Jewish Mysticism from Ancient Times through Today by Marvin A. Sweeney

Abstract

Reviewed by: Jewish Mysticism from Ancient Times through Today by Marvin A. Sweeney Joshua Ezra Burns marvin a. sweeney, Jewish Mysticism from Ancient Times through Today (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020). Pp. xvi + 432. $60. The stated purpose of this volume is to present "an account of the development of visionary and mystical experience in Jewish tradition from antiquity to the present" (p. 8). What it actually presents amounts to two accounts of varying quality and coherence. The first, comprising chaps. 1 through 5, reads like a primer on prophecy in the Hebrew Scriptures and Jewish literature of the Second Temple period highlighting its visionary themes. The second, comprising chaps. 6 through 10, surveys postbiblical Jewish texts and concepts belonging to the general order of esoteric or mystical theology, from the Hekhalot, or heavenly ascent texts of late antiquity, through the medieval Kabbalah and contemporary Hasidism. The two halves of the book do not mesh especially well. Linking them is an underdeveloped argument positing that the appearance of scriptural visionary motifs in postbiblical Jewish mysticism indicates a religious phenomenon whereby the visionary accounts of Israel's prophets informed the development of subsequent Jewish thought and devotional [End Page 310] practice involving sensory experience of the divine. That is a dubious analytical premise. Where prophecy was supposedly initiated by God, the pursuit of communion with God that typifies Jewish mystical speculation is meant to be initiated by the individual. Sweeney's elision of that distinction renders his reasoning more suggestive than persuasive. The greater part of the book is given not to reasoning but to description. In the first half of the book, S. summarizes a wide range of prophetic texts and depictions of prophecy in the Hebrew Scriptures and early Jewish literature. His analysis of those materials is capable but largely derivative, often drawing upon his own extensive body of scholarship. The second half, focusing on mystical texts, is almost entirely descriptive. Annotations are sparse, nebulous, and often conspicuously out of date. The contrast gives the impression of a scriptural scholar dabbling in a field of expertise not his own. S. occasionally offers comments challenging the stance of Gershom Scholem (e.g., Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism [New York: Schocken, 1941]) and his followers setting mysticism in opposition to the rationalistic intellectual pursuits of rabbinic Judaism. S. notes that Torah study and prayer, quintessential rabbinic acts of devotion involving the consumption of prophetic writings, historically have been regarded in mystical circles as means of accessing the divine realm. He likewise highlights the appearance of classical rabbinic personalities in mystical lore. Those observations, by no means original, represent the clearest efforts on the author's part to substantiate his location of prophecy and mysticism in a linear phenomenological continuum. The book is not easy to digest. It is unreasonably dense. Its literary summaries are supplemented by all sorts of ancillary information: form-critical commentaries, historical excursions, biographical legends, and so forth. These passages are impressionistic, repetitive, and, in the second half of the book, poorly documented. As for the summaries themselves, they are packed with too much information for the casual reader to retain reasonably. That is a tremendous liability as S. proceeds from the simple visionary claims of the prophets to discuss the more sophisticated cosmological schemes and metaphysical concepts of later ages. The net effect is that of an overambitious survey of literature embedded in a chronicle of Jewish history and burdened by a thesis that is not argued cogently. Aspiring to accomplish too much, the study ends up accomplishing too little to justify reading it from cover to cover. In view of the foregoing, I am at a loss to imagine an ideal audience for this book. Scholars acquainted with its subject matter will find the book superficial. Graduate students and seminarians will find it tedious. Undergraduates will find it impenetrable. S. seems to pitch his work to a reader in need of remedial education in the Hebrew Scriptures yet conversant in postbiblical Judaism, its culture, and its religious lexicon. I can imagine it working for adult learners with healthy attention spans interested in exploring formative Jewish texts seldom read outside of Hasidic circles. But I would not recommend...