jack

Possibly we should talk about what what was divinely revealed to all these people who went to heaven and then wrote a book about it, but instead, I realised I really needed to know what was going on in history at the same time all this religious teaching was being written down.

You've probably read some of the Christian gospels and have some idea what Judea looks like in 1AD. But this comes after 500 years of being conquered, the temple destroyed, being taken away, and let go, and conquered again, and rebelling, and being conquered by someone else, etc, etc. The first bit about the being taken away to Babylon and then a generation later let go is described in the book of Daniel which also describes a bunch of visions about heaven the end of the world. Esther describes Esther marrying a Persian emperor (probably a fictionalised version of the historical one) c.f. Purim. Maccabees describes yet another revolt celebrated by Hannukah.

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In Parts I and II (see https://jack.dreamwidth.org/tag/boyarin-apocalypse), we saw Elisha Ben Abuya aka "Aher, the Other rabbi" get shunned for believing something heretical to ardent monotheists. The story describes four great rabbis entering a metaphorical "garden" and him seeing seeing Metatron giving orders from a golden throne, and crying "God?", and then legions of angels drag Metatron away to be whipped him for temerity. But why are they punishing Metatron here?

This was some sort of dualistic or binitarian belief, but what? This was central to the point Daniel Boyarin was making in these lectures. He's showing that despite quite a lot of strands of Jewish mysticism having no written records from about 300BCE to 200CE, they didn't vanish during this time but were probably actually common but disapproved of. This is an extended swipe at another unparalleled biblical scholar, Peter Schafer, who wrote books about ways Christianity did influence Judaism.

At some point Schafer described one of Boyarin's books using the "what is good is not new and what is new is not good" quip. Another time, he says "some scholars" believe Christianity didn't influence Judaism at all, but gives an example of a book by Boyarin. Boyarin angrily retorts Shafer his putting words in his mouth, he's saying THIS PARTICULAR story with the garden was an influence of a different tradition, not Christianity, and gave this fascinating lecture series to explain why in extreme detail.

Boyarin takes a number of specific examples that appear in the Talmud. For instance, the garden story was supposed to be a warning "IF YOU KNOW HOW TO GO TO HEAVEN DON'T WRITE IT DOWN THE KNOWLEDGE IS TOO MUCH FOR MOST PEOPLE" but the rabbis of a few hundred years later helpfully go into a lot of specific detail, including specific steps Rabbi Akiva supposedly undertook and the substances of seven onion-layers of heaven he travelled through.

Boyarin compares these to similar stories recorded earlier (e.g. 1 Enoch where Enoch travels to heaven in a similar way and is taken up as an angel taught great mysteries about everything) and later (e.g. 3 Enoch where someone else travels to heaven and meets Enoch-now-Metatron who complains about getting whipped for it, but gives him important visions), and demonstrates that these probably all influenced each other, as opposed to the ideas being re-imported from Christianity or another source. Conversely there's a story in Daniel about a great king and Someone sitting on a great throne and Daniel getting important visions, in both Jewish and Christian tradition, but this seems to be a slightly different version of the story emphasising who is in heaven and how they rule, not a human becoming an angel and getting whipped for going too far.

These likely relate to a much earlier story. The Sumerian King List records a sequence of kings stretching back before a Great Flood, and the seventh antediluvian king has a series of legends about being taken up into heaven, being allowed to run humanity and making a golden age, and then screwing it all up by being worshipped too much for his own sake and cast down again. Legends about a junior divine being who had been, or became, human, or who got too big for his boots and had to be cast down float about since then. The Sumerian religion at the time was later reformed by Zoroaster as Zoroastrinism.

This seems to be the earlier point of the Enoch-Metatron stories. The bible only says Enoch (seventh generation patriach) went off with God instead of dying. But this is back when the idea was that heaven was for angels and dead people went to some sort of underworld, so it may reflect the "went to heaven and was taught all the mysteries and became an angel" story recorded later. Then some Jewish people happily bought into the "Metatron rules on some days when God is busy doing accounts" plan whether or not Metatron had been Enoch. Others told them off with the "Yes, and he was PUNISHED FOR IT" bit of the Enoch/Metatron story. This is why Metatron's punishment for what Aher said seems to come out of nowhere.

Conversely, if Jesus or the Holy Spirit has any relationship to this story, they don't have any of those bits, so the bit with Metatron being seen by the Rabbis going into the garden derives from earlier Jewish tradition, not a denouncement of contemporary Christianity. And so (says Boyarin), Boyarin's long detailed lecture series is correct and Shafer's throw-away snarky footnote is wrong.

In the Talmud there's a famous story about four Rabbis who enter a fine garden. The word is "Pardes" which literally means orchard, but is a distant cousin of the word paradise. To no-one's surprise this turns out to be (spoilers!) a metaphor for heaven or divine knowledge which is Making a Point. In fact, I think the whole story is recorded not for its own sake but as a supporting example to a general prohibition, if you meditate and study so hard you gain divine insight that gives you miraculous powers, only share the knowledge with sober-minded over-40s of good character, in case someone is a bit reckless and heat-visions an entire landscape or designs a robot that runs amok and destroys Prague, or whatever.

You will also be shocked, shocked, to learn that when reach these heights of divine knowledge, three of them act incautiously and get comeuppance for it, and R Akiva is sensible about it and gets out safely and becomes One of the Most Famous Rabbis in the Talmud ever.

According to later versions of the story, the first rabbi, Ben Azzai saw God and died. In the earliest version is just says he went into the garden and "glimpsed and died", and what exactly he glimpsed was something only contained in oral versions of the story. The real life Ben Azzai was another Talmud Rabbi famous for all sorts of things, although apparently he did die young-ish and never officially got recognised as a rabbi in his lifetime.

The second, Ben Zoma, looked around and saw too much, but not so much that he died, and went mad. The original cliff notes version quotes a bit of the bible about not eating too much honey here, so something like, he didn't know what was too much. Apparently he also died without becoming a Rabbi but was famous for his learning anyway.

The third "trampled the stalks" which is bad in a field, and super super bad to do in heaven. The expanded version says he saw God and Metatron and said, "oh look, there's two Gods!?" and caused a holy hullabaloo across all of heaven, and got kicked out. And in real life, he abandoned being a great famous Rabbi and became a super super heretic, and went around gratuitously sinning all over the place -- or perhaps, adopted ideas of a different sect of Judaism that the people writing this down wanted to tell everyone how BAD it was. His name as Elisha ben Abuya, but he's known as "Acher" which means "The Other" all through the talmud where's an example of what absolutely not to do.

And Akiva entered the garden peacefully, did no harm, and left again safely. The Talmud usually likes Akiva.

Next time we'll talk about Acher's heresy in a lot more detail. Also (spoilers) the angels drag Metatron from his throne and whip him with thousands and thousands of fiery whips (yes, really) which may give some satisfaction to those of you who read Good Omens.