The Dualism of Heaven and Earth in Early Jewish Literature and Its Implications

Philip S. Alexander explores heaven and earth dualism as a special type of cosmological dualism through his study of sample texts from the Book of Watchers, Sefer Yesirah, Heikhalot Rabbati, 2 Enoch, and 3 Enoch, written over a period of approximately 1000 years. This dualistic tradition sees heaven as a parallel universe to earth. Reality is divided into two parallel worlds, which operate according to different physical laws. Movement between these worlds is possible only by way of physical transformation (apotheosis and incarnation). Heaven is understood either as a monoelemental universe made of fire or as a multi-elemental one with primordial, antithetical elements eternally juxtaposed. Although the different formulations of heaven and earth binarism in ancient Judaism point to dynamic dualist thought, Alexander nevertheless observes an element of longstanding stability in this tradition. “The clearest examples I could find of the parallel-universe idea come, curiously, from the beginning and the end of the tradition, from some of the earliest layers of the Enochic corpus on the
|one hand and from the Heikhalot literature on the other.”
| Light Against Darkness , "Introduction," 13.