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Steve:

I’m new to your Heavenly Ascents blog – it looks fascinating and well researched.

I have two questions, if you would be kind enough to consider them: I was introduced to the ascent motif via the work of the late Morton Smith, who postulated that a mystical method of heavenly ascent was extant in Jesus’ time and that Jesus and his disciples may have had some personal experience with this practice. I realize that some of Smith’s statements were likely issued with a twinkle in his eye (did he forge Secret Mark, etc.), but he does seem to make a serious case for ascent in Jewish culture even before Jesus’ time, e.g., he points out that at least one other person “ascended” – one member of the DSS community, as reported in 4Q 491, who claimed to have ascended into the angelic assembly and to have gained divine wisdom thereby.

First question: But there are claims that most Jewish ascent literature came after Jesus’ time, too late to influence and/or be expressive of primitive Christian beliefs. I am unclear on this timeline. Some say, for example, that some of this literature was too late to have been strongly influential in nascent “Jewish Christianity”, with Enoch maybe dating from that time but maybe from a later time. So would you be able to firm up for me the time frame of ascent literature as it might bear on the religion of Jesus, his disciples, and their Jewish successors, say, until after the Second Revolt in CE 135? I.e., can we date extra-biblical ascent literature from Jesus’ own lifetime up until just after the final Jewish War?

The second question concerns what, from my admittedly meager reading, poses a mystery vis a vis the Jewish nature of ascent literature. I understand that with the rise of rabbinical Judaism post-Jamnia, orthodoxy was stressed, e.g., per Alan Segal, the rabbis came down on anything smacking of a “Two Powers in Heaven” belief, beliefs concerning a Chief Assisting Angel, and beliefs about God’s human form or “Kavod”. What puzzles me is that post-70 ascent literature – IF Jewish – seems to be replete with just those kinds of beliefs that were being more and more strongly condemned by the rabbis. Do we conclude from this (if my assumption is correct) that ascent authors and communities were not Jewish; or if they were Jewish, they were by definition heretical? And if they were heretical, by what means were these ideas promulgated and texts preserved?

Thanks for your consideration.

Regards,

Steve Bastasch¹

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Me:

Dear Mr Bastasch,

Thank you for your excellent and very relevant questions. Before I give my response, just as a forewarning, although my website is called Heavenly Ascents, I cannot claim to be an expert (yet!) on the topic, so bear that in mind as I give you my best answers to your questions.

I will begin by saying (and this may shape your opinion of my overall answer!) that in my estimation, the ascent to heaven motif is of great antiquity, much older even than the mentions attested to in the Qumran texts. It may not have been conceived of in exactly the same ways that it is later expressed in the Christian era, but I think that later texts build on these earlier attestations of the motif.

When I say much older, I believe that a form of heavenly ascent was practiced as a ritual in the pre-exilic times, the First Temple period. I base this conclusion partially on what I see as evidence for the idea in the liturgical setting of some of the Psalms. I believe that psalms such as 24, 47, 68, 118, and 132 (and others, cf. 139:8) describe a procession(s) that involved ascending the temple mount in order to reach the throne of God in the Temple. The Hebrew word for ascent (ʽālâ), is often used in this context. The expressed purpose of the ascent, according to Psalm 24:6, was to “seek the face of the God of Jacob” (see RSV or similar translation). The features of this ritualized ascent share many of the same features as the later ascent narratives, including passing through gates with guardians (Pss. 15, 24, 118 imply that there is a question-and-answer dialogue between those desiring to be found worthy of entry and the gatekeepers), seeing the Lord on his throne (Ps. 24:6; cf. Isa. 6, etc.), exaltation and enthronement of the individual (Pss. 2, 110, 89, etc.), and other similar features. While I can’t give a full description here, I believe that all this describes a practice of a primitive heavenly ascent ritual. The holy mountain with the temple at its pinnacle, while obviously located physically on earth, represented the mountain of God that reached into the heavens upon which God’s throne was located.

