Much Thanks

I want to thank a couple of bloggers for directing some attention to my blog: ElShaddai Edwards at He Is Sufficient and Iyov. They've both already directly influenced my blog: I've changed the name of the blog to exactly match the blog address.


Iyov heaps high praise when he refers to this blog as "important". I believe that's more than a bit premature, but I thank him for the compliment.

As for Iyov's expectations of comments on Jewish mysticism, I'm not sure I'll be able to oblige him in the way he means. I originally chose this blog title because my area of study is Second Temple Jewish literature (particularly early Jewish interpretation of scripture) and as such, the pseudepigraphic literature in general and the Enochic literature (especially 1 Enoch) along with the book of Jubilees (Enoch plays a small but very important role in this book) is of more than a passing interest to me. I actually went to the trouble of learning Ethiopic so that I could get as close as possible to the originals (which are unfortunately only completely available in a translation of a translation of the originals).

1 Enoch, Jubilees, many Qumran writings as well as a few other early pre-rabbinic Jewish texts certainly count as Jewish mystical texts in the broadest sense, since they are Jewish and they contain the typical mystical themes of esoteric knowledge, secret interpretations, divine visions, numerology, etc. But I'm sure he had something like Merkava/Hekhalot mysticism or perhaps the Kabbalistic literature in mind, and I have only a passing knowledge of the former and virtually none of the latter.

In addition, I never really intended to blog on Jewish mysticism at all since 1 Enoch, Jubilees and other early pre-rabbinic Jewish texts which might count under the broad definition (which are the only Jewish mystical texts that I know well) hardly make for compelling blog reading for the general public.


Anyways, congratulations to Iyov on his upcoming one year anniversary. He's averaged well over 8 posts/week for the first year for which he has nothing but my admiration. In comparison, I hope to average about 2-3 posts/week and would be ecstatic if I could keep that up for a few months.