The Greatest Mirror: Heavenly Counterparts in the Jewish Pseudepigrapha

Andrei A. Orlov

ሴፕቴ 2017 · State University of New York Press

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The idea of a heavenly double—an angelic twin of an earthbound human—can be found in Christian, Manichaean, Islamic, and Kabbalistic traditions. Scholars have long traced the lineage of these ideas to Greco-Roman and Iranian sources. In The Greatest Mirror, Andrei A. Orlov shows that heavenly twin imagery drew in large part from early Jewish writings. The Jewish pseudepigrapha—books from the Second Temple period that were attributed to biblical figures but excluded from the Hebrew Bible—contain accounts of heavenly twins in the form of spirits, images, faces, children, mirrors, and angels of the Presence. Orlov provides a comprehensive analysis of these traditions in their full historical and interpretive complexity. He focuses on heavenly alter egos of Enoch, Moses, Jacob, Joseph, and Aseneth in often neglected books, including Animal Apocalypse, Book of the Watchers, 2 Enoch, Ladder of Jacob, and Joseph and Aseneth, some of which are preserved solely in the Slavonic language.

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Andrei A. Orlov is Professor of Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity at Marquette University. He is the author of Dark Mirrors: Azazel and Satanael in Early Jewish Demonology and Divine Scapegoats: Demonic Mimesis in Early Jewish Mysticism, both also published by SUNY Press.