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By Root 2426 0

will then be glorified by transformations, and the shape of their face will be changed into the light of their beauty so that they may acquire and receive the undying world which is promised to them…. When they therefore will see that those over whom they are exalted now will then be more exalted and glorified than they, then both these and those will be changed, these into the splendor of angels and those into startling visions and horrible shapes; …For they will live in the heights of that world and they will be like the angels and be equal to the stars. And they will be changed into any shape which they wished, for beauty to loveliness, and from light to the splendor of glory And the excellence of the righteous will then be greater than that of the angels.17

Here is an innovative interpretation of the visions of Daniel. The evil ones are transformed into the terrible beasts of the Daniel vision while the righteous are explicitly transformed into stars.

Cavallin points out that we may profitably compare this vision with Paul’s discussion in 1 Corinthians 15.18 He lists four important similarities between the two: (1) the general background of apology for the belief in resurrection; (2) reflection on the nature of the resurrection body; (3) the survival of some at the end; and (4) the idea of transformation and heavenly glorification of the righteous. This does not necessarily imply direct dependence, only a reworking of traditional material to answer similar questions. Since this is a revelation achieved in RASC, it does hint at the way in which texts inspire further visions.

THIRD BARUCH

Third Baruch is also relevant to our story. The work survives in two different forms-Slavonic and Greek-though there are good reasons for supposing that the Slavonic version represents a more original version of the text than the Greek, which shows considerable Christian reworking. In particular, the references to the disposition of the dead in the Slavonic version seem to be the more original. But, the Greek version retains the more common Jewish name of Samael for Satan while the Slavonic version has a more elaborate story of the fall of Satan-El,19 who loses his angelic suffix El (like Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, etc.) and becomes Satan after the fall. So both versions have undergone independent later development. But this and other characteristics make even the Slavonic version often seem more like a summary than the original narrative.20

Third Baruch is revelatory literature. As Baruch is crying over the destruction of the Temple, an angel appears to him. What happens thereafter is supposed to be a description of simple events yet the setting is one in which prophets often enter RASC. Lamentation is a regular occasion for the reception of altered states of consciousness in Jewish tradition, right into the modern period.

The Baruch literature ignores the Enoch tradition, although it resumes much of the information contained in Genesis 2-11. This inevitably leads to scholarly speculation that Baruch literature is polemical against Enochic material.21 At any rate, it contains much expanded and sometimes bizarre notions of the punishment of sinners. The builders of the Tower of Babel are accorded special attention, as does punishment in hell. In the Greek version, Hades is placed in the third heaven (4:3, 4:6, 5:3), which seems to be an independent development. The Greek version interprets the birds that Baruch sees in the fourth heaven as the “souls of the righteous” (10:5), a motif which may reach back to Canaanite practice and which occasionally comes back in Islamic tradition. The notion of the immortality of the soul is well represented in the received version of this document, whatever the complicated origins of the tradition may have been.

Apocalyptic literature represents heavenly journeys as straight and ordinary narrative when, during this period at least, we know that they were achieved through RASC. There are documents that prefer to represent altered states in a dream context and others that prefer to ignore