Reading with an I to the Heavens: Looking at the Qumran Hodayot Through the Lens of Visionary Traditions (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9783110610857)

This book examines the collection of prayers known as the Qumran Hodayot (= Thanksgiving Hymns) in light of ancient visionary traditions, new developments in neuropsychology, and post-structuralist understandings of the embodied subject. The thesis of this book is that the ritualized reading of reports describing visionary experiences written in the first person "I" had the potential to create within the ancient reader the subjectivity of a visionary which can then predispose him to have a religious experience. This study examines how references to the body and the strategic arousal of emotions could have functioned within a practice of performative reading to engender a religious experience of ascent. In so doing, this book offers new interdisciplinary insights into meditative ritual reading as a religious practice for transformation in antiquity.

Author: Angela Kim Harkins
ISBN-10: 311061085X
ISBN-13: 9783110610857
Publisher: de Gruyter
Language: English
Published: 06/11/2018
Pages: 334
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.14lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.75d