Early forms of Jewish mysticism

INTRODUCTION The mystical-poetical Hebrew works of the first five centuries of the Common Era, known collectively as heikhalot (heavenly sanctuaries) and merkavah (throne-chariot) literature remain on the whole a closed book to readers and students, although the first scholarly studies were published more than a century ago. It is not known precisely when this literature was composed, and the identity of the authors and editors of the heikhalot tradition is anonymous, pseudepigraphic, or disputed, although these works were written in the first person as if by eyewitnesses to the supernal worlds and attributed by the authors to the High Priest Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha (BT Ber. 7a) and Rabbi Akiva, who entered the pardes (that is, engaged in esoteric speculation pertaining to the heavenly sanctuaries; see BT Hag. 14b). Anonymous or pseudepigraphic as they are, these works, which carry such enigmatic names as Heikhalot Zutarti, Heikhalot Rabbati, Seven Holy Sanctuaries, Maase Merkavah, Shiur Qomah, Masekhet Heikhalot, and Merkavah Rabba, display a distinct affinity with mystical traditions that envisioned humans and angels moving freely between the terrestrial and celestial realms. The bulk of this literature is preoccupied with supernal worlds whose hidden essence, measured in cosmic numbers and figures amounting to thousands of myriads of parasangs between the different parts of the merkavah, became known to humanity via angelic and human testimony, the latter conveyed by the “descenders to the merkavah”.