Martha Himmelfarb – författare

This book is a study of the ancient Jewish and Christian apocalypses involving ascent into heaven, which have received little scholarly attention relative to apocalypses concerned primarily with the end of the world. Recent developments like the publication of the Aramaic Enoch fragments from Qumran and interest in questions of genre in the study of the apocalypses make this a particularly appropriate time to undertake this study. The book emphasizes the emergence of the understanding of heaven as temple in the Book of the Watchers, the earliest of these apocalypses, and the way in which this understanding affects the depiction of the culmination of ascent, the hero's achievement of a place among the angels, in the ascent apocalypses generally. It also considers the place of secrets of nature and the story of creation in these works. Finally, it offers an interpretation of the pseudepigraphy of the apocalypses and their function. It places the apocalypses in relation to both their biblical antecedents and their context in the Greco-Roman world.

The seventh-century CE Hebrew work Sefer Zerubbabel (Book of Zerubbabel), composed during the period of conflict between Persia and the Byzantine Empire for control over Palestine, is the first full-fledged messianic narrative in Jewish literature. Martha Himmelfarb offers a comprehensive analysis of this rich but understudied text, illuminating its distinctive literary features and the complex milieu from which it arose.Sefer Zerubbabel presents itself as an angelic revelation of the end of times to Zerubbabel, a biblical leader of the sixth century BCE, and relates a tale of two messiahs who, as Himmelfarb shows, play a major role in later Jewish narratives. The first messiah, a descendant of Joseph, dies in battle at the hands of Armilos, the son of Satan who embodies the Byzantine Empire. He is followed by a messiah descended from David modeled on the suffering servant of Isaiah, who brings him back to life and triumphs over Armilos. The mother of the Davidic messiah also figures in the work as a warrior.Himmelfarb places Sefer Zerubbabel in the dual context of earlier Jewish eschatology and Byzantine Christianity. The role of the messiah’s mother, for example, reflects the Byzantine notion of the Virgin Mary as the protector of Constantinople. On the other hand, Sefer Zerubbabel shares traditions about the messiahs with rabbinic literature. But while the rabbis are ambivalent about these traditions, Sefer Zerubbabel embraces them with enthusiasm.

According to the account in the Book of Exodus, God addresses the children of Israel as they stand before Mt. Sinai with the words, "You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (19:6). The sentence, Martha Himmelfarb observes, is paradoxical, for priests are by definition a minority, yet the meaning in context is clear: the entire people is holy. The words also point to some significant tensions in the biblical understanding of the people of Israel. If the entire people is holy, why does it need priests? If membership in both people and priesthood is a matter not of merit but of birth, how can either the people or its priests hope to be holy? How can one reconcile the distance between the honor due the priest and the actual behavior of some who filled the role? What can the people do to make itself truly a kingdom of priests?Himmelfarb argues that these questions become central in Second Temple Judaism. She considers a range of texts from this period, including the Book of Watchers, the Book of Jubilees, legal documents from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the writings of Philo of Alexandria, and the Book of Revelation of the New Testament, and goes on to explore rabbinic Judaism's emphasis on descent as the primary criterion for inclusion among the chosen people of Israel-a position, she contends, that took on new force in reaction to early Christian disparagement of the idea that mere descent from Abraham was sufficient for salvation.

From the ancient Book of the Dead to Dante's Divine Comedy, the living have attempted to describe the world of the dead. Tours of Hell focuses on one form of that attempt: the tours of hell found in Jewish and Christian apocalypses of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages.Himmelfarb examines seventeen texts, preserved in five languages and spanning a thousand years of human history. These include Hebrew texts and Christian texts in Greek, Latin, Ethiopic, and Coptic, such as the Apocalypse of Peter and the Apocalypse of Paul family. Muslim texts, medieval visions, and other related literatures are also discussed. Himmelfarb details the common elements of the tour tradition, including such features as a hero or heroine figure, a heavenly revealer, and descriptions of the punishments awaiting those who arrive in hell. She convincingly refutes the accepted nineteenth-century critical view of the earliest of these tours, the Apocalypse of Peter, as a Christian form of an "Orphic-Pythagorean" descent to Hades. She place the work instead on the family tree of the tour apocalypse, a genre she traces back to the third century B.C.E. Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36). Linking the Apocalypse of Peter with later Jewish tours of hell, Himmelfarb reveals significant sin-and-punishment combinations that seem to point to a common source, which she theorizes to be a lost Jewish Tour work of the late Second Temple period.Rich and fascinating texts seldom before brought to light are treated in detail in this pioneering study. A comprehensive work on the apocalyptic tradition, Tours of Hell will be of great interest to scholars and students of religion, history, ancient and medieval literature, and Dante studies.

