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...

Leading scholars explore the tradition, rooted in Genesis 6, of the Watchers, mysterious heavenly beings who became the focus of rich cosmological and theological speculation in early Judaism. Chapters trace the development of the Watchers through the Enoch literature, Jubilees, and other early Jewish and Christian writings.