Writing, ritual, and apocalypse: Studies in the theme of ascent to heaven in ancient Mesopotamia and Second Temple Judaism

Explanations of the rise of the genre apocalypse in Hellenistic Judaism have typically traced literary influences but left questions about the mechanisms by which the genre itself came about. To address these questions, this dissertation focuses new methodological and philological resources on a single element of the genre: the ascent to heaven. The first chapter investigates the history of comparison between Jewish apocalypses and Mesopotamian religious traditions and finds that history dominated by a developmentalist model of borrowing, with Mesopotamian material arranged to fit a Hellenistic Jewish pattern. The second chapter develops an alternative, inner-Mesopotamian model of journeys to heaven and revelatory mediators based on a detailed survey of texts. The next three chapters apply this model to processes by which Israelite textual and ritual traditions were invoked and changed. The third chapter shows "apocalyptic" processes at work in the relationship between the Torah and the Bible: contests over the definition of Israel and the physical location of its contact with God affected, on a micro level, the textual form of the book of Joshua, and, on a macro level, the formation of new genres such as the apocalypse. The fourth chapter investigates generic continuity, showing that the mystical liturgies found at Qumran, in the book of Revelation, and in the later Hekhalot literature share a vocabulary, a set of poetic techniques and a concern with the ritual construction of other worldly space comparable to ancient Near Eastern Temple Hymns. The fifth chapter shows how Canaanite myths of ascent to the throne of the dominant god are moved across different genres, from epic to prophecy, to emerge in the Hellenistic period in the genre of prayer as part of a discourse of revealed knowledge and identification with divine beings. This discourse has a practical correlate in the corporeal dualism of Qumran ritual. By tracing the history of an apocalyptic theme, the dissertation documents the transformation of religious genres and the ritual subject: how they became apocalyptic together.