Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses

Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses PDF

Author: Martha Himmelfarb

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1993-08-19

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 0195359658

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This is a study of the ancient Jewish and Christian apocalypses involving ascent into heaven, which have received little scholarly attention in comparison to apocalypses concerned primarily with the end of the world. Recent developments like the publication of the Aramaic Enoch fragments from Qumran and interest in questions of genre in the study of the apocalypses make this a particularly appropriate time to undertake this study. Martha Himmelfarb places the apocalypses in relation to both their biblical antecedents and their context in the Greco-Roman world. Her analysis emphasizes the emergence of the understanding of heaven as temple in the Book of the Watchers, the earliest of these apocalypses, and the way in which this understanding affects the depiction of the culmination of ascent, the hero's achievement of a place among the angels, in the ascent apocalypses generally. It also considers the place of secrets of nature and primeval history in these works. Finally, it offers an interpretation of the pseudepigraphy of the apocalypses and their function.

The Open Heaven

The Open Heaven PDF

Author: Christopher Rowland

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2002-08-01

Total Pages: 577

ISBN-13: 1592440126

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The Open Heaven offers a comprehensive discussion of Jewish apocalyptic literature and themes in the Second Temple period and in early Christianity. In it there is a sustained challenge to the widespread view that apocalypticism is a form of eschatology, and, it has been widely recognised as a significant contribution to the discussion of apcocalypticism in religion since it was first published twenty years ago. By concentrating on the revelatory character of apocalyptic texts rather than their diverse contents the author suggests that it is this aspect of the literature which best enables us to understand their distinctive religion. The book offers a sustained argument for the iew that apocalyptic literature is primarily about the disclosure of heavenly wisdom which offers recipients an understanding of life in the present. He also suggests that there ma be some evidence to support the view that apocalypses include reports of visionary experience. The approach to apocalypticism in early Christianity stresses the importance of the visionary element as a decisive element in the history of Christa origins.

Tours of Hell

Tours of Hell PDF

Author: Martha Himmelfarb

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2016-11-11

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 1512802778

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From the ancient Book of the Dead to Dante's Divine Comedy, the living have attempted to describe the world of the dead. Tours of Hell focuses on one form of that attempt: the tours of hell found in Jewish and Christian apocalypses of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Himmelfarb examines seventeen texts, preserved in five languages and spanning a thousand years of human history. These include Hebrew texts and Christian texts in Greek, Latin, Ethiopic, and Coptic, such as the Apocalypse of Peter and the Apocalypse of Paul family. Muslim texts, medieval visions, and other related literatures are also discussed. Himmelfarb details the common elements of the tour tradition, including such features as a hero or heroine figure, a heavenly revealer, and descriptions of the punishments awaiting those who arrive in hell. She convincingly refutes the accepted nineteenth-century critical view of the earliest of these tours, the Apocalypse of Peter, as a Christian form of an "Orphic-Pythagorean" descent to Hades. She place the work instead on the family tree of the tour apocalypse, a genre she traces back to the third century B.C.E. Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36). Linking the Apocalypse of Peter with later Jewish tours of hell, Himmelfarb reveals significant sin-and-punishment combinations that seem to point to a common source, which she theorizes to be a lost Jewish Tour work of the late Second Temple period. Rich and fascinating texts seldom before brought to light are treated in detail in this pioneering study. A comprehensive work on the apocalyptic tradition, Tours of Hell will be of great interest to scholars and students of religion, history, ancient and medieval literature, and Dante studies.

Jewish and Christian Apocalypses

Jewish and Christian Apocalypses PDF

Author: Francis Crawford Burkitt

Publisher:

Published: 1914

Total Pages: 102

ISBN-13:

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In this time of intense apocalyptic interests, Burkitt's study of extra-biblical apocalypses will shed some light. Burkitt is known for his work in early Christianity, and he is well-equipped to deal with this difficult issue. These Schweich Lectures of 1913 address the book of Enoch, minor Jewish and early Christian apocalypses, especially the Ascension of Isaiah.

The Apocalypse

The Apocalypse PDF

Author: Martha Himmelfarb

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2010-01-22

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1444318225

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This accessible and enlightening history provides insights into thefascinating genre of apocalyptic literature, showing how theapocalypse encompasses far more than popular views of the lastjudgment and violent end of the world might suggest. An accessible and enlightening history of the"apocalypses"--ancient Jewish and Christian works -- providingfresh insights into the fascinating genre of literature Shows how the apocalypses were concerned not only with popularviews of the last judgment and violent end of the world, but withreward and punishment after death, the heavenly temple, and therevelation of astronomical phenomena and other secrets ofnature Traces the tradition of apocalyptic writing through the MiddleAges, through to the modern era, when social movements stillprophesise the world’s imminent demise

The Fate of the Dead

The Fate of the Dead PDF

Author: Richard Bauckham

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2014-04-09

Total Pages: 446

ISBN-13: 9004267417

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These studies focus on personal eschatology in the Jewish and early Christian apocalypses. The apocalyptic tradition from its Jewish origins until the early middle ages is studied as a continuous literary tradition, in which both continuity of motifs and important changes in understanding of life after death can be charted. As well as better known apocalypses, major and often pioneering attention is given to those neglected apocalypses which portray human destiny after death in detail, such as the Apocalypse of Peter, the Apocalypse of the Seven Heavens, the later apocalypses of Ezra, and the four apocalypses of the Virgin Mary. Relationships with Greco-Roman eschatology are explored. Several chapters show how specific New Testament texts are illuminated by close knowledge of this tradition of ideas and images of the hereafter.

Cosmology and Eschatology in Jewish and Christian Apocalypticism

Cosmology and Eschatology in Jewish and Christian Apocalypticism PDF

Author: Yarbro Collins

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-12-06

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 9004493883

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This volume deals with Jewish and Christian apocalyptic texts and movements from the second century BCE through the fourth century CE. It focuses on two major themes, cosmology and eschatology; that is, views of structure of the universe including its religious function and interpretations of history and the future. The detailed historical and literary analysis of these themes are introduced by an essay on the cultural gap between the original contexts of these texts and those of readers today and how that gap may be bridged. The book deals with the interrelations between post-biblical Judaism and early Christianity. The relevant Jewish texts and history are discussed thoroughly in their own right. The Christian material is approached in a way which shows both its continuity with Jewish tradition and its distinctiveness.

The Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition and the Shaping of New Testament Thought

The Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition and the Shaping of New Testament Thought PDF

Author: Benjamin E. Reynolds

Publisher: Fortress Press

Published: 2017-04-01

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 1506423426

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The contemporary study of Jewish apocalypticism today recognizes the wealth and diversity of ancient traditions concerned with the “unveiling” of heavenly matters‒‒understood to involve revealed wisdom, the revealed resolution of time, and revealed cosmology‒‒in marked contrast to an earlier focus on eschatology as such. The shift in focus has had a more direct impact on the study of ancient “pseudepigraphic” literature, however, than in New Testament studies, where the narrower focus on eschatological expectation remains dominant. In this Companion, an international team of scholars draws out the implications of the newest scholarship for the variety of New Testament writings. Each entry presses the boundaries of current discussion regarding the nature of apocalypticism in application to a particular New Testament author. The cumulative effect is to reveal, as never before, early Christianity, its Christology, cosmology, and eschatology, as expressions of tendencies in Second Temple Judaism.

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