Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: javax.persistence.EntityListeners

Answer: This seems to be caused by Hibernate 3.6. It is now dependent on JPA, so it must have a JPA jar in the class path as well. You can find one in the Hibernate 3.6 distro: hibernate-distribution-3.6.0.Final/lib/jpa/hibernate-jpa-2.0-api-1.0.0.Final.jar