Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered - The Preterist Archive

a book of the utmost importance for Qumran visionaries and in the Qumran apocalyptic scheme
generally. Daniel, too, is a work integrally tied to the Maccabean Uprising, as are - at least in spirit -
many of the Qumran documents. As in Dan. 8:16, Gabriel is here the interpreter of the vision or, if one
prefers, the Heavenly or mystic guide though by the end of the vision as extant in this fragment, it is
no longer clear whether Michael or Gabriel is having the vision.
In the Islamic tradition - a later adumbration clearly owing much to the tradition we see developing
here - Gabriel serves as the revealing or dictating Angel co-extensive with what in Christian tradition
might otherwise be called the Holy Spirit. Here, whatever else one might say of him, Gabriel is the
guide in the Highest Heaven - traditions about Muhammad too are not immune from such Heavenly
Ascents - not unlike the role, Dante ascribes to Virgil and finally Beatrice in his rendition of a similar
ecstatic ascent and vision.
Here the Archangel Michael ascends to the Highest Heaven. Some practitioners of this kind of mystic
journeying speak of three 'layers' (again see Paul in 2 Cor. 12:2), some of seven, and some of twelve.
He then appears to descend to tell the ordinary Angels what he has seen, though, as we have noted,
how his role differs from Gabriel's is difficult to understand in the text as presently extant. While in
Heaven Michael beholds the 'Glory of God' - literally 'Greatness' in Aramaic. Ezekiel - a prophet of
the utmost importance in Qumran tradition, not only for works of this kind, but also for the notion of
the 'sons of Zadok' terminology generally - is one of the first to have had such visions relating to the
divine 'Glory'. The terminology is also important in the New Testament and fairly widespread at
Qumran.
Most of the vision is incomprehensible, but one idea, which reappears in Paul and Kabbalistic tradition
generally, is found here that of the New or Heavenly Jerusalem, i.e. while in Heaven Michael learns of
a city to be built. This apocalyptic and visionary genre clearly owes much to imagery in Daniel and is
reiterated in the pseudo-Daniel works in Chapter 2. But the actual themes of Heavenly Ascents and a
Heavenly Jerusalem again go all the way back to Ezekiel's visions. Not only is Ezekiel picked up by
an Angel-like 'Holy Spirit' and deposited in Jerusalem as part of his ecstatic visionary experience early
in that book (Ezek. 8:3), but at the end of the book ascribed to him, he is picked up again and proceeds
to measure out a new Temple (40-48). This theme is the crux of the next work, which was either
directly ascribed to Ezekiel or operated as part of a pseudo-Ezekiel genre.