A Transparent Illusion: The Dangerous Vision of Water in Hekhalot Mysticism: A Source-Critical and Tradition-Historical Inquiry, by C. R. A. Morray-Jones. JSJSup 59. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Pp. xiii +322. $104.00. In b. fag. 14b we find a version of story of four who entered paradise (or the garden) in which four tannaitic figures dare to enter celestial paradise, with only one, R. Akiva, surviving unscathed. The recension of Babli has R. Akiva warning others that when they approach the marble stones, they must on no account say Water! It appears that none of other three heeded his admonition, thus bringing their disastrous fates down on their own heads. In book under review, Morray-Jones attempts to reconstruct origin and meaning of warning and its relationship to story of four. (All references to Hekhalot literature in this review use section numbering of Peter Schafer's Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur [Tubingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1981].) Morray-Jones begins in first two chapters by recapitulating convincing case he has made elsewhere that recension of story of four found in Hekhalot texts known as Hekhalot Zutarti (338-39) and Merkavah Rabbah (671-73), when cleared of obvious redactional elements from another, third-person version, preserves a first-person account that clearly takes paradise to mean heavenly realm and which predates versions in rabbinic collection. It follows that we must place this recension at latest in early fourth century. This early Hekhalot account did not include warning about water, although a different version of it, water vision episode, appears elsewhere in Hekhalot Zutarti (secs 4078), with a parallel version appearing in Hekhalot Rabbati (secs 258-59). In ch. 3 be argues, again convincingly, first that latter version (in Hekhalot Rabbati) is a garbled abbreviation of former (in Hekhalot Zutarti) and, second, that in manuscript New York 8128 a version of vision episode has been secondarily combined with story of four in Hekhalot Zutarti and Merkavah Rabbah and that it is this combined passage that is assumed by Babli, and not other way around, strongly implying that Hekhalot traditions are stratigraphically earlier. Indeed, other evidence, especially from Qumran Hodayot, implies that concept of hostile waters of chaos associated with celestial temple may go back to Second Temple period. Chapter 4 deals with pure stones of marble, which really seem to be composed of brilliant air below firmament (ideas covered in on Ezek 1:19-28 of Hekhalot Zutarti secs 407-12, which midrash Morray-jones takes to interpret Ezek 1 as a celestial ascent of prophet himself). Chapter 5 covers waters of impurity associated with celestial pavement. In these chapters, drawing on parallels from OT Pseudepigrapha, Yerushalmi, Dead Sea Scrolls, and NT book of Revelation, Morray-Jones reconstructs a tradition of existence of demonic waters of chaos which he takes to inform vision episode in Hekhalot Zutarti. These waters have tainted material creation, in particular earthly bodies born of woman, making it incompatible with substance of celestial realm that is goal of mystical ascent. Traditions about corrupt waters of materiality under firmament and pleromatic air, found in texts from Nag Hammadi and related works, fill out picture in ch. 6 and reinforce proposition that this cosmology was widespread in Judeo-Christian esoteric literature by fourth century. Chapter 7 explores traditions about curtain or veil in celestial temple in a similar range of sources. Chapter 8 focuses on Hekhalot Zutarti 368-74, midrash, a passage describing scene of divine throne room and preserving calculations about number of faces and wings on Ezekiel's four living creatures who bear throne. …