Whether one accepts these ideas and others in the Hebrew Bible as authentic precursors to the later ascent literature or not, I think there is still very good evidence that the belief in and practice of heavenly ascent was common in Jewish circles well before the Christian era. You mention the works of Morton Smith — he did some good research on this topic. However, you should take a look at the more recent work of James Davila in his article on heavenly ascents in the Dead Sea Scrolls in The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment (vol. 2; Brill, 1999), edited by Peter Flint and James VanderKam. Besides the one example of the anonymous figure ascending that you mention (4Q 491), Davila cites five other examples of ascent found at Qumran, including narratives of the heavenly ascent of Enoch, Melchizedek, Levi, Methuselah, and perhaps also Noah (4Q534) and Moses (4Q374, although this text is very unclear). Besides these, there are phrases from some of the sectarian literature that perhaps assume a belief in heavenly ascent. For example, in the Hodayot there are lines such as “You have exalted his [man's] glory beyond flesh” (7:21) and “[s]ons of God to be united with the sons of heaven” (frg. 2 10) and 11:19-23 where the speaker claims to have been “raised eternally to an exalted realm in communion of praise with the angels” (quoting Davila’s summary). Although the nature of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice is much debated, and Davila expresses doubts in this article, elsewhere he and also other scholars such as Crispin Fletcher-Louis, have described this text as possibly narrating a heavenly ascent ritual performed at Qumran. In the Davila article above, he emphasizes the fact that there seems to be a “ritual context” and “experiential component” behind these ascent texts. For me, this is all pretty clear evidence for the practice of a heavenly ascent ritual before the time of Jesus Christ. If you look at some of the works of Old Testament scholar Margaret Barker, this is the assumption that she is working with as well.

As far as the age of the Enochic literature, I follow the general opinion that the oldest sections of 1 Enoch were likely written around 300 BC and the latest sections around the first century BC. Martha Himmelfarb, in her classic Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses considers 1 Enoch’s “Book of the Watchers” (ca. 3rd Century BC) to be the earliest “ascent apocalypse”. 2 Enoch, which has a much clearer account of the ascent to heaven, is a much later text, probably from the first century AD. It is debatable whether this is originally a Jewish or Christian text. Coming up with a timeline for specific texts is very tricky and scholars have widely diverging opinions on when some of these texts were originally penned and by what group — Jewish or Christian. There certainly seems to be a blooming of this type of literature in the first few centuries of the Christian era, and these texts are preserved more often by the hands of Christians than Jews — this fact, however, does not mean that they were not originally written by Jews, and it is possible that some of these texts are considerably older than the attested examples. It is very difficult to tell. I’m sorry that I don’t have more specific details for you, but in my opinion, we can be quite certain, based on the examples I mentioned above and others, that the ascent idea was quite prevalent in at least some Jewish circles well before the time of Christ, and may have even been a main feature of the pre-exilic Israelite religion. Although Martha Himmelfarb is one that would perhaps deny this, I also believe that beyond, and perhaps in some cases accompanying, the ancient narratives regarding ascent, there was also an ascent praxis.

For a great treatment of the idea of the “mysteries” in connection with human access to the divine council at Qumran, see Samuel I. Thomas’s very recent book, The “Mysteries” of Qumran: Mystery, Secrecy, and Esotericism in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It doesn’t go into the “heavenly ascent” idea in much detail, but I think connections with ascent literature are not hard to make.

Why do we get so much talk of chief angels and the anthropomorphic Kavod in the ascent literature? My opinion is that these ideas are perpetuations of very old motifs that for some reason are well-preserved in this type of literature. If you look at the studies of scholars like Gabriele Boccaccini and others, you get the idea that there was a much larger degree of pluralism in early Judaism than most imagine. There seem to have been several different Jewish sects (even beyond the Pharisee, Sadducee, Essene, etc. divisions that we usually hear about). Some scholars claim that some of these Jewish sects preserved the older Israelite religion better than others. In the Second Temple period, some of the mainstream groups seemed to be very interested in reforming and reshaping the Jewish religion — censoring older ideas that they now found heretical. Theoretically, many of these ideas that they wanted to discard involved the possibility of heavenly ascent, of seeing God on his throne, of any “Two Powers” notions, etc. It seems that these issues were hotly debated well before the rise of Christianity. According to some, this may have been why the “sectarians” went to Qumran. The religious tenets that they held to had become unacceptable by the mainstream. Rabbinical Judaism would develop out of this mainstream of “Zadokite” Judaism and would continue to try to purge Jewish culture of these beliefs that they found heretical. It appears that the early Christians had beliefs that were in line with, or similar to, some of these “other” Jewish groups that were unacceptable to the Rabbis.

I don’t believe that all of the post-70 ascent literature was Christian. I think that a lot of it was originally Jewish, but that it came from Jewish groups that were outside of the Rabbinic mainstream. I think a lot of the literature was eventually preserved only by Christians because they had very similar beliefs and because the Jewish groups that would have possibly written the texts and could have preserved them eventually waned under Rabbinic suppression. However, we do see that there were Jewish circles that did preserve many of these more “mystical” ideas into medieval times and beyond (e.g. merkavah mysticism, hekhalot texts, Kabbalah, Sefer Yetzirah, Zohar, etc.). It seems that some of the groups that preserved these traditions were more ascetical and priestly and were generally opposed by the Rabbis. If you look at E.R. Goodenough’s work on the Dura Europos synagogue, which is full of mystical and ascent motifs, you can get an idea for how and by whom some of these ideas were perpetuated in Jewish circles. I believe that both Christians and these “sidelined” Jewish groups preserved this material because they believed that it was part of a more authentic ancient Israelite belief system that had roots in the First Temple period and that had not been so altered by reformers.

