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Reincarnation in Abrahamic Religions

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Reincarnation in Abrahamic Religions Leiden University Centre for the Study of Religion (LUCSoR) Master Thesis in Theology and Religious Studies Reincarnation in Abrahamic Religions Submitted by: S. Meysami-Azad Supervisor: Prof. dr. A.F. de Jong Second reader: Dr. E.M. de Boer 31 August 2017 Leiden ADAM ENOCH NOAH ABRAHAM MOSES DAVID ELIJAH JESUS MOHAMMAD 2 Table of Contents Foreword ....................................................................................................................................................... 4 1. Reincarnation; Terminology and Definition .......................................................................................... 7 2. Views of the Afterlife in Judaism ........................................................................................................ 11 2.1. General Views .................................................................................................................................. 12 2.2. The Belief in Reincarnation in Judaism ...................................................................................... 16 2.2.1. Early Period ............................................................................................................................... 16 2.2.2 In Kabbalistic Tradition .............................................................................................................. 19 3. Views of the Afterlife in Christianity ...................................................................................................... 21 3.1 General Views ................................................................................................................................... 22 3.2. Alternative Views ............................................................................................................................. 24 3.3. Western Spiritualism and Esotericism .............................................................................................. 28 4. Views of the Afterlife in Islam ............................................................................................................ 31 4.1. General View ................................................................................................................................... 32 4.2. Alternative View ......................................................................................................................... 35 5. Reincarnation in the Bible and in the Quran ........................................................................................... 44 5.1. Hermeneutical method ......................................................................................................................... 45 5.2. Spiritual Death and Biological Death ............................................................................................... 47 5.3. Temporary Death and Sleep ............................................................................................................. 49 5.4. Paradise and Hell .............................................................................................................................. 52 5.5. Resurrection...................................................................................................................................... 56 5.6. End of Time ...................................................................................................................................... 59 6. Reincarnation of the Messiah .................................................................................................................. 60 6.1. Historical Background ...................................................................................................................... 61 3 6.2. Reincarnation of the Messiah in the Bible ....................................................................................... 63 6.3. Reincarnation of the Messiah in the Quran ...................................................................................... 69 7. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 72 7.1. Evaluation in two Paradigms ............................................................................................................ 73 7.2. Relevance of the Study ..................................................................................................................... 74 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................ 76 Books and articles ................................................................................................................................... 77 Websites .................................................................................................................................................. 82 4 Foreword One of the important functions of religion is to provide answers to human questions about their destiny in life and about life after death. The fact that religion answers some existential human questions in terms of the meaning of life, its goal, and human nature is well known. Even a cursory glance at the Encyclopedia of Religion shows that one of the fundamental human questions from ancient times onwards and all over the world concerns death and the afterlife. The entry “afterlife” alone counts forty-eight pages and the entry on “death” ten pages.1 According to the latter entry the meaning of life is dependent in part on one’s understanding of death, and although death as a biological fact is uniform across time and space, the human sense or experience of it is not.2 In his article about ‘death’ in the Encyclopedia of Religion Gary Eberesole assets that “the central role of death in the conceptual worlds of human beings has led occasionally some Western scholars to establish their theories on the origins of religion based on human response to death. He mentions the nineteenth-century anthropologist Edward B. Tylor, who went so far - in his influential work Primitive Culture (1871)- to claim that death was the reason religion existed.3 However, Hiroshi Obayashi points out that at least in the case of Christianity the story of Christ’s sacrificial death and resurrection, which guarantees the future resurrection of all the faithful, has played a crucial role in the emergence of this religion.4 Also in Judaism and Islam resurrection and the Last Judgment play a significant role both in producing belief in a just God and stimulating individuals to keep their faith in this God and follow religious guidelines. In line with such an outlook on the origin of religion, some religious systems seem to have considered paving the way for life after death the main goal of religion and to have assumed that the present life is fundamentally a preparation for the life to come. They considered this world as a preliminary stage to achieving eternal life, and therefore the role of religion in this world is only to lead man to salvation and blessing in the life after death. Accordingly, the entry on “afterlife” points out that “not all religious persons have addressed the same kind of question. Nonetheless, there is a certain commonality in the kinds of basic questions that have been addressed.”5 One of these common questions refers to the issue of the afterlife. Therefore, the entry ends by stating that “despite the variations in conceptions of what the afterlife may entail, a belief that human begins will continue to exist in some form after the experience they term death is a universal phenomenon.”6 John Hick also affirms this notion in his book Death and 1 Jones, L. & Eliade, M., 2005. Encyclopedia of Religion 2nd [rev.] ed. / Lindsay Jones, ed. in chief.., Detroit, Mich., [etc]: Macmillan Reference USA, Thomson/Gale. Pp. 127-172, pp. 2235-2245. 2 Ibid., P. 2235. 3 Ibid. P. 2237. 4 Ibid. P. 156. 5 Ibid. P. 128. 6 Ibid. P. 135. 5 Eternal Life: “These studies show that some kind of after-life belief was universal, and took a number of forms.”7 Moreover, the answer to the question concerning human survival after death has various consequences for our understanding of human nature, pre-existence, human destiny, the justice of God in rewards and punishment, which itself has influence on notions of human responsibility and ethical life. In his article Rebirth Roy W. Perrett juxtaposes the Western religious traditions –Judaism, Christianity, Islam – with the Indian traditions such as Hinduism and Buddhism. He states that traditional conceptions of the Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism are that they believe in numerous existences for each human, whereas the Western traditions presume that man lives in this worldly life only once and dies once, until – according to some- achieving a post-mortem existence.8 Such traditional categorizations of the Western traditions are a simplistic generalization that refers only to the orthodox belief of the majority and ignores many different viewpoints. In fact, conceptions of life after death and related issues such as the pre-existence of the soul and the constitution of a human being differ not only among different religions but also within them. For example, Judaism, at least since the third century BCE, recognized various concepts of resurrection,9 and in Christianity the disputes over the nature and time of resurrection have started since the early days of the Church.10 Similarly in Islamic history the view on the afterlife
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