14
The Rabbis and Rabbinic Literature
WE TURN FROM the religious leaders who created Christianity to those who created contemporary Judaism. The Rabbinic movement had an entirely different function in Jewish society than the Church Fathers did in Christian society. They did not dispense sacraments nor lead services, they did not write intellectual tractates, they did not run dioceses. They did not even control synagogues. The Rabbis were legal specialists, religious lawyers, dispensers of wisdom, and judges, rather than priests or academic intellectuals. Their training prepared them to be judges; the Jewish legal system depends on panels of judges of various sizes, more like the Napoleonic Code than English common law. Rabbinic authority was based, first of all, on the respect in which they were held as judges-which is to say, on their ability to interpret the law.
The early Rabbis, the Tannaim, went through periods of Roman support and lack of support. Likewise, the progress of Rabbinic authority was slow within Jewish society, as the synagogue had its own local officers, who seem to be highly correlated with the wealth of the community. For instance, the synagogues of Galilee do not immediately seem to follow Rabbinic prescriptions for depicting human likenesses.1 They often contained mosaic floors with zodiacs with the god Helios clearly depicted in the center, driving his quadriga with four galloping horses. The sun was a necessary part of the annual clock because it tells the zodiacal month, the constellation sign that governed that time period. Lunar months were easy to distinguish by the phase of the moon. But solar months were governed by signs of the zodiac and so the zodiac was just as much astronomy as an astrological system.
As time proceeded, there was a tendency to efface the depiction of Helios as a god and to replace it with another, less idolatrous symbol like a column or a sun with blazing rays.2 By that time, aniconic Islam was already the government of the area. Exactly what to conclude from this evidence is hard to know. The Rabbis inexorably grew more respected within the Jewish community over the years, and it is reasonable to think that as they grew in power they would have gained some influence over the decoration of the synagogue, especially when renovations were attempted. As leaders of the community, they would have been circumspect about the desires of the land’s overlords too.
Although the Rabbis were legal specialists, they had keen theological interests, which they evinced in their Scriptural exegesis and also in their legal opinions. They did not write theological treatises but incorporated ethical and theological issues into their legal writings. As a result, many readers mistake the nature of Rabbinic literature: They think Rabbinic literature has a very legalistic theology when they should be appreciating the amount of theological discourse that appears in Jewish law.
The Mishnah is a rational code, resembling Roman law. As the Jews moved out of the inhospitable Christian Roman Empire, they moved more and more into considerably more tolerant Zoroastrian Persia. There, they found a religion that was similarly attuned to ritual and which was similarly interested in the moral actions of its adherents. It is no surprise then that the religious literature of the period, the Gemarah, has many similarities to the Videvdat and other Zoroastrian legal commentaries.
The Difficulty in Isolating Rabbinic Theology
GIVEN THAT IT is a legal literature, organized on legal lines, it is very difficult to isolate issues like Rabbinic views of the afterlife. There are a number of modern anthologies of Rabbinic thought but to use them, one must understand the modern organizing principles of the editors. For instance, the very helpful anthology of Rabbinic thought translated into English, put together by C. G. Montefiore and H. Loewe, betrays the modern Jewish impatience with traditional Jewish notions of the afterlife:
I propose now to close this anthology with some quotations concerning the Rabbinic views about the life beyond the grave. These extracts will not be very numerous because the Rabbis knew no more about the future than we, they thought about it in terms and conceptions most which have become obsolete and remote for us today, and so their ideas are of small interest or profit.3
Inherent in this statement is a modern liberal Jewish notion that the Rabbis did not have much to say about the afterlife and that afterlife was not very central to their thinking; nor should it be to ours. Judaism in the modern period has naturally gravitated toward rational discourse over against Christianity’s emphasis on mystery, this-worldly ethics over promises of salvation. Indeed, compared to Christianity, Montefiore and Loewe are right on the mark: In terms of the quantity of Rabbinic writings, very little of the explicitly legal material does deal with the afterlife. Why would it? There is no need to discuss law in the afterlife.
On top of that, unlike Christianity’s interest in theological debate, the Rabbis do not write systematic philosophical discourse. Their method is to compare legal rulings to try to discover legal principles. Each Rabbi attempts to find the principle that best describes the body of tradition. Thus, the Midrashic or Rabbinic exegesis and lore contain a bewildering variety of different views. In like fashion, each Rabbi was free to use his imagination when it came to the afterlife and so we see short discussions of the afterlife within their exegeses of text, with little attempt to formulate a conceptually uniform perspective. This makes studying any theological idea in Rabbinic literature difficult, and partly explains the palpable apologetic tone to Montefiore and Loewe’s essay on the subject. Nevertheless, their rather long anthology, as well as those equally long studies by Cohen and Urbach, are useful in finding one’s bearings in this sea of interpretations.4
The collection shows us that Jewish notions of the afterlife were at the very least fitted to the period in which they were created and spoke to the interests of the people who listened to the Rabbis’ interpretations and homilies. To understand how, one has to think of the religious crisis of first-century Judaism, following hard on the Roman pacification of Judea. The destruction of the Jewish homeland—the First Revolt resulting in the destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE) then the Second Revolt against Rome (135 CE) resulting in the complete economic destruction of the homeland—were also spiritual crises that demanded a theological answer.
The Rabbinic community’s first reactions seem less satisfying: if, where, and how to blow the shofar after the demise of the Temple?5 Since the shofar was originally blown from the walls of the Temple, inherent in this question is how Judaism should adapt to life without a Temple. These were not the grand questions that other Israelites, with access directly to divine revelation, faced. But they were questions that the Pharisees could answer authoritatively. From them came the precedents for Jewish self-government after the destruction of the state. In the process, the Pharisees were transformed into a new group, the Rabbinic class.
The Rabbis face theology obliquely. Their core beliefs are discoverable in their legal reasoning and in the immense body of folklore that they have recorded. We shall see that they believe in a world to come, resurrection of the dead, Messianic deliverance, divine recompense for corporate and individual deeds, the efficacy of repentance, all of which characterize the covenant between themselves and God.6 But they designed new ways to express their doctrines, which were tailored to their political position and the social position of Jews in the wider world.
Consequently, the Rabbis have left us with an immense body of literature. Some is largely legal and even systematic, like the Mishnah. But most documents, like the commentary to the Mishnah called the Gemarah, which together with the Mishnah form the Talmud, are more freewheeling and discursive. Still other kinds of documents, like Midrash (a genre of verse-by-verse, Bible exegesis) are extraordinarily varied. We cannot fully explore all this literature, which comes from vastly different places and time periods, with few datable details. We shall take a close look at a few very important passages and take a brief, longer look at the vast variety of literature which surrounds it, together with at least a glance at liturgy (which was prepared by the Rabbis) and mystical literature.7
Rabbinic Humor
RABBINIC HUMOR is one of the most unexpected aspects of entering this strange world—so unexpected, in fact, that many people just miss it entirely. One joke that has to do with resurrection is hard to miss. It serves as a caveat against being too zealous in the commandment to celebrate the feast of Purim. There was also a custom of parodying Rabbinic exegesis on the holiday, which became known as “Purim Torah,” Rabbinic satire.
Evidently, the Rabbis needed a special commandment to celebrate the holiday; the rule is to drink until one cannot tell the difference between “Blessed be Mordechai” and “Cursed be Haman.” For the Rabbis, whose job it was to make very fine distinctions, this meant drinking quite a lot. The following story serves as a cautionary tale against too much celebration, through an early example of “Purim Torah”:
Rabba and R. Zera joined together for a Purim feast. They became mellow and Rabba arose and cut R. Zera’s throat. On the next day, he prayed on his behalf and revived him from the dead. Next year he said: “Will your honour come and we will have Purim feast together? He replied: “A miracle does not take place on every occasion.” [In other words, “I respectfully decline your kind invitation. I can’t count on a miracle happening every year.”] (b. Meg. 7b)
Not only does this illustrate the Rabbinic sang froid in discussing resurrection, it illustrates some of the properties of humor that, unfortunately, we will need to analyze, which will spoil the humor. There are multiple ironies in this passage. The first irony is that intended by the teller of the joke itself: that the sadder but wiser Rabbi Zera refuses the invitation of Rabba because he fears for his life, despite Rabba’s best intentions. The second irony is an inadvertent one, the euphemism “mellow” understood at the expense of the translator, whose work is evident. Nothing is so tedious as humor explained; unfortunately, in order to get at the Rabbinic notion of resurrection and life after death we will need to locate the source of subtle ironies, finding textual evidence for the intention of the Rabbis. This is not always easy. In this case, however, we can be sure that the original issue in the text is “drunkenness” not “mellowness.” The Rabbis were not talking about marijuana intoxication. That was added by the translator inadvertently.
The Mishnah
THE EARLIEST identifiable book of Rabbinic Judaism is the Mishnah, a compendium of law largely from the enactments of a group of Rabbis we know as the Tannaim, whose activity ends at the beginning of the third century CE. It is a communal book of law, with multiple authorship, recording the many discussions of the earlier Rabbis, redacted by Judah the Prince around the year 220 CE, when the Tannaitic enterprise ends and a new age, the Amoraic or Talmudic period of commentary, begins. It is based on the Israelite law of the First Temple period 922-587 BCE and second Temple Period (515 BCE-70 CE) and includes many subsequent developments in legal discussion. Although it is a systematic legal code and legal commentary, tailored by the Patriarch Judah the Prince from a variety of earlier Mishnahs, individual traditions in them are notoriously difficult to date.
Rabbi (that is how Rabbi Judah the Prince is known in the Mishnah) kept careful control on what the Mishnah contains. He kept out all angelology, and most Messianism, and most discussion of resurrection and life after death (with one notable exception).8 Since Rabbi Judah the Prince’s Mishnah is the basis of the Talmud, and is a very rationally organized work of law with little attention to such issues as resurrection or life after death, the Talmuds are in turn mostly lacking a systematic theological discussion of the issue. It is easy to see how, in modern times, many Jews wrongly believe that afterlife issues are not properly part of Judaism. Even the magisterial compendium of Ephraim E. Urbach, The Sages,9 contains no subject heading for resurrection or immortality of the soul, though the subject is touched on in the chapters on “Reward and Punishment” and “Redemption,” which deal mostly with Messianism. Such is the Rabbinic ranking of these issues in the minds of modern experts.
Rabbi Judah the Prince’s editing was the last systematic organization of Rabbinic material until the “stam” (the “just” or “only” or “nameless”), the unattributed voice who appears to organize the Gemarahs, more than four centuries later. In the meantime, the material had grown enormous by gloss and commentary so that all sorts of topics appear by association with topics where one would never expect them. The Gemarah to each Mishnah, the records of the commentary offered by the Palestinian and the Babylonian sages, was organized around the text of the Mishnah in a line-for-line commentary. Each of these became a Talmud, the Babylonian Talmud and the Palestinian Talmud. The former was the most authoritative because the Jews lived in greater security and affluence in Babylonia under Persian rule than in the intolerant Christian Roman Empire.
