This post comprises some very interesting questions posed to me by a new reader of this blog, Steve Bastasch, regarding the development of the “heavenly ascent” theme in early Christian thought and writings and their Jewish background. My answer to these questions follows.

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Steve:

I’m new to your Heavenly Ascents blog – it looks fascinating and well researched.

I have two questions, if you would be kind enough to consider them: I was introduced to the ascent motif via the work of the late Morton Smith, who postulated that a mystical method of heavenly ascent was extant in Jesus’ time and that Jesus and his disciples may have had some personal experience with this practice. I realize that some of Smith’s statements were likely issued with a twinkle in his eye (did he forge Secret Mark, etc.), but he does seem to make a serious case for ascent in Jewish culture even before Jesus’ time, e.g., he points out that at least one other person “ascended” – one member of the DSS community, as reported in 4Q 491, who claimed to have ascended into the angelic assembly and to have gained divine wisdom thereby.

First question: But there are claims that most Jewish ascent literature came after Jesus’ time, too late to influence and/or be expressive of primitive Christian beliefs. I am unclear on this timeline. Some say, for example, that some of this literature was too late to have been strongly influential in nascent “Jewish Christianity”, with Enoch maybe dating from that time but maybe from a later time. So would you be able to firm up for me the time frame of ascent literature as it might bear on the religion of Jesus, his disciples, and their Jewish successors, say, until after the Second Revolt in CE 135? I.e., can we date extra-biblical ascent literature from Jesus’ own lifetime up until just after the final Jewish War?

The second question concerns what, from my admittedly meager reading, poses a mystery vis a vis the Jewish nature of ascent literature. I understand that with the rise of rabbinical Judaism post-Jamnia, orthodoxy was stressed, e.g., per Alan Segal, the rabbis came down on anything smacking of a “Two Powers in Heaven” belief, beliefs concerning a Chief Assisting Angel, and beliefs about God’s human form or “Kavod”. What puzzles me is that post-70 ascent literature – IF Jewish – seems to be replete with just those kinds of beliefs that were being more and more strongly condemned by the rabbis. Do we conclude from this (if my assumption is correct) that ascent authors and communities were not Jewish; or if they were Jewish, they were by definition heretical? And if they were heretical, by what means were these ideas promulgated and texts preserved?

Thanks for your consideration.

Regards,

Steve Bastasch¹

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Me:

Dear Mr Bastasch,

Thank you for your excellent and very relevant questions. Before I give my response, just as a forewarning, although my website is called Heavenly Ascents, I cannot claim to be an expert (yet!) on the topic, so bear that in mind as I give you my best answers to your questions.

I will begin by saying (and this may shape your opinion of my overall answer!) that in my estimation, the ascent to heaven motif is of great antiquity, much older even than the mentions attested to in the Qumran texts. It may not have been conceived of in exactly the same ways that it is later expressed in the Christian era, but I think that later texts build on these earlier attestations of the motif.

When I say much older, I believe that a form of heavenly ascent was practiced as a ritual in the pre-exilic times, the First Temple period. I base this conclusion partially on what I see as evidence for the idea in the liturgical setting of some of the Psalms. I believe that psalms such as 24, 47, 68, 118, and 132 (and others, cf. 139:8) describe a procession(s) that involved ascending the temple mount in order to reach the throne of God in the Temple. The Hebrew word for ascent (ʽālâ), is often used in this context. The expressed purpose of the ascent, according to Psalm 24:6, was to “seek the face of the God of Jacob” (see RSV or similar translation). The features of this ritualized ascent share many of the same features as the later ascent narratives, including passing through gates with guardians (Pss. 15, 24, 118 imply that there is a question-and-answer dialogue between those desiring to be found worthy of entry and the gatekeepers), seeing the Lord on his throne (Ps. 24:6; cf. Isa. 6, etc.), exaltation and enthronement of the individual (Pss. 2, 110, 89, etc.), and other similar features. While I can’t give a full description here, I believe that all this describes a practice of a primitive heavenly ascent ritual. The holy mountain with the temple at its pinnacle, while obviously located physically on earth, represented the mountain of God that reached into the heavens upon which God’s throne was located.

Whether one accepts these ideas and others in the Hebrew Bible as authentic precursors to the later ascent literature or not, I think there is still very good evidence that the belief in and practice of heavenly ascent was common in Jewish circles well before the Christian era. You mention the works of Morton Smith — he did some good research on this topic. However, you should take a look at the more recent work of James Davila in his article on heavenly ascents in the Dead Sea Scrolls in The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment (vol. 2; Brill, 1999), edited by Peter Flint and James VanderKam. Besides the one example of the anonymous figure ascending that you mention (4Q 491), Davila cites five other examples of ascent found at Qumran, including narratives of the heavenly ascent of Enoch, Melchizedek, Levi, Methuselah, and perhaps also Noah (4Q534) and Moses (4Q374, although this text is very unclear). Besides these, there are phrases from some of the sectarian literature that perhaps assume a belief in heavenly ascent. For example, in the Hodayot there are lines such as “You have exalted his [man's] glory beyond flesh” (7:21) and “[s]ons of God to be united with the sons of heaven” (frg. 2 10) and 11:19-23 where the speaker claims to have been “raised eternally to an exalted realm in communion of praise with the angels” (quoting Davila’s summary). Although the nature of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice is much debated, and Davila expresses doubts in this article, elsewhere he and also other scholars such as Crispin Fletcher-Louis, have described this text as possibly narrating a heavenly ascent ritual performed at Qumran. In the Davila article above, he emphasizes the fact that there seems to be a “ritual context” and “experiential component” behind these ascent texts. For me, this is all pretty clear evidence for the practice of a heavenly ascent ritual before the time of Jesus Christ. If you look at some of the works of Old Testament scholar Margaret Barker, this is the assumption that she is working with as well.

