) 182; idem, Ezekiel 1-20 (AB 22; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983) 15. Cooke (Ezekiel. 425) describes Ezekiel as “the most practical of reformers”; however, Ezekiel was also sensitive to an eschatological element here which will be considered below: the time of the return from exile is also a new age.??
8 Johann Maier, “The Temple Scroll and Tendencies in the Cultic Architecture of the Second Commonwealth,” Archaeology and History in the Dead Sea Scrolls (ISOT/ASOR Monograph Series 2; JSPSup 8; ed. Lawrence H. Schiffman; Sheffield: JSOT, 1990) 67, 75.
9So Eichrodt, Ezekiel. 542; Hats, Ezekiel, 299. Indeed, Hats (pp. 301-3) deems it impossible to recover any kind of positive program from these verses; the report of the vision, in his view, is intended to negate past practices and abuses.
10 Avigdor Hurowitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House: Temple Building in the Bible in Light of Mesopotamian and Northwest Semitic Writings, JSOTSup 115, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992) 244-47. According to Horowitz. a comparison of the biblical texts with Mesopotamian building descriptions, particularly those found in royal inscriptions, reveals that the Mesopotamian inscriptions are high-flown and poetical, while the biblical texts tend to be concrete and practical. By reading a biblical building description one can actually visualize the structure described something not always possible with the Mesopotamian inscriptions.
11 Horowitz, I have Built. 247 n. 2, To demonstrate the concreteness of biblical temple descriptions, Horowitz (p. 247) cites the numerous sketches and models of the temple of Jerusalem that have been based on these descriptions. No such model, however can be made of Ezekiel’s temple complex or its contents- The best one can do is present a bare outline. The sole exception is the altar of burnt offering (43:13-17), which is described in such detail that it can be modeled with ease, but the description of the altar was not a part of the prophet’s original vision xenon. and it appears to derive from an older description of the Solomonic altar (see the discussion in Steven S. limit, The 2aw of the Temple M Ezekiel 40 48 [HSM 49; Atlanta: Scholars, 19921 46-51).12
12 Horowitz, I Have Built. 64.
13 Gudea Cylinder A, col. 4 line 8 to col. 7 line 10.
14 CTA 4.4.62-63.
15 Note in I Chr 28:11-12 the explicit mention of the tabnit, which in this case evidently refers to a written document. Yigael Yadin (The Temple Scroll [2 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983] I. q7, 182) has suggested that the Temple Scroll presents itself as just such a document, originally revealed to Moses, then handed on to Solomon by David.
16 As Yadin has argued, on the basis of 1 IQT 29.8-9: /9 ‘TIM nu Yadin (temple Scroll, 2. 128-29) translates this passage, And I will consecrate my (t)emple by my glory, (the temple) on which will settle my glory, until the day of on which I will create my temple” Yadin (Temple Scroll I. 183)
compares this st between a present temple (evident y t ‘emu described in the scroll) and
a future, eschatological to be Yhwh’s creation) with the “old house” and “new
house” of 1 Enoch 90:29.17
17 Horowitz, I Have Built 25; cf. 138, 159, 255.
18 Ibid., 251.
19 Ibid., 251-52. Horowitz bases his assessment of the text as an exercise on the use of the expressions assum/ki. . . la tidi, “since you do not know,” and ana amari, “in order to calculate.”
20 Ibid., 252-53.
21 Ibid., 253-55.
22 Ibid., 255.
23 As Eichrodt (Ezekiel, 184) observes, Ezekiel 40-42 is neither instruction for nor narrative of building, but a vision of an already built complex.
24 Eichrodt, Ezekiel, 542; Yadin, Temple Scroll.1.198; Maier, “Temple Scroll and Tendencies in the Cultic Architecture,” 69; Jon Levenson, Theology of the Program of Restoration of Ezekiel 40-48 (HSM 10; Missoula, MT: Scholars, 1976) 33: J. J. M. Roberts. “A Christian Perspective on Prophetic Prediction,” Int 33 (1979) 247; Joseph Blenkinsopp, Ezekiel (IBC; Louisville: John Knox, 1990) 193-99.
25 For the mythic significance of the cosmic mountain, see Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return; or, Cosmos and History (Bollingen Series 46; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1911) 12-21; Richard J. Clifford, The Cosmic Mountain in Canaan and the Old Testament (HSM 4; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972) 3. Levenson (Theology. 14) identifies the mountain of Ezekiel 40:1 with the mythic Zaphon, but he also identifies it with Sinai (Theology 41).
26 Yadin ( Temple Scroll, I. 185) suggests that the idea of a future temple built by Yhwh, which he finds also in the Temple Scroll, derives from [nod 15:17. The future temple is also mentioned in 4QFIorilegium. which describes the house which [he will create) for [himself at the end of days" One might also note Jub. 1:15-17,26-29. Eichrodt (Ezekiel, 542) similarly observed that in Ezekiel's vision "the temple makes its appearance as a heavenly reality created by Yahweh himself and transplanted to stand on the earth," and that "there is nothing to suggest that it should have a human builder." Cf. also Zimmerli, Ezekiel, 2. 327-28.
27 Blenkinsopp (Ezekiel, 177-78; 179-80; 194) further argues that the temple vision originally followed Ezekiel 37.
28 of an oracle. Of these, eleven are precise to the year, month and day (I:I; 8:1; 20:1; 24:1; 29:1; 29:17; 30:20; 11:1;32:1; 33:21; 40:1). Three others are precise to the year and day (I:2; 26:1: 32:17), while two date by reference M some fixed event (3:16 refers back to the date of the call vision and sets its vision seven days later, while a second date in 40:1 specifies the year as the fourteenth after the fall of Jerusalem). Interestingly, both 1:1,2 and 40:1 are double dates, though in light of the troublesome "thirtieth year" of 1:1 not much can be made of this parallel.
29 This formula occurs seven times in Ezekiel, always in a visionary context (1:3; 3:14,22: 8:1; 33:22: 37:1; 40:1), Zimmerli (Ezekiel, I. 42) rightly regards the phenomenon of prophetic ecstasy as a point of continuity between Ezekiel and the preclassical prophets. The word mar'ah is relatively rare, occurring only eleven times (Gen 46:2; Num 12:6 [both El; 1 Sam 3:15; Dan 10:7 [twice],8,16; Ezek 1:1; 8:3; 40:2; 439).
30 Most scholars (for instance, Cooke, Ezekiel, 121; May. IB, 6. 118; Eichrodt, Ezekiel, 142-43; Zimmerli, Ezekiel. 1.256; Donald E. Gowan, Ezekiel [Knox Preaching Guides; Atlanta: John Knox, 19851 50; Hats, Ezekiel, 68-69; Blenkinsopp, Ezekiel. 52, 62-64) have argued that this text is not original to the vision, and that it may indeed represent a later editorial expansion of Ezekiel's prophecy. However, despite the presence of an additional oracular heading at 11.14, the content of this oracle fits quite well into its context: Yhwh's condemnation of Jerusalem's inhabitants and abandonment of Jerusalem itself. Further, as Wevers observes (Ezekiel. 79). this text presupposes that Jerusalem is still standing, which makes it unlikely that 11:14-16 has been added by a later editor, or even by Ezekiel himself, at a time following the city's destruction. If it was not originally connected to the vision of the temple's destruction, the connection was made very early in the composition of the book, doubtless by Ezekiel himself.
31 The JPSB reads 11:14-25 as a single connected oracle, so that 11:14-16 becomes an introduction to the promise of return in 11:17-21 (a reading also proposed by Cooke, Ezekiel, 124-25). Though the exiles have been removed far away and Yhwh has "become to them a diminished sanctity in the countries whither they have gone" the day of their return will one day come. Against this reading must be posed the separate oracular heading at 11:17 and the scribal tradition inserting a break seluma between vv 16 and 17, both of which suggest that 11:16 and 11:17-21 represent two separate divine responses to the words of the Jerusalemites in 11:14. Further, the general rendering "sanctity" for Inn is without precedent; everywhere, miqdas is used for a sanctuary. Note that in the Targum of Ezek 11:16, on non is understood as a reference to the synagogue. Ezek 11:16 does not represent a concession to the diminished sanctity of Yhwh in Babylon—quite the contrary: it is only among the exiles that Yhwh's presence will be manifested at all, albeit in small measure.
32 This proposal was first advanced by the author of the present study in Steven S. Tuell, The Temple Vision of Ezekiel 40-48: A Program for Restoration?" Proceedings of the Eastern Great Lakes Biblical Society 2 (1982) 101-2. Something similar is proposed by Gowan (Ezekiel, 140), save that he understands the vision symbolically, as a "theology in visual terms." While Ezekiel 40-42 is certainly filled with theological insight, it remains the report of a vision: Ezekiel describes what he and his contemporaries would have understood as an actual visionary journey to the heavenly temple.
33 A. Leo Oppenheim, The Mesopotamian Temple," BAR, 1. 163. Indeed, one of the accusations raised later against Sennacherib was that with evil intentions against Babylon he let its sanctuaries fall into disrepair, disturbed the(ir) foundation Imes and let the cultic rites fall into oblivion" (from the stela of Nabonidus in Istanbul, t E A. Len Oppenhcim. A NET 309; emphasis mine).
34 Frank Moore Cross, "The Priestly Tabernacle," BAR. 1 220.
35 Hurowitz, I Have Built. 168-70.
36 Martha Himmelfarb, “From Prophecy to Apocalypse: The Book of the Watcbers and Tours of Heaven,” Jewish Spirituality: From the Bible tbrough the Middle Ages (World Spirituality 13; ed. Arthur Green; New York: Crossroad, 1988) 149-50.37
37 Ibid., 150.38
38 The mention of Sing' (Pa in Ezek 40:2 should not mislead the reader. Since the term "Zinn" is never used in the Book of Ezekiel (Yhwh having abandoned Zion's earthly referent, the acropolis of Jerusalem), this phrase serves to indicate that the mountain in question is indeed Zion, the mountain of God. Elsewhere in Scripture, heavenly "geography" is indicated by reference to corresponding earthly geography. For example, Ps 48:2 identifies the divine dwelling place with Zaphon, and in Dan 10;20-21 Michael, the angelic prince of Israel, does battle with the angelic princes of Persia and Greece. One might also cite in this connection the place names in Judg 5:4, where Yhwh marches to war from the south (cf. also Hab 3:3).
39 For instance, the description of the throne-chariot of Yhwh in 4Q404 Iii 1-16; 4Q405 20-22 (Carol Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice: A Critical Edition [HSS 27; Atlanta: Scholars, 1985] 226,303) obviously derives from Ezekiel I, as Newsom (pp. 52, 55-56) has noted.
40 Note particularly that the interest of Ezekiel 40 42 in the temple gates appears to find a parallel in the Songs. the words used to describe the entrances and exits of the heavenly temple in 4Q405 (x18′, 824,91A3 Prat appear together only in Ezekiel, as Newsom (Songs. 42) has noted: the first two are found in 40:11,38,40 and 46:3; all are found together in 46:2-3.
41 Ibid., 58.
42 Julie Galambush, “The Last Enthronement Festival: Ezekiel 43 as 4.5444144 2199 Year’s Celebration: presented at the Annual Meeting Of the Society of Biblical Literature. 1992.
43 Galambush also suggests a tenuous connection between the taus vim of 11:16 and the akitu house, the smaller shrine where the image of Marduk was placed upon removal from Esagila in the New Year’s Festival.
44 Statement made in response to Galambush’s presentation at the meeting referred to in n. 42. Galambush is inclined to reject Marvin Sweeney’s proposal that Ezekiel I 3 represents Yom Kippur, since the dates are wrong; further, she proposes that Yom Kippur is absent from the cultic calendar in Eyck 45:21-25, where it has been replaced by a ceremony of cleansing linked to Passover. Without doubt, the dates, both for the initial vision of call and for the temple cleansing in the calendar, do not lit the calendar of P. but that in itself need not rule out such an identification. Elsewhere Quell, Law of tbe Temple. 145-48) I have argued that. Ezekiel 45 represents an alternate calendar, from a time prior to the adoption of a single, fixed liturgy. The ritual described in 45:18-20 is explicitly performed to atone for the Temple and for the inadvertent sin of the people. ThiS festival despite its variant date, is functionally, Yom Kippur. If the initial vision of Yhwh’s Kavod is understood to represents the priest’s entrance into e
The Jerusalem Temple in Devotional and Visionary Experience
Jon D. Levenson
Temple and TentA CENTRAL PARADOX of Jewish spirituality lies in the fact that so much of it centers upon an institution that was destroyed almost 1 two millennia ago, the Jerusalem Temple. The enduring centrality of the Temple in Jewish consciousness and the tenacity of it’s hold upon it are attested by the tendency of modern students of Jewish history to periodicize distant antiquity in terms of the First Temple period (ca. 960-587 B.C.E.) and the Second Temple period (ca. 515 B.C..E.-70 C.E.). In ‘fact, the existence or absence of the Temple is a point of great relevance even to the observance of Jewish law. To cite only one example from among many, the Mishnah, a law code promulgated about 200 C.E., stipulates that the prohibition of the slaughter of an animal and its young on the same day (Lev 22:28) applies both “in the presence of the Temple and in the absence of the Temple” (m. Hui. 5:1). But other commandments, especially many found in the last of the six “orders” of the Mishnah, which deals with matters of ritual purity, apply only when the Temple is standing.
The paradox is compounded when one considers that the Pentateuch has been, in principle, the foundational document of Judaism since some point in that Second Temple period. For the Pentateuch neither names Jerusalem nor refers directly to the sacred building(s) that were erected there. Instead it treats at length the construction of the ‘ohel mo’ed, the Tent of Assembly or Tent of Meeting, which served as a portable temple during the period between the revelation at Sinai (e.g., Exod 25-30; 35-40) and the entrance into Canaan, or perhaps even the construction of Solomon’s Temple, the First Temple (1 Kgs 8:4). Modern critical scholarship has tended to doubt the historicity of that portable temple and to regard it as a retrojection of a later institution, usually the Second Temple, which the text thus anchors in primordial events.
This tendency has been mitigated in our century by research into tribal palladia and other tent-like structures which, even in modern times, have accompanied some nomadic Arabian tribes in their movements. Descriptions of analogous shrines appear in Phoenician sources contemporaneous with much biblical literature. Thus, the possibility that the traditions about the Tent of Meeting contain a nucleus of historical fact especially in the more conservative American circles.There has gained ground, on the other hand, the notion that the Tent as described in Exodus could have been carried about in the wilderness for some forty years is still implausible. If, as seems likely, the Tent of Meeting and the Temple, in whatever of its phases, are not simply to be identified, we are led to wonder what statement is being made by the emphasis of some ancient Israelite traditions upon the portable shrine.
Is it a judgment upon the Temple, a statement that the Jerusalem shrine does not conform to the ancient archetype. If so, then the very portability of the Tent may have served as a critique of the tendency to regard Jerusalem and its Temple as immutable cosmic realities, a tendency which we shall examine and which became more developed in post-biblical literature. Similarly, the availability of God in His portable home probably did serve as a source of consolation to an Israel in exile (sixth century B.C.E.) far from their Temple, which lay in ruins. To them the most meaningful image of God was not that of a king enthroned in his massive stone palace; it was that of a delicate tabernacling presence, on the move with His people. In rabbinic literature, this presence acquires a name, the shekkinah (from the root shakhan, “to set up tent; “to dwell”), and there it is often said to envelop those who involve themselves in Torah (e.g., m. Abot 3:3). This conjunction of the tabernacling presence and Torah is, in a sense, natural, in light of the emphasis in the Pentateuch itself upon God’s mobility and availability to all Israel, attributes that He shares with the Book. Finally, we should note that, if the Pentateuchal concern with the tent-shrine is indeed a judgment on the Jerusalem Temple, it is probably also a judgment upon the latter’s character as a royal shrine, built, patronized, and abused by the House of David. The placement of the ideal arrangement in the days of Aaron and Moses, when a king had not yet remains that the dominant impression one receives from the Hebrew Bible is one of an easy harmony between the two. In fact, one scholar has recently gone so far as to argue for the historical accuracy of the statement of 1 Kgs 8:4 (-2 Chr 5:5) and several texts in Chronicles that the Tent was moved into the Temple.4 In support of this, he points to texts such as Ps 26:8:
0 LORD, I love Your temple abode,
The dwelling-place (meqwm ‘thaw) of Your glory.’
Here, the psalmist puts “temple” and “tent” into synonymous parallelism. Essentially the same use of language can be found in Ps 27:4-5, in which the poet longs “to live in the house (beyt) of the LORD,” which he also describes as “His pavilion” (sukkoh) and “His tent” (‘oholo). Finally, Psalm 74, whose occasion is the destruction of one of the Jerusalem Temples (v. 2), most likely the First in 587 B.C.E., puts “sanctuary” (miqdash) and “tent” (mishkan) into parallelism and laments the torching of all of “God’s [of El's] tabernacles” (mo’adey-’El, vv. 7-8).This kind of evidence, of which there exists much more, suggests that we may, with all due caution, include the Tent of Meeting in our discussion of the spiritual experience of the Jerusalem Temple when it stood. In a sense, the rabbis institutionalized such: a homologization, when, centuries later, they match, “sages from the Torah about the construction of the Tent of Meeting with prophetic lee-. tions (haftarot) describing the erection or reconstruction of the Temple in; Jerusalem.
For example, the haftarah for the portion Teza wweh (Exod 27:20-e 30:10) is Ezek 43:10-27, and that for Wayaqhel (Exod 35:1-38:20) is 1 Kg 7:40-50. Judaism tends to continue those streams in biblical tradition which: homologized the Tent and the Temple.
The Presentness and Practice of Salvation
It is often said that Israel established her identity through the recitation of her Heilsgeschichte, the sacred story which, with many embellishments and digressions, dominates the Pentateuch or the Hexateuch (Genesis-Joshua) The most compressed resume of the story occurs in 1 Sam 12:8: 91710 Jacob came to Egypt,6 … your fathers cried out to the LORD, and the LORD sent Moses and Aaron, who brought your fathers out of Egypt and settled them in this place This resume is extraordinary only in its implication that Moses and Aaron came into the land with the people; the Pentateuch dates their deaths before the entrance into the land (Num 20:27-29; Deut 34:4-7).7 The absence of mention of the revelation at Sinai/Horeb is not,. extraordinary. It is paralleled in the Pentateuch (e.g., Deut 26:5b-9). In fact,. it is this omission which has generated the controversial hypothesis that the settlement tradition and the Sinai tradition were originally separate and distinct, having been combined only at a certain point within historical memory.’ Whether the hypothesis is historically valid or not, it remains true that the present shape of the Pentateuch presents us with two different perspectives concerning the point at which the relationship between Israel and its God (YHWH) was consummated, the telos, so to speak, of the foundational drama. The settlement tradition holds that the story is consummated only outside the Pentateuch, with the allocation of the land, at long last, to the tribes (Josh 21:41-43). Until “everything was fulfilled” (v. 43), the hand of God was restless, discontented with the status quo, and upsetting eventually each obstacle to the fulfillment of the promise, whether it arises from Pharaoh, from Canaanite land tenure, or from the faithlessness and lawlessness of the Israelites themselves. The other perspective finds the climax at the point at which God graciously signals the acceptability of the complex and elaborate system of worship mandated and executed at Sinai:
Moses and Aaron then went inside the Tent of Meeting. When they came out, they blessed the people; and the Presence of the Lord appeared to all the people.
Fire came forth from before the LORD and consumed the burnt offering and the fat parts on the altar. And all the people saw, and shouted, and fell on their faces. (Lev 9:23-24)
At last, the basis has been laid for insuring the eternal availability of that elusive “presence (kavod, usually rendered “glory”), which all the people tipv. The visitation of God to Israel, the vision of God in Israel, need no longer be episodic or arbitrary. An enduring means of access of YHWH to Israel and of Israel to YHWH has been inaugurated, service without end, “an eternal ordinance for all generations” (Lev 10:9 and often). From now on, all that remains is the issue of whether or not Israel is observing the commandments, moral, ritual, and both, which entitle her to be graced by the electrifying divine presence manifest in the Tent and to remain in the presence of the fire that burned on Mount Sinai, wherever she may go. Whereas in the first perspective, the land symbolizes and manifests spiritual fulfillment, in this second one it is the Tent of Meeting that performs this climactic function. The relationship of YHWH and Israel is consummated in her unending repetition of His sacred rites. In both perspectives, the 1 assumption, perhaps a naïve one, is that only Israel’s sin can rupture the beatified life.The two climactic movements define two poles not only of the Torah but of biblical spirituality in general, and perhaps of the Jewish world view itself. The first, the settlement tradition, evokes images of instability, of political change, of an alternation of divine presence and absence, of the quest for new fulfillments. For even the land soon proves to be something very different from paradise, and each new consummation—the defeat m the Philistines, the establishment of the House of David, the erection of the Jerusalem Temple, the centralization of the liturgy there—yields to a successor, in a dynamic whose logical fulfillment came in the vision of a definitive end to all history in apocalyptic literature (Dan 2:44-45). In this perspective, the status quo is forever on the verge of obsolescence, and its radical critique is an indispensable component of the spiritual life: The second perspective, the Sinai tradition, at least as it appears in Priestly materials (P), evokes images of stasis, regularity, repetition, constancy, and intimacy. It places salvation in the present and not only in the future and offers the means for a partial immanentization of the God who is still transcendent. Those means are essentially the liturgy centered upon the Tent of Meeting. They are beyond critique, although the people obligate by them is not. Salvation, the beatific vision, which is the definitive teleo-, logical end of life, cannot be surpassed.
Within this second perspective, the emphasis lies on absorption into divine order of things, that is, participation in the rhythm of the divine file: itself, which is the nearest approximation to unto mystics that Hebraic thought can tolerate. Thus, the Sabbath, which in Deuteronomic tradition (D) is a humanitarian ordinance and a commemoration of the liberation from Egypt (Deut 5:12-15), appears in P as a sign of the eternal covenant. and a-commemoration of the act of creation (Exod 31:12-17). In P, in of e words, observance of the Sabbath is an example of imitatio Dei. Through it, Israel replicates the rhythm of the primordial act, participating endlessly in an institution which, until Sinai, had been observed by God alone (Gad., 2:1-3). The dietary laws speak to the same point. In D, they seem to be consequence of the election and consecration of Israel (Deut 14:1-21). P, which also assumes election and consecration, suggests a connection between I Israel’s “separation” (hivdaltem) of clean from unclean beasts and God’s “separation” (hivdaltiy) of Israel from the nations, and it presents divine holiness as the rationale for Israel’s mandated holiness (Lev 20:25-26).10 Once again, sacred rites are grounded in imitatio Dei; mortal persons are offered some access into the divine life. Furthermore, it seems likely that tile emphasis upon the verb “to separate” (hivdil) here is intended to suggest the primordial acts of separation that punctuate the act of creation in P (Gen 1:4, 6, 7, 14, 18). If so, then the implication is that the separation of Israel from the nations is a continuation of creation and that Israel’s own separation of fit from unfit foods is a perpetuation of the very process that brought order out of chaos. Israel draws near to God, in part, by perpetuating the primordial within the world of historical change, and the sacred amidst profanity.
And at the center of Israel, quite literally, lies what is most sacred, the Temple (Num 2). Israel lies at the intersection of God and, the world, but she faces God.
The dichotomy between these two perspectives must not be sharply drawn. Although D is closer in spirit to the first, and P, to the second, the perspectives are ideal types that are not coterminous with literary sources or historical periods. Nor should we fall into the common mistake of identifying one perspective as indigenous and essential, and the other as foreign and peripheral. Both are well attested in the Hebrew Bible, and both have antecedents and parallels elsewhere in the ancient Near East. More important, the final shape of the Hebrew Bible and of the Torah in particular includes both perspectives. In that sense, the Book is bipolar: the whole is larger than the sum of its part, and the tension between perspectives yields a spiritual dynamic that neither perspective alone could have produced.
The Presence and the Omnipresence of God
The developed theology of temples in Israel points to the presence of God as the core of spiritual meaning:
For there I will meet with you, and there I will speak to you, and there I will meet with the Israelites, and it shall be sanctified by My Presence.
I will sanctify the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and I will consecrate Aaron and his sons to serve me as priests. I will abide among the Israelites, and I will be their God.
And they shall know that I the LORD am their God, who brought them out from the land of Egypt that I might abide among them, I the LORD their God. (Exod 29:42b-46)
This passage offers a rich network of interconnected associations. The Tent is the vehicle for communication with God; in it oracles are received. God’s visible Presence” (kavod) renders the Tent and its sacrificial apparatus sacred. But the sanctity does not preclude immediate human contact; it only restricts it to the chosen priesthood (kohanim), Aaron and his male descendants. The Tent is a visible relationship between God and Israel, a relationship whose other great testimony is the exodus. Here, we see the effect of the nearer climax of the sacred history that appears in P: the goal of the exodus is not so much the promised land as it is the intimacy with YHWH made available to Israel in the Tabernacle. He rescued her so that He might set up Tent in her midst (leshokniy betokham, v. 46). The endless rendezvous in the portable temple is the teleological consummation of the history of redemption.Another aspect of the sanctified and sanctifying presence of God in His Temple is the idea of blessing. We have already examined the passage in which Moses and Aaron blessed the people after they came out of the Tent and before the presence, or glory, of YHWH appeared to all (Lev 9:23-24). In fact, blessing was a part of the regular liturgy of the Jerusalem Temple:
A song of ascents.
Now bless the LORD,
all you servants of the LORD
who stand nightly
in the house of the LORD.
Lift your hands toward the sanctuary and bless the Lord.
May the LORD, maker of heaven and earth,
bless you from Zion. (Ps 134)
The setting of this poem was probably the changing of the guard in _the Jerusalem Temple, which sat atop Mount Zion. The night shift, who seem to be going on or off duty (v. 1), are summoned to bless YHWH before doing so. Verse 3 may be the response from the other shift; if so, they return YHWH’s blessing to those who have just blessed him (cf. Ruth 2:4). At all events, two points are noteworthy in the psalm. First, the direction of blessing is twofold: God is blessed and blesses; persons both give and receive a benediction. The image is one of nearness, mutuality, reciprocity, communication. Second, the psalmist’s assertion of God’s sovereignty over the entire cosmos, “heaven and earth; is in no tension with his allegiance to Zion as the source of YHWH’s blessing (v. 3). Zion is not another spot in the world. It is the capital of the world, the place from which the divine beatification of humanity proceeds. In this, Psalm 134 is typical of Hebraic thought, which does not view the presence of God as finite in quantity: His presence in one place does not imply a corresponding absence of God elsewhere. Thus can the God enthroned on Zion bestow a blessing to those outside. This is not an easy conception for modern persons to grasp. Perhaps it will prove useful to envision the Temple as the center of a wheel, equidistant from each point on the rim, which is the world. The sanctifying and beatifying presence of God shoots out along the spokes. The points on the rim then discharge sanctity and blessing back toward the center. The rim and the center are not identical. But so long as the process of sanctification and beatification continues, neither is bereft of God. Zion is the conduit through which the plenitude of divine blessings surges into the world. In fact, the Temple is sometimes seen as the earthly antitype to a heavenly archetype.The °holy palace° (heykhal qodsho) is both the Temple (e.g., Ps 79:1) and the eternal archetype which it manifests. YHWH’s presence in His Temple does not diminish His presence in the heavens. On the contrary, the two places are the same. The relationship of the Temple to the world is not one of simple spatiality.
The Temple is the objective correlative of the paradoxical doctrine of God’s simultaneous otherness and omnipresence.
Refuge for the Just in the House of YHWH
Nowhere is it written that sins and sanctity can cohabitate. In some passages, the conditionality of God’s presence in the Temple is underscored:
Then the word of the LORD came to Solomon,
“With regard to this House you are building— if you follow My laws and observe My rules and faithfully keep My commandments,
I will fulfill for you the promise that I gave to your father David: I will abide among the children of Israel, and I will never forsake My people Israel.” (1 Kgs 6:11-13)
Here, the dynastic covenant with David, which elsewhere is unconditional (2 Sam 7:14-16; Ps 89:20-38), has been rendered contingent upon the king’s obedience. The same note of conditionality governs YHWH’s presence in the Temple. Once again, covenant and presence imply each other. Faithful obervance of the commandments (mizwot), which are the stipulations of the covenant, evokes the presence of God. God graciously deigns to place His presence in the Temple until human disobedience renders the place fit for Him. In prophetic preaching, the moral side of sanctity becomes a precious homiletical resource:
When they [the Judean kings] placed their threshold
next to My threshold
and their doorposts next to My doorposts
with only a wall between Me and them,
they would defile My holy name
by the abominations that they committed,
and I consumed them in My anger.
Therefore, let them put their apostasy
and the memorials of their kings far from Me,
and I will dwell among them forever. (Ezek 43:8-9)
The last passage cited and probably the one before it as well are responses to the catastrophe of 587 B.C.E., when Solomon’s Temple, the First Jerusalem Temple, fell to the Babylonians. They reflect the solemn note of conditionality that dominates Jeremiah, Deuteronomy, and the literature edited under the latter’s influence, the block from Joshua through 2 Kings: Israel’s breach of covenant, her violation or neglect of mizwot, can fell the House of YHWH. As we shall see, other literature from the Hebrew Bible affirms the unshakability and inviolability of the Temple and its mountain and city, leaving ambiguous the issue of whether this is pure grace or a conditional gift that may yet be withdrawn if the recipient proves undeserving.
Is it a judgment upon the Temple, a statement that the Jerusalem shrine does not conform to the ancient archetype. If so, then the very portability of the Tent may have served as a critique of the tendency to regard Jerusalem and its Temple as immutable cosmic realities, a tendency which we shall examine and which became more developed in post-biblical literature. Similarly, the availability of God in His portable home probably did serve as a source of consolation to an Israel in exile (sixth century B.C.E.) far from their Temple, which lay in ruins. To them the most meaningful image of God was not that of a king enthroned in his massive stone palace; it was that of a delicate tabernacling presence, on the move with His people. In rabbinic literature, this presence acquires a name, the shekkinah (from the root shakhan, “to set up tent; “to dwell”), and there it is often said to envelop those who involve themselves in Torah (e.g., m. Abot 3:3). This conjunction of the tabernacling presence and Torah is, in a sense, natural, in light of the emphasis in the Pentateuch itself upon God’s mobility and availability to all Israel, attributes that He shares with the Book. Finally, we should note that, if the Pentateuchal concern with the tent-shrine is indeed a judgment on the Jerusalem Temple, it is probably also a judgment upon the latter’s character as a royal shrine, built, patronized, and abused by the House of David. The placement of the ideal arrangement in the days of Aaron and Moses, when a king had not yet remains that the dominant impression one receives from the Hebrew Bible is one of an easy harmony between the two. In fact, one scholar has recently gone so far as to argue for the historical accuracy of the statement of 1 Kgs 8:4 (-2 Chr 5:5) and several texts in Chronicles that the Tent was moved into the Temple.4 In support of this, he points to texts such as Ps 26:8:
0 LORD, I love Your temple abode,
The dwelling-place (meqwm ‘thaw) of Your glory.’
Here, the psalmist puts “temple” and “tent” into synonymous parallelism. Essentially the same use of language can be found in Ps 27:4-5, in which the poet longs “to live in the house (beyt) of the LORD,” which he also describes as “His pavilion” (sukkoh) and “His tent” (‘oholo). Finally, Psalm 74, whose occasion is the destruction of one of the Jerusalem Temples (v. 2), most likely the First in 587 B.C.E., puts “sanctuary” (miqdash) and “tent” (mishkan) into parallelism and laments the torching of all of “God’s [of El's] tabernacles” (mo’adey-’El, vv. 7-8).This kind of evidence, of which there exists much more, suggests that we may, with all due caution, include the Tent of Meeting in our discussion of the spiritual experience of the Jerusalem Temple when it stood. In a sense, the rabbis institutionalized such: a homologization, when, centuries later, they match, “sages from the Torah about the construction of the Tent of Meeting with prophetic lee-. tions (haftarot) describing the erection or reconstruction of the Temple in; Jerusalem.
For example, the haftarah for the portion Teza wweh (Exod 27:20-e 30:10) is Ezek 43:10-27, and that for Wayaqhel (Exod 35:1-38:20) is 1 Kg 7:40-50. Judaism tends to continue those streams in biblical tradition which: homologized the Tent and the Temple.
The Presentness and Practice of Salvation
It is often said that Israel established her identity through the recitation of her Heilsgeschichte, the sacred story which, with many embellishments and digressions, dominates the Pentateuch or the Hexateuch (Genesis-Joshua) The most compressed resume of the story occurs in 1 Sam 12:8: 91710 Jacob came to Egypt,6 … your fathers cried out to the LORD, and the LORD sent Moses and Aaron, who brought your fathers out of Egypt and settled them in this place This resume is extraordinary only in its implication that Moses and Aaron came into the land with the people; the Pentateuch dates their deaths before the entrance into the land (Num 20:27-29; Deut 34:4-7).7 The absence of mention of the revelation at Sinai/Horeb is not,. extraordinary. It is paralleled in the Pentateuch (e.g., Deut 26:5b-9). In fact,. it is this omission which has generated the controversial hypothesis that the settlement tradition and the Sinai tradition were originally separate and distinct, having been combined only at a certain point within historical memory.’ Whether the hypothesis is historically valid or not, it remains true that the present shape of the Pentateuch presents us with two different perspectives concerning the point at which the relationship between Israel and its God (YHWH) was consummated, the telos, so to speak, of the foundational drama. The settlement tradition holds that the story is consummated only outside the Pentateuch, with the allocation of the land, at long last, to the tribes (Josh 21:41-43). Until “everything was fulfilled” (v. 43), the hand of God was restless, discontented with the status quo, and upsetting eventually each obstacle to the fulfillment of the promise, whether it arises from Pharaoh, from Canaanite land tenure, or from the faithlessness and lawlessness of the Israelites themselves. The other perspective finds the climax at the point at which God graciously signals the acceptability of the complex and elaborate system of worship mandated and executed at Sinai:
Moses and Aaron then went inside the Tent of Meeting. When they came out, they blessed the people; and the Presence of the Lord appeared to all the people.
Fire came forth from before the LORD and consumed the burnt offering and the fat parts on the altar. And all the people saw, and shouted, and fell on their faces. (Lev 9:23-24)
At last, the basis has been laid for insuring the eternal availability of that elusive “presence (kavod, usually rendered “glory”), which all the people tipv. The visitation of God to Israel, the vision of God in Israel, need no longer be episodic or arbitrary. An enduring means of access of YHWH to Israel and of Israel to YHWH has been inaugurated, service without end, “an eternal ordinance for all generations” (Lev 10:9 and often). From now on, all that remains is the issue of whether or not Israel is observing the commandments, moral, ritual, and both, which entitle her to be graced by the electrifying divine presence manifest in the Tent and to remain in the presence of the fire that burned on Mount Sinai, wherever she may go. Whereas in the first perspective, the land symbolizes and manifests spiritual fulfillment, in this second one it is the Tent of Meeting that performs this climactic function. The relationship of YHWH and Israel is consummated in her unending repetition of His sacred rites. In both perspectives, the 1 assumption, perhaps a naïve one, is that only Israel’s sin can rupture the beatified life.The two climactic movements define two poles not only of the Torah but of biblical spirituality in general, and perhaps of the Jewish world view itself. The first, the settlement tradition, evokes images of instability, of political change, of an alternation of divine presence and absence, of the quest for new fulfillments. For even the land soon proves to be something very different from paradise, and each new consummation—the defeat m the Philistines, the establishment of the House of David, the erection of the Jerusalem Temple, the centralization of the liturgy there—yields to a successor, in a dynamic whose logical fulfillment came in the vision of a definitive end to all history in apocalyptic literature (Dan 2:44-45). In this perspective, the status quo is forever on the verge of obsolescence, and its radical critique is an indispensable component of the spiritual life: The second perspective, the Sinai tradition, at least as it appears in Priestly materials (P), evokes images of stasis, regularity, repetition, constancy, and intimacy. It places salvation in the present and not only in the future and offers the means for a partial immanentization of the God who is still transcendent. Those means are essentially the liturgy centered upon the Tent of Meeting. They are beyond critique, although the people obligate by them is not. Salvation, the beatific vision, which is the definitive teleo-, logical end of life, cannot be surpassed.
Within this second perspective, the emphasis lies on absorption into divine order of things, that is, participation in the rhythm of the divine file: itself, which is the nearest approximation to unto mystics that Hebraic thought can tolerate. Thus, the Sabbath, which in Deuteronomic tradition (D) is a humanitarian ordinance and a commemoration of the liberation from Egypt (Deut 5:12-15), appears in P as a sign of the eternal covenant. and a-commemoration of the act of creation (Exod 31:12-17). In P, in of e words, observance of the Sabbath is an example of imitatio Dei. Through it, Israel replicates the rhythm of the primordial act, participating endlessly in an institution which, until Sinai, had been observed by God alone (Gad., 2:1-3). The dietary laws speak to the same point. In D, they seem to be consequence of the election and consecration of Israel (Deut 14:1-21). P, which also assumes election and consecration, suggests a connection between I Israel’s “separation” (hivdaltem) of clean from unclean beasts and God’s “separation” (hivdaltiy) of Israel from the nations, and it presents divine holiness as the rationale for Israel’s mandated holiness (Lev 20:25-26).10 Once again, sacred rites are grounded in imitatio Dei; mortal persons are offered some access into the divine life. Furthermore, it seems likely that tile emphasis upon the verb “to separate” (hivdil) here is intended to suggest the primordial acts of separation that punctuate the act of creation in P (Gen 1:4, 6, 7, 14, 18). If so, then the implication is that the separation of Israel from the nations is a continuation of creation and that Israel’s own separation of fit from unfit foods is a perpetuation of the very process that brought order out of chaos. Israel draws near to God, in part, by perpetuating the primordial within the world of historical change, and the sacred amidst profanity.
And at the center of Israel, quite literally, lies what is most sacred, the Temple (Num 2). Israel lies at the intersection of God and, the world, but she faces God.
The dichotomy between these two perspectives must not be sharply drawn. Although D is closer in spirit to the first, and P, to the second, the perspectives are ideal types that are not coterminous with literary sources or historical periods. Nor should we fall into the common mistake of identifying one perspective as indigenous and essential, and the other as foreign and peripheral. Both are well attested in the Hebrew Bible, and both have antecedents and parallels elsewhere in the ancient Near East. More important, the final shape of the Hebrew Bible and of the Torah in particular includes both perspectives. In that sense, the Book is bipolar: the whole is larger than the sum of its part, and the tension between perspectives yields a spiritual dynamic that neither perspective alone could have produced.
The Presence and the Omnipresence of God
The developed theology of temples in Israel points to the presence of God as the core of spiritual meaning:
For there I will meet with you, and there I will speak to you, and there I will meet with the Israelites, and it shall be sanctified by My Presence.
I will sanctify the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and I will consecrate Aaron and his sons to serve me as priests. I will abide among the Israelites, and I will be their God.
And they shall know that I the LORD am their God, who brought them out from the land of Egypt that I might abide among them, I the LORD their God. (Exod 29:42b-46)
This passage offers a rich network of interconnected associations. The Tent is the vehicle for communication with God; in it oracles are received. God’s visible Presence” (kavod) renders the Tent and its sacrificial apparatus sacred. But the sanctity does not preclude immediate human contact; it only restricts it to the chosen priesthood (kohanim), Aaron and his male descendants. The Tent is a visible relationship between God and Israel, a relationship whose other great testimony is the exodus. Here, we see the effect of the nearer climax of the sacred history that appears in P: the goal of the exodus is not so much the promised land as it is the intimacy with YHWH made available to Israel in the Tabernacle. He rescued her so that He might set up Tent in her midst (leshokniy betokham, v. 46). The endless rendezvous in the portable temple is the teleological consummation of the history of redemption.Another aspect of the sanctified and sanctifying presence of God in His Temple is the idea of blessing. We have already examined the passage in which Moses and Aaron blessed the people after they came out of the Tent and before the presence, or glory, of YHWH appeared to all (Lev 9:23-24). In fact, blessing was a part of the regular liturgy of the Jerusalem Temple:
A song of ascents.
Now bless the LORD,
all you servants of the LORD
who stand nightly
in the house of the LORD.
Lift your hands toward the sanctuary and bless the Lord.
May the LORD, maker of heaven and earth,
bless you from Zion. (Ps 134)
The setting of this poem was probably the changing of the guard in _the Jerusalem Temple, which sat atop Mount Zion. The night shift, who seem to be going on or off duty (v. 1), are summoned to bless YHWH before doing so. Verse 3 may be the response from the other shift; if so, they return YHWH’s blessing to those who have just blessed him (cf. Ruth 2:4). At all events, two points are noteworthy in the psalm. First, the direction of blessing is twofold: God is blessed and blesses; persons both give and receive a benediction. The image is one of nearness, mutuality, reciprocity, communication. Second, the psalmist’s assertion of God’s sovereignty over the entire cosmos, “heaven and earth; is in no tension with his allegiance to Zion as the source of YHWH’s blessing (v. 3). Zion is not another spot in the world. It is the capital of the world, the place from which the divine beatification of humanity proceeds. In this, Psalm 134 is typical of Hebraic thought, which does not view the presence of God as finite in quantity: His presence in one place does not imply a corresponding absence of God elsewhere. Thus can the God enthroned on Zion bestow a blessing to those outside. This is not an easy conception for modern persons to grasp. Perhaps it will prove useful to envision the Temple as the center of a wheel, equidistant from each point on the rim, which is the world. The sanctifying and beatifying presence of God shoots out along the spokes. The points on the rim then discharge sanctity and blessing back toward the center. The rim and the center are not identical. But so long as the process of sanctification and beatification continues, neither is bereft of God. Zion is the conduit through which the plenitude of divine blessings surges into the world. In fact, the Temple is sometimes seen as the earthly antitype to a heavenly archetype.The °holy palace° (heykhal qodsho) is both the Temple (e.g., Ps 79:1) and the eternal archetype which it manifests. YHWH’s presence in His Temple does not diminish His presence in the heavens. On the contrary, the two places are the same. The relationship of the Temple to the world is not one of simple spatiality.
The Temple is the objective correlative of the paradoxical doctrine of God’s simultaneous otherness and omnipresence.
