THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS AND LATER JEWISH MAGIC AND MYSTICISM

Abstract

Students of the Rabbinic period who study the phenomena we call magic and mysticism have good reason to appreciate the efforts of Qumran scholars over the past five decades, as their labors have yielded palpable results for the history of Hekhalot and literatures. While historians of talmudic law may have to reason by analogy on how each community faced a similar legal problem, we can point to specific genres of literature found at Qumran that provide precedents for later Jewish esoteric literature. Two examples, which will be discussed below, are the well-known Angelic Liturgy and a fragment of an Aramaic handbook. It will be argued here that both present interesting examples of persistence and transformation. At the same time, these fields are also plagued with two of the most vexed terms in contemporary history of religions. Both mysticism and magic are currently disputed categories, a fact recognized recently by some Qumran scholars, as will be shown below. To call ancient Jewish literature mystical raises serious epistemological questions regarding how we recover the inner experience of writers who do not reveal themselves explicitly. To call anything magical raises questions of whether our modern, rationalistic categories create an inherent bias against some sorts of discourse and activity and thereby prevent us from understanding them in their fullness.' Yet these problems are not