As far as the age of the Enochic literature, I follow the general opinion that the oldest sections of 1 Enoch were likely written around 300 BC and the latest sections around the first century BC. Martha Himmelfarb, in her classic Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses considers 1 Enoch’s “Book of the Watchers” (ca. 3rd Century BC) to be the earliest “ascent apocalypse”. 2 Enoch, which has a much clearer account of the ascent to heaven, is a much later text, probably from the first century AD. It is debatable whether this is originally a Jewish or Christian text. Coming up with a timeline for specific texts is very tricky and scholars have widely diverging opinions on when some of these texts were originally penned and by what group — Jewish or Christian. There certainly seems to be a blooming of this type of literature in the first few centuries of the Christian era, and these texts are preserved more often by the hands of Christians than Jews — this fact, however, does not mean that they were not originally written by Jews, and it is possible that some of these texts are considerably older than the attested examples. It is very difficult to tell. I’m sorry that I don’t have more specific details for you, but in my opinion, we can be quite certain, based on the examples I mentioned above and others, that the ascent idea was quite prevalent in at least some Jewish circles well before the time of Christ, and may have even been a main feature of the pre-exilic Israelite religion. Although Martha Himmelfarb is one that would perhaps deny this, I also believe that beyond, and perhaps in some cases accompanying, the ancient narratives regarding ascent, there was also an ascent praxis.

For a great treatment of the idea of the “mysteries” in connection with human access to the divine council at Qumran, see Samuel I. Thomas’s very recent book, The “Mysteries” of Qumran: Mystery, Secrecy, and Esotericism in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It doesn’t go into the “heavenly ascent” idea in much detail, but I think connections with ascent literature are not hard to make.

Why do we get so much talk of chief angels and the anthropomorphic Kavod in the ascent literature? My opinion is that these ideas are perpetuations of very old motifs that for some reason are well-preserved in this type of literature. If you look at the studies of scholars like Gabriele Boccaccini and others, you get the idea that there was a much larger degree of pluralism in early Judaism than most imagine. There seem to have been several different Jewish sects (even beyond the Pharisee, Sadducee, Essene, etc. divisions that we usually hear about). Some scholars claim that some of these Jewish sects preserved the older Israelite religion better than others. In the Second Temple period, some of the mainstream groups seemed to be very interested in reforming and reshaping the Jewish religion — censoring older ideas that they now found heretical. Theoretically, many of these ideas that they wanted to discard involved the possibility of heavenly ascent, of seeing God on his throne, of any “Two Powers” notions, etc. It seems that these issues were hotly debated well before the rise of Christianity. According to some, this may have been why the “sectarians” went to Qumran. The religious tenets that they held to had become unacceptable by the mainstream. Rabbinical Judaism would develop out of this mainstream of “Zadokite” Judaism and would continue to try to purge Jewish culture of these beliefs that they found heretical. It appears that the early Christians had beliefs that were in line with, or similar to, some of these “other” Jewish groups that were unacceptable to the Rabbis.

I don’t believe that all of the post-70 ascent literature was Christian. I think that a lot of it was originally Jewish, but that it came from Jewish groups that were outside of the Rabbinic mainstream. I think a lot of the literature was eventually preserved only by Christians because they had very similar beliefs and because the Jewish groups that would have possibly written the texts and could have preserved them eventually waned under Rabbinic suppression. However, we do see that there were Jewish circles that did preserve many of these more “mystical” ideas into medieval times and beyond (e.g. merkavah mysticism, hekhalot texts, Kabbalah, Sefer Yetzirah, Zohar, etc.). It seems that some of the groups that preserved these traditions were more ascetical and priestly and were generally opposed by the Rabbis. If you look at E.R. Goodenough’s work on the Dura Europos synagogue, which is full of mystical and ascent motifs, you can get an idea for how and by whom some of these ideas were perpetuated in Jewish circles. I believe that both Christians and these “sidelined” Jewish groups preserved this material because they believed that it was part of a more authentic ancient Israelite belief system that had roots in the First Temple period and that had not been so altered by reformers.

For more on this line of thinking, see Margaret Barker’s The Older Testament, The Great Angel: A Study of Israel’s Second God, Temple Themes in Christian Worship, or pretty much any other book of hers.

I’m sorry if my thoughts here are more general than specific, but feel free to ask me any further questions. I would enjoy further discussing these ideas.

Cheers,

David

1. Author’s name reproduced with permission