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“Zoroastrian Influence Upon Jewish Afterlife: Hell Punishments in Arda Wiraz and Medieval Visionary Midrashim”

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“Zoroastrian Influence Upon Jewish Afterlife: Hell Punishments in Arda Wiraz and Medieval Visionary Midrashim” LATVIJAS UNIVERSIT ĀTE Valts Apinis Promocijas darbs “Zoroastrian influence upon Jewish Afterlife: Hell punishments in Arda Wiraz and Medieval Visionary Midrashim” (Zoroastrisma ietekme uz j ūdaismu priekšstatos par p ēcn āves dz īvi: elles sodu sist ēma Ard ā Vir āz un viduslaiku vizion ārajos midr āšos) Teolo ģijas un reli ģiju zin ātnes doktora zin ātnisk ā gr āda ieg ūšanai Apakšnozare: Visp ārīgā un sal īdzin āmā reli ģijp ētniec ība Promocijas darba vad ītājs Dr. Theol. Ralfs Kokins Rīga, 2010 Annotation The main issue addressed in the present dissertation is whether Judaism (its Pseudepigraphic Medieval literary successors are implied) had borrowed certain concepts of Zoroastrian afterlife and how this can be exposed through the medium of available texts. There has been quite an extended discussion among scholars of various fields on this issue in general; yet there is a certain lack of a more detailed approach. The following dissertation deals with the certain features of the description of hell („tours of hell” of visionary genre) within the context of otherworldly journeys of a God elected hero particularly concerned with the details of punishment of the sinners using principle of retaliation (talion) as means of reward. The task of the author is to carry out an analytical comparison between these common elements or its modified forms (hanging punishments, location of hell in northern regions, angels of punishment and various tormenting creatures, etc.) inherent at textual sources. The main thesis of my doctoral research makes an attempt to research Jewish Medieval tours of hell as closely resembling concepts behind Ard ā Wir āz N āmag („The Book of the Righteous Wir āz”, 9 th -10 th century, Zoroastrian community treatise on otherworldly journey to have a glimpse of heavenly bliss and punishments in hell) and other Pahlavi texts (up till the 9 th century C.E.) of Sasanid period in Iran (226 C.E.-651 C.E.). Zoroastrian descriptions of hell tours bear some particular elements which are exclusively vivid, especially in comparison to identical Jewish hell tours (Medieval visionary midrash) comprising the same or similar elements. The concept of “hanging punishments” according to which the sinners are hung up by the part of the body they had sinned with is reviewed. The original idea of a principle of the correspondence of a punished limb to a crime committed is probably mostly borrowed from Zoroastrians; this statement could be approved by their book Arda Wir āz Nāmag . Additional concepts of afterlife are found in corpuses of other Zoroastrian texts such as Bundahišn ( “Creation”), Dadestan-i Denig (“Religious Judgments”), Dēnkard (“Acts of Faith”, “Acts of Religion”) and Vendid ād (“Law against the Demons”). 2 Several Medieval Jewish midrashic texts are examined, including the tractate Orot Hayyim (“Lights of Life”), Gedulat Moshe (“The Revelation of Moses”), Otzar Midrashim (“Treasury of Midrashim”), tractate Masekhet Gehinnom (“Tractate of Hell”), Masekhet Hibbut Ha-Kever (“Tractate of the Pangs of the Grave”), Gan Eden we Gehinnom ( “Garden of Eden and Hell”) and the “Ascension of Moses” (Judeo-Persian version of Hebrew midrash included). While exploring further sources of similar motives of transmission, the texts of Christian visionary literature as the Apocalypse of Paul (Visio Sancti Pauli ) and the Apocalypse of Peter (Nag-Hammadi Gnostic texts), Medieval Old Slavonic apocryphon “Weeping of Our Lady” as well as Medieval Muslim hadiths (legends including Miraj or The Night Journey of Muhammad), Dante’s “Divine Commedy” ( Divina Commedia ) and other relevant material have been inspected. Medieval Jewish visionary midrash which was popular among masses (however not supported by rabbis) can be considered as a descendant of earlier Jewish Pseudepigraphal and Apocryphal traditions. It received more elaborated form between the 9 th and 14 th centuries, and chronologically corresponds to fixing of Arda Wir āz N āmag in a written form and most of Zoroastrian centuries old traditions written down during the 9th and 10th centuries (esp. 9th Cent.). 3 Table of contents Annotation ..................................................................................................................................................... 2 Table of contents ........................................................................................................................................... 4 Glossary ......................................................................................................................................................... 6 List of Abbreviations .................................................................................................................................. 10 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................ 11 I. Task, thesis and method of the given ivestigation. General considerations on the topic. ................. 15 1.1. Describing afterlife ........................................................................................................................... 15 1.2. Visionary genre ................................................................................................................................. 15 1.3. Terminology and Imagery ................................................................................................................ 19 1.4. „Demonstrative explanations” in Zoroastrian texts on afterlife and Arda Wir āz N āmag ............. 21 1.5. Hell punishments. Methodological issues. ....................................................................................... 22 II. Outline and relevance of the present topical study. ............................................................................ 27 III. Critical analysis of related major secondary studies. ....................................................................... 32 1.1. Brief history of modern research on Zoroastrian-Jewish interaction .................................... 32 1.2. Review of recent major secondary studies. ...................................................................................... 35 IV. Zoroastrianism-Judaism interaction: general assumptions and conclusions for a detailed study. 53 1.1. Babylonian and Zoroastrian-Jewish influences. ..................................................................... 53 1.2. Judeo-Persian studies ....................................................................................................................... 56 V. Writing Down of Traditions. ................................................................................................................ 58 1.1. Shift from Spoken to Written Tradition? ......................................................................................... 58 Part I. ........................................................................................................................................................... 61 1. Survey of Jewish concepts of afterlife before and after the destruction of the Second Temple. .. 61 1.1. Destruction of the Second Temple and its consequences ............................................................ 61 1.2. Transformations in Jewish thinking on afterlife. ........................................................................ 62 1.2.1. Biblical concept of Sheol transformed. ................................................................................. 63 1.2.2. Gehenna. ................................................................................................................................ 64 1.3. Rabbis and their opponents on afterlife. ...................................................................................... 65 1.4. Babylonian Jewish dispora and the shaping of the afterlife. ...................................................... 68 2. Early forms of post-biblical visionarism and Medieval tours of hell .............................................. 72 2.1. Visionarism in Pseudepigraphic perspective ............................................................................... 72 2.2. Tours of hell and some specifics of Medieval Jewish visionary midrashim ............................... 74 3. Development of Eschatological systems within Jewish and Zoroastrian traditions. .................... 77 A general survey. ................................................................................................................................ 77 Major conclusions of Part I .................................................................................................................... 81 Part II. ......................................................................................................................................................... 83 1. Jews and Zoroastrians in relation to “the other”. Evaluation of foreign relations. .................. 83 1.1. Rigidity of Zoroastrian Tradition. Contacts with non-Zoroastrians, the others. ........................ 83 Part III. ........................................................................................................................................................ 91 1. Zoroastrianism and punishments in historical perspective and social context. ............................ 91 1.1. Phenomenon of the „hanging punishments”. ........................................................................... 91 1.2. Social history of the „hanging punishments”.
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