Seper Hekhalot (3 Enoch)

SEPER HEKHALOT (3 ENOCH) Sefer Hekhalot, or as it became known: J Enoch, is probably the best known Hekhalot text. Odeberg's famous edition of the book, which also contains an English translation and commentary, made the book available to the scholarly world. In spite of all its deficiencies, 1 Odeberg's edition has done justice to the subject, and in many cases his commentary and long introduction contain interesting and valuable material. 5 efer Hekhalot is the longest and most complex of the Hekhalot writings, and by the manner in which it fuses together a number of esoteric traditions it can be viewed as a romance or grand summary of the Jewish apocalyptic and mystical traditions. Although it is clear that the book draws its material from a variety of sources, it is not always possible to identify them and to assess the special manner in which the book uses them. Even in the case of the Hekhalot material incorporated in the book it is not always easy to show where it derived from. From the manner in which the writer, or compiler, of the book put his material together we may conclude that it is not an original work, as for example Hekhalot Rabbati or even Sefer Ha-Razim are. In fact, Sefer Hekhalot fuses traditions together in a rather artificial way, and one is justified in characterizing it as an eclectic composition. In addition, the writer, or compiler, of the book used his terminology in a rather loose, even careless, manner, and the reader sometimes wonders at the degree of literary degeneration the Hekhalot literature has reached with Sefer Hekhalot. In fact, none of the original components of the Hek halot writings are present in Sefer Hekhalot. Nothing is said in it about the special technique of the ascent; it lacks any reference to the theurgical means which protect the mystic on his journey in heaven; and it contains no Hekhalot hymns. However, in spite of all its literary shortcomings, the book is a treasure-house of information about the 1 For an excellent summary of the main problems of the book as they are seen by a modern scholar, see J. Greenfield's "Prolegomenon" to the Ktav Publishing House Reprint (1973) of H. Odeberg, J Enoch. In spite of all its deficiencies Odeberg's is still the only Hekha/ot text that received scholarly treatment. A new translation and commentary is now being prepared by Dr. Philip Alexander of Manchester for Doubleday, New York. My translations here follow mainly those of Odeberg, though at times I differed from him, mainly because his text is based on completely wrong textual presuppositions. 192 SEPER HEKHALOT (3 ENOCH) esoteric traditions at the time of its writing. The book seems to have been written, or compiled, in post-talmudic times, probably in the 6th century C.E. In any event, it is clear that it was composed at a rather late stage in the creation of the Hekhalot literature. However, J. 'T. Milik's attribution of the book to the Kabbalistic literature of the twelfth or thirteenth centuries only shows how little Milik knows of both the Hekhalot literature and of the Cabbalah. 2 From a literary point of view, the book is affiliated to the ancient Enoch tradition, and it appears that in spite of its late date of composi tion it contains a great deal that derives from the early Enoch tradition and literature. The book may be divided into several parts, and this division may help us in analyzing and understanding the special manner in which the writer handled his material. The first part of the book (chapters 1-12) describes Enoch's translation unto heaven and his transformation into the angel Metatron. However, in order to affiliate itself to the Merkavah tradition, the book begins with a description of the mystical ascent of Rabbi Yishma>el to behold the vision of the Merkavah (chapters 1-2). This description of Rabbi Yishma>el's ascent is a literary device, which defines the setting of the book: it is a rewritten version of the Enoch tradition in terms of the Merkavah tradition. In this way many of the original traits of the apocalyptic Enoch tradition are preserved, though they are recast in a story that was to become part of the Merkavah tradition. In line with the common Merkavah tradition, Rabbi Yishma'el is described as having passed from palace to palace until he reached the seventh palace. Before he entered the seventh Hekhal, he had said a prayer so that he might be saved from the wrath of Qeifiel and his retinue. We already met Qe?fiel in Hekhalot Rabbati xviii, where he was one of the gatekeepers of the sixth Hekhal. His new post in 2 See J. T. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1976, pp. 125-135. There is nothing in Sefer Hekhalot that betrays either the style or the symbolism of Jewish medieval Kabbalah. Milik's contention that the identification of Enoch with Metatron docs not "appear in Western Europe until the twelfth century" (p. 134) has no basis. Equally strange is Milik's dating of the Greek original of the Slavonic Enoch (2 Enoch) "to the ninth if not tenth century" (p. 126). A post-Byzantine dating of 2 Enoch is simply inconceivable to anyone who has the slightest idea of the history of literature. In addition, Milik's explanation of the name Metatron as deriving "from the Latin meta/or through the Greek µ"l)TOCTeup, µt-.oc-.eup" (p. 131) has very little, if any, substantiation. A closer study of the Hekhalot literature and its relationship to Jewish apocalyptic could have saved l\filik from falling into many pitfalls. .

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