Chapter 4 The Redemption of an Arch-Heretic Elisha ben Abuya and the Flames of Gehenna1
Marcel J. H. M. Poorthuis
The Hebrew Bible does not know of a place of permanent and eternal pun- ishment. The underworld, Hades, or to use the biblical expression: Sheol, is described as a ghostly existence for both the good and the bad. After his death, the Prophet Samuel has his abode under the earth, in the realm of the dead. Nevertheless the psalms speak about God who will not abandon his faithful to the grave (e.g. 16:10). Moreover, the Hebrew Bible definitely contains ingredi- ents for a specific imagination of the hereafter as a Paradise even surpassing the earthly Paradise of the Book of Genesis, considering the description of the mountain of God in the book of Ezekiel (28:13–17). We will have to wait until post-biblical literature, however, for the development of a heavenly Paradise as the abode of the dead.2 Similarly, representations of hell as the abode of the wicked who are pun- ished after death postdate the Hebrew Bible. The popular idea of sinners who are punished with a punishment proportionate to their transgression – adulterous women hanging from their breasts and such like – is a form of middah kneged middah, ‘measure for measure’, which can be found in Christian literature from the Apocalypse of Paul to Dante’s Divina Commedia, and which has left its traces in Rabbinic literature as well. This concept of Gehenna is incompatible with the notion of temporary punishment or redemption from the suffering of the dead in the underworld.3
1 I thank my friend Philippe van Heusden for sharing his valuable insights into the figure of Elisha ben Abuya. 2 See Archibald van Wieringen’s contribution. 3 M. Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell: An Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), treats the ‘minor midrashim’ as rich sources of Rabbinic representations of heaven, paradise and hell. In this article, I will leave this material aside, because I believe the ‘tours of hell’ are not relevant to the ‘descensus ad inferos’.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/9789004366633_006 80 Poorthuis
Instead, the descensus ad inferos, to which the Creed refers, presupposes a temporary abode in the netherworld. This netherworld does not seem to have explicit connotations of punishment for specific transgressions. In a way, the notion of a limited period coincides more or less with certain Jewish concep- tions of Gehenna, where human beings generally stay no longer than twelve months. In combination with the idea that man can repent even after his death, this temporary abode can be seen as a period of purification. Yet the Christian idea that all of humankind from Adam on is gathered in the netherworld adds a new element: this abode is unavoidable not because of personal sinfulness, but because of the universal plight of humankind before Christ. Redemption comes from Christ himself. Obviously, the central role of Christ’s redemption of the souls in the neth- erworld is lacking in Rabbinic Judaism. But two related aspects – a tempo- rary abode in the netherworld and the possibility of forgiveness even after death – do occur in Rabbinic Judaism, although they seem to be absent from the Jewish-apocalyptic literature mentioned above. There are even traces of the notion that the living can make a positive contribution to the redemption of the deceased in Rabbinic Judaism. Curiously, little research has been carried out on views of the abode of the dead in the netherworld / Gehenna, and of the possibility of redemption in post-biblical Judaism.4 As has been seen, the com- mon view in Rabbinic Judaism is that the tortures of Gehenna will last no lon- ger than 12 months (Mishnah Eduyot 2:10).5 In this sense, the Rabbinic idea of Gehenna resembles the Christian idea of purgatory, although the latter arose at a later date. To complicate matters further, some Christian authors espouse the idea of apokatastasis, the final restoration and restitution of the cosmos, on the assumption that even hell will disappear at the end of times. As a hypothesis, this idea can be found already in Origen (185–254 CE), and it became the sub- ject of fierce debate in later centuries. In the fourth century, Evagrius Ponticus elaborated on the idea by stating that even the rich Dives, who, as we know, was consigned to hell (Luke 16:19–31), would eventually be saved. Evagrius makes this plausible by pointing out how even in hell, Dives felt compassion
4 Cf. “Gehenna,” in The Jewish Encyclopaedia, 1901, “Elisha ben Abuya,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica. 5 The accepted view is probably as follows: Jews do not stay in Gehenna for longer than twelve months (with the exception of a few individuals, see Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 99a), but non-Jews stay longer in Gehenna (with the possible exception of a few individuals). The Qur’an 3:24 rejects the possibility of a limited stay in Gehenna, possibly in reference to Judaism.