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Second Temple Judaism: The Rise of a Beatific Afterlife in the Bible

FOR WE MUST needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again; neither doth God respect any person: yet doth he devise means, that his banished be not expelled from him. (2 Sam 14:14)

Here is the classic King James Version of the advice of the wise woman of Tekoa to David. The first part of the verse is clear and poignant. Our lives are like water spilt on the ground. Life is lost as it is lived; it cannot be recovered. Yet the second phrase of the passage seems more portentous and has been translated, as here, to say something more about God’s rescue of the righteous from the abandonment of death. The word nefesh (soul) occurs in the text in a way that can be capitalized upon by later thinkers. The Hebrew is, in fact, not so much uncertain as part of a difficult argument. In context, it is part of a ruse, planned by Joab, to convince David to allow Absalom to return from exile. The woman seems to mean that King David should be just as lenient as God since, as David has himself judged, God desires the survival of a sole surviving son. Because the situation is parallel to the banishment of Absalom, it is equally an argument for allowing Absalom to return from exile without further punishment, a point which the wise woman immediately presses upon David.

The original meaning is not likely to go beyond the sad realization that everyone passes from God’s sight, mitigated by the comfort that God mercifully can preserve the seed of a family for the next generation. Indeed, the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Bible) points out that God will take the exiled as well. Yet the King James Version, basing itself partly on the Vulgate, translates the passage in a more generalized and a very much more hopeful way. The Vulgate is certainly one major step in the direction of the hereafter. A beatific afterlife is so powerful an incentive in life that once it has entered Christian life, it is hard to imagine that it was not always present in the Hebrew text.¹ But it was not.

Furthermore, life after death did not enter Jewish thought immediately after the Jews met the Persians and the Greeks. The right social and historical situation had to arise before a beatific afterlife was expressed in Jewish thought.

The Book of Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth)

THE BOOK OF Ecclesiastes was written during the Persian period (539-332 BCE) or, a bit later, during the early Hellenistic period (332 BCE-65 BCE). Along with Job, it is an articulate denial of life after death. It is so pointed a denial that one is forced to the conclusion that the Jews were aware of notions of afterlife in Persian and Greek culture.

Interestingly, the “stoicism” in Ecclesiastes might have come from almost any period of Israelite thinking, as a certain fatalism has been part of Near Eastern Wisdom literature since its inception.² But the grammar, word usage, and syntax indicate that the book was written in Second Temple times. Ecclesiastes is traditionally thought to date from the time of Solomon, who is identified as the narrator, Qoheleth, on the grounds that the narrator describes himself as “a scion of David, king in Jerusalem” (Eccles 1:1). There are no strong grounds for the identification with Solomon. The English title “Ecclesiastes” comes from the Latin transcription of the Greek translation of the term qoheleth, which was taken to mean something like “a member of the assembly.” The rabbis, noting the fatalistic tone in it, said that although it was written by Solomon, it was written during his declining, more cynical years-the product of an old, worldly-wise and pessimistic man, who despite his greatness was also guilty of a number of very worldly sins. And so a remarkable document has come down to us by ascription to an undisputedly great, though tarnished, Judean king.

The most recent, full treatment of the book, Ecclesiastes by Choon-Leong Seow for the Anchor Bible, is a sober and almost convincing argument for its Persian provenance. To begin with, there are two widely recognized Persian loanwords in Ecclesiastes: pardes (2:5) meaning “garden, orchard” (cognate with Greek paradeisos and English “paradise”) and pitgam (8:11) meaning “proverb, aphorism” (cognate with Greek apophthegmos and English “apothegm”). The word “paradise” is, of course, crucial for the development of notions of the afterlife. But it has not yet been put to the purpose of describing our ultimate disposition.

These words are important because there is no clear evidence of any Persianism in Israelite documents prior to the Achaemenid period. Yet, we should be careful about concluding too much from these terms. Both these early Persian words-“paradise” and “apothegm”-are also found in Greek, either by cognation or by borrowing; they may just as well be an argument for Hellenization.

More importantly for the Persian dating, there are a great number of Aramaic phrases in Ecclesiastes. Aramaic was the lingua franca of the Persian Empire in its western provinces. Because of its closeness to Hebrew, Aramaic words were accepted readily into Hebrew, far more easily than Persian or Greek words. Indeed, many ancient writers seem unaware of the distinction. By the Roman and Byzantine periods, Aramaic had virtually replaced Hebrew as the common tongue. At the same time, many Greek and even Latin words were accepted into general parlance but the rate of absorption was much slower by comparison to Aramaic.³ Persian words also creep in here and there, especially in the Talmudic period, where the major Jewish community was found in Babylonia. All of this makes certain that the book of Ecclesiastes dates to the end of the Persian or to the beginning of the Greek period in Israelite history. No other explanation seems realistic, but neither is there adequate grounds for more specificity.

One of the most obvious changes in Israelite life by the end of the Persian period was the rise of a commercial and monetary economy. The change to a moneyed economy can be seen in the epigraphy of the period and it can be seen here in Ecclesiastes. Seow notes that the effects of the new economic system on the wisdom literature in Ecclesiastes: “One who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor whoever loves abundance with yield” (5:10). This statement recognizes that both barter and monetary exchange are economic realities. There are also a number of statements about interest and capital building. Ecclesiastes notes what every moneyed economy has thereafter noted: Money does not bring happiness. The worker sleeps well while the rich have no rest in their surfeit (5:12): “While Qohelet clearly draws on timeless wisdom teachings, he also addresses people facing a new world of money and finance.”⁴ Ecclesiastes reflects a very different social reality than the subsistence agriculture of preexilic Judah.

Even if Qoheleth was not himself a king and merely adopting that role as a literary conceit, he belonged to a class of people who were both working hard and benefiting from the newfound affluence:

Behold, what I have seen to be good and to be fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life which God has given him, for this is his lot. Every man also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and find enjoyment in his toil-this is the gift of God. For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart. (Eccles 5:18-20)

On the other hand, he is quite upset with a number of aspects of this new moneyed economy. He sees oppression of the poor, economic injustice, and even sudden ruin:

No man has power to retain the spirit, or authority over the day of death; there is no discharge from war, nor will wickedness deliver those who are given to it. (Eccles 8:8)

He advises that investment and assumption of risk are profitable activities but should be balanced by charity for the less fortunate:

Cast your bread upon the waters,

for you will find it after many days.

Give a portion to seven, or even to eight,

for you know not what evil may happen on earth.

    (Eccles 11:1-2)

Qoheleth admits that the newfound economic affluence is good but then critiques the accompanying greed. His message, that all is vanity, is meant to put this affluence in the correct perspective. Life is not just a race to accumulate the most goods, as it is full of terrible misfortunes and upheavals, and it always ends in death.

It is quite possible that this perception took place during the Persian period, as Seow suggests. It is also possible that the setting is the beginning of the Greek period, after the conquest of Alexander in 332 BCE. Indeed, as Seow himself has shown, and as a number of other people have suggested, the economic characteristics of the Hellenistic period were already well established during the Persian period.⁵ If the Persians presided over the “takeoff” period of the economy, the Hellenists brought the development of true international trade, which Judea was well positioned geographically to exploit. In fact, the Jews complained bitterly of the lack of prosperity and affluence in the early Persian period (Neh 9:32-39). But Greek documents show a very comfortable, new urban class, the very ones who can appreciate the value of the new Hellenistic culture. To distinguish between the the cultural conditions of the end of the Persian period and the beginning of the Ptolemaic one may be impossible in Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes is important for the history of the development of the notion of the afterlife, especially because it emphasizes that the idea does not develop early among Jewish aristocrats living in the land of Israel. If he were so disposed, Qoheleth could have appealed to either of two, well-developed foreign notions of beatific afterlife. He might have used either to encourage people to be honest and lead moral lives. But, evidently, he came to the opposite conclusion, and thus the book can be seen as a companion piece to the book of Job:

Moreover I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, wickedness was there, and in the place of righteousness, wickedness was there as well. I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for he has appointed a time for every matter, and for every work. I said in my heart with regard to human beings that God is testing them to show that they are but animals. For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and humans have no advantage over the animals; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knows whether the human spirit goes upward and the spirit of animals goes downward to the earth? So I saw that there is nothing better than that all should enjoy their work, for that is their lot; who can bring them to see what will be after them? (Eccles 3:16-22)

The context for these observations by Qoheleth is the seeming injustice and hypocrisy in the world. Ecclesiastes does not rely on a concept of life after death to guarantee justice. Instead, it makes a different observation: God is testing humanity by showing them how close they are to animals, suggesting that the wisdom to perceive the situation will itself permit humanity to regain the proper path. The only afterlife Qoheleth suggests is that we return to dust, just as Genesis 3 says. Qoheleth is reasserting traditional Hebrew values but he valorizes them in a very affecting personal voice, a self-possessed personal sensibility that we have not heard before in Jewish society.

Qoheleth goes out of his way to say that the fate of both animals and humans is the same: They all die. But he then asks a rhetorical question, querying whether anyone knows for sure whether human spirit goes up while animals go down into the earth? This is a most astonishing question, since until now the Israelites and the Jews after them have articulated clearly that humans normally go down to Sheol when they die. Qoheleth was aware of new ideas percolating in the area, ideas which suggested that we ascend to the heavens when we die. He denies their validity.

His opposition may even be influenced by the foreignness of the ideas. It may be the very fact that the Fravashi is Persian and the immortal soul is Greek that bothers him. In any event it looks as if some unstated and uncharacterized notions of a beatific afterlife were already known in Jewish Hebrew culture that Ecclesiastes is going out of its way to question it. Even though Ecclesiastes denies a beatific afterlife, or says that we should never count on reward after death, merely asking the question and suggesting that our spirits can go up rather than down to the grave suggests that we have entered another phase in Hebrew thought.

Qoheleth himself counts on observation of the world to defeat the notion. He suggests that any such traditions of human spirit heading upwards after death is counterintuitive:

This is an evil in all that happens under the sun, that the same fate comes to everyone. Moreover, the hearts of all are full of evil; madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. But whoever is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no more reward, and even the memory of them is lost. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished; never again will they have any share in all that happens under the sun. Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going. (Eccles 9:3-10)

In this passage, Qoheleth accepts the notion of Sheol. He reproduces the solace of the Old Babylonian version of The Gilgamesh Epic. He explicitly denies resurrection and return to this world after death. Logically, he is also sceptical of the prophetic notion that God will Himself intervene to set the world right. He goes beyond pessimism and agnosticism about the life after death.

Instead, he states positively that there is no reward or punishment in the life after death. It is the same reward for all. But his reaction is not despair; rather it is closer to stoic apatheia, stoic indifference. Like Sidduri in the old Babylonian version of The Gilgamesh Epic, he suggests a carpe diem (literally: “seize the day”) theme. Enjoy life. Eat and drink with enjoyment; let your family give you pleasure; dress well. This life is all that we can know. Don’t count on anything more.

Here, in Ecclesiastes, is the beginning of the position that Josephus and the New Testament associate with the Sadducees. This class comes from the highest level of the society but, by the first century CE, Josephus calls them boorish and too indifferent to the needs of their inferiors. Whatever their manners, their rejection of life after death is grounded in Scripture, particularly in the book of Ecclesiastes.

The Wisdom of Jesus Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus)

EVEN IN THE later book of the Wisdom of Jesus Ben Sira, also known as Sirach, Siracides or Ecclesiasticus, we find similar notions which stand heroically against any doctrine of beatific afterlife. All rewards and punishments are experienced in this life. Adversity is a test of one’s faith: “Opt not for the success of pride; remember it will not reach death unpunished” (Sir 9:12). Even more important is his famous discussion of death:

Give, take, and treat yourself well,

    for in the netherworld there are no joys to seek.

All flesh grows old, like a garment;

    the age-old law is: all must die. (Sir 14:16-17)

This text merely says that all die. But in Ben Sira there is no remedy for death on the other side of the grave. There are two principal ways in which a person outlasts death. The first is through children (Sir 30:4-5). They will represent their parents after death. The other way is by means of lasting reputation (Sir 41:11-13). For Ben Sira, they are both the most admirable and worthwhile life occupations.

The Hebrew text is actually more pessimistic on the issue of afterlife than is the Greek. In the Greek translation, several possible allusions to retribution in the hereafter are mentioned, especially Sirach 7:17b and 48:11b. The reasons for this may be that the translation was written after the publication of the visions of Daniel while the original certainly precedes them. The Greek version was likely glossed to contain the ever more popular notions of life after death.

The Arrival of the Notion of Resurrection

EVIDENCE OF the gradual imposition of the idea of beatific afterlife surfaces in the later prophets and psalms. One of the most famous passages occurs in Ezekiel 37, dated sometime around the victory of Cyrus over the Neo-Babylonian empire in 539 BCE. But it actually means less than has been attributed to it:

The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O LORD God, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the LORD God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the LORD.” So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude. (Ezek 37:1-10)

No passage in the Hebrew Bible appears to be more a discussion of bodily resurrection. It actually describes the physical process by which the bones of the dead are re-covered with flesh and built into human beings again. The passage has affected ever after the imagery and depiction of the resurrection promised by the Bible. Zoroastrian notions of the resurrection, starting with the bones of the dead, seems naturally to be implicated; but this parallel raises a whole host of chronological and historical problems.⁶ The beginning of Ezekiel’s career was far too early and too far west for Zoroastrian influence. Even if these images had been borrowed, they have been well adapted into Israelite thought. If the ultimate source is Zoroastrianism, gone is the notion of battle between good and evil at the end of time and gone is the importance of the saving drink of Haoma.

Instead, it looks to be the authentic and independent vision of the Israelite prophet. But the issue is not resurrection. There is no evidence that this passage is meant to be a prophecy of resurrection at all. It uses the imagery of resurrection in a very important and reassuring way. But it does not promise resurrection to the Judeans. Rather, it uses the metaphor of resurrection to promise national regeneration. There is no suggestion that resurrection is supposed to happen to anyone personally or individually. It is only the striking vehicle of the metaphor for the message of the prophecy. The very next words in the passage clarify that the vision is a symbolic depiction of the effect of prophecy on the exiles and not meant to be literal at all:

Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the LORD God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act,” says the Lord. (Ezek 37:11-14)

The verses immediately following the description of bodily resurrection make clear that this is a prophetic vision, with a symbolic meaning for the present, not a literal prophecy of the end of time. The interpretation of the vision is to be found starting in verse 11, which states that the people are metaphorically dead, lacking in spirit and morale. The prophet’s burden is to infuse them with a new spirit, which comes from his prophetic visions of restoration and his prophetic utterances of encouragement. The grave is clearly understood as low morale, exile, and cultic pollution. Those who return from exile are as though they have been restored to life. They again hear the prophetic voice. The kingdoms of Judah and Israel will be restored to life but they will be united under the aegis of the Davidic king. They will be one branch (vv 21ff.). And idolatry will cease to exist in the land and so will all the pollutions of idolatry and the dead bodies. They will all know the LORD.

The prophet also seems to be answering a question generated by a real issue of what to do about the bones of corpses strewn about the land of Israel a half century previously when the Babylonians devastated the land. For returning exiles, the question of the impurity of the land, impurity created by the unburied corpses, and impurity created by the sins of the forefathers, would have been significant. Perhaps the vision of the resurrection is one reflection on how God will resolve it.

Even if the passage is not meant to be a literal description of and promise of life after death, it can certainly furnish a new vocabulary of images of resurrection directly into Israelite thought and thus provide the language for belief in life after death in future generations. That, it has done extremely well. After the cultural situation to which the prophet speaks faded into history, his striking imagery of a personal life after death retains its prophetic immediacy. The Targum interprets this passage as the prophecy of the resurrection of the ten lost tribes of Israel (not all of Israel). The Dura Europos fresco paintings depict this scene vividly as a literal resurrection. The Church Fathers-especially Justin Martyr (Apol. 2.87), Irenaeus (Haer. 5.1) and Tertullian (Res. 30)-used this scene as a Biblical demonstration of the resurrection. Tertullian even refuted the Gnostic opinion that this passage referred only to the restoration of Israel and not to personal resurrection.

The rabbis interpreted the passages in various ways, including as a literal future resurrection scene, but were reluctant to use it as proof for the general doctrine of resurrection because it did not appear in the first five books of Moses and thus could not offer the best support and precedent for the doctrine. One rabbi even suggested imaginatively that the dead were actually resurrected as a sign of the end, that they sang their song of praise to the LORD, and then they died immediately again to await the final consummation.⁷

The Isaianic Apocalypse: Isaiah 24-27

THE LANGUAGE in chapters 24 through 27 of Isaiah is visionary; it describes life after death, and, again, it is not likely to be meant literally. But in this passage there is a good deal of ambiguity. While it is scarcely true that the imagery of life after death automatically assumes a mature belief in resurrection, it is quite true that this very concrete resurrection imagery suggests that the belief was present in Israelite society. Yet, the report that a prophet saw this vision is no guarantee that the imagery was not borrowed from Canaanite or Persian thought either.⁸

If notions of resurrection or beatific life after death were already present in Israelite thought, they had not been emphasized in any significant way. One would expect that a belief like resurrection of the body would enter with a bold statement, not sneak in the back door. One such place is Isaiah 25:8-9 where the prophet envisions a day in which God will destroy death:

He will swallow up death for ever, and the LORD GOD will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth; for the LORD has spoken. It will be said on that day, “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the LORD; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

This prophecy is a vision of a perfected future. It would be surprising if death were present in a perfected future. The vision is an example of the prophetic “Day of the LORD.” The question is only how the prophet will articulate the remedy to death. Here, he picks a Canaanite motif of Ba’al’s victory over Mot. Why the prophet has chosen a mythological Canaanite image is not clear-perhaps only because it was a known story or even partly out of a polemical concern to assert YHWH’S, not Ba’al’s, authorship of life and death.

In Canaanite mythology it was Ba ’al who conquered death, but he has to renew the battle periodically. Save for Ba ’al, whom death regurgitates, death itself swallows all. The prophet reverses the metaphor by applying it to YHWH as the savior of Israel and LORD of life and death. It is a brave and striking metaphor but not as much of a religious innovation as it first seems, even in Israel. What is striking about the image is that YHWH will defeat death historically, once and for all and forever, not defeat death every-so-often at the turn of seasons. Indeed, the whole point of the image is that death is still very much part of the world. God’s action is awaited in the future. The vision is for the future, just as it is for the faithful to YHWH alone.

Another place where notions of eternal life enter the Isaianic apocalypse is Isaiah 26:19. This passage is much more complicated and much more difficult to understand:

Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise.⁹ O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a radiant dew, and the earth will give birth to those long dead.

Come, my people, enter your chambers, and shut your doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until the wrath is past.

For the LORD comes out from his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity; the earth will disclose the blood shed on it, and will no longer cover its slain. (Isa 26:19-21)

This passage has been quoted throughout Western history, having donated its words to prayers and thanksgivings, as well as to titles of plays and poems, to inspire faith and religious vision, and promise salvation to every Abrahamic faith. Out of context, it seems much more clearly a reference to resurrection than it actually is, when read in its confusing and somewhat ambiguous literary context. Furthermore, making the passage’s interpretation even more difficult, this Isaianic passage has not yielded much to historical analysis: nobody agrees when it was written or to what it refers.

Basing their views as much on its subject matter as anything else, many scholars suspect that chapters 24-27 of Isaiah, the so-called “Isaianic Apocalypse,” are from a much later time than the original Isaiah of chapters 1-39.¹⁰ Most of Isaiah 1-39 is from the First Temple period, from the eighth century BCE, written by a Judahite prophet during the Syro-Ephraimite War with the specter of a resurgent Assyria. But chapters 24-27 are in many ways like Isaiah 40-66, which discuss the return from exile (538-515 BCE), though they are angrier and more vehement. We call the nameless prophet of Isaiah 40-66 Second Isaiah (also called Deutero-Isaiah) since his prophecies were combined with the earlier one. There is also a third writer in the later parts of Isaiah 56-66, who can be called, conventionally, Third Isaiah.

But no one is sure who is the author of Isaiah 24-27 nor when he lived; no one can even satisfactorily identify the voice with any of the other authors in the book of Isaiah. Identifying the “Isaianic apocalypse” as contemporary with 2 or 3 Isaiah is only a guess made on the basis of the known composite nature of the volume.

Before speculating on the situation which produced the lines of Isaiah 26:19-21, we should analyze what they say in context. The lines are analogous to the Ezekiel 37. As in Ezekiel 37, there is an underlying ambiguity as to whether the prophet meant us to understand a literal resurrection. Unlike Ezekiel 37, where the prophecy is clearly intended to be metaphorical, here it is quite difficult to tell.

On the one hand, the context suggests a symbolic rather than a literal message. Obviously the writer does not mean that the people will literally give birth. It is again the people and their political, social regeneration that is the subject of the passage, just as it is in Ezekiel 37. The prophet points out the previous failures of the people. They have already tried to return to the LORD. But, unlike in Ezekiel 37, their endeavors are in vain. Like Ezekiel 37, the prophet promises that the people will be renewed with the help of the prophetic spirit, provided by the prophet. So far, the message is similar to Ezekiel, except ritual purity is not the issue, and the historical time and the imagery is unstated.

Unlike Ezekiel 37, whether or not we are dealing with a metaphor or the literal resurrection, the exact event that the prophet describes is obscure. The prophet may in fact be saying that the righteous dead will be the agents of God’s punishment, that the righteous will arise to punish the sinners. If so, the prophet was using Canaanite language in a very ironic way, to say the dead will punish God’s enemies who have ignored His words.

If I had to guess (and I do have to guess, since there are no completely convincing previous analyses of the passage for me to rely on), I would say that the author is actually 1 Isaiah, and that he is using the terminology of Canaanite myth and ritual ironically to talk about the terrible destruction brought to Jerusalem by the Assyrians, followed by their even more terrible and awesome retreat in 701 BCE. Since it has not been suggested before, let us explore the possibility that Isaiah 26 was written by the original Isaiah, and that the event he describes is the great Assyrian siege of Jerusalem, which was lifted when the Assyrian army was struck with a plague (2 Kgs 18-20, especially 19:35). Hezekiah himself became sick immediately afterwards (2 Kgs 20:1-21). And his recovery was seen as divine intervention to save the Judahite kingdom yet again. But this suggestion demands further explanation.

So far there is nothing that demands a literal reading of resurrection. Indeed, Psalms shows us that a terrible sickness like Hezekiah’s might certainly be treated as if the king had already been in Sheol, only to recover to normal life with God’s help, as we have seen so often in the conventional language of Psalms. It may also be the dominant metaphor for the recovery of the people after the siege. That means that the second, parallel line in Isaiah 26:19, which sounds so literal, may only be a restatement of the metaphor of regeneration: “For your dew is a radiant dew, and the earth will give birth to those long dead” (Isa 26:19b). Then the description of closing doors until the malevolence has gone by might be a literal reference to the siege with the Assyrian corpses still lying on the field of battle, like the firstborn dead of Egypt in the Exodus story.

That is speculation but so are all the other explanations of this passage. Even if unsubstantiated, this hypothesis shows that the passage does not have to be about the literal resurrection of the dead. Whatever else is true, in context, it is not a clear and impressive prophecy of literal future bodily resurrection.

So let us explore it further for a moment. The salvation of Jerusalem from the Assyrian menace in 701 BCE would have been seen as a mighty intervention from God, as is described in 2 Kings. The prophet would be explaining Israel’s deliverance as a miraculous intervention from God, balanced by punishment for the enemies of God. The Israelites who participated in the cult of the dead, perhaps also other idolaters, are included in the punishment, reasoning “measure for measure”: God will give these worshipers of the dead punishment from the dead. The dead will be His agents. Then the righteous, who were thought dead because they were surrounded by the Assyrians and truly given up for dead, will reemerge from the siege: “Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise. O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy!” (Isa 26:19). This also follows Hezekiah’s reemergence from his sickness, after being considered dead, even by the prophet Isaiah himself.

Whatever else this speculation shows, it demonstrates that the Isaiah and Ezekiel passages need not be discussions of literal resurrection. However, even if both these passages are taken as references to literal resurrection, they hardly affect the general tenor of Israelite religion, which emphasized life on this earth and behavior in the world. That much is unaffected by the outcome of an analysis of Ezekiel 37 and Isaiah 26. But these two passages are absolutely crucial for understanding whence the language of resurrection comes. Metaphorical here, resurrection becomes absolutely literal in Daniel 12. Therefore these passages become the reservoir of images that illustrate what resurrection means.

Daniel 12: The Dead Arise at Long Last

THE FIRST CLEAR reference to resurrection can be defined exactly; both its date and circumstances can be fixed accurately:

“At that time Michael, the great prince, the protector of your people, shall arise. There shall be a time of anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. But you, Daniel, keep the words secret and the book sealed until the time of the end. Many shall be running back and forth, and evil shall increase.” (Dan 12:1-3)

The sign of the resurrection will be the arrival of the great prince, the archangel Michael. It will be a time of unprecedented, terrible tribulation. But the people whose names are written in the book shall be rescued. This book, which the prophet mentions in such a portentous way, had an ambiguous past in the Bible, though it quickly became part of standard Jewish lore (See e.g., ascension of Isaiah 9:21-22), eventually providing the central metaphor of the Jewish New Year (m. Rosh Hashanah 1:1). Even in the contemporary Jewish service of the New Year, “the Book of Life” has a major role. The book is, likely, to be identified with the mysterious book Moses mentions in Exodus 32:32: “But now, if thou wilt forgive their sin-and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.” Whatever the book, the metaphor dramatizes God’s clear and predestined plan for vindication of the earth. Daniel 12:2 promises resurrection to some of Israel, not to all, not even to all those who are righteous, as would be true if Isaiah 26 or Ezekiel 37 were to be understood literally. The presence of the book suggests that God has indicated his intentions in advance, completed an inevitable plan, will hold to it, and that this knowledge is available to prophets like Moses who can read it ahead of time. The writer is, in effect, claiming the credentials of a prophet-not an oral one like the prophets of old, but a new wisdom prophet who can read God’s plan when God choses to show it.

This writer is claiming prophecy and literary tradition at the same time. Besides the revelation of God’s secret plan, he is aware of the previous writing on the subject, primarily the writing we have just reviewed, because his language is based on the metaphors in the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel. Some of the language in Daniel 12:1-3 is taken directly from Isaiah 26:19, which says that the dead will “awaken.” The writer of Daniel has taken the ambiguous prophecy of Isaiah in a literal sense, saying that “the sleepers in the dust” will literally arise.¹¹ But he did not take the writing literally in every respect because he has some innovative notions about the identity of the resurrected and the process of resurrection.

Strangely, he goes on to say that resurrection will not be reserved for the righteous alone. Also some whose behavior was reprehensible will be resurrected for eternal contempt and shame. This is totally missing from any of previous references in the Hebrew Bible but it is not totally out of keeping with Zoroastrian notions of resurrection, that promised it eventually to all. However, Zoroastrian influence is unlikely here. The Zoroastrians believed that the time in the grave would absolve all sinners from their sins. In this case, the resurrection promised to evildoers is not to forgive them but to punish them the more. Discussions of resurrection in Judaism only rewarded the righteous until the rise of Rabbinic Judaism which took seriously that all Israel will be saved, as does Paul: “And so all Israel will be saved; as it is written, ‘The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob’” (Rom 11:26). Even in this case, the rabbis maintained that all Israel will be righteous.

Another passage that was particularly important to the seer is Isaiah 66. The only other place in the Hebrew Bible where the perplexing word dera’on ((lědor’ōn olām, “eternal abhorance”) of Daniel 12:2 appears is in Isaiah 66:24: “And they shall go forth and look on the dead bodies of the men that have rebelled against me; for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.” The Septuagint translates the passage slightly differently, as “spectacle”: “a spectacle for all flesh,” I suppose meaning a spectacle of derision, showing that although the word was somewhat puzzling even in ancient times, a consensus about its meaning had already arisen.

But the connection with Isaiah 66 is not merely adventitious; it is a major clue to the composition of the passage. We are fortunate that the words only appear in these two places because they underline how much the seer in Daniel is actually dependent on Isaiah 66. Daniel’s vision is prophecy and confirmation that the last part of Isaiah 66 is to come true in a surprising way with the resurrection of the righteous remnant:

And they shall go forth and look on the dead bodies of the men that have rebelled against me; for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh. (Isa 66: 23-24)

The term “abhorrence,” used only twice in the Hebrew Bible, is like a tracer bullet, showing that the vision of Isaiah 66 is being interpreted by the seer in Daniel as a prophecy that will shortly come true. The imagery of Isaiah 24-27 is itself interpreted in Isaiah 66.¹²

The nations will soon know of the Lord’s power because He himself will show them His Glory. Quite possibly, Daniel interpreted this passage to mean that the “son of man,” the manlike figure of Daniel 7:13 is appointed the Glory of the Lord. Daniel probably had the archangel Michael in mind for the position of “Glory of the Lord,” because his name means “he who is like God.”

It looks like the resurrection prophecy of Daniel 12:1-2 is based on a visionary understanding of Isaiah 66:14 “Your bones will flower like grass.” To establish a consistent picture, the seer must also combine Isaiah 66:14 with the imagery of Ezekiel 37, “the vision of the dry bones,” in which the bones lying dry in the valley come together with tendons, flesh, and skin to form human beings again. The purpose of the resurrection in Daniel 12, according to the seer Daniel’s inspired exegesis of Isaiah 66:14, was to show the plan of the Lord, that the Lord’s hand would be known: “that the hand of the LORD is with his servants and his indignation against his enemies” (Isa 66:14). The medium of this combination of passages is a prophetic, revelatory vision, which combines passages from all over the Bible, not in a casual fashion but in a very complex and sophisticated manner. But it is not exegesis; it is a visionary revelation, as the Daniel text explicitly says. It is a vision that the seer has received after avid study of the text. This writing could not have been produced merely by an intellectual exegesis of the text, but rather by a religiously altered state of consciousness (see ch. 8). No exegete would have mixed all the motifs of all these passages without seeking a methodological justification or calling attention to the way in which the passages should be combined; after his study of Isaiah 66, the prophet experienced a dream or vision, in which all the passages were combined into one.

Of particular interest is the following vision of judgment in Isaiah 66.¹³ In the vision the sinners are those who eat swine’s flesh; God arrives in his chariotry in his warrior (“Ba’al”) form as the “Glory,” easily the best interpretation of the human figure in Daniel 7:13-14.¹⁴ God makes a new heaven and a new earth, he brings judgment against his enemies. In this vision of the end, Israel and the nations stream to Jerusalem to worship together, and the dead bodies of those who have rebelled against God are to be an example to all flesh (presumably those who have come to Jerusalem). The seer of Daniel 12 has re-imbued the vision of Isaiah 66 with new life because the vision of the end of time in Isaiah 66 seems to him to fit the historical circumstances of Daniel 12.

This earliest undoubted reference to literal resurrection in the Hebrew Bible suggests that both the righteous and the very evil need to be resurrected for the purposes of giving them their valid and well-deserved deserts. This hope comes not just from the study of Scripture but from observation of historical events. The prophet understood a particular historical circumstance by visionary experience in which he saw the events of Isaiah 66 (itself an interpretation of Isaiah 24-27, together with Ezekiel 37 as well). As a result, he produces Daniel 12. The new Scripture describes a particular historical and social situation which can be characterized and, ultimately, identified. First of all, it was a time when there were gentiles near Jerusalem, possibly the suggestion of a foreign army. It comes, no doubt, from the observation that the pious had been suffering, not for forgetting God’s law but precisely because they observed it. It comes from a time when some were eating pork and others, trembling for the fear of God, forbeared from the sin. If God was letting his faithful suffer, the very promises of the Bible are brought into doubt. The context for this observation must surely be persecution and martyrdom. The passage obviously describes the Maccabean revolt.

Astral Transformation for the Maskilim and the “Holy Ones”

BESIDES THE general resurrection and punishment, a very interesting special reward is promised to those who make others wise (hamaskilim). They shall shine like the brightness of the heaven, like (or, more exactly: as) stars forever. Given the mythological past of wisdom in the ancient Near East, it is probable that the author means here not just a literary figure but a literal identification of the knowledge-givers with the stars. They shall be luminous beings, transformed into shining stars, which can only mean to the Jews that they shall become angels. For stars had been identified as angelic creatures from earliest times (e.g., Judg 5:20; also Job 38:7).

One should also note that the term for brightness here is zohar, not accidentally also the name of the principal work of Kabbalah, the Zohar. Since we shall shortly see that the “Son of Man” is enthroned next to God in Daniel 7:13-14, it is quite possible, in fact likely, that this is meant to depict how God will exalt those “wisdom-givers” who become “angels.” Several different figures are actually identified with the “Son of Man” in later literature: Jesus is identified with the “Son of Man” in the Gospels; Enoch is identified with the “Son of Man” in I Enoch 70-71; Metatron is identified with Enoch in 3 Enoch. These passages demonstrate that the leaders will gain the heavenly reward of divine enthronement as angels and stars have. Thus, inherent in this short notice is the basis for Jewish ascent mysticism in all the later mystic literatures: apocalypticism, Merkabah, and especially Kabbalah, which takes one of its primary intuitions into reality from this passage.

But what kind of leaders will be given such an exalted reward? The best answer appears to be those who are faithful enough to undergo martyrdom. Many scholars note the relationship between this passage and a possible martyrdom in Isaiah 53, especially verses 8 and 10. We do not know which specific events may have occasioned this prophetic utterance in Isaiah 53. It must have been something which 2 Isaiah’s listeners easily recognized. Though there is a clear reference to a righteous sufferer, there is no discussion of life after death in 2 Isaiah. It is not even clear that the righteous sufferer is a martyr, as his death is not clearly stated. The most we can say with surety is that the sufferer is brought close to death and then saved by God’s will to see his offspring, though he had suffered terribly.

The Social and Historical Situation: The Maccabean Wars

WE KNOW THE specific events that produced the literal prophecy of a bodily resurrection in Daniel. It was the persecution of Antiochus in the Maccabean Wars, in which forced eating of pork served as the test of faith. Although the story purports to be from the Persian Period, scholarly opinion has surmised that the events producing the visions in Daniel are from a much later time, from the terrible events in the Maccabean war. During this period, as all Jewish children know from the story of Hannukah, righteous Jews were martyred “for their faith,” probably for the first time in Jewish history.¹⁵

Some stories of this period actually illustrate the importance that statements of life after death could achieve in this dark period of Jewish history. First, we note that stories of resurrection are not necessary for a martyr’s death to be meaningful, even in this period. The martyr Eleazar, described in 2 Maccabees 6:18, refused to eat pork, or even to eat acceptable food if the crowd had been told it was swine’s flesh.

“Such pretense is not worthy of our time of life,” he said, “for many of the young might suppose that Eleazar in his ninetieth year had gone over to an alien religion, and through my pretense, for the sake of living a brief moment longer, they would be led astray because of me, while I defile and disgrace my old age. Even if for the present I would avoid the punishment of mortals, yet whether I live or die I shall not escape the hands of the Almighty. Therefore, by bravely giving up my life now, I will show myself worthy of my old age and leave to the young a noble example of how to die a good death willingly and nobly for the revered and holy laws.” When he had said this, he went at once to the rack. (2 Macc 6:21-31)

The old man Eleazar died a martyr’s death, even though he was offered what the persecutors think was a merciful and respectful way out; he accepted martyrdom rather than compromise his faith, because in his last remaining few moments, he did not want to make a mockery of the divine rules by which he had lived his entire life. Not insignificantly, he points out that there are punishments for sinners, either before or after death.

Soon (2 Macc 7) seven brothers and their mother are put to the same torture. In later versions this story became the story of “Hannah and her Seven Sons,” though she was not yet named in this early version. The story is one of such unmitigated horror that the savagery of the days of the Judges pales by comparison. The barbarity of this scene must have struck everyone with fear and doubt about the promises which God had made.

Although the subject of the story is the time of the Maccabean revolt, very few scholars would actually date the composition of this passage to the time of the evil edicts of Antiochus. Second Maccabees was seemingly written in Greek and some years after the events narrated in them had passed. The passages in 2 Maccabees 6 and 7 could easily have been a separate source, which was added into the text by the editors. So we must be careful to note that we do not have a record of actual events but the literary creation of a new genre, a “martyrology.” Although the term “martyr” is not found in pre-Christian acounts, we already see the existence of a pattern of celebration of the death of these heroes. When the text says that they leave behind a pattern or model (hypodeigma, 2Macc 6:31) of nobility and a memory of virtue (mnemosyne), the major theme was of the righteous persecuted and then rewarded by God. That is the master narrative of martyrdom before the term arose in later Christianity.¹⁶

The purpose of this writing is to celebrate the “martyr” as a brave sacrifice for the truth and authenticity of the religion. Martyrdom is a complex social process in which the death of an innocent victim is taken as a proof of the truth of the religion by the audience, be it literary or actual.¹⁷We see a similar method in effect at the beginning of Maccabees, where the editor has included several letters, which may even be authentic, in order to set the scene for the coming problems. On the other hand, he does not here tell the reader that he is relying on an external source so there is some attempt to present the literary creation as fact. The purpose is probably, among other things, to provide a model of martyrdom for present and future martyrs to follow.

This gruesome story differs in several important ways from the story of Eleazar which preceded it. Although the youths are as valliant as the old man, their reasons for allowing themselves to be martyred are quite different. Several of the sons make brave statements of the afterlife:

“You accursed wretch, you dismiss us from this present life, but the King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because we have died for his laws.”

“I got these from Heaven, and because of his laws I disdain them, and from him I hope to get them back again.”

“One cannot but choose to die at the hands of mortals and to cherish the hope God gives of being raised again by him. But for you there will be no resurrection to life!” (2 Macc 6:9, 11, 14)

All of this seems to be a way of spelling out what the first brother says:

“The Lord God is watching over us and in truth has compassion on us, as Moses declared in his song that bore witness against the people to their faces, when he said, ‘And he will have compassion on his servants.’” (2 Macc 7:6)

The mercy of God, which makes the whole notion of resurrection necessary in the case of martyrdom, is a way of spelling out the prophecy that we have already seen in Daniel 12. Resurrection shows God’s continuing mercy in vindicating those who suffer marytrdom. The resurrection will be bodily, in fact, very bodily, as the third son’s remarks make clear. It is much more physical than the resurrection described in Daniel. The effect of this extreme attention to the body in the restoration of this world shows that the tradition of resurrection was not at all obligated to Platonic or any other Greek philosophical thought, although 2 Maccabees was written first in Greek using Greek cultural norms in a variety of ways.

The palpability of the bodily resurrection, wherever it comes from, has become a quintessentially Jewish idea because, when it distinguishes the oppressed from the oppressors, it speaks to the reward which a pious Israelite must obtain through the covenant and, if necessary, through martyrdom. It was the remedy given by God to the Jews because of the cruelty and oppression of foreign domination, a notion which carried on directly into the Roman period. And it is easy to see why it was stressed at this particular moment. The persecutors have destroyed the bodies of these young martyrs, though Deuteronomy promised length of days to those who kept God’s law. But God’s mercy guaranteed that they would have their youth back and have the pleasures of their bodily existence again when God raises them.

In the Greek epitomist’s comments in 2 Maccabees 12:43,¹⁸ we also see a similar interest in resurrection:

He also took up a collection, man by man, to the amount of two thousand drachmas of silver, and sent it to Jerusalem to provide for a sin offering. In doing this he acted very well and honorably, taking account of the resurrection . For if he were not expecting that those who had fallen would rise again , it would have been superfluous to pray for the dead.

Creatio ex Nihilo Is Born to Bolster Resurrection

ONE OTHER important aspect of this passage is often overlooked. The mother encouraged her martyr sons in several ways, but nowhere more importantly than when she exalted God’s creative powers:

“I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you. Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of humankind and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws.” (2 Macc 7:22-23)

And this can be seen even more clearly in 2 Maccabees 7:28: “I beseech you, my child, to look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed. Thus also mankind comes into being.”

This is the first clear statement of creatio ex nihilo, the first time God is clearly praised as creating the world from nothing.¹⁹ In Genesis 1, God does not actually create everything-darkness and the deep precede creation. God creates man from dust of the earth in Genesis 2. The writers of the great prologue in heaven of Genesis 1 were not sensitive to the theological principles which we have inherited from Aristotelianism. Even Isaiah 45, which we looked at briefly above, only praises God as the creator of good and evil, light and darkness, not everything. Perhaps Isaiah’s prophecy meant, therefore, to include everything. Explicitly one might argue that the oppositions-good and evil, light and darkness-implies that God is the author of everything. Now, in the face of the Persians, it is necessary to stress that point explicitly.

In the previous examples where resurrection was discussed, some bodily residuum remains: The dry bones knit together in Ezekiel, the corpses of those who rest in the dust become the basis of the awakened and resurrected saints in Daniel. Here, the text is impelled to stress that God creates from nothing. The martyrs will be resurrected from nothing-even if the bodies of the martyrs are burned and their dust scattered-just as all humans come originally from nothing and the universe itself was created from nothing.

Although the innovation in 2 Maccabees is “creation from nothing,” it is not being used to teach a philosophical doctine. Rather what is being stressed is God’s power to do anything, even the seemingly improbable task of reconstituting a human being when there is nothing left of the corpse. The result of this assertion is the reassurance that God can certainly resurrect the righteous from dust, even from nothing, if nothing remains. There is no gainsaying the absolute innovations which the sudden importation of ideas of life after death found in Hebrew thought and the effect that it immediately had. The argument that the original creation was from nothing is of secondary interest.

One normally thinks that Aristotelian principles suggest the necessity that God create out of nothing, else anything that is coterminous with God can be also thought of as equal with Him. But this passage shows that the motivation for developing a notion of creatio ex nihilo is actually the necessity of clarifying what bodily resurrection means. God needs to not just to preserve the souls of the righteous alive. Now, God needs to be praised for the power to create their bodies again. Previously, the creation testified to God’s power and the Sabbath was the ritual celebration of His power. Now, the creation is also the demonstration of God’s power to resurrect. That was a total innovation in Jewish thought.

Even more interesting is the extent to which this passage mirrors the argument of Zoroastrianism in the Bundahishn (see ch. 4, p. 190). Unfortunately, the Bundahishn is normally thought to be redacted later than 2 Maccabees, though certain traditions in it may be early and this argument would have to be one of the early parts. We must be careful about this parallel, as credibility about God’s ability to effect resurrection is a natural enough question anywhere resurrection is propounded. It may equally be an independent argument adduced out of necessity in each place. Creation from nothing is not an obvious necessity based on the reality of resurrection. It seems to be a borrowing from Zoroastrianism.

But that is hardly proven. It is merely an interesting parallel. The parallel, whatever else it may show, does emphasize Zoroastrian thought can be one context, one contributing factor, in which the notion of Jewish bodily resurrection arose. The second century BCEleaves plenty of time for Zoroastrianism to have influenced Judaism. If there was influence, it also shows that religious ideologies only borrow where they have serious need to adapt. It is not exactly the same doctrine which was developed in Zoroastrianism. It is not less Jewish for being more Zoroastrian. For the Jews, it is the issue of martyrdom that brought resurrection to the fore and that is its Jewish meaning.

One more interesting passage in 2 Maccabees (14:37-46), dealing with the martyrdom of Razis, further illustrates the ideas already discussed. The text tells how Razis attempts to commit suicide but shows instead that his act is actually a kind of martyrdom. Even though the wound is self-inflicted, everyone understands that Razis’ death was a result of Nicanor’s persecution. As a result, Razis dies spewing his own innards but praying that God will return them to him. The terrible pain that he suffers is taken as a token of his enormous faith. The resurrection envisioned seems purely physical, and very bodily, just as are the other resurrection hopes in the book. It appears to come at the end of time. Immortality of the soul is never mentioned in this case nor anywhere else in the book.²⁰

The notion of life after death developed in the land of Israel to explain the martyrdom of the righteous for their religious views. The original idea of resurrection was possibly borrowed from Zoroastrianism. But that hardly describes its essence, structure, or function in Israelite life. The point is: The doctrine of judgment and rewards and punishments in the afterlife was first articulated because it was necessary that the doctrine develop to help people understand the implications of their faith. Wherever the idea comes from, it was tailored to Jewish sensibilities by the time it appeared in Jewish culture. It was there to resolve an important moral, political, and social issue in the time period of Daniel. We will need to return to these texts many times in coming chapters, to fully explore the implications of these short and puzzling texts.

Babylonian Influence, the Enoch Legends, and the Son of Man

BESIDES ZOROASTRIAN and continuing Canaanite influences, ancient Mesopotamian influences are also much in evidence in Second Temple times. First exiled to Babylon by force and then returned to the land of Israel as a part of a great Persian world empire, the Jews were as able as anyone on earth to appreciate the importance of Babylonian wisdom. Babylonian traditions are absorbed in many different parts of the Bible and in various extrabiblical works. Like all the other traditions that were borrowed into Judaism, they were adapted specifically to Hebrew purposes. The reason that these traditions show up in the Enoch literature is apparently due to the Maccabees themselves. They caused a schism in the priesthood. When they took over the role of high priest as well as king, they alienated a group of priests who retreated to the desert and eventually set up the community which used the Dead Sea Scrolls as its library. The displaced or separatist priests, the Zadokites who were actually the founding priesthood of the Second Temple, developed their own traditions, which we see in the Enoch literature.²¹

The Biblical figure of Enoch in Genesis 4 and 5 seems to parallel the Mesopotamian traditions of Enmeduranki and Adapa, wise men who traveled to heaven and founded divinatory priesthoods and ecstatic prophetic guilds, as we have seen in previous chapters. The receipt of these notions in Israel appears in a few verses about Enoch in Genesis, the visions in Daniel 7-13, the enormous pseudepigraphical literature we know as 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, 3 Enoch, and many of the new pseudepigraphical works we find in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Enoch literature itself evinces sure signs of composite authorship, with each book sometimes containing five or six different independent blocks of traditions, which can often be shown to have circulated separately. The enormous variety in this Jewish material can be shown to be based on the Mesopotamian traditions which we surveyed earlier. All this suggests a long and fruitful period of interaction between Israel and Mesopotamian religion, in a variety of different contexts, rather than one confined only to the Second Temple period:²²

When Jared had lived a hundred and sixty-two years he became the father of Enoch. Jared lived after the birth of Enoch eight hundred years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Jared were nine hundred and sixty-two years; and he died. When Enoch had lived sixty-five years, he became the father of Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after the birth of Methuselah three hundred years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him. (Gen 5:18-24)

The report of this Biblical Enoch is contained within the genealogy leading up to the flood. Enoch often occupies the same position in this genealogy as Enmeduranki (sometimes Enmeduranna) does in the Babylonian King List, arguing that there is a much longer ancient Near Eastern background to the Biblical story. For instance, Enoch’s 365-year life is paralleled by Enmeduranki’s association with the sun god. Enmeduranki was also summoned to the divine council chamber. Enmeduranki was also given heavenly and underworld secrets and enthroned by the gods and finally given secret techniques of divination.²³ These themes are prominent in the Enoch material; the most likely explanation is that they were borrowed into it because they were so well known and this short puzzling statement provided a way to make Enoch part of Hebrew prehistory as well. It is the same kind of borrowing we saw in the flood narrative and other events of Biblical prehistory-details from the Wisdom tradition of the known world, which were blended into Israel’s story after having received a distinctive Israelite stamp.

There are several other anomalous parts to the Biblical story. First and most importantly for any study of immortality in the Bible, Enoch’s story is notable in that he alone, of all the members of this genealogy, has no death notice. Instead, the text twice says that Enoch “walked with God,” (Gen 5:22; 5:24) and, at the end of the second, the text states “he was not, for God took him.” This gives the writer the ability to talk about Enoch’s heavenly journey and also about his final disposition in heaven. In doing so, he brought into the narrative all the various notions of translation, heavenly transformation, angelification, and even Messianic redemption. And along the way he describes the mechanisms of solar regularity and weather.

If the terse report in the Bible was a way of “burying” Enoch in the heavens, as it were, it did not work. This surprising violation of the conventional genealogical story stimulates an enormous explanatory novelistic literature. It is likely responsible for the earliest known, extra-canonical Hebrew literature. The Enoch literature assumes that Enoch was transported to heaven at the end of his relatively short, earthly life (his immediate relatives live far longer), presumably cutting his life short for the ultimate reward: astral transformation and enthronement in heaven.

Enoch’s journey to heaven and his transformation there validates the ecstatic and mystical experience of those who stay on earth. It quite nicely fills in the Hebrew Bible’s otherwise puzzling reference to those who in the psalms dwell “with God.” It also confirms by eyewitness report that God intends to reward the righteous after their suffering and punish the oppressors. Furthermore, Enoch’s heavenly journey represents the human transcendence of our material situation to the deathless realm. All of these aspects of the Enoch story become part of the story of Jesus’ resurrection and ascension as well.

Enoch is supposed by this literature to have been commissioned specially by God as a “court-appointed” defense attorney for the rebellious angels. Though he “lost his first case” because the sin of the rebellious angels was so great, Enoch tried his level best and is rewarded for his efforts. The divine edict was that the evil angels must be punished by damnation yet God rewards Enoch for his righteous efforts. The narrative has obvious correlatives with those righteous sufferers on earth who stay true to God’s word. One may pray for the sinners but God will punish them anyway.

Enmeduranki’s relationship to the ecstatic baru priests and Babylon is significant. The Enoch material too is deeply related to the wisdom of the priestly tradition as we find it among the Dead Sea Scroll sectarians who were disenfranchised priests. They boasted of secret wisdom which allowed them knowledge of the heavenly world and gave them access to the presence of God.

Along the way we who are not yet initiated into the secret wisdom but who read the story of Enoch are treated to a narrative demonstrating that God is running the universe well and fairly, explaining all the magnificent machinery of the heavenly economy, and revealing in detail how God’s justice rewards the dead in heaven and punishes the wicked. It also warns us to be prepared for the sudden breakthrough of the apocalyptic end, which will devour the evil powers who have oppressed God’s saints and turn the earth over to the righteous for the peaceful reign of God forever. So besides giving us a short course on the heavenly economy, it develops the standard apocalyptic themes that evil may be in control on earth, but God has plans for the world which will very soon even the score.

The solar calendar is evidently one of the secrets which Enoch imparted to the Qumran community. Qumran observes a solar calendar made up of twelve months of thirty days, divided up into priestly courses, and supplemented by the appropriate number of intercalated days fit between the weeks. These intercalated days stand outside the normal week; as a result the holidays always fall on the same day of the week; no other sect observed such a symmetrical calendar. And since the other sects in Judea figured their calendars by the phase of the moon, it also gives an extra dimension to the apocalyptic work, “The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness,” found for the first time at Qumran in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It seems likely that the title refers to the calendar and designates the group as the “sons of light” marking them off from the rest of the Jews as well as the gentiles.²⁴ In short, it is an independent witness to the sectarian nature of the Enoch literature.

The Enoch literature has been known for many centuries in Greek, but also in more obscure languages like Ethiopic, Armenian, Slavonic, Mandaean, Arabic and even Turkic dialects in Central Asia. From this varied literature it becomes clear that there are at least five separate compositions present in the contemporary version of 1 Enoch. The various versions of 1 Enoch come to us in Aramaic (from Qumran), Greek, and the major text, as it is received from the Ethiopian Christian church. The Aramaic versions at Qumran seem to be the earliest editions but from the variety of different versions and a variety of secondary texts that existed in the first century, it is also evident that the tradition was much more fluid than the received Ethiopic version. Different communities may have picked those parts of the tradition that most suited them.

When Aramaic fragments of 1 Enoch were found at Qumran Cave 4, it became clear that the story was very ancient-some of it going back to the third century BCE. In some sense, the Enoch literature is the link between the prophecies in Daniel and the Qumran community.²⁵ Some of the Jewish version of the tradition, then, may be earlier than the visionary material in Daniel. In fact, a number of scholars have assumed that the material in 1 Enoch is older than the story in Genesis 5, Genesis forming a précis of yet older material. The idea that Enoch literature is older than Genesis which is therefore dependent on it, and not the other way around, is still shocking and not established.²⁶ It is more likely both Genesis and Enoch drew on earlier sages.

Luckily, to look at the afterlife material, we do not have to solve these thorny problems. For our purposes all three documents, 1 Enoch (in its primary Ethiopic, Greek, and Aramaic versions), 2 Enoch (Slavonic) and 3 Enoch (Hebrew) are relevant but in very different ways. We will look at the latter two books in future chapters. 1 Enoch or, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch, is the first of many books based on the terse Biblical report. It provides us with a reservoir of information about life after death, scenes of judgment and apocalyptic ideology. In chapter 14, Enoch begins his journey to heaven to intercede for the fallen angels:

And behold I saw the clouds: And they were calling me in a vision and the fogs were calling me; and the course of the stars and the lightnings were rushing at me and causing me to desire; and in the vision, the winds were causing me to fly and rushing me high up into heaven. And I kept coming (into heaven) until I approached a wall which was built of white marble and surrounded by tongues of fire; and it began to frighten me. And I came into the tongues of the fire and drew near to a great house which was built of white marble, and the inner wall(s) were like mosaics of white marble, the floor of crystal, the ceiling like the path of the stars and the lightnings between which (stood) fiery cherubim and their heaven of water; and flaming fire surrounded the wall(s), and its gates were burning with fire. (1 En 14:8-12, Charlesworth, I, 20)

In back of this description is the blueprint for the heavenly Temple, on which the earthly Temple in Jerusalem was patterned. Apparently, even before the Second Temple was destroyed during the war with the Romans, religious Jews fretted over the condition of the earthly Temple, either because of the behavior of the priests or the plan of the building itself, which differed from the original plan and also from the visionary rebuilt temple described in Ezekiel.²⁷

As we have already seen in Isaiah 66, the visible presence of God in His Temple is often called “God’s Glory,” linking it with the vocabulary in Exodus 24:16-17 (also see LXX), other significant places in the Hebrew Bible, and preeminently in Ezekiel. The Greek term doxa has little to do with “opinion” or “praise” in standard Greek but rather it is translation Greek and became the technical Hebrew term Kābôd, which is translated by doxa in the LXX and which thereafter can indicate God’s principal angelic mediator, who carries the divine name, or even God’s human manifestation.²⁸

Besides the major transformation motif, which parallels Daniel 12, Enoch also reports on the final disposition of the dead. Such a report has the immediate effect of confirming the Bible’s presumed promise that the righteous will be rewarded, the sinners punished. This, we find elaborated in 1 Enoch 22, the first (and in many ways the most instructive) of many, many tours of heaven, confirming heaven as the realm of the transformed dead. It is included in a part of the work known as The Book of the Watchers:

Then I went to another place, and he showed me on the west side a great and high mountain of hard rock and inside it four beautiful corners; it had [in it] a deep, wide, and smooth (thing) which was rolling over; and it (the place) was deep and dark to look at. At that moment, Raphael, one of the holy angels, who was with me responded to me; and he said to me, “These beautiful corners (are here) in order that the spirits of the souls of the dead should assemble into them-they are created so that the souls of the children of the people should gather here. They prepared these places in order to put them (i.e., the souls of the people) there until the day of their judgment and the appointed time of the great judgment upon them. I saw the spirits of the children of the people who were dead and their voices were reaching unto heaven until this very moment.” I asked Raphael, the angel who was with me, and said to him, “This spirit, the voice of which is reaching (into heaven) like this and is making suit, whose (spirit) is it?” And he answered me saying, “This is the spirit which had left Abel, whom Cain, his brother, had killed; it (continues to) pursue him until all of (Cain’s) seed is exterminated from the face of the earth, and his seed has disintegrated from among the seed of the people.” At that moment, I raised a question regarding him and regarding the judgment of all, “For what reason is one separated from the other?” And he replied and said to me, “These three have been made in order that the spirits of the dead might be separated. And in the manner which the souls of the righteous are separated (by) this spring of water with light upon it, in like manner, the sinners are set apart when they die and are buried in the earth and judgment has not been executed upon them in their lifetime, upon this great pain, until the great day of judgment-and to those who curse (there will be) plague and pain forever, and the retribution of their spirits. They will bind them there forever-even if from the beginning of the world. And in this manner is a separation made for the souls of those who make the suit (and) those who disclose concerning destruction, as they were killed in the days of the sinners. Such has been made for the souls of the people who are not righteous, but sinners and perfect criminals; they shall be together with (other) criminals who are