Two Talmuds exist because there was not enough central authority in Jewish life to unify the material into a single book like the Mishnah. There may not have been any desire to organize the Talmudic material either. Certainly, any editorial activity as stringent as Rabbi Judah the Prince’s during the Amoraic period would have drastically reduced the creative energy inherent in the literature. As it is, part of the excitement of reading Talmud is to see the Rabbis grasping at legal analogies from other parts of the law and even analogizing from custom and ceremonies in the community to clarify a difficulty in legal interpretation. As a result, Jewish law and particularly Jewish lore contain a vast variety of sometimes seemingly contradictory material.10
Rabbinic tradition was written by the people the New Testament regarded as opponents. To read Rabbinic literature with any understanding, one has to be able to take the New Testament’s judgment as a mark of the Pharisees’ social and historical position, not as a judgment on their intentions. It will be useful to specify the kinds of issues the Rabbis usually deal with before getting into their discussion of life after death, which is an unusual subject for them to discuss in the abstract.
Here, for example, is a Tannaitic discussion of procedure at an execution, which touches on the issue of life after death:
Mishnah: When he is about ten cubits away from the place of stoning, they say to him, “Confess,” for such is the practice of all who are executed, that they [first] confess, for he who confesses has a portion in the world to come….
And if he knows not what to confess, they instruct him, say, “May my death be an expiation for all my sins.” R. Judah said: if he knows that he is a victim of false evidence, he can say: “May my death be an expiation for all my sins but this.” They [the sages] said to him: If so, everyone will speak likewise in order to clear himself. (M. Sanh. quoted from b. Sanh. 43b)
Here is an example of the Mishnah dealing with a more atypical subject. They are specifying how an execution should take place. They affirm that the confession of a person convicted of a capital crime is enough to assure his entrance into the life to come.
From a historical perspective, this scene is problematic. It is dubious that the Rabbis who produced the Mishnah in 220 CE had ever seen a Rabbinic execution or would ever get the chance to organize one, as the powers of the state had been firmly in the hands of the Romans for two centuries. This merely begs the question: From where do these traditions come? Did the Romans cede them power in religious cases, otherwise unattested? Are the Rabbis deliberating on traditions that have been passed down for two centuries, even though they have not been practiced? If so, and in spite of their very considerable powers of accurate transmission, do we have accurate information about Second Temple procedures for execution? If that is so, why do these traditions differ so much from stories in the New Testament, as in the martyrdom of Stephen?
We learn an important fact from this passage, one that certainly was important to the Tannaim after the destruction of the Temple-namely, that a person’s own death can be thought of as expiation for sin. This is an especially important topic for the Rabbinate after the Second Temple’s destruction. The Temple was the location of a sacrificial cult, one of whose purposes was to atone for the sins of the people with God, when adequate and just compensation had been made. After the destruction of the Temple, the Rabbis had to answer the question: “How may the sins of Israel be atoned, now that the Temple is in ruins?”
Many answers developed; one approach even comes from this passage concerning the final confession of a condemned criminal. If it is possible for sins to be forgiven in the case of a great sinner, the convicted perpetrator of a capital crime, should not an ordinary death with the correct and timely repentance itself be an expiation for each Israelite, whose sins are much less than a capital criminal? This logic only underlines the extent to which the concept of “vicarious atonement” was part of the thinking of the Jewish people while the Temple stood and sacrifices were offered daily.
Similar traditions also suggest that prayer, confession, and deeds of loving kindness have the same effect in atoning for Israel’s collective sins. In the end, this notion will yield the multicultural assertion that we are all martyrs because we all die and the righteous of all nations will receive a place in the world to come. That notion can be seen developing in the Rabbinic texts.11
Mishnah Sanhedrin 10
THE TANNAITIC notion of life after death is discussed extensively only in Mishnah tractate Sanhedrin in chapter 10, where the Rabbis face directly the issue of what awaits after death. One should not expect the same kind of organized philosophical treatise as in the Church Fathers. The Mishnah is the result of a communal discussion about law and procedure, more a legal document than a theological one. It is a theoretical discussion taking place between Rabbis of different generations, whose opinions are compared one to another, in order to come up with a consistent practice. Here they seem to discuss both what will happen to individuals after death and to Israel at the end-time:
Mishnah 1: All Israelites have a share in the world to come, for it is written, “Thy people also shall be all righteous, they shall inherit the land for ever; the branch of my planting, the work of my hands that I may be glorified” (Isa 60:21). And these are they that have no share in the world to come: he that says that there is no resurrection of the dead prescribed in the Torah, and [he that says] that the Torah is not from Heaven, and an Epicurean. R. Akiba says: Also he that reads the books of the “outsiders,” or that utters charms over a wound and says, I will put none of the diseases upon thee which I have put upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord that heals you. (Exod 15:28) Abba Saul says: also he that pronounces the Name with it proper letters.
If the Tannaim counted the Pharisees as their forebears they still developed their own Rabbinic thought in amazingly different ways. For instance, Josephus recounts that the Pharisees thought that the souls of the good alone went to another body. This could be an explicit exegesis of Daniel 12: “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Dan 12:2).
But not Sanhedrin 10 Mishnah 1. It is quite different. Rather it states that “all Israel will be righteous, they will have a share in the world to come, and they will all live in the land of Israel forever,” not merely the members of the Pharisaic sect or the Tannaim. This is an important difference. Until now resurrection was a reward given only to the the members of the sect or the martyrs or the elected ones, which always followed some sectarian, denominational, or philosophical lines. Daniel only promised resurrection to “some” and suggested that most people will simply die.
The reward itself is not well described. All Israel will return to the land but is it an ideal land on this earth, or a reconstituted earth, or is it a heavenly Israel? Will death disappear? It is a Zionist hope but it is also idealized. Because the passage says “forever,” one might assume that death will disappear. The subsequent discussion clarifies that the reconstituted Israel will include all those long dead, as it discusses a number of primeval personages including dead kings of Judah and Israel. It is certainly not like any of the visions of resurrection that we saw in the Jewish or Christian apocrypha or the apocalyptic literature.
This doctrine also differs from immortality of the soul. Immortality of the soul is available to all as a natural right, not a privilege for a few, no matter how widely defined. With immortality of the soul, one would not expect discussion of the land. Practically, the goals inherent in the immortality of the soul, that the soul has rest from earthly trouble, is available most easily to the philosophers, people who are able to pursue philosophical studies and cleanse their souls of material impurities. To do this, one needs a good education, which means ascetic living or inherited wealth. Immortality of the soul is an entitlement. In the philosophical schools, learning how to care for the soul is what ensured the soul’s permanent felicity.
Neither Judaism nor Christianity wanted to promulgate that aristocratic view of salvation. In fact, we shall see that the Tannaitic conception is neither the one (resurrection of the body) nor the other (immortality of the soul) but an innovation that allows for Israel’s ultimate felicity and good ethical practice on earth. Prophecy is cited but it is not the prophecy itself which is the basis of the doctrine. Rather, it is the way the prophecy is exegeted: What allows for Israel’s felicity is the exegesis of Isaiah 60-66. It is part of the exegetical skills of the Rabbis that they can balance these new issues in the culture and yet derive it all from a credible and holy source so that it has cultural credibility.
Isaiah 60-66 has already surfaced in discussions of the afterlife but it has never been used in this way, without any reference to the evils which may befall those who are not included. Instead, the Rabbis envision a future that applies to everyone in Israel. This is also the reason that Daniel 12 is not quoted in the Mishnah; Daniel 12 is the only place where resurrection is clearly promised in the Hebrew Bible and it promises a very different, more sectarian kind of end-of-days, where only the members of the sect will receive resurrection, and maybe only some of them. So the Tannaim look for other proof-texts. Instead, they take Isaiah 60 as their primary text, which talks not about afterlife but about inheriting the land forever.
Even that was a wildly fantastic notion, given their current state. So they do not take the passage to refer to this world, rather the world to come, the Olam haba’ (‘olārn habbā’). They will reclaim their land forever. This may be an early Zionist sentiment. But it is not political Zionism. It is translated to the afterlife. Evidently, the Rabbis felt that all Israel would receive the gift of the land in the resurrection, in contradiction with the various sectarians traditions, which they must have known very well. There is no explanation for this new, more universal understanding of resurrection. Perhaps they felt that Israel had itself experienced a martyrdom in the tribulations it had undergone in the Roman Wars. Perhaps it was chauvinism, a privilege for its unique prophetic rank in the world. Perhaps it was merely a dream to recover the lost homeland. But, for whatever reason, they believed that the whole of Israel would receive the gift of the land of Israel in the resurrection. They claimed that the disasters that overtook Israel, in particular the destruction of the Second Temple, were due to “senseless hatreds.” They were evidently setting out to make sure that no more senseless hatreds divide the nation further, bringing further catastophes upon them. They gave up the first century sectarian notion that divine justice adheres only to one’s sectarian brothers and suggest that God’s promises are now “catholic” for Israel.
Furthermore, the quotation from Isaiah 60:21, which surely was not about eternal life or resurrection in its original context, suggests that, for the purposes of this part of the Tannaitic discussion, “the world to come” may mean something as simple as all Israel, those alive and deceased, living eternally on this earth as masters of Israel’s own land. The inflow of the exiles from all parts of the Roman Empire, whence they had been removed as slaves, was part of their idealized view of the future. The difference between this existence and the idealized one is that Israel will again be gathered together in its own land and master of its own territory.
Daniel 12 can be understood to mean that judgment will follow for some but not all humans who have ever lived. The specific identification of those groups occupies a significant part of the following Rabbinic discussion. In other words, in spite of the fact that they use a quotation from Isaiah 60, which expresses their particular view of what wholeness for the people Israel would entail, the entire organization of this discussion is based on categories of the afterlife which are implicit in Daniel 12, without actually quoting it. Everyone engaged in the discussion knows that the basic doctrine is outlined in Daniel 12 and the categories adduced-resurrected for reward, resurrected for punishment, and the great “in-between” those neither resurrected nor punished nor given further rewards. These are the logical categories derivable from Daniel 12 in Scripture and from nowhere else.
The Rabbis quickly turn to the legal connotations of the discussion, and not necessarily the most obvious one-namely, who is to be excluded from this promise? They indulge in what can only be their private ironic humor: “Those who do not believe in the world to come from the Torah are destined not to get it.” This is not a surprise because a similar ruling has appeared in a number of communities. The Tannaim state that one must believe in the doctrine which they call, literally, the “vivication of the dead, teḥiat hametim” and-this is the crucial issue to occupy the Amoraim commentators starting in 220 CE-that one must believe that the vivication of the dead is present in the Torah itself. By this, they mean that the doctrine must be derivable from the first five books of the Torah. But we know from long analysis that there are no very obvious demonstrations of beatific afterlife in Torah.
Even the phrase’s literal meaning, the “vivication of the dead” (teḥiat ha-metim), does not come from the first five books of Torah, and not from Daniel 12, but from the source of some of Daniel’s images in Isaiah 26:19:
Thy dead shall live, their bodies [literally, corpses] shall rise.
O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy!
For thy dew is a dew of light,
and on the land of the shades thou wilt let it fall.
We come suddenly on what will be the technical term for “resurrection” amongst the Rabbis from this passage in Isaiah. But note that Isaiah’s description is not exactly the Rabbinic concept because the Rabbis deliberately pick the “vivication of the dead” (teḥiat hametim), not the “raising of corpses” (a hypothetical tequmat hanevelot), just as explicitly mentioned in this very place in Isaiah 26:19. They ignore the term “corpses” and instead use the first clause, which contains much less definite terms. They are not actually interested in defining the afterlife with the notion of the resurrection of the fleshly body. Like their description of the “endtime,” they would rather describe something a bit more ambiguously, not specifying exactly how God plans to bring the final consummation.
This observation helps resolve the paradox that we noted in the discussion of Josephus’ description of the Pharisees in chapter 9, “Sectarian Life.” If the Pharisees are best able to govern the remaining state of Judah after the war and share power before the war, then why should they believe in resurrection of the flesh, which is characteristic of the sectarian life of Judea? The answer to that vexing question is that they do not necessarily believe in resurrection of the dead corpses (with Isaiah), and certainly do not believe in anything like the Gospels’ view of the matter. On the other hand, they cannot risk overtly contradicting Isaiah either, instead exegeting Isaiah in such a way that Isaiah seems to say what they have in mind. They build a paradise based on the land of Israel, which the living and dead share. They are content with an ambiguity whose resolution dominates Christian thinking for four centuries and maybe for all time. The contrast could not be more obvious.
The Rabbis certainly believe that God will do what He wills; but they are not tailoring their doctrine to explain martyrdom.12 Rather they want a more general doctrine. To the Rabbis as to the Christians, human life is sacred. But Rabbinic policy is not to encourage martyrdom, indeed one might violate many commandments, including the food laws, to avoid martyrdom. The commandments one should not commit are murder, incest, adultery, blasphemy, apostasy, or idolatry (b. Sanh. 74a). According to this ruling, neither Eleazar, nor the woman and her seven sons, needed to endure martyrdom. But the issue is moot because they also judge that no law can be broken as a sign of apostasy. One is to undergo martyrdom rather than apostatize.
The general rule is: Breaking food laws is preferrable to martyrdom. But there are cases where martyrdom cannot be avoided. Death should be accepted as necessary and inevitable in that case. When necessary, one should die ’al qiddush ha-shem, “for the sanctification of God’s name,” which is explicitly the technical Rabbinic vocabulary for martyrdom and refers to reciting the Shema (Deut 6:4) prayer at death. A person who does so is called a Qadosh, a “holy one,” (even “a saint”) just as the angels are called. Martyrdom was closely associated with human transmogrification into angels. But, to the Rabbis, martyrdom should be avoided, if possible.
The deliberate ambiguity in the definition of the afterlife and the lack of enthusiasm for martyrdom are connected. The Rabbis do not seem to care much whether resurrection is as literal, fleshly body, or as a perfected, spiritual body. Evidently, they believed that the nature of the resurrection was for God to define. Their job was to try to figure out his ethical will before that. While they concede the necessity of martyrdom, they do not see it as an earthly good, rather an ordeal that is sometimes unavoidable. The greater skepticism about resurrection and the lack of enthusiasm for martyrdom are structurally related.
This may explain why the most famous ex-Pharisee of the Western world-namely, Paul-did not believe in fleshly resurrection either. He believed that God would bring the consummation about as He wills and that the “resurrection body” is a “spiritual entity,” a body but not a corruptible body. Perhaps Paul was again an accurate witness to the state of Rabbinic thinking in his own century.13 We can translate teḥiat ha-metim as “vivication of the dead,” even “resurrection of the dead,” but not “resurrection of the flesh.”
This perception goes a long way towards answering our sociological quandary in reading Josephus: Why should the Pharisees, who sometimes share the reins of government, propound a doctrine that was characteristic of only the most extreme sectarians? The answer is that they do not; they do not tie themselves down to the specificity of the millenarian position. They pick a term and a pastoral vision of the end that is deliberately ambiguous. Like Paul, resurrection of the body for the Rabbis might not mean the fleshly body, at least in its corpselike form, but the “metamorphosis” or more properly a “summorphosis” of the corporeal body into a heavenly and spiritual body-like the angels, a sexually resolved and completed body. They do not pretend to know exactly what God has in mind for His faithful. It could be like the angelomorphism of the sectarians and Christians. But it was not necessarily a transformation of the martyr only. All Israel qualified for the reward. And, if necessary, it might be describable in a variety of other ways.
What Happened to the Villains of Yore?
WHAT OCCUPIES the Tannaim’s attention next is the Biblical basis for the doctrine, not what the phrase means. They are expert exegetes, and they want to know what Scripture says. In the Mishnah-what is often quintessentially held up as a literature of casuistry, a literature that discusses subtly what right and wrong are and what the various punishments are for infractions against justice-there is no major discussion of which heinous crimes cause Israelites to be permanently stricken from the rolls of those who will be resurrected. A few general issues are mentioned: denying that the Torah is revelation from heaven, healing by incantation, pronouncing the name of God, becoming an Epicurean (a philosopher who denied divine providence), possibly reading heretical books (the Gospels?). The list is neither long nor involved. Instead, it looks like it was intended to be broadly inclusive and only later suffered a few last-minute qualifications.
Rather, the passage begins to describe those Biblical villains, Israelites or not (Balaam), who will not be resurrected or who will not be judged:
Mishnah 2: Three kings and four commoners have no share in the world to come. The three kings are Jeroboam and Ahab and Manasseh. R. Judah says: Manasseh has a share in the world to come, for it is written, And he prayed unto him, and he was entreated of him and heard his supplication and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom(2 Chr 33:13). They said to him: He brought him again to his kindgom, but he did not bring him to the life of the world to come. The four commoners are Balaam and Doeg and Ahitophel and Gehazi.
The first question which appears to occupy the Mishnah is whether all Israelites are really entitled to life in the world to come. The Mishnah takes the position that not quite all Israelites will inherit the world to come. But it wants to know who will be left out. It picks what are clearly meant to be the most heinous of all Israelite sinners in the Bible and asks whether they have a share. The answer is “no”-except for Manasseh, about whom there is the slightest sliver of evidence that he repented: Second Chronicles is interpreted to mean that he prayed for forgiveness and so was forgiven, although the reading is certainly farfetched from our point of view. From this we learn two things: There are some Israelites who are so evil that they are denied a place in the world to come. Also we learn that “a moment’s repentance can annul the decree,” even for the most vicious of all sinners of all time. The presence of Balaam also implicitly raises the logical question that, although he is to be left out of the life to come because of his personal sins, perhaps the other gentiles can be saved. This topic is not systematically discussed here, though it will be later:
Mishnah 3: The generation of the Flood have no share in the world to come, nor shall they stand in the judgment, for it is written, My spirit shall not judge with man for ever (Gen 6:3). [Thus they have] neither judgment nor spirit. The generation of the dispersion have no share in the world to come, for it is written, So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth (Gen 11:8); so the Lord scattered them abroad-in this world; and the Lord then scattered them from thence-in the world to come. The men of Sodom have no share in the world to come, for it is written, Now the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners against the Lord exceedingly; wicked in this world, and sinners in the world to come. But they shall stand in the judgment. R. Nehemiah says: Neither of them shall stand in the judgement, for it is written: Therefore the wicked shall not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous (Ps 1:8). Therefore the wicked shall not stand in the judgment-this is the generation of the flood; nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous-these are the men of Sodom. They said to him: They shall not stand in the congregation of the righteous, but they shall stand in the congregation of the ungodly. The spies have no share in the world to come, for it is written, Even those men that did bring up an evil report of the land died by the plague before the Lord (Num 14) died-in this world; by the plague-in the world to come. The generation of the wilderness have no share in the world to come nor shall they stand in the judgment, for it is written, In this wilderness they shall be consumed and there they shall die (Num 14:35). So R. Akiba. But R. Eliezer says: It says of them also, Gather my saints together unto me, those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice (Ps. 50:5). The company of Korah shall not rise up again, for it is written, And the earth closed upon them in this world, and they perished from among the assembly, in the world to come. So R. Akiba. But R. Eliezer says: It says of them also, The Lord kills and makes alive, he brings down to Sheol and brings up (1 Sam 2:6). The Ten Tribes shall not return again, for it is written, And he cast them into another land like this day. Like as this day goes and returns not, so do they go and return not. So R. Akiba. But R. Eliezer says: Like as the day grows dark and then grows light so also after darkness is fallen upon the Ten Tribes shall light hereafter shine upon them.
Readers who have never before encountered Rabbinic discussion may have trouble at first with the connections and the arguments among the discussants even in this basic Mishnaic passage. Various Tannaim often disagree with each other, and the disagreements are in some way created by the texts themselves, since the Rabbis may come from different places and different times. The Mishnah is organized on a principle of the subject matter of various laws, not as a commentary on the Bible. There are editorial principles and techniques of memorization operating behind the surface of the text. These principles are complex and have not been well defined yet but they are present, even in this rather simple text.
Mishnah, however, indulges in scriptural exegesis fast and furiously in this particular text. The Mishnah tries to define who will be raised and who not; who will be judged and who not. It discusses whether the “Ten Lost Tribes” are to be included in the ideal future. This is interesting because they are possibly understood as quasi-idolators. Possibly the Rabbis are recording a veiled discussion about very acculturated, “back-sliding” Jews in the diaspora.
But one sees that new categories are being adduced to judge these Biblical villains: “Will they stand in judgment?” and “Will they be resurrected?” The categories just appear, though Rabbi Nehemiah is named as someone who used them. But where do the categories come from? The categories come from Daniel 12. Daniel 12 defines both the resurrection and the judgment. Even though Daniel 12 is the backbone of the passage, it is not actually stated because it assumes a more sectarian position than the Rabbis want to propound.
As utilized here, the sectarian nature of the categories in Daniel 12 is actually deconstructed, removed from its sectarian context and placed in a new, more catholic Isaianic context. After receiving some examples of which Biblical personages are saved and which condemned, the reader learns something that is never stated-namely, that repentance annuls the heavenly decree against any person. That perception is never found in Daniel, where the saved and the damned are predestined to their deserts.
The topic of discussion switches to various Biblical non-Israelites and how they will fare in the last judgment. The precedents are not good. Certainly the great sinners of the generation of the flood are lost, and they will not even be resurrected in time of judgment. (The discussion parallels the Church Fathers on the same issue, though Christ is sometimes seen to save some of the generation of the flood.) In this case, the well-documented sinning of the generation of the flood (ḥamas) condemns them.