Refuge for the Just in the House of YHWH
Nowhere is it written that sins and sanctity can cohabitate. In some passages, the conditionality of God’s presence in the Temple is underscored:
Then the word of the LORD came to Solomon,
“With regard to this House you are building— if you follow My laws and observe My rules and faithfully keep My commandments,
I will fulfill for you the promise that I gave to your father David: I will abide among the children of Israel, and I will never forsake My people Israel.” (1 Kgs 6:11-13)
Here, the dynastic covenant with David, which elsewhere is unconditional (2 Sam 7:14-16; Ps 89:20-38), has been rendered contingent upon the king’s obedience. The same note of conditionality governs YHWH’s presence in the Temple. Once again, covenant and presence imply each other. Faithful obervance of the commandments (mizwot), which are the stipulations of the covenant, evokes the presence of God. God graciously deigns to place His presence in the Temple until human disobedience renders the place fit for Him. In prophetic preaching, the moral side of sanctity becomes a precious homiletical resource:
When they [the Judean kings] placed their threshold
next to My threshold
and their doorposts next to My doorposts
with only a wall between Me and them,
they would defile My holy name
by the abominations that they committed,
and I consumed them in My anger.
Therefore, let them put their apostasy
and the memorials of their kings far from Me,
and I will dwell among them forever. (Ezek 43:8-9)
The last passage cited and probably the one before it as well are responses to the catastrophe of 587 B.C.E., when Solomon’s Temple, the First Jerusalem Temple, fell to the Babylonians. They reflect the solemn note of conditionality that dominates Jeremiah, Deuteronomy, and the literature edited under the latter’s influence, the block from Joshua through 2 Kings: Israel’s breach of covenant, her violation or neglect of mizwot, can fell the House of YHWH. As we shall see, other literature from the Hebrew Bible affirms the unshakability and inviolability of the Temple and its mountain and city, leaving ambiguous the issue of whether this is pure grace or a conditional gift that may yet be withdrawn if the recipient proves undeserving.
Between these two positions—the one resting the very existence of the Temple on Israel’s deserts, the other ostensibly ignoring the issue of deserts – lies a third position. This one, most evident in the book of Psalms, sees in the Temple a source of boundless security, but one available only to those whose deeds prove worthy. The effect, then, is to highlight the unshakability and inviolability of the person of innocence And rectitude:
A psalm of David.
LORD, who may sojourn in Your tent,
who may dwell on Your holy mountain?
He who lives without blame,
who does what is right,
and in his heart acknowledges the truth;
whose tongue is not given to evil;
who has never done harm to his fellow,
or borne reproach for (his acts toward) his neighbor;
for whom a contemptible man is abhorrent,
but who honors those who fear the LORD;
who stands by his oath even to his hurt;
who has never lent money at interest,
or accepted a bribe against the innocent.
The man who acts thus shall never be shaken. (Ps 13)
In this poem, we hear the requirements for admission to the Temple. The assumption of most scholars has been that the original setting for this kind of literature was an “entrance liturgy: in which priests set forth the terms for admission for inquiring worshipers. Egyptian parallels, however, suggest an alternative hypothesis, that the requirements were inscribed on the doorposts or lintels of the Temple.This recalls the injunction in Deuteronomy that the stipulations of the covenant be inscribed “on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deut 6:9; 11:20), and it suggests a very practical background to Jeremiah’s stress on the moral requirements for admission to the Temple, especially the Decalogue (Jer 7:9), which he is said to have proclaimed to “all you of Judah who enter these gates …” (v. 2; cf. 22:2).
A psalm of David.
LORD, who may sojourn in Your tent,
who may dwell on Your holy mountain?
He who lives without blame,
who does what is right,
and in his heart acknowledges the truth;
whose tongue is not given to evil;
who has never done harm to his fellow,
or borne reproach for (his acts toward) his neighbor;
for whom a contemptible man is abhorrent,
but who honors those who fear the LORD;
who stands by his oath even to his hurt;
who has never lent money at interest,
or accepted a bribe against the innocent.
The man who acts thus shall never be shaken. (Ps 13)
In this poem, we hear the requirements for admission to the Temple. The assumption of most scholars has been that the original setting for this kind of literature was an “entrance liturgy: in which priests set forth the terms for admission for inquiring worshipers. Egyptian parallels, however, suggest an alternative hypothesis, that the requirements were inscribed on the doorposts or lintels of the Temple.This recalls the injunction in Deuteronomy that the stipulations of the covenant be inscribed “on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deut 6:9; 11:20), and it suggests a very practical background to Jeremiah’s stress on the moral requirements for admission to the Temple, especially the Decalogue (Jer 7:9), which he is said to have proclaimed to “all you of Judah who enter these gates …” (v. 2; cf. 22:2).
But who is applying for admission? Much of the literature suggests, as does Psalm 15, that it is ordinary people who seek to offer prayer or sacrifice in the House of YHWH. Elsewhere, however, we hear of the worshiper’s desire not merely to visit the sacred shrine but to spend his whole life there, as in the close of the famous Twenty-Third Psalm:
You spread a table for me in full view of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil; my drink is abundant.
Only goodness and steadfast love shall pursue me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
for many long years. (Ps 23:5-6)
The familiar words suggest an image perhaps unfamiliar to those who now make devotional use of the poem: In the Temple, the poet has found refuge from his pursuing enemies. There, his life is complete, lacking neither food nor drink. The passage recalls Adonijah’s grasping the horns of the altar until his brother, Solomon, swore not to put him to the sword (1 Kgs 1:50-53). The sacred shrine is a place of asylum for those falsely accused and for those who crime was unintentional (cf. Exod 21:14).Apparently, its function in Israelite law was like that of the “cities of refuge”, to which one guilty of homicide without malice aforethought could escape the vendetta of his victim’s blood-avenger (Num 35:9-34). There he was entitled to remain in asylum until the death of the high priest (vv. 25-28), at which point, presumably, the right of vengeance expired, probably because of an amnesty proclaimed by the new high priest upon his accession (before the exile, it was the king who issued the amnesty). The resultant interval could be decades. We should not be surprised, therefore, by the length of time which some psalmists seek to spend in the Temple:
One thing I ask of the LORD, only that do I seek:
to live in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD,
to frequent His temple.
He will shelter me in His pavilion
on an evil day,
grant me the protection of His tent,
raise me high upon a rock.
Now is my head high
over my enemies roundabout;
I sacrifice in His tent
with shouts of joy,
singing and chanting
a hymn of the LORD. (Ps 27:4-6)
As in the Twenty-Third Psalm, so here again we read of the author’s longing for a lifetime of asylum in the Temple in place of the enmity which seems to have driven him there. If, as we suggest, this request for a lifetime in the Temple was not originally an example of devotional hyperbole (which it became later), but had a precise, legal reference, how did the refugee spend his time those many years? Psalm 84 suggests an answer:
How lovely is Your dwelling-place,
0 LORD of hosts.
I long, I yearn for
the courts of the LORD;
my body and soul shout for joy
to the living God.
Even the sparrow has found a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself
in which to set her young,
near Your altar, 0 LORD of hosts,
my king and my God.
Happy are those who dwell in Your house;
they forever praise You. (Selah)
Happy is the man who finds refuge in You.
Better one day in Your courts
than a thousand [anywhere else];
I would rather stand at
the threshold of God’s house
than dwell in the tents of the wicked,
For the LORD God is sun and shield;
the LORD bestows grace and glory;
He does not withhold His bounty
from those who live without blame. (Ps 84:2-6a, 11-12)
The two beatitudes of vv. 5 and 6 suggest that the refugees may have been employed as Temple singers, a position that in the postexilic era was redefined as a prerogative of the lesser clerical caste, the Levites (1 Chr 16:4). Verse 11 recalls another Temple chore, that of the doorkeepers, which also eventually became Levitical (1 Chr 9:19). Ps 27:6, which we have already examined, indicates that the refugee may also have been engaged in the sacred slaughter of animals, and many psalms indicate that he did, indeed, partake of the offerings:
I bless You all my life;
I lift up my hands, invoking Your name.
I am sated as with suet and fat,
I sing praises with joyful lips
when I call You to mind upon my bed,
when I think of You in my watches of the night,
for You are my help,
and in the shadow of Your wings
I shout for joy.
My soul is attached to You;
Your right hand supports me.
May those who seek to destroy my life
enter the depths of the earth. (Ps 63:5-10)
Elsewhere, the “as” of v. 6 disappears, and we hear of people who “feast on the rich fare of Your house” (Ps 36:9). These passages betray no awareness of the Priestly insistence that a layperson may not eat of the sacred donations (Lev 22:10-16).We have argued that the Jerusalem Temple (and other Israelite shrines) served as places of asylum in a very practical, legal sense. Whether the institution of asylum was the original context for all the “entrance liturgies” is impossible to ascertain. Passages like Ezekiel 18, however, with its criteria for determining who is righteous and worthy of life and who is not, argue for a less limited context of these lists of criteria. In any event, the preservation of the “entrance liturgies” after the disappearance of the legal institution in question and their eventual inclusion in the Psalter demonstrates that their meaning was not thought to have been exhausted by any practical context. Instead, they became part of a manual of devotion.
The refugee of those poems that do clearly speak of asylum became Everyman. The situation of an innocent person slandered and hunted by bloodthirsty enemies and seeking shelter and sustenance from his bountiful lord became a paradigm of the human condition. The recitation to this day of those psalms by people who have never suspected their original setting is stunning evidence for the phenomenal durability of the spiritual legacy of the Jerusalem Temple.
A Locus for the Vision of God
You spread a table for me in full view of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil; my drink is abundant.
Only goodness and steadfast love shall pursue me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
for many long years. (Ps 23:5-6)
The familiar words suggest an image perhaps unfamiliar to those who now make devotional use of the poem: In the Temple, the poet has found refuge from his pursuing enemies. There, his life is complete, lacking neither food nor drink. The passage recalls Adonijah’s grasping the horns of the altar until his brother, Solomon, swore not to put him to the sword (1 Kgs 1:50-53). The sacred shrine is a place of asylum for those falsely accused and for those who crime was unintentional (cf. Exod 21:14).Apparently, its function in Israelite law was like that of the “cities of refuge”, to which one guilty of homicide without malice aforethought could escape the vendetta of his victim’s blood-avenger (Num 35:9-34). There he was entitled to remain in asylum until the death of the high priest (vv. 25-28), at which point, presumably, the right of vengeance expired, probably because of an amnesty proclaimed by the new high priest upon his accession (before the exile, it was the king who issued the amnesty). The resultant interval could be decades. We should not be surprised, therefore, by the length of time which some psalmists seek to spend in the Temple:
One thing I ask of the LORD, only that do I seek:
to live in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD,
to frequent His temple.
He will shelter me in His pavilion
on an evil day,
grant me the protection of His tent,
raise me high upon a rock.
Now is my head high
over my enemies roundabout;
I sacrifice in His tent
with shouts of joy,
singing and chanting
a hymn of the LORD. (Ps 27:4-6)
As in the Twenty-Third Psalm, so here again we read of the author’s longing for a lifetime of asylum in the Temple in place of the enmity which seems to have driven him there. If, as we suggest, this request for a lifetime in the Temple was not originally an example of devotional hyperbole (which it became later), but had a precise, legal reference, how did the refugee spend his time those many years? Psalm 84 suggests an answer:
How lovely is Your dwelling-place,
0 LORD of hosts.
I long, I yearn for
the courts of the LORD;
my body and soul shout for joy
to the living God.
Even the sparrow has found a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself
in which to set her young,
near Your altar, 0 LORD of hosts,
my king and my God.
Happy are those who dwell in Your house;
they forever praise You. (Selah)
Happy is the man who finds refuge in You.
Better one day in Your courts
than a thousand [anywhere else];
I would rather stand at
the threshold of God’s house
than dwell in the tents of the wicked,
For the LORD God is sun and shield;
the LORD bestows grace and glory;
He does not withhold His bounty
from those who live without blame. (Ps 84:2-6a, 11-12)
The two beatitudes of vv. 5 and 6 suggest that the refugees may have been employed as Temple singers, a position that in the postexilic era was redefined as a prerogative of the lesser clerical caste, the Levites (1 Chr 16:4). Verse 11 recalls another Temple chore, that of the doorkeepers, which also eventually became Levitical (1 Chr 9:19). Ps 27:6, which we have already examined, indicates that the refugee may also have been engaged in the sacred slaughter of animals, and many psalms indicate that he did, indeed, partake of the offerings:
I bless You all my life;
I lift up my hands, invoking Your name.
I am sated as with suet and fat,
I sing praises with joyful lips
when I call You to mind upon my bed,
when I think of You in my watches of the night,
for You are my help,
and in the shadow of Your wings
I shout for joy.
My soul is attached to You;
Your right hand supports me.
May those who seek to destroy my life
enter the depths of the earth. (Ps 63:5-10)
Elsewhere, the “as” of v. 6 disappears, and we hear of people who “feast on the rich fare of Your house” (Ps 36:9). These passages betray no awareness of the Priestly insistence that a layperson may not eat of the sacred donations (Lev 22:10-16).We have argued that the Jerusalem Temple (and other Israelite shrines) served as places of asylum in a very practical, legal sense. Whether the institution of asylum was the original context for all the “entrance liturgies” is impossible to ascertain. Passages like Ezekiel 18, however, with its criteria for determining who is righteous and worthy of life and who is not, argue for a less limited context of these lists of criteria. In any event, the preservation of the “entrance liturgies” after the disappearance of the legal institution in question and their eventual inclusion in the Psalter demonstrates that their meaning was not thought to have been exhausted by any practical context. Instead, they became part of a manual of devotion.
The refugee of those poems that do clearly speak of asylum became Everyman. The situation of an innocent person slandered and hunted by bloodthirsty enemies and seeking shelter and sustenance from his bountiful lord became a paradigm of the human condition. The recitation to this day of those psalms by people who have never suspected their original setting is stunning evidence for the phenomenal durability of the spiritual legacy of the Jerusalem Temple.
A Locus for the Vision of God
The apogee of the spiritual experience of the visitor to the Temple was a visit of God. In fact, “to see the face of YHWH” is an idiom that indicates a visit to the Temple (e.g., Deut 16:16). Psalm 11 asserts a reciprocity of vision: YHWH, enthroned in His Temple, conducts a visual inspection of humanity, and those found worthy are granted a vision of his “face”:
The LORD is in His holy palace;
the LORD —His throne is in heaven;
His eyes behold (yehezu), His gaze searches mankind.
The Lord seeks out the righteous man,
but loathes the wicked one who loves injustice.
He will rain down upon the wicked
blazing coals and sulfur;
a scorching wind shall be their lot.
For the LORD is righteous;
He loves righteous deeds;
the upright shall behold (yehezu) His face. (Ps 11:4-7)
We shall see that the vision of God in His Temple or a vision of the Temple itself were occasionally powerful components of the revelation granted to prophets. But this was probably merely a specialization of the spiritual experience of the Temple available to any whose deeds merited it. The folk etymology of the Land of Moriah at which Abraham was to sacrifice Isaac underscores the association with visionary experience:
And Abraham named that site Adonai-Yireh,
whence the present saying,
“On the mount of the LORD there is vision.” (Gen 22:14)
The last clause can just as well be translated, “on the mount of the LORD He is seen.” One senses that the author has a particular mountain in mind. Postexilic tradition may well be correct in identifying it with the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where YHWH “had appeared to [Solomon's] father David” (2 Chr 3:1). If so, then one function of the story of the binding of Isaac in its present form was to connect the ongoing vision of God in the Temple with the visionary experience of the patriarchs. Abraham’s experience has been assimilated to David’s (2 Sam 24:15), and both now serve as a foundation myth for the Jerusalem Temple. If, as seems equally possible, in Genesis 22 Moriah has not yet become a name for any part of Jerusalem but refers to another sacred spot, the connection between theophany and sacrifice remains valid and important. Particularly noteworthy is the association of vision, sacrifice, and oracle, which appear together not only in Genesis 22 and 2 Samuel 24 but also, for example, in the story of the Gentile seer Balaam (Num 23:1-5) and in the annunciation of Samson’s birth (Judges 13). The last passage indicates that a divine being might be imagined to have been glimpsed in the flames leaping up to the sky from the altar on which the sacrificial offering was burning (vv. 19-23; cf. Exod 3:2).
The importance of icons of the deity in Near Eastern temples suggests another candidate for the object beheld in the epiphanic moment. To be sure, images of the deity, in fact all images, became strictly prohibited in ancient Israel. The prohibition came into the Decalogue itself (Exod 20:4),20 and Aaron’s and Jeroboam’s casting of golden calves (Exod 32 and 1 Kgs 12:28-32) came to serve as archetypes of sin. The question is the date at which the cultus became aniconic and the extent of acceptance of the anti-iconic theology in ancient Israelite society. From the Torah itself one might not suspect that the heyday of iconoclasm in Israel began in the days of Hezekiah, king of Judah late in the eighth century B.C.E., and was resumed with a ferocious passion almost a century later, in the reign of Josiah.
It was Hezekiah who “broke into pieces the bronze serpent which Moses had made” (2 Kgs 18:4), the very sight of which had been thought to produce healing in the viewer (Num 21:6-9).
Josiah, acting on the basis of a newfound “book of the Torah,” which most scholars think was some form of Deuteronomy, carried out a far-reaching purge, which included the destruction of iconography on the grounds of the Jerusalem Temple (2 Kgs 22-23). The history of Israel that comes to us in the books from Joshua through 2 Kings was edited in Deuteronomistic circles who presupposed the normativeness and antiquity of the aniconic cultus.
But traces of the other perspectives remain. There is, for example, the golden “ephod” that the YHWHistic hero Gideon made; to a Deuteronomistic editor of the book of Judges, it was only “a snare to Gideon and his household” (Judg 8:27). But there is no reason to think that it represented any deity except YHWH. Similarly, the mother of an Ephraimite named Micah dedicated silver to YHWH, out of which a smith at her request apparently made two images, one sculptured and one molten. These Micah set up in his temple (Judg 17:1-6). The precise nature of all these images must remain a matter of speculation. Nonetheless, the application of bovine imagery to YHWH may provide a clue. Not only is YHWH described as being endowed with something “like the horns of a wild ox” (Num 24:8), but one of his epithets is ‘avir ya`aqov, a term often rendered as “Mighty One of Jacob; but better rendered “Bull of Jacob” (Gen 49:24; Ps 132: 2,4).21 The bovine imagery and epithets are a carryover from the Canaanite god ‘El, with whom YHWH was identified even in “orthodox” theology (e.g., Gen 33:20; Isa 43:12). Was there ever a bull image or similar icon in the Jerusalem Temple?
In answer, one must first note that the radical iconoclasm of Deuteronomic tradition, which prohibited all plastic art (Deut 4:15-18), never seems to have taken root in the Jerusalem Temple. There, in contrast, one encountered a dazzling display of art, including olive-wood cherubim, reliefs of trees and flowers, bronze columns, topped with capitals and festooned with chainwork, a bronze tank called the “Sea’ supported by twelve oxen (!), and much else (1 Kgs 7).
The blunt truth is that, if we judged from the descriptions of Solomon’s Temple and the Tent of Meeting (Exod 25-30; 35-40) alone, we should never guess the depth of anti-iconic feeling in ancient Israel. Whether the gallery of visual delights that was the Jerusalem Temple included at some points in its checkered history an icon of YHWH, bovine or other, is impossible to say with certainty. Deuteronomic tradition insists that the Ark of the Covenant contained only the Decalogue (Deut 10:1-5).
Some modern scholars have conjectured that at one point it contained an icon instead.If so, it is likely that the “face” which was seen in the Temple or the “beauty of the LORD” which one psalmist longed to behold there for his entire life (Ps 27:4) were more than metaphorical. In that case, what is most remarkable is that this language of vision remained central to the religious vocabulary even after its literal referent had vanished. In this, the language of vision resembles the Jerusalem Temple itself.
Zion the Inviolable
We have seen that central to the idea of the Temple as a place of asylum is the assertion that the person qualified for admittance to it is inviolable. He “shall never be shaken” (Ps 15:5), and he holds his “head high/over [his] enemies roundabout” (Ps 27:6). The same inviolability is predicated not only of the right-doing person sheltered within, but of the Temple itself, the mount upon which it rests, and the holy city in which it is found. That is to say, the protection that the Temple affords one Israelite against the enmity of another is available also to the larger community when it is under attack by its enemies:
A song. A psalm of the Korahites.
The LORD is great and much acclaimed
in the city of our God,
His holy mountain —
fair-crested, joy of all the earth,
Mount Zion, summit of Zaphon,
city of the great king.
Through its citadels,
God has made Himself known as a haven.
See, the kings joined forces;
they advanced together.
At the mere sight of it they were stunned,
they were terrified, they panicked;
they were seized there with a trembling,
like a woman in the throes of labor,
as the fleet of Tarshish
was wrecked in an easterly gale.
The likes of what we heard
we have now witnessed
in the city of the LORD of hosts,
in the city of our God—
may God preserve it forever!
Selah.
In Your temple, God,
we meditate upon Your faithful care.
The praise of You, God, like Your name,
reaches to the ends of the earth;
Your right hand is filled with beneficence.
Let Mount Zion rejoice!
Let the towns of Judah exult,
because of Your judgments.
Walk around Zion, circle it;
count its towers, take note of its ramparts;
go through its citadels,
that you may recount it to a future age.
For God—He is our God forever;
He will lead us evermore. (Ps 48)
In this poem, recited today by traditional Jews on Monday mornings, the Temple is the objective correlative of the omnipotence and trustworthiness of God. The very sight of it throws an alliance of hostile kings into a panic (vv. 4-8). Zion, the Temple Mount, is the visible form, the “incarnation: so to speak, of the sacred story of YHWH’s commitment to rescue those loyal to Him (v. 9): it is in the Temple that the psalmist and his circle “form an image” (dimminu, v. 10)23 of God’s care for His worshipers. Here the dichotomy is not between the innocent within and the wicked outside the Temple, or between the homicide without malice aforethought and his victim’s avenger. Rather, the critical distinction is between the Temple (and Zion and Jerusalem) as the state shrine of the entire kingdom of Judah, on the one hand, and those outside Judah, on the other, those who are, presumably, vulnerable to military defeat, as Judah, ruled by “the great king” (v. 3), is not. Whether “the great king” is YHWH or His Davidic viceroy and son is impossible to ascertain and ultimately irrelevant, given the indefectible commitment of YHWH to the House of David in Judean royal theology (e.g., Pss 89:20-28; 110:1-5). In fact, the inviolability of the Temple/Zion/Jerusalem served, in part, as the ideology associated with Davidic imperialism. The utility of this mythos for propaganda and psychological warfare must not be overlooked:
Why do nations assemble,
and peoples plot vain things;
kings of the earth take their stand,
and regents intrigue together
against the LORD and against His anointed.
“Let us break the coals of their yoke,
shake off their ropes from us!”
He who is enthroned in heaven laughs;
the LORD mocks at them.
Then He speaks to them in anger,
terrifying them in His rage,
“But I have installed My king
on Zion, My holy mountain!”
Let me tell of the decree:
the LORD said to me,
“You are My son,
I have fathered you this day.
Ask it of Me,
and I will make the nations your domain;
your estate, the limits of the earth.
You can smash them with an iron mace,
shatter them like potter’s ware.
So now, 0 kings, be prudent;
accept discipline, you rulers of the earth!
Serve the LORD in awe;
tremble with fright,
pay homage in good faith,
lest He be angered,
and your way be doomed
in the mere flash of His anger.
Happy are all who take refuge in Him. (Ps 2)
In this poem, as in Psalm 48, we hear of a conspiracy of kings and of the ease with which it is overcome. But here the kings are already in vassalage to YHWH and to His anointed regent (mashiah, v. 2); v. 3 is the manifesto of their revolution, the declaration of their independence.With three points, however, they have failed to reckon.
First, ultimate sovereignty is not an earthly prerogative; it resides in the skies, where YHWH, the king of kings, is enthroned. No challenge to His kingship can succeed (v. 4).
Second, the human king against whom they are in rebellion has been installed by the ultimate king on Mount Zion, which is sacred space (v. 6). Presumably, an attack upon him there would be equivalent to an invasion of the Temple precincts by a blood-avenger in pursuit of his prey—in short, an outrageous sacrilege.
Third, the rebellious vassals do not recognize the closeness and the durability of YHWH’s relationship to the anointed king enthroned upon Zion. The latter rectifies this by reading the protocol By which he became God’s son and thus the vice-regent of the universal dominion (vv. 7-9). The action of Psalm 2, therefore, takes place upon a split set.
The nexus between heavenly and earthly sovereignty is Davidic kingship, which is an extension of YHWH’s reign into the murky world of human politics. In other words, the authority of the House of David is in this world, but not of it. The link between the two worlds, the world of divine power and the world of power politics, is Mount Zion, the capital of the universe, from which the House of David exercises its divine commission to rule. The divine origin of that commission ensures the immunity and invulnerability of the Temple Mount to the challenges of ordinary political life. It is on Zion that the higher world is available. Zion is the axis mundorum.
The Judean royal theology, with its bold assertions about the indefectibility and absoluteness of God’s commitments to David and Zion, must not be taken for the totality of biblical thought on these issues. There is, for example, a tension between this theology and the stern morality of much prophetic literature:
Hear this, you rulers of the House of Jacob,
You chiefs of the House of Israel,
Who detest justice
And make crooked all that is straight,
Who build Zion with crime,
Jerusalem with iniquity!
Her rulers judge for gifts,
Her priests give rulings for a fee,
And her prophets divine for pay;
Yet they rely upon the LORD, saying,
“The LORD is in our midst;
No calamity shall overtake us.”
Assuredly, because of you
Zion shall be plowed as a field,
And Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins,
And the Temple Mount
A shrine in the woods. (Mic 3:9-12; cf. Jer 7:1-15)
Here, the divine commitment to Temple/Zion/Jerusalem is emphatically contingent upon the justice of the Judean ruling class. Jerusalem ceases to benefit from God’s special protection when its prosperity results from corruption and victimization of the innocent; to build Jerusalem in this way is to invite God to level it. To be sure, no biblical source guarantees the Davidic king and the inhabitants of Jerusalem immunity from punishment for sins they commit. In fact, even the texts that promise David an everlasting dynasty warn that the reigning dynast can be chastised, even though the throne is inalienable from his family (2 Sam 7:14-15; Ps 89:31-38). The Davidic covenant does not provide exemption from the Sinitic. And, in fact, Israelite kings, like kings throughout the ancient Near East, were expected to promote and enforce social justice (e.g., Pss 72 and 101).On the other hand, the very indefectibility of the grant to David does imply that one punishment for breach of the Sinaitic covenant is not a possibility, the deposition and exile of the king (Dent 28:36). When, in 597 B.C.E., a Davidic king was dragged into exile and in 587 B.C.E., the Temple atop Mount Zion was torched and the sacred city destroyed (2 Kgs 24:825:17), the Sinaitic covenantal tradition must have seemed vindicated and the spiritual experience articulated in the royal theology, discredited:
The breath of our life, the LORD’S anointed,
Was captured in their traps—
He in whose shade we had thought
To live among the nations. (Lam 4:20)
Yet Judaism as it developed in the exile and in the period of the Second Temple was not a religion of pure conditionality untouched by vision and grace. Instead, the impregnable Temple of yesteryear and Zion, the seat of a glorious empire, were increasingly projected onto an eschatological future. God would redeem Zion, David, and all Israel from their present state of degradation and subjugation (e.g., Zech 9:9-10). Or, to change the metaphor from the temporal to the spatial, the glories of the past could still be glimpsed, but only in the form of their heavenly archetypes now that the earthly antitypes were ruined or diminished: apocalyptic seers and initiated mystics could still attain to a vision of the messiah and even of the throne of God in the supernal realm, which has not yet come to the mundane world (e.g., Dan 7; 1 Enoch 14).Despite all these transformations, something of the Judean royal theology lives even today in the Jewish messianic hope and its Christian counterpart, the expectation of the Second Coming and the kingdom, and in the place that Zion and Jerusalem play in the Jewish religious imagination.
The effect of the inclusion of these two spiritual postures in one set of scriptures is to create a spiritual dialectic which, like any dialectic, is more than the sum of its pans. The one perspective, represented by the royal theology, speaks of the mysterious and all-encompassing grace of God, which provides absolute security in the here-and-now. The second perspective, represented by the Sinaitic covenantal perspective, also includes a note of grace, for example, in its assertion of the perdurable openness of God to repentance (e.g., Deut 4:29-31) and its occasional emphasis upon the eternal, unconditional covenant with the patriarchs (e.g., Lev 26:39-42). But the predominant note in the Sinaitic traditions is the note of ultimate conditionality, the life-and-death choice which it is fully in Israel’s power to make (e.g., Deut 30:19-20).
Together these two positions prescribe a religion in which, to use the Christian terminology, neither “grace” nor “works,” is asserted at the expense of the other. The emphasis on grace in the royal and Temple theologies threatens to depreciate the deed, to render ethics dispensable, in short, to make Israel merely a passive bystander in her own spiritual life. The emphasis on works on mizwot, in the traditions of the Sinai covenant, threatens to make God merely a mechanism for the dispensation of rewards and punishments and to make the mizwot themselves into magical practices through which Israel can manipulate her God, who thus becomes the passive partner in the relationship.
By refusing to dichotomize spiritual experience into grace and works, by affirming both simultaneously, the religion prescribed by the Jewish Bible maintains the two-sidedness of the relationship of God and Israel. It preserves both activity and passivity as proper postures for both partners, and it affirms the ultimate importance both of this world and of the higher or future world.
To some, the juxtaposition of the two theologies will seem to have resulted in an unacceptable contradiction. To others, it will seem to have resulted in a contradiction that is indeed to be accepted, a paradox, one that lies at the heart of Jewish spirituality throughout the ages.
Temple and Creation
In post-biblical Jewish literature, both Hellenistic and rabbinic, we find the notion that the Jerusalem Temple (or the Tent of Meeting) was a cosmic institution, either the center of the world, from which the world was created, or itself a microcosm, a miniature world. For example, the first-century historian Josephus describes the veil over its door as an eikon, an image, of the world.
In our century this notion that the Temple was conceived as cosmic has received some confirmation from archaeologists studying the iconography of the Temple and its Near Eastern sources and parallels.
For example, the metal “Sea” (yam) in its courtyard (1 Kgs 7:23-26) suggests “the Mesopotamian apsu, employed both as the name of the subterranean fresh-water ocean and as the name of a basin of holy water erected in the Temple. As the god of the subterranean freshwater ocean, apsu played an important role in some Mesopotamian cosmogonies, just as the Sea (yam) did in some Israelite creation stories (e.g., Ps 74:12-17; Isa 51:9-11). This suggests that the metal Sea in the Temple courtyard served as a continual testimony to the act of creation.
Similarly, the name of the foundation of the altar of the Temple envisioned in Ezek 43:13-17, “Bosom of the earth” (heq ha’arez), might suggest the sort of cosmic understanding that will become common in Hellenistic and rabbinic speculation, and the name har’el there (v. 15) may signify either “the mountain of God” (Hebrew) or “a cosmic locality opposite of heaven” (Akaddian arallu). The last example of many that might be cited is the platform (kiyor), upon which Solomon stands as he dedicates his Temple in 2 Chr 6:13. It has been connected with Akkadian kiuru, which may indicate the earth or a sacred place.
In sum, the likelihood is that the Temple appurtenances were conceived as symbolic of the cosmos and reminiscent of the great cosmogonic acts of YHWH. If so, then the association of Zion/Jerusalem with “heaven and earth” (e.g., Ps 134:3; Isa 65:17-18), the nierism through which biblical Hebrew denotes the world (e.g., Gen 1:1), is not coincidence!
There is also literary evidence to support this connection of creation and Temple in ancient Israelite culture. Since rabbinic times, scholars have noticed verbal parallels between the account of the completion of the world in Gen 2:1-3 and the account of the completion of the Tent of Meeting in Exodus 39-40. World building and Temple building seem to be homologous activities. In fact, some of the same language can be found in the description of “the establishment of the sanctuary in the land and the distribution of the land among the tribes in Joshua 18-19.
Therefore, we should not be surprised to find other thematic parallels between these three moments. One is the theme of “rest.” God “rested° (wayyanah) on the seventh day (Exod 20:11), the crown of creation; Zion is his “resting-place” (menuhatiy), Ps 132:4 and the land of Israel is the place in which he provides “rest” for his people (menuhah, Deut 12:9). According to 1 Chr 22:9, it is because Solomon, unlike David, was “a man at rest” (‘ish menuhah) that he was permitted to build the Temple.
The Temple is the place at which that primordial moment of repose remains eternally available. Yet the Sabbath; another memorial to creation (e.g., Exod 20:11), makes available the same experience. The Sabbath is a kind of democratization of the Temple experience, and the land of Israel is an extended Temple, a whole land of holiness, which, like temples, must be zealously guarded against pollution (e.g., Lev 18:24-30).
The sanctity of the Sabbath, the sanctity of the Temple, and the sanctity of the land are homologous. They are not ultimately distinguishable. Each testifies to God’s triumph, to His invincibility — whether in cosmogony, when He overcame the primordial watery chaos (Gen 1:2), or in history, when He overcame all the enemies of His people, settled them in the land, gave them respite, and allowed His sacred palace to be built at last. Ultimately, the cosmogony and the historical myths are not to be distinguished: their end point is the same, YHWH and Israel at rest in His sacred precincts. It was for this reason that the definitive triumph of YHWH over Pharaoh, a historical enemy, could be celebrated with a hymn about victory at the waters, a hymn that ends with the appropriate image of YHWH enthroned on his mountain in the Temple which His own hands built and acclaimed king by the people He acquired through manumission (Exod 15:1-8).32 It is here that we see the convergence of the two perspectives outlined above, the settlement tradition and the (Priestly) Sinai tradition.
It is true that the consummation of the foundational story comes at the assumption of the promised land in one case and at the inauguration of the tent-shrine in the other. In the settlement tradition, the fulfillment lies ahead for a longer time. In the (Priestly) Sinai tradition, it is a present reality from Sinai on. But once the homology of land and Temple is recognized, it becomes clear that, although the story comes to rest later in one case than the other, the rest to which it comes is the same.
This conception of the Temple as a world, a microcosm, recalls the recent statement by a distinguished historian of religion that “ritual represents the creation of a controlled environment … [It is] a means of performing the way things ought to be in conscious tension to the way things are in such a way that this ritualized perfection is recollected in the ordinary, uncontrolled, course of things.” The Temple is the world as it ought to be. It is a world in which God’s reign is unthreatened, and his justice is manifest, in which life is peaceful, and every Israelite is without blemish. It is no wonder that prophets could call the mountain of God TAW, and compare Zion glorified to that paradisaical garden (Ezek 28:13-14; Isa 51:3). In this theology, [he Temple was a piece of primal perfection available within the broken world of ordinary experience—heaven on earth.
The House of YHWH and the Renewal of the World
The contiguity of a heavenly entity, the Jerusalem Temple, and mundane reality, with all its corruption and defilement, accounts for one of the most powerful spiritual dynamics in the Hebrew Bible. We see it in its sharpest form in the experience of the prophet Isaiah:
In the year that King Uzziah died, I beheld my Lord seated on a high and lofty throne; and the skirts of His robe filled the Temple.
Seraphs stood in attendance on Him. Each of them had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his legs, and with two he would fly.
And one would call to the other,
“Holy, holy, holy!
The Loan of Hosts!
His presence fills all
the earth”
The doorposts would shake at the sound of the one who called, and the House kept filling with smoke.
I cried,
“Woe is me; I am lost!
For I am a man of unclean lips
And I live among a people
of unclean lips;
Yet my own eyes have beheld The King LORD of Hosts!”
Then one of the seraphs flew over to me with a live coal, which he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. He touched it to my lips and declared,
“Now that this has touched your lips,
Your guilt shall depart
And your sin be purged away!”
Then I heard the voice of my LORD saying,
“Whom shall I send?
Who will go for us?”
And I said,
“Here am I; send me.”
And He said,
“Go, say to that people… 7 (Isa 6:1-9)
Here Isaiah is privileged to see the difference between the earthly antitype and the heavenly archetype disappear: iconography becomes the reality it symbolizes. To the prophet, the Temple as it fills with smoke (probably from burning incense) suggests the world as it is filled with the “presence” (kaved) of God, no longer restricted to the sacred precincts (vv. 3-4; cf. Exod 40:34; 1 Kgs 8:11).Not only does the earthly Temple become one with the heavenly one, but the world becomes one with the Temple — or almost. For the vision of God in His majesty and holiness and the seraphic announcement of the universal scope of His presence induce in Isaiah an acute awareness of his own defilement. He is a man °of unclean lips” from a people “of unclean lips,” a status that is incompatible with a vision of God.
The vision would have doomed him, had not a seraph cauterized his lips and thus purified him of whatever blasphemy or slander he had uttered (Isa 6:5-7). Only then does Isaiah become fit to bear the verdict of the divine council out into the profane world (vv. 8-9).
The affinity of Isaiah’s throne – vision with the spirituality of the Temple as it appears in the Psalms is patent. As we have noted, the apogee of a visit to the Temple was a vision of God, but entrance was granted only to those qualified for it. Sins of the tongue are prominent among the disqualifications (e.g., Ps 15:3; 24:4).
In Isaiah’s case, the dissonance between the holiness of YHWH enthroned in his Temple and the unholiness of the outside world impelled his prophetic career. The people of Zion have become unfit receptacles for that overpowering holiness whose invasion of the ordinary world was announced by the seraphim. They must be reformed:
Sinners in Zion are frightened,
The godless are seized with trembling:
“Who of us can dwell with the devouring fire?
Who of us can dwell with the never – dying blaze?”
He who walks in righteousness,
Speaks uprightly,
Spurns profit from fraudulent dealings,
Waves away a bribe instead of grasping it,
Stops his ears against listening to infamy,
Shuts his eyes against looking at evil —
Such a one shall dwell in lofty security,
With inaccessible cliffs for his stronghold,
With his food supplied And his drink assured. (Isa 33:14-16)
In this oracle, the “entrance liturgy” serves as the basis for prophetic indictment, as the entire nation is exhorted to act as if it seeks admission to the Temple. Moreover — and here we see the connection with the seraphic hymn of 6:3 — the holy God is not satisfied with remaining within His palace, but is, instead, determined to make the world His palace: He is a “devouring flame,” scorching sinners not only in Zion/Jerusalem but also in Israel and throughout the world.Isaiah’s message is, in large measure, founded upon the ethical imperative that follows from the experience of the Temple. For him, YHWH is, first and foremost, the “Holy One of Israel;” and the deadliest sin is arrogance, which he interprets as the idolatrous act of self-enthronement:
Yea, man is bowed,
And mortal brought low;
Brought low is the pride of the haughty.
And the LORD of Hosts is exalted by judgment, The Holy God proved holy by retribution. (Isa 5:15-16; cf. 2:10-17).
Just as Isaiah’s own life is exposed to the eyes of the Holy One, so he sees his people in their world sub specie sanctitatis Dei.
The LORD is in His holy palace;
the LORD —His throne is in heaven;
His eyes behold (yehezu), His gaze searches mankind.
The Lord seeks out the righteous man,
but loathes the wicked one who loves injustice.
He will rain down upon the wicked
blazing coals and sulfur;
a scorching wind shall be their lot.
For the LORD is righteous;
He loves righteous deeds;
the upright shall behold (yehezu) His face. (Ps 11:4-7)
We shall see that the vision of God in His Temple or a vision of the Temple itself were occasionally powerful components of the revelation granted to prophets. But this was probably merely a specialization of the spiritual experience of the Temple available to any whose deeds merited it. The folk etymology of the Land of Moriah at which Abraham was to sacrifice Isaac underscores the association with visionary experience:
And Abraham named that site Adonai-Yireh,
whence the present saying,
“On the mount of the LORD there is vision.” (Gen 22:14)
The last clause can just as well be translated, “on the mount of the LORD He is seen.” One senses that the author has a particular mountain in mind. Postexilic tradition may well be correct in identifying it with the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where YHWH “had appeared to [Solomon's] father David” (2 Chr 3:1). If so, then one function of the story of the binding of Isaac in its present form was to connect the ongoing vision of God in the Temple with the visionary experience of the patriarchs. Abraham’s experience has been assimilated to David’s (2 Sam 24:15), and both now serve as a foundation myth for the Jerusalem Temple. If, as seems equally possible, in Genesis 22 Moriah has not yet become a name for any part of Jerusalem but refers to another sacred spot, the connection between theophany and sacrifice remains valid and important. Particularly noteworthy is the association of vision, sacrifice, and oracle, which appear together not only in Genesis 22 and 2 Samuel 24 but also, for example, in the story of the Gentile seer Balaam (Num 23:1-5) and in the annunciation of Samson’s birth (Judges 13). The last passage indicates that a divine being might be imagined to have been glimpsed in the flames leaping up to the sky from the altar on which the sacrificial offering was burning (vv. 19-23; cf. Exod 3:2).
The importance of icons of the deity in Near Eastern temples suggests another candidate for the object beheld in the epiphanic moment. To be sure, images of the deity, in fact all images, became strictly prohibited in ancient Israel. The prohibition came into the Decalogue itself (Exod 20:4),20 and Aaron’s and Jeroboam’s casting of golden calves (Exod 32 and 1 Kgs 12:28-32) came to serve as archetypes of sin. The question is the date at which the cultus became aniconic and the extent of acceptance of the anti-iconic theology in ancient Israelite society. From the Torah itself one might not suspect that the heyday of iconoclasm in Israel began in the days of Hezekiah, king of Judah late in the eighth century B.C.E., and was resumed with a ferocious passion almost a century later, in the reign of Josiah.
It was Hezekiah who “broke into pieces the bronze serpent which Moses had made” (2 Kgs 18:4), the very sight of which had been thought to produce healing in the viewer (Num 21:6-9).
Josiah, acting on the basis of a newfound “book of the Torah,” which most scholars think was some form of Deuteronomy, carried out a far-reaching purge, which included the destruction of iconography on the grounds of the Jerusalem Temple (2 Kgs 22-23). The history of Israel that comes to us in the books from Joshua through 2 Kings was edited in Deuteronomistic circles who presupposed the normativeness and antiquity of the aniconic cultus.
But traces of the other perspectives remain. There is, for example, the golden “ephod” that the YHWHistic hero Gideon made; to a Deuteronomistic editor of the book of Judges, it was only “a snare to Gideon and his household” (Judg 8:27). But there is no reason to think that it represented any deity except YHWH. Similarly, the mother of an Ephraimite named Micah dedicated silver to YHWH, out of which a smith at her request apparently made two images, one sculptured and one molten. These Micah set up in his temple (Judg 17:1-6). The precise nature of all these images must remain a matter of speculation. Nonetheless, the application of bovine imagery to YHWH may provide a clue. Not only is YHWH described as being endowed with something “like the horns of a wild ox” (Num 24:8), but one of his epithets is ‘avir ya`aqov, a term often rendered as “Mighty One of Jacob; but better rendered “Bull of Jacob” (Gen 49:24; Ps 132: 2,4).21 The bovine imagery and epithets are a carryover from the Canaanite god ‘El, with whom YHWH was identified even in “orthodox” theology (e.g., Gen 33:20; Isa 43:12). Was there ever a bull image or similar icon in the Jerusalem Temple?
In answer, one must first note that the radical iconoclasm of Deuteronomic tradition, which prohibited all plastic art (Deut 4:15-18), never seems to have taken root in the Jerusalem Temple. There, in contrast, one encountered a dazzling display of art, including olive-wood cherubim, reliefs of trees and flowers, bronze columns, topped with capitals and festooned with chainwork, a bronze tank called the “Sea’ supported by twelve oxen (!), and much else (1 Kgs 7).
The blunt truth is that, if we judged from the descriptions of Solomon’s Temple and the Tent of Meeting (Exod 25-30; 35-40) alone, we should never guess the depth of anti-iconic feeling in ancient Israel. Whether the gallery of visual delights that was the Jerusalem Temple included at some points in its checkered history an icon of YHWH, bovine or other, is impossible to say with certainty. Deuteronomic tradition insists that the Ark of the Covenant contained only the Decalogue (Deut 10:1-5).
Some modern scholars have conjectured that at one point it contained an icon instead.If so, it is likely that the “face” which was seen in the Temple or the “beauty of the LORD” which one psalmist longed to behold there for his entire life (Ps 27:4) were more than metaphorical. In that case, what is most remarkable is that this language of vision remained central to the religious vocabulary even after its literal referent had vanished. In this, the language of vision resembles the Jerusalem Temple itself.
Zion the Inviolable
We have seen that central to the idea of the Temple as a place of asylum is the assertion that the person qualified for admittance to it is inviolable. He “shall never be shaken” (Ps 15:5), and he holds his “head high/over [his] enemies roundabout” (Ps 27:6). The same inviolability is predicated not only of the right-doing person sheltered within, but of the Temple itself, the mount upon which it rests, and the holy city in which it is found. That is to say, the protection that the Temple affords one Israelite against the enmity of another is available also to the larger community when it is under attack by its enemies:
A song. A psalm of the Korahites.
The LORD is great and much acclaimed
in the city of our God,
His holy mountain —
fair-crested, joy of all the earth,
Mount Zion, summit of Zaphon,
city of the great king.
Through its citadels,
God has made Himself known as a haven.
See, the kings joined forces;
they advanced together.
At the mere sight of it they were stunned,
they were terrified, they panicked;
they were seized there with a trembling,
like a woman in the throes of labor,
as the fleet of Tarshish
was wrecked in an easterly gale.
The likes of what we heard
we have now witnessed
in the city of the LORD of hosts,
in the city of our God—
may God preserve it forever!
Selah.
In Your temple, God,
we meditate upon Your faithful care.
The praise of You, God, like Your name,
reaches to the ends of the earth;
Your right hand is filled with beneficence.
Let Mount Zion rejoice!
Let the towns of Judah exult,
because of Your judgments.
Walk around Zion, circle it;
count its towers, take note of its ramparts;
go through its citadels,
that you may recount it to a future age.
For God—He is our God forever;
He will lead us evermore. (Ps 48)
In this poem, recited today by traditional Jews on Monday mornings, the Temple is the objective correlative of the omnipotence and trustworthiness of God. The very sight of it throws an alliance of hostile kings into a panic (vv. 4-8). Zion, the Temple Mount, is the visible form, the “incarnation: so to speak, of the sacred story of YHWH’s commitment to rescue those loyal to Him (v. 9): it is in the Temple that the psalmist and his circle “form an image” (dimminu, v. 10)23 of God’s care for His worshipers. Here the dichotomy is not between the innocent within and the wicked outside the Temple, or between the homicide without malice aforethought and his victim’s avenger. Rather, the critical distinction is between the Temple (and Zion and Jerusalem) as the state shrine of the entire kingdom of Judah, on the one hand, and those outside Judah, on the other, those who are, presumably, vulnerable to military defeat, as Judah, ruled by “the great king” (v. 3), is not. Whether “the great king” is YHWH or His Davidic viceroy and son is impossible to ascertain and ultimately irrelevant, given the indefectible commitment of YHWH to the House of David in Judean royal theology (e.g., Pss 89:20-28; 110:1-5). In fact, the inviolability of the Temple/Zion/Jerusalem served, in part, as the ideology associated with Davidic imperialism. The utility of this mythos for propaganda and psychological warfare must not be overlooked:
Why do nations assemble,
and peoples plot vain things;
kings of the earth take their stand,
and regents intrigue together
against the LORD and against His anointed.
“Let us break the coals of their yoke,
shake off their ropes from us!”
He who is enthroned in heaven laughs;
the LORD mocks at them.
Then He speaks to them in anger,
terrifying them in His rage,
“But I have installed My king
on Zion, My holy mountain!”
Let me tell of the decree:
the LORD said to me,
“You are My son,
I have fathered you this day.
Ask it of Me,
and I will make the nations your domain;
your estate, the limits of the earth.
You can smash them with an iron mace,
shatter them like potter’s ware.
So now, 0 kings, be prudent;
accept discipline, you rulers of the earth!
Serve the LORD in awe;
tremble with fright,
pay homage in good faith,
lest He be angered,
and your way be doomed
in the mere flash of His anger.
Happy are all who take refuge in Him. (Ps 2)
In this poem, as in Psalm 48, we hear of a conspiracy of kings and of the ease with which it is overcome. But here the kings are already in vassalage to YHWH and to His anointed regent (mashiah, v. 2); v. 3 is the manifesto of their revolution, the declaration of their independence.With three points, however, they have failed to reckon.
First, ultimate sovereignty is not an earthly prerogative; it resides in the skies, where YHWH, the king of kings, is enthroned. No challenge to His kingship can succeed (v. 4).
Second, the human king against whom they are in rebellion has been installed by the ultimate king on Mount Zion, which is sacred space (v. 6). Presumably, an attack upon him there would be equivalent to an invasion of the Temple precincts by a blood-avenger in pursuit of his prey—in short, an outrageous sacrilege.
Third, the rebellious vassals do not recognize the closeness and the durability of YHWH’s relationship to the anointed king enthroned upon Zion. The latter rectifies this by reading the protocol By which he became God’s son and thus the vice-regent of the universal dominion (vv. 7-9). The action of Psalm 2, therefore, takes place upon a split set.
The nexus between heavenly and earthly sovereignty is Davidic kingship, which is an extension of YHWH’s reign into the murky world of human politics. In other words, the authority of the House of David is in this world, but not of it. The link between the two worlds, the world of divine power and the world of power politics, is Mount Zion, the capital of the universe, from which the House of David exercises its divine commission to rule. The divine origin of that commission ensures the immunity and invulnerability of the Temple Mount to the challenges of ordinary political life. It is on Zion that the higher world is available. Zion is the axis mundorum.
The Judean royal theology, with its bold assertions about the indefectibility and absoluteness of God’s commitments to David and Zion, must not be taken for the totality of biblical thought on these issues. There is, for example, a tension between this theology and the stern morality of much prophetic literature:
Hear this, you rulers of the House of Jacob,
You chiefs of the House of Israel,
Who detest justice
And make crooked all that is straight,
Who build Zion with crime,
Jerusalem with iniquity!
Her rulers judge for gifts,
Her priests give rulings for a fee,
And her prophets divine for pay;
Yet they rely upon the LORD, saying,
“The LORD is in our midst;
No calamity shall overtake us.”
Assuredly, because of you
Zion shall be plowed as a field,
And Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins,
And the Temple Mount
A shrine in the woods. (Mic 3:9-12; cf. Jer 7:1-15)
Here, the divine commitment to Temple/Zion/Jerusalem is emphatically contingent upon the justice of the Judean ruling class. Jerusalem ceases to benefit from God’s special protection when its prosperity results from corruption and victimization of the innocent; to build Jerusalem in this way is to invite God to level it. To be sure, no biblical source guarantees the Davidic king and the inhabitants of Jerusalem immunity from punishment for sins they commit. In fact, even the texts that promise David an everlasting dynasty warn that the reigning dynast can be chastised, even though the throne is inalienable from his family (2 Sam 7:14-15; Ps 89:31-38). The Davidic covenant does not provide exemption from the Sinitic. And, in fact, Israelite kings, like kings throughout the ancient Near East, were expected to promote and enforce social justice (e.g., Pss 72 and 101).On the other hand, the very indefectibility of the grant to David does imply that one punishment for breach of the Sinaitic covenant is not a possibility, the deposition and exile of the king (Dent 28:36). When, in 597 B.C.E., a Davidic king was dragged into exile and in 587 B.C.E., the Temple atop Mount Zion was torched and the sacred city destroyed (2 Kgs 24:825:17), the Sinaitic covenantal tradition must have seemed vindicated and the spiritual experience articulated in the royal theology, discredited:
The breath of our life, the LORD’S anointed,
Was captured in their traps—
He in whose shade we had thought
To live among the nations. (Lam 4:20)
Yet Judaism as it developed in the exile and in the period of the Second Temple was not a religion of pure conditionality untouched by vision and grace. Instead, the impregnable Temple of yesteryear and Zion, the seat of a glorious empire, were increasingly projected onto an eschatological future. God would redeem Zion, David, and all Israel from their present state of degradation and subjugation (e.g., Zech 9:9-10). Or, to change the metaphor from the temporal to the spatial, the glories of the past could still be glimpsed, but only in the form of their heavenly archetypes now that the earthly antitypes were ruined or diminished: apocalyptic seers and initiated mystics could still attain to a vision of the messiah and even of the throne of God in the supernal realm, which has not yet come to the mundane world (e.g., Dan 7; 1 Enoch 14).Despite all these transformations, something of the Judean royal theology lives even today in the Jewish messianic hope and its Christian counterpart, the expectation of the Second Coming and the kingdom, and in the place that Zion and Jerusalem play in the Jewish religious imagination.
The effect of the inclusion of these two spiritual postures in one set of scriptures is to create a spiritual dialectic which, like any dialectic, is more than the sum of its pans. The one perspective, represented by the royal theology, speaks of the mysterious and all-encompassing grace of God, which provides absolute security in the here-and-now. The second perspective, represented by the Sinaitic covenantal perspective, also includes a note of grace, for example, in its assertion of the perdurable openness of God to repentance (e.g., Deut 4:29-31) and its occasional emphasis upon the eternal, unconditional covenant with the patriarchs (e.g., Lev 26:39-42). But the predominant note in the Sinaitic traditions is the note of ultimate conditionality, the life-and-death choice which it is fully in Israel’s power to make (e.g., Deut 30:19-20).
Together these two positions prescribe a religion in which, to use the Christian terminology, neither “grace” nor “works,” is asserted at the expense of the other. The emphasis on grace in the royal and Temple theologies threatens to depreciate the deed, to render ethics dispensable, in short, to make Israel merely a passive bystander in her own spiritual life. The emphasis on works on mizwot, in the traditions of the Sinai covenant, threatens to make God merely a mechanism for the dispensation of rewards and punishments and to make the mizwot themselves into magical practices through which Israel can manipulate her God, who thus becomes the passive partner in the relationship.
By refusing to dichotomize spiritual experience into grace and works, by affirming both simultaneously, the religion prescribed by the Jewish Bible maintains the two-sidedness of the relationship of God and Israel. It preserves both activity and passivity as proper postures for both partners, and it affirms the ultimate importance both of this world and of the higher or future world.
To some, the juxtaposition of the two theologies will seem to have resulted in an unacceptable contradiction. To others, it will seem to have resulted in a contradiction that is indeed to be accepted, a paradox, one that lies at the heart of Jewish spirituality throughout the ages.
Temple and Creation
In post-biblical Jewish literature, both Hellenistic and rabbinic, we find the notion that the Jerusalem Temple (or the Tent of Meeting) was a cosmic institution, either the center of the world, from which the world was created, or itself a microcosm, a miniature world. For example, the first-century historian Josephus describes the veil over its door as an eikon, an image, of the world.
In our century this notion that the Temple was conceived as cosmic has received some confirmation from archaeologists studying the iconography of the Temple and its Near Eastern sources and parallels.
For example, the metal “Sea” (yam) in its courtyard (1 Kgs 7:23-26) suggests “the Mesopotamian apsu, employed both as the name of the subterranean fresh-water ocean and as the name of a basin of holy water erected in the Temple. As the god of the subterranean freshwater ocean, apsu played an important role in some Mesopotamian cosmogonies, just as the Sea (yam) did in some Israelite creation stories (e.g., Ps 74:12-17; Isa 51:9-11). This suggests that the metal Sea in the Temple courtyard served as a continual testimony to the act of creation.
Similarly, the name of the foundation of the altar of the Temple envisioned in Ezek 43:13-17, “Bosom of the earth” (heq ha’arez), might suggest the sort of cosmic understanding that will become common in Hellenistic and rabbinic speculation, and the name har’el there (v. 15) may signify either “the mountain of God” (Hebrew) or “a cosmic locality opposite of heaven” (Akaddian arallu). The last example of many that might be cited is the platform (kiyor), upon which Solomon stands as he dedicates his Temple in 2 Chr 6:13. It has been connected with Akkadian kiuru, which may indicate the earth or a sacred place.
In sum, the likelihood is that the Temple appurtenances were conceived as symbolic of the cosmos and reminiscent of the great cosmogonic acts of YHWH. If so, then the association of Zion/Jerusalem with “heaven and earth” (e.g., Ps 134:3; Isa 65:17-18), the nierism through which biblical Hebrew denotes the world (e.g., Gen 1:1), is not coincidence!
There is also literary evidence to support this connection of creation and Temple in ancient Israelite culture. Since rabbinic times, scholars have noticed verbal parallels between the account of the completion of the world in Gen 2:1-3 and the account of the completion of the Tent of Meeting in Exodus 39-40. World building and Temple building seem to be homologous activities. In fact, some of the same language can be found in the description of “the establishment of the sanctuary in the land and the distribution of the land among the tribes in Joshua 18-19.
Therefore, we should not be surprised to find other thematic parallels between these three moments. One is the theme of “rest.” God “rested° (wayyanah) on the seventh day (Exod 20:11), the crown of creation; Zion is his “resting-place” (menuhatiy), Ps 132:4 and the land of Israel is the place in which he provides “rest” for his people (menuhah, Deut 12:9). According to 1 Chr 22:9, it is because Solomon, unlike David, was “a man at rest” (‘ish menuhah) that he was permitted to build the Temple.
The Temple is the place at which that primordial moment of repose remains eternally available. Yet the Sabbath; another memorial to creation (e.g., Exod 20:11), makes available the same experience. The Sabbath is a kind of democratization of the Temple experience, and the land of Israel is an extended Temple, a whole land of holiness, which, like temples, must be zealously guarded against pollution (e.g., Lev 18:24-30).
The sanctity of the Sabbath, the sanctity of the Temple, and the sanctity of the land are homologous. They are not ultimately distinguishable. Each testifies to God’s triumph, to His invincibility — whether in cosmogony, when He overcame the primordial watery chaos (Gen 1:2), or in history, when He overcame all the enemies of His people, settled them in the land, gave them respite, and allowed His sacred palace to be built at last. Ultimately, the cosmogony and the historical myths are not to be distinguished: their end point is the same, YHWH and Israel at rest in His sacred precincts. It was for this reason that the definitive triumph of YHWH over Pharaoh, a historical enemy, could be celebrated with a hymn about victory at the waters, a hymn that ends with the appropriate image of YHWH enthroned on his mountain in the Temple which His own hands built and acclaimed king by the people He acquired through manumission (Exod 15:1-8).32 It is here that we see the convergence of the two perspectives outlined above, the settlement tradition and the (Priestly) Sinai tradition.
It is true that the consummation of the foundational story comes at the assumption of the promised land in one case and at the inauguration of the tent-shrine in the other. In the settlement tradition, the fulfillment lies ahead for a longer time. In the (Priestly) Sinai tradition, it is a present reality from Sinai on. But once the homology of land and Temple is recognized, it becomes clear that, although the story comes to rest later in one case than the other, the rest to which it comes is the same.
This conception of the Temple as a world, a microcosm, recalls the recent statement by a distinguished historian of religion that “ritual represents the creation of a controlled environment … [It is] a means of performing the way things ought to be in conscious tension to the way things are in such a way that this ritualized perfection is recollected in the ordinary, uncontrolled, course of things.” The Temple is the world as it ought to be. It is a world in which God’s reign is unthreatened, and his justice is manifest, in which life is peaceful, and every Israelite is without blemish. It is no wonder that prophets could call the mountain of God TAW, and compare Zion glorified to that paradisaical garden (Ezek 28:13-14; Isa 51:3). In this theology, [he Temple was a piece of primal perfection available within the broken world of ordinary experience—heaven on earth.
The House of YHWH and the Renewal of the World
The contiguity of a heavenly entity, the Jerusalem Temple, and mundane reality, with all its corruption and defilement, accounts for one of the most powerful spiritual dynamics in the Hebrew Bible. We see it in its sharpest form in the experience of the prophet Isaiah:
In the year that King Uzziah died, I beheld my Lord seated on a high and lofty throne; and the skirts of His robe filled the Temple.
Seraphs stood in attendance on Him. Each of them had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his legs, and with two he would fly.
And one would call to the other,
“Holy, holy, holy!
The Loan of Hosts!
His presence fills all
the earth”
The doorposts would shake at the sound of the one who called, and the House kept filling with smoke.
I cried,
“Woe is me; I am lost!
For I am a man of unclean lips
And I live among a people
of unclean lips;
Yet my own eyes have beheld The King LORD of Hosts!”
Then one of the seraphs flew over to me with a live coal, which he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. He touched it to my lips and declared,
“Now that this has touched your lips,
Your guilt shall depart
And your sin be purged away!”
Then I heard the voice of my LORD saying,
“Whom shall I send?
Who will go for us?”
And I said,
“Here am I; send me.”
And He said,
“Go, say to that people… 7 (Isa 6:1-9)
Here Isaiah is privileged to see the difference between the earthly antitype and the heavenly archetype disappear: iconography becomes the reality it symbolizes. To the prophet, the Temple as it fills with smoke (probably from burning incense) suggests the world as it is filled with the “presence” (kaved) of God, no longer restricted to the sacred precincts (vv. 3-4; cf. Exod 40:34; 1 Kgs 8:11).Not only does the earthly Temple become one with the heavenly one, but the world becomes one with the Temple — or almost. For the vision of God in His majesty and holiness and the seraphic announcement of the universal scope of His presence induce in Isaiah an acute awareness of his own defilement. He is a man °of unclean lips” from a people “of unclean lips,” a status that is incompatible with a vision of God.
The vision would have doomed him, had not a seraph cauterized his lips and thus purified him of whatever blasphemy or slander he had uttered (Isa 6:5-7). Only then does Isaiah become fit to bear the verdict of the divine council out into the profane world (vv. 8-9).
The affinity of Isaiah’s throne – vision with the spirituality of the Temple as it appears in the Psalms is patent. As we have noted, the apogee of a visit to the Temple was a vision of God, but entrance was granted only to those qualified for it. Sins of the tongue are prominent among the disqualifications (e.g., Ps 15:3; 24:4).
In Isaiah’s case, the dissonance between the holiness of YHWH enthroned in his Temple and the unholiness of the outside world impelled his prophetic career. The people of Zion have become unfit receptacles for that overpowering holiness whose invasion of the ordinary world was announced by the seraphim. They must be reformed:
Sinners in Zion are frightened,
The godless are seized with trembling:
“Who of us can dwell with the devouring fire?
Who of us can dwell with the never – dying blaze?”
He who walks in righteousness,
Speaks uprightly,
Spurns profit from fraudulent dealings,
Waves away a bribe instead of grasping it,
Stops his ears against listening to infamy,
Shuts his eyes against looking at evil —
Such a one shall dwell in lofty security,
With inaccessible cliffs for his stronghold,
With his food supplied And his drink assured. (Isa 33:14-16)
In this oracle, the “entrance liturgy” serves as the basis for prophetic indictment, as the entire nation is exhorted to act as if it seeks admission to the Temple. Moreover — and here we see the connection with the seraphic hymn of 6:3 — the holy God is not satisfied with remaining within His palace, but is, instead, determined to make the world His palace: He is a “devouring flame,” scorching sinners not only in Zion/Jerusalem but also in Israel and throughout the world.Isaiah’s message is, in large measure, founded upon the ethical imperative that follows from the experience of the Temple. For him, YHWH is, first and foremost, the “Holy One of Israel;” and the deadliest sin is arrogance, which he interprets as the idolatrous act of self-enthronement:
Yea, man is bowed,
And mortal brought low;
Brought low is the pride of the haughty.
And the LORD of Hosts is exalted by judgment, The Holy God proved holy by retribution. (Isa 5:15-16; cf. 2:10-17).
Just as Isaiah’s own life is exposed to the eyes of the Holy One, so he sees his people in their world sub specie sanctitatis Dei.
The invasion of the weed by the Towle is the theme of an oracle of uncertain authorship, two variations of which appear in Isaiah and in Micah:
In the days to come,
The Mount of the Lord’s House Shall stand firm above the
mountains And tower above the hills;
And all the nations
Shall gaze on it
with joy.
And the many peoples shall go and say: “Come,
Let us go up to
the Mount of the Lord, To the House of the God of Jacob; That He may instruct us
in His ways, And that we may walk in His paths.”
For instruction shall come
forth from Zion, The word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
Thus He will judge among the nations
And arbitrate for the many peoples,
And they shall beat their
swords into plowpoints”
And their spears into pruning hooks:
Nation shall not take up
Sword against nation;
They shall never again know war. (Isa 2:2-4; cf. Mic 4:1-5)
Here we see numerous reflections of the Temple mythos which we have been delineating. The language of the eschatological establishment of the Temple (nakhon, “stand firm;’ v. 2) recalls both YHWH’s founding of a temple after His battle with Pharaoh at the Sea (Exod 15:17) and the language of creation, in which YHWH sets the earth upon its foundation (e.g., yekoneneha, Ps 24:1-2). The Temple is about to be refounded, and the world, renewed. The exaltation of the Temple Mount (nissa’, Isa 2:2) recalls Isaiah’s vision of YHWH seated “on a high and lofty (ram wenissa’) throne” (6:1). Apparently, the famous oracle of 2:2-4 is a description of the world as it is to be after YHWH’s final and irreversible enthronement, when He assumes direct rule over His universal dominion. Like so much of biblical literature, it is a historicization of the enthronement experience, this time (as often) in the future tense.The theme of peace (v. 4) is, as we have seen, also an integral element in the Temple mythos. In this oracle, it is extended beyond the vicinity of Zion, or, to be more precise, Zion so dominates the world that all war becomes as futile as an attack upon the inviolable and impregnable Temple Mount itself. The affirmation that God “puts a stop to wars throughout the earth” (Ps 46:10) seems to have had a place in the Temple theology (cf. vv. 9-12).
Finally, the prediction of “instruction” (torah, Isa 2:3) proceeding from Zion recalls the career of Isaiah himself, who bore his message from the Temple out into the world. The prediction is another reflex of the idea, common throughout the ancient Near East, of the temple as a place for oracles. But, in this vision, alongside the outward motion of the oracle as it leaves Zion/Jerusalem lies the motion of the nations as they march toward the Temple in quest of sacred knowledge. The image of the Gentiles converging on Zion, now resplendent and triumphant after a period of humiliation and desolation, became an important element in later Jewish eschatology (e.g., Isa 60-62).
It was an essential constituent of the vision of YHWH’s ultimate victory, which was complete and manifest only when He had assumed His throne in the palace upon His sacred mountain. “A new heaven and a new earth” were inextricably associated with a new Jerusalem, (re-)created “as a joy/and her people as a delight” (Isa 65:17-18). Visions of that (re)new(ed) temple and the proleptic experience of it were important in Jewish utopias (e.g., Ezek 40-48).
Temple and Synagogue
==================================The groundwork for Jewry’s survival of the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE. was laid after the Babylonians had razed the First in 587 B.C.E. The unavailability of the Temple to all Jews for another two generations and to Diaspora Jews ever after aided mightily in the emergence of ideas and institutions that stood in succession to the national shrine, principally the synagogue. Until the emergence of liberal Judaism in the nineteenth century, however,the succession of the Jerusalem Temple by the synagogue was not regarded as final. Rather, the synagogue was seen as a temporary measure, although, sadly, a long-lived one, until the -reconstruction of the Temple. In fact, the traditional liturgy continues to pray for the return of the Temple and the reinstitution of its sacrificial system. Prayer and sacred study replaced sacrifice, but sacrifice remained a central concern of prayer and sacred study. This curious arrangement, in which one institution replaces another without altogether displacing it, is adumbrated in the Hebrew Bible, in the longest biblical meditation upon the use of the Temple, Solomon’s dedication speech in 1 Kgs 8:12-53. The speech shows an acute consciousness of the possibility of national defeat in war and a consequent exile (vv. 33-34, 46-53), but it never once mentions the most frequent and obvious function of the Temple, to serve as a place for sacrifice! Instead it stresses prayer (tefilla) and supplication (tehinnah) unremittingly.37 The Temple, in fact, has become the place toward which Israel in exile directs their prayers (v. 48); from there they are referred to God’s heavenly abode, the supernal Temple. The survival of the Temple as a spiritual focus long after the physical entity had been destroyed is one of the most remarkable aspects ofJudaism. It is not that the Temple was spiritualized after its destruction. Instead, the spiritual role of the Temple after its destruction was a continuation of the role the Temple had long played in the devotional and visionary experience of Israel in the biblical period.
What is Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism?
April D. DeConick
Editor’s Introduction, Paradise Now: Essays on Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism (SBL 2006)
And what mortal person is it who is able
To ascend on high,
To ride on wheels,
To descend below,
To search out the inhabited world,
To walk on the dry land,
To gaze at His splendor,
To dwell with His crown,
To be transformed by His glory,
To recite praise,
To combine letters,
To recite their names,
To have a vision of what is above,
To have a vision of what is below,
To know the explanation of the living,
And to see the vision of the dead,
To walk in rivers of fire,
And to know the lightening?
And who is able to explain it,
And who is able to see it?
Hekhalot Zutarti, Sections 349-501
As a word, “mysticism” has a notorious reputation. Its polymorphic associations make precise meaning difficult to isolate, especially across cultures and eras. It is often used as an antonym for so called “rationalism,” associated with so-called “supernaturalism,” in contradistinction to our contemporary scientific view of the world. Broadly speaking, it has come to describe for us organized practices used to illicit direct contact with the divine.
As an “-ism,” “mysticism” is not an emic word, a word actually used by ancient people to describe their experiences. It corresponds to no single term in the ancient literature. In fact, when the early Jews and Christians describe their mystical experiences in a single word, they do so most often by employing the term “apokalypsis,” an “apocalypse” or “revelation.” In the Jewish and Christian period-literature, these religious experiences are described emically as waking visions, dreams, trances and auditions which can involve spirit possession and ascent journeys.2 Usually these experiences are garnered after certain preparations are made or rituals performed, although they can also be the result of rapture. The culmination of the experience is transformative in the sense that the Jewish and Christian mystics thought they could be invested with heavenly knowledge, join the choir of angels in worship before the throne, or be glorified in body.
So “mysticism” is an etic term, a modern typology, contemporary analytic vocabulary that we are imposing on the ancients in order to investigate their religiosity. It serves the modern scholar heuristically as a taxonomy, aiding our engagement in historical investigation and research. It is a comparative analytic tool created and employed by outsiders-to-the-culture and imposed on insiders. In etic terms, it identifies a tradition within early Judaism and Christianity centered on the belief that a person directly, immediately and before death can experience the divine, either as a rapture experience or one solicited by a particular praxis. This definition, although framed in etic terms, remains sensitive to the fact that the early Jews and Christians themselves made no distinction between unsolicited rapture and solicited invasion experiences – all were “apocalypses” – nor did they describe their experiences in terms of the unio mystica so central to later Christian mysticism.
1. A Dynamic Bilateral Tradition
“Early Jewish and Christian mysticism” serves to identify for us a bilateral mystical tradition flowing through Judaism and Christianity during their formative years. Since Judaism and Christianity are companion expressions of Second Temple Judaism, sibling religions that developed simultaneously within comparable historical contextures, the mystical tradition preserved in their literature is rightly characterized as manifestations of Jewish and Christian religiosity in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods. I would go as far as to suggest that the Christian mysticism of this period should be understood as essentially “Jewish,” beginning to take on its own individuality only by the mid- to late second century as can be seen, for instance, in the Alexandrian school run by Clement and then Origen.
As such, the early Jewish and Christian mystical tradition emerges in what I call, for the sake of brevity, the “period-literature” – that is, in Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature,3 in the writings of the Jewish theologian, Philo of Alexandria,4 in the Qumran literature,5 and possibly in the teachings of the Palestinian Jewish school of Yohanan ben Zakkai.6 There are a growing number of scholars, myself included, who think that these early currents of mysticism form the basis for Merkavah and Hekhalot speculation.7 Subsequently, these mystical traditions were absorbed into the Pharisaic and Tannaitic trajectory,8 some forms of Christianity,9 Gnostic schools,10 and later Kabbalistic materials.11 It goes without saying, I hope, that this literature is vast and variable, representing the opinions, interpretations and experiences of several different communities, most having no direct historical connection with or influence on the other, but all associated with Second Temple Jewish religiosity in one way or another. It is this familiarity with Second Temple Jewish religiosity, I think, which accounts for the emergence and development of a culturally and historically “unique” mystical tradition whose main features I wish to identify and describe. In this description, I do not write with any pretense or assumption that the tradition was monolithic or static. Rather I wish to emphasize its dynamism as it erupts within different social and historical contexts. My discussion of “early Jewish and Christian mysticism” should never be taken to suggest the linear progression or “evolution” of the tradition from one historical circumstance to the next. Rather, this tradition surfaces, sometimes simultaneously, within various social contexts and historical circumstances, and the communities involved are responsible for continually reusing and reshaping this “shared” mystical tradition for their own ends.
2. The Intersection of Hermeneutics and Experience
The persistent core of early Jewish and Christian mysticism is the belief that God or his manifestation can be experienced immediately, not just after death or eschatologically on the Last Day. This belief appears to me to be the consequence of at least two aspects of religiosity during the Second Temple period: hermeneutics and religious experience. It has been unfortunate that past academic discussions of the period-literature has been dogged by our need to treat these as antithetical. Although this attitude has encroached upon our analyses of the period-literature from the pseudepigraphical apocalypses to the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi collection, it has emerged most aggressively in scholarly discussion of the Merkavah and Hekhalot corpus, some scholars insisting that this literature represents mainly exegetical activity12 while others experiential.13
This dichotomy, of course, is a false dichotomy that has not served us well, as several studies have suggested.14 Elliot Wolfson, in fact, thinks that it is impossible to isolate phenomenologically an experience from its literal context, a position that seems to be akin to that of Steven Katz who has noted, I think correctly, that “all experience is processed through, organized by, and makes itself available to us in extremely complex epistemological ways.”15 It appears to me that this false dichotomy has been set in place because modernists have little patience for the so-called “supernatural,” feeling that the “supernatural” can and should be deconstructed in the wake of God’s death. But in so doing, we have forced our own demarcation between the natural world and the “supernatural” onto the ancient people we are studying, imposing as well our disposal of everything “supernatural” onto people who profoundly were invested in their “experiences” of God. The ancient Jews and Christians believed that they experienced the sacred, and they wrote about it. These people were deeply religious people whose texts are filled with feelings about and hopes for religious experience as they understood and imagined it.
In this regard, Paul’s own first-hand testimony cannot be emphasized enough, because it demonstrates that the first Christian Jews believed that they were recipients of ecstatic experiences both in the form of rapture events and invasions of heaven.16 In the context of this latter discourse, Paul also implies that he knows of other Christian Jews, perhaps associated with the mission of the Jerusalem church, who boast of mystical experiences.17 This is implied by the author of Colossians too.18 We have a quite strong tradition that the disciples and members of Jesus’ family who formed the initial church in Jerusalem had visions of Jesus following his death.19 To Paul’s first-hand witness we must also add the waking visions of John of Patmos and the dream visions of the Pastor Hermas. Of course, the evidence for mystical experience from second-hand accounts in the early Christian literature is staggering, ranging from the transfiguration of Jesus to the post-resurrection appearances to the vision of Stephen.20
As an historian, I am not concerned whether these ancient people “actually” experienced God. I can never know this. But this does not make its study pointless. As Bernard McGinn has aptly remarked, “Experience as such is not a part of the historical record. The only thing directly available to the historian…is the evidence, largely in the form of written records…”21 What I wish to understand and map is their belief that God had been and still could – even should – be reached, that the boundaries between earth and heaven could be crossed by engaging in certain religious activities and behaviors reflected in the stories of their primordial ancestors and great heros.
It makes no difference to me whether or not we describe these narratives of the heroes as literary or experiential literature because this distinction misses the point. The point we need to recognize is that the early Jews and Christians who were reading these texts believed that the stories were reports of actual encounters with God. The images and descriptions in these texts deeply affected the way that the early Jews and first Christians described and interpreted their own perceived experiences, and the way that they framed their hopes for future experiences.
So this fundamental belief – that the sacred could be experienced – was supported by their reading and exegesis of their scriptures. In turn, it was this belief that the early Jews and Christians wrote about in new texts which they characterized as “revealed” scriptures containing heavenly gnosis, the razim or “mysteries” of God. Many of these works – from the Jewish and Christian apocalypses to the Nag Hammadi texts – freely retell the biblical narratives under the auspices of an alternative revelation from an angelic being or primeval authority. In several ways, they were providing in these works counter-readings of the old scriptures, recomposing the stories through a new hermeneutic for a contemporary audience.22 In these new texts, the ancient Jews and Christians shared their revelation of the “things hidden” of the past, present and future, reinterpreting and rescribing the past to serve their present experiences and future hopes.23
The authors of these new texts appear to me to be rebelling against the idea that the truth about the sacred can be reached through intellectual engagement, through normal epistemological routes like traditional reading and interpretation of the scriptures. This is not to say that they shunned intellectual endeavors like studying Torah, developing hermeneutics, or creating elaborate mythologies to explain questions of cosmogony and theodicy. In fact, in a passage from the Hekhalot Rabbati we are told that the mystic must prove his worthiness to enter the seventh heaven by having “read the Torah, prophets and writings, Mishnayot, Midrash, Halakhot and Haggadot” and having learned “the interpretation of the Halakhot, prohibition and permission” and having abided by “every prohibition that is written in the Torah” and having observed faithfully “all the warnings of the laws, statutes and instructions that were said to Moses at Sinai” (Section 234)!
What these Jews and Christians seem to me to be saying is that intellectual pursuit of God and “truth” can only advance a person so far spiritually. It can get the person to the gate of the highest heavenly shrine, so to speak, but no further. They insist that knowledge of the sacred itself comes only through the direct experience of God, that is by actually meeting him face to face. It was this experiential encounter, they thought, that transformed them, that pulled them beyond the limits of their ordinary human senses and perceptions. This new godlike perspective, they believed, would lead to new understandings and revelations, allowing them to reinterpret the concealed truths and hidden histories locked within their sacred scriptures.24 So here lies the intersection between exegesis and experience. It is at this intersection, this crossroads that I think we should tarry, rather than running down either of these roads alone.
3. Communal Identities
“Early Jewish and Christian mysticism” as a tradition does not represent the imagination and opinions of isolated authors as much as those of living religious communities of people. 25 The nature of the communities, of course, varies in terms of its literature, social conventions and historical characteristics and any attempt to identify them must be done systematically with reference to particular texts, resisting any temptation to locate a single community responsible for the tradition. While some of the literature is more forthright with communal information, referencing rules of behavior or handbook guidelines for communal life like those found among the Dead Sea Scrolls or in Paul’s letters, most of the period-literature is very perplexing in this regard. Some of the most challenging cases have been with reference to pseudepigraphical literature like the Jewish and Christian apocalypses, the Nag Hammadi literature and the Hekhalot texts. Most scholars have come to think that the Jewish and Christian apocalypses, with their interest in ascension and secret teachings about the Last Days, can be identified with apocalyptic circles or “conventicles” of pious ascetics anxiously awaiting the imminent Eschaton whose social formation could have mirrored John the Baptist’s movement or the Qumran community.26 But this opinion has been challenged recently by other scholars who have pointed to a prophetic group27 or a collective of priests28 as equally creditable possibilities. The Enochic corpus within the apocalyptic literature has been singled out recently by a number of scholars who think that it not only represents a socially distinct group in early Judaism, but one connected to the community of Jews associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls.29 Identification of the “authors” of the Hekhalot books has been hotly contested in scholarly circles, as has their historical and literary relationship to the apocalypses.
According to the early opinion of G. Scholem and several scholars since Scholem, a circle of rabbis may have been responsible for the Hekhalot literature, literature believed to have formal connections with the Jewish and Christian apocalypses.30 Other scholars have thought the books should be identified with either a group of people in conflict with the rabbis – people who were protesting rabbinic Judaism through the composition of the Hekhalot literature – or a post-Rabbinic elite from the late Talmudic period.31 Others like M. Swartz and J. Davila identify the group outside the formal Rabbinic circles – with synagogue functionaries, poets, scribes, and even shamans, practitioners of ritual power.32 R. Elior has set forth the most comprehensive thesis I am aware of – that the writers of these traditions identify themselves with a disaffected priestly class of the first century C.E., particularly as expressed in the Dead Sea Scrolls and some of the Jewish apocalypses. After the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E., the priestly traditions are carried on by this disaffected class of Jews in the Hekhalot literature in order to transport the ruined earthly cult into the heavenly spheres.33
Communal attribution of the Nag Hammadi collection has come up against its own problems. For years after its discovery, this collection was thought to be a library of ancient Gnostic writings. This led to an indiscriminate use of the materials by scholars and the development of theories about an umbrella religion called “Gnosticism,” a religion which in fact did not exist. Examination of the collection over the last decade has brought with it the recognition that the texts themselves represent the opinions of different groups of early Jews and Christians and Hermetics. In fact, there are at least six religious communities represented in this corpus: Sethian Gnostic Christians, Valentinian Gnostic Christians, Simonians, followers of Julius Cassianus, Thomasine Christians, and Hermetics. It is significant to note that the majority of Sethian Gnostic and Valentinian Gnostic texts from the Nag Hammadi literature were written by people who self-identified with the Christian tradition, although some of the materials they rewrote look to be Jewish originally. It appears that those who authored most of these treatises considered themselves esoteric Christians who wished to pursue advanced spiritual study in some type of seminary or Christian study circle or lodge. So scholars have shifted to speak of them in terms of “schools” rather than religious communities separate from Judaism or Christianity.
This business of identifying social groups responsible for particular texts within the period-literature has been met with varying degrees of success. Here I wish to make clear that the early Jewish and Christian mystical tradition, in my opinion, is not the purview of a single religious community or to be located in a single community’s literature. There is no claim or assumption on my part that the early Jewish and Christian mystical tradition is founded by a particular body of people or maintained by a particular body of people. What I wish to fully articulate is the opinion that we are dealing with a variety of esoteric Jews and Christians over the course of several centuries who self-identified with different religious communities. There is no single social group responsible for the practice and preservation of this tradition, although there is mounting evidence that one of the main origins of the tradition was within Jewish priestly circles.
At any rate, it should be recognized that various social groups familiar with the mystical tradition employ it with different emphases and applications. This to me is one of the most the fascinating aspects about the study this tradition – how it was shaped and used within various social contexts and time periods. Future study of this tradition will need to articulate more carefully and systematically, I think, the social boundaries of various groups of esoteric Jews and Christians, their use and reformulation of the tradition for their own communal purposes and benefit.
4. A “Priestly” Cosmology
The early Jewish and Christian mystical tradition is supported by a distinct hermeneutic, itself based on exegesis of foundational Jewish texts, particularly but not exclusively, Genesis 1-3, Exodus 24 and 33, Ezekiel 1, 8, 10 and 40-48, Daniel 7 and Isaiah 6. Although the emphases and elements of this hermeneutic varies across the period-literature, several themes emerge as prominent and tend to cluster in regard to cosmology. The prominence of these themes can be tracked across the canonical and extra-canonical Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature of the Second Temple period, urging through many of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi texts, and flowing through the Merkavah and Hekhalot corpus as well as some Rabbinic stories. I mention this not to suggest or capture some linear progression of ideas from old to new as some scholars would like to do, but to underscore the insurgency of these themes in a variety of texts across many centuries and communities of believers.
These themes collectively represent the “worldview” or cosmology that undergrids mystical discussions within early Judaism and Christianity, a cosmology that appears to have strong connections with older Jewish priestly traditions as the work of Rachel Elior, in particular, has convinced me.34
4.1 The Glory of YHWH
The centerpiece of this cosmology is the belief that God has a “body,” called the “Glory” or Kavod of YHWH.35 This idea grew out of the study of certain Jewish scriptures, particularly sections of Ezekiel which describe his visions of an enthroned “likeness as the appearance of a Man (`adam),” a Man who looked like “fire” with “brightness around him.” This is “the appearance of the likeness of the Glory (kavod) of YHWH.”36 This figure is the very manifestation of the hidden YHWH, depicted in the scriptures as an anthropomorphic figure of fire or light.37 He presides over the created order oftentimes seated upon his merkavah, a special throne consisting of two cherubim with wings spread over the kapporet, the lid of the Ark of the Covenant in the Temple.38
In the period-literature of the Jews and Christians, the God who is seated on the throne in heaven is presented as Yahweh’s manifestation or Kavod. Luminous anthropomorphic descriptions of the “Hidden” God are the culmination of many of the stories of the heroes who journey to glimpse Yahweh enthroned. A cluster of images are found in these descriptions. His body is enrobed in a splendid white garment with a face emitting sparks.39 The haluq, or robe, is described as most holy, frightful and terrible, emitting tremors, terror, and vibration. Upon the inside and outside of the garment, from the top to the bottom, the tetragrammaton is etched.40 None of the angels can look directly at the enthroned deity, and the devotee heroes are usually only allowed peeks at his luminous body.41 He is exceedingly beautiful, to the extent that in the Hekhalot literature the expression that the devotee wishes “to behold the King in his beauty” has become formulaic.42
This luminosity of the Kavod acted as a mask or screen, functioning in such a way that protected the seer from direct gaze of God’s body and certain death, since it was believed that no one could directly see YHWH’s face and live. So on the one hand, it kept YHWH hidden from the direct gaze of his creatures. On the other hand, this covering of light served to reveal God indirectly, so that the presence of God would be available to the adept, usually as a quick glimpse.43 In the later Hekhalot literature, the negative effect of the vision is still maintained: “He who looks at him will immediately be torn. He who views his beauty will immediately be poured out like a jug.”44 At the same time, the devotee is told to report “what you have heard” and “what you have seen upon the countenance, ” a countenance which is revealed “three times daily in the heights,” and which “no man perceives and knows.”45 Here we note the paradox of the Hidden God whose very countenance or face cannot be seen, but only the luminous mask of the Glory which simultaneously covers him and reveals him. As Rabbi Akiba relates, “He is, so to say, as we are, but he is greater than everything and his Glory consists in this, that he is concealed from us.”46
These anthropomorphic descriptions of the Glory look to me to be very early since such a description is present in Exodus 33:18-34:8.47 In this passage, Moses wishes to see God’s Glory. When he asks permission, God reveals himself to Moses, but only his backside because “man shall not see me and live.” So the Lord said to Moses, “While my Glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand and you shall see my back. But my face shall not be seen.”48
Exegetical speculations about the Kavod led to the identification of the angelic figure in Daniel 7, the “one like a son of man” who is described as the special angel having the “appearance of a man” in Daniel 8:15 and 10:18, with the description of the Kavod found in Ezekiel 1:26, the “likeness as the appearance of man.” So in some period-literature, kavod-like angels sit on heavenly thrones and act as the great Judge and God’s vicegerent.49 For example, Adam and Abel, in the Testament of Abraham, have thrones in heaven. Adam is described sitting on a golden throne and having “the appearance of the man” which “was fearsome, like that of the Lord.”50 Abel is the great Judge of souls, and he sits on a crystal throne that blazes. He is “a wondrous man shining like the sun, like unto a son of God.”51 In the Apocalypse of Abraham, the angel who has God’s Name, Yahoel, is depicted as being “in the likeness of a man” and possessing a “golden scepter.”52
Such honor is also accorded to Moses in the Exagoge of Ezekiel the playwrite. Moses has a vision of a noble “man” seated on an enormous throne on the top of Mt. Sinai. This kavod-like figure gives Moses his crown and scepter, and gets up from the throne so that Moses can take his place. This fabulous scene appears to be built from Exodus 24:10, “And they saw the God of Israel, and there was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness.”
Interpretations of this passage in other literature, take it to be a throne vision of the Glory or Kavod.53 Perhaps the most well-known angelic vice-regent is Metatron, the great “enthroned” angel described throughout the Hekhalot literature.54 Many scholars have speculated about the origins and meaning of his name, with almost a dozen suggested possibilities, none of which has emerged as the favorite.55 He is called the “little YHWH,” “youth,” and “Prince of the World,” and is accorded many of the characteristics of the Kavod, although one tradition suggests that he is whipped for taking a seat on his throne.56 The traditions of Enoch, of course, are bound up with this angel, traditions which relate Enoch’s bodily transformation into this great angel. The destructive, almost infernal, transformation brings his body into conformity with the enormity of God’s body, when he “was enlarged and increased in size until [he] matched the world in length and breadth. He made to grow on me 72 wings, 36 on one side and 36 on the other…He fixed in me 365,000 eyes…There was no sort of splendor, brilliance, brightness, or beauty in the luminaries of the world that he failed to fix in me.”57
The body of God tradition is perhaps most developed in the Shi`ur Qomah (the “Measure of the Divine Body”) material where the dimensions and the corporeal appearance of God are enumerated in great detail. These materials describe the revelation by Metatron of the “measurement of the body” to the seers, Rabbi Akiba and Rabbi Ishmael. The materials depict anthropomorphic details of the body of God along with the mystical names of God’s gigantic limbs. The enormity of the body is a theme that can be traced to earlier texts, to some even located in the New Testament.58
This Jewish Kavod doctrine had a profound impact on the development of early Christian christologies. For instance, Paul describes Jesus as the “image” or “form” of God.59 In John’s gospel Jesus is depicted as God’s Glory or Kavod descended to earth.60 Descriptions of Jesus as the High Priest of the heavenly temple and depictions of Jesus as the Lamb all are heir to this tradition.61
4.2 The Heavenly Temple
The celestial realm is understood to be a heavenly version of the Jerusalem Temple. The various heavens are the hekhalot, shrine rooms or sanctuaries within the Temple. In the approach of the highest heaven, each successive room is more holy than the last, the Holy of Holies where God’s manifestation resides. These firmaments generally number seven. The association with the number seven appears to be a reference to the seven planetary spheres in combination with aspects of the Temple that number seven: seven gates, seven steps, the seven-branched lampstand62 and even seven levels as enumerated by Rabbi Jose – the area within the balustrade, the court of women, the court of Israel, the court of the priests, the area between the altar and the entrance to the Temple, the sanctuary, and the Holy of Holies.63 As Christopher Morray-Jones correctly notes, “The temple is not ‘in’ heaven: its seven ‘sanctuaries’ are the heavens.”
The angels associated with this heavenly Temple are the Temple’s functionaries: its priests performing cultic activities there.64 They are the guardians of the Covenant and the heavenly Temple and its gates, as well as “servants of the throne,” petitioners and worshipers offering “sacrifices” and recitations to God. Prayers, praises, thanksgivings, blessings and glorifications are sung as liturgies, filtering up through the heavens. The angelology assumed by these texts is very complex, with several grades of angels, most having names that are permutations of the divine Name or an attribute of God.
In fact, speculations about the divine Name and associations of it with various angels are quite dominant in the period-literature. Usually there is one highly exalted angel, like the “Angel of the Lord,” the “Angel of the Countenance,” “Metatron” or “Christ.”65 Sometimes, it is difficult to differentiate between this exalted Angel and God’s glorious manifestation, the Kavod or Doxa, who is enthroned on the merkavah seat in the Holy of Holies, the devir, the highest of the heavens. As we will see, the celestial merkavah is the special wheeled chariot made of four sacred creatures whose outspread wings formed the seat itself, much like the Ark of the Covenant in the earthly Temple. The throne in some cases is exalted, personified as an object of worship and a representation of God.66
As the work of Rachel Elior has especially pointed out, all aspects of the celestial Temple in fact correlate to an ideal aspect of the earthly Temple, including associations with the liturgical calendar, the seasons, creation, the Garden of Eden, life and fertility, betrothal and sanctification. Priestly concerns like holiness and purity are consistent, even excessive themes. Even angels must bathe in fiery rivers flowing near the throne.
Humans crossing the heavenly threshold must be exceedingly righteous and able to endure a bodily transfiguration into a flaming being. One of the reasons that this particular cosmology appears to have developed was as a guarantee that the Temple cult would not be disrupted even when the priesthood and the earthly Temple in Jerusalem was threatened, contaminated or destroyed. The continuation of a holy cultus in the heavenly Temple meant that continuity of creation and life would be maintained, a standard concern of the Jewish priests since the time of ancient Israel.67
4.3 The Merkavah
The chariot-throne from Ezekiel 1 in the period-literature is located in the heavenly Temple, in the highest and most holy heaven. A fabulous passage from Massekhet Hekhalot highlights its prominence: “And the throne of Glory is high up in the air, and the appearance of his Glory is like the appearance of the hashmal. And a diadem of brightness is upon his head, and the crown of the explicit Name is upon his brow. One half of him is fire, and the other half is hail. On his right is life, and on his left is death. And a scepter of fire is in his hand. And the curtain is parted in two before him, and seven angels who were created in the beginning minister before him inside the curtain” (Section 28).
This merkavah is described as a chariot with wheels like the sun.68 It is a crystal throne, blazing like fire, called the “Throne of Great Glory.”69 In the Hekhalot tradition, the throne is not only wheeled, but hovers like a bird underneath God’s splendor.70 God, in fact has remained seat on his throne since its creation, and will not leave it for all eternity.71
There is much speculation about the “faces” of the “chariot of cherubim” – the faces of the lion, the eagle, the ox, and the man.72 One tradition even identifies the man’s face with the patriarch Jacob whose “image” was engraved on the throne.73 Jarl Fossum has noted that the Fragmentary Targum Genesis 1:28 74 and the editio princeps reprinted in the London Polyglot,75 explicitly states that the image of Jacob was “upon” the throne, not engraved on the throne as the other Targumim. This is highly significant when it is realized that Targum Ezekiel 1:26 says that some people think the Glory on the throne is the form of Jacob.76 So some appealed to the likeness of Jacob as the Kavod. The angels, who long to see the Glory, but cannot, descend to earth to look upon his image in the flesh!77
The merkavah, in fact, in some texts is anthropomorphized like God himself. The throne holds converse with God, the King, even singing glorious hymns of praise to him.78 So glorious is the throne-chariot in these traditions, that there may have been some who thought it an object worthy of veneration, if not worship. So in the Hekhalot Rabbati we find the statement that the throne, like God, will “reign in all generations,” but that God is to be “honored beyond the throne of your Glory” and to be “appreciated more than your precious vessel.”79
Perhaps the most intriguing tradition about the merkavah, is the journey that devotees thought they could make to stand before it and hymn in the presence of the Glory. In the Hekhalot materials there is a unique development of this tradition, that the ascending devotee is a “descender to the chariot,” the yored merkavah. What this means and how it developed has really not been adequately resolved in my opinion although two explanations stand out from the rest. E. Wolfson has made a convincing case that the phrase refers to the enthronement of the devotee during the final stage of ascent.80 And Christopher Morray-Jones has offered in this book an article that suggests that the term is linked to the “downwards” posture assumed by the devotee so that the “ascent” through the heavens could also be viewed as a “descent” within the “temple” of the body. The descender to the chariot is very special, very holy, because he has transcended the natural boundaries of his humanity and entered the realms of the sacred. The journey of ascent and descent is fraught with grave danger and oral examinations administered by the guardian angels.81 He must be very knowledgeable of the Torah, the prophets, the writings, the Mishnah, the Midrash, the Halakah, the Haggadah, and their interpretations and their practical observation.82 He must show the guardians of the gates seals and know passwords.83 If he fails, destruction or insanity result. But if he succeeds, his descent to the merkavah can be made.
4.4 The Heavenly Curtain
Spread in front of the merkavah is the secret heavenly curtain, the pargod. This is the heavenly counterpart of the veil, the paroket, which divided the Holy of Holies from the Hekhal in the Temple in Jerusalem.84 Upon the heavenly curtain, the thoughts and deeds of all the human generations are recorded, including future ones. Rabbi Ishmael stresses that he saw “with his own eyes” all the deeds of Israel and the Gentiles “till the end of time” printed on the curtain.85 The printed record of humanity’s deeds on the curtain was for Yahweh’s benefit on the day of Judgment, when one glance examines everyone’s deeds and determines everyone’s judgment.86
Ultimately, the heavenly curtain screened off the Kavod from the angels because of the destructive nature of its view.87 But, as Christopher Morray-Jones has noticed, the curtain also functions as a celestial firmament, dividing the seventh heaven from the lower heavens and sanctuaries.88
5. An Internalized Apocalypse
Modern scholars have been slow to recognize that “early Jewish and Christian mysticism” is a major dimension of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic thought, even though the ancients themselves call these experiences “apokalypses.” There has been a tendency in academia to equate apocalypticism with eschatology, as if an “apokalypsis” were the Last Day.89 So visions of destruction, retribution, and salvation have become associated exclusively with the study of the apocalyptic, ignoring its atemporal aspects. This faulty understanding of apocalyptism which concentrates almost exclusively on the revelation of End time phenomenon is reflected in the standard definition of the term found in the well-respected Semeia volume on the subject: “Apocalypse is a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial as it involves another, supernatural world.”90 To be fair, this understanding of apocalypticism does not appear to have been only the misconception of the SBL Genres Project, but has been around in the scholarly prose for a very long time.
In fact, a careful reading of the second Temple apocalypses tells us that eschatology, the secret revelation of the imminence of the End, is only part of the discussion. The other part is the mystical, the belief in the immediate and direct experience of God. This belief has to do with religious experience, the act of revelation itself, the encounter with God, which results in the devotee’s immediate personal transformation and the uncovering of God’s mysteries. This mystical dimension of apocalyptic thought appears to me to have been developed by esoteric Jews and Christians in response to unfulfilled redemptive promises during times when hopes for their fulfillment were being historically challenged. The redemptive myth itself was founded on what seems to have been a standard Jewish myth in the Second Temple period, that there existed a heavenly Anthropos who was thought to have come forth from God prior to creation.91
This tale was inspired by rereading Genesis 1:3 in Greek. Since the word phos can mean both “light” (tov fw§?”) and “man” (oJ fwv”), exegetes determined that a heavenly Man of Light came forth when God said, “Let there be phos!”92 This luminous heavenly Man was portrayed as God’s partner in creation.93 The Anthropos was identified further with both the Kavod and the cosmic Adam, and thus was perceived to be the Image of God. This Image, they thought, came into existence on the first day of creation and acted as a cosmogonic agent.94 Later Jewish mystical traditions, in fact, explicitly call the primordial luminous Man the Yotser Bereshith, the “creator in the beginning.”95 In 3 Enoch, the heavenly Man and Kavod-like Metatron is given a crown etched with the letters of light by which “all the necessities of the world and all the orders of creation were created.”96 Christian texts, Hermetic texts and Gnostic texts, all influenced by this old Jewish mythology, also preserve reference to the demiurgic aspect of the Anthropos.97
According to this standard Jewish myth, the human being was created after the likeness of the Anthropos.98 Since the first human being was created in God’s image according to the Genesis story, this meant for some thinkers that Adam must have been a reflection of the Kavod. This aspect of the myth may explain some of the Adamic traditions which depict the veneration of the created Adam.99 Be that as it may, the image of the first human being was said to have been so bright that it even surpassed the brightness of the sun.100 His body, like the cosmic Anthropos, was so immense that it filled the universe from one end to the other.101
But this radiant image or immense body either was taken away from Adam or altered as a consequence of his Fall according to this myth. 102 Aspects of this speculation were rooted in discussion about Genesis 3:21 where God made Adam and Eve “garments of skin, and clothed them.” It was concluded that Adam and Eve originally must have worn garments of light that were lost as a consequence of their sin.103 This type of exegesis brought with it the consequence that the human being was in something of a predicament. Was it possible to restore this radiant image, to return the human being to his prelapsarian glory? Most early Jews and Christians thought that piety was the key to such transformation of the soul. If the person lived his or her life in obedience to the commandments (God’s and/or Jesus’), at death or the Eschaton, the glory that Adam had lost would be restored. This they taught by way of their doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, the restoration of the whole person as a glorious angelic-like body reflecting God’s Image.104
But it appears that some Jews and Christians felt that the lost Image could be restored, at least provisionally, before death, that Paradise and its fruits could be had Now. That this mythological paradigm was religiously operable outside the literary context is clear to me when we examine, for instance, the literature of the Dead Sea Scrolls or Philo’s account of the Therapeutae or Paul’s epistles.
In this literature, we have first-hand accounts of communities of believers involved in religious activities to achieve mystical transformation of the body in the here and now, and the elevation of the adept to the community of angels.105 Many of the first Christians contemplated their own ascensions into heaven and bodily transformations, believing that Jesus’ exaltation and transformation had opened heaven’s gate for them. Paul believed that the faithful who were possessed by Christ’s spirit could start experiencing the transformation into the image of God while still on earth but that full glorification would only occur after death.106 Others Christians promoted pre-mortem flights into heaven and full transformation in the present as the result.107
This shift in thought to concentrate on the fulfillment of God’s promises in the present appears to me to have been largely a consequence of failed eschatological expectations. Since the mystical tradition was a “vertical” dimension of Jewish apocalyptic thought running perpendicular to the eschatological,108 this shift would have been easy to make. It moved the eschatological encounter with God and promises of bodies glorified from the future sphere to the present, from an external cosmic apocalyptic event to an internal apocalyptic experience. This meant that the traditional rewards reserved for the Last Day, became available to believers Now through personal mystical encounters with the divine, encounters that were frequently described by these esoteric Jews and Christians in terms of a heavenly journey that culminated in a vision of God or his Kavod. This visionary experience initiated the process of the person’s transfiguration whereby his or her body became “angelic” and was “glorified.”109 Since some early Christians identified Jesus with the Kavod or Doxa, they talk about visionary journeys to see Jesus as well as the Father.
The mechanism for vision apotheosis appears to me to be Greek in origin.110 It was based on an ancient physiology that suggested that the “seen” image enters the seer through his eye and transforms his soul: “The pleasure which comes from vision enters by the eyes and makes its home in the breast; bearing with it ever the image…it impresses it upon the mirror of the soul and leaves there its image.”111 This idea is as old as Plato who suggested that the vision of the object touched the eye and was transmitted to the soul. In fact, he uses the image of the soul as a block of wax upon which a vision received is imprinted like a stamp of a signet ring.112
For these mystical Jews and Christians, this must have meant that a vision of the Kavod, the Image of God, literally resulted in the “re-stamping” of God’s image on the soul, restoring it to its original Form and Glory. In the ancient language of their mythology, they said that they would become “glorified,” “exalted,” or “angelic.”113 They would be clothed in shining white garments, become “standing” angels worshiping God before his throne, be transformed into beings of fire or light, be “enthroned,” regain their cosmic-sized bodies, or be invested with God’s Name or Image.114
Ultimately, even their minds would surpass normal human limits of comprehension as it too became godlike. Enoch relates regarding his own transformation into the angel Metatron: “The Holy One, blessed be he, revealed to me from that time onward all the mysteries of wisdom, all the depths of the perfect Torah and all the thoughts of human hearts. All mysteries of the world and all the orders of nature stand revealed before me as they stand revealed before the Creator. From that time onward, I looked and beheld deep secrets and wonderful mysteries. Before anyone thinks in secret, I see his thought. Before he acts, I see his act. There is nothing in heaven above or deep within the earth concealed from me.”115
6. Communal Practices
Avenues for mystical transformation other than the visionary were also popular in Judaism and Christianity, including asceticism, imitation, washing, spirit possession, eating “divine” food or drink, anointing the body with a sacramental oil or dew, chanting permutations of God’s Name and so forth. Thus the period-literature is impregnated with references to practical activities associated with a mystical praxis.
The literature does not simply contain indirect references to ritual washing, anointing, study of sacred texts, vigils, sacrifice, fasting, withdrawal, and sexual asceticism in the narratives of the heroes. The period-literature also contains pieces of actual liturgy, prayers, hymns, repetitive chants, and “magical” formulas, as well as references to periods of silence. Many of these are suggestive of communal behavior, initiation rites, and contemplative practices, although individual activity like incubation and dream visions are also known. Some of the references point to the development of “magical” practices at least as evidenced in the Hekhalot handbooks, 116 and sacramental ritual behavior, particularly (but not exclusively) in the Christian tradition.
The activities appear to have varied widely, so the exploration of practices as they were developed in individual communities is essential. No single praxis can be sifted out of the period-literature, so praxis must be studied as variant practices in particular community settings whenever possible. What the community at Qumran was doing in order to participate in the angelic liturgy was different from what the Sethian Gnostics were doing to ascend into the Godhead to practice the soul-journey home. What the Therapeutae were doing to become “citizens of heaven while on earth” was different from what the Hekhalot practitioners were doing to “descend to the chariot.”
What particularly has fascinated me as a scholar of Christian Origins is the reformation of the mystical praxis into the sacramental rituals of the early Christian Church and the “Gnostic” schools. The sacraments seem to me to have been set in place to “democratize” the mystical, making the presence of God regularly available to believers – baptism, anointing, and the eucharist all affecting the transformation of the soul and the integration of the Holy Spirit and the Christ into the soul. These rituals were understood to function in such a way that the person was reintegrated into the divine immediately and ontologically. Some texts even narrate this belief in terms of the ascent journey motif! That is, the ritual is presented as the vehicle that elevates and transports the person into the sacred realm so that he or she can come into the very presence of God.
Lately, I have come to understand many of narratives in the apocalyptic and mystical texts to be “verbal icons,” not simply “imaginative narratives” recounting the heavenly journeys and visions of the great heroes of the tradition, but “verbal maps” which functioned to actually bring the devotee into the presence of God. Not unlike later Byzantine pictorial icons, meditation upon the verbal images would have expressed and made present the sacred reality. The person who contemplated these texts would have been making himself ready to receive the mysteries that would be revealed directly and immediately to him. Through verbal recitation of the narrative or mental recall of the memorized text, the devotee too would have journeyed into the heavenly spheres and the presence of God, embracing this present experience through its likeness to that which was past.117 His ability to decipher the meaning of the words written would have provided his own journey into the heavenly world. What mattered to the devotee was not so much following the map in terms of sequential geography, but rather his ability to mentally picture the “places” where the hero had gone before, seeing again what the great heroes of the Jews and Christians had themselves seen. And in so doing, he would have appropriated the text for himself, and its mysteries.
This appropriation, in my opinion, results in part from the fact that during this period the apocalypse had been internalized. The cosmic had collapsed into the personal. The period-literature indicates that some Jews and Christians hoped to achieve in the present, the eschatological dream, the restoration God’s Image within themselves – the resurrection and transformation of their bodies into the glorious bodies of angels, and their minds into the mind of God. They developed various means to achieve this, including visionary flights to heaven, eating divine food and drinking divine drink, immersing themselves in water, anointing their bodies with sacred oil, intoning God’s Name, and so on. As Alan Segal insightfully comments, “The myth suggests the goal; the mysticism gives the practical way to achieve it.” Although the employment of particular practices varied from community to community, all appear to me to have been vying for the glories and power of Paradise Now.
Notes
1 All references in this chapter to Hekhalot texts (excluding 3 Enoch) are to P. Schäfer, Synopse zur Hekhalot- Literatur (Tübingen: Mohr, 1981) and English translations of passages from the Hekhalot texts (excluding 3 Enoch) are those of P. Schäfer, The Hidden and Manifest God: Some Major Themes in Early Jewish Mysticism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998).
2 See particularly, F. Flannery-Dailey, Dreamers, Scribes, and Priests. Jewish Dreams in the Hellenistic and Roman Eras, JSJSup 90 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2004).
3 G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Jerusalem: Schocken Publishing House, 1941), pp. 40-79; idem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkavah Mysticism and Talmudic Tradition (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1960); idem, On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism (trans. R. Manheim; New York: Schocken Books, 1965); idem,Kabbabah (Jerusalem and New York: Merdian, 1974), pp. 8-21;
idem, Origins of the Kabbalah (ed. R. J. Z. Werblowsky; trans. A. Arkush; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 18-24; idem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead: Basic Concepts in the KABBALAH (ed. J. Chipman; trans. J. Neugroschel; forward by J. Dan; New York: Schoken Books, 1991). I. Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism (AGJU 14; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1980); C. Morray-Jones, Merkabah Mysticism and Talmudic Tradition (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1988).
4 See the classic work by E.R. Goodenough, By Light, By Light (Amsterdam: Philo Press, 1969). K. Kohler first determined that elements of Merkavah mysticism can be found in Philo: “Merkabah,” The Jewish Encyclopedia 8 (ed. I. Singer; New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1904), p. 500. H. Chadwick has suggested that agreements between Paul and Philo may be the result of a common background in Jewish mysticism: “St. Paul and Philo of Alexandria,” BJRL 48 (1966), pp. 286-307.
5 Gruenwald, Merkavah Mysticism, p. vii; L. H. Schiffman, “Merkavah Speculation at Qumran: The 4Q Serekh Shirot ‘Olat ha-Shabbat,” in J. Renharz and D. Swetschinski (eds.), Mystics, Philosophers, and Politicians: Essays in Jewish Intellectual History in Honor of A. Altmann (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1982) 15-47; C.H.T. Fletcher-Louis, All the Glory of Adam. Liturgical Anthropology in
the Dead Sea Scrolls, STDJ 62 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2002); R. Elior, The Three Temples. On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004).
6 Cf. Scholem, Major Trends, p. 41; E. E. Urbach, “Ha-Masorot ‘al Torat ha-Sod bi-Tequfat ha-Tannaim,” in A. Altmann (ed.), Studies in Mysticism and Religion: Presented to G. G. Scholem on his Seventieth Birthday (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1967), pp. 2-11; J. W. Bowker, “‘Merkavah Visions and the Visions of Paul,” JJS 16 (1971), pp. 157-173; J. Neusner, A Life of Yohanan ben Zakkai: Ca. 1-80 C.E. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2nd revised ed., 1970); A. Goldberg, “der Vortrag des Ma`asse Merkawa: Eine Vermutung zur frühen Merkavamystik,” Judaica 29 (1973), pp. 9-12; C. Rowland, The Influence of the First Chapter of Ezekiel on Jewish and Early Christian Literature (Ph.D. Thesis, Cambridge University, 1974); idem, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic In Judaism and Ealry Christianity (London: SPCK, 1982), 282-283, and 303-305; Gruenwald, Merkavah Mysticism, pp. vii, and 73-86; cf. Morray-Jones, Merkabah Mysticism and Talmudic Tradition; Kanagaraj, “Mysticism” in the Gospel of John, pp. 150-158.
7 On this, see now J.R. Davila, Descenders to the Chariot. The People behind the Hekhalot Literature, JSJSup 70 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2001); C.R.A. Morray-Jones, A Transparent Illusion. The Dangerous Vision of Water in Hekhalot Mysticism: A Source-Critical and Tradition-Historical Inquiry, JSJSup 59 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2002); V.D. Arbel, Beholders of Divine Secrets. Mysticism and Myth in the Hekhalot and Merkavah Literature (Albany: SUNY, 2003). For a contrary view, see Halperin, Merkavah, pp. 107-140 and 179-185; P. Schäfer, “New Testament and Hekhalot Literature: The Journey into Heaven in Paul and in Merkavah Mysticism,” JJS 35 (1984), pp. 19-35.
8 Cf. Schiffman, “Merkavah Speculation,” p. 46.
9 On Paul’s familarity with mystical Judaism, see especially now A. F. Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 34-71; C. Morray-Jones, “Paradise Revisited (2 Cor. 12.1-12): The Jewish Mystical Background of Paul’s Apostolate. Part 1: The Jewish Sources” and “Part 2: Paul’s Heavenly Ascent and its Significance,” HTR 86 (1993), pp. 177-217 and 265-292; J Ashton, The Religion of Paul the Apostle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). On Thomasine traditions, see A. D. DeConick, Seek to See Him. Ascent and Vision Mysticism in the Gospel of Thomas, VCSup 33 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996); A. D. DeConick, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas: A History of the Gospel and Its Growth, JSNTSup 286 (London: T & T Clark, 2005). On Johannine traditions, refer to A. D. DeConick, Voices of the Mystics. Early Christian Discourse in the Gospels of John and Thomas and Other Ancient Christian Literature, JSNTSup 157 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001); J.J. Kanagaraj, “Mysticism” in the Gospel of John. An Inquiry into its Background, JSNTSup 158 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998).
10 On this, see especially my recent articles, “Heavenly Temple Traditions and Valentinian Worship: A Case for First-Century Christology in the Second Century,” in C. C. Newman, J. R. Davila, and G. S. Lewis (eds.), The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism: Papers from the St. Andrews Conference on the Historical Origins of the Worship of Jesus, Supplements to JSJ 63 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999), pp. 308-341; “The True Mysteries. Sacramentalism in the Gospel of Philip,” VC 55 (2001) pp. 225-261; Morray-Jones, A Transparent Illusion.
11 Cf. E. R. Wolfson, Through A Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).
12 Cf. D. J. Halperin, The Merkabah in Rabbinic Literature (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1980); idem, The Faces of the Chariot (Tübingen: Mohr, 1988); P. Schäfer, “Tradition and Redaction in Hekhalot Literature, JSJ 14 (1983); idem, “The Aim and Purpose of Early Jewish Mysticism,” in his Hekhalot-Studien, Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum 19 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1988); idem, “Merkavah Mysticism and Rabbinic Judaism,” JAOS 104 (1984), pp. 537-554.
13 Scholem, Major Trends, pp. 45- ; Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah, pp. 98- ; J, Dan, Three Types of Jewish Mysticism (Cincinnati: University of Cincinnati Press, 1984) pp. 8-16; J. Dan, “The Religious Experience of the Merkavah,” in A. Green (ed.), Jewish Spirituality. From the Bible Through the Middle Ages (New York: Crossroad, 1986) pp. 289-307; J. Dan, The Ancient Jewish Mysticism (Tel Aviv: MOD Books, 1993); R. Elior, “The Concept of God in Hekhalot Mysticism,” in J. Dan (ed.), Binah, Studies in Jewish Thought II (New York: Praeger, 1989) pp. 97-120; Elior, “Mysticism, Magic, and Angelology,” pp. 3-53; Elior, “From Earthly Temple to Heavenly Shrine,” pp. 217-267; K.E. Grözinger, Musik und Gesang in der Theologie der fruehen juedischen Literatur (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1982); Morray-Jones, “Transformation Mysticism;” K.E. Grözinger, “The Names of God and the Celestial Powers: Their Function and Meaning in the Hekhalot Literature,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 6 (1987) pp. 53-69.
14 Cf. P. Alexander, “The Historical Setting of the Hebrew Book of Enoch,” JJS 28 (1977) p. 173 (156-180); Rowland, Open Heaven, pp. 214-240; Wolfson, Speculum; Arbel, Beholders. For complimentary views regarding mysticism generally, see B. Garaside, “Language and Interpretation of Mystical Experience,” International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 3 (1972) pp. 93-102; P. Moore, “Mystical Experience, Mystical Doctrine, Mystical Technique,” in S.T. Katz (ed.), Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (London: Sheldon, 1978) pp. 101-131; C. Keller, “Mystical Literature,” in S.T. Katz (ed.), Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (London: Sheldon, 1978) pp. 59-67.
15 Wolfson, Speculum, p. 120; S.T. Katz, “Language, Epistemology and Mysticism,” in his Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (London: Sheldon, 1978) pp. 26 (22-26).
16 Gal 1:12; 1 Cor 15:8; 2 Cor 12:2-4.
17 cf. 2 Cor 11:21-12:11.
18 Col 2:16-18.
19 1 Cor 15:5-7.
20 Mk 9:2-8; Matt 17:1-8; Lk 9:28-36; Mk 16; Matt 28; Lk 24; Jn 20; Gos. Pet. 12-14; Acts 7:55-56.
21 B. McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism, v. 1 (New York: Crossroad, 1991) p. xiv.
22 Cf. H. Najman, “Interpretation as Primordial Writing. Jubilees and its Authority Conferring Strategies,” JSJ 30 (1999) 379-410; H. Najman, “Torah of Moses. Pseudonymous Attribution in Second Temple Writings,” in C.A. Evans (ed.), The Interpretation of Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity. Studies in Language and Tradition (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000) 202-216; H. Najman, Seconding Sinai. The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2003) 41-69; H. Najman, “The Symbolic Significance of Writing in Ancient Judaism,” in H. Najman and J.E. Newman (eds.), The Idea of Biblical Interpretation. Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2004) 139-173.
23 This is a natural function of communal memory. On this, see M. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Trans. L.A. Coser; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 [1925]) p. 40; M. Halbwach, The Legendary Topography of the Gospels in the Holy Land (trans. L. Coser; Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992 [1941]) p. 7; F. Zonabend, The Enduring Memory: Time and History in a French Village (Trans. A. Forster; Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984) p. 203; P. Hutton, “Collective Memory and Collective Mentalities: The Halbwachs-Aries Connection,” RHist 15 (1988) p. 314; J. Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) p. 75; I. Irwin-Zarecka, Frames of Remembrance: The dynamics of collective memory (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1994) p. 7; B. Zelizer, “Reading the Past Against the Grain: The Shape of Memory Studies,” CSMC 12 (1995) 228; B. Swartz, Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000) p. 9.
24 On this subject, see now Arbel, Beholders of the Secrets; “Seal of Resemblance,” 2005, 130-142.
25 For a detailed account of the nature of traditions, see E. Shils, Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981) and my own, “The ‘New’ Traditionsgeschichtliche Approach,” in Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas, pp. 3-37.
26 Cf. M. Smith, “Palestinian Judaism in the First Century,” in M. Davis (ed.), Israel: Its Role in Civilization (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1956) p. 69; M. Stone, “Apocalyptic Literature,” in Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period, Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum, 2.2 (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) p. 430.
27 R. Hall, “The Ascension of Isaiah. Community, Situation, Date, and Place in Early Christianity,” JBL 109 (1990) pp. 289-306. F Flannery-Dailey, Dreamers.
29 Cf. G. Nickelsburg, “The Apocalytpic Construction of Reality in 1 Enoch,” in J.J. Collins and J. Charlesworth (eds.), Mysteries and Revelations. Apocalyptic Studies Since the Uppsala Colloquium, JSPSup 9 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991); J.J. Collins, The Apocalytpic Imagination. An Introduction to the Jewish Matrix of Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1984) pp. 56-63; G. Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmann’s Publishing, ); G. Boccaccini, Enoch and Qumran Origins (Grand Rapids: Eerdmann’s Publishing, 2005).
30 Scholem, Major Trends, pp. 41-47; Merkavah, pp. 7-8.
31 Halperin, Merkavah, pp. 3- , 183- ; Chariot, cs. 1 and 9; P. Schäfer, “The Aim and Purpose of Early Jewish Mysticism,” in Hekhalot-Studien, p. 293; Hidden and Manifest, p. 159.
32 Swartz, Mystical Prayer, pp. 211-223; Davila, “The Hekhalot Literature and Shamanism,” pp. 767-789; Descenders to the Chariot.
33 Elior, Three Temples.
34 Elior, Three Temples.
35 For complete coverage, see J. Fossum, “Glory,” Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (ed. K. van der Toorn et. al.; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996) 348-352.
36 Ezek 1:28.
37 cf. Ezek 1:27-28; 8:2; Isa 6:1-4.
38 cf. 1 Chron 28:18; 1 Kings 6:23-28, 8:6-7; 2 Chron 3:10-11, 5:7-8.
39 1 Enoch 14:18-21; 2 Enoch 22:1-4; 39:3-8.
40 Hekh. Rabb. Section 102.
41 Hekh. Rabb. Section 102.
42 cf. Hekh. Rabb. Sections 198, 248, 259; Hekh. Rabb. Sections 407-409; 411, 412.
43 cf. Philo, Mut. 7; Fug. 165; 1 Enoch 14; 2 Enoch 22.
44 Hekh. Rabb. Section 159; 102; 104; 105; cf. Hekh. Zut. Section 356.
45 Hekh. Rabb. Section 169.
46 Hekh. Zut. Section 352.
47 In the Priestly source, the Glory is not anthropomorphic but a phenomenon of light. It is associated with a pillar of cloud or fire that surrounded YHWH as he led the Israelites through the desert or when his presence resided in the Tabernacle and then the Temple (Exod 16:10; 24:16-17, 43-44; 40:34-35, 38; Num 17:7; 1 Kings 8:10-11; Lev 9:23-24; 1 Sam 3:3; 4:21). It appears that we are seeing in these texts an association of the Glory with cultic practices since it is directly said to “fill” the Tabernacle and Temple (Exod 40:34-35; 1 Kings 8:10-11), be present at the altar of sacrifice (Lev 9:23-24), and function as some sort of lamp connected with the Ark (cf. Exod 27:20-21).
48 Exod 33:22-23.
49 1 Enoch 45:3; 55:4; 61:8; 62:2: 69:29.
50 Rec A, 11:4.
51 Rec. A, 12:5.
52 11:3.
53 Tg. Onq. And Tg. Ps.-J.; b. Men. 43b; Mem. Marqah, Crowley 1909:25.
54 For an outstanding presentation of the materials about Metatron, see A. Orlov, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition, TSAJ (Göttingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005).
55 Orlov, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition, pp. 92-96.
56 b. Hag. 15a.
57 3 Enoch 9.
58 cf. Eph 3:18-19; 4:13; Col 1:18-19; 2:9; Epiph., Ref. 30.17.6; 2 Enoch 39:3-6; Merk. Rabb. Sections 688-
704.
59 2 Cor 4:4, Col 1:15; Phil 2:6.
60 1:14; 2:11; 11:40; 12:23, 28, 41; 13:32; 17:1-5, 22-23.
61 Heb 3:1; 4:14-16; 5:1-10; Rev 5:6-14; 7:13-8:1; 14:1-5.
62 Josephus, Ant. 3.6.7; War 5.5.5; 7.5.5.
63 André Neher, “Le voyage mystique des quatre,” RHR 140 (1951) 73-76.
64 Elior, Three Temples.
65 Cf. Fossum, Name, 177- , 319- ; Fossum, “Jewish Christian Christology and Jewish Mysticism,” VC 37 (1983) pp. 260-287; Rowland, Open Heaven, 94-113; C. Rowland, “The Vision of the Risen Christ in Rev. 1:13ff: The Debt of Early Christology to an Aspect of Jewish Angelology,” JTS 31 (1980) pp. 1-11; Carr, Angels and Principalities, pp. 143-147; J. Daniélou, “Trinité et angélologie dans la théologue judéochrétienne,” RSR 45 (1957) pp. 5-41; J. Daniélou, The Origins of Latin Christianity (London, 1977) pp. 149-152; Wolfson, Speculum, pp. 255-269; G. Quispel, “Gnosticism and the New Testament”; G. Quispel, “The Origins of the Gnostic Demiurge,” in P. Granfield and J.A. Jungman (eds.), Kyriakon: Festschrift Johannes Quaesten (Münster: Aschendorff, 1970) ; G. Quispel, “The Demiurge in the Apocryphon of John,” in R. McL. Wilson (ed.), Nag Hammadi and Gnosis (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1978).
66 cf. Hekhalot Rabbati section 236 and 257.
67 Elior, Three Temples.
68 1 Enoch 14:18-21.
69 Test. Abr. Rec. B, 8:5; Rec. A, 12:5.
70 Hekh. Rabb. Section 98, MS Vatican.
71 Hekh. Rabb. Section 119.
72 1 Chr 28:18 LXX; Ecclus 49:8; cf. Hekh. Zut. Sections 368-374; Hyp. Arch. 29; Orig. World 32.
73 Tg. Ps.-Jonathan; Tg. Neofiti I; Fragmentary Tg.; Gen. R. 68:12
74 MS Vatican.
75 Venice.
76 MS Montefiore No. 7.
77 Fossum, Image of the Invisible God, 135-142.
78 Hekh. Rabb. Sections 94, 99, 154, 161-162, 634, 687, 686.
79 Section 257.
80 E. Wolfson, “Yeridah la-Merkavah: Typology of Ecstasy and Enthronement in Ancient Jewish Mysticism,” in R.A. Herrera (ed.), Mystics of the Book: Themes, Topics, and Typologies (New York: Lang, 1993) 13-44.
81 cf. Hekh. Rabb. 224-258.
82 Hekh. Rabb. 234.
83 Hekh. Rabb. 236.
84 Exod 26:31; 2 Chr 3:14.
85 3 Enoch 45:1-6.
86 Frag. T.-S. K21.95.J, fol. 2b, lines 2-11, Schäfer, Geniza-Fragmente, 133.
87 Tg. Job 26:9; 3 Enoch Rec. B 22:6.
88 Morray-Jones, A Transparent Illusion, pp. 153-172.
89 Collins, McGinn, Stein.
90 J.J. Collins, “Introduction: Towards the Morphology of a Genre,” Semeia 14 (1979) 6.
91 Fossum, Name of God, pp. 266-291.
92On this, see G. Quispel, “Ezekiel 1:26 in Jewish Mysticism and Gnosis,” VC 34 (1980) p. 6; Fossum, Name, p. 280.
93 Later, some rabbis reacted against this concept. Cf. b. Sanh. 38b; Tos. Sanh. 8.7.
94 See especially J. Fossum, “The Adorable Adam of the Mystics and the Rebuttal of the Rabbis,” in H. Cancik, H. Lichtenberger, and P. Schäfer (eds.), Geschichte-Tradition-Reflexion. Festschrift für Martin Hengel zum 70. Geburtstag, volume 1, Judentum (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1996) pp. 529-539.
95 On this, see G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, 1941) p. 65.
96 13:1-2.
97 cf. John 1:1-5, 9-10; C.H. 1.6-13; 13.19; Gos. Egy. 3.49.10-12; 4.61.8-11.
98 cf. Philo, Quest. Gen. 1.32; 2.62; Opif. mundi 25; 69; 139; Leg. All. 3.96; Her. 230-231; Apoc. Abr. 23.4- 6; Test. Abr. 11.4 rec. A; Fug. 68-71. Schenke, Der Gott “Mensch” in der Gnosis; Fossum, Name, pp. 266- 291; P.B. Munoa III, Four Powers in Heaven: The Interpretation of Daniel 7 in the Testament of Abraham, JSPSup 28 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998) pp. 85-90. The most recent article by A. Orlov brings together descriptions of the luminous Adam and the creation of the first human being after the Image: “‘Without Measure and Without Analogy’: The Tradition of the Divine Body in 2 (Slavonic) Enoch,” (forthcoming).
99 cf. Life Adam and Eve 13.2-14..2; 3 Bar. 4; 2 En 22. M. Stone, “The Fall of Satan and Adam’s Penance: Three Notes on the Books of Adam and Eve,” in G. Anderson, M. Stone, J. Tromp (eds.), Literature on Adam and Eve: Collected Essays, SVTP 15 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2000).
100 L. Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jew, volume 5 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1928). p. 97 n. 69; B. Murmelstein, “Adam, ein Beitrag zur Messiaslehre,” WZKM 35 (1928) p. 255 n. 3; W. Staerk, Die Erlösererwartung in den östlichen Religionen (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1938) p. 11. 101 cf. Gen. R. 8.1; 21.3; 24.2; Lev. R. 14.1; 18.2; Pirke R. Eliezer 11; Chronicles of Jerahmeel 6-12. Orlov, “‘Without Measure and Without Analogy.’”
102 cf. Gen. R. 11-12; b. Moed Katan 15b; `Aboda Zara 8a; Tanch. Buber Bereshit 18; cf. Gen. R. 8.1; b. Hag. 12a; Pesiq. Rab. Kah. 1.1. P. Alexander, “From Son of Adam to Second God: Transformation of the Biblical Enoch,” in M.E. Stone and T. A Bergen (eds.), Biblical Figures Outside the Bible (Harrisburg, 1998) pp. 102-111.
103 See DeConick, A.D. and Fossum, J., “Stripped Before God: A New Interpretation of Logion 37 in the Gospel of Thomas,” VC 45 (1991) p. 124 n. 8. For later rabbinic reports, see M. Idel, “Enoch is Metatron,” Immanuel 24/25 (1990) pp. 220-240. There is also a tradition that understands the verbs in Genesis 3:21 to be pluperfects, referring to the status of Adam and Eve before the Fall. Thus Gen. R. 20.12 states that the scroll of R. Meir read rOa, “light,” instead of rOi, “skin.” The Targums presuppose this wording since they read “garments of glory (raqy).”
104 A. Segal, Life After Death.
105 Cf. J. Strugnell, “The Angelic Liturgy,” VTSup 7 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960) pp. 318-345; L. Schiffman, “Merkavah Speculation at Qumran,” in J. Reinharz and D. Swetschinski, Mystics, Philosophers and Politicians (Durham: 1982) pp. 15-47; C. Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (Atlanta: 1985); C. Newsom, “Merkavah Exegesis in the Qumran Sabbath Shirot,” JSJ 38 (1987) pp. 11-30; M. Smith, “Two Ascended to Heaven – Jesus and the Author of 4Q491,” in J.H. Charlesworth (ed.), Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Doubleday, 1992) pp. 290-301; Fletcher-Louis, All the Glory of Adam; Segal, Paul the Convert; Morray-Jones, “Paradise Revisited.”
106 Rom 7:24; 8:10, 13, 29; 2 Cor 3:18; Phil 3:21; 1 Cor 15:49; Col 3:9; 2 Cor 5:15-6:1.
107 Gos Thom 15, 19, 37, 50, 59, 83, 84, 108.
108 Rowland, Open Heaven.
109 Regarding the rabbinic ambiguity about whether or not one can see God, refer to Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism, pp. 93-97, who proposes that the negative opinion on seeing God in this literature, rules out “the possibility of a direct visual encounter with God;” I. Chernus, “Visions of God in Merkabah Mysticism,” JSJ 13 (1982) pp. 123-146, outlines all of the passages in mystical literature where visions of God are mentioned and concludes that the majority of mystics “did think it possible for certain individuals, both human and celestial, to see God” (p. 141); N. Deutsch, The Gnostic Imagination: Gnosticism, Mandaeism, and Merkabah Mysticism, Jewish Studies 13 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995) pp. 75-79.
110 For a broader discussion, see DeConick, Voices of the Mystics, pp. 34-67. See also on the subject of transformation, Morray-Jones, Transformational Mysticism”; Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven, pp. 47-71.
111 Achilles Tatius, Clitophon and Leucippe 5.13.
112 Theaetetus 191a-196c.
113 Cf. K. Sullivan, Wrestling with Angels. A Study of the Relationship Between Angels and Humans in Ancient Jewish Literature and the New Testament, AGAJU 55 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2004).
114 Cf. Wolfson, Speculum, pp. 84-85 and n. 46; E. Wolfson, “Yeridah la-Merkavah: Typology of Ecstasy and Enthronement in Ancient Jewish Mysticism,” in R. Herrera (ed.), Mystics of the Book: Themes, Topics, and Typologies (New York: Lang, 1993) pp. 13-44.
115 3 Enoch 11:1-3.
116 On this, see particularly M. Swartz, Scholastic Magic. Ritual and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996); R. Lesses, Ritual Practices to Gain Power. Angels, Incantations, and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism, HTS 44 (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International,
1998).
117 M. Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and The Making of Images, 400-1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) 68-69.
Transformational Mysticism in the Apocalyptic-Merkavah Tradition
C. R. A. MORRAY-JONES
LADY MARGARET HALL, OXFORD
Journal of Jewish Studies, XLIII No. 1 – Spring 1992
In the last great vision of the prophet Ezekiel, an angelic figure guides the prophet through a Transformational Mysticism in the Apocalyptic-Merkabah Tradition
The question of the origins of the visionary-mystical traditions recorded in the Hekhalot literature is still quite controversial. I have elsewhere argued,’ contra Urbach,2 Schafer3 and Halperin,4 in favour of a modified version of the hypothesis advanced by Scholem 5 and developed by Gruenwald 6 that the talmudic references to ma’aseh merkabah indicate the existence of an esoteric tradition or traditions within first- and second-.century rabbinism. These traditions were associated with exegesis of Scriptural accounts of visions of the enthroned deity (Daniel 7, Isaiah 5 and, pre-eminently, Ezekiel 17) but it is probable that visionary-mystical practices were also involved. Such traditions were inherited_ from apocalyptic circles and enthusiastically developed by some Tannaim. but were opposed by others, mainly because the same traditions were being developed by groups whom they regarded as heretical including the various forms of Christianity and Gnosticism. The Hekhalot writings represent the development of these traditions. It cannot be assumed that everything in this literature goes back to the tannaitic period, the writers’ claim to be the heirs to a tradition from this time and milieu deserves to be taken seriously.
This model will he assumed in (and, it is hoped. to some extent confirmed by) the following discussion. It should be noted that the expression ‘Merkabah mysticism’ is used to refer to an esoteric, visionary -mystical tradition centered upon the vision of God, seated on the celestial throne or Merkabah. It is not simply synonymous with the contents of the Hekhalot texts, which represent one development of that tradition (failure to observe this distinction has been a cause of much confusion). the tradition’s influence is also found in the Apocalypses (though the term “Merkabah’ was not yet in use), and in a wide range of Jewish, Christian and Gnostic Sources.
In the ascent passages of the Hekhalot literature, the object of the climactic vision in the seventh palace, at the culmination of the heavenly journey, is the appearance of God as a vast and overpoweringly glorious human form of fire or light (Ezekiel’s likeness of the appearance of a man’s) enthroned upon the kisse’ hakkahod or Merkabah.00 This form and its gigantic dimensions are the object of the theurgic-liturgical Si’ur-Qomah (‘dimensions of the body’) texts and passages of this literature, which utilise the imagery of Isaiah 6:1-4, 66:1, and The Song of Songs.00 In Hekhalot mysticism, a distinction (though, in this literature, no discontinuity of identity) is observed between this visible appearance and God as He exists in Himself beyond the seventh heaven, to which He descends to manifest in a visible, corporeal form and to receive the worship of His creation. Song of Songs Rabbah refers to this distinction:
R. Hanina bar Papa said: A man of flesh and blood rides out of necessity, because he has substance, but the Holy One, blessed be He, is not like this: He needs His chariot to ride in because He has no substance.
The form of God upon the Merkabah is referred to as “The Glory” (hakkahod), frequently “the Great Glory” (hakkahod hoggadol) or as ilk Plat’ (haggeburah). This terminology, of course, goes back to E741114 where the figure on the throne is called ‘the Glory of the Lord’ (1:28 etc.), and is frequently found in apocalyptic literature.00 Tin ts, for example, The Testament of Levi 2:4: “In the uppermost heaven of all dwells the Great Glory in the Holy of Holies”, and I Enoch 14:20f: “And the Great Glory was sitting upon it pile Throw* As for His gown, which was shining more brightly than the sun, it was whiter than any snow.”
In The Ascension of Isaiah, Christ sits at the right hand of ‘the Great Glory’ (I 1:32), in terms reminiscent of Mark 14:62 and parallels:” “You shall see the Son of Man seated at the right hand or the Power.” Also worth mentioning is 1QH 7: “Thou hast revealed Thyself to me in Thy Power as perfect light.” It is clear, then, that the application of these terms to the appearance of God on the Throne is an established apocalyptic usage.00 Both kabod and its Aramaic equivalent yeqara’ are derived from roots meaning ‘to he heavy’ and the Gina is, therefore, ‘aprimary of the divine Essence “15 in human form and/or as light. Consider in this light Hekhalot Rabbati 3:4:16:
And three times every single day, the throne of Thy Glory (kisse’ kebodeka) prostrates itself before Thee and says to Thee: ’0 ZOHARARIEL. LORD God of Israel, make Thyself heavy/glorious (hitkabbed) and sit upon me, 0 wondrous King, for the burden of Thee is lovely [some manuscripts add: and precious (miff) upon me, and no glory (we'eino kabed) upon me, as it is written: Holy! Holy! Holy is the LORD of Hosts!'
This calls to mind Paul's expression at 2 Corinthians 4:17: “… an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” In many early sources, the 'Glory' or 'Power' is identified with the 'Name' of God, which is in turn identified with the creative 'Word' or Logos.00 At Isaiah 30:27f, the Name appears as a wrathful divine hypostasis,18 while Psalm 54:1 uses the terms 'Name' and 'Power' in parallel: “0 God, Save me by Thy Name (besimka) and vindicate me by Thy Power (bigeburatka).” Jubilees 36:7 refers to “The glorious and honoured and great and splendid and amazing and mighty Name which created heaven and earth and everything together.”
The Samaritan literature contains many references to the Name as the creative agency of God which, like the Glory of Isaiah 6, fills and sustains the world.19 This notion is also found in early Christian literature: “The Name of the Son of God is great and infinite (achoreton) and sustains the whole world." In the context of hellenistic Judaism, The Letter of Aristeas tells us that the Power (dynamis) fills every place (132) and that it created and sustains the world (157). These traditions are surely the background of Philo's Logos doctrine. He states, for example, that “The Glory of God is the Power through which He now appears," and of the Logos: “for having made the whole universe to depend and cling to Himself. He is Charioteer of all that vaste creation.”
These examples, which represent a selection from as wide a variety of sources as possible and could be multiplied many times over, should be sufficient to demonstrate that the equation .'Glory= Power = Name= Word'. is both ancient and widespread. It is succinctly summarised by Justin Martyr:
God has begotten of Himself a certain rational (logike) Power as a Beginning before all other creatures. The Holy Spirit indicates this Power by various titles, sometimes the Glory of the Lord, at other times Son, or Wisdom, or Angel, or God, or Lord, or Word.
It should be remarked that the sources differ as to which of God's names represents the hypostatized Glory and which pertains to the Godhead itself. In the Samaritan sources, the Tetragrammaton is frequently identified with the 'Word' (millah), though this role is occasionally ascribed to 'Elohim.00 Philo uses rheas of the transcendent divinity (ho on) and the divine attribute of Mercy, and kyrios (=Yhwh, the tetragrammaton) of the Logos and the attribute of Justice. In rabbinic literature, the Tetragrammaton generally represents Mercy and Elohim, Justice, though it seems that both traditions were known.00 Here, of course, any notion of a separate divine hypostasis is severely de-emphasized, but the idea of creation by or through the Name, which is highly developed in later esoteric writings like the Sefer Vernal]. is also found in exoteric sources. At. I hot 29b and Genesis Rabbah 12:10, the word behibbare’am of Genesis 2:4 00 is read as bar bare’am: ‘by (the letter) He’ (representing ti,- tetragrammaton) created He them.’ 21 At BT Hagigah 15b, God decrees that R. Aqiba is worthy `to make use of My Glory (lehistammes bikebodi) .28 As pointed out by Scholem, lehistammes is a technical term referring to pronunciation of the divine Name.00 Thus, an equation of the tetragrammaton with the Glory is implied. Several midrashic sources record a tradition that the light of the first day of creation emanated from the garment of the glory:
R. Simeon h. R. Jehotzad ek questioned R. Samuel bar Nachman ‘Since I have heard
that you area master of Aggadah —whence was the light created?’
R. Samuel said: ‘the Holy One, blessed be He„ wrapped Himself in it as in a garment [var.: wrapped Himself in a white garment and the splendour of His Glory shone forth from one end of the world to the other.: I lc said this in a whisper.
He said to him: 'There is a verse that says openly: ".. Who covered, Himself with light as with a garment" (Psalm I 04:2). It is strange that you should say it in
a whisper!'
He said to him: 'As I heard it in a whisper, I have told it to you in a whisper.'
The whisper, of course, implies that this was an esoteric tradition. The divine garment (haluq) is described in the hymnic passages of the Hekhalot literature:
Who is like unto our King? Who is like unto our Creator? Who is like unto the Lord our Cod?
The sun and the moon are cast out and sent forth by the crown of His head. The Pleiades and Orion and the Planet of Venus,Constellations and Stars and zodiacal
Dow and issue forth from ffd im Who, crowned and shrouded in it, sits upon the Throne of His glory.
The idea of the heavenly garment is an extremely important item to which we shall return.
Also important are the rabbinic prohibitions against association of the Name of God with any created being or object, recorded at WI Sukkah 45b, Sanhedrin 63a and Exodus Rabbah 43:3. The second and third of these references occur in connection with the Golden Calf, suggesting that such association was regarded as tantamount to idolatry or as falling into the Two Powers' heresy." Rowland has shown that, whereas in the early apocalyptic tradition the visionary was able to see the Glory on the Throne, many later Apocalypses tend to avoid such anthropomorphic descriptions and to transfer the functions of the kabod to one or more intermediary figures." While the motivation behind this development seems to have been to safeguard the transcendence and unity of God, it opened the way for two different but (from the rabbinic point of view) equally heretical aberrations: on the one hand, the Glor could be identified as a subordinate, created being (the beginning ot the process that culminated in Gnosticism, and, on the other a created being could be identified with the kavod (as in orthodox Christianity). It seems probable that the comment appended Ire Hid restriction concerning hammerkabah at M Hagigah 2.1 is a warning against speculations and/or practices that compromised the unity of God:
It would be better for one who is not careful concerning the Glory of his
Creator if he had never come into the world.
An important reference to the 'Two Powers' heresy occurs in the well known story of how Elisha b. Abuya (Aher) encountered the angel Metatron, found at HT Hagigah I 5a and 3 Enoch 16. 3 Enoch's version is probably closer to the original form of the story:"
R. Ishmael said: The angel Metatron, Prince of the Divine Presence, the Glory of the highest heaven, said to me: At first I sat upon a great throne at the door of the seventh palace, and I judged all the denizens of the heigh on the authority of the Holy One, blessed be He. I assigned greatness, royalty, ank, sovereignty, glory, praise, diadem. crown and honour to all the princes kingdoms. when I sat in the heavenly court. The princes of the kingdoms stood beside me, to my right and to my left, by authority of the Holy One, blessed be He. But when 'Aber came to behold the vision of the Merkabah and set es upon me, he was afraid and trembled before me. His soul was alarmed to the point of leaving him because of his fear, dread, and terror of me, when he saw me upon a,a king, with ministering angels standing beside me as servants and all the princes of kingdoms crowned with crowns surrounding me. Then he opened his mouth and said, There are indeed two Powers in heaven!' Immediately a divine voice came out from the presence of the Shekhinah and said, 'Come back to Me, apostate sons (Jeremiah 3:22)— apart from Aber' Then Anefiel. ¬ If WH, the honoured, glorified, beloved, wonderful, terrible, and dreadful prince, came at the command of the Holy One, blessed be He, and struck me with sixty lashes of fire and made me stand upon my feet."
The figure of Metatron, who is extremely important in Jewish esoteric literature, has been the subject of several studies." He performs many functions, but has two main sides to his character (called by later kabbalists the 'greater' and 'lesser' Metatron): he is the 'Angel of the LORD' or 'Prince of the Presence' and he is also the patriarch Enoch after his ascension into heaven.
As the Angel of the LORD, Metatron functions as the celestial vice-regent who ministers before the Throne, supervises the celestial liturgy and officiates over the heavenly hosts. He silk on a throne, which is a replica of the Throne of Glory and wears a glorious robe like that of God. He functions as the agent of God in the creation, acts as intermediary between the heavenly and lower world, is the guide of the ascending vtsionary, and reveals the celestial secrets to Plank ind. He is, by delegated divine authority. the ruler and judge of the world. He is thus a Logos figure and an embodiment of the divine Glory. In the si'ur Tomah, we are told that Metatron's body, like the kabod, fills the entire world, though the writer is careful to maintain a distinction between Metatron and the Glory of God Himself." In a short text published by Jellinek under the title Aggadath Shema Israel," which deals with the ascent of Moses. we lied the statement:
The Holy One, blessed be He, decrees and Metatron executes.
This is remarkably reminiscent of Justin Martyr:
There exists and if mentioned in Scripture another God and Lord under the Creator of all things. who is also called an Angel, because he proclaims to man whatever the Creator of the world-- above whom there is no other God--wishes to reveal to them.
Metatron is, in fact, referred to as the 'Lesser Tetragrammaton' (YHWH haqqaton)" and it is said that 'his name is like that of his Master' 4 or that He embodies the Name of God. The tradition of the Name hearing angel and celestial vice-regent is apparently ancient and widespread. He appears in both apocalyptic and Hekhalot literature under a variety of names and titles. In some circles, Michael seems to have retained this function, while the Mandean and. perhaps, Muslim literature suggests that other groups assigned this supreme role to Gabriel.12 In the Hekhalot literature, this angelic being is called by such names as Anafiel, Suriel, or Panaion, as well as Metatron. Most significant of all is the angelic guide in The Apocalypse of Abraham, called laoel, who explains:
I was so called by Him who causes those with me on the seventh expanse, on the firmament, to shake, a power through the medium of His ineffable Name in me. (10:8)
As pointed out by Fossum.43 Iaoel is described in terms that elsewhere apply to the divine Glory itself: he is 'in the likeness of a man' (10:4). has 'a body like sapphire' (11:2) and so forth. Fossum suggests that the reason why the Throne, when Abraham sees it, is empty (I8:3ff) is that lapel is the Glory. At all events. it is clear that Metatron (whose 'lama, ocean c only in rabbinic and esoteric Jewish sources, and on a few Aramaic incantation bowls) represents one developed version of this tradition of the Name-bearing angel who mediates, and in some sense embodies. the kabod.. Similar urea encountered in Gnostic literature, such as Poimandres and the "Little Yao",44 must be derived from the same tradition.
Not surprisingly.- the talmudic sources are reticent and apparently suspicious with regard to Metatron. He appears at WE Abodah Zarah 3b. where he is said to teach the souls of dead children in heaven when God is otherwise engaged, Hagigah I5a (the 'Aber story) and Sanhedrin 38b, where he is again associated with the 'Two Powers' heresy:
Once a min said to R. Idith, 'It is written: And unto Moses He said. Come up to
YHWH (Exodus 24:1). Surely it should have said: Come up to Me!'
'This was Metatron,' he replied. 'whose name is like that of his Master, for it is written: For My Name is in him (Exodus 23:21).'
'But, if so, we should worship him!'
R. Idith replied, 'The same verse, however, says: 'Do not rebel against him. (This means:) Do not exchange him for Me [reading 'al femur (do not exchange) for 'al tammer (do not rebel)].’
`But, if so, why is it stated: He will not pardon your transgressions (loc. cit., above)?’
He answered, ‘Indeed, we would not accept him even as a messenger, for it is written: If Thy Presence go not with us … etc. (Exodus 23:15)
Thus, there is evidence to suggest that the rabbis were concerned to guard against an early and widespread tradition of the Name-bearing angel who was intimately associated, and sometimes identified. with the Name-Word-Glory-Power of the LORD. It seems that they countered this threat, if not by outright suppression, by significantly downgrading the status and importance of Metatron (as this angel came to be called), but that the early tradition was preserved and developed in esoteric circles. 3 Enoch’s statement that Metatron used to sit upon a throne hut was ‘demoted’ because of ‘Aher’s heresy may well be, in this sense, historically correct.
Before leaving this subject. a further tradition should be noted that not only Metatron but all the angels bear The Name of God engraved on !Aga within (kern.” in The Odes of Solomon, we find the statement that the angels are ‘clothed with’ the Divine Name (4:8), and the Hekhalot writings frequently refer to angels who have the Tetragrammaton appended to their names.”
The second aspect of Metatron’s character is his identification as the patriarch Enoch, who ascended into heaven and was transformed into the Name-bearing angel. This is, of course, a development of the apocalyptic Enoch traditions. 3 Enoch presents Metatron exclusively in the light of this identification and re-interprets the elements of the ‘greater Metatron’ tradition accordingly. The identification of Enoch with Metatron is not found in the Talmuds or the early midrashic literature, though Midrash Aggadah to Genesis 5:18 associates it with Aqiba 47 and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to Genesis 5:24 says of Enoch that ‘God called his name Metatron, the Great Scribe.” Milik regards this as a late addition to the Targum,4° but the tradition of Enoch as ‘the Great Scribe of Righteousness’ who records men’s deeds and reveals the heavenly secrets goes back to I Enoch 15 and Jubilees 4, while BT Hagigah 15a explains that Metatron was permitted to sit in the presence of God so that he could perform his scribal duties. There is evidence, then. of the early existence of a tradition concerning the ascent to heaven of an exceptionally righteous man *Clio beholds the vieioa of the divine kabod upon the Merkbah, is transformed into an angelic being and enthroned as celestial vice-regent; thereby becoming identified with the Name-bearing angel who either is or is closely associated with the kabod itself and functions as a second. intermediary power in heaven. It is hardly surprising that some rabbis were ambivalent about such traditions.
The account of Enoch’s transformation in 3 Enoch 7-15 contains the following significant details:
I was enlarged and increased in size till I matched the world in length and breadth. (9:2)
The Holy One, blessed be He, fashioned for me a majestic robe, in which all kinds of luminaries were set, and He clothed me in it. He fashioned for me a glorious cloak in which brightness, brilliance, splendour. and lustre of every kind were fixed, and He wrapped me in it. He fashioned for me a kingly crown .. and He called me ‘The Lesser YHWH in the presence of His whole household in the height, as it is written, ‘My name is in him’. (12:1-5)
When the Holy One, blessed be He, took me to serve the Throne of Glory, its., the wheels of the Merkabah and all the needs of the Shckhinah, at once my flesh turned to flame, my sinews to blazing fire, my bones to juniper coals, my eyelashes to lightning flashes, my eyeballs to fiery torches, the hairs of my head to hot flames, all my limbs to wings of burning fire, and the substance of my body to blazing fire. On my right—those who cleave flames of fire-on my left—burning brands—round about me swept wind, tempest and storm; and the roar of earthquake upon earthquake was before and behind me. (15:10
Though the redactor is careful to avoid taking the final, heretical step, this seems to be a theologically sanitized version of a tradition according to which the ascending hero becomes identified with the kabod.
That this tradition may have been a source of early Christian belief about Jesus will be immediately apparent. Whereas the synoptic tradition speaks of Jesus sitting or standing ‘at the right hand’ of the Power or the Glory. it is clear that in the Pauline and Johannine literature Christ is the Glory.” As such, he is God’s ‘image and likeness’ 52 in whom ‘the whole Fullness of God dwells bodily”‘ and is also, of course, the embodied Word which is also the Name.” All these traditions seem to he included in Hebrews 1:2-4:
… in these last days He has spoken to us by a Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things. through whom He created the world. Ile reflects Pie Glory of God and bears the very stamp of His nature, upholding the universe by His word of power. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at she right hand of the Majesty on high. having become as much superior to the angels as the Name he has obtained is more excellent than limits.
It is worth noting that Clement of Alexandria calls the Son both ‘Wind’ and ‘Name’,” while the importance of these traditions for Syriac Christianity is indicated by statements such as the following:
Thou art the discloser of hidden secrets and the revealer of mysterious sayings .. Thou didst become the Messiah and didst put on the First Man. Thou art the Power and the Wisdom and the Knowledge and the R Will and the Rest of Thy Father. in Thou art revealed in Thy creative agency. and Ye (note the plural) are One with two names.
Identification of Christ with the Name, Form or Image of God is widely found in Gnostic, especially Valentinian sources. Ireneus reports the following Valentinian form:
The Name which is hidden from every deity, dominion And existence, which Jesus the Nazarene put on in the spheres of light. (the Nano., of Cht ist. of Him who lives through the Holy Spirit for the angelic redemption, the Name of Restoration.
and in The Gospel of Philip we find:
Only one name is not uttered in the world, the name that the father bestowed on the son; it is above every other—that is, the name of the father. For la would not become the Father had he not put on the name of the father”
Particular attention should be paid to the expression ‘put on’ or ‘clothe with’ the Name or ‘First Man’ (i.e. the divine Image or Glory) which is also found in Syriac baptismal formulae.” As noted by Quispel:
If we find the same curious expression in the Syrian Christianity of Edessa, and in circles of Valentinian Gnostics somewhere in the west, this seems to noire a common background in Jewish Christianity.
The roots of the idea must, moreover, go back to the apocalyptic traditions of investiture in heaven of the ascending hero.
All this is remarkably like what we find in theapeatikak. where it is repeatedly stated that Moses was ‘vested with’ the Name of God.
He was worthy to put on the Name whereby the world came into being.”
In this literature Moses is said, like Enoch and Christ, to have been crowned and enthroned in heaven. Like Metatron and Christ, Moses is the pre-existent creative agent of God and the celestial vice-regent. As the ‘Man of God’, he is the divine image or glory of Adam to whom God says: “You are My second in the lower world.”00
Josephus takes the trouble to deny that Moses ascended to God after his death,°’ but does not mention the tradition of his heavenly ascent At Sinai. Evidence of the antiquity of the latter is provided by by Ezekiel the Tragedian (second century-BC).66 Philo develops the theme of Moses’ ascent, both at Sinai and after his death, 67 and his transformation into the likeness of God, especially at Mote 1.155-8 were, as argued by Meeks, he must be combining the hellenistic notion of divine kingship with an already-existing.
Meeks has argued very convincingly that the rabbinic sources dealing with Moses’ heavenly ascent at Sinai preserve traces of an earlier tradition that he enthroned and received the divine Name and the garments and crown of the divine glory, though this has everywhere been supressed.69 Thus, in midrashim such as Pesikta Rabbati 20. Moses takes hold of the Throne rather than being seated upon it and, rather than clothing him with the divine garment or ‘robe of the Glory’, God merely spreads a corner of it over him. Nonetheless, the tradition persisted that Moses ascended to heaven after his death.” These midrashim frequently associate Moses with Metatron, who acts as his guide and protector, and state that his flesh was turned to fire:
At that time. the Holy One. blessed be He. commanded Metatron. saying to him. ‘Go. and bring my servant Moses up to heaven—and take with you 15.000 angels on his right and 151100 angels on his left. with song, with timbrels. and with dancing. and utter song before Moses My servant
Metatron said to the Holy One blessed he He. is lt able to withstand the angels. for the angels are princes of fire, while he is flesh and blood.’
Thereupon the Holy One. blessed be He. commanded Metatron. saying. ‘Go, change his flesh into torches of fire and his strength (0 UM I of Gabriel:
Metatron came to Moses. When Moses saw him, he was terrified. He said to him, ‘Who are you?’He said to him. ‘I an Enoch b. Yared. your ancestor. The Holy One, blessed be He. has sent me to bring you up beside the Throne of Glory.’
Moses said to him, ‘I am flesh and blood. and unable to look at the angels’
Thereupon he stood up and changed his flesh to torches of fire, and his eyes to Merkavah wheels, and his strength to that of Gabriel. and his tongue to flame. And he raise Moses up to heaven, and with him were 15.000 angels on his right and 15.000 angels on his left, with Metatron and Moses in the middle.
There are, then. good grounds for believing that some first- and second-century rabbis attempted to suppress an early tradition of the ascent to heaven of an exceptionally righteous man or men win received (he divine Name and became in some way associated or identified with the angel of the LORD. or the Form of God as enthroned Logo Power-Glory, at that tbte. tradition was kept alive in esoteric circles. Vie following is om a baraita in which the survival of the tradition in the face of a Tannaitic minter-polemic is clearly apparent:
What (does this means ”I he Lord of Hosts, He is the King of Glory’? (This means that) He apportions some of His Glory to those who fear Him according to His Glory. How so? He is called God.’ and He called Moses ‘god.’ as it is said. ‘See. I have made von a god to Pharaoh’ t [sosto% 7:1). He vivifies the dead, and He apportioned some of His Glory. to for the latter vivified a dead person (1 Kings 17:22). Thus the Holy One blessed he He. apportions some of His glory to those that fear Him. To the King Messiah lie grants to he clothed in Hi. robes (Psalm 21:6) Our rabbis teach us that no mortal king rides on God's steed or puts on I his robes or uses His crown or sits on His throne but the Holy One. blessed be He. apportions all these to those who fear Him. and gives them to them.
That rabbinic hostility toward these traditions was in part due to the emergence of Christianity seems highly probable. The ego deli sayings of (sus suggest that he claimed to be an embodiment of the divine Name or, at least, that his followers made this claim." It should be noted, however. that other historical figures claimed (or had claimed for them) a similar status. Mani' was identified by his followers as 'the most beautiful and beloved Name'" and the name of the Jewish-Christian leader Elchasai means 'the Hidden Power'." Going back to the first century. Simon Magus was identified by his followers as 'the Power of God called the Great'." It seems. then, that claims to have ehieved a transformation like that attributed to Enoch and Moses were sometimes made in mystically orientated circles. This implies that transformation into the divine Image or the likeness thereof was a goal of the mystical endeavour.
Of relevance to this theme are the very widespread traditions concerning the primordial glory of Adam77 Rabbinic sources state 01:1? Adam's body was so large that it filled the universe.'" and tannaitic debates on Genesis 3:2 ('Behold, the Man has become like one of us') provide evidence of an early tradition that Adam was like God and/or the angels.'" Ill Sanhedrin 38a records a polemic against the identification of Adam as a 'second Power':
Our Rabbis taught: Adam was created on the eve of the Sabbath. And why? Lest the Sadducees [probably originally: the minim] should say that the Holy One, blessed he He. had a partner in His work of creation.
This polemic must be directed against the demiurgic Anthropos found in Gnostic literature, who is identified by a pun on the Greek word phos (‘man’ or ‘light’) with the primordial fight of creation: thus the heavenly man of light is said to have existed from the beginning, rather than day six. This notion, which seems to underlie Philo’s heavenly Adam speculation, may well have originated in Alexandria: Ezekiel the Tragedian uses phas of the heavenly man.” Philo frequently distinguishes between the earthly man, moulded from clay. and the heavenly or archetypal man who is a likeness of the divine Image or Logos.” and is sometimes apparently identical with the Logos.” In Gnosticism, the heavenly light-man is clearly identified with the Power-Glory or Form of God:
In the beginning. he [the supreme deity] decided to have his form come to he as a great power. Immediately. the beginning of that fight was revealed as an immortal, androgynous man.
He [the man] created for himself a great aeon corresponding to his greatness. liegave it authority and it mled over all creation,: He created for himself gods and archangels and angels. myriads without /mother for retinue. Now from that matl originated divinity and kingdom. Therefore he was called ‘God of Gods’ and ‘King of Kings’.
The identification of Christ with Adam as the divine Image in man is also found in Syriac Christian literature, which tends to stress the difference between (‘Mist’s divine and human natures.”
In The Testament of Abraham ch. II, Abraham encounters ‘the first formed Adam seated on a throne at the entrance to Paradise. This is analogous to the position of Metatron in 3 Enoch and a precise parallel is found in a surviving fragment of a lost Hekhalot work, The Mystery of Sandalphon.85 where Elisha b. Abuya (= ‘Aher) encounters ‘ ‘Akatriel Yah, the LORD God of Isrel’ (elswhere a name for the Divine Glory itself 86) enthroned before the gates of Paradise. This suggests that some mystical circles. regarded by the rabbis as heretical, associated or identified the primordial Adam with the divine kabod,87 A polemic against this identification, highly reminiscent of the story of Metatron’s dethronement, is found at Genesis Rabbah 8:10:
R. Hoshaya said: When the Holy One, blessed be He, created Adam, the ministering angels mistook him for a divine being and wished to utter the Sanctus before him. What does this resemble? A king and a governor who sat in a chariot and his subjects wished to say to the king ‘Domine! but they did not know which one it was. What did the king do? He pushed the governor out of the chariot. and so they knew who was the king.
An interesting counter-polemic is found in The Life of Adam and Eve, 14:Iff, where God commands the angels to worship Adam as the embodiment of His Image and only Satan refuses to obey.
It is axiomatic to these traditions that when Adam sinned his glory and his stature were diminished, a predicament which is shared by his descendants. Consider in this light Romans 3:23, “All have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God.”
Corollary to this is the tradition that the righteous will, in the world to _come, recover the Omuta. This teaching, which, together with descriptions of the righteous as enthroned and/or vested with robes and crowns of glory, is widely documented in Apocalyptic, early Christian literature, and the Scrolls,” is also found in rabbinic sources. Several midrashim state that the righteous will, like Enoch-Metatron, become like or superior to the angels,” and that they will become God-likc and he transformed into lire:
In this world. Israel cleave unto the holy One. blessed he He, as it is said: ‘But ye that did cleave unto the LORD (Deuteronomy 4:4). Hui in the time to come they will become like Him), Just as the Holy One. blessed be He. is fire consuming fire. according to what is written: ‘For the LORI) is a consuming fire’ (Deuteronomy 4:24), so shall they he consuming fire, according to what is written: ‘.. and the light of Israel shall be for a fire and his Holy One for a flame’ (Isaiah 10:17).”
This transformation and enthronement indicates that the righteous are, like the primordial Adam, conformed to the Image of God or the kabod (this is, presumably. what Paul has in mind when he speaks of ‘glorification). Thus BT Baba Hatra 75h:
R. Eleazar said: There will come a time when ‘Holy!’ will be said before the righteous as it is said before the Holy One, blessed be He, for it is said: ‘And it shall come to pass that he that is left in Zion. and he that remaineth in Jerusalem. shall be called Holy’ (Isaiah 4:3)
These traditions are evidently connected to those of the enthronement, vesting and transformation of the apocalyptic hero. Deuteronomy Rabbah 11:3 states that the glory taken from Adam was restored to Moses at Sinai, an idea that is also found in the Samaritan sourcess°’ which also attribute the glory of Adam to the pre-existent Moses:
On the day when Adam put on the divine Image. Moses put en the splendour of the light and the crown on the four sides of which was written: I AM THAT I AM.
Given the close association and in some sources apparent identity between the celestial Adam and the divine Glory, this confirms the supposition that in certain circles figures such as Moses and Enoch were identified. like the Pauline and Johannine Christ, with the kabod.
Since the Glory is also the Logos and the divine Names it is not surprising that this transformation of a human being into the likeness of the divine Image implies that the righteous man receives into himself. and becomes an embodiment of, the Name of God. We have already seen that this applies to Enoch and, in Samaritan literature, to Moses. A similar tradition concerning Melchizedek as the Name-bearing angel and Logos is widely documented, in Philo,” in 2 Enoch 23, in I IQ Melchizedek (where he is apparently identified with Michael), in ‘Melchizedekian’ Gnosticism,” and. of course, in The Epistle to the Hebrews. The Samaritans are reported to have identified Melchizedek with Shem, the son of Noah,” and Genesis Rabbah 26:3 explains Shem’s name by stating that God’s Name (km) was set upon him. Targum Neofiti and the Fragmentary Targum call Melchizedek the great sem’.96 At Genesis Rabbah 39:1 1 and 63:7 the privilege of being called by the divine Name is accorded to Abraham.
Rabbinic sources record the tradition that in the world to conic all of the righteous will be called by the Name of God:
Rabbah further stated in the name of R. Yohanan: The Righteous will in the time to come be called h) the Name the Holy One. blessed be He. for it is said: ‘Everyone that is named by My Name. and whom I have created for My Glory, I have formed him. yea I have made him’ (Isaiah 43:7).”
This idea may be implicit in the notion that they become as the angels who, as we have seens were held by some to bear the divine Name within themselves. In The Shepherd of Hermes, we find Michael. the Angel of the Lord (described as ‘glorious and very tall’). giving out branches from a willow tree in Paradise to ‘those who are called by the Name of the Lord” 98
The idea of the righteous man as an embodiment of the divine Name or Image perhaps underlies the idea of the righteous man as ‘the foundation of the world.’ based on Proverbs 111256 taken in isolation,” This implies that the righteous man is, like the Samaritan Moses, Metatron and Christ, a creative agent)” In Jewish sources, we occasionally encounter the idea that the world was created for the sake of Abraham,101 Moses 102 or Israel as a collective entity. “3 At Genesis Rabbah 49:6 and parallels.’” find it stated that the patriarchs are the Merkabah. this idea is developed at Hekhalot Rabbati 9:4,1″ where God bends down to embrace and kiss the image of Jacob, which is engraved upon the Merkabah, whenever Israel recites the @tight”, suggesting :to intimate union between God and the righteous representative of His people of the kind associated with the Song of Songs. Elsewhere. we find the notion that the world was created and is sustained for the sake of righteous men in general.82″ and se- are told that there is always a minimum number (30. 36 or 45) of righteous men in the world, who sustain it in being ;Ind who behold the tace of God each 403(.1″ The Galilean Hasid Hanina b. nom was believed to be one such man:
Rab Judah said in the name of Rah: Every day a voice goes for th from Mount Horeb and proclaims: ‘The whole world is sustained for the sake of My son Hanina. and Hanina. My son has to subsist on a gab of carobs Bolnh one week’s end to the next.
All this suggests that, in the visionary-mystical circles from which the Tannaim inherited their esoteric traditions—and the Hasidim of Galilee were surely one such source—the idea was current that exceptionally worthy human beings or “men of righteousness’ were able to achieve a transformation into the likeness of the divine Glory which was analogous to that ascribed to the heroes of the heavenly-ascent narratives and to the righteous in the world to come. Such men, it appears. were believed to he gifted with supernatural powers and to function as mediators and intercessors between the earthly community and the realm of God. Hanina h. Dosa, for example, interceded for the sick.’”
A similar mediatorial role was claimed by or for the adepts of the Hekhalot tradition. At the beginning of Hekhalot Rabbati, we find a long list of supernatural powers ascribed to the adept who is portrayed as acting by divine authority as judge and leader of the people.110 When taking part in the celestial liturgy, the adept acts as the representative of the people before God. as well as being commissioned to declare what has been revealed to him. 111 In other words, he performs a functon analogous to that of the High Priest in the Temple.112 A passage found in some versions of Hekhalot Rabbati indicates that the adept, here typified by Metatron-as-Enoch. has taken over the priestly
R. Ishmael said: The Heavenly Splendour said to me: Prithee, say to them. to Israel: Beloved are repentant sinners, for repentance reaches and extends across the 390 firmaments to the Throne of Glory. Repentant sinners are greater than the ministering angels. For when Israel went into exile, Metatron, Michael and Gabriel said, ‘What is to be done?’ At once they beat their hands upon their heads. and at once they were weeping with a great voice and saying. Who will go up to the heavenly heights and lament before Him who spoke. and theworld became, that He may turn back from His burning anger and have compassion on His sons?’
Metatron said to them, ‘I will go up into his upper chamber.’ All the blazing fiery ones were appalled before him when he ascended. The eight firmaments were in a tumult. The heavens, the uppermost heaven? and the holiest heights said with a single voice, What is this smell of one born of woman, ascending on high’e—until the Holy One, blessed he He. said to them:
‘Ye ministers of Justice and ye Seraphim, leave him alone! He has come up to weep over My sons. who have gone into exile amongst wolves and amongst lions. and over their Temple and their Law which the son of Nimrod. the wicked. has burned with fire, and over their sages and students who have been killed in the Sanctuary. Be still and quiet! My hands are enfeebled. and 1 cannot save then until their bones are healed by words of Torah, for among them are no repentant sinners who pray for compassion upon them—for if there were repentant sinners among them, praying for compassion upon them, I would not have delivered them over to death!’
Therefore it is taught that repentant sinners are greater than the ministering angels.
In similar vein, the Samaritan sources stress the role of Moses. the God-man, as intercessor on behalf of humanity,’” while Philo ascribes this role to the Logos-Angel:
To His word, his chief messenger, highest in age and honour, the Father of all
has given the special prerogative to stand on the border and separate the
creature from the Creator. ‘I his same Word both pleads with the Immortal as
suppliant for of mortality and acts as ambassador of dic Ruler to the subject.
He glories in this prerogative and proudly describes it in these words:
And I stand between the t ord and you (Deuteronomy 5:51 that is neither uncreated as God, nor created as you but midway between tt,- two extremes. as a surety to hoth sides: to the Parent. pledging the creation” that it should never altogether rebel against the rein and choose disorder 1011811 than order: to the child. warranting his hopes that the Merciful God will never bit get Hls own work.
At Qumran. we find the idea that the human priesthood is representative of the mediating Angel:
May you be as an Angel of the Presence in the Abode of Holiness. to the glory of the God of Hosts.
These traditions are solely the background of the Christology of The Epistle to the Hebrews. Clement of Alexandria provides an interesting interpretation of the entry of the Holy of Holies of the High Priest, who has the Name engraved upon his heart’, as an allegory of the entry of the soul into the intelligible world. When he removes the golden breastplate• on which the Tetragrammaton is inscribed, this symbolizes the laying aside of the body, which has been purified by his piety … as a result of which he has been recognized by the prjncipalities and powers as one who is clothed with the Name (to onoma perikeimenos).00
As we have seen. several charismatic figures. such as Simon Magus. claimed identity with the Name or Power of God. The influence of this Jewish-Samaritan tradition is apparent in several passages of the Magical Papyri, where the practitioner seeks to identify himself with the glorious angelic form of the primordial Adam??: the first-begotten and first-born God … who possesses the powerful Name which has been consecrated by all angels . .. lord over all the angels etc.82″
The idea that the vision or God involves the transformation of the visionary into an angelic or supra-angelic being, is found at several places in apocalyptic literature.00 This transformation is described in the familiar terms of robing, crowning, anointing, enthronement and metamorphosis into fire or light, At 2 Enoch 22:10. Enoch says:
And I looked at myself, and I had become like one of the glorious ones. and there was no observable difference.
Associated with the rabbinic stories of Moses’ metamorphosis is the very widespread midrashic tradition that the vision of God experienced by the Israelites at Sinai entailed a similar transformation. We find. lot example, that God adorned the Israelites ‘from the splendour of His (Rol y’, vested them in royal robes. and gave them crowns and weapons engraved with the divine Name, which freed them from the power of the angel of death.’” Pirkei de Rabbi Eliczer includes the following:
R. Judah says: As long as a man is wearing the clothes of his splendour. he is beautiful in his appearance and in his glory and in his radiance. Thus were the Israelites when they wore that Name—they were as good as ministering angels before the Holy One, blessed be He.
Related traditions state that the Israelites, unable to withstand the vision of God’s Glory or the sound of the divine voice, died but were revived by the angels at God’s command.122 Chernus has shown that underlying these traditions is a theme of ‘initiatory death:’ 123 that is, the Isrelites, on seeing the Glory, underwent an experience of Death leading to rebirth. This involved the transformation of their bodies into fiery angelic likenesses clothed with the Name of God, which conferred immortality upon them. All this, however, was lost as a result of the sin of the Calf or. ecording to some sources, they were overwhelmed by the experience, asked Moses to et as intermediary between God and themselves, and so returned to their former condition. The probability that these midrashim, are derived, from the. visionary-mysticaI tradition is confirmed by Song of Songs Rabbet, 1:15, where it is stated that, as a result of hearing the divine voice at Sinais the Israelites had the knowledge of Torah fixed in their hearts but afterwards returned to the state of learning and forgetting.124 This must be connected with the Sar-tora h traditions preserved by the Hekhalot compilers.
Schafer regards the account in 3 Enoch of Enoch’s transformation as ‘the final stage in the literaricization of Merkabah mysticism’ and states that, while it has parallels in earlier apocalyptic, it is unique in the Hekhalot literature.’ 25 The date of composition of 3 Enoch is highly uncertain, though it is now generally regarded as a fairly late product of the Hekhalot tradition (which is what Schafer means by `Merkabah mysticism.” 126 However. it must he recognized that the fundamental different between the Apocalypses and the Hekhalot texts is a matter of literacy form and purpose. An Apocalypse is a narrative composition in which Descriptions of visions are subordinate to the writer’s didactic or kerygmatic Purpose This does not necessarily mean that the Apocalypses are mere litesary fantasies having no connection with genuine visionary-mysticm, but they are not intended to tell the reader how such visions may be obtained. ‘The !Irk halot writings, on the other hand. are liturgical and instructional ‘technical guides or manuals, for mystics’.127 3 Enoch, being itself an Apocalypse. is an exception to this rule. It clearly derives from the same bekground as the other Hekhalot writings. but is a much more highly edited composition than most of the other compilations in the corpus, has a definite theological agenda, and contains nothing in the way of mystical instruction (it may be added that we have here an Apocalypse which we know to be the product of a visionary mystical tradition). Schafer’s description of the win k is therefore almost certainly misleading. It seems more likely to be the case that the same mystical tradition gave rise to various types of composition. who forms reflect their different literary put poses.
In the light of these considerations. it is hardly surprising Ora a narrative description of the transformation of a pseudepigraphical apocalyptic hero is found in the Hekhalot corpus only in 3 Enoch. However, IV idea that tits vision of God entails a transformation of the beholder into fue or light iss as we have seen, well-documented. not only in the Apocalypses but also in the nerkaba h midrashim and the Hekhalot writings offer instructions whereby that vision may be obtained. there arc. moreover, references to such a transformation of the Mystic himself. In Hekhalot Zutarti, Aqiba states that the adept is able ‘to walk in rivers of fire and to know the lightning, 128 and, in another passage. that he himself ascended to heaven in a carriage of fire.’” which would hardly he possible in an ordinary body. AIso, in Hekhalot Zutartis we find Ishmael stating that as a result of his vision of the angelic vice-regent there called MGHSH or MNHSH) … my hands were bumed, and I was standing without hands or Feet.130 The most striking passage occurs Hekhalot Rabbati:
A quality of Witness. a quality of power, a quality of awefulness. a quality of dread, a quality of terror, a quality of trembling, a quality of fearfulness. a quality of arm is the quality of the garment of ZOHORARI’EL, LORD God of Israel. Who is crowned and comes and sits upon the Throne of His Glory. And it is embroidered all over and covered, within and without: YHWH, YHWH. And no creature’s eyes can behold it -neither the eyes of flesh and blood nor the eyes of His ministers. For he who beholds it—yea. he who glances and sees it—his eyeballs are ignited and whirled around: his eyeballs cast forth fire and spew forth fiery torches, and they set him ablaze and burn him up–for fire issues forth from the man who beholds and sets him ablaze and burns him up. Why? Because of the likeness of the eyes of the garment of ZOHARARI’EL, LORD God of Israel, who is crowned and comes upon the Throne of His Glory. And His splendour is pleasing and beautiful like the appearance of the beauty and splendour and glory of the eyes of the Living Creatures—as it is written: Holy! Holy! Holy is the LORD of Hosts!
Scholem comments on this passage:
This is not .. a description of dangers confronting the mystic. but of a mystical transfiguration taking place within him. What is a rettrement experience as the case of Enoch. however, is only a temporary experience in the case of the Merkabah mystic.
Chernus disputes this interpretation, arguing that the passage refers to the danger of the vision of the Glory,’” but both are surely right in what they affirm and wrong in vim( they deny. The meaning must lad that the vision of the garment of the Glory. which embodies the Name or God. involves a transformation of the mystic’s body into fire, a process which is terrifyingly dangerouss even fatal, should he prove unworthy. A striking parallel is found in The Pseudo-Clementine Homiliess where it is staled that no human being can look at the incorporeal form (morph e) of the Father or the Son:
For the excess of light dissolves the flesh of him who sees, unless by the secret power of God the flesh can be changed into the nature divine.
Attention should he drawn to the importance of praise in the Hekhalot literature. Long sections of these texts consist of grandiloquent, rhythmical and apparently ecstatic or ecstasy-inducing hymns and prayer It seems that the mystic, l combining recitation of these liturgical passages with visualisation of the images described and so entering, in imagination and belief, into the presence of the Glory and participating in the worship of the angels, produced in himself a state of intense emotion, which could, and apparently sometimes did, bring about an ecstatic, transformational experience of the kind that we have been considering. That such experience can involve extreme bodily sensations of fire and light is widely attested in the annals of devotional mysticism. This seems to have been known to Philo who states, in a well-known passage, that one who makes confession of praise becomes exempt from body and matter for he is permeated by fire in giving thanks to God and is drunk with a sober drunkenness.82 36
At I Enoch 71:11, we find a similar association of transformation with ecstatic praise:
I fell on my face. my w hole body mollified and my spirit trail Formed Then I cried out with a great voice by the spirit of the Power, blessing, glorifying and extolling.
The last three chapters of Hekhalot Rabbati. at the climax of the mystical ascent, consist of a long hymn (clearly a compilation from store than one source) which is said to be uttered by the Throne of Glory in the presence of God each day, and which the mystic is instructed to recite.’:” It seems that the mystic is identifying himself with the Merkabah and asking God to he enthroned upon or within him. In other words, he is seeking to become, like the patriarchs and righteous men of mythical history, a vehicle for the manifestation of the divine Image or 0106.
It would seem, then, that the story of Enoch’s transformation into Metatron may represent the ultimate aspiration of the Merkaba mystic. The traditions examined above suggest that a variety of mythical and historical figures were credited with having achieved such a transformation on what might be called a ‘cosmic’ scale and with having become veritable incarnations of the Name or Power of God. An analogous, though lesser, transformation was promised to the righteous in the world to come. But it seems that such a transformation was also considered possible, if only temporarily, for exceptionally holy individuals in this life. Such men were gifted with supernatural power and knowledge, and became intercessors between the divine and human worlds, because they had ‘become conformed to the divine Image or kabod and, like the High Priest in the Temple sanctuary, had been vested with the Name of God.
There may be an ironic reference to this belief at M Berakoth 2:8:
If a bridegroom wishes to recite the Sema. on the first, night, he ma,. (10 s0 It hough he is exempt from this obligation] Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel says: Not everyone who wishes to assume the Name may do so
It is clear from the context that ‘to assume the Name’ means to adopt the posture of an exceptionally pious and saintly person who is not distracted from his religious observance even on his wedding night. It seems reasonable to suggest that the expression is derived from the mystical tradition and indicates a transformation analogous to that of Enoch-Metatron which may only be safely undergone by exceptionally saintly persons. We have encountered the idea of ‘clothing’ with the Name in several traditions: of the Samaritan Moses, the Gnostic Christ and the righteous in the world to come. The traditions about the transformation of Enoch are expressed in very similar language. In Syriac Christian sources, the idea of taking the Name upon oneself or ‘sealing with the Name’ is often associated with The Initiatory death-rebirth transformation of baptism, in which man is conformed through the mediation of Christ to the divine Image,’” in which context Narsai says of the officiating priest:
Lo. The priest is ready to enter the Holy of Holies, to open the door of the kingdom of the height before them that would enter. Lo, he approaches the royal house, that he may receive power to perform the mysteries that are to be done by his hand. Lo, the King of the height reaches out to him the hand of the Spirit and places in his hand the signet of His Name, that he may seal His sheep. Lo, He puts on him the vesture of the immortals, that he may hide therewith the disgrace of men who were guilty and exposed.
It should be noted that revelatory visions and locutions are sometimes associated with the rite of baptism in the Syriac sources.140 Presumably. the New Testament stories of Jesus’ own baptism provided the paradigm for this association. Though he does not mention ‘clothing with the Name’. Paul’s understanding of baptism seems to be rooted in the same tradition of transformational mysticism:”’
.. you have put off the old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator.
Clement of Alexandria reports a Gnostic baptismal tradition that the candidate is:
baptized into the same Name as that in which his angel was baptized before him .. . in the beginning, the angels were baptized in the redemption of His Name which came down upon Jesus in the dove and redeemed him.
Further evidence that the baptismal transformation was associated by some Gnostics with pronunciation of the divine Name, with which the candidate is invested. is provided by The Gospel of the Egyptians. I his text, whose background in the Merkahah tradition is indicated by its description of the spiritual universe as a ‘glorifying throneroom’ (doxomed on ) domedon)114 and its application to Christ of the name MN.’ ’5 includes an (ecstatic?) post-baptismal hymn which begins as follows:’
0 Iessees!
… In very truth!
0 living water!
0 child of the
child!
O name of all the glories
In very truth!
0 eternal being!
In
very truth!
O being which beholds the aeons
In very truth!
In very
truth!
IRA A16 in the heart!
0 existent upsilon forever unto
eternity!
You are what you are!
You are who you are!
This great name of
yours is upon me, o self-originate that- lacks nothing and is free.
0
invisible unto all but [me]
0 invisible unto all!
For what being can
comprehend you by speech or praise?
Now that I have known you I have mixed
with your unchangeableness;155 And I have girded myself and come to dwell in an
armour of loveliness and light, and I have become luminous …
With this should be compared a statement found in the Apocalypse of Adam that the seed of Seth will receive the name of the Saviour ‘upon the water.
A short text from the circles of the Hasidei-’Askenazim who preserved the Hekhalot traditions, the Sefer-Ha Malbush, describes a ritual in which the practitioner makes for himself a priestly robe embroidered with the name of God and. following a period of ascetic preparation, is instructed to immerse as follows:
Go down into the water up to your loins and clothe ourself with the venerable and terrible Name in the water.
This seems almost to be an enactment of the tradition recorded in Genesis Rabbah that, when the Waters were divided on the third day of creation,
The voice of the LORD became Metatron upon the waters, as it is written: The voice of the LORD is upon the waters’ (Psalms 29:3).
The same scriptural verse is quoted in an initiation ritual described Eleazar of Worms (c. 1200). in which the divine Name is ‘transmitted’ master to pupil while both are standing up to their ankles in flowing water.”’ At all events, though the evidence for these rituals as such is relatively late, the underlying idea is so similar to that of the Syriac and Gnostic baptismal formule as to suggest a common origin in the evidently at n f tradition of transformational mysticism according to which the vision of God’s Glory transforms the visionary into the likeness of that Glory, and invests him with the divine Name, This seems also to be the background of many statements in the New Testament writings, particularly the letters of Paul to which several references have been made above.’” Consider also, for example, Romans 8:29:
Those whom He foreknew He also predestined to he conformed to the Image of His Son, in order that He might be the first-born of many brethren.
2 Corinthians 3:18:
and we alls beholding with unveiled faces the Glory of the Lord,’” are being
changed into His likeness from one degree of glory to another.
and perhaps, in the light of the si’ur qomah tradition and the cosmic bodies of Metatron and the primordial Adam, Ephesians 4:12–13:
for the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of
the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure
of the stature of the fullness (pleromatos) of Christ.
In the days to come,
The Mount of the Lord’s House Shall stand firm above the
mountains And tower above the hills;
And all the nations
Shall gaze on it
with joy.
And the many peoples shall go and say: “Come,
Let us go up to
the Mount of the Lord, To the House of the God of Jacob; That He may instruct us
in His ways, And that we may walk in His paths.”
For instruction shall come
forth from Zion, The word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
Thus He will judge among the nations
And arbitrate for the many peoples,
And they shall beat their
swords into plowpoints”
And their spears into pruning hooks:
Nation shall not take up
Sword against nation;
They shall never again know war. (Isa 2:2-4; cf. Mic 4:1-5)
Here we see numerous reflections of the Temple mythos which we have been delineating. The language of the eschatological establishment of the Temple (nakhon, “stand firm;’ v. 2) recalls both YHWH’s founding of a temple after His battle with Pharaoh at the Sea (Exod 15:17) and the language of creation, in which YHWH sets the earth upon its foundation (e.g., yekoneneha, Ps 24:1-2). The Temple is about to be refounded, and the world, renewed. The exaltation of the Temple Mount (nissa’, Isa 2:2) recalls Isaiah’s vision of YHWH seated “on a high and lofty (ram wenissa’) throne” (6:1). Apparently, the famous oracle of 2:2-4 is a description of the world as it is to be after YHWH’s final and irreversible enthronement, when He assumes direct rule over His universal dominion. Like so much of biblical literature, it is a historicization of the enthronement experience, this time (as often) in the future tense.The theme of peace (v. 4) is, as we have seen, also an integral element in the Temple mythos. In this oracle, it is extended beyond the vicinity of Zion, or, to be more precise, Zion so dominates the world that all war becomes as futile as an attack upon the inviolable and impregnable Temple Mount itself. The affirmation that God “puts a stop to wars throughout the earth” (Ps 46:10) seems to have had a place in the Temple theology (cf. vv. 9-12).
Finally, the prediction of “instruction” (torah, Isa 2:3) proceeding from Zion recalls the career of Isaiah himself, who bore his message from the Temple out into the world. The prediction is another reflex of the idea, common throughout the ancient Near East, of the temple as a place for oracles. But, in this vision, alongside the outward motion of the oracle as it leaves Zion/Jerusalem lies the motion of the nations as they march toward the Temple in quest of sacred knowledge. The image of the Gentiles converging on Zion, now resplendent and triumphant after a period of humiliation and desolation, became an important element in later Jewish eschatology (e.g., Isa 60-62).
It was an essential constituent of the vision of YHWH’s ultimate victory, which was complete and manifest only when He had assumed His throne in the palace upon His sacred mountain. “A new heaven and a new earth” were inextricably associated with a new Jerusalem, (re-)created “as a joy/and her people as a delight” (Isa 65:17-18). Visions of that (re)new(ed) temple and the proleptic experience of it were important in Jewish utopias (e.g., Ezek 40-48).
Temple and Synagogue
==================================The groundwork for Jewry’s survival of the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE. was laid after the Babylonians had razed the First in 587 B.C.E. The unavailability of the Temple to all Jews for another two generations and to Diaspora Jews ever after aided mightily in the emergence of ideas and institutions that stood in succession to the national shrine, principally the synagogue. Until the emergence of liberal Judaism in the nineteenth century, however,the succession of the Jerusalem Temple by the synagogue was not regarded as final. Rather, the synagogue was seen as a temporary measure, although, sadly, a long-lived one, until the -reconstruction of the Temple. In fact, the traditional liturgy continues to pray for the return of the Temple and the reinstitution of its sacrificial system. Prayer and sacred study replaced sacrifice, but sacrifice remained a central concern of prayer and sacred study. This curious arrangement, in which one institution replaces another without altogether displacing it, is adumbrated in the Hebrew Bible, in the longest biblical meditation upon the use of the Temple, Solomon’s dedication speech in 1 Kgs 8:12-53. The speech shows an acute consciousness of the possibility of national defeat in war and a consequent exile (vv. 33-34, 46-53), but it never once mentions the most frequent and obvious function of the Temple, to serve as a place for sacrifice! Instead it stresses prayer (tefilla) and supplication (tehinnah) unremittingly.37 The Temple, in fact, has become the place toward which Israel in exile directs their prayers (v. 48); from there they are referred to God’s heavenly abode, the supernal Temple. The survival of the Temple as a spiritual focus long after the physical entity had been destroyed is one of the most remarkable aspects ofJudaism. It is not that the Temple was spiritualized after its destruction. Instead, the spiritual role of the Temple after its destruction was a continuation of the role the Temple had long played in the devotional and visionary experience of Israel in the biblical period.
What is Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism?
April D. DeConick
Editor’s Introduction, Paradise Now: Essays on Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism (SBL 2006)
And what mortal person is it who is able
To ascend on high,
To ride on wheels,
To descend below,
To search out the inhabited world,
To walk on the dry land,
To gaze at His splendor,
To dwell with His crown,
To be transformed by His glory,
To recite praise,
To combine letters,
To recite their names,
To have a vision of what is above,
To have a vision of what is below,
To know the explanation of the living,
And to see the vision of the dead,
To walk in rivers of fire,
And to know the lightening?
And who is able to explain it,
And who is able to see it?
Hekhalot Zutarti, Sections 349-501
As a word, “mysticism” has a notorious reputation. Its polymorphic associations make precise meaning difficult to isolate, especially across cultures and eras. It is often used as an antonym for so called “rationalism,” associated with so-called “supernaturalism,” in contradistinction to our contemporary scientific view of the world. Broadly speaking, it has come to describe for us organized practices used to illicit direct contact with the divine.
As an “-ism,” “mysticism” is not an emic word, a word actually used by ancient people to describe their experiences. It corresponds to no single term in the ancient literature. In fact, when the early Jews and Christians describe their mystical experiences in a single word, they do so most often by employing the term “apokalypsis,” an “apocalypse” or “revelation.” In the Jewish and Christian period-literature, these religious experiences are described emically as waking visions, dreams, trances and auditions which can involve spirit possession and ascent journeys.2 Usually these experiences are garnered after certain preparations are made or rituals performed, although they can also be the result of rapture. The culmination of the experience is transformative in the sense that the Jewish and Christian mystics thought they could be invested with heavenly knowledge, join the choir of angels in worship before the throne, or be glorified in body.
So “mysticism” is an etic term, a modern typology, contemporary analytic vocabulary that we are imposing on the ancients in order to investigate their religiosity. It serves the modern scholar heuristically as a taxonomy, aiding our engagement in historical investigation and research. It is a comparative analytic tool created and employed by outsiders-to-the-culture and imposed on insiders. In etic terms, it identifies a tradition within early Judaism and Christianity centered on the belief that a person directly, immediately and before death can experience the divine, either as a rapture experience or one solicited by a particular praxis. This definition, although framed in etic terms, remains sensitive to the fact that the early Jews and Christians themselves made no distinction between unsolicited rapture and solicited invasion experiences – all were “apocalypses” – nor did they describe their experiences in terms of the unio mystica so central to later Christian mysticism.
1. A Dynamic Bilateral Tradition
“Early Jewish and Christian mysticism” serves to identify for us a bilateral mystical tradition flowing through Judaism and Christianity during their formative years. Since Judaism and Christianity are companion expressions of Second Temple Judaism, sibling religions that developed simultaneously within comparable historical contextures, the mystical tradition preserved in their literature is rightly characterized as manifestations of Jewish and Christian religiosity in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods. I would go as far as to suggest that the Christian mysticism of this period should be understood as essentially “Jewish,” beginning to take on its own individuality only by the mid- to late second century as can be seen, for instance, in the Alexandrian school run by Clement and then Origen.
As such, the early Jewish and Christian mystical tradition emerges in what I call, for the sake of brevity, the “period-literature” – that is, in Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature,3 in the writings of the Jewish theologian, Philo of Alexandria,4 in the Qumran literature,5 and possibly in the teachings of the Palestinian Jewish school of Yohanan ben Zakkai.6 There are a growing number of scholars, myself included, who think that these early currents of mysticism form the basis for Merkavah and Hekhalot speculation.7 Subsequently, these mystical traditions were absorbed into the Pharisaic and Tannaitic trajectory,8 some forms of Christianity,9 Gnostic schools,10 and later Kabbalistic materials.11 It goes without saying, I hope, that this literature is vast and variable, representing the opinions, interpretations and experiences of several different communities, most having no direct historical connection with or influence on the other, but all associated with Second Temple Jewish religiosity in one way or another. It is this familiarity with Second Temple Jewish religiosity, I think, which accounts for the emergence and development of a culturally and historically “unique” mystical tradition whose main features I wish to identify and describe. In this description, I do not write with any pretense or assumption that the tradition was monolithic or static. Rather I wish to emphasize its dynamism as it erupts within different social and historical contexts. My discussion of “early Jewish and Christian mysticism” should never be taken to suggest the linear progression or “evolution” of the tradition from one historical circumstance to the next. Rather, this tradition surfaces, sometimes simultaneously, within various social contexts and historical circumstances, and the communities involved are responsible for continually reusing and reshaping this “shared” mystical tradition for their own ends.
2. The Intersection of Hermeneutics and Experience
The persistent core of early Jewish and Christian mysticism is the belief that God or his manifestation can be experienced immediately, not just after death or eschatologically on the Last Day. This belief appears to me to be the consequence of at least two aspects of religiosity during the Second Temple period: hermeneutics and religious experience. It has been unfortunate that past academic discussions of the period-literature has been dogged by our need to treat these as antithetical. Although this attitude has encroached upon our analyses of the period-literature from the pseudepigraphical apocalypses to the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi collection, it has emerged most aggressively in scholarly discussion of the Merkavah and Hekhalot corpus, some scholars insisting that this literature represents mainly exegetical activity12 while others experiential.13
This dichotomy, of course, is a false dichotomy that has not served us well, as several studies have suggested.14 Elliot Wolfson, in fact, thinks that it is impossible to isolate phenomenologically an experience from its literal context, a position that seems to be akin to that of Steven Katz who has noted, I think correctly, that “all experience is processed through, organized by, and makes itself available to us in extremely complex epistemological ways.”15 It appears to me that this false dichotomy has been set in place because modernists have little patience for the so-called “supernatural,” feeling that the “supernatural” can and should be deconstructed in the wake of God’s death. But in so doing, we have forced our own demarcation between the natural world and the “supernatural” onto the ancient people we are studying, imposing as well our disposal of everything “supernatural” onto people who profoundly were invested in their “experiences” of God. The ancient Jews and Christians believed that they experienced the sacred, and they wrote about it. These people were deeply religious people whose texts are filled with feelings about and hopes for religious experience as they understood and imagined it.
In this regard, Paul’s own first-hand testimony cannot be emphasized enough, because it demonstrates that the first Christian Jews believed that they were recipients of ecstatic experiences both in the form of rapture events and invasions of heaven.16 In the context of this latter discourse, Paul also implies that he knows of other Christian Jews, perhaps associated with the mission of the Jerusalem church, who boast of mystical experiences.17 This is implied by the author of Colossians too.18 We have a quite strong tradition that the disciples and members of Jesus’ family who formed the initial church in Jerusalem had visions of Jesus following his death.19 To Paul’s first-hand witness we must also add the waking visions of John of Patmos and the dream visions of the Pastor Hermas. Of course, the evidence for mystical experience from second-hand accounts in the early Christian literature is staggering, ranging from the transfiguration of Jesus to the post-resurrection appearances to the vision of Stephen.20
As an historian, I am not concerned whether these ancient people “actually” experienced God. I can never know this. But this does not make its study pointless. As Bernard McGinn has aptly remarked, “Experience as such is not a part of the historical record. The only thing directly available to the historian…is the evidence, largely in the form of written records…”21 What I wish to understand and map is their belief that God had been and still could – even should – be reached, that the boundaries between earth and heaven could be crossed by engaging in certain religious activities and behaviors reflected in the stories of their primordial ancestors and great heros.
It makes no difference to me whether or not we describe these narratives of the heroes as literary or experiential literature because this distinction misses the point. The point we need to recognize is that the early Jews and Christians who were reading these texts believed that the stories were reports of actual encounters with God. The images and descriptions in these texts deeply affected the way that the early Jews and first Christians described and interpreted their own perceived experiences, and the way that they framed their hopes for future experiences.
So this fundamental belief – that the sacred could be experienced – was supported by their reading and exegesis of their scriptures. In turn, it was this belief that the early Jews and Christians wrote about in new texts which they characterized as “revealed” scriptures containing heavenly gnosis, the razim or “mysteries” of God. Many of these works – from the Jewish and Christian apocalypses to the Nag Hammadi texts – freely retell the biblical narratives under the auspices of an alternative revelation from an angelic being or primeval authority. In several ways, they were providing in these works counter-readings of the old scriptures, recomposing the stories through a new hermeneutic for a contemporary audience.22 In these new texts, the ancient Jews and Christians shared their revelation of the “things hidden” of the past, present and future, reinterpreting and rescribing the past to serve their present experiences and future hopes.23
The authors of these new texts appear to me to be rebelling against the idea that the truth about the sacred can be reached through intellectual engagement, through normal epistemological routes like traditional reading and interpretation of the scriptures. This is not to say that they shunned intellectual endeavors like studying Torah, developing hermeneutics, or creating elaborate mythologies to explain questions of cosmogony and theodicy. In fact, in a passage from the Hekhalot Rabbati we are told that the mystic must prove his worthiness to enter the seventh heaven by having “read the Torah, prophets and writings, Mishnayot, Midrash, Halakhot and Haggadot” and having learned “the interpretation of the Halakhot, prohibition and permission” and having abided by “every prohibition that is written in the Torah” and having observed faithfully “all the warnings of the laws, statutes and instructions that were said to Moses at Sinai” (Section 234)!
What these Jews and Christians seem to me to be saying is that intellectual pursuit of God and “truth” can only advance a person so far spiritually. It can get the person to the gate of the highest heavenly shrine, so to speak, but no further. They insist that knowledge of the sacred itself comes only through the direct experience of God, that is by actually meeting him face to face. It was this experiential encounter, they thought, that transformed them, that pulled them beyond the limits of their ordinary human senses and perceptions. This new godlike perspective, they believed, would lead to new understandings and revelations, allowing them to reinterpret the concealed truths and hidden histories locked within their sacred scriptures.24 So here lies the intersection between exegesis and experience. It is at this intersection, this crossroads that I think we should tarry, rather than running down either of these roads alone.
3. Communal Identities
“Early Jewish and Christian mysticism” as a tradition does not represent the imagination and opinions of isolated authors as much as those of living religious communities of people. 25 The nature of the communities, of course, varies in terms of its literature, social conventions and historical characteristics and any attempt to identify them must be done systematically with reference to particular texts, resisting any temptation to locate a single community responsible for the tradition. While some of the literature is more forthright with communal information, referencing rules of behavior or handbook guidelines for communal life like those found among the Dead Sea Scrolls or in Paul’s letters, most of the period-literature is very perplexing in this regard. Some of the most challenging cases have been with reference to pseudepigraphical literature like the Jewish and Christian apocalypses, the Nag Hammadi literature and the Hekhalot texts. Most scholars have come to think that the Jewish and Christian apocalypses, with their interest in ascension and secret teachings about the Last Days, can be identified with apocalyptic circles or “conventicles” of pious ascetics anxiously awaiting the imminent Eschaton whose social formation could have mirrored John the Baptist’s movement or the Qumran community.26 But this opinion has been challenged recently by other scholars who have pointed to a prophetic group27 or a collective of priests28 as equally creditable possibilities. The Enochic corpus within the apocalyptic literature has been singled out recently by a number of scholars who think that it not only represents a socially distinct group in early Judaism, but one connected to the community of Jews associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls.29 Identification of the “authors” of the Hekhalot books has been hotly contested in scholarly circles, as has their historical and literary relationship to the apocalypses.
According to the early opinion of G. Scholem and several scholars since Scholem, a circle of rabbis may have been responsible for the Hekhalot literature, literature believed to have formal connections with the Jewish and Christian apocalypses.30 Other scholars have thought the books should be identified with either a group of people in conflict with the rabbis – people who were protesting rabbinic Judaism through the composition of the Hekhalot literature – or a post-Rabbinic elite from the late Talmudic period.31 Others like M. Swartz and J. Davila identify the group outside the formal Rabbinic circles – with synagogue functionaries, poets, scribes, and even shamans, practitioners of ritual power.32 R. Elior has set forth the most comprehensive thesis I am aware of – that the writers of these traditions identify themselves with a disaffected priestly class of the first century C.E., particularly as expressed in the Dead Sea Scrolls and some of the Jewish apocalypses. After the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E., the priestly traditions are carried on by this disaffected class of Jews in the Hekhalot literature in order to transport the ruined earthly cult into the heavenly spheres.33
Communal attribution of the Nag Hammadi collection has come up against its own problems. For years after its discovery, this collection was thought to be a library of ancient Gnostic writings. This led to an indiscriminate use of the materials by scholars and the development of theories about an umbrella religion called “Gnosticism,” a religion which in fact did not exist. Examination of the collection over the last decade has brought with it the recognition that the texts themselves represent the opinions of different groups of early Jews and Christians and Hermetics. In fact, there are at least six religious communities represented in this corpus: Sethian Gnostic Christians, Valentinian Gnostic Christians, Simonians, followers of Julius Cassianus, Thomasine Christians, and Hermetics. It is significant to note that the majority of Sethian Gnostic and Valentinian Gnostic texts from the Nag Hammadi literature were written by people who self-identified with the Christian tradition, although some of the materials they rewrote look to be Jewish originally. It appears that those who authored most of these treatises considered themselves esoteric Christians who wished to pursue advanced spiritual study in some type of seminary or Christian study circle or lodge. So scholars have shifted to speak of them in terms of “schools” rather than religious communities separate from Judaism or Christianity.
This business of identifying social groups responsible for particular texts within the period-literature has been met with varying degrees of success. Here I wish to make clear that the early Jewish and Christian mystical tradition, in my opinion, is not the purview of a single religious community or to be located in a single community’s literature. There is no claim or assumption on my part that the early Jewish and Christian mystical tradition is founded by a particular body of people or maintained by a particular body of people. What I wish to fully articulate is the opinion that we are dealing with a variety of esoteric Jews and Christians over the course of several centuries who self-identified with different religious communities. There is no single social group responsible for the practice and preservation of this tradition, although there is mounting evidence that one of the main origins of the tradition was within Jewish priestly circles.
At any rate, it should be recognized that various social groups familiar with the mystical tradition employ it with different emphases and applications. This to me is one of the most the fascinating aspects about the study this tradition – how it was shaped and used within various social contexts and time periods. Future study of this tradition will need to articulate more carefully and systematically, I think, the social boundaries of various groups of esoteric Jews and Christians, their use and reformulation of the tradition for their own communal purposes and benefit.
4. A “Priestly” Cosmology
The early Jewish and Christian mystical tradition is supported by a distinct hermeneutic, itself based on exegesis of foundational Jewish texts, particularly but not exclusively, Genesis 1-3, Exodus 24 and 33, Ezekiel 1, 8, 10 and 40-48, Daniel 7 and Isaiah 6. Although the emphases and elements of this hermeneutic varies across the period-literature, several themes emerge as prominent and tend to cluster in regard to cosmology. The prominence of these themes can be tracked across the canonical and extra-canonical Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature of the Second Temple period, urging through many of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi texts, and flowing through the Merkavah and Hekhalot corpus as well as some Rabbinic stories. I mention this not to suggest or capture some linear progression of ideas from old to new as some scholars would like to do, but to underscore the insurgency of these themes in a variety of texts across many centuries and communities of believers.
These themes collectively represent the “worldview” or cosmology that undergrids mystical discussions within early Judaism and Christianity, a cosmology that appears to have strong connections with older Jewish priestly traditions as the work of Rachel Elior, in particular, has convinced me.34
4.1 The Glory of YHWH
The centerpiece of this cosmology is the belief that God has a “body,” called the “Glory” or Kavod of YHWH.35 This idea grew out of the study of certain Jewish scriptures, particularly sections of Ezekiel which describe his visions of an enthroned “likeness as the appearance of a Man (`adam),” a Man who looked like “fire” with “brightness around him.” This is “the appearance of the likeness of the Glory (kavod) of YHWH.”36 This figure is the very manifestation of the hidden YHWH, depicted in the scriptures as an anthropomorphic figure of fire or light.37 He presides over the created order oftentimes seated upon his merkavah, a special throne consisting of two cherubim with wings spread over the kapporet, the lid of the Ark of the Covenant in the Temple.38
In the period-literature of the Jews and Christians, the God who is seated on the throne in heaven is presented as Yahweh’s manifestation or Kavod. Luminous anthropomorphic descriptions of the “Hidden” God are the culmination of many of the stories of the heroes who journey to glimpse Yahweh enthroned. A cluster of images are found in these descriptions. His body is enrobed in a splendid white garment with a face emitting sparks.39 The haluq, or robe, is described as most holy, frightful and terrible, emitting tremors, terror, and vibration. Upon the inside and outside of the garment, from the top to the bottom, the tetragrammaton is etched.40 None of the angels can look directly at the enthroned deity, and the devotee heroes are usually only allowed peeks at his luminous body.41 He is exceedingly beautiful, to the extent that in the Hekhalot literature the expression that the devotee wishes “to behold the King in his beauty” has become formulaic.42
This luminosity of the Kavod acted as a mask or screen, functioning in such a way that protected the seer from direct gaze of God’s body and certain death, since it was believed that no one could directly see YHWH’s face and live. So on the one hand, it kept YHWH hidden from the direct gaze of his creatures. On the other hand, this covering of light served to reveal God indirectly, so that the presence of God would be available to the adept, usually as a quick glimpse.43 In the later Hekhalot literature, the negative effect of the vision is still maintained: “He who looks at him will immediately be torn. He who views his beauty will immediately be poured out like a jug.”44 At the same time, the devotee is told to report “what you have heard” and “what you have seen upon the countenance, ” a countenance which is revealed “three times daily in the heights,” and which “no man perceives and knows.”45 Here we note the paradox of the Hidden God whose very countenance or face cannot be seen, but only the luminous mask of the Glory which simultaneously covers him and reveals him. As Rabbi Akiba relates, “He is, so to say, as we are, but he is greater than everything and his Glory consists in this, that he is concealed from us.”46
These anthropomorphic descriptions of the Glory look to me to be very early since such a description is present in Exodus 33:18-34:8.47 In this passage, Moses wishes to see God’s Glory. When he asks permission, God reveals himself to Moses, but only his backside because “man shall not see me and live.” So the Lord said to Moses, “While my Glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand and you shall see my back. But my face shall not be seen.”48
Exegetical speculations about the Kavod led to the identification of the angelic figure in Daniel 7, the “one like a son of man” who is described as the special angel having the “appearance of a man” in Daniel 8:15 and 10:18, with the description of the Kavod found in Ezekiel 1:26, the “likeness as the appearance of man.” So in some period-literature, kavod-like angels sit on heavenly thrones and act as the great Judge and God’s vicegerent.49 For example, Adam and Abel, in the Testament of Abraham, have thrones in heaven. Adam is described sitting on a golden throne and having “the appearance of the man” which “was fearsome, like that of the Lord.”50 Abel is the great Judge of souls, and he sits on a crystal throne that blazes. He is “a wondrous man shining like the sun, like unto a son of God.”51 In the Apocalypse of Abraham, the angel who has God’s Name, Yahoel, is depicted as being “in the likeness of a man” and possessing a “golden scepter.”52
Such honor is also accorded to Moses in the Exagoge of Ezekiel the playwrite. Moses has a vision of a noble “man” seated on an enormous throne on the top of Mt. Sinai. This kavod-like figure gives Moses his crown and scepter, and gets up from the throne so that Moses can take his place. This fabulous scene appears to be built from Exodus 24:10, “And they saw the God of Israel, and there was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness.”
Interpretations of this passage in other literature, take it to be a throne vision of the Glory or Kavod.53 Perhaps the most well-known angelic vice-regent is Metatron, the great “enthroned” angel described throughout the Hekhalot literature.54 Many scholars have speculated about the origins and meaning of his name, with almost a dozen suggested possibilities, none of which has emerged as the favorite.55 He is called the “little YHWH,” “youth,” and “Prince of the World,” and is accorded many of the characteristics of the Kavod, although one tradition suggests that he is whipped for taking a seat on his throne.56 The traditions of Enoch, of course, are bound up with this angel, traditions which relate Enoch’s bodily transformation into this great angel. The destructive, almost infernal, transformation brings his body into conformity with the enormity of God’s body, when he “was enlarged and increased in size until [he] matched the world in length and breadth. He made to grow on me 72 wings, 36 on one side and 36 on the other…He fixed in me 365,000 eyes…There was no sort of splendor, brilliance, brightness, or beauty in the luminaries of the world that he failed to fix in me.”57
The body of God tradition is perhaps most developed in the Shi`ur Qomah (the “Measure of the Divine Body”) material where the dimensions and the corporeal appearance of God are enumerated in great detail. These materials describe the revelation by Metatron of the “measurement of the body” to the seers, Rabbi Akiba and Rabbi Ishmael. The materials depict anthropomorphic details of the body of God along with the mystical names of God’s gigantic limbs. The enormity of the body is a theme that can be traced to earlier texts, to some even located in the New Testament.58
This Jewish Kavod doctrine had a profound impact on the development of early Christian christologies. For instance, Paul describes Jesus as the “image” or “form” of God.59 In John’s gospel Jesus is depicted as God’s Glory or Kavod descended to earth.60 Descriptions of Jesus as the High Priest of the heavenly temple and depictions of Jesus as the Lamb all are heir to this tradition.61
4.2 The Heavenly Temple
The celestial realm is understood to be a heavenly version of the Jerusalem Temple. The various heavens are the hekhalot, shrine rooms or sanctuaries within the Temple. In the approach of the highest heaven, each successive room is more holy than the last, the Holy of Holies where God’s manifestation resides. These firmaments generally number seven. The association with the number seven appears to be a reference to the seven planetary spheres in combination with aspects of the Temple that number seven: seven gates, seven steps, the seven-branched lampstand62 and even seven levels as enumerated by Rabbi Jose – the area within the balustrade, the court of women, the court of Israel, the court of the priests, the area between the altar and the entrance to the Temple, the sanctuary, and the Holy of Holies.63 As Christopher Morray-Jones correctly notes, “The temple is not ‘in’ heaven: its seven ‘sanctuaries’ are the heavens.”
The angels associated with this heavenly Temple are the Temple’s functionaries: its priests performing cultic activities there.64 They are the guardians of the Covenant and the heavenly Temple and its gates, as well as “servants of the throne,” petitioners and worshipers offering “sacrifices” and recitations to God. Prayers, praises, thanksgivings, blessings and glorifications are sung as liturgies, filtering up through the heavens. The angelology assumed by these texts is very complex, with several grades of angels, most having names that are permutations of the divine Name or an attribute of God.
In fact, speculations about the divine Name and associations of it with various angels are quite dominant in the period-literature. Usually there is one highly exalted angel, like the “Angel of the Lord,” the “Angel of the Countenance,” “Metatron” or “Christ.”65 Sometimes, it is difficult to differentiate between this exalted Angel and God’s glorious manifestation, the Kavod or Doxa, who is enthroned on the merkavah seat in the Holy of Holies, the devir, the highest of the heavens. As we will see, the celestial merkavah is the special wheeled chariot made of four sacred creatures whose outspread wings formed the seat itself, much like the Ark of the Covenant in the earthly Temple. The throne in some cases is exalted, personified as an object of worship and a representation of God.66
As the work of Rachel Elior has especially pointed out, all aspects of the celestial Temple in fact correlate to an ideal aspect of the earthly Temple, including associations with the liturgical calendar, the seasons, creation, the Garden of Eden, life and fertility, betrothal and sanctification. Priestly concerns like holiness and purity are consistent, even excessive themes. Even angels must bathe in fiery rivers flowing near the throne.
Humans crossing the heavenly threshold must be exceedingly righteous and able to endure a bodily transfiguration into a flaming being. One of the reasons that this particular cosmology appears to have developed was as a guarantee that the Temple cult would not be disrupted even when the priesthood and the earthly Temple in Jerusalem was threatened, contaminated or destroyed. The continuation of a holy cultus in the heavenly Temple meant that continuity of creation and life would be maintained, a standard concern of the Jewish priests since the time of ancient Israel.67
4.3 The Merkavah
The chariot-throne from Ezekiel 1 in the period-literature is located in the heavenly Temple, in the highest and most holy heaven. A fabulous passage from Massekhet Hekhalot highlights its prominence: “And the throne of Glory is high up in the air, and the appearance of his Glory is like the appearance of the hashmal. And a diadem of brightness is upon his head, and the crown of the explicit Name is upon his brow. One half of him is fire, and the other half is hail. On his right is life, and on his left is death. And a scepter of fire is in his hand. And the curtain is parted in two before him, and seven angels who were created in the beginning minister before him inside the curtain” (Section 28).
This merkavah is described as a chariot with wheels like the sun.68 It is a crystal throne, blazing like fire, called the “Throne of Great Glory.”69 In the Hekhalot tradition, the throne is not only wheeled, but hovers like a bird underneath God’s splendor.70 God, in fact has remained seat on his throne since its creation, and will not leave it for all eternity.71
There is much speculation about the “faces” of the “chariot of cherubim” – the faces of the lion, the eagle, the ox, and the man.72 One tradition even identifies the man’s face with the patriarch Jacob whose “image” was engraved on the throne.73 Jarl Fossum has noted that the Fragmentary Targum Genesis 1:28 74 and the editio princeps reprinted in the London Polyglot,75 explicitly states that the image of Jacob was “upon” the throne, not engraved on the throne as the other Targumim. This is highly significant when it is realized that Targum Ezekiel 1:26 says that some people think the Glory on the throne is the form of Jacob.76 So some appealed to the likeness of Jacob as the Kavod. The angels, who long to see the Glory, but cannot, descend to earth to look upon his image in the flesh!77
The merkavah, in fact, in some texts is anthropomorphized like God himself. The throne holds converse with God, the King, even singing glorious hymns of praise to him.78 So glorious is the throne-chariot in these traditions, that there may have been some who thought it an object worthy of veneration, if not worship. So in the Hekhalot Rabbati we find the statement that the throne, like God, will “reign in all generations,” but that God is to be “honored beyond the throne of your Glory” and to be “appreciated more than your precious vessel.”79
Perhaps the most intriguing tradition about the merkavah, is the journey that devotees thought they could make to stand before it and hymn in the presence of the Glory. In the Hekhalot materials there is a unique development of this tradition, that the ascending devotee is a “descender to the chariot,” the yored merkavah. What this means and how it developed has really not been adequately resolved in my opinion although two explanations stand out from the rest. E. Wolfson has made a convincing case that the phrase refers to the enthronement of the devotee during the final stage of ascent.80 And Christopher Morray-Jones has offered in this book an article that suggests that the term is linked to the “downwards” posture assumed by the devotee so that the “ascent” through the heavens could also be viewed as a “descent” within the “temple” of the body. The descender to the chariot is very special, very holy, because he has transcended the natural boundaries of his humanity and entered the realms of the sacred. The journey of ascent and descent is fraught with grave danger and oral examinations administered by the guardian angels.81 He must be very knowledgeable of the Torah, the prophets, the writings, the Mishnah, the Midrash, the Halakah, the Haggadah, and their interpretations and their practical observation.82 He must show the guardians of the gates seals and know passwords.83 If he fails, destruction or insanity result. But if he succeeds, his descent to the merkavah can be made.
4.4 The Heavenly Curtain
Spread in front of the merkavah is the secret heavenly curtain, the pargod. This is the heavenly counterpart of the veil, the paroket, which divided the Holy of Holies from the Hekhal in the Temple in Jerusalem.84 Upon the heavenly curtain, the thoughts and deeds of all the human generations are recorded, including future ones. Rabbi Ishmael stresses that he saw “with his own eyes” all the deeds of Israel and the Gentiles “till the end of time” printed on the curtain.85 The printed record of humanity’s deeds on the curtain was for Yahweh’s benefit on the day of Judgment, when one glance examines everyone’s deeds and determines everyone’s judgment.86
Ultimately, the heavenly curtain screened off the Kavod from the angels because of the destructive nature of its view.87 But, as Christopher Morray-Jones has noticed, the curtain also functions as a celestial firmament, dividing the seventh heaven from the lower heavens and sanctuaries.88
5. An Internalized Apocalypse
Modern scholars have been slow to recognize that “early Jewish and Christian mysticism” is a major dimension of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic thought, even though the ancients themselves call these experiences “apokalypses.” There has been a tendency in academia to equate apocalypticism with eschatology, as if an “apokalypsis” were the Last Day.89 So visions of destruction, retribution, and salvation have become associated exclusively with the study of the apocalyptic, ignoring its atemporal aspects. This faulty understanding of apocalyptism which concentrates almost exclusively on the revelation of End time phenomenon is reflected in the standard definition of the term found in the well-respected Semeia volume on the subject: “Apocalypse is a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial as it involves another, supernatural world.”90 To be fair, this understanding of apocalypticism does not appear to have been only the misconception of the SBL Genres Project, but has been around in the scholarly prose for a very long time.
In fact, a careful reading of the second Temple apocalypses tells us that eschatology, the secret revelation of the imminence of the End, is only part of the discussion. The other part is the mystical, the belief in the immediate and direct experience of God. This belief has to do with religious experience, the act of revelation itself, the encounter with God, which results in the devotee’s immediate personal transformation and the uncovering of God’s mysteries. This mystical dimension of apocalyptic thought appears to me to have been developed by esoteric Jews and Christians in response to unfulfilled redemptive promises during times when hopes for their fulfillment were being historically challenged. The redemptive myth itself was founded on what seems to have been a standard Jewish myth in the Second Temple period, that there existed a heavenly Anthropos who was thought to have come forth from God prior to creation.91
This tale was inspired by rereading Genesis 1:3 in Greek. Since the word phos can mean both “light” (tov fw§?”) and “man” (oJ fwv”), exegetes determined that a heavenly Man of Light came forth when God said, “Let there be phos!”92 This luminous heavenly Man was portrayed as God’s partner in creation.93 The Anthropos was identified further with both the Kavod and the cosmic Adam, and thus was perceived to be the Image of God. This Image, they thought, came into existence on the first day of creation and acted as a cosmogonic agent.94 Later Jewish mystical traditions, in fact, explicitly call the primordial luminous Man the Yotser Bereshith, the “creator in the beginning.”95 In 3 Enoch, the heavenly Man and Kavod-like Metatron is given a crown etched with the letters of light by which “all the necessities of the world and all the orders of creation were created.”96 Christian texts, Hermetic texts and Gnostic texts, all influenced by this old Jewish mythology, also preserve reference to the demiurgic aspect of the Anthropos.97
According to this standard Jewish myth, the human being was created after the likeness of the Anthropos.98 Since the first human being was created in God’s image according to the Genesis story, this meant for some thinkers that Adam must have been a reflection of the Kavod. This aspect of the myth may explain some of the Adamic traditions which depict the veneration of the created Adam.99 Be that as it may, the image of the first human being was said to have been so bright that it even surpassed the brightness of the sun.100 His body, like the cosmic Anthropos, was so immense that it filled the universe from one end to the other.101
But this radiant image or immense body either was taken away from Adam or altered as a consequence of his Fall according to this myth. 102 Aspects of this speculation were rooted in discussion about Genesis 3:21 where God made Adam and Eve “garments of skin, and clothed them.” It was concluded that Adam and Eve originally must have worn garments of light that were lost as a consequence of their sin.103 This type of exegesis brought with it the consequence that the human being was in something of a predicament. Was it possible to restore this radiant image, to return the human being to his prelapsarian glory? Most early Jews and Christians thought that piety was the key to such transformation of the soul. If the person lived his or her life in obedience to the commandments (God’s and/or Jesus’), at death or the Eschaton, the glory that Adam had lost would be restored. This they taught by way of their doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, the restoration of the whole person as a glorious angelic-like body reflecting God’s Image.104
But it appears that some Jews and Christians felt that the lost Image could be restored, at least provisionally, before death, that Paradise and its fruits could be had Now. That this mythological paradigm was religiously operable outside the literary context is clear to me when we examine, for instance, the literature of the Dead Sea Scrolls or Philo’s account of the Therapeutae or Paul’s epistles.
In this literature, we have first-hand accounts of communities of believers involved in religious activities to achieve mystical transformation of the body in the here and now, and the elevation of the adept to the community of angels.105 Many of the first Christians contemplated their own ascensions into heaven and bodily transformations, believing that Jesus’ exaltation and transformation had opened heaven’s gate for them. Paul believed that the faithful who were possessed by Christ’s spirit could start experiencing the transformation into the image of God while still on earth but that full glorification would only occur after death.106 Others Christians promoted pre-mortem flights into heaven and full transformation in the present as the result.107
This shift in thought to concentrate on the fulfillment of God’s promises in the present appears to me to have been largely a consequence of failed eschatological expectations. Since the mystical tradition was a “vertical” dimension of Jewish apocalyptic thought running perpendicular to the eschatological,108 this shift would have been easy to make. It moved the eschatological encounter with God and promises of bodies glorified from the future sphere to the present, from an external cosmic apocalyptic event to an internal apocalyptic experience. This meant that the traditional rewards reserved for the Last Day, became available to believers Now through personal mystical encounters with the divine, encounters that were frequently described by these esoteric Jews and Christians in terms of a heavenly journey that culminated in a vision of God or his Kavod. This visionary experience initiated the process of the person’s transfiguration whereby his or her body became “angelic” and was “glorified.”109 Since some early Christians identified Jesus with the Kavod or Doxa, they talk about visionary journeys to see Jesus as well as the Father.
The mechanism for vision apotheosis appears to me to be Greek in origin.110 It was based on an ancient physiology that suggested that the “seen” image enters the seer through his eye and transforms his soul: “The pleasure which comes from vision enters by the eyes and makes its home in the breast; bearing with it ever the image…it impresses it upon the mirror of the soul and leaves there its image.”111 This idea is as old as Plato who suggested that the vision of the object touched the eye and was transmitted to the soul. In fact, he uses the image of the soul as a block of wax upon which a vision received is imprinted like a stamp of a signet ring.112
For these mystical Jews and Christians, this must have meant that a vision of the Kavod, the Image of God, literally resulted in the “re-stamping” of God’s image on the soul, restoring it to its original Form and Glory. In the ancient language of their mythology, they said that they would become “glorified,” “exalted,” or “angelic.”113 They would be clothed in shining white garments, become “standing” angels worshiping God before his throne, be transformed into beings of fire or light, be “enthroned,” regain their cosmic-sized bodies, or be invested with God’s Name or Image.114
Ultimately, even their minds would surpass normal human limits of comprehension as it too became godlike. Enoch relates regarding his own transformation into the angel Metatron: “The Holy One, blessed be he, revealed to me from that time onward all the mysteries of wisdom, all the depths of the perfect Torah and all the thoughts of human hearts. All mysteries of the world and all the orders of nature stand revealed before me as they stand revealed before the Creator. From that time onward, I looked and beheld deep secrets and wonderful mysteries. Before anyone thinks in secret, I see his thought. Before he acts, I see his act. There is nothing in heaven above or deep within the earth concealed from me.”115
6. Communal Practices
Avenues for mystical transformation other than the visionary were also popular in Judaism and Christianity, including asceticism, imitation, washing, spirit possession, eating “divine” food or drink, anointing the body with a sacramental oil or dew, chanting permutations of God’s Name and so forth. Thus the period-literature is impregnated with references to practical activities associated with a mystical praxis.
The literature does not simply contain indirect references to ritual washing, anointing, study of sacred texts, vigils, sacrifice, fasting, withdrawal, and sexual asceticism in the narratives of the heroes. The period-literature also contains pieces of actual liturgy, prayers, hymns, repetitive chants, and “magical” formulas, as well as references to periods of silence. Many of these are suggestive of communal behavior, initiation rites, and contemplative practices, although individual activity like incubation and dream visions are also known. Some of the references point to the development of “magical” practices at least as evidenced in the Hekhalot handbooks, 116 and sacramental ritual behavior, particularly (but not exclusively) in the Christian tradition.
The activities appear to have varied widely, so the exploration of practices as they were developed in individual communities is essential. No single praxis can be sifted out of the period-literature, so praxis must be studied as variant practices in particular community settings whenever possible. What the community at Qumran was doing in order to participate in the angelic liturgy was different from what the Sethian Gnostics were doing to ascend into the Godhead to practice the soul-journey home. What the Therapeutae were doing to become “citizens of heaven while on earth” was different from what the Hekhalot practitioners were doing to “descend to the chariot.”
What particularly has fascinated me as a scholar of Christian Origins is the reformation of the mystical praxis into the sacramental rituals of the early Christian Church and the “Gnostic” schools. The sacraments seem to me to have been set in place to “democratize” the mystical, making the presence of God regularly available to believers – baptism, anointing, and the eucharist all affecting the transformation of the soul and the integration of the Holy Spirit and the Christ into the soul. These rituals were understood to function in such a way that the person was reintegrated into the divine immediately and ontologically. Some texts even narrate this belief in terms of the ascent journey motif! That is, the ritual is presented as the vehicle that elevates and transports the person into the sacred realm so that he or she can come into the very presence of God.
Lately, I have come to understand many of narratives in the apocalyptic and mystical texts to be “verbal icons,” not simply “imaginative narratives” recounting the heavenly journeys and visions of the great heroes of the tradition, but “verbal maps” which functioned to actually bring the devotee into the presence of God. Not unlike later Byzantine pictorial icons, meditation upon the verbal images would have expressed and made present the sacred reality. The person who contemplated these texts would have been making himself ready to receive the mysteries that would be revealed directly and immediately to him. Through verbal recitation of the narrative or mental recall of the memorized text, the devotee too would have journeyed into the heavenly spheres and the presence of God, embracing this present experience through its likeness to that which was past.117 His ability to decipher the meaning of the words written would have provided his own journey into the heavenly world. What mattered to the devotee was not so much following the map in terms of sequential geography, but rather his ability to mentally picture the “places” where the hero had gone before, seeing again what the great heroes of the Jews and Christians had themselves seen. And in so doing, he would have appropriated the text for himself, and its mysteries.
This appropriation, in my opinion, results in part from the fact that during this period the apocalypse had been internalized. The cosmic had collapsed into the personal. The period-literature indicates that some Jews and Christians hoped to achieve in the present, the eschatological dream, the restoration God’s Image within themselves – the resurrection and transformation of their bodies into the glorious bodies of angels, and their minds into the mind of God. They developed various means to achieve this, including visionary flights to heaven, eating divine food and drinking divine drink, immersing themselves in water, anointing their bodies with sacred oil, intoning God’s Name, and so on. As Alan Segal insightfully comments, “The myth suggests the goal; the mysticism gives the practical way to achieve it.” Although the employment of particular practices varied from community to community, all appear to me to have been vying for the glories and power of Paradise Now.
Notes
1 All references in this chapter to Hekhalot texts (excluding 3 Enoch) are to P. Schäfer, Synopse zur Hekhalot- Literatur (Tübingen: Mohr, 1981) and English translations of passages from the Hekhalot texts (excluding 3 Enoch) are those of P. Schäfer, The Hidden and Manifest God: Some Major Themes in Early Jewish Mysticism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998).
2 See particularly, F. Flannery-Dailey, Dreamers, Scribes, and Priests. Jewish Dreams in the Hellenistic and Roman Eras, JSJSup 90 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2004).
3 G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Jerusalem: Schocken Publishing House, 1941), pp. 40-79; idem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkavah Mysticism and Talmudic Tradition (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1960); idem, On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism (trans. R. Manheim; New York: Schocken Books, 1965); idem,Kabbabah (Jerusalem and New York: Merdian, 1974), pp. 8-21;
idem, Origins of the Kabbalah (ed. R. J. Z. Werblowsky; trans. A. Arkush; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 18-24; idem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead: Basic Concepts in the KABBALAH (ed. J. Chipman; trans. J. Neugroschel; forward by J. Dan; New York: Schoken Books, 1991). I. Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism (AGJU 14; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1980); C. Morray-Jones, Merkabah Mysticism and Talmudic Tradition (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1988).
4 See the classic work by E.R. Goodenough, By Light, By Light (Amsterdam: Philo Press, 1969). K. Kohler first determined that elements of Merkavah mysticism can be found in Philo: “Merkabah,” The Jewish Encyclopedia 8 (ed. I. Singer; New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1904), p. 500. H. Chadwick has suggested that agreements between Paul and Philo may be the result of a common background in Jewish mysticism: “St. Paul and Philo of Alexandria,” BJRL 48 (1966), pp. 286-307.
5 Gruenwald, Merkavah Mysticism, p. vii; L. H. Schiffman, “Merkavah Speculation at Qumran: The 4Q Serekh Shirot ‘Olat ha-Shabbat,” in J. Renharz and D. Swetschinski (eds.), Mystics, Philosophers, and Politicians: Essays in Jewish Intellectual History in Honor of A. Altmann (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1982) 15-47; C.H.T. Fletcher-Louis, All the Glory of Adam. Liturgical Anthropology in
the Dead Sea Scrolls, STDJ 62 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2002); R. Elior, The Three Temples. On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004).
6 Cf. Scholem, Major Trends, p. 41; E. E. Urbach, “Ha-Masorot ‘al Torat ha-Sod bi-Tequfat ha-Tannaim,” in A. Altmann (ed.), Studies in Mysticism and Religion: Presented to G. G. Scholem on his Seventieth Birthday (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1967), pp. 2-11; J. W. Bowker, “‘Merkavah Visions and the Visions of Paul,” JJS 16 (1971), pp. 157-173; J. Neusner, A Life of Yohanan ben Zakkai: Ca. 1-80 C.E. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2nd revised ed., 1970); A. Goldberg, “der Vortrag des Ma`asse Merkawa: Eine Vermutung zur frühen Merkavamystik,” Judaica 29 (1973), pp. 9-12; C. Rowland, The Influence of the First Chapter of Ezekiel on Jewish and Early Christian Literature (Ph.D. Thesis, Cambridge University, 1974); idem, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic In Judaism and Ealry Christianity (London: SPCK, 1982), 282-283, and 303-305; Gruenwald, Merkavah Mysticism, pp. vii, and 73-86; cf. Morray-Jones, Merkabah Mysticism and Talmudic Tradition; Kanagaraj, “Mysticism” in the Gospel of John, pp. 150-158.
7 On this, see now J.R. Davila, Descenders to the Chariot. The People behind the Hekhalot Literature, JSJSup 70 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2001); C.R.A. Morray-Jones, A Transparent Illusion. The Dangerous Vision of Water in Hekhalot Mysticism: A Source-Critical and Tradition-Historical Inquiry, JSJSup 59 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2002); V.D. Arbel, Beholders of Divine Secrets. Mysticism and Myth in the Hekhalot and Merkavah Literature (Albany: SUNY, 2003). For a contrary view, see Halperin, Merkavah, pp. 107-140 and 179-185; P. Schäfer, “New Testament and Hekhalot Literature: The Journey into Heaven in Paul and in Merkavah Mysticism,” JJS 35 (1984), pp. 19-35.
8 Cf. Schiffman, “Merkavah Speculation,” p. 46.
9 On Paul’s familarity with mystical Judaism, see especially now A. F. Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 34-71; C. Morray-Jones, “Paradise Revisited (2 Cor. 12.1-12): The Jewish Mystical Background of Paul’s Apostolate. Part 1: The Jewish Sources” and “Part 2: Paul’s Heavenly Ascent and its Significance,” HTR 86 (1993), pp. 177-217 and 265-292; J Ashton, The Religion of Paul the Apostle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). On Thomasine traditions, see A. D. DeConick, Seek to See Him. Ascent and Vision Mysticism in the Gospel of Thomas, VCSup 33 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996); A. D. DeConick, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas: A History of the Gospel and Its Growth, JSNTSup 286 (London: T & T Clark, 2005). On Johannine traditions, refer to A. D. DeConick, Voices of the Mystics. Early Christian Discourse in the Gospels of John and Thomas and Other Ancient Christian Literature, JSNTSup 157 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001); J.J. Kanagaraj, “Mysticism” in the Gospel of John. An Inquiry into its Background, JSNTSup 158 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998).
10 On this, see especially my recent articles, “Heavenly Temple Traditions and Valentinian Worship: A Case for First-Century Christology in the Second Century,” in C. C. Newman, J. R. Davila, and G. S. Lewis (eds.), The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism: Papers from the St. Andrews Conference on the Historical Origins of the Worship of Jesus, Supplements to JSJ 63 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999), pp. 308-341; “The True Mysteries. Sacramentalism in the Gospel of Philip,” VC 55 (2001) pp. 225-261; Morray-Jones, A Transparent Illusion.
11 Cf. E. R. Wolfson, Through A Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).
12 Cf. D. J. Halperin, The Merkabah in Rabbinic Literature (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1980); idem, The Faces of the Chariot (Tübingen: Mohr, 1988); P. Schäfer, “Tradition and Redaction in Hekhalot Literature, JSJ 14 (1983); idem, “The Aim and Purpose of Early Jewish Mysticism,” in his Hekhalot-Studien, Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum 19 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1988); idem, “Merkavah Mysticism and Rabbinic Judaism,” JAOS 104 (1984), pp. 537-554.
13 Scholem, Major Trends, pp. 45- ; Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah, pp. 98- ; J, Dan, Three Types of Jewish Mysticism (Cincinnati: University of Cincinnati Press, 1984) pp. 8-16; J. Dan, “The Religious Experience of the Merkavah,” in A. Green (ed.), Jewish Spirituality. From the Bible Through the Middle Ages (New York: Crossroad, 1986) pp. 289-307; J. Dan, The Ancient Jewish Mysticism (Tel Aviv: MOD Books, 1993); R. Elior, “The Concept of God in Hekhalot Mysticism,” in J. Dan (ed.), Binah, Studies in Jewish Thought II (New York: Praeger, 1989) pp. 97-120; Elior, “Mysticism, Magic, and Angelology,” pp. 3-53; Elior, “From Earthly Temple to Heavenly Shrine,” pp. 217-267; K.E. Grözinger, Musik und Gesang in der Theologie der fruehen juedischen Literatur (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1982); Morray-Jones, “Transformation Mysticism;” K.E. Grözinger, “The Names of God and the Celestial Powers: Their Function and Meaning in the Hekhalot Literature,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 6 (1987) pp. 53-69.
14 Cf. P. Alexander, “The Historical Setting of the Hebrew Book of Enoch,” JJS 28 (1977) p. 173 (156-180); Rowland, Open Heaven, pp. 214-240; Wolfson, Speculum; Arbel, Beholders. For complimentary views regarding mysticism generally, see B. Garaside, “Language and Interpretation of Mystical Experience,” International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 3 (1972) pp. 93-102; P. Moore, “Mystical Experience, Mystical Doctrine, Mystical Technique,” in S.T. Katz (ed.), Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (London: Sheldon, 1978) pp. 101-131; C. Keller, “Mystical Literature,” in S.T. Katz (ed.), Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (London: Sheldon, 1978) pp. 59-67.
15 Wolfson, Speculum, p. 120; S.T. Katz, “Language, Epistemology and Mysticism,” in his Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (London: Sheldon, 1978) pp. 26 (22-26).
16 Gal 1:12; 1 Cor 15:8; 2 Cor 12:2-4.
17 cf. 2 Cor 11:21-12:11.
18 Col 2:16-18.
19 1 Cor 15:5-7.
20 Mk 9:2-8; Matt 17:1-8; Lk 9:28-36; Mk 16; Matt 28; Lk 24; Jn 20; Gos. Pet. 12-14; Acts 7:55-56.
21 B. McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism, v. 1 (New York: Crossroad, 1991) p. xiv.
22 Cf. H. Najman, “Interpretation as Primordial Writing. Jubilees and its Authority Conferring Strategies,” JSJ 30 (1999) 379-410; H. Najman, “Torah of Moses. Pseudonymous Attribution in Second Temple Writings,” in C.A. Evans (ed.), The Interpretation of Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity. Studies in Language and Tradition (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000) 202-216; H. Najman, Seconding Sinai. The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2003) 41-69; H. Najman, “The Symbolic Significance of Writing in Ancient Judaism,” in H. Najman and J.E. Newman (eds.), The Idea of Biblical Interpretation. Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2004) 139-173.
23 This is a natural function of communal memory. On this, see M. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Trans. L.A. Coser; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 [1925]) p. 40; M. Halbwach, The Legendary Topography of the Gospels in the Holy Land (trans. L. Coser; Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992 [1941]) p. 7; F. Zonabend, The Enduring Memory: Time and History in a French Village (Trans. A. Forster; Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984) p. 203; P. Hutton, “Collective Memory and Collective Mentalities: The Halbwachs-Aries Connection,” RHist 15 (1988) p. 314; J. Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) p. 75; I. Irwin-Zarecka, Frames of Remembrance: The dynamics of collective memory (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1994) p. 7; B. Zelizer, “Reading the Past Against the Grain: The Shape of Memory Studies,” CSMC 12 (1995) 228; B. Swartz, Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000) p. 9.
24 On this subject, see now Arbel, Beholders of the Secrets; “Seal of Resemblance,” 2005, 130-142.
25 For a detailed account of the nature of traditions, see E. Shils, Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981) and my own, “The ‘New’ Traditionsgeschichtliche Approach,” in Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas, pp. 3-37.
26 Cf. M. Smith, “Palestinian Judaism in the First Century,” in M. Davis (ed.), Israel: Its Role in Civilization (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1956) p. 69; M. Stone, “Apocalyptic Literature,” in Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period, Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum, 2.2 (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) p. 430.
27 R. Hall, “The Ascension of Isaiah. Community, Situation, Date, and Place in Early Christianity,” JBL 109 (1990) pp. 289-306. F Flannery-Dailey, Dreamers.
29 Cf. G. Nickelsburg, “The Apocalytpic Construction of Reality in 1 Enoch,” in J.J. Collins and J. Charlesworth (eds.), Mysteries and Revelations. Apocalyptic Studies Since the Uppsala Colloquium, JSPSup 9 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991); J.J. Collins, The Apocalytpic Imagination. An Introduction to the Jewish Matrix of Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1984) pp. 56-63; G. Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmann’s Publishing, ); G. Boccaccini, Enoch and Qumran Origins (Grand Rapids: Eerdmann’s Publishing, 2005).
30 Scholem, Major Trends, pp. 41-47; Merkavah, pp. 7-8.
31 Halperin, Merkavah, pp. 3- , 183- ; Chariot, cs. 1 and 9; P. Schäfer, “The Aim and Purpose of Early Jewish Mysticism,” in Hekhalot-Studien, p. 293; Hidden and Manifest, p. 159.
32 Swartz, Mystical Prayer, pp. 211-223; Davila, “The Hekhalot Literature and Shamanism,” pp. 767-789; Descenders to the Chariot.
33 Elior, Three Temples.
34 Elior, Three Temples.
35 For complete coverage, see J. Fossum, “Glory,” Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (ed. K. van der Toorn et. al.; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996) 348-352.
36 Ezek 1:28.
37 cf. Ezek 1:27-28; 8:2; Isa 6:1-4.
38 cf. 1 Chron 28:18; 1 Kings 6:23-28, 8:6-7; 2 Chron 3:10-11, 5:7-8.
39 1 Enoch 14:18-21; 2 Enoch 22:1-4; 39:3-8.
40 Hekh. Rabb. Section 102.
41 Hekh. Rabb. Section 102.
42 cf. Hekh. Rabb. Sections 198, 248, 259; Hekh. Rabb. Sections 407-409; 411, 412.
43 cf. Philo, Mut. 7; Fug. 165; 1 Enoch 14; 2 Enoch 22.
44 Hekh. Rabb. Section 159; 102; 104; 105; cf. Hekh. Zut. Section 356.
45 Hekh. Rabb. Section 169.
46 Hekh. Zut. Section 352.
47 In the Priestly source, the Glory is not anthropomorphic but a phenomenon of light. It is associated with a pillar of cloud or fire that surrounded YHWH as he led the Israelites through the desert or when his presence resided in the Tabernacle and then the Temple (Exod 16:10; 24:16-17, 43-44; 40:34-35, 38; Num 17:7; 1 Kings 8:10-11; Lev 9:23-24; 1 Sam 3:3; 4:21). It appears that we are seeing in these texts an association of the Glory with cultic practices since it is directly said to “fill” the Tabernacle and Temple (Exod 40:34-35; 1 Kings 8:10-11), be present at the altar of sacrifice (Lev 9:23-24), and function as some sort of lamp connected with the Ark (cf. Exod 27:20-21).
48 Exod 33:22-23.
49 1 Enoch 45:3; 55:4; 61:8; 62:2: 69:29.
50 Rec A, 11:4.
51 Rec. A, 12:5.
52 11:3.
53 Tg. Onq. And Tg. Ps.-J.; b. Men. 43b; Mem. Marqah, Crowley 1909:25.
54 For an outstanding presentation of the materials about Metatron, see A. Orlov, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition, TSAJ (Göttingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005).
55 Orlov, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition, pp. 92-96.
56 b. Hag. 15a.
57 3 Enoch 9.
58 cf. Eph 3:18-19; 4:13; Col 1:18-19; 2:9; Epiph., Ref. 30.17.6; 2 Enoch 39:3-6; Merk. Rabb. Sections 688-
704.
59 2 Cor 4:4, Col 1:15; Phil 2:6.
60 1:14; 2:11; 11:40; 12:23, 28, 41; 13:32; 17:1-5, 22-23.
61 Heb 3:1; 4:14-16; 5:1-10; Rev 5:6-14; 7:13-8:1; 14:1-5.
62 Josephus, Ant. 3.6.7; War 5.5.5; 7.5.5.
63 André Neher, “Le voyage mystique des quatre,” RHR 140 (1951) 73-76.
64 Elior, Three Temples.
65 Cf. Fossum, Name, 177- , 319- ; Fossum, “Jewish Christian Christology and Jewish Mysticism,” VC 37 (1983) pp. 260-287; Rowland, Open Heaven, 94-113; C. Rowland, “The Vision of the Risen Christ in Rev. 1:13ff: The Debt of Early Christology to an Aspect of Jewish Angelology,” JTS 31 (1980) pp. 1-11; Carr, Angels and Principalities, pp. 143-147; J. Daniélou, “Trinité et angélologie dans la théologue judéochrétienne,” RSR 45 (1957) pp. 5-41; J. Daniélou, The Origins of Latin Christianity (London, 1977) pp. 149-152; Wolfson, Speculum, pp. 255-269; G. Quispel, “Gnosticism and the New Testament”; G. Quispel, “The Origins of the Gnostic Demiurge,” in P. Granfield and J.A. Jungman (eds.), Kyriakon: Festschrift Johannes Quaesten (Münster: Aschendorff, 1970) ; G. Quispel, “The Demiurge in the Apocryphon of John,” in R. McL. Wilson (ed.), Nag Hammadi and Gnosis (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1978).
66 cf. Hekhalot Rabbati section 236 and 257.
67 Elior, Three Temples.
68 1 Enoch 14:18-21.
69 Test. Abr. Rec. B, 8:5; Rec. A, 12:5.
70 Hekh. Rabb. Section 98, MS Vatican.
71 Hekh. Rabb. Section 119.
72 1 Chr 28:18 LXX; Ecclus 49:8; cf. Hekh. Zut. Sections 368-374; Hyp. Arch. 29; Orig. World 32.
73 Tg. Ps.-Jonathan; Tg. Neofiti I; Fragmentary Tg.; Gen. R. 68:12
74 MS Vatican.
75 Venice.
76 MS Montefiore No. 7.
77 Fossum, Image of the Invisible God, 135-142.
78 Hekh. Rabb. Sections 94, 99, 154, 161-162, 634, 687, 686.
79 Section 257.
80 E. Wolfson, “Yeridah la-Merkavah: Typology of Ecstasy and Enthronement in Ancient Jewish Mysticism,” in R.A. Herrera (ed.), Mystics of the Book: Themes, Topics, and Typologies (New York: Lang, 1993) 13-44.
81 cf. Hekh. Rabb. 224-258.
82 Hekh. Rabb. 234.
83 Hekh. Rabb. 236.
84 Exod 26:31; 2 Chr 3:14.
85 3 Enoch 45:1-6.
86 Frag. T.-S. K21.95.J, fol. 2b, lines 2-11, Schäfer, Geniza-Fragmente, 133.
87 Tg. Job 26:9; 3 Enoch Rec. B 22:6.
88 Morray-Jones, A Transparent Illusion, pp. 153-172.
89 Collins, McGinn, Stein.
90 J.J. Collins, “Introduction: Towards the Morphology of a Genre,” Semeia 14 (1979) 6.
91 Fossum, Name of God, pp. 266-291.
92On this, see G. Quispel, “Ezekiel 1:26 in Jewish Mysticism and Gnosis,” VC 34 (1980) p. 6; Fossum, Name, p. 280.
93 Later, some rabbis reacted against this concept. Cf. b. Sanh. 38b; Tos. Sanh. 8.7.
94 See especially J. Fossum, “The Adorable Adam of the Mystics and the Rebuttal of the Rabbis,” in H. Cancik, H. Lichtenberger, and P. Schäfer (eds.), Geschichte-Tradition-Reflexion. Festschrift für Martin Hengel zum 70. Geburtstag, volume 1, Judentum (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1996) pp. 529-539.
95 On this, see G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, 1941) p. 65.
96 13:1-2.
97 cf. John 1:1-5, 9-10; C.H. 1.6-13; 13.19; Gos. Egy. 3.49.10-12; 4.61.8-11.
98 cf. Philo, Quest. Gen. 1.32; 2.62; Opif. mundi 25; 69; 139; Leg. All. 3.96; Her. 230-231; Apoc. Abr. 23.4- 6; Test. Abr. 11.4 rec. A; Fug. 68-71. Schenke, Der Gott “Mensch” in der Gnosis; Fossum, Name, pp. 266- 291; P.B. Munoa III, Four Powers in Heaven: The Interpretation of Daniel 7 in the Testament of Abraham, JSPSup 28 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998) pp. 85-90. The most recent article by A. Orlov brings together descriptions of the luminous Adam and the creation of the first human being after the Image: “‘Without Measure and Without Analogy’: The Tradition of the Divine Body in 2 (Slavonic) Enoch,” (forthcoming).
99 cf. Life Adam and Eve 13.2-14..2; 3 Bar. 4; 2 En 22. M. Stone, “The Fall of Satan and Adam’s Penance: Three Notes on the Books of Adam and Eve,” in G. Anderson, M. Stone, J. Tromp (eds.), Literature on Adam and Eve: Collected Essays, SVTP 15 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2000).
100 L. Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jew, volume 5 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1928). p. 97 n. 69; B. Murmelstein, “Adam, ein Beitrag zur Messiaslehre,” WZKM 35 (1928) p. 255 n. 3; W. Staerk, Die Erlösererwartung in den östlichen Religionen (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1938) p. 11. 101 cf. Gen. R. 8.1; 21.3; 24.2; Lev. R. 14.1; 18.2; Pirke R. Eliezer 11; Chronicles of Jerahmeel 6-12. Orlov, “‘Without Measure and Without Analogy.’”
102 cf. Gen. R. 11-12; b. Moed Katan 15b; `Aboda Zara 8a; Tanch. Buber Bereshit 18; cf. Gen. R. 8.1; b. Hag. 12a; Pesiq. Rab. Kah. 1.1. P. Alexander, “From Son of Adam to Second God: Transformation of the Biblical Enoch,” in M.E. Stone and T. A Bergen (eds.), Biblical Figures Outside the Bible (Harrisburg, 1998) pp. 102-111.
103 See DeConick, A.D. and Fossum, J., “Stripped Before God: A New Interpretation of Logion 37 in the Gospel of Thomas,” VC 45 (1991) p. 124 n. 8. For later rabbinic reports, see M. Idel, “Enoch is Metatron,” Immanuel 24/25 (1990) pp. 220-240. There is also a tradition that understands the verbs in Genesis 3:21 to be pluperfects, referring to the status of Adam and Eve before the Fall. Thus Gen. R. 20.12 states that the scroll of R. Meir read rOa, “light,” instead of rOi, “skin.” The Targums presuppose this wording since they read “garments of glory (raqy).”
104 A. Segal, Life After Death.
105 Cf. J. Strugnell, “The Angelic Liturgy,” VTSup 7 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960) pp. 318-345; L. Schiffman, “Merkavah Speculation at Qumran,” in J. Reinharz and D. Swetschinski, Mystics, Philosophers and Politicians (Durham: 1982) pp. 15-47; C. Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (Atlanta: 1985); C. Newsom, “Merkavah Exegesis in the Qumran Sabbath Shirot,” JSJ 38 (1987) pp. 11-30; M. Smith, “Two Ascended to Heaven – Jesus and the Author of 4Q491,” in J.H. Charlesworth (ed.), Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Doubleday, 1992) pp. 290-301; Fletcher-Louis, All the Glory of Adam; Segal, Paul the Convert; Morray-Jones, “Paradise Revisited.”
106 Rom 7:24; 8:10, 13, 29; 2 Cor 3:18; Phil 3:21; 1 Cor 15:49; Col 3:9; 2 Cor 5:15-6:1.
107 Gos Thom 15, 19, 37, 50, 59, 83, 84, 108.
108 Rowland, Open Heaven.
109 Regarding the rabbinic ambiguity about whether or not one can see God, refer to Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism, pp. 93-97, who proposes that the negative opinion on seeing God in this literature, rules out “the possibility of a direct visual encounter with God;” I. Chernus, “Visions of God in Merkabah Mysticism,” JSJ 13 (1982) pp. 123-146, outlines all of the passages in mystical literature where visions of God are mentioned and concludes that the majority of mystics “did think it possible for certain individuals, both human and celestial, to see God” (p. 141); N. Deutsch, The Gnostic Imagination: Gnosticism, Mandaeism, and Merkabah Mysticism, Jewish Studies 13 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995) pp. 75-79.
110 For a broader discussion, see DeConick, Voices of the Mystics, pp. 34-67. See also on the subject of transformation, Morray-Jones, Transformational Mysticism”; Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven, pp. 47-71.
111 Achilles Tatius, Clitophon and Leucippe 5.13.
112 Theaetetus 191a-196c.
113 Cf. K. Sullivan, Wrestling with Angels. A Study of the Relationship Between Angels and Humans in Ancient Jewish Literature and the New Testament, AGAJU 55 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2004).
114 Cf. Wolfson, Speculum, pp. 84-85 and n. 46; E. Wolfson, “Yeridah la-Merkavah: Typology of Ecstasy and Enthronement in Ancient Jewish Mysticism,” in R. Herrera (ed.), Mystics of the Book: Themes, Topics, and Typologies (New York: Lang, 1993) pp. 13-44.
115 3 Enoch 11:1-3.
116 On this, see particularly M. Swartz, Scholastic Magic. Ritual and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996); R. Lesses, Ritual Practices to Gain Power. Angels, Incantations, and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism, HTS 44 (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International,
1998).
117 M. Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and The Making of Images, 400-1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) 68-69.
Transformational Mysticism in the Apocalyptic-Merkavah Tradition
C. R. A. MORRAY-JONES
LADY MARGARET HALL, OXFORD
Journal of Jewish Studies, XLIII No. 1 – Spring 1992
In the last great vision of the prophet Ezekiel, an angelic figure guides the prophet through a Transformational Mysticism in the Apocalyptic-Merkabah Tradition
The question of the origins of the visionary-mystical traditions recorded in the Hekhalot literature is still quite controversial. I have elsewhere argued,’ contra Urbach,2 Schafer3 and Halperin,4 in favour of a modified version of the hypothesis advanced by Scholem 5 and developed by Gruenwald 6 that the talmudic references to ma’aseh merkabah indicate the existence of an esoteric tradition or traditions within first- and second-.century rabbinism. These traditions were associated with exegesis of Scriptural accounts of visions of the enthroned deity (Daniel 7, Isaiah 5 and, pre-eminently, Ezekiel 17) but it is probable that visionary-mystical practices were also involved. Such traditions were inherited_ from apocalyptic circles and enthusiastically developed by some Tannaim. but were opposed by others, mainly because the same traditions were being developed by groups whom they regarded as heretical including the various forms of Christianity and Gnosticism. The Hekhalot writings represent the development of these traditions. It cannot be assumed that everything in this literature goes back to the tannaitic period, the writers’ claim to be the heirs to a tradition from this time and milieu deserves to be taken seriously.
This model will he assumed in (and, it is hoped. to some extent confirmed by) the following discussion. It should be noted that the expression ‘Merkabah mysticism’ is used to refer to an esoteric, visionary -mystical tradition centered upon the vision of God, seated on the celestial throne or Merkabah. It is not simply synonymous with the contents of the Hekhalot texts, which represent one development of that tradition (failure to observe this distinction has been a cause of much confusion). the tradition’s influence is also found in the Apocalypses (though the term “Merkabah’ was not yet in use), and in a wide range of Jewish, Christian and Gnostic Sources.
In the ascent passages of the Hekhalot literature, the object of the climactic vision in the seventh palace, at the culmination of the heavenly journey, is the appearance of God as a vast and overpoweringly glorious human form of fire or light (Ezekiel’s likeness of the appearance of a man’s) enthroned upon the kisse’ hakkahod or Merkabah.00 This form and its gigantic dimensions are the object of the theurgic-liturgical Si’ur-Qomah (‘dimensions of the body’) texts and passages of this literature, which utilise the imagery of Isaiah 6:1-4, 66:1, and The Song of Songs.00 In Hekhalot mysticism, a distinction (though, in this literature, no discontinuity of identity) is observed between this visible appearance and God as He exists in Himself beyond the seventh heaven, to which He descends to manifest in a visible, corporeal form and to receive the worship of His creation. Song of Songs Rabbah refers to this distinction:
R. Hanina bar Papa said: A man of flesh and blood rides out of necessity, because he has substance, but the Holy One, blessed be He, is not like this: He needs His chariot to ride in because He has no substance.
The form of God upon the Merkabah is referred to as “The Glory” (hakkahod), frequently “the Great Glory” (hakkahod hoggadol) or as ilk Plat’ (haggeburah). This terminology, of course, goes back to E741114 where the figure on the throne is called ‘the Glory of the Lord’ (1:28 etc.), and is frequently found in apocalyptic literature.00 Tin ts, for example, The Testament of Levi 2:4: “In the uppermost heaven of all dwells the Great Glory in the Holy of Holies”, and I Enoch 14:20f: “And the Great Glory was sitting upon it pile Throw* As for His gown, which was shining more brightly than the sun, it was whiter than any snow.”
In The Ascension of Isaiah, Christ sits at the right hand of ‘the Great Glory’ (I 1:32), in terms reminiscent of Mark 14:62 and parallels:” “You shall see the Son of Man seated at the right hand or the Power.” Also worth mentioning is 1QH 7: “Thou hast revealed Thyself to me in Thy Power as perfect light.” It is clear, then, that the application of these terms to the appearance of God on the Throne is an established apocalyptic usage.00 Both kabod and its Aramaic equivalent yeqara’ are derived from roots meaning ‘to he heavy’ and the Gina is, therefore, ‘aprimary of the divine Essence “15 in human form and/or as light. Consider in this light Hekhalot Rabbati 3:4:16:
And three times every single day, the throne of Thy Glory (kisse’ kebodeka) prostrates itself before Thee and says to Thee: ’0 ZOHARARIEL. LORD God of Israel, make Thyself heavy/glorious (hitkabbed) and sit upon me, 0 wondrous King, for the burden of Thee is lovely [some manuscripts add: and precious (miff) upon me, and no glory (we'eino kabed) upon me, as it is written: Holy! Holy! Holy is the LORD of Hosts!'
This calls to mind Paul's expression at 2 Corinthians 4:17: “… an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” In many early sources, the 'Glory' or 'Power' is identified with the 'Name' of God, which is in turn identified with the creative 'Word' or Logos.00 At Isaiah 30:27f, the Name appears as a wrathful divine hypostasis,18 while Psalm 54:1 uses the terms 'Name' and 'Power' in parallel: “0 God, Save me by Thy Name (besimka) and vindicate me by Thy Power (bigeburatka).” Jubilees 36:7 refers to “The glorious and honoured and great and splendid and amazing and mighty Name which created heaven and earth and everything together.”
The Samaritan literature contains many references to the Name as the creative agency of God which, like the Glory of Isaiah 6, fills and sustains the world.19 This notion is also found in early Christian literature: “The Name of the Son of God is great and infinite (achoreton) and sustains the whole world." In the context of hellenistic Judaism, The Letter of Aristeas tells us that the Power (dynamis) fills every place (132) and that it created and sustains the world (157). These traditions are surely the background of Philo's Logos doctrine. He states, for example, that “The Glory of God is the Power through which He now appears," and of the Logos: “for having made the whole universe to depend and cling to Himself. He is Charioteer of all that vaste creation.”
These examples, which represent a selection from as wide a variety of sources as possible and could be multiplied many times over, should be sufficient to demonstrate that the equation .'Glory= Power = Name= Word'. is both ancient and widespread. It is succinctly summarised by Justin Martyr:
God has begotten of Himself a certain rational (logike) Power as a Beginning before all other creatures. The Holy Spirit indicates this Power by various titles, sometimes the Glory of the Lord, at other times Son, or Wisdom, or Angel, or God, or Lord, or Word.
It should be remarked that the sources differ as to which of God's names represents the hypostatized Glory and which pertains to the Godhead itself. In the Samaritan sources, the Tetragrammaton is frequently identified with the 'Word' (millah), though this role is occasionally ascribed to 'Elohim.00 Philo uses rheas of the transcendent divinity (ho on) and the divine attribute of Mercy, and kyrios (=Yhwh, the tetragrammaton) of the Logos and the attribute of Justice. In rabbinic literature, the Tetragrammaton generally represents Mercy and Elohim, Justice, though it seems that both traditions were known.00 Here, of course, any notion of a separate divine hypostasis is severely de-emphasized, but the idea of creation by or through the Name, which is highly developed in later esoteric writings like the Sefer Vernal]. is also found in exoteric sources. At. I hot 29b and Genesis Rabbah 12:10, the word behibbare’am of Genesis 2:4 00 is read as bar bare’am: ‘by (the letter) He’ (representing ti,- tetragrammaton) created He them.’ 21 At BT Hagigah 15b, God decrees that R. Aqiba is worthy `to make use of My Glory (lehistammes bikebodi) .28 As pointed out by Scholem, lehistammes is a technical term referring to pronunciation of the divine Name.00 Thus, an equation of the tetragrammaton with the Glory is implied. Several midrashic sources record a tradition that the light of the first day of creation emanated from the garment of the glory:
R. Simeon h. R. Jehotzad ek questioned R. Samuel bar Nachman ‘Since I have heard
that you area master of Aggadah —whence was the light created?’
R. Samuel said: ‘the Holy One, blessed be He„ wrapped Himself in it as in a garment [var.: wrapped Himself in a white garment and the splendour of His Glory shone forth from one end of the world to the other.: I lc said this in a whisper.
