nora
(Nora)
#1
Martha Himmelfarb
of the scrolls and merkabah mysticism, as far as I know; as I have noted, it fo
cuses particularly on the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, but it also finds evi
dence for this mysticism in other texts among the scrolls, especially liturgical
texts and the so-called Self-Glorification Hymn. Following Johann Maier,
Alexander understands merkabah mysticism to have originated among Jeru
salem priests; eventually some of their heirs brought the tradition to
Qumran, where it underwent a reworking with the concerns of a sect alien
ated from the Jerusalem temple in view.^16 With the destruction of the tem
ple, the tradition was maintained by priests who became members of the
rabbinic movement, though it stood in considerable tension with the domi
nant ideology of the rabbis; the hekhalot literature that appears toward the
end of the rabbinic period is, in Alexander's view, a somewhat rabbinized
version of the merkabah tradition. Although he catalogues a body of paral
lels between the Qumran texts and the hekhalot literature, Alexander em
phasizes the "oblique" character of the relationship between the two forms
of merkabah mysticism: the former is a "sectarian reworking of a priestly
doctrine," while the latter is a reworking of that original doctrine "more in
keeping with the rabbinic ethos."^17
But what is most important in Alexander's book for our purposes is
the very brief consideration of Jubilees in its discussion of the larger context
of the relevant scrolls in the literature of the second temple period. Alexan
der points out that Jubilees shares with the Book of the Watchers and other
works of the second temple period two important and interrelated features
that appear elsewhere in the tradition of merkabah mysticism: an under
standing of heaven as temple and of a group of human beings as the earthly
counterpart of the angels.^18 I shall return to their significance for Jubilees'
relationship to the early Jewish mystical tradition shortly.
While Alexander's book focuses primarily on the scrolls, Rachel Elior's
Three Temples, which appeared a few years before Alexander's book, under
takes to sketch the entire early history of Jewish mysticism from the Bible
through the hekhalot texts. I have offered my views on Elior's work at some
ism, Hierarchy and the Limits of Human Participation," in The Dead Sea Scrolls as Back
ground to Postbiblical Judaism and Early Christianity: Papers from an International Confer
ence at St. Andrews in 2001, ed. lames R. Davila, STDJ 46 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003),
220-47.
16. Alexander, Mystical Texts, 128-31; Johann Maier, Vom Kultus zur Gnosis, Kairos
Religionswissenschaftliche Studien 1 (Salzburg: Otto Mueller, 1964).
17. Alexander, Mystical Texts, 122-38; quotations, 135.
18. Alexander, Mystical Texts, 55-56,139.
