The Book of Jubilees and Early Jewish Mysticism
The first stage of merkabah mysticism, the traditions found in the
apocalyptic literature of the second temple period, is the least developed
stage in Scholem's discussion. Scholem touched briefly on apocalyptic litera
ture in Major Trends and had only a little more to say in his one book on
early Jewish mysticism, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Tal-
mudic Tradition.^13 The last third of the twentieth century saw dramatic
growth in scholarly interest in apocalyptic literature, and several scholars
took up the challenge posed by Scholem's work, offering more detailed dis
cussions of the themes and motifs of merkabah mysticism as they appeared
in the apocalypses.^14
The last decades of the twentieth century also saw the ongoing publi
cation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a corpus of major significance for our under
standing of the apocalypses and early Jewish mysticism. Scholem was clearly
aware of the potential significance of the scrolls for early Jewish mysticism,
and in Jewish Gnosticism he noted some parallels between the poetry of the
hekhalot texts and that of the Hodayot and the "Angelic Liturgy," as the early
publication of a portion of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice was called. But
the slow pace of publication meant that he was not in a position to offer an
overall evaluation of their significance for early Jewish mysticism before his
death in 1982. By the end of the twentieth century, however, the relationship
of the scrolls to merkabah mysticism had become a topic of considerable
scholarly interest.^15 Alexander's Mystical Texts is the first book-length study
and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996),
esp. 209-29.
13. Gershom G. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tra
dition (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, i960).
14. See, e.g., Ithamar Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism, AGJU 14
(Leiden: Brill, 1980); Halperin, faces of the Chariot, 63-114; Martha Himmelfarb, "Heavenly
Ascent and the Relationship of the Apocalypses and the Hekhalot Literature," HUCA 59
(1988): 73-100; Himmelfarb, "The Practice of Ascent in the Ancient Mediterranean World,"
in Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys, ed. John J. Collins and Michael Fishbane (Al
bany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 121-37; James R. Davila, "The Hekhalot Lit
erature and the Ancient Jewish Apocalypses," in Paradise Now: Essays on Early Jewish and
Christian Mysticism, ed. April DeConick, SBLSymS 11 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature,
2006), 105-25.