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This chapter deals with an exegesis of Daniel 7:9, found only in the Babylonian Talmud, which boldly assigns the Messiah–King David a throne in heaven, next to that of God. This presents a clear evidence that certain rabbis felt attracted to the idea of a second divine figure, enjoying equal rights with God. The angry rejection of this idea by other rabbis demonstrates that such “heretical” ideas gained a foothold within the rabbinic fold of Babylonian Jewry. The Bavli's Daniel exegesis finds its counterpart in the David Apocalypse, which gives an elaborate description of the elevated David and his worship in heaven. This unique piece is structurally similar to the elevation of the Lamb (that is, Jesus Christ) in the New Testament Book of Revelation and can be interpreted as a response to the New Testament.

This chapter examines rabbinic attitudes toward the angels. Enoch-Metatron, being transformed into the highest of all angels and becoming a divine figure next to God, stands at the extreme (Babylonian) end of a much larger spectrum of rabbinic attitudes toward the angels. Earlier Palestinian sources were vehemently opposed to any such possibility of the angels being granted a role transcending their traditional task of praising God and acting as his messengers. This is particularly true for the creation story and the revelation of the Torah on Mount Sinai. With regard to the former, the rabbis set great store in pointing out that the angels were not created on the first day of creation—to make sure that nobody should arrive at the dangerous idea that these angels participated in the act of creation. Similarly, the rabbis took great care in not granting the angels too active a role during the revelation of the Torah on Mount Sinai.

This chapter explores Yogananda’s growing status as a global spiritual authority and a divine figure. The chapter begins by placing Yogananda in the context of religious internationalism, a subset of interwar cultural internationalism driven by concerns for world peace. It details his use of East-West as a vehicle for a cosmopolitan spiritual vision. An extravagant worldwide journey in 1935-36 from California to England, the Continent, the Middle East, and ultimately to his home city of Calcutta solidified his reputation as a “global guru.” The chapter also explores his syncretism, through his lengthy exegesis of New Testament gospel narratives that transformed the story of Jesus and his teachings into a revelation of yogic truth that hinted at Yogananda’s own divine identity. But it was the 1946 Autobiography of a Yogi that firmly established Yogananda’s reputation as a guru to the world. An analysis of this text’s structural features reveals it to be a new scripture, designed to inculcate belief in the spiritual world Yogananda evoked and a hagiography of the yogi who wrote it.

The introduction begins with a discussion of the name, the variety of places in which we find it, and the different forms it takes across our six examples. The comparative nature of the project and its focus on the material culture of religion are discussed in relation to past and present practices of scholarly communities that study Mithra. Both the study of religion and comparative approaches to history lack a full appreciation of the material record, making this fertile pasture for the reappraisal of a figure as intriguing as Mithra. We conclude by raising three questions that run through the book: how might our understanding of objects be furthered by learning about others that share the name? What does the appearance of a name in such varied contexts mean for our understanding of ancient religion? And finally, to what extent can material culture tell us anything about religious practice?