Reading with an "I" to the Heavens: Looking at the Qumran Hodayot through the Lens of Visionary Traditions

Angela Kim Harkins

Published by De Gruyter 2012

Reading with an "I" to the Heavens

Looking at the Qumran Hodayot through the Lens of Visionary Traditions

Angela Kim Harkins

Volume 3 in the series Ekstasis: Religious Experience from Antiquity to the Middle Ages

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110251814

Overview
Contents

About this book

This book examines the collection of prayers known as the Qumran Hodayot (= Thanksgiving Hymns) in light of ancient visionary traditions, new developments in neuropsychology, and post-structuralist understandings of the embodied subject. The thesis of this book is that the ritualized reading of reports describing visionary experiences written in the first person "I" had the potential to create within the ancient reader the subjectivity of a visionary which can then predispose him to have a religious experience. This study examines how references to the body and the strategic arousal of emotions could have functioned within a practice of performative reading to engender a religious experience of ascent. In so doing, this book offers new interdisciplinary insights into meditative ritual reading as a religious practice for transformation in antiquity.

Author / Editor information

Angela Kim Harkins, Marie Curie International Incoming Fellow, University of Birmingham, UK.

Supplementary Materials

Contents

Topics

Frontmatter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	i
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
Contents Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 1. Creating an Embodied Subjectivity for Religious Experience Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
Chapter 2. The Imaginal Body as an Affective Script for Transformation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
Chapter 3. Progressive Spatialization: The Scripted Movement Out From Places of Punishment Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	114
Chapter 4. The Thirdspace Terrain of the Hodayot: The Arousal of Fear and the Exegetical Generation of Texts Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	153
Chapter 5. Paradise as a Place on the Threshold of the Heavens Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	206
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	267
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	274
Subject Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303
Ancient Text Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	306
Modern Author Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	318

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: Academics, Libraries, Institutes
Pages
- Front matter: 10
- Main content: 324
Keywords: Dead Sea Scrolls; Religious Experience; Emotions; Performance Studies; Ritual

eBook

Published: July 4, 2012
ISBN: 9783110251814

Hardcover

Published: June 14, 2012
ISBN: 9783110251807

Paperback

Published: June 11, 2018
ISBN: 9783110610857