Harkins Reading with an "I" to the Heavens

Looking at the Qumran Hodayot through the Lens of Visionary Traditions
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-3-11-025181-4
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 3, 334 Seiten

Reihe: Ekstasis: Religious Experience from Antiquity to the Middle AgesISSN

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.

Zielgruppe

Academics, Libraries, Institutes

Autoren/Hrsg.

Harkins, Angela Kim

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Heilige & Traditionelle Texte, Mythologie, Vergleichende Mythologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionssoziologie und -psychologie, Spiritualität, Mystik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Introduction;11
1.1;I. The Proposal;14
1.2;II. Basic Orientation to the Qumran Hodayot;18
1.3;III. Traditional Scholarly Ways of Reading and Interpreting the Hodayot;27
2;Chapter 1 Creating an Embodied Subjectivity for Religious Experience;35
2.1;I. Religious Experience as Bodily Experience;39
2.2;II. Affective Experience as Bodily Experience;47
2.3;III. The Theoretical Post-Structural Framework of Performance Theory and Ritual Studies;56
2.3.1;1. Generative aspects of Ritual Performance;66
2.3.2;2. Embodied Subjectivity;70
2.3.3;3. The Radical Indeterminacy of Ritual Experiences;75
2.4;Conclusion;77
3;Chapter 2 The Imaginal Body as an Affective Script for Transformation;79
3.1;I. Embodiment Language and the Strong “I”;84
3.2;II. Emotions in Performance Studies;101
3.3;III. Performative Emotions in Religious Experience;108
3.4;Conclusion;120
4;Chapter 3 Progressive Spatialization: The Scripted Movement Out From Places of Punishment;124
4.1;I. Critical Spatial Theory: Firstspace, Secondspace, and Thirdspace;124
4.2;II. The Secondspace Terrain of the Hodayot;134
4.2.1;A. Spatial Orientation to the Collection TH+CH II;137
4.2.2;B. Places of Punishment and Entrapment: The Religious Geography of Terror in the TH;140
4.2.2.1;1. Entrapment and Enemy Attacks: 1QH X, 22–32;148
4.2.2.2;2. 1QH XI: Specific Allusions to Enochic Places of Punishment;151
4.2.2.3;3. Entrapment (1QH XII, 6-XIII, 6);157
4.2.2.4;4. The Lion’s Den (1QH XIII, 7–21);158
4.3;Conclusion;162
5;Chapter 4 The Thirdspace Terrain of the Hodayot: The Arousal of Fear and the Exegetical Generation of Texts;163
5.1;I. The Anthropologizing “I” and the Process of Actualization;166
5.2;II. The Role of the Emotions in the Generation of New Visionary Compositions;182
5.2.1;A. Neuropsychological Processes;184
5.2.2;B. Emotion and Memory in Performance Theory and Neuropsychology;192
5.2.3;C. Summary of the Neuropsychology of Emotion and Performance;198
5.3;III. Moving from Secondspace to Thirdspace Experiences: Performative Reading and the Exegetical Generation of 1QH XIII, 22-XV, 8;200
5.4;Conclusion;213
6;Chapter 5 Paradise as a Place on the Threshold of the Heavens;216
6.1;I. The Garden as Heterotopia;218
6.2;II. The Garden Paradise in the Hodayot;225
6.2.1;A. The Location of Paradise as a Place Above;228
6.2.2;B. A Glimpse of the Garden Paradise in 1QH XIII, 22-XV,8;230
6.2.3;C. The Well-Watered Garden Paradise in 1QH XVI, 5-XVII, 36;234
6.3;III. Moving On: The Spatial Progression in the Hodayot Scroll;254
6.4;IV. Entry into the Heavens;257
6.5;Conclusion;275
7;Conclusion;277
8;Bibliography;284
9;Subject Index;313
10;Ancient Text Index;316
11;Modern Author Index;328

Über Autor(innen)

Harkins, Angela Kim
Angela Kim Harkins, Fairfield University, CT, USA.

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