Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys Book

	Introduction
	Antiquity	1
Ch. 1	Wisdom's Place	3
Ch. 2	Ascent to the Stars in a Mesopotamian Ritual: Social Metaphor and Religious Experience	15
	Late Antiquity	39
Ch. 3	A Throne in the Heavens: Apotheosis in Pre-Christian Judaism	41
Ch. 4	The Seven Heavens in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses	57
Ch. 5	Paul and the Beginning of Jewish Mysticism	93
Ch. 6	The Practice of Ascent in the Ancient Mediterranean World	121
Ch. 7	Mystical Descents	137
Ch. 8	The Crown of Immortality: Toward a Redescription of Christian Martyrdom	153
Ch. 9	Abathur, A New Etymology	169
	Medieval	179
Ch. 10	The Imagination of Death in Jewish Spirituality	181
Ch. 11	Weeping, Death, and Spiritual Ascent in Sixteenth Century Jewish Mysticism	207
Ch. 12	Between Authority and Indeterminacy: Some Reflections on Kabbalistic Hermeneutics	245
Ch. 13	Hekhalot and Miraj: Observations on the Heavenly Journey in Judaism and Islam	265
Ch. 14	The Role of the "Anima Mundi" as Mediator Between the Divine and Created Realms in the Twelfth Century	285
	Early Modern	317
Ch. 15	Death and the Distribution of Sacral Power in Early Japanese Mythistory	319
Ch. 16	To Hell and Back: Death, Near-Death and Other Worldly Journeys in Early Medieval China	339
Ch. 17	Sir Henry Vane: Mystical Piety in the Puritan Revolution	357
	Contemporary	377
Ch. 18	Death, and Near-Death Today	379
	Contributors	405
	Biblical References Index	411
	Nonbiblical Authors and Works Index	415
	Modern Authors Index	421