• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2148 0

prophetic categories, that the hand of the LORD is upon him as it was on the prophets of old, and interprets that phrase literally enough that the hand of the Lord can raise him to his hands and knees. By using RISC for the critical, most general category, we avoid having to decide what exactly is the state of consciousness being claimed, as well as whether it is real, imagined, hallucinatory, or faked.3 We are just noting that it is the quality of the experience that justifies its truth for the actor. The specific characteristics of the RISC are interesting questions which can be explored in various contexts, depending on what the texts claim. But we do not need to address the issue of the truth of the RISC, if the report lacks sufficient evidence for us to decide.

A Plan of Attack in the Hellenistic World

JUDGING THE issue of consciousness in the ancient texts of the Hellenistic world is an intriguing question, and it is complicated further by changing notions of the value of that experience in different classes and over time. By the Second Temple period, historical prophecy was in the eyes of the central authorities either a phenomenon of the distant past or the eschatological future.4 In other words, to the central authorities only fake prophets would claim it. But that is precisely what makes it so important to the understanding of groups like the sects that produced Daniel, the Dead Sea Scrolls, or the New Testament. They all felt that the end of time was upon them and therefore prophets would again speak authoritatively about the end. And they felt in some tension with the central authorities. What was most important was the conventions available for them to speak. Such an important doctrine as life after death and resurrection was not merely discussed as a philosophical option. It was a new dispensation revealed through revelation, which arrived through the medium of a dream to the seer whom we know only as Daniel, in approximately 165 BCE.

Elliot R. Wolfson, in his book on Merkabah mysticism, suggests how to get out of the trap of excessive reductionism:

Bearing the inherently symbolic nature of the visionary experience in mind, we can now set out to answer another question that has been posed by scholars with regard to the visionary component of this literature. Did the Merkabah mystics actually ascend to the celestial realm and did they see something “out there,” or should these visions be read as psychological accounts of what may be considered in Freudian language a type of self-hypnosis? Or, to suggest yet a third alternative, would it perhaps be most accurate to describe the heavenly journey in Jungian terms, as a descent into and discovery of the archetypal self?

From a straight-forward reading of the extant sources it would appear that some texts assume a bodily ascent, a translation into the heavenly realm of the whole person with all the sensory faculties intact, whereas others assume an ascent of the soul or mind separated from the body as the result of a paranormal experience such as a trance-induced state. But even in the case of the latter explanation, typified most strikingly in Hekhalot Rabbati in the story concerning the recall of R. Nehuniah ben Ha-Qanah from his ecstatic trance, it is evident that the physical states are experienced in terms of tactile and kinesthetic gestures and functions appropriate to the body, such as the fiery gyrations of the eyeballs, ascending and descending, entering and exiting, standing and sitting, singing and uttering hymns, looking and hearing.5

Whatever one thinks of Jungian analysis, Wolfson must be correct in thinking that mystical ascents were really experienced and that they had a salutary effect for the mystic as well as for society or they would not have been practiced and supported. Jung suggests that these images are fundamental psychological processes that aid the quest for individuation. I would certainly agree that they are normal occurences and can be significant, meaningful, and salutary to human life in cultures that value them. Yet it may not