Everyone taking part in the discussions already knows all the relevant Biblical quotations. So the Rabbis only need to discover the best arguments for discovering the truth. The repetitions in Scripture are used to show that they will neither live in this world nor be resurrected in the world to come. The principle that the Bible provides us with guidance is taken quite literally. All the precedents for the argument depend on Biblical quotations, interpreted by various Rabbis.
The Rabbis can disagree. For instance, with regard to the generation of Sodom, some Rabbis think that they will be resurrected for judgment but not attain the world to come. But R. Nehemiah finds the right combination of Scriptural passages to show that this is not possible. As with the previous question, the Rabbis are not just using their considerable expertise to answer questions about the final disposition of Biblical characters but are trying out some theories about how divine justice is dispensed. As with many Tannaitic discussions, and not a few Amoraic ones, the principles themselves are left wholly or partly unarticulated. They are left for the student of the literature to adduce from study.
The Rabbis are truly more generous to Israelite sinners than they are to the primeval ones. This is largely because their basic question is whether all Israelites will be saved. That is the basic sociological group to whom they must interpret the Bible. That the generation of the wilderness, who were Israelites, will not receive the benefits of the world to come is proposed. But R. Eliezer again finds a precedent for saying that even though they sinned, they will be part of the world to come, showing that God has mercy even on the stiff-necked and rebellious generation of Moses.
The same is true of the followers of Korah, who rebelled against Moses and were swallowed by the earth. There are certainly grounds for thinking them condemned. Yet again, the final word appears to be that God has spared them. The scriptural grounds for this conclusion may seem forced. And it is never wholly clear to modern readers whether the Rabbis are seriously discussing these issues or using them as examples for their very finely honed talents-tours de force for their own mutual appreciation and demonstration of their greatly rarefied talents. But, no matter how much legal virtuousity is contained in these writings, the conclusions are serious, because they demonstrate that God desires contrition; when He sees it, He forgives even heinous crimes. Yet a certain degree of freedom with the text is already evident, a freedom that undoes the original intention of the Biblical passages, which was certainly to report a terrible death by earthquake of the party of Korah. One begins to appreciate the exegetical acumen of the Rabbis as much as their discussions. They are challenged to find Scriptural passages which will save ancient sinners from destruction. A certain suspense results from this process, once the reader figures out what is happening.
Another question, which might be answered here but apparently is not, is how punishment will be carried out in the world to come. There is no mention of hell for malefactors or permanent punishment of any sort. Indeed, Rabbinic Judaism is extremely reticent to discuss hell-as if the benevolence of the eternal God would not allow most souls to be permanently condemned. Only in later Jewish folklore do we find any concept of a hell.
Different approaches have been attempted to understand the relationship between the last judgment and individual reward and punishment. This section may be assuming that ordinary sins are punished in this world, as is certainly the case in the Hebrew Bible, and is frequently assumed in Rabbinic Judaism. At the very least, one might assume that a person’s death would atone for sins.
The Gemarah’s Commentary
THE RABBINIC discussion of the afterlife becomes even more interesting when the later Babylonian Gemarah (third to seventh century CE) is added to this interesting third-century Mishnah. This discussion largely takes place under the influence of Zoroastrianism and so a whole new, more literal notion of resurrection can be discussed without embarrassment. The same is just as true after the Arab conquest.14 The Babylonian Talmud’s discussion of this Mishnah begins on folio, with the quotation of the Mishnah.
The first question which the Gemarah asks is: “Why does the Mishnah rule with such severity?” As becomes clear, the first serious issue is the Tannaim’s little ironic joke: “Those who deny that the vivification of the dead comes from the Torah will not get it.” The Amoraim, the Rabbis in the Gemarah, ask why the Mishnah insists that the punishment for those denying life after death is not to receive it; it seems like such a great punishment for such a small infraction.
This first stubborn question, however, is quickly answered by reference to equity or “measure for measure,” a well-known Rabbinic dictum explaining God’s actions. The answer is explicitly that denying the world to come is the appropriate and equable punishment for someone who denies life after death, even though it seems harsh. Anyone who recants the “heresy” is admitted. It is interesting that the Rabbis are puzzled by a punishment that stands merely on a belief, not an action; while it is precisely belief that makes for salvation or damnation in Christianity, for instance. The question is more interesting and revealing than the answer, which satisfies the Rabbis.
What Is the Verse?
AFTER THIS, the Gemarah raises the issue that will dominate its discussion of life after death: How is resurrection derived from the Torah? Now, the Amoraim are expressly using the term “Torah” to refer only to the first five books of Moses, as is clear from the subsequent discussion. Since we know from historical analysis that the first sure reference to life after death is in the book of Daniel and that even the first hints of it are as late as the prophets, it seems a hopeless task to derive it from the the Mosaic Torah. But the issue is not history; it is hermeneutics. The Rabbis did not know of modern historical criticism; they wanted to see for themselves what could be said on the matter. They threw down a challenge to themselves, and they each tried to answer the challenge with the appropriate passage. The challenge creates the same kind of suspense that letting the previous Biblical generations off the hook did, except here they are trying to do the impossible.
Being absolute masters of the text of the Bible from their youths, they are clearly aware of the difficulty for their exegetical skills. The first candidate to answer the challenge is Numbers 18:28: “And you shall give the Lord’s heave offering to Aaron the priest.” Since Aaron died, this commandment now seems to to be falsified. But the Rabbis are pointing out that the commandment contains no time limitation so Aaron must be still “alive.” From Aaron’s resurrection we learn that we will be resurrected. But is it an adequate proof?
Immediately, the school of Rabbi Ishmael, who are credited with the rather modern notion that “the language of Torah is human language,” suggest what most modern interpreters would think first: perhaps the “to Aaron,” really means “to one like Aaron,” namely, to Aaron’s priestly descendants in the Aaronide line. The effect of this discussion was to bring the passage into question as the proof of life after death.
This is quite an astonishing moment. It is the first time within a community accepting resurrection as a religious doctrine that we actually see an argument about whether the belief in resurrection is true at all. To be sure it was debated within the Jewish community in the first century. And the Christians debated the nature of the resurrection. But, here, in the third century or later, the very scriptural demonstration of the belief was still under scrutiny. Such is characteristic of Rabbinic exegesis. The school of Rabbi Ishmael was not declared heretic and ostracized. Yet, no one would say that the Amoraic Rabbis denied the doctrine that Josephus claimed was central even to the Pharisees, predecessors to the Tannaim who themselves are the predecessors to the Amoraic Rabbis.
These Gemarah passages reflect very different historical times than the first century. The debates took place in relative freedom in the Parthian (Arsacid) and Sassanian Persian Empires. Even the most sacred assumptions were in principle subject to the same legal scrutiny as issues of marriage and divorce.
The issue of the scriptural basis for the doctrine of resurrection becomes a constant refrain, interrupted by intervening digressions. Passages that are presented as possibly demonstrating life after death follow:15 Exodus 6:4*, Deuteronomy 31:16; Isaiah 26:19; Song 7:9; Deuteronomy 11:21*; Deuteronomy 4:4*; Numbers 15:31; Psalm 72; Isaiah 35; Isaiah 25:9; Isaiah 65:20; Deuteronomy 32:39*; Exodus 15:3*; Joshua 8:30*; Psalm 34:5; Isaiah 52:8*; Deuteronomy 33:6*; Daniel 12:2*; Daniel 12:13*; Ezekiel 37. Several of the passages are from later books of the Bible, adduced at first in conjunction with the first five books and then scrutinized themselves.
Many of the proofs are subjected to rigorous examination. For example:
Sectarians asked Rabban Gamliel: Whence do we know that the Holy One, blessed be He, will resurrect the dead? He answered them from the Torah, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa, yet they did not accept it [as conclusive proof]: From the Torah, for it is written And the Lord said unto Moses, Behold thou shalt sleep with thy fathers and rise up [again]. But perhaps, said they to him [the verse reads] and the people will rise up?
The Rabbis assumed that everyone is familiar with the passage to know that the next word in the sentence after “rise up” is “the people.” It happens that the two words occur in different verses in our Bible, so it is conventional to consider that there is a full stop between them, indicating that the sentence has ended. But the Rabbinic Torah originally had not yet received the standard punctuation. The issue, in effect, becomes one of punctuation. The word order of prose narrative Hebrew is exactly “Thou shalt sleep with thy fathers and rise up the people.” Normally, we think Moses slept and the people arose. But, by reading across the two sentences, one can also compose the following sentence: “Thou shalt sleep with thy fathers and rise up. [Now] the people …” even though the normal expectation in Hebrew syntax would be that Moses died and the people rose up to go astray. The Rabbis’ proof depends on moving the full stop one word into the next sentence. But they were not satisfied with this weak proof. Thus, the heretics were not satisfactorily answered, again raising the level of suspense. The Rabbis objected to a Rabbinic proof-text that was actually used to defend the faithful against the skepticism of heretics.
But Deuteronomy 11:21 or 4:4 is said to please them:
Thus he did not satisfy them until he quoted this verse, which the Lord swore unto your fathers to give … (Deut 11:21) to them; not to you, but to them is said: hence resurrection is derived from the Torah. Others say that he proved it from this verse. But ye that did cleave unto the Lord your God are alive every one of you this day. (Deut 4:4)
On the other hand, there are places where the great inventiveness of one Rabbi is immediately admired by his colleagues. One imagines that the Rabbis admire the argument, were amused by its virtuosity, even when they question it.
Our Rabbis taught: I kill and I make alive (Deut 32:39); I might interpret, I kill one person and give life to another, as the world goes on. Therefore the Bible says: I wound and I heal. Just as the wounding and healing refer to the same person, so putting to death and bringing to life refer to the same person. This refutes those who maintain that resurrection is not intimated in the Torah.
It has been taught: R Meir said, “Whence do we know resurrection from the Torah? From the verse, Then shall Moses and the children of Israel sing this song unto the Lord (Exod 15:1): not sang but shall sing is written: thus resurrection is taught in the Torah. Likewise you read, Then shall Joshua build an altar unto the Lord God of Israel: not built, but shall build is written: thus resurrection is intimated in the Torah. If so, then did Solomon build an high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab? Does that too mean that he shall build? But there the writ regards him as though he had built. (b. Sanh. 91b)
Rabba said: Whence is resurrection derived from the Torah? From the verse, Let Reuben live, and not die (Deut 33:16). Rabina said, [it is derived] from this verse, And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt (Dan 12:2-3).
These are exquisite arguments, if you like virtuoso performances and subtle rebuttals, and if you have a sense of humor. The first depends on the notion that one must be first wounded in order to then be healed. The Rabbis were clearly aware of the difficulty in demonstrating resurrection from the Torah. Since it is posited in the Mishnah, they take on the challenge very seriously and impress each other with their virtuosity. It looks as though besides some witty amusement, they got a great deal of serious fun out of the exercise.
