Dybbuk and Maggid: Two Cultural Patterned of Altered Consciousness in Judaism
AJS Review The Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies November 1, 1996 DOI: 10.1017/s0364009400008552 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Altered states of consciousness |
| Citations | 24 |
| Key points | Argues that scholars of Judaism avoided anthropological methods for several reasons: classical ethnography's focus on small-scale, non-literate societies seemed inapplicable to Judaism's text-based "great tradition"; early comparative work by Robertson Smith and Frazer appeared methodologically unsound; and an emotional reluctance to equate "primitive" religions with monotheism reinforced this caution. |
Abstract
For many years scholars of Judaism were reluctant to employ the analytic tools distilled in anthropology for studying Jewish culture. One reason for this reluctance was that the classical ethnographic field, consisting of a small-scale tribal society with no written tradition, did not appear pertinent to the study of the text-informed “great tradition“ of Judaism. In addition, the notion of comparative research implicit in most anthropological studies appeared dubious to many scholars of Judaism, who were alarmed by the sweeping, methodologically unfounded comparisons evident in the treatment of biblical material by such precursors of modern anthropology as Robertson Smith and Frazer.1 This methodological consideration was augmented by an emotional unwillingness to equate the “primitive’ religious systems of “savage’ societies with concepts and rituals pertaining to the oldest monotheistic religion.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on altered states of consciousness, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Altered States of Consciousness | 1966 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Functional neuroanatomy of altered states of consciousness: The transient hypofrontality hypothesis | 2003 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Psychedelic Mystical Experience in the Human Encounter with Death | 1969 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| A neurophenomenological approach to non-ordinary states of consciousness: hypnosis, meditation, and psychedelics | 2022 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Hypnotic phenomena and altered states of consciousness: a multilevel framework of description and explanation | 2003 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |