Descenders to the Chariot
Descenders to the Chariot

Author: James Davila

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-11-22

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 9004496998

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The Hekhalot literature is a bizarre conglomeration of Jewish esoteric and revelatory texts in Hebrew and Aramaic, produced sometime between late antiquity and the early Middle Ages and surviving in medieval manuscripts. These texts claims to describe the self-induced spiritual experiences of the "descenders to the chariot" and to reveal the techniques that permitted these magico-religious practitioners to view for themselves Ezekiel's Merkavah as well as to gain control of angels and a supernatural mastery of Torah. Drawing on epigraphic and archaeological evidence from the Middle East, anthropological models, and a wide range of cross-cultural evidence, this book aims to show that the Hekhalot literature preserves the teachings and rituals of real religious functionaries who flourished in late antiquity and who were quite like the functionaries anthopologists call shamans.

The Besht
The Besht

Author: Immanuel Etkes

Publisher: UPNE

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 1611683084

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Now available in English, a provocative new biography of the founder of Hasidism

Flores Florentino
Flores Florentino

Author: Anthony Hilhorst

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 866

ISBN-13: 9004162925

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This volume comprises forty-eight essays, presented by friends, colleagues and students in honour of Florentino Garcia Martinez. The articles are primarily in the field of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but also cover many other fields of Second Temple Judaism, from late biblical texts and Septuagint up to the pseudepigrapha and early rabbinic writings.

Hekhalot Literature in Translation
Hekhalot Literature in Translation

Author: James Davila

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2013-06-13

Total Pages: 451

ISBN-13: 9004252169

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The Hekhalot literature is a motley collection of textually fluid and often textually corrupt documents in Hebrew and Aramaic which deal with mystical themes pertaining especially to God's throne-chariot (the Merkavah). They were composed between late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, with roots in earlier traditions and a long and complex subsequent history of transmission. This volume presents English translations of eclectic critical texts, with a full apparatus of variants, of most of the major Hekhalot documents: Hekhalot Rabbati; Sar Torah; Hekhalot Zutarti; Ma'aseh Merkavah; Merkavah Rabba; briefer macroforms: The Chapter of R. Nehuniah ben HaQanah, The Great Seal-Fearsome Crown, Sar Panim, The Ascent of Elijah ben Avuyah, and The Youth; and the Hekhalot fragments from the Cairo Geniza.

On My Right Michael, On My Left Gabriel
On My Right Michael, On My Left Gabriel

Author: Mika Ahuvia

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2021-06-08

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 0520380118

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Introduction : angelic greetings or Shalom Aleichem -- At home with the angels : Babylonian ritual sources -- Out and about with the angels : Palestinian ritual sources -- No angels? early rabbinic sources -- In the image of God, not angels : rabbinic sources -- In the image of the angels : liturgical sources -- Israel among the angels : Late rabbinic sources -- Jewish mystics and the angelic realms : early mystical sources -- Conclusion : angels in Judaism and the religions of late antiquity -- Appendix A : table -- Appendix B : description of table.

Concealment and Revelation
Concealment and Revelation

Author: Moshe Halbertal

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2009-01-10

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 1400827965

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During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, great new trends of Jewish thought emerged whose widely varied representatives--Kabbalists, philosophers, and astrologers--each claimed that their particular understanding revealed the actual secret of the Torah. They presented their own readings in a coded fashion that has come to be regarded by many as the very essence of esotericism. Concealment and Revelation takes us on a fascinating journey to the depths of the esoteric imagination. Carefully tracing the rise of esotericism and its function in medieval Jewish thought, Moshe Halbertal's richly detailed historical and cultural analysis gradually builds conceptual-philosophical force to culminate in a masterful phenomenological taxonomy of esotericism and its paradoxes. Among the questions addressed: What are the internal justifications that esoteric traditions provide for their own existence, especially in the Jewish world, in which the spread of knowledge was of great importance? How do esoteric teachings coexist with the revealed tradition, and what is the relationship between the various esoteric teachings that compete with that revealed tradition? Halbertal concludes that, through the medium of the concealed, Jewish thinkers integrated into the heart of the Jewish tradition diverse cultural influences such as Aristotelianism, Neoplatonism, and Hermeticisims. And the creation of an added concealed layer, unregulated and open-ended, became the source of the most daring and radical interpretations of the tradition.

Intimate Alien
Intimate Alien

Author: David J. Halperin

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2020-03-24

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 1503612120

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A voyage of exploration to the outer reaches of our inner lives. UFOs are a myth, says David J. Halperin—but myths are real. The power and fascination of the UFO has nothing to do with space travel or life on other planets. It's about us, our longings and terrors, and especially the greatest terror of all: the end of our existence. This is a book about UFOs that goes beyond believing in them or debunking them and to a fresh understanding of what they tell us about ourselves as individuals, as a culture, and as a species. In the 1960s, Halperin was a teenage UFOlogist, convinced that flying saucers were real and that it was his life's mission to solve their mystery. He would become a professor of religious studies, with traditions of heavenly journeys his specialty. With Intimate Alien, he looks back to explore what UFOs once meant to him as a boy growing up in a home haunted by death and what they still mean for millions, believers and deniers alike. From the prehistoric Balkans to the deserts of New Mexico, from the biblical visions of Ezekiel to modern abduction encounters, Intimate Alien traces the hidden story of the UFO. It's a human story from beginning to end, no less mysterious and fantastic for its earthliness. A collective cultural dream, UFOs transport us to the outer limits of that most alien yet intimate frontier, our own inner space.

Heaven
Heaven

Author: Paula Gooder

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2011-09-12

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 1610977777

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"Heaven is one of those great mysteries that somehow symbolize what we don't know about ourselves and the world around us. At the same time it lifts our vision from the mundane realities of our everyday lives and reminds us that beyond the daily grind of our existence there is another, unseen reality. A reality that is as real--if not more so--than our everyday lives. Heaven suggests an answer to the familiar human feeling that there must be more than this, and prompts us to wonder whether there is indeed more in heaven and earth than can be dreamt of in all our philosophies."-Paula Gooder, from the Introduction

Ontological Aspects of Early Jewish Anthropology
Ontological Aspects of Early Jewish Anthropology

Author: Tyson L. Putthoff

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2016-11-28

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 9004336419

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In Ontological Aspects of Early Jewish Anthropology, Tyson L. Putthoff explores early Jewish beliefs about how the human self reacts ontologically in God’s presence. Combining contemporary theory with sound exegesis, Putthoff demonstrates that early Jews widely considered the self to be intrinsically malleable, such that it mimics the ontological state of the space it inhabits. In divine space, they believed, the self therefore shares in the ontological state of God himself. The book is critical for students and scholars alike. In putting forth a new framework for conceptualising early Jewish anthropology, it challenges scholars to rethink not only what early Jews believed about the self but how we approach the subject in the first place.