Description: This is a comprehensive study of the ancient Jewish and Christian apocalypses involving ascent into heaven, which have hitherto received little scholarly attention in comparson to apocalypses concerned primarily with the end of the world. Martha Himmelfarb places the ascent apocalypses in relation to both their biblical antecedents and their context in the Greco-Roman world. She examines the emergence of the understanding of heaven as temple in the Book of the Watchers, the earliest of these apocalypses, and shows how this understanding affects the depiction of the culmination of ascent, the hero's achievement of a place among the angels, in the ascent apocalypses generally. She also considers the place of secrets of nature and primeval history in these works. Finally, she offers an interpretation of the pseudepigraphy of the apocalypses and their function. Scholars and students of ancient Judaism will find Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses illuminating, as will those with an interest in early Christianity and New Testament scholarship.

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