He said to him: 'There is a verse that says openly: ".. Who covered, Himself with light as with a garment" (Psalm I 04:2). It is strange that you should say it in
a whisper!'
He said to him: 'As I heard it in a whisper, I have told it to you in a whisper.'
The whisper, of course, implies that this was an esoteric tradition. The divine garment (haluq) is described in the hymnic passages of the Hekhalot literature:
Who is like unto our King? Who is like unto our Creator? Who is like unto the Lord our Cod?
The sun and the moon are cast out and sent forth by the crown of His head. The Pleiades and Orion and the Planet of Venus,Constellations and Stars and zodiacal
Dow and issue forth from ffd im Who, crowned and shrouded in it, sits upon the Throne of His glory.
The idea of the heavenly garment is an extremely important item to which we shall return.
Also important are the rabbinic prohibitions against association of the Name of God with any created being or object, recorded at WI Sukkah 45b, Sanhedrin 63a and Exodus Rabbah 43:3. The second and third of these references occur in connection with the Golden Calf, suggesting that such association was regarded as tantamount to idolatry or as falling into the Two Powers' heresy." Rowland has shown that, whereas in the early apocalyptic tradition the visionary was able to see the Glory on the Throne, many later Apocalypses tend to avoid such anthropomorphic descriptions and to transfer the functions of the kabod to one or more intermediary figures." While the motivation behind this development seems to have been to safeguard the transcendence and unity of God, it opened the way for two different but (from the rabbinic point of view) equally heretical aberrations: on the one hand, the Glor could be identified as a subordinate, created being (the beginning ot the process that culminated in Gnosticism, and, on the other a created being could be identified with the kavod (as in orthodox Christianity). It seems probable that the comment appended Ire Hid restriction concerning hammerkabah at M Hagigah 2.1 is a warning against speculations and/or practices that compromised the unity of God:
It would be better for one who is not careful concerning the Glory of his
Creator if he had never come into the world.
An important reference to the 'Two Powers' heresy occurs in the well known story of how Elisha b. Abuya (Aher) encountered the angel Metatron, found at HT Hagigah I 5a and 3 Enoch 16. 3 Enoch's version is probably closer to the original form of the story:"
R. Ishmael said: The angel Metatron, Prince of the Divine Presence, the Glory of the highest heaven, said to me: At first I sat upon a great throne at the door of the seventh palace, and I judged all the denizens of the heigh on the authority of the Holy One, blessed be He. I assigned greatness, royalty, ank, sovereignty, glory, praise, diadem. crown and honour to all the princes kingdoms. when I sat in the heavenly court. The princes of the kingdoms stood beside me, to my right and to my left, by authority of the Holy One, blessed be He. But when 'Aber came to behold the vision of the Merkabah and set es upon me, he was afraid and trembled before me. His soul was alarmed to the point of leaving him because of his fear, dread, and terror of me, when he saw me upon a,a king, with ministering angels standing beside me as servants and all the princes of kingdoms crowned with crowns surrounding me. Then he opened his mouth and said, There are indeed two Powers in heaven!' Immediately a divine voice came out from the presence of the Shekhinah and said, 'Come back to Me, apostate sons (Jeremiah 3:22)— apart from Aber' Then Anefiel. ¬ If WH, the honoured, glorified, beloved, wonderful, terrible, and dreadful prince, came at the command of the Holy One, blessed be He, and struck me with sixty lashes of fire and made me stand upon my feet."
The figure of Metatron, who is extremely important in Jewish esoteric literature, has been the subject of several studies." He performs many functions, but has two main sides to his character (called by later kabbalists the 'greater' and 'lesser' Metatron): he is the 'Angel of the LORD' or 'Prince of the Presence' and he is also the patriarch Enoch after his ascension into heaven.
As the Angel of the LORD, Metatron functions as the celestial vice-regent who ministers before the Throne, supervises the celestial liturgy and officiates over the heavenly hosts. He silk on a throne, which is a replica of the Throne of Glory and wears a glorious robe like that of God. He functions as the agent of God in the creation, acts as intermediary between the heavenly and lower world, is the guide of the ascending vtsionary, and reveals the celestial secrets to Plank ind. He is, by delegated divine authority. the ruler and judge of the world. He is thus a Logos figure and an embodiment of the divine Glory. In the si'ur Tomah, we are told that Metatron's body, like the kabod, fills the entire world, though the writer is careful to maintain a distinction between Metatron and the Glory of God Himself." In a short text published by Jellinek under the title Aggadath Shema Israel," which deals with the ascent of Moses. we lied the statement:
The Holy One, blessed be He, decrees and Metatron executes.
This is remarkably reminiscent of Justin Martyr:
There exists and if mentioned in Scripture another God and Lord under the Creator of all things. who is also called an Angel, because he proclaims to man whatever the Creator of the world-- above whom there is no other God--wishes to reveal to them.
Metatron is, in fact, referred to as the 'Lesser Tetragrammaton' (YHWH haqqaton)" and it is said that 'his name is like that of his Master' 4 or that He embodies the Name of God. The tradition of the Name hearing angel and celestial vice-regent is apparently ancient and widespread. He appears in both apocalyptic and Hekhalot literature under a variety of names and titles. In some circles, Michael seems to have retained this function, while the Mandean and. perhaps, Muslim literature suggests that other groups assigned this supreme role to Gabriel.12 In the Hekhalot literature, this angelic being is called by such names as Anafiel, Suriel, or Panaion, as well as Metatron. Most significant of all is the angelic guide in The Apocalypse of Abraham, called laoel, who explains:
I was so called by Him who causes those with me on the seventh expanse, on the firmament, to shake, a power through the medium of His ineffable Name in me. (10:8)
As pointed out by Fossum.43 Iaoel is described in terms that elsewhere apply to the divine Glory itself: he is 'in the likeness of a man' (10:4). has 'a body like sapphire' (11:2) and so forth. Fossum suggests that the reason why the Throne, when Abraham sees it, is empty (I8:3ff) is that lapel is the Glory. At all events. it is clear that Metatron (whose 'lama, ocean c only in rabbinic and esoteric Jewish sources, and on a few Aramaic incantation bowls) represents one developed version of this tradition of the Name-bearing angel who mediates, and in some sense embodies. the kabod.. Similar urea encountered in Gnostic literature, such as Poimandres and the "Little Yao",44 must be derived from the same tradition.
Not surprisingly.- the talmudic sources are reticent and apparently suspicious with regard to Metatron. He appears at WE Abodah Zarah 3b. where he is said to teach the souls of dead children in heaven when God is otherwise engaged, Hagigah I5a (the 'Aber story) and Sanhedrin 38b, where he is again associated with the 'Two Powers' heresy:
Once a min said to R. Idith, 'It is written: And unto Moses He said. Come up to
YHWH (Exodus 24:1). Surely it should have said: Come up to Me!'
'This was Metatron,' he replied. 'whose name is like that of his Master, for it is written: For My Name is in him (Exodus 23:21).'
'But, if so, we should worship him!'
R. Idith replied, 'The same verse, however, says: 'Do not rebel against him. (This means:) Do not exchange him for Me [reading 'al femur (do not exchange) for 'al tammer (do not rebel)].’
`But, if so, why is it stated: He will not pardon your transgressions (loc. cit., above)?’
He answered, ‘Indeed, we would not accept him even as a messenger, for it is written: If Thy Presence go not with us … etc. (Exodus 23:15)
Thus, there is evidence to suggest that the rabbis were concerned to guard against an early and widespread tradition of the Name-bearing angel who was intimately associated, and sometimes identified. with the Name-Word-Glory-Power of the LORD. It seems that they countered this threat, if not by outright suppression, by significantly downgrading the status and importance of Metatron (as this angel came to be called), but that the early tradition was preserved and developed in esoteric circles. 3 Enoch’s statement that Metatron used to sit upon a throne hut was ‘demoted’ because of ‘Aher’s heresy may well be, in this sense, historically correct.
Before leaving this subject. a further tradition should be noted that not only Metatron but all the angels bear The Name of God engraved on !Aga within (kern.” in The Odes of Solomon, we find the statement that the angels are ‘clothed with’ the Divine Name (4:8), and the Hekhalot writings frequently refer to angels who have the Tetragrammaton appended to their names.”
The second aspect of Metatron’s character is his identification as the patriarch Enoch, who ascended into heaven and was transformed into the Name-bearing angel. This is, of course, a development of the apocalyptic Enoch traditions. 3 Enoch presents Metatron exclusively in the light of this identification and re-interprets the elements of the ‘greater Metatron’ tradition accordingly. The identification of Enoch with Metatron is not found in the Talmuds or the early midrashic literature, though Midrash Aggadah to Genesis 5:18 associates it with Aqiba 47 and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to Genesis 5:24 says of Enoch that ‘God called his name Metatron, the Great Scribe.” Milik regards this as a late addition to the Targum,4° but the tradition of Enoch as ‘the Great Scribe of Righteousness’ who records men’s deeds and reveals the heavenly secrets goes back to I Enoch 15 and Jubilees 4, while BT Hagigah 15a explains that Metatron was permitted to sit in the presence of God so that he could perform his scribal duties. There is evidence, then. of the early existence of a tradition concerning the ascent to heaven of an exceptionally righteous man *Clio beholds the vieioa of the divine kabod upon the Merkbah, is transformed into an angelic being and enthroned as celestial vice-regent; thereby becoming identified with the Name-bearing angel who either is or is closely associated with the kabod itself and functions as a second. intermediary power in heaven. It is hardly surprising that some rabbis were ambivalent about such traditions.
The account of Enoch’s transformation in 3 Enoch 7-15 contains the following significant details:
I was enlarged and increased in size till I matched the world in length and breadth. (9:2)
The Holy One, blessed be He, fashioned for me a majestic robe, in which all kinds of luminaries were set, and He clothed me in it. He fashioned for me a glorious cloak in which brightness, brilliance, splendour. and lustre of every kind were fixed, and He wrapped me in it. He fashioned for me a kingly crown .. and He called me ‘The Lesser YHWH in the presence of His whole household in the height, as it is written, ‘My name is in him’. (12:1-5)
When the Holy One, blessed be He, took me to serve the Throne of Glory, its., the wheels of the Merkabah and all the needs of the Shckhinah, at once my flesh turned to flame, my sinews to blazing fire, my bones to juniper coals, my eyelashes to lightning flashes, my eyeballs to fiery torches, the hairs of my head to hot flames, all my limbs to wings of burning fire, and the substance of my body to blazing fire. On my right—those who cleave flames of fire-on my left—burning brands—round about me swept wind, tempest and storm; and the roar of earthquake upon earthquake was before and behind me. (15:10
Though the redactor is careful to avoid taking the final, heretical step, this seems to be a theologically sanitized version of a tradition according to which the ascending hero becomes identified with the kabod.
That this tradition may have been a source of early Christian belief about Jesus will be immediately apparent. Whereas the synoptic tradition speaks of Jesus sitting or standing ‘at the right hand’ of the Power or the Glory. it is clear that in the Pauline and Johannine literature Christ is the Glory.” As such, he is God’s ‘image and likeness’ 52 in whom ‘the whole Fullness of God dwells bodily”‘ and is also, of course, the embodied Word which is also the Name.” All these traditions seem to he included in Hebrews 1:2-4:
… in these last days He has spoken to us by a Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things. through whom He created the world. Ile reflects Pie Glory of God and bears the very stamp of His nature, upholding the universe by His word of power. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at she right hand of the Majesty on high. having become as much superior to the angels as the Name he has obtained is more excellent than limits.
It is worth noting that Clement of Alexandria calls the Son both ‘Wind’ and ‘Name’,” while the importance of these traditions for Syriac Christianity is indicated by statements such as the following:
Thou art the discloser of hidden secrets and the revealer of mysterious sayings .. Thou didst become the Messiah and didst put on the First Man. Thou art the Power and the Wisdom and the Knowledge and the R Will and the Rest of Thy Father. in Thou art revealed in Thy creative agency. and Ye (note the plural) are One with two names.
Identification of Christ with the Name, Form or Image of God is widely found in Gnostic, especially Valentinian sources. Ireneus reports the following Valentinian form:
The Name which is hidden from every deity, dominion And existence, which Jesus the Nazarene put on in the spheres of light. (the Nano., of Cht ist. of Him who lives through the Holy Spirit for the angelic redemption, the Name of Restoration.
and in The Gospel of Philip we find:
Only one name is not uttered in the world, the name that the father bestowed on the son; it is above every other—that is, the name of the father. For la would not become the Father had he not put on the name of the father”
Particular attention should be paid to the expression ‘put on’ or ‘clothe with’ the Name or ‘First Man’ (i.e. the divine Image or Glory) which is also found in Syriac baptismal formulae.” As noted by Quispel:
If we find the same curious expression in the Syrian Christianity of Edessa, and in circles of Valentinian Gnostics somewhere in the west, this seems to noire a common background in Jewish Christianity.
The roots of the idea must, moreover, go back to the apocalyptic traditions of investiture in heaven of the ascending hero.
All this is remarkably like what we find in theapeatikak. where it is repeatedly stated that Moses was ‘vested with’ the Name of God.
He was worthy to put on the Name whereby the world came into being.”
In this literature Moses is said, like Enoch and Christ, to have been crowned and enthroned in heaven. Like Metatron and Christ, Moses is the pre-existent creative agent of God and the celestial vice-regent. As the ‘Man of God’, he is the divine image or glory of Adam to whom God says: “You are My second in the lower world.”00
Josephus takes the trouble to deny that Moses ascended to God after his death,°’ but does not mention the tradition of his heavenly ascent At Sinai. Evidence of the antiquity of the latter is provided by by Ezekiel the Tragedian (second century-BC).66 Philo develops the theme of Moses’ ascent, both at Sinai and after his death, 67 and his transformation into the likeness of God, especially at Mote 1.155-8 were, as argued by Meeks, he must be combining the hellenistic notion of divine kingship with an already-existing.
Meeks has argued very convincingly that the rabbinic sources dealing with Moses’ heavenly ascent at Sinai preserve traces of an earlier tradition that he enthroned and received the divine Name and the garments and crown of the divine glory, though this has everywhere been supressed.69 Thus, in midrashim such as Pesikta Rabbati 20. Moses takes hold of the Throne rather than being seated upon it and, rather than clothing him with the divine garment or ‘robe of the Glory’, God merely spreads a corner of it over him. Nonetheless, the tradition persisted that Moses ascended to heaven after his death.” These midrashim frequently associate Moses with Metatron, who acts as his guide and protector, and state that his flesh was turned to fire:
At that time. the Holy One. blessed be He. commanded Metatron. saying to him. ‘Go. and bring my servant Moses up to heaven—and take with you 15.000 angels on his right and 151100 angels on his left. with song, with timbrels. and with dancing. and utter song before Moses My servant
Metatron said to the Holy One blessed he He. is lt able to withstand the angels. for the angels are princes of fire, while he is flesh and blood.’
Thereupon the Holy One. blessed be He. commanded Metatron. saying. ‘Go, change his flesh into torches of fire and his strength (0 UM I of Gabriel:
Metatron came to Moses. When Moses saw him, he was terrified. He said to him, ‘Who are you?’He said to him. ‘I an Enoch b. Yared. your ancestor. The Holy One, blessed be He. has sent me to bring you up beside the Throne of Glory.’
Moses said to him, ‘I am flesh and blood. and unable to look at the angels’
Thereupon he stood up and changed his flesh to torches of fire, and his eyes to Merkavah wheels, and his strength to that of Gabriel. and his tongue to flame. And he raise Moses up to heaven, and with him were 15.000 angels on his right and 15.000 angels on his left, with Metatron and Moses in the middle.
There are, then. good grounds for believing that some first- and second-century rabbis attempted to suppress an early tradition of the ascent to heaven of an exceptionally righteous man or men win received (he divine Name and became in some way associated or identified with the angel of the LORD. or the Form of God as enthroned Logo Power-Glory, at that tbte. tradition was kept alive in esoteric circles. Vie following is om a baraita in which the survival of the tradition in the face of a Tannaitic minter-polemic is clearly apparent:
What (does this means ”I he Lord of Hosts, He is the King of Glory’? (This means that) He apportions some of His Glory to those who fear Him according to His Glory. How so? He is called God.’ and He called Moses ‘god.’ as it is said. ‘See. I have made von a god to Pharaoh’ t [sosto% 7:1). He vivifies the dead, and He apportioned some of His Glory. to for the latter vivified a dead person (1 Kings 17:22). Thus the Holy One blessed he He. apportions some of His glory to those that fear Him. To the King Messiah lie grants to he clothed in Hi. robes (Psalm 21:6) Our rabbis teach us that no mortal king rides on God's steed or puts on I his robes or uses His crown or sits on His throne but the Holy One. blessed be He. apportions all these to those who fear Him. and gives them to them.
That rabbinic hostility toward these traditions was in part due to the emergence of Christianity seems highly probable. The ego deli sayings of (sus suggest that he claimed to be an embodiment of the divine Name or, at least, that his followers made this claim." It should be noted, however. that other historical figures claimed (or had claimed for them) a similar status. Mani' was identified by his followers as 'the most beautiful and beloved Name'" and the name of the Jewish-Christian leader Elchasai means 'the Hidden Power'." Going back to the first century. Simon Magus was identified by his followers as 'the Power of God called the Great'." It seems. then, that claims to have ehieved a transformation like that attributed to Enoch and Moses were sometimes made in mystically orientated circles. This implies that transformation into the divine Image or the likeness thereof was a goal of the mystical endeavour.
Of relevance to this theme are the very widespread traditions concerning the primordial glory of Adam77 Rabbinic sources state 01:1? Adam's body was so large that it filled the universe.'" and tannaitic debates on Genesis 3:2 ('Behold, the Man has become like one of us') provide evidence of an early tradition that Adam was like God and/or the angels.'" Ill Sanhedrin 38a records a polemic against the identification of Adam as a 'second Power':
Our Rabbis taught: Adam was created on the eve of the Sabbath. And why? Lest the Sadducees [probably originally: the minim] should say that the Holy One, blessed he He. had a partner in His work of creation.
This polemic must be directed against the demiurgic Anthropos found in Gnostic literature, who is identified by a pun on the Greek word phos (‘man’ or ‘light’) with the primordial fight of creation: thus the heavenly man of light is said to have existed from the beginning, rather than day six. This notion, which seems to underlie Philo’s heavenly Adam speculation, may well have originated in Alexandria: Ezekiel the Tragedian uses phas of the heavenly man.” Philo frequently distinguishes between the earthly man, moulded from clay. and the heavenly or archetypal man who is a likeness of the divine Image or Logos.” and is sometimes apparently identical with the Logos.” In Gnosticism, the heavenly light-man is clearly identified with the Power-Glory or Form of God:
In the beginning. he [the supreme deity] decided to have his form come to he as a great power. Immediately. the beginning of that fight was revealed as an immortal, androgynous man.
He [the man] created for himself a great aeon corresponding to his greatness. liegave it authority and it mled over all creation,: He created for himself gods and archangels and angels. myriads without /mother for retinue. Now from that matl originated divinity and kingdom. Therefore he was called ‘God of Gods’ and ‘King of Kings’.
The identification of Christ with Adam as the divine Image in man is also found in Syriac Christian literature, which tends to stress the difference between (‘Mist’s divine and human natures.”
In The Testament of Abraham ch. II, Abraham encounters ‘the first formed Adam seated on a throne at the entrance to Paradise. This is analogous to the position of Metatron in 3 Enoch and a precise parallel is found in a surviving fragment of a lost Hekhalot work, The Mystery of Sandalphon.85 where Elisha b. Abuya (= ‘Aher) encounters ‘ ‘Akatriel Yah, the LORD God of Isrel’ (elswhere a name for the Divine Glory itself 86) enthroned before the gates of Paradise. This suggests that some mystical circles. regarded by the rabbis as heretical, associated or identified the primordial Adam with the divine kabod,87 A polemic against this identification, highly reminiscent of the story of Metatron’s dethronement, is found at Genesis Rabbah 8:10:
R. Hoshaya said: When the Holy One, blessed be He, created Adam, the ministering angels mistook him for a divine being and wished to utter the Sanctus before him. What does this resemble? A king and a governor who sat in a chariot and his subjects wished to say to the king ‘Domine! but they did not know which one it was. What did the king do? He pushed the governor out of the chariot. and so they knew who was the king.
An interesting counter-polemic is found in The Life of Adam and Eve, 14:Iff, where God commands the angels to worship Adam as the embodiment of His Image and only Satan refuses to obey.
It is axiomatic to these traditions that when Adam sinned his glory and his stature were diminished, a predicament which is shared by his descendants. Consider in this light Romans 3:23, “All have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God.”
Corollary to this is the tradition that the righteous will, in the world to _come, recover the Omuta. This teaching, which, together with descriptions of the righteous as enthroned and/or vested with robes and crowns of glory, is widely documented in Apocalyptic, early Christian literature, and the Scrolls,” is also found in rabbinic sources. Several midrashim state that the righteous will, like Enoch-Metatron, become like or superior to the angels,” and that they will become God-likc and he transformed into lire:
In this world. Israel cleave unto the holy One. blessed he He, as it is said: ‘But ye that did cleave unto the LORD (Deuteronomy 4:4). Hui in the time to come they will become like Him), Just as the Holy One. blessed be He. is fire consuming fire. according to what is written: ‘For the LORI) is a consuming fire’ (Deuteronomy 4:24), so shall they he consuming fire, according to what is written: ‘.. and the light of Israel shall be for a fire and his Holy One for a flame’ (Isaiah 10:17).”
This transformation and enthronement indicates that the righteous are, like the primordial Adam, conformed to the Image of God or the kabod (this is, presumably. what Paul has in mind when he speaks of ‘glorification). Thus BT Baba Hatra 75h:
R. Eleazar said: There will come a time when ‘Holy!’ will be said before the righteous as it is said before the Holy One, blessed be He, for it is said: ‘And it shall come to pass that he that is left in Zion. and he that remaineth in Jerusalem. shall be called Holy’ (Isaiah 4:3)
These traditions are evidently connected to those of the enthronement, vesting and transformation of the apocalyptic hero. Deuteronomy Rabbah 11:3 states that the glory taken from Adam was restored to Moses at Sinai, an idea that is also found in the Samaritan sourcess°’ which also attribute the glory of Adam to the pre-existent Moses:
On the day when Adam put on the divine Image. Moses put en the splendour of the light and the crown on the four sides of which was written: I AM THAT I AM.
Given the close association and in some sources apparent identity between the celestial Adam and the divine Glory, this confirms the supposition that in certain circles figures such as Moses and Enoch were identified. like the Pauline and Johannine Christ, with the kabod.
Since the Glory is also the Logos and the divine Names it is not surprising that this transformation of a human being into the likeness of the divine Image implies that the righteous man receives into himself. and becomes an embodiment of, the Name of God. We have already seen that this applies to Enoch and, in Samaritan literature, to Moses. A similar tradition concerning Melchizedek as the Name-bearing angel and Logos is widely documented, in Philo,” in 2 Enoch 23, in I IQ Melchizedek (where he is apparently identified with Michael), in ‘Melchizedekian’ Gnosticism,” and. of course, in The Epistle to the Hebrews. The Samaritans are reported to have identified Melchizedek with Shem, the son of Noah,” and Genesis Rabbah 26:3 explains Shem’s name by stating that God’s Name (km) was set upon him. Targum Neofiti and the Fragmentary Targum call Melchizedek the great sem’.96 At Genesis Rabbah 39:1 1 and 63:7 the privilege of being called by the divine Name is accorded to Abraham.
Rabbinic sources record the tradition that in the world to conic all of the righteous will be called by the Name of God:
Rabbah further stated in the name of R. Yohanan: The Righteous will in the time to come be called h) the Name the Holy One. blessed be He. for it is said: ‘Everyone that is named by My Name. and whom I have created for My Glory, I have formed him. yea I have made him’ (Isaiah 43:7).”
This idea may be implicit in the notion that they become as the angels who, as we have seens were held by some to bear the divine Name within themselves. In The Shepherd of Hermes, we find Michael. the Angel of the Lord (described as ‘glorious and very tall’). giving out branches from a willow tree in Paradise to ‘those who are called by the Name of the Lord” 98
The idea of the righteous man as an embodiment of the divine Name or Image perhaps underlies the idea of the righteous man as ‘the foundation of the world.’ based on Proverbs 111256 taken in isolation,” This implies that the righteous man is, like the Samaritan Moses, Metatron and Christ, a creative agent)” In Jewish sources, we occasionally encounter the idea that the world was created for the sake of Abraham,101 Moses 102 or Israel as a collective entity. “3 At Genesis Rabbah 49:6 and parallels.’” find it stated that the patriarchs are the Merkabah. this idea is developed at Hekhalot Rabbati 9:4,1″ where God bends down to embrace and kiss the image of Jacob, which is engraved upon the Merkabah, whenever Israel recites the @tight”, suggesting :to intimate union between God and the righteous representative of His people of the kind associated with the Song of Songs. Elsewhere. we find the notion that the world was created and is sustained for the sake of righteous men in general.82″ and se- are told that there is always a minimum number (30. 36 or 45) of righteous men in the world, who sustain it in being ;Ind who behold the tace of God each 403(.1″ The Galilean Hasid Hanina b. nom was believed to be one such man:
Rab Judah said in the name of Rah: Every day a voice goes for th from Mount Horeb and proclaims: ‘The whole world is sustained for the sake of My son Hanina. and Hanina. My son has to subsist on a gab of carobs Bolnh one week’s end to the next.
All this suggests that, in the visionary-mystical circles from which the Tannaim inherited their esoteric traditions—and the Hasidim of Galilee were surely one such source—the idea was current that exceptionally worthy human beings or “men of righteousness’ were able to achieve a transformation into the likeness of the divine Glory which was analogous to that ascribed to the heroes of the heavenly-ascent narratives and to the righteous in the world to come. Such men, it appears. were believed to he gifted with supernatural powers and to function as mediators and intercessors between the earthly community and the realm of God. Hanina h. Dosa, for example, interceded for the sick.’”
A similar mediatorial role was claimed by or for the adepts of the Hekhalot tradition. At the beginning of Hekhalot Rabbati, we find a long list of supernatural powers ascribed to the adept who is portrayed as acting by divine authority as judge and leader of the people.110 When taking part in the celestial liturgy, the adept acts as the representative of the people before God. as well as being commissioned to declare what has been revealed to him. 111 In other words, he performs a functon analogous to that of the High Priest in the Temple.112 A passage found in some versions of Hekhalot Rabbati indicates that the adept, here typified by Metatron-as-Enoch. has taken over the priestly
R. Ishmael said: The Heavenly Splendour said to me: Prithee, say to them. to Israel: Beloved are repentant sinners, for repentance reaches and extends across the 390 firmaments to the Throne of Glory. Repentant sinners are greater than the ministering angels. For when Israel went into exile, Metatron, Michael and Gabriel said, ‘What is to be done?’ At once they beat their hands upon their heads. and at once they were weeping with a great voice and saying. Who will go up to the heavenly heights and lament before Him who spoke. and theworld became, that He may turn back from His burning anger and have compassion on His sons?’
Metatron said to them, ‘I will go up into his upper chamber.’ All the blazing fiery ones were appalled before him when he ascended. The eight firmaments were in a tumult. The heavens, the uppermost heaven? and the holiest heights said with a single voice, What is this smell of one born of woman, ascending on high’e—until the Holy One, blessed he He. said to them:
‘Ye ministers of Justice and ye Seraphim, leave him alone! He has come up to weep over My sons. who have gone into exile amongst wolves and amongst lions. and over their Temple and their Law which the son of Nimrod. the wicked. has burned with fire, and over their sages and students who have been killed in the Sanctuary. Be still and quiet! My hands are enfeebled. and 1 cannot save then until their bones are healed by words of Torah, for among them are no repentant sinners who pray for compassion upon them—for if there were repentant sinners among them, praying for compassion upon them, I would not have delivered them over to death!’
Therefore it is taught that repentant sinners are greater than the ministering angels.
In similar vein, the Samaritan sources stress the role of Moses. the God-man, as intercessor on behalf of humanity,’” while Philo ascribes this role to the Logos-Angel:
To His word, his chief messenger, highest in age and honour, the Father of all
has given the special prerogative to stand on the border and separate the
creature from the Creator. ‘I his same Word both pleads with the Immortal as
suppliant for of mortality and acts as ambassador of dic Ruler to the subject.
He glories in this prerogative and proudly describes it in these words:
And I stand between the t ord and you (Deuteronomy 5:51 that is neither uncreated as God, nor created as you but midway between tt,- two extremes. as a surety to hoth sides: to the Parent. pledging the creation” that it should never altogether rebel against the rein and choose disorder 1011811 than order: to the child. warranting his hopes that the Merciful God will never bit get Hls own work.
At Qumran. we find the idea that the human priesthood is representative of the mediating Angel:
May you be as an Angel of the Presence in the Abode of Holiness. to the glory of the God of Hosts.
These traditions are solely the background of the Christology of The Epistle to the Hebrews. Clement of Alexandria provides an interesting interpretation of the entry of the Holy of Holies of the High Priest, who has the Name engraved upon his heart’, as an allegory of the entry of the soul into the intelligible world. When he removes the golden breastplate• on which the Tetragrammaton is inscribed, this symbolizes the laying aside of the body, which has been purified by his piety … as a result of which he has been recognized by the prjncipalities and powers as one who is clothed with the Name (to onoma perikeimenos).00
As we have seen. several charismatic figures. such as Simon Magus. claimed identity with the Name or Power of God. The influence of this Jewish-Samaritan tradition is apparent in several passages of the Magical Papyri, where the practitioner seeks to identify himself with the glorious angelic form of the primordial Adam??: the first-begotten and first-born God … who possesses the powerful Name which has been consecrated by all angels . .. lord over all the angels etc.82″
The idea that the vision or God involves the transformation of the visionary into an angelic or supra-angelic being, is found at several places in apocalyptic literature.00 This transformation is described in the familiar terms of robing, crowning, anointing, enthronement and metamorphosis into fire or light, At 2 Enoch 22:10. Enoch says:
And I looked at myself, and I had become like one of the glorious ones. and there was no observable difference.
Associated with the rabbinic stories of Moses’ metamorphosis is the very widespread midrashic tradition that the vision of God experienced by the Israelites at Sinai entailed a similar transformation. We find. lot example, that God adorned the Israelites ‘from the splendour of His (Rol y’, vested them in royal robes. and gave them crowns and weapons engraved with the divine Name, which freed them from the power of the angel of death.’” Pirkei de Rabbi Eliczer includes the following:
R. Judah says: As long as a man is wearing the clothes of his splendour. he is beautiful in his appearance and in his glory and in his radiance. Thus were the Israelites when they wore that Name—they were as good as ministering angels before the Holy One, blessed be He.
Related traditions state that the Israelites, unable to withstand the vision of God’s Glory or the sound of the divine voice, died but were revived by the angels at God’s command.122 Chernus has shown that underlying these traditions is a theme of ‘initiatory death:’ 123 that is, the Isrelites, on seeing the Glory, underwent an experience of Death leading to rebirth. This involved the transformation of their bodies into fiery angelic likenesses clothed with the Name of God, which conferred immortality upon them. All this, however, was lost as a result of the sin of the Calf or. ecording to some sources, they were overwhelmed by the experience, asked Moses to et as intermediary between God and themselves, and so returned to their former condition. The probability that these midrashim, are derived, from the. visionary-mysticaI tradition is confirmed by Song of Songs Rabbet, 1:15, where it is stated that, as a result of hearing the divine voice at Sinais the Israelites had the knowledge of Torah fixed in their hearts but afterwards returned to the state of learning and forgetting.124 This must be connected with the Sar-tora h traditions preserved by the Hekhalot compilers.
Schafer regards the account in 3 Enoch of Enoch’s transformation as ‘the final stage in the literaricization of Merkabah mysticism’ and states that, while it has parallels in earlier apocalyptic, it is unique in the Hekhalot literature.’ 25 The date of composition of 3 Enoch is highly uncertain, though it is now generally regarded as a fairly late product of the Hekhalot tradition (which is what Schafer means by `Merkabah mysticism.” 126 However. it must he recognized that the fundamental different between the Apocalypses and the Hekhalot texts is a matter of literacy form and purpose. An Apocalypse is a narrative composition in which Descriptions of visions are subordinate to the writer’s didactic or kerygmatic Purpose This does not necessarily mean that the Apocalypses are mere litesary fantasies having no connection with genuine visionary-mysticm, but they are not intended to tell the reader how such visions may be obtained. ‘The !Irk halot writings, on the other hand. are liturgical and instructional ‘technical guides or manuals, for mystics’.127 3 Enoch, being itself an Apocalypse. is an exception to this rule. It clearly derives from the same bekground as the other Hekhalot writings. but is a much more highly edited composition than most of the other compilations in the corpus, has a definite theological agenda, and contains nothing in the way of mystical instruction (it may be added that we have here an Apocalypse which we know to be the product of a visionary mystical tradition). Schafer’s description of the win k is therefore almost certainly misleading. It seems more likely to be the case that the same mystical tradition gave rise to various types of composition. who forms reflect their different literary put poses.
In the light of these considerations. it is hardly surprising Ora a narrative description of the transformation of a pseudepigraphical apocalyptic hero is found in the Hekhalot corpus only in 3 Enoch. However, IV idea that tits vision of God entails a transformation of the beholder into fue or light iss as we have seen, well-documented. not only in the Apocalypses but also in the nerkaba h midrashim and the Hekhalot writings offer instructions whereby that vision may be obtained. there arc. moreover, references to such a transformation of the Mystic himself. In Hekhalot Zutarti, Aqiba states that the adept is able ‘to walk in rivers of fire and to know the lightning, 128 and, in another passage. that he himself ascended to heaven in a carriage of fire.’” which would hardly he possible in an ordinary body. AIso, in Hekhalot Zutartis we find Ishmael stating that as a result of his vision of the angelic vice-regent there called MGHSH or MNHSH) … my hands were bumed, and I was standing without hands or Feet.130 The most striking passage occurs Hekhalot Rabbati:
A quality of Witness. a quality of power, a quality of awefulness. a quality of dread, a quality of terror, a quality of trembling, a quality of fearfulness. a quality of arm is the quality of the garment of ZOHORARI’EL, LORD God of Israel. Who is crowned and comes and sits upon the Throne of His Glory. And it is embroidered all over and covered, within and without: YHWH, YHWH. And no creature’s eyes can behold it -neither the eyes of flesh and blood nor the eyes of His ministers. For he who beholds it—yea. he who glances and sees it—his eyeballs are ignited and whirled around: his eyeballs cast forth fire and spew forth fiery torches, and they set him ablaze and burn him up–for fire issues forth from the man who beholds and sets him ablaze and burns him up. Why? Because of the likeness of the eyes of the garment of ZOHARARI’EL, LORD God of Israel, who is crowned and comes upon the Throne of His Glory. And His splendour is pleasing and beautiful like the appearance of the beauty and splendour and glory of the eyes of the Living Creatures—as it is written: Holy! Holy! Holy is the LORD of Hosts!
Scholem comments on this passage:
This is not .. a description of dangers confronting the mystic. but of a mystical transfiguration taking place within him. What is a rettrement experience as the case of Enoch. however, is only a temporary experience in the case of the Merkabah mystic.
Chernus disputes this interpretation, arguing that the passage refers to the danger of the vision of the Glory,’” but both are surely right in what they affirm and wrong in vim( they deny. The meaning must lad that the vision of the garment of the Glory. which embodies the Name or God. involves a transformation of the mystic’s body into fire, a process which is terrifyingly dangerouss even fatal, should he prove unworthy. A striking parallel is found in The Pseudo-Clementine Homiliess where it is staled that no human being can look at the incorporeal form (morph e) of the Father or the Son:
For the excess of light dissolves the flesh of him who sees, unless by the secret power of God the flesh can be changed into the nature divine.
Attention should he drawn to the importance of praise in the Hekhalot literature. Long sections of these texts consist of grandiloquent, rhythmical and apparently ecstatic or ecstasy-inducing hymns and prayer It seems that the mystic, l combining recitation of these liturgical passages with visualisation of the images described and so entering, in imagination and belief, into the presence of the Glory and participating in the worship of the angels, produced in himself a state of intense emotion, which could, and apparently sometimes did, bring about an ecstatic, transformational experience of the kind that we have been considering. That such experience can involve extreme bodily sensations of fire and light is widely attested in the annals of devotional mysticism. This seems to have been known to Philo who states, in a well-known passage, that one who makes confession of praise becomes exempt from body and matter for he is permeated by fire in giving thanks to God and is drunk with a sober drunkenness.82 36
At I Enoch 71:11, we find a similar association of transformation with ecstatic praise:
I fell on my face. my w hole body mollified and my spirit trail Formed Then I cried out with a great voice by the spirit of the Power, blessing, glorifying and extolling.
The last three chapters of Hekhalot Rabbati. at the climax of the mystical ascent, consist of a long hymn (clearly a compilation from store than one source) which is said to be uttered by the Throne of Glory in the presence of God each day, and which the mystic is instructed to recite.’:” It seems that the mystic is identifying himself with the Merkabah and asking God to he enthroned upon or within him. In other words, he is seeking to become, like the patriarchs and righteous men of mythical history, a vehicle for the manifestation of the divine Image or 0106.
It would seem, then, that the story of Enoch’s transformation into Metatron may represent the ultimate aspiration of the Merkaba mystic. The traditions examined above suggest that a variety of mythical and historical figures were credited with having achieved such a transformation on what might be called a ‘cosmic’ scale and with having become veritable incarnations of the Name or Power of God. An analogous, though lesser, transformation was promised to the righteous in the world to come. But it seems that such a transformation was also considered possible, if only temporarily, for exceptionally holy individuals in this life. Such men were gifted with supernatural power and knowledge, and became intercessors between the divine and human worlds, because they had ‘become conformed to the divine Image or kabod and, like the High Priest in the Temple sanctuary, had been vested with the Name of God.
There may be an ironic reference to this belief at M Berakoth 2:8:
If a bridegroom wishes to recite the Sema. on the first, night, he ma,. (10 s0 It hough he is exempt from this obligation] Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel says: Not everyone who wishes to assume the Name may do so
It is clear from the context that ‘to assume the Name’ means to adopt the posture of an exceptionally pious and saintly person who is not distracted from his religious observance even on his wedding night. It seems reasonable to suggest that the expression is derived from the mystical tradition and indicates a transformation analogous to that of Enoch-Metatron which may only be safely undergone by exceptionally saintly persons. We have encountered the idea of ‘clothing’ with the Name in several traditions: of the Samaritan Moses, the Gnostic Christ and the righteous in the world to come. The traditions about the transformation of Enoch are expressed in very similar language. In Syriac Christian sources, the idea of taking the Name upon oneself or ‘sealing with the Name’ is often associated with The Initiatory death-rebirth transformation of baptism, in which man is conformed through the mediation of Christ to the divine Image,’” in which context Narsai says of the officiating priest:
Lo. The priest is ready to enter the Holy of Holies, to open the door of the kingdom of the height before them that would enter. Lo, he approaches the royal house, that he may receive power to perform the mysteries that are to be done by his hand. Lo, the King of the height reaches out to him the hand of the Spirit and places in his hand the signet of His Name, that he may seal His sheep. Lo, He puts on him the vesture of the immortals, that he may hide therewith the disgrace of men who were guilty and exposed.
It should be noted that revelatory visions and locutions are sometimes associated with the rite of baptism in the Syriac sources.140 Presumably. the New Testament stories of Jesus’ own baptism provided the paradigm for this association. Though he does not mention ‘clothing with the Name’. Paul’s understanding of baptism seems to be rooted in the same tradition of transformational mysticism:”’
.. you have put off the old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator.
Clement of Alexandria reports a Gnostic baptismal tradition that the candidate is:
baptized into the same Name as that in which his angel was baptized before him .. . in the beginning, the angels were baptized in the redemption of His Name which came down upon Jesus in the dove and redeemed him.
Further evidence that the baptismal transformation was associated by some Gnostics with pronunciation of the divine Name, with which the candidate is invested. is provided by The Gospel of the Egyptians. I his text, whose background in the Merkahah tradition is indicated by its description of the spiritual universe as a ‘glorifying throneroom’ (doxomed on ) domedon)114 and its application to Christ of the name MN.’ ’5 includes an (ecstatic?) post-baptismal hymn which begins as follows:’
0 Iessees!
… In very truth!
0 living water!
0 child of the
child!
O name of all the glories
In very truth!
0 eternal being!
In
very truth!
O being which beholds the aeons
In very truth!
In very
truth!
IRA A16 in the heart!
0 existent upsilon forever unto
eternity!
You are what you are!
You are who you are!
This great name of
yours is upon me, o self-originate that- lacks nothing and is free.
0
invisible unto all but [me]
0 invisible unto all!
For what being can
comprehend you by speech or praise?
Now that I have known you I have mixed
with your unchangeableness;155 And I have girded myself and come to dwell in an
armour of loveliness and light, and I have become luminous …
With this should be compared a statement found in the Apocalypse of Adam that the seed of Seth will receive the name of the Saviour ‘upon the water.
A short text from the circles of the Hasidei-’Askenazim who preserved the Hekhalot traditions, the Sefer-Ha Malbush, describes a ritual in which the practitioner makes for himself a priestly robe embroidered with the name of God and. following a period of ascetic preparation, is instructed to immerse as follows:
Go down into the water up to your loins and clothe ourself with the venerable and terrible Name in the water.
This seems almost to be an enactment of the tradition recorded in Genesis Rabbah that, when the Waters were divided on the third day of creation,
The voice of the LORD became Metatron upon the waters, as it is written: The voice of the LORD is upon the waters’ (Psalms 29:3).
The same scriptural verse is quoted in an initiation ritual described Eleazar of Worms (c. 1200). in which the divine Name is ‘transmitted’ master to pupil while both are standing up to their ankles in flowing water.”’ At all events, though the evidence for these rituals as such is relatively late, the underlying idea is so similar to that of the Syriac and Gnostic baptismal formule as to suggest a common origin in the evidently at n f tradition of transformational mysticism according to which the vision of God’s Glory transforms the visionary into the likeness of that Glory, and invests him with the divine Name, This seems also to be the background of many statements in the New Testament writings, particularly the letters of Paul to which several references have been made above.’” Consider also, for example, Romans 8:29:
Those whom He foreknew He also predestined to he conformed to the Image of His Son, in order that He might be the first-born of many brethren.
2 Corinthians 3:18:
and we alls beholding with unveiled faces the Glory of the Lord,’” are being
changed into His likeness from one degree of glory to another.
and perhaps, in the light of the si’ur qomah tradition and the cosmic bodies of Metatron and the primordial Adam, Ephesians 4:12–13:
for the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of
the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure
of the stature of the fullness (pleromatos) of Christ.
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