This is a comparative study of the ancient Jewish and Christian views of the ascent into heaven. It places the ascent narratives in their cultural and historical context, and explores their relationship to the canonical apocalypses and to other Graeco-Roman literature of ascent and divinization.
About the Author
Martha Himmelfarb is an American scholar of religion. Her areas of focus include the Second Temple period in Jewish history, Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature, Hekhalot literature, early Christianity, early rabbinic Judaism after the fall of the Second Temple, and the Jewish priesthood. She became an academic at Princeton University in New Jersey in 1978, and eventually acquired the named chair of William H. Danforth Professor of Religion. She took on emeritus status at Princeton in 2022. Much of Himmelfarb's work is on the intersection of Hellenistic Judaism, Jewish Christianity, …