For more on this line of thinking, see Margaret Barker’s The Older Testament, The Great Angel: A Study of Israel’s Second God, Temple Themes in Christian Worship, or pretty much any other book of hers.

I’m sorry if my thoughts here are more general than specific, but feel free to ask me any further questions. I would enjoy further discussing these ideas.

Cheers,

David

1. Author’s name reproduced with permission

Often when we think of Judaism, with think of this ancient monolithic system that has never changed much. Many assume that the Judaism of today is the same as the Judaism of ancient Rabbis, which is the same Judaism as is presented in the New Testament and, likewise, the Old. Nothing could be further from the truth! Just as there have been many branches and divisions within Christianity, there have been many types of Judaism. An understanding of this fact will help us to comprehend why the religion of Jesus seems so incompatible with that of his contemporaries and also, to some degree, so different from the Old Testament as well. How could Jesus’ followers–primarily Jews–so readily accept his ”new” brand of religion? Also, for Latter-day Saints–if the same Gospel has been on the Earth since the beginning, why does the Old Testament sometimes seem like such a different gospel? Why are the structure and ordinances that we know sometimes hard to find in its many pages? I turn to the work of Dr. Gabriele Boccaccini, professor of New Testament and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Michigan, to give us some possible insight into these questions.

Boccaccini is an expert on what happened to the religion of the Jews after the Babylonian exile and in the centuries that led up to the beginning of Christianity. He has written several books, including Middle Judaism: Jewish Thought, 300 BCE-200 CE (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), Beyond the Essene Hypothesis: The Partings of the Ways between Qumran and Enochic Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), and Roots of Rabbinic Judaism: An Intellectual History, from Ezekiel to Daniel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001). It is from the last of these three works that I will draw most of my material.

Rabbinic Judaism really developed and became the mainstream form of Judaism after Jerusalem’s Second Temple was destroyed in 70 AD. Roots of Rabbinic Judaism is an attempt by Boccaccini to trace the Rabbinic movement back to its roots in the Second Temple period (the period that commences right after the Jews’ return from Babylon).  Boccaccini starts from the premise that Rabbinic Judaism was not always the normative or mainstream expression of Judaism that it claims to be.  Traditionally, the rabbis portrayed their movement as a monolithic entity that extends unaltered back to the Mosaic covenant at Sinai. Modern insight into the diversity of the Second Temple Period has revealed that this traditional history is a reconstruction and that Rabbinic Judaism is likely descended from a combination of “Judaisms” that competed with each other in post-exilic Judah. Rather than being a continuation of the religion of ancient Israel, the system of the Rabbis was “a bold reform movement” that represented the views of only some Jews. [1]

Boccaccini draws his conclusions from a close analysis of the available texts, ranging from Ezekiel to Daniel along with the “extra-biblical” literature of the Second Temple period, including the Enochic writings and the Dead Sea Scrolls.  His analysis identifies multiple “Judaisms” that developed concurrently in the Second Temple Period.  According to Boccaccini, there “is no Judaism but, in today’s world as well as in the past, only Judaisms–a set of parallel systems in competition.” [2]

The Second Temple

• Zadokite Judaism — “After the Babylonian exile and the end of the Davidic monarchy, the leadership of the Jewish people was provided by the Zadokites.” [3] The Zadokites were the Aaronic high priests of the new temple built after the exile (the Temple of Zarubbabel or Second Temple), and considered themselves to be descendents of Zadok, the priest of David and Solomon (2 Sam 8:17; 1 Kgs 1:32–46)–supposedly the most worthy line of the sons of Aaron.  This distinction seems to have developed during the period of the exile, as expressed in Ezek 44:10-16. In the void created by the Babylonian captivity, the Zadokites siezed the opportunity to elevate their social, political, and religious status:

Taking advantage of discontent and dissatisfaction among the exiles, the house of Zadok took a step that would have monumental consequences for the future of Judaism. They made clear that they were no longer available to recognize the Davidic king’s right to exclusive leadership, in particular his right to appoint the chief priest–an office they now claimed for themselves as a divine right. [4]

Before long, the Davidic kings disappeared from history, and the religious functions associated with the kings (that requires a separate post!) were absorbed by the priests; the Zadokite Aaronic priests were left alone as the supreme and unchallenged religous authority in Jewish society. [5] The Zadokites now set the agenda, which entailed, according to Boccaccini, “a new temple in Jerusalem under a new priesthood.” [6]  The Zadokites created a complex social hierarchy within Jewish society, based on grades of holiness. Each class was subject, in turn, to specific laws of purity that they were required to observe. Disobedience brought unbalance to the system, which threatened the stability of the whole cosmos. All of creation depended on the Aaronic high priest to perform atonement, else they would face certain destruction. All were dependent on them for salvation.