This accessible and enlightening history provides insights into the fascinating genre of apocalyptic literature, showing how the apocalypse encompasses far more than popular views of the last judgment and violent end of the world might suggest. An accessible and enlightening history of the "apocalypses"--ancient Jewish and Christian works -- providing fresh insights into the fascinating genre of literatureShows how the apocalypses were concerned not only with popular views of the last judgment and violent end of the world, but with reward and punishment after death, the heavenly temple, and the revelation of astronomical phenomena and other secrets of natureTraces the tradition of apocalyptic writing through the Middle Ages, through to the modern era, when social movements still prophesise the world’s imminent demise

This accessible and enlightening history provides insights into the fascinating genre of apocalyptic literature, showing how the apocalypse encompasses far more than popular views of the last judgment and violent end of the world might suggest. An accessible and enlightening history of the "apocalypses"--ancient Jewish and Christian works -- providing fresh insights into the fascinating genre of literatureShows how the apocalypses were concerned not only with popular views of the last judgment and violent end of the world, but with reward and punishment after death, the heavenly temple, and the revelation of astronomical phenomena and other secrets of natureTraces the tradition of apocalyptic writing through the Middle Ages, through to the modern era, when social movements still prophesise the world’s imminent demise

Martha Himmelfarb befasst sich in ihren Aufsätzen mit dem Judentum zur Zeit des zweiten Tempels und der Entwicklung und Rezeption der Bräuche in der Spätantike und dem Mittelalter. Im Abschnitt über "Priester, Tempel und die Tora" behandelt sie dessen Titelthemen in den Texten der Bibel bis hin zu denen der Mishna. Der Abschnitt "Reinheit in den Schriftrollen vom Toten Meer" enthält Aufsätze, die die Intensivierung der biblischen Reinheitsvorschriften, vor allem die Gesetze bezüglich des Genitalausflusses, in den wichtigsten Rechtsakten der Schriftrollen thematisieren. In "Judentum und Hellenismus" untersucht die Autorin die Beziehung zwischen diesen beiden antiken Kulturen, indem sie die historische und die moderne Geschichtsschreibung des Makkabäeraufstands und die Rolle der Tora in antiken jüdischen Adaptionen der griechischen Kultur betrachtet. "Der Aufstieg in den Himmel" prüft die Beziehung zwischen den Aufstieg-Apokalypsen zur Zeit des zweiten Tempels und späteren Texten, in denen der Aufstieg thematisiert wird, vor allem in der Hekhalot-Literatur. Im letzten Abschnitt, "Die Pseudepigraphen und mittelalterliche jüdische Literatur", untersucht Martha Himmelfarb die Kenntnis jüdischer Gelehrter im Mittelalter von Arbeiten aus der Zeit des zweiten Tempels. Außerdem betrachtet sie die möglichen Verbreitungswege, über welche die Texte diese späteren Leser erreicht haben könnten.

Die Erforschung der frühen jüdischen Mystik (Merkavah-Mystik) hat in den letzten 30 Jahren gewaltige Fortschritte gemacht. Das alte Modell einer linearen Entwicklung, ausgehend von einem einmaligen und möglichst frühen Ursprung, wird zunehmend durch neue Einsichten in die spezifischen - und sich wandelnden - kulturellen Kontexte in Frage gestellt, in denen diese Mystik entstand und ihren literarischen Niederschlag fand. Das byzantinische Palästina und das sassanidische Babylonien kristallisieren sich als die beiden entscheidenden Brennpunkte der Merkavah-Mystik heraus. Im vorliegenden Band untersuchen internationale Wissenschaftler aus verschiedenen Disziplinen und demnach auch unterschiedlichen Perspektiven die literarische Entstehung, kulturelle Bedeutung, religiöse Funktion und Überlieferung der Hekhalot Literatur.