Beholders of Divine Secrets: Mysticism and Myth in the Hekhalot and Merkavah Literature.

• Author: Boustan, Ra'anan S.
• Position: Book review

Beholders of Divine Secrets: Mysticism and Myth in the Hekhalot and Merkavah Literature. By VITA DAPHNA ARBEL. Albany: STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS, 2003. Pp. xii + 250. $71.50 (cloth); $23.95 (paper).

Beholders of Divine Secrets is a brave and adventurous book. Most previous studies of Hekhalot literature have attempted to situate this enigmatic collection of Jewish liturgical, ritual, and ascent texts from Late Antiquity in its immediate historical, cultural, or literary contexts. The Hebrew Bible and New Testament; early Jewish and Christian apocalyptic works (both canonical and non-canonical); the vast corpus of rabbinic exegetical, legal, and narrative writings; early Christian and patristic sources (especially those materials classed as "Gnostic"); late antique Jewish and Christian liturgy; Neoplatonic theurgy and mysticism; Greco-Roman magical literatures and practices: all of these have served as comparative material for assessing the religious world-view of Hekhalot literature and the socio-cultural location of its authors. Vita Daphna Arbel has instead taken up the more uncertain course of locating in Hekhalot texts "mythological themes and patterns" from ancient Mesopotamia and analyzing how they have acquired "new mystical meanings" (pp. 56, 65, and passim) in their new literary and religious context. Beyond its potential contribution to our understanding of early Jewish mysticism as a discrete historical phenomenon, this study also holds out the alluring promise of tracing the enduring impact of ancient Near Eastern religion and literature on the formation of post-biblical Judaism--and with it the great religious traditions of the western world.

The obstacles that face such a project are naturally quite daunting. The Judaism of Late Antiquity, of which Hekhalot literature forms an important, if puzzling, part, is separated from the ancient Near Eastern texts Arbel uses by vast expanses of time and by significant linguistic, cultural, and technological barriers. Arbel argues, however, that it is not productive to confine analysis to precise mechanisms of literary transmission and reception. "Difficulties in establishing, with full certainty, linear transmission of the Mesopotamian contents as well as modes of contact between literary traditions also hinder an examination which goes beyond listing similarities and differences" (p. 56). Instead, Arbel proposes what she terms a "phenomenological" approach to her materials. Of course, the phenomenology of religion as a mode of analysis has a century-long history that is marked by profound shifts and ruptures (S. Twiss and W. Conser, eds., Experience of the Sacred [Brown Univ. Press, 1992], 1-74). It is, therefore, unfortunate that Arbel nowhere makes explicit the analytical rules of her method or situates herself within...