Search results for ""Author Martha Himmelfarb""

This volume contains articles by Martha Himmelfarb on topics in Second Temple Judaism and the development and reception of Second Temple traditions in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. The section on "Priests, Temples, and Torah" addresses the themes of its title in texts from the Bible to the Mishnah. "Purity in the Dead Sea Scrolls" contains articles analyzing the intensification of the biblical purity laws, particularly the laws for genital discharge, in the major legal documents from the Scrolls. In "Judaism and Hellenism" the author explores the relationship between these two ancient cultures by examining the ancient and modern historiography of the Maccabean Revolt and the role of the Torah in ancient Jewish adaptations of Greek culture. The last two sections of the volume follow texts and traditions of the Second Temple period into late antiquity and the Middle Ages. The articles in "Heavenly Ascent" consider the relationship between the ascent apocalypses of the Second Temple period and later works involving heavenly ascent, particularly the hekhalot texts. In the final section, "The Pseudepigrapha and Medieval Jewish Literature," Himmelfarb investigates evidence for knowledge of works of the Second Temple period by medieval Jews with consideration of the channels by which the works might have reached these later readers.

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This accessible and enlightening history provides insights into the fascinating genre of apocalyptic literature, showing how the apocalypse encompasses far more than popular views of the last judgment and violent end of the world might suggest. An accessible and enlightening history of the "apocalypses"--ancient Jewish and Christian works -- providing fresh insights into the fascinating genre of literature Shows how the apocalypses were concerned not only with popular views of the last judgment and violent end of the world, but with reward and punishment after death, the heavenly temple, and the revelation of astronomical phenomena and other secrets of nature Traces the tradition of apocalyptic writing through the Middle Ages, through to the modern era, when social movements still prophesise the world’s imminent demise

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According to the account in the Book of Exodus, God addresses the children of Israel as they stand before Mt. Sinai with the words, "You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (19:6). The sentence, Martha Himmelfarb observes, is paradoxical, for priests are by definition a minority, yet the meaning in context is clear: the entire people is holy. The words also point to some significant tensions in the biblical understanding of the people of Israel. If the entire people is holy, why does it need priests? If membership in both people and priesthood is a matter not of merit but of birth, how can either the people or its priests hope to be holy? How can one reconcile the distance between the honor due the priest and the actual behavior of some who filled the role? What can the people do to make itself truly a kingdom of priests? Himmelfarb argues that these questions become central in Second Temple Judaism. She considers a range of texts from this period, including the Book of Watchers, the Book of Jubilees, legal documents from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the writings of Philo of Alexandria, and the Book of Revelation of the New Testament, and goes on to explore rabbinic Judaism's emphasis on descent as the primary criterion for inclusion among the chosen people of Israel—a position, she contends, that took on new force in reaction to early Christian disparagement of the idea that mere descent from Abraham was sufficient for salvation.

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Over the past 30 years, scholars of early Jewish mysticism have, with increasing confidence, located the initial formation of Hekhalot literature in Byzantine Palestine and Sasanian or early Islamic Babylonia (ca. 500-900 C.E.), rather than at the time of the Mishnah, Tosefta, early Midrashim, or Palestinian Talmud (ca. 100-400 C.E.). This advance has primarily been achieved through major gains in our understanding of the dynamic and highly flexible processes of composition, redaction, and transmission that produced the Hekhalot texts as we know them today. These gains have been coupled with greater appreciation of the complex relationships between Hekhalot writings and the variegated Jewish literary culture of late antiquity, both within and beyond the boundaries of the rabbinic movement. Yet important questions remain regarding the specific cultural contexts and institutional settings out of which the various strands of Hekhalot literature emerged as well as the multiple trajectories of use and appropriation they subsequently travelled. In the present volume, an international team of experts explores—from a variety of disciplinary perspectives (e.g. linguistics, ritual and gender studies, intellectual history)—the literary formation, cultural meanings, religious functions, and textual transmission of Hekhalot literature.

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