The contrast with the New Testament could not be more obvious. Jesus was asked a similar question about basis for the belief in the afterlife. He offered a most interesting answer, very much in this Rabbinic genre: “When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like the angels in heaven” (e.g. Mark 12:25). This firmly states the Christian, sectarian notion that the believers should live with the knowledge that they will be angels. Then came the Rabbinic question: Then, how do we know that there is life after death? Jesus answered in the same way as the Rabbis would-that is, by adducing Scripture as a proof-text. In this case, he brought two different Scriptures and resolved the seeming contradiction between them. This too is very characteristic of Rabbinic discourse:
Jesus said to them, “Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living; you are quite wrong.” (Mark 12:24-27)
or its parallel in Matthew:
And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching. (Matt 22:31-33)
The New Testament means these proofs to be taken seriously, just as the Rabbis did. They are, in fact, evidence that the kind of Midrash practiced by the Rabbis in the second and third centuries was already known and respected in the first.
But notice the enormous difference in the way the scriptural proofs are offered. In the New Testament, Jesus offered one proof, from a case taken from life. His opponents asked a hard question, intending to trip him up. Actually, he offered the same kind of virtuoso response as the Rabbis did, based on comparing two different scriptural passages: He points out that in Exodus, God reveals to Moses that He is “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exod 3:6). Jesus also points out that God is called the living God, quite cogently referring to where Deuteronomy describes this same scene at Mount Sinai in front of the burning bush, which in Greek comes out even more conveniently for his argument: “For who is there of all flesh, that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of fire, as we have, and has still lived?” (Deut 5:26)
This is a beautifully crafted argument in the Rabbinic style, having even more elegance in expression than we usually see in the foreshortened Rabbinic texts. By a process of comparison, Jesus equated the designation “God of the Living” with “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob.” Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob must still be alive, even though we know that the Bible states that they died. From this Jesus concluded that they are still alive in the resurrection (although it had clearly not come to fruition yet on earth). Now this is a good type of Rabbinic argument, later called Hekesh (although the Rabbis doubt some applications of it), and is frequently used in later Rabbinic thought, though not this particular one in connection with this particular problem.
What is interesting is that Jesus offered a single Rabbinic proof, though a good one, and this settles the matter once and for all. In Rabbinic literature, each Rabbi contributed a proof, equally good, yet all of them are disputed by other Rabbis. That is their function, their acuity, and their great pleasure. This merely underlines what we already know: The New Testament was written to an entirely different audience than the Rabbinic literature. The Rabbis were indulging in a daring process of argumentation, a kind of serious play, which is then recorded in the Talmud. The New Testament is validating the charismatic leader and preaching Him as the Savior of the world. The Talmud is for exegetical study; the New Testament is for missionizing.
Liturgy
SYNAGOGUE LITURGY, a vast Midrashic literature, and Jewish mystical literature forcefully profess belief in vivification of the dead, with interesting, different, and even inconsistent characterizations about its meaning. Some may have had doubts about the Scripture on which resurrection depended, but they did not doubt the doctrine itself. The participants in the Talmudic discussions did not feel that they had to give up their critical scrutiny of Scripture because they had inherited a difficult-to-demonstrate doctrine from the Tannaim. After all, they did accept several passages as having demonstrated the vivification of the dead. In any event, they realized that doubt was a significant part of their religious affirmation.
On the other hand, we moderns can never completely overcome the suspicion that the objections are more taking than the proofs, especially when they are based on such clever but obvious misreadings. Some Rabbis may have at least partly understood the irony that we naturally feel in seeing these exegetical exercises. Such is the force of the Rabbinic method. Instead of promulgating divine truths, the text is available for discussion and debate. Once one learns to read the text critically from the paradigm of the Rabbis, one can even deny the doctrine which they seek to defend. The Rabbis were indulging in an early example of “deconstructionism.” Because of the method of scrutinizing every doctrine in this way, modern Jews would certainly deny that Judaism depends on the notion of resurrection in any literal way. And they might even return to the following passage to show how all doctrine must be made subject to our own rational scrutiny.
This irony of deconstruction is peculiarly our own modern perspective, not theirs, for the Rabbis refused to take the method that far. In fact, a glance at the liturgy reveals that life after death is repeatedly valorized in daily prayers. For instance, we have these brave statements of the faith in human, eternal reward:
You are mighty, eternally, O Lord.
You bring the dead to life, mighty to save.
You sustain the living with loving kindness
With great mercy you bring the dead to life again.
You support the fallen, heal the sick, free the captives;
You keep faith with those who sleep in the dust.
Who can compare with Your might, O Lord and King?
You are Master of life, and death, and deliverance.
This passage is part of the great prayer, known simply as Ha-tefilah. The Prayer, which is said standing in every Jewish service, is known as the Amidah, the standing prayer. Since it has roughly 18 paragraphs, it is also known as the Shmoneh Esre (“Eighteen”), the eighteen-part prayer. The passage above is quoted from the weekday version and is known as the Gevurot, God’s mightiness (plural of gevurah, might), after the first statement in the paragraph. It is one of the best-known prayers in Jewish liturgy.16 It praises God for bringing the dead to life, without reference to ethnic identity.
The passage is attributed to various authors. One tradition holds it was composed by the Anshe Knesset Hagedolah, the men of the great assembly. A famous tradition in the Babylonian Talmud (Meg. 17b) says that the entire Shmoneh ‘Esre was formulated by R. Shimon the Flaxworker at Yavneh in the presence of Rabban Gamaliel. That would date the prayer in our form at the end of the first century or the beginning of the second, since Rabban Gamaliel succeeded Rab Yohanan ben Zakkai, who received permission to leave the siege at Jerusalem with his scholars just before 70 CE. More likely, that tradition reflects not its original composition but an attempt by the Rabbinic movement to lay claim to the already traditional prayer, on the grounds that they corrected and standardized the liturgy. An earlier form of the prayer seems assured by the newly published writings from Qumran, which demonstrates that they too believed in resurrection and used a very closely related liturgical text to affirm it. So the Rabbinic enterprise was an attempt to impose a canonical form on the prayer.
In both the Rabbinic and Qumranic form, Gevuroth is largely a gloss on Psalm 146:5-8, which, however, has no reference to resurrection, concentrating as we would expect, given the topic, on theodicy and God’s care of the poor, downtrodden and unfortunate. To this are added the phrases that God brings the dead to life and will keep faith with those who sleep in the dust. The first praises God for resurrecting the dead; the second for remembering the plight of those who have died and are buried. It is but one of innumerable references to the resurrection which dot the prayerbook.
In the preparatory service for morning prayers, The Birkhot Hashahar, the liturgy also contains explicit discussions of the immortality of the soul. Taken from the text in b. Talmud Berakhot 60b, the prayer begins with the Biblical notion of soul but quickly dresses it in a more Greek garb:
The soul which you, my God, have given me is pure. You created it, You formed it, You breathed it into me; You keep body and soul together. One day You will take my soul from me, to restore it to me in life eternal. So long as this soul is within me I acknowledge You, Lord my God, my ancestors’ God, Master of all creation, sovereign of all souls. Praised are You, Lord who restores the soul to the lifeless, exhausted body. (Siddur Sim Shalom 9-10)
The prayer begins with a reference to the soul. The first line might be just a traditional Biblical understanding of soul. The last suggests that it means only to explain how a tired body is refreshed by a night of sleep. But in the middle is a statement that life consists of body and soul together. God takes the soul at death and will restore it in life eternal. The last phrase seems to suggest immortality of the soul, though there is a peculiar variation on it. The source of the identity and the soul are different. The paragraph actually seems to describe immortality of the soul returned to a recreated body (the “me”), very much what Augustine affirmed as well. But the phrasing leaves a lot of ambiguity unexplained.
The term neshamah 
, translated as “soul” above, occurs in Scripture some dozen times. Probably the prayer is making direct reference to the creation story in Genesis 2: “And He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being.”
The Gevuroth prayer is reflecting on the verbs of creation used in Genesis-“created” it, “formed” it, “breathed” it into me. However, in Genesis 2:7, neshamah means more literally “the breath of life” which effects Adam’s change from dust of the earth to a “living being,” nefesh. It is interesting that the prayer does not use nefesh itself to stand for “soul.” But by the Rabbinic period, neshamah was probably a better translation for soul because nefesh can mean “a person,” whereas neshamah is more technical in that it refers to a spiritually inbreathed presence. Perhaps, too, when this prayer was composed, neshamah had already received one of the several mystic meanings of “over-soul,” which became an object of great speculation in later Jewish mysticism. This is a soul that can be separated from the body and which will return to God at death. It is one that goes back into a body, which must be reconstituted from dust. It is a soul in the Greek sense but it also includes resurrection, narratively like the Christian synthesis.
The prayer contains a suggestion for the way that the resurrection of the dead will take place. It compares the waking of the body after sleep directly with the resurrection of corpses. It does this because the prayer is said in the evening, before sleep. And it praises God for being the one who will return the souls to dead corpses just as he returns wakefulness to people after sleep. Beyond that, the mechanism has little interest to the Rabbis or their community.
The prayer for the dead contains scarcely more detail. This prayer itself is not the Kaddish prayer, the famous prayer said in memory of the dead, which is a doxology of God. The Jewish prayer for the dead, El Male Rahamim, “God full of mercy …” is chanted at memorial services and at graveside, and it does prominently mention life after death:
God, full of mercy, who dwells on high, let these holy and pure beings find perfect rest under the wings of your Shechinah in the heights, let them shine as the brightness of the heavens, the souls of all those dear ones who are remembered today for a blessing. Let the garden of Eden be their rest. O Master of Mercy, hide them in the hiding place of your wings forever. May their souls be bound up in the bond of life and let them rest in peace upon their biers. And let us say “Amen.”
Some of the basic imagery is taken from 1 Samuel 25:29:
If men rise up to pursue you and to seek your life, the life of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living in the care of the LORD your God; and the lives of your enemies he shall sling out as from the hollow of a sling.
This image of the providence of the Lord is taken from the wording of Abigail’s blessing of David. She likens the way God guards the life of David to being bound in a bundle while the enemies of David are being cast out like stones in a sling. No one completely understands the metaphor. But in-gathering of the exiles is basic to the Rabbinic view of the afterlife.
The influence of Daniel 12 is also prominent in this very allusive passage from Jewish liturgy. The dead are to shine with the brightness of the heavens, just as Daniel 12 suggests. The garden of Eden has become the final resting place of the dead, as well as humanity’s original home, just as it has appeared in one of the heavens in the apocalyptic literature. But, in spite of Rabbinic Judaism’s eschewal of apocalyptic thinking, Daniel 12 continues to inform Rabbinic notions of the afterlife. In some way, the dead shine in the heavens, reside in Eden, yet their bodies find peace in the grave.