• Enochic Judaism — As the Zadokites rose in power after their return from exile, other returnees, as well as the large population who had remained in the land during the Exile, were required to conform to the new order. There were many whose “religious practices were not significantly altered” since more ancient times, and who did not want to participate in this new system. They soon found themselves “outcast as ‘foreigners’ from the cultic community of Jerusalem.” [7] These “outcasts” included the Samaritans and others, including what scholars see as a “priestly opposition” group.  This priestly opposition is known primarily through their writings, which include, characteristically, the Enochic literature, Aramaic Levi, and much of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. For Boccaccini, from these came the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran. Although we have no specific name for them, Boccaccini calls their movement “Enochic Judaism” due to its preferred use of the ancient priestly/prophetic hero Enoch in some of its literature. Many of their writings are seen as polemics against the Zadokite hegemony. This group had a very mystical/apocalyptic view and believed in the role of divine intercessory figures between man and God. An important part of their belief was that through temple rites, mortals could be deified. Much of their literature details how humans were able to ascend into the highest heaven and stand before God’s throne, where they were anointed, clothed, and transformed into celestial beings. They believed that the Zadokite priesthood was apostate and traced their own priesthood to a purer, pre-Aaronite source–that of Adam, Enoch, and Melchizedek. Boccaccini recognizes the antiquity of their traditions, explaining that they may imply “a very ancient, preexilic origin for the Enochic movement.” [8] Although he does not fully agree, he refers to Margaret Barker’s theory that Enochic Judaism is “a survival form of the religion of the First Temple, which the Zadokites replaced and tried in vain to eradicate.” [9] Although Enochic Judaism was quite influential and perhaps represented the most ancient traditions, it was largely suppressed by the ruling class and its writings were not included in the later Jewish canons of Scripture.

• Sapiential Judaism — The last group (and there were likely many others) that Boccaccini refers to is a form of Judaism that he sees as developing in the monarchic period, prior to and independent of Zadokite Judaism. While other groups were suppressed, this movement was allowed to grow and flourish during the period of Zadokite rule. This movement was not instigated by priests, but by lay persons who collected wise sayings.  They produced what we know as the Wisdom literature of Israel, which Boccaccini sees as including the biblical books of Proverbs, Job, Jonah, and Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes). This group believed in the universal truth of wise sayings and gathered wisdom from various cultures and sources. The writings of Sapiential Judaism don’t necessarily agree with the theology of Zadokites or with Enochic Judaism. The conquest of the region by Alexander the Great caused a disturbance for the supremacy of the Zadokites.  The resulting political changes caused the Zadokites to have to share authority with economically and politically powerful non-Zadokite families, which caused an interjection of sapiential thought into the literature and theological expressions of the Zadokites.  While the Enochic movement continued to develop their own alternative theology, the sapiential literature gained influence by joining with the priestly camp.

The political authority of the Zadokites was brought to an end by the Maccabean revolt.  Some lost faith that either the Zadokite or the Enochic explanations could explain the tragedies that had befallen God’s chosen people.  This opened the path for a new way to be established-a new theology that combined ideas from both parties.  For Boccaccini, this new development is apparent in the book of Daniel.  It is from this new trajectory that several new movements, including the Pharisees, spring.  Boccaccini sees the Rabbinical movement as descending from this branch.

From all this, I think one of the most important points is this: many Jews saw the Zadokite movement and temple as “not simply the restoration of the old sanctuary but a new one with new rules and a new priesthood.” [10] Boccaccini goes so far as to express the opinion (held by other scholars, as well) that the “creation of the Aaronite priesthood was a postexilic phenomenon.” [11] In explaining this, he includes the idea that the Zadokites wrote their own history of Israel (Chronicles) and tweaked with the other sacred writings in a way that would show their supremacy over any alternative claim. This is significant in light of the Enochic belief that there was a more ancient priesthood order that was linked to the Patriarchs and the figure of Melchizedek. This helps us understand the possible reasons why there is so much that we deem to be ancient that we just can’t find in much of the Old Testament–but that often turns up in extra-canonical writings like the pseudepigrapha. Much more needs to be said on this topic, which I must save for later!

References

1] Roots of Rabbinic Judaism, xiii

2] Roots, 14

3] Roots, 43

4] Roots, 48

5] Roots, 56

6] Roots, 53

7] Roots, 82

8] Roots, 93

9] Roots, 93-94.

10] Roots, 61

11] Roots, 63