Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [312]
No one can prove that this kind of heavenly journey, which Ḥai Gaon describes, depicts pre-Christian Judea. But there is no harm in seeing what exactly happens to the tradition in a later time, in order to investigate what was happening in the first century. There is nothing unusual about claims to religiously interpreted states of consciousness (RISC) or religiously altered states of consciousness (RASC), and there are good reasons for thinking that the heavenly journey is itself a metaphor to express it. There are grounds for thinking that this particular variety of RISC was already vibrant in early Hellenistic times and may actually go back to the earliest myths in the ancient Near East.
The vision of the throne chariot of God in Ezekiel 1, along with the attendant vocabulary of glory or kabod for the human figure described there as God’s glory or form, has also been recognized as one of the central themes of Jewish mysticism, which is closely related to the apocalyptic tradition.50
There is no doubt that this was an actual vision, received as a RISC. We have already seen how important the tradition of the heavenly journey is for verifying the truth of life after death. The very name “Merkabah”- that is, Throne-chariot mysticism, which is the usual Jewish designation for these mystical traditions even as early as the Mishnah (ca. 220 CE: See Mishnah Hagigah 2:1)-is the Rabbinic term for the heavenly conveyance described in Ezekiel 1.51 The truly groundbreaking work of Hugo Odeberg, Gershom Scholem, Morton Smith, and Alexander Altmann,52 showing the Greco-Roman context for these texts in Jewish mysticism, has been followed up by a few scholars who have shown the relevance of these passages to the study of early Rabbinic literature,53 as well as of apocalypticism, Samaritanism, and Christianity.54
The entire collection of Hekhaloth texts has been published by Peter Schaefer55 and translations of several of the works have appeared.56 Nevertheless, the results of this research have not yet been broadly discussed, nor are they well known.57 The Rabbis most often call God’s principal angel Metatron. The term “Metatron” in Rabbinic literature and Jewish mysticism is probably not a proper name but a title adapted from the Greek word Metathronos, meaning “one who stands after or behind the throne.” If so, it represents a Rabbinic softening of the more normal Hellenistic term, synthronos, meaning “one who is with the throne,” sharing enthronement or acting for the properly throned authority. The Rabbis would have changed the preposition from one connoting equality (syn-, “with”) to one connoting inferiority (meta-, “after or behind”) in order to reduce the heretical implications of calling God’s principal helping angel his synthronos.58
In 3 Enoch, a Hebrew work that actually calls itself “The Book of Palaces,” we enter immediately into an ascension discourse. It is introduced explicitly as a commentary on Genesis 5:24: “Enoch walked with God and he was no more for God took him.” Rabbi Ishmael is introduced as the speaker and he explains the peculiar text. He reports his ascension through the six palaces and into the seventh, evidently the lower spheres, but depicted as fortified palaces with doors or gates.59 Rabbi Ishmael has qualified for this honor because of his great piety and because he is high priest, though this tradition may in fact be conflating the Ishmael who was a contemporary of Rabbi Akiba in the second century with a previous first century Ishmael who was a priest. In any event this Rabbi Ishmael is the narrator of a number of other Merkabah texts, including Hekhaloth Rabbati and Ma’aseh Merkabah.
Essentially Ishmael becomes an ascender, a heavenly journeyer, who narrates his experience in the heavens and, at the same time, speaks from within the Rabbinic tradition. The heavens are divided into seven “palaces” or hekhaloth, which Scholem thought were all to