The World to Come
THERE ARE TWO other places where notions of the afterlife show up strongly in Jewish thought. The first is Midrash, that compendium of Biblical exegesis and homilies which glosses the Bible for use in study and in creating synagogue sermons, mostly for the feasts and holidays. There, we find a rich and completely free imaginative reconstruction of life after death. Each picture really depends on the imagination of individual Rabbis, who mirror the issues of different times and places as well as tell us of their own hopes. Because of the many treatments of this theme, there is no need to go into great detail about it.17
The dominant Rabbinic notion of life after death is Olam Ha-ba’ (‘olām habbā,’ lit. “the coming world,” or “the next world”), which is usually translated as “the world to come” and is contrasted with our present world, 'Olam Ha-ze (’olām hazzeh, lit. “this world”). Because Midrash is a communal literature, made up of the comments of many Rabbis over many centuries, one cannot expect a systematic or even a consistent treatment of “the world to come.” While the terminology is standard, the conception varies, depending on the Midrash and the exegetical or rhetorical needs of the Rabbi. “Better is one hour of bliss in the world to come than the whole of life in this world,” and yet we also hear at the same place: “Better is one hour of repentance and good works in this world than the whole life of the world to come.” The moral point is made by contrast, yielding a deliberate paradox.
Both statements appear in the same Mishnah, Avot 4:17, showing that there was no real interest in logical consistency in this literature. Each Rabbi’s exegetical statements and homilies were remembered and deliberately restated in such a way as to defy logic. This is due to the vision of the redactor. But each homily also contains its own deliberate literary technique, quite characteristic of the Rabbinic period in which it was written and continued into mystical literature.
Considering that the main Rabbinic interest was in resolving legal problems logically, this is especially striking and it is meant to be. Here, the interest of the Rabbis is in deliberately stating a paradox, challenging each reader to provide some kind of intellectual synthesis. Putting these two statements together yields a literature where the real interest of the Rabbis was conduct in this world, not the world to come explicitly, though many Rabbis might address it in their sermons and homilies.
The reticence of Rabbinic tradition to discuss the next life is summarized by the third-century Palestinian sage, Yohanan bar Nappaha: “All the prophets prophesied only about the days of the Messiah; but of the world to come, ‘no eye has seen it.’ (Isa 64:4)” (See b. Sanh. 99a, Ber. 34b). The effect of this statement is to dampen speculation on the pleasures of the afterlife. Perhaps it was meant to defend against particularly vivid depictions of heaven and hell in Christianity and Zoroastrianism, and later in Islam. But the Rabbis could not entirely resist imagining an afterlife as a life without some of the responsibilities of this world and with rewards impossible in this world. Rav Abba, a third-century Babylonian Amora describes a perfected world with restricted pleasures and difficulties:
It was a favorite saying of Rab: “Not like this world is the world to come.” In the world to come there is neither eating nor drinking, no procreation of children or business transactions, no envy or hatred or rivalry. But the righteous sit enthroned, their crowns on their heads, and enjoy the radiance of the Shekhinah. (b. Ber. 17a)
The passage seems to have behind it an interpretation of Exodus 24:10-11: “And they saw the God of Israel; and there was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank.” The passage narrates the theophany between God, Moses, and the elders of the Children of Israel at Sinai. The life to come is taken on that model, with the inconveniences of life removed. Angelic life will remove eating and drinking, procreation or business and thus all envy hatred and rivaltry will disappear. Sexuality disappears in this vision. In order to see these bodily processes as “inconveniences” one has to understand the Rabbinic love of study as a transcendent value, against which everything else is an interruption. We see here the Rabbinic penchant for exaggeration, possibly taken to a deliberately humorous, self-satirizing extreme.
In the idealized world, nothing will interfere with the righteous’s contemplation of God. They will receive the crowns and probably the thrones reserved for the maskilim (those who make others wise) because they are an academic community. Indeed, they conceive of God’s court no longer as a royal court, as in the Biblical traditions, but as a Rabbinic court where the righteous enjoy the ability to study Torah all day. They are a “yeshivah shel ma’aleh” (Rabbinic Academy on High). The equivalent Aramaic term is metivta deraqia’. The Heavenly Yeshiva is meant to reward those who study in this life and promise the same reward to those without the ability or opportunity to study in earthly academies. All will have the pleasures of study in the coming life, when all will have the ability and time and opportunity to occupy themselves with Torah.
The Midrash Eleh Ezkerah (“Midrash ‘Let Me Remember These’ and “The Legend of the Ten Martyrs”) envisions the martyrs in the world to come. There, the purified souls of the righteous sit in the heavenly academy on golden thrones and to listen to Rabbi ‘Aqiba (a martyr of the second century) discourse on Torah.18 The rewards of the martyrs become the same as the rewards of everyone else. Everyone will have the ability to become a Rabbi and study the fine points of Torah in the heavenly academy.19 This story is meant to underline and emphasize the study of Torah as the ultimate divine service, superseding the role of the angelic court in advising God (the Biblical portrait) and the angelic court’s role in serving in the divine temple, where the service to God still continues.
The Academy on High is similar to the earthly academy. Scholars continue their studies and debates there. The death of a sage is expressed as a summons to the Academy on High to help settle an argument (Baba Metzia 86a). In a striking anthropomorphism, God himself participates in the debates and sometimes His authority is not accepted immediately. For example, one of His rulings is contested by all the other scholars, and a human, Rabbah b. Nahmani, is especially summoned from earth (i.e., to die) for a final decision, which he gives before he dies. The potential theological issue of God’s ultimate rightness is resolved when Rabbah b. Nahmani’s decision concurs with that of God.20 This portrait is meant to further exalt as transcendent the legal discussions of the Rabbis. To do so, the Rabbis figure God as a Rabbi.
The theme of the angelic identity of those who make others wise is furthered in a new social context in this passage. The tradition of angelomorphism has been academically domesticated, though one can see its original form, complete with the notion that the ascetic on earth can approximate angelic states in heaven, indeed, even experience them proleptically by means of altered states of consciousness. But, if so, the Rabbis scarcely ever speak about it in classic Rabbinic literature. In this sense, it is like the prophetic notion of “The End of Days,” rather than the apocalyptic eschaton. For the Rabbis, study and prayer is asceticism, as well as intellectual exercise.21
In the mishnayoth and gemaroth that we have so far seen, there is discussion of “the world to come” but there has been little actual description of it. The contents or nature of the “world to come” was not a central concern of the writers of Jewish legal documents. Instead, the descriptions are part of the Midrashic tradition. “The world to come” began its intellectual life parallel to apocalyptic notion, as a paradise on a reconstituted land of Israel, as the Mishnah’s use of Isaiah 60 would suggest. More and more in Midrash, however, Olam Ha-Ba’ does double duty as a postmortem realm.
Some Rabbis believed that the perfected days at the end of time would not contain any of the striving of this world. As one would expect, scenes of agricultural plenty predominate in Rabbinic descriptions:
Not like this world will be the world to come. In this world, one has the trouble to harvest grapes and press them; but in the world to come a person will bring a single grape in a wagon or a ship, store it in the corner of his house, and draw from it enough wine to fill a large flagon. There will not be a grape which will not yield thirty measures of wine. (Ketub. 111b)
Wine was not a forbidden pleasure to the Rabbis or to Jews in general. But that is not the point. Visions like this appeal to an urban as well as an agricultural economy, lionize the land of Israel, and demonstrate exaggeration as the language of heaven, perhaps stimulated by periodic lack of provisions. They have a wonderful folkloric naive pastoralism, demonstrating how an apocalyptic vision can be domesticated into a normative society. There was no active apocalyptic hope in these communities but the eschatological hope of a better future in a reconstituted land of Israel served as a substitute for the view of heaven.
But it coexisted with a more explicit view of heaven with judgment coming right after death. “The world to come” can often be understood as “heaven,” the abode of the souls, containing “the garden of Eden,” another name for the place where souls go when they die. A very clear example of this is to be found in Tanhuma, Vayikra 8, as translated by Simha Paull Raphael:
The sages have taught us that we human beings cannot appreciate the joys of the future age. Therefore, they called it “the coming world.” [Olam ha-ba’], not because it does not yet exist, but because it is still in the future. “The World to Come” is the one waiting for man after this world. But there is no basis for the assumption that the world to come will only begin after the destruction of this world. What it does imply is that when the righteous leave this world, they ascend on high, as it is said: “How great is the goodness, O Lord, which you have in store for those who fear you, and which, toward those who take refuge in you, you show in the sight of men [Ps 31:20].
This passage demonstrates that the Midrashic literature is a product of individual talents anthologized. The writer of this homily is declaring himself against the common tradition to make a point to his hearers. The homily probably originated as a kind of sermon or Torah lesson. It also shows that the Rabbinic concepts were available to creative reinterpretation.
The Midrashist deliberately uses ‘“olam ha-ba’” as a substitute for heaven, together with an implied judgment upon death and the resultant ascent of the righteous. Many people have read the various opinions with great interest. But, the flexibility and playfulness of the tradition are most impressive.
For instance, the Rabbis almost always pin their hopes on a difficult turn of phrase in the Scripture, which they can then intepret in a comforting way by looking at the context:
God said to Moses, “Behold thy days draw near to die” (Deut 31:14). Samuel Bar Nahmani said: “Do days die?” But it means that at the death of the righteous, their days cease from the world, yet they themselves abide, as it says, “In whose hand is the soul of all the living” (Job 12:10). Can this mean that the living alone are in God’s hand, and not the dead? No, it means that the righteous even after their death may be called living, whereas the wicked, both in life and in death, may be called dead. (Tanh b., Ber., 28b end)
Samuel Bar Nahmani picks up the scriptural anomaly that the subject of the verb “die” is actually “days.” Though it would be tempting just to say it was a Biblical idiom, he uses this interesting grammatical anomaly in the Bible to provide his homily. The Midrash is far more definite about the reward of the righteous than the punishment of the sinners and the truth of reward and punishment than any specific description of it. The notion that the wicked are dead in this life, the righteous alive in the next, has been sounded before.
On the other hand, there is the famous and very naive tradition, that the dead buried outside of the land of Israel will be provided with a subterranean path to Israel and they will roll there underground to be resurrected:
R. Simai said: “The Holy One, blessed be He, will burrow the earth before them, and their bodies will roll through the excavation like bottles, and when they arrive at the land of Israel, their souls will be reunited with them. (T.J. Ketub. 12:3ff. see also Ket. 111a)
Perhaps it is the strangeness of the idea that impresses modern sensibilities but it does answer the question of the pious buried in Diaspora: How can even the dead participate in God’s plan for the ingathering of the exiles? Are those buried in the diaspora left out of the privileges which those buried in Jerusalem obtain? In this case, Rabbi Simai even suggests that resurrection will include reclothing the soul with the body. The body makes its own way underground to Jerusalem where the soul meets it. This passage later states that the new body will be built from the single, root vertebra. Renewing the body from the bones is known in Zoroastrianism as well. If so, it has been subjugated to Zionistic longing. This is speculation, but it reflects the hunch that we do not entirely understand the context in which R. Simai is writing. We do not even know exactly who he was. In any event, both Zoroastrianism and Judaism as early as 2 Maccabees also affirm that God can reassemble the body from nothing.
