Days of Awe and Wonder: How to Be a Christian in the Twenty-first Century

by Marcus J. Borg

For a history of Jewish mysticism reaching back to the time of Jesus and earlier, see esp. the work of Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1946), and Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition, 2nd ed. (Hoboken: KTAV, 1965). A connection between apocalypticism and visions of or journeys into another world is increasingly affirmed in studies of Jewish apocalyptic. See, e.g., John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination (New York: Crossroad, 1984), which speaks of two strands of tradition in Jewish apocalypses, one visionary and one involving otherworldly journeys.