Jewish Beliefs on the Afterlife

CHAPTER FIVE Jewish Beliefs on the Afterlife That the Christian belief in the resurrection is related to Jewish eschatological ideas is impossible to gainsay. This is a fact. But this fact does not by itself explain why this belief succeeded in the first Christian centuries. Jews were clearly visible in most larger communities during this period, but visibility does not equal influence. That their religion was widely known does not mean that their tenets were widely accepted. That Christianity first reached Jewish communities cannot explain either how this new religion was accepted by the Greeks. Although there is a clear historical connection, Jewish beliefs on the afterlife were never identical with what Christians held to be true. We must also consider to what degree Judaism actually influenced the development of the resurrection belief in Christianity. This forces us to ask another basic question, How typical of Judaism during this time was the belief in the resurrection, not least the belief in the resurrection of the flesh? Does Judaism in early imperial times offer any clue for why early Christians chose this one form of belief in the afterlife and not anything else? During the time of Jesus, Judaism was in no way a uniform religion but consisted of different movements. Jews were present in most Roman cities, and even prior to the destruction of the Temple the majority of them were living outside Palestine. Jews like other peoples in the eastern Mediterranean were also in various degrees Hellenized, even to a great deal using the Septuagint, the third-century b.c. Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. When looking at Judaism during the first Christian centuries, one must, however, also be aware of the ongoing discussion to what degree some of the Jewish Pseudepigraphical books, pseudo-Biblical texts, D. Ø. Endsjø, Greek Resurrection Beliefs and the Success of Christianity © Dag Øistein Endsjø 2009 122 Greek Resurrection Beliefs which never made their way into the final Biblical canons, really are just Jewish, Jewish Christian works, or in their preserved form, originally Jewish texts substantially edited by Christians.1 The way these texts are not only written in the name of various ancient Jewish figures but in a manner that tries to express the time of these alleged authors was a means employed by both Jewish and Christian authors to provide ancient support for their own current beliefs. The Jewish Evolution of Resurrection Beliefs That Jewish eschatological beliefs merely equaled a belief in the phys- ical resurrection represents a serious simplification not only of what constituted the religious landscape at the beginning of the Christian era but also of Judaism in general. One thing is certain: originally the belief in the resurrection, any kind of resurrection, was not at all the most typical Jewish idea of what would happen after death. It seems rather to represent a more recent addition to previously held beliefs. What strikes the reader of the most ancient texts is the silence on the subject of the afterlife. One may speculate whether a conviction that there was no afterlife at all could be the most ancient Jewish idea. That death was considered the end of everything would of course not equal some form of premodern atheism, neither would it mean that the Jewish God was callous or insensitive to his chosen people. Yahweh’s promise of salva- tion in these earliest texts translates to the survival of the Jews as a people, not to the immortality of the individual. It is in itself an attractive offer that could be seen rather soundly demonstrated in history with the Jewish return from Babylonian captivity in 538 b.c. and the subse- quent reconstruction of the Temple. Regardless of whether the conviction that there was no afterlife is the most ancient Jewish belief or not, this belief appears prominent in the early Roman period, as witnessed by both contemporary Jewish and New Testament writers, who usually connected it with the Sadducees.2 As Josephus maintained, “The Sadducees hold that the soul perishes along with the body.”3 In her book on early Jewish and Christian resurrection beliefs, Claudia Setzer points out how “Be of good courage. No one is immortal” was a common inscription on Jewish graves in both Rome and Palestine.4 At an early point, the idea of the Sheol appeared, a shadowy after- world similar to Hades, the depressing Greek abode of the dead. In Sheol, too, the dead souls remained forever in a dank existence that Jewish Beliefs on the Afterlife 123 did not equal immortality. The apparent parallel was not lost on the ancients either, and in the Septuagint, Sheol is simply translated with Hades. Sheol is already mentioned on a number of occasions in Genesis, Numbers and Deuteronomy, always in connection with misery and mourning.5 According to Isaiah, the dead denizens of Sheol were even cut off from God,6 though there are also passages in which Sheol is depicted as not beyond the power of God, for example, in Job, Psalms and Amos.7 American scholar of religion Alan Segal sees these descrip- tions probably representing “the Biblical polemic against other gods, in this case, against the notion that there is another god who is ‘Lord of the Underworld,’ as there was in every other culture surrounding the Hebrews.”8 Either way, the afterlife was obviously not Yahweh’s primal concern. Also the living should keep their distance from the dead. Any com- munication with the dead was consequently condemned, punished by stoning in Leviticus.9 Later the loquacious ghost of Samuel chastised Saul for having the woman at Endor conjuring him up from the dead.10 The prohibition on communicating with the dead is simultaneously an indication that the dead were considered very early to have some kind of conscious existence.11 One cannot find any concrete indication of Jewish belief in any form of resurrection before 200 b.c., only various references that may be understood this way and that most usually are understood this way just because of later beliefs. Swedish Biblical scholar H.C.C. Cavallin argues that the “belief in the resurrection of the dead appears only on the fringe of the Hebrew Bible” with only “one or possible two excep- tions in the latest part of the Palestinian canon.”12 British scholar of Judaism, Daniel Cohn-Sherbok concurs, observing that “the rabbis of the post-Biblical period were faced with the difficulty of proving that the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead is contained in Scripture” and had to base themselves on innovative exegesis.13 The third-century b.c. Book of Isaiah offers a message that many have seen as connected with the resurrection: “Your dead shall live, my body shall rise. Oh dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy.”14 Several modern scholars nevertheless doubt that this enigmatic text refers to the resurrection at all. Cavallin, for example, is deeply skepti- cal, arguing against how “many scholars hold that the original Hebrew meaning of this verse involves resurrection of the dead, in spite of all of the problems of understanding both the Hebrew text and the context.” Cavallin’s conclusion is more simply that “this cannot be proven.”15 Biblical scholar M.E. Dahl finds this verse ambiguous, too, arguing that 124 Greek Resurrection Beliefs “we cannot be absolutely certain that Isa[iah] 26.19 is either an explicit prophecy of resurrection or the earliest example of such a thing.”16 On the other hand, one cannot exclude the possibility of Isaiah refer- ring to a belief in some form of resurrection. Thus, this verse would be instrumental in shaping later Jewish belief on the resurrection. As pointed out by Segal, later writers would take “the ambiguous prophecy of Isaiah in a literal sense, saying that ‘the sleepers in the dust’ will literally rise.”17 A less ambiguous reference to some form of resurrection is found in the second-century b.c. Book of Daniel. Here we learn that “many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.”18 Segal calls this the “earliest undoubted reference to literal resurrection in the Hebrew Bible,” while German New Testament scholar Horacio Lona calls this a definite evidence of a hope for resurrection.19 There is, however, still no assertion that the body is being raised. Cavallin contends that although “the body is not mentioned, . the reference to the dust and the term dr’wn, which refers to corpses in decay in Is[aiah] 66:24, probably imply a resurrection of the body.”20 That the dead will be res- urrected after sleeping “in the dust” is nevertheless not proof of a bodily resurrection. The prophecy of Daniel could just as well mean that only the souls, not the bodies, would awake from an unconscious existence as dead. American Biblical scholar Adela Yarbro Collins argues that the original Hebrew phrase in Daniel 12.2 is best translated not as “those who sleep in the dust of the earth” but “those who sleep in a land of dust,” a traditional reference to Sheol, the land of the dead.21 Such a reading definitely leaves the bodies out of this resurrection, as only souls lin- gered in Sheol. Indeed, what happened to the dead bodies could actually have been irrelevant to the writer of Daniel.

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