The Rabbis aver that there are heretics who do not believe in life after death. When Moses and God are speaking at Sinai, Moses asks God: “Will the dead ever be restored to life?” God, in surprise, retorts, “Have you become a heretic, Moses, that you doubt the resurrection?” “If,” said Moses, “the dead never awaken to life, then truly You are right to wreak vengeance upon Israel. But if the dead are to be restored to life hereafter, what will You say to the fathers of this nation, if they ask You what has become of the promise You have made to them?”22 Here the issue is explicitly the justification of God’s ways to man. Moses and God are depicted in a Rabbinic discussion where Moses’ arguments overcomes God’s objections.
The Targums
THE TARGUM, the translation of the Bible into Aramaic, served as Scripture for the Aramaic-speaking community, as the Septuagint did for the Greek-speaking community. Many targumim were written for use within the synagogue as Aramaic had largely replaced Hebrew in the Middle East by the third century BCE. Some of the targumim are quite ancient. They appear at Qumran, for instance, but the fragment found there do not correspond to the received texts later on. Although some targumim are indeed quite ancient, we may not have access to them.
The Targum is not just a translation of the Bible. It contains many additions and comments to the original text, which reveal the issues that occupied the ancient community. Targumim are as much Midrash as translation. As life after death is largely missing from the Hebrew Bible, the targumim take the opportunity to supply it. For instance, where the Hebrew Bible narrates the murder of Abel by Cain in Genesis 4:8, the Targum inserts a short Midrash in which they argue over resurrection, making it into the very subject of the first murder. The same is true of the argument between Jacob (Israel = the Jews) and Esau (Edom = Rome = Christianity). The same with the argument between the land and the sea as understood from “The Song At The Sea” in Exodus 15:12. Each of these Midrashim inserted into the Targum is also found in the Midrash.23
Interestingly, the figure of Lot’s wife is also crux for the issue of resurrection. The targumim to Genesis 19:26 says that she shall remain a pillar until the resurrection, when she will live again. One can speculate what this means: The Biblical story becomes a crux for the doctrine of resurrection. Does Lot’s wife not deserve the same treatment as the rest of humanity? This targum answers “yes.” It is significant that Lot’s wife receives resurrection although she is not an Israelite.24
Jewish Mysticism
THE SECOND place where the notion of an afterlife continues to have strong and important role was in Jewish mysticism.25 On the surface, a great many Jewish mystical texts look like Midrash itself. But it is Midrash devoted to a very limited number of themes. The secret purposes of the various stories only emerge in the course of reading through a great many of them. The originally apocalyptic material-the Kabod imagery, Daniel 7:13-14, enthronement of God’s principal angel in Exodus 24, Ezekiel 1, and Psalm 110-continues to be a strong theme of Jewish mysticism, even into Kabbalah, where it is caught up in the complicated richness of speculation of the sepheroth. In mysticism, many different and somewhat conflicting notions of the soul are evidenced. Mysticism portrays themes of angelic doubles who serve as guardians, as well as human transformations into sephirotic powers, and a myriad of other conceptualizations, which we cannot describe in any detail.26
The specific connection between Psalm 110 and the visions of Daniel, which is crucial in Christianity, appears in the Zohar to similar effect, yet without any Christian coloring:
The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Daniel, Thou shalt go towards the end, and will rest (Dan 12:13). Daniel asked: “Rest in this world or in the next world?” “Rest in the next world,” was the answer (cf. “They will rest in their beds” Isa 57:2), “and thou shalt stand up to thy lot at the end of days.” Daniel asked, “Shall I be among the resurrected or not?” God answered, “And thou wilt stand up.” Daniel then said, “I know full well that the dead will rise up in various classes, some righteous and some wicked, but I do not know among whom I shall be found.” God answered, “To thy lot.” Daniel then said, “As there is a right end and a left end, I do not know whether I shall go to the right end (l’qets hayamin) or to the end of days (l’qets hayamim).” The answer was, “To the end of the right (l’qets hayamin).” Similarly, David said to the Holy One, blessed be He, “Make me to know my end,” that is, he wished to know to which end he was allotted, and his mind was not at rest ’til the good tidings reached him, “Sit at my right hand” (Ps 110:1). (Zohar Bereshith, 1.63a)
The exegetical subject of this passage is Noah’s flood. The Biblical phrase “the end of all things” summons up the final apocalypse. The Zohar then surveys other places where “the end” is mentioned, including the important passage in Daniel. It can interweave the two passages, gleaning what it can for its depiction of the end of days. It derives two choices-resurrection or not-and Daniel asks: “Will I arise?” The answer is “Yes.”
The next question follows logically: What will his fate be in the resurrection? Two choices are again derived: “to the right,” to a good end, or “to the end of days,” for destruction. Daniel asks again what his final reward will be and is told that his end will be good. The passage depends on a pun between the word for “days” in Hebrew (yamim) and the word for “right” (yamin). “Right” in this case refers to the direction right not vindication. But a good implication derives from the arrangement of the good sepherot(divine spheres) on the right. The categories of this passage are derived from Daniel 12:2, supplemented with the kabbalistic apparatus of the emanations of the spheroth.
Then a conversation between God and David is narrated. David essentially asks the same question, based on Psalm 39:5: “Lord, let me know my end, and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is!” (Ps 39:4; MT Ps 39:5). The answer, the kabbalist says, is to be found in Psalm 110, which narrates that David will be translated to heaven for his final reward, to be enthroned next to God, essentially what Daniel sees in 7:13-14.
The Zohar also equates the stars with the angels on the basis of Job 38:7, “The morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for Joy,” as well as Psalm 148:3, “Praise him, all ye stars of light.” The praises that are sung are the same songs which Israel used in its liturgy, as Israel sings antiphonally with the angels in its services (see Zohar Bereshit I, 231b). The Zohar also mentions the image of the righteous (both Ṣelem [image] and demut [likeness] are used), which have a complicated and difficult relationship with the neshamah. Like the Rabbis, the Zohar describes dying as a kind of atoning sacrifice:
The soul ascends to her place, and the body is given over to its place, in the same way as in an offering the devotion of him who offers ascends to one place, and the flesh to another. Hence, the righteous man is, of a truth, himself an offering of atonement. But he who is not righteous is disqualified as an offering, for the reason that he suffers from a blemish, and is therefore like the defective animals of which it is written, “They shall not be accepted for you” (Lev 22:25). Hence it is said, ‘The righteous are an atonement and a sacrifice for the world.’ (Bereishit I, 65b)
It was for the sake of the righteous that the world was created. The kabbalists considered themselves to be the enlightened of the prophecy in Daniel. This text forms the very basis of the introductory proem of the Tiqqunei ha-Zohar, as well as in many other places in the mystical corpus. The very title of the Zohar, the principal book of Kabbalah, is taken from Daniel 12:3. Like theurgic texts and hermetism, the texts tend to describe the process from the top down, as cosmology rather than as soteriology, but it is not hard to see that these cosmologies imply a corresponding and opposite journey upwards of the soul caught in earthly matter.
For the Kabbalists, all Israel (except for the most heinous and unrepentant sinners) will inherit the land of Israel, as among the Rabbis. But this particular kabbalistic plan for the end of days is found for both in Daniel 12 and associated passages. Both saw that some would be transformed into shining, angelic creatures; each thought it would be they-most dramatically in the case of the Zoharic masters. The mekubalim, the Kabbalists, thought themselves to be the maskilim, those who will lead many to knowledge and become shining stars prophesied in Daniel 12. This is but half a doctrine of salvation. The Kabbalists especially seemed willing to restrict membership of the saved to the members of Israel. But theirs was a consolation for very troubled times.
This consolation continued in the various medieval documents of heavenly ascent that are found in Rabbinic literature. Many of them can be conveniently read in Simcha Paull Raphael’s book, Jewish Views of the Afterlife.27 These stories serve, among other things, to confirm that the various rewards which the mystics seek are really to be found in heaven. Some seem stimulated by RASC and others seem merely to be imaginative narratives.
Elijah’s Trip to Heaven in Rabbinic Literature
WE HAVE ALREADY seen in detail that only two figures in the Hebrew Bible are assumed into heaven while alive. The first is Enoch (Gen 5) and the second is Elijah (2 Kgs 2). While the apocalyptic and pseudepigraphical literature contains a vast romance about Enoch, Rabbinic Judaism was far more interested in Elijah. He is a tremendously popular figure in Jewish culture. Even today, at the havdalah service that begins every liturgical week, a hymn is sung to Elijah, who is viewed as the possible forerunner of the Messiah. This is due to the later prophecy of Elijah’s return, which grants him the status of a Messianic figure by himself:
“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse.” (Mal 4:5-6)
For this reason alone, Elijah might have been invoked as present at the seder. But even earlier, Ben Sira (ca. 200 BCE) attributed the future restoration of the tribes of Jacob to him (Eccles 48:10). A cup of wine is set for him in the current seder. After dinner, most Jewish homes open the door to let him in to the seder to claim his cup of wine. What better place to insure that the hearts of children are turned to their fathers and vice versa than at a holy and joyful and very ample feast, whose venue is the home. One supposes that this both signals the possibility of the final consummation and avoids the curse of Malachi 4:6.
Perhaps the popularity of Elijah at the expense of Enoch in Rabbinic literature is due to the fact that Elijah was a Jewish prophet who battled for the Lord, while Enoch was a primeval hero. The Biblical text gives us many different miracles to add to his Midrashic repertoire of characteristics, including a battle against Ba’al, ending a drought, and the theophany where God appeared as “the still, small voice” (1 Kgs 19). More significantly, he raises the son of the widow of Zarephath from the dead (1 Kgs 17:17ff.). He ascends to heaven in a fiery chariot driven by fiery horses (2 Kgs 2:11). His mantle gave his successor Elisha magical power to continue his ministry. Elijah is praised while Enoch is criticized and remains a very ambiguous character in the Midrash.
Elijah is continually blessed as the bringer of good news in Jewish liturgy, preeminently in the grace after meals and the blessings over the Haftarah. He appears in other Jewish liturgy as well. The circumcision chair in a synagogue is known as the chair of Elijah. In the New Testament, Jesus is frequently compared with Elijah, where he is usually understood as a precursor, so as not to cast a shadow on Jesus’ role, though the Hebrew Bible outlines an individual, eschatological role for Elijah. Jesus is acclaimed as Elijah (who is still alive because of his assumption alive into heaven preserved him from death) in Mark 8:27-33, Matthew 16:13-23, and Luke 9:18-22. Jesus also proclaimed John the Baptist as Elijah (Matt 11:10ff.; 17:10ff.; Mark 9:11ff.), so both prophetic figures in early Judaism were identified with this already legendary figure. Elijah was evidently a Messianic figure in his own right.
In the famous story of the oven of Akhnai (b. Mesi’a 59a), Elijah appears at the end to tell us that God is pleased with the ruling that we always incline towards the majority and do not heed miracles as legal proof.28 In the equally famous story of Rabbi Shim’on bar Yohai living in a cave for ten years after the destruction of the Second Temple (Sabb. 33 b), Elijah tells the great sage and mystic that he should leave the cave. Elijah reports in Midrash (Pirked Rabbi Eliezer 43, end) that the Messiah is to be found as a beggar at the gate of Rome, and he becomes the herald of the Messianic age (Sanh. 98a). Yet, he can also rescue people from danger, as he rescues Nahum Ish Gamzu from the Romans (Sanh. 108b-109a; Ta ’an. 21a). In the Midrash he announces that “the emperor” has died (Sabb. 33b), a very hopeful piece of news in a time of persecution.
Elijah’s role was quite unlike the saints of the church and even unlike angelic presences elsewhere. He serves a basically Rabbinic function in these stories, demonstrating that Rabbinic takkanot (“corrections,” really “innovations”) are desired and wanted by God. In Rabbinic literature, angels do not, as a rule, serve as interpretive authorities, as they do in apocalyptic traditions. That job is squarely given to humans and to their exemplars, as Elijah surely serves here. Elijah has some of the formal characteristics of Hermes, in bringing messages back and forth between heaven and earth and also in occasionally leading souls to paradise, both in mystical ascent and after death, as in Baba Metzia 114a-b, where he leads Rabba bar Abuha to the garden of Eden, the standard Rabbinic word for the heaven of redeemed human souls.29
The most interesting of all the passages concerning Elijah for our purposes is one in which the secret of resurrection is revealed to human beings by Elijah, for which he is punished by means of sixty fiery lashes (Baba Metzia 85b). This punishment is otherwise known only as a punishment for angels, so Elijah is viewed as an angel in this legend. No mere human could have stood up to such a punishment. Since they viewed the doctrine as one of the most important in Rabbinic Judaism, they explained it as a heavenly secret that Elijah revealed, in much the same way that Prometheus was punished for his having stolen fire for humanity in the classical tradition. In this case, the punishment was not eternal; Elijah is always available as a savior figure and consoler, as well as a messenger between Israel and God.
Rabbinic Multi-culturalism as a Social Necessity on Earth
TO SEE THE complete and more optimistic Rabbinic design, we must also look at the Rabbinic discussion for the final disposition of the gentiles. There is not a single answer to the question “What was the Rabbinic view of the place of the gentiles in God’s scheme?”
Rabbinic writings debate the issue of the salvation of the gentiles, as they debate most every issue.
Rabbi Eliezer said: “All the nations will have no share in the world to come, even as it is said, ‘the wicked shall go into Sheol, and all the nations that forget God’ (Ps 9:17). The wicked shall go into Sheol-these are the wicked among Israel.” Rabbi Joshua said to him: “If the verse had said, ‘The wicked shall go into Sheol with all the nations,’ and had stopped there, I should have agreed with you, but as it goes on to say ‘who forget God,’ it means there are righteous men among the nations who have a share in the world to come.” (t. Sanh. 13:2)
Some Rabbis, represented by Rabbi Eliezer, said that only Israel will be saved. Others, represented by Rabbi Joshua, said that the righteous gentiles would be saved as well. The positions attributed to Rabbis Eliezer and Joshua b. Hananiah are typical of other remarks that Rabbinic literature has attributed to them. Rabbi Eliezer was a severe critic of gentiles. Rabbi Joshua b. Hananiah was more liberal. He removed all distinctions between Jew and gentile in attaining salvation through the doing of good deeds. He said: “Everyone who walks in blamelessness before his Creator in this world will escape the judgment of hell in the world to come.” He even disagreed with Rabbi Gamaliel by maintaining that the blameless children of wicked heathen will also have a share in the world to come. Though Rabbi Joshua probably did not allow conversion without circumcision, he at least looked at the positive side of the issue, saying: “Baptism without circumcision makes one a ger (that is, “a proselyte,” a person in the process of converting) (b. Yebam. 46a).
The status of the gentiles is discussed in later Rabbinic Judaism through at least two different rubrics-the resident alien and the doctrine of the “Noahide Commandments.” These two legal constructions make different assumptions about the purpose of the gentiles and they sometimes imply conflicting approaches which need to be systematically worked out.
The issue of the resident alien derived from the Biblical rules incumbent upon “the stranger in your gates.”30 Resident aliens were obliged to abstain from offering sacrifices to strange gods (Lev 17:7-9), from eating blood in any form (Lev 17:10ff.), from incest (Lev 18:6-26), from work on the Sabbath (Exod 2o: 10ff.), and from eating leavened bread during the Passover (Exod 12:18ff.).31
Closely allied with this issue is the Rabbinic doctrine of the “Noahide Commandments.” This Rabbinic doctrine is derived from a sophisticated and theological formulation that some legal enactments were given before Sinai, during the primeval history to all human beings. Furthermore, the sign of the Noahide covenant, the rainbow, is available to all humanity to symbolize God’s promise of safety. And it was completely outside of the special covenant with Abraham and his descendants. The covenant with Noah is expanded to the entire primeval period, encompassing all the revealed commandments preceding Sinai. The Noahide Commandments (e.g., t. ’Abed. Zar. 8.4 and more fully in b. Sanh. 56b) function somewhat like a concept of “natural law,” which any just person can be expected to follow by observation and reason.
In the Diaspora, Jews develop a proselytism and apologetic literature that is designed both to interest gentiles into joining the movement and to encourage Jews not to assimilate. It suggests that what Judaism has over even the greatest philosophers is moral superiority. The sins of the gentiles are always more or less equivalent to three: violence, sexual immorality, and idolatry-three of the sins which Jews must never do, not even to avoid martyrdom. These are three preeminent moral issues in which Jews knew better than their neighbors in Hellenistic literature. And they will be important for understanding how the Noahide Commandments developed.
Once the social significance of the different formulations is outlined, the reasons for the ambiguity become clear. The difference between the Noahide Commandments and the rules for the sojourner alien is clear from a social point of view. The resident alien must, because of his close association with Israelites, observe some of the laws of Judaism, while the Noahide Commandments refer to the ultimate disposition of gentiles and thus entirely to gentiles who were not observant. The resident sojourners may be ethical or not; the issue is irrelevant because the question was only how to keep them from somehow interfering with Jewish religious life. The law was there for the benefit of the Israelites who needed not to tolerate certain impieties within their own territory. With the Noahide Commandments the gentiles needed not to observe any Jewish law at all. The sole question is whether they could be righteous. They merely had to observe seven laws to prove worthy to inherit “the world to come.”32
This corresponds to the two different but related social situations of Jews in the Roman Empire. The first, the resident alien, refers to a situation where Jews were in the majority and had political power. In that situation, they could maintain that gentiles ought to do a certain amount of Jewish ritual-such as circumcision, if they wanted to participate in the Passover sacrifice. This later became the legal basis for discussions of conversion in Judaism.
But more numerous even during the time of Jesus is the second situation, in which Jews were not the majority of the population and had very limited abilities to affect or control their neighbors. In such a situation, there was even a danger of gentile backlash in being too open to mission. There is ample evidence of the concern of the pagan community that the Jews and Christians were stealing their children from them. This does not mean kidnapping but conversion, which was viewed as dividing the pagan family, driving a wedge between parents and children. In these situations, the concept of a righteous gentile, who eschewed sin but did not explicitly take up the special rules of Judaism, had a positive value because it relieved the community from the necessity of converting gentiles. We have ample evidence that Jews living in gentile areas understood very well that they depended on gentile toleration for their well-being and strove to live as good guests in the Diaspora.
Isaac in Synagogue Floors
THE ZODIAC was prominently displayed in the center of many Greco-Roman synagogue floors. Though one finds depictions of the zodiac in pagan art, one rarely sees it depicted in floors. The second panel of the synagogue floors was frequently a depiction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The two pillars in front, as well as the curtain of the ark are often depicted, along with the implements of Temple worship, and the familiar basilicate facade. The relationship between the Temple and the synagogue has been discussed many times. This depiction is easy to understand as a statement of the continuity of Israel’s worship from Temple to synagogue. It is possible that the zodiac is itself a reference to the Temple, as one finds a zodiac on the base of the Temple minorah taken by Titus.
The third panel in a number of synagogues was the depiction of Genesis 22, the sacrifice of Isaac, yet another reference to the Temple. But it is also an important story within both later Judaism and Christianity. In Christianity it became a crucial typology and prophecy of the passion of Christ. First, and earliest in the tradition is the connection between the two fathers: Abraham and God are compared as being willing to give up their sons (e.g. John 3:16); amongst the Church Fathers the relationship between Isaac and Jesus as martyrs and sacrificial victims is often compared.
Why synagogue mosaic-floors so frequently depict the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22) is more ambiguous. The connection between the sacrifice of Isaac and Mount Moriah, already identified in Scripture as the Temple Mount, would have been clear to all. So the sacrifice of Isaac may be another symbol of the Temple sacrifice, now transferred to the prayers of the synagogue. That Isaac was not actually sacrificed might easily be seen as justification for the termination of sacrifice and its non-inclusion in the synagogue service.
Isaac was also viewed as actually sacrificed and resurrected in various places in Midrash.33 This is likely to be the Jewish antidote to Christian notions of vicarious atonement, the symbol that could be turned to the Jewish equivalent of Christianity’s cosmocrator crucifix. This possibility also raises the further serious and very strong pre-Christian tradition that Isaac stands with Abel within the martyr tradition. Too often in Late Antiquity and the Byzantine Period, Jews needed encouragement in their hour of trial, often when Christians were the persecutors. It was no wonder that they frequently welcomed the Arabs as liberators from the Christian Empire. But, as Isaac was not actually slaughtered, it is also possible that the symbol of Isaac stood for the Jewish notion that martyrdom should be avoided wherever possible, as well as encouraging martyrs in their unavoidable hour of trial. Isaac also stood for the synagogue’s faith that, though Jews were constantly imperiled in the Christian empire, God would save them alive, not as martyrs, as he had saved Isaac and Daniel alive.
In a further development of the rescue motif, which began in the stories about Daniel and Isaac, the Jewish mystical tradition contains the folkloric story of Lupinus Caesar (otherwise unknown) and the martyrdom of Hananyah ben Teradion.34 In the story, the emperor martyrs Hananyah, one of the mystic masters, but God substitutes one for the other and Lupinus, in fact, dies two deaths. The story shows that mystic knowledge helps the adept avoid martyrdom. Mystical traditions contain many rites and experiences of spiritual martyrdom-namely an ecstatic experience of martyrdom without any necessary, physical martyrdom. Not that it is a pretense. The mystic stands before God, handing his soul over to him (mesirat nefesh). Lawrence Fine has called this “spiritual martyrdom” or “contemplative death.”35 Rather than use martyrdom to help propagate the faith, Rabbinic Judaism attempts to minimize the losses from martyrdom whenever it is avoidable.