Lecture XI - The Myth-Scape of the Hekhalot
Added 2025-09-30 17:50:52 +0000 UTC
Comments
WHere else can we get this deep dive into Western mysticism?
Mark RENDINA
2025-10-13 04:49:48 +0000 UTCyvy
North Firefly
2025-10-07 01:01:25 +0000 UTCHad to catch up, migraines have been in the way, love this series so much
Alkemy Frost
2025-10-04 21:21:22 +0000 UTCAmazing lesson, thank you Justin! Just one thing, I couldn't find the word חמס in 213-216 the word in Hebrew is actually הבל or חבל witch is more associated with the scroll of Ecclesiastes than the flood story in Genesis. Please correct me if I'm wrong, it's a little confusing read through Schafer - Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur
amir steklov
2025-10-03 08:56:09 +0000 UTCDescenders in the hands of a terrible old man. So busy
Gabriel Elliot
2025-10-01 05:04:02 +0000 UTCSorry. Clipped. I was going to say 'It isn't a website where you have to ask and wait for an invitation . (Which - yes - flippant and I blush.)
Keryl Kris
2025-09-30 23:01:32 +0000 UTCAs per the decent to god. This feels like some some aspects of certain genres of modern (mostly American) Protestant christianity. Those in which one says the 'sinners prayer' or (a bit more work) and gets baptized and... that does it. Granted, one still has to wait to die, but the connection I'm making is that in those conceptions the active part is played by the human. PEOPLE pray. PEOPLE decide to get the water. It isn't 'worship god and see if you become his people'. It isn't There is no considered possibility that God/Jesus will say no. Granted not quite the same thing but... I see a connection.
Keryl Kris
2025-09-30 23:00:18 +0000 UTCVery good! I was able to see almost the entire lecture on Sunday, and just finished up the last 15 minutes of it that I had to miss...excellent as always! I am hoping to be there on Friday, but in case I'm not, I will ask this question here: while you contrasted the Hekhalot literature to other ascent/descent texts of the ancient Near East in that in this literature, one is able to visit these places without dying, I wonder if that is actually the case (as Jeremy Naydler and others have argued with some of the Egyptian "afterlife" texts)...but that actually leads to the question: is it possible that these various ordeals are only because one is attempting to access these places while still alive/incarnate? If one were to actually die, would these same ordeals be before one (and would it be possible to have the "second death" if one didn't know the passwords, seals, and such), or would it just be smooth-sailing, so to speak? In comparing some of these matters to the medieval Irish afterlife visions/journeys, one tends to have to see (and even, in some cases, experience) certain pains of Hell or Purgatory before seeing Heaven, God and the Angels, etc.; but, in doing so, it is implied that such is the price for seeing these things while still alive. I wonder if something similar is operative in the Hekhalot situation without actually being stated plainly.
P. Sufenas Virius Lupus`
2025-09-30 20:56:45 +0000 UTCNew England?! That's where I'm from!
Katherine Cargill
2025-09-30 18:13:52 +0000 UTC
