Includes bibliographical references (p. 381-418) and indexes.

What is early Jewish and Christian mysticism? / April D. DeConick -- Religious experience and the construction of the transcendent self / Alan F. Segal -- Visionary experience in ancient Judaism and Christianity / Christopher Rowland with Patricia Gibbons and Vicente Dobroruka -- Performative exegesis / Seth L. Sanders -- The emergence of the mystical traditions of the merkabah / Rachel Elior -- The ancient Jewish apocalypses and the Hekhalot literature / James R. Davila -- Rabbi Ishmael's priestly genealogy in Hekhalot literature / Ra'anan S. Boustan -- The temple within / R. A. Morray-Jones -- God's face in the Enochic tradition / Andrei A. Orlov -- Wheels of time in the apocalypse of Jesus Christ / Cameron C. Afzal -- Sexuality and gender of angels / Kevin Sullivan -- Lessons on early Jewish apocalypticism and mysticism from dream literature / Frances Flannery-Dailey -- Situating the afterlife / Kelley Coblentz Bautch -- Eschatological sorrow, divine weeping, and God's right arm / Rebecca Lesses -- The therapeutae, text work, ritual and mystical experience / Celia Deutsch -- Jewish and Christian heavenly meal traditions / Andrea Lieber -- Baptismal praxis and mystical experience in the book of Revelation / Charles A. Gieschen -- Divine secrets and divination / Daphna Arbel.