Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [464]
4. Perkins, Resurrection, p. 197.
5. It is a similar question that appears to occasion the remarks of 1 Cor 15, concentrating so fully on resurrection. With Paul we can begin to discuss the effect of Jewish mystical and apocalyptic visions not just as a warning of the end of time and as vindication for those who stay faithful to the precepts of Judaism but as an important spiritual experience within the life of an individual (in this case a Christian, but Paul did not understand the difference between “Jew” and “Christian” in quite the way we do; he never uses the term Christian).
6. See, for example, the discussion of Lorenzen, Resurrection and Discipleship, pp. 127-146.
7. Paradise or the garden of Eden was often conceived as lying in one of the heavens, though the exact location differs from one apocalyptic work to another. See Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell. See 2 Enoch, for an example that locates it in the third heaven. But 2 Enoch may have been influenced by Paul’s writings.
8. In different ways, the close relationship between mysticism and apocalypticism has been touched upon by several scholars of the last decade, myself included. See A. Segal, Two Powers; Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkabah Mysticism; esp. Rowland, The Open Heaven; as well as Fossum, The Name of God.
9. Also see A. Segal, Heavenly Ascent; Dean-Otting, Heavenly Journeys; Culianu, Psychanodia. Culianu has also published a more general work, Expériences de l’Extase. The verb harpazo in Greek and its Latin equivalent rapto are sometimes shared with pagan ascensions (sol me rapuit, “the sun has ‘abducted’ me”), but also probably initially denotes both the rapture of vision and the specific heavenly journeys of Enoch (Hebrew: laqah = Greek: metetheken.
10. See Baird, “Visions, Revelation, and Ministry.”
11. Encounters with the divine and heavenly journeys are fraught with danger. Jacob was wounded by his wrestling with the angel (Gen 32:25). Three of the four rabbis who entered paradise suffered injury (b. Hagigah 14b). See Baird, “Visions,” p. 660 and Johann Maier, “Das Gefaehrdungsmotiv.”
12. See the discussion between Goulder and A. Segal in “Transformation and Afterlife,” and Goulder’s response, pp. 137-152. See the chapter on Rabbinic Judaism in this book for further discussion of the limits of irony; and see Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity.
13. Morray-Jones, “Paradise Revisited.”
14. See Morray-Jones, A Transparent Illusion.
15. B. Taylor, “Recollection and Membership.” Also see Beckford, “Accounting for Conversion;” Snow and Machalek, “The Sociology of Conversion.”
16. See Tabor, Things Unutterable. See Kim, The Origin of Paul’s Gospel, who suggests 2 Cor 12 is Paul’s conversion experience; and his new book, Paul and the New Perspective, which argues strongly that it is. Scholarship is divided as to whether or not Gal 1 and 2 Cor 12 can be identified as the same experience and that it is to be identified with the Damascus Road experience. Baird (“Visions”) reports that recently most scholars assume a distinction (p. 652 and n. 2). A good example of this position would be Dunn, Spirit, p. 103. The following earlier writers maintained the identification between the two experiences: Knox, “Fourteen Years Later” and “The Pauline Chronology.” Yet, in a footnote to his Chapters in a Life of Paul, p. 78, he abandoned the notion. See Riddle, Paul: Man of Conflict, p. 63; Buck and Taylor, Saint Paul, pp. 220-26; Enslin Reapproaching Paul, pp. 53-55.
17. Hengel, The Pre-Christian Paul.
18. See Dunn, Spirit, for instance, pp. 107-9.
19. See Hekhaloth Rabbati 20 Wertheimer, I, pp. 98-99; Schaefer, Synopse, §§198-99; and Schiffman, “The Recall of Nehuniah ben Hakkanah;” also see Lieberman’s corrections to Schiffman in Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkabah Mysticism, p. 241. For the latest