Enoch and the Mosaic Torah- The Evidence of Jubilees

Martha Himmelfarb

of mysticism, Jubilees' relationship to these texts is nonetheless of consider­

able interest, with important implications for the understanding of Jubilees.

In Major Trends, Scholem delineated three stages of merkabah mysti­

cism: traditions found in the apocalyptic literature of the second temple pe­

riod; the speculation of the Tannaim, the rabbis of the first and second centu­

ries of this era; and finally the hekhalot texts, which Scholem dated to the

period of the amoraim, the rabbis of the third through fifth centuries.^7 The

scholarship of the last decades of the twentieth century developed and re­

fined Scholem's understanding of merkabah mysticism, but it also raised im­

portant questions about his representation of each of the three stages.^8 For

the third stage, the hekhalot texts, in which Scholem saw ascent to heaven as

the defining interest, recent scholarship has pointed out that the adjuration

of angels is also a central concern;^9 there have also been strong arguments for

moving the date of the hekhalot texts forward into the Islamic period.^10 For

the second stage, the merkabah mysticism attested in early rabbinic literature,

scholarship since Scholem has questioned the existence of a tradition of mys­

tical practice and has emphasized the exegetical aspect of the Tannaitic tradi­

tions and even of later material in classical rabbinic sources,^11 thus demon­

strating that the relationship of these merkabah materials to the hekhalot

literature is less direct and more complex than Scholem suggested.^12

7. Scholem, Major Trends, 43.

8. To the best of my knowledge, there is no article or book chapter devoted to a criti­

cal discussion of scholarship on the hekhalot literature since Scholem. For recent listings of

publications that supplement each other, see Rebecca Macy Lesses, Ritual Practices to Gain

Power. Angels, Incantations, and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism, HTS 44 (Harrisburg,

Pa.: Trinity, 1998), 3 n. 8; and James R. Davila, Descenders to the Chariot The People behind

the Hekhalot Literature, JSJSup 70 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 316-17.

9. Peter Schafer, "The Aim and Purpose of Early Jewish Mysticism," in Hekhalot-Studien,

TSAJ19 (Tubingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1988), 277-95, and The Hidden and Manifest God: Some

Major Themes in Early Jewish Mysticism, trans. Aubrey Pomerance (Albany: State University of

New York Press, 1992), esp. 142-46,151-57; David J. Halperin, The Faces of the Chariot: Early Jew­

ish Responses to Ezekiel's Vision, TSAJ 16 (Tubingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1988), esp. 376-87.

10. Most recently, Ra'anan S. Boustan, "The Emergence of Pseudonymous Attribu­

tion in Heikhalot Literature: Empirical Evidence from the Jewish 'Magical' Corpora," JSQ 14

(2007): 18-38.

11. David J. Halperin, The Merkabah in Rabbinic Literature, AOS 62 (New Haven:

American Oriental Society, 1980), esp. 179-85.

12. For a range of views on the nature of the relationship, all at some distance from

Scholem's, see P. S. Alexander, "The Historical Setting of the Hebrew Book of Enoch," JJS

28 (1977): 156-80; Halperin, Faces of the Chariot, esp. 427-46; Schafer, "Aim and Purpose,"

289-95, and Hidden and Manifest God, 157-61; Michael D. Swartz, Scholastic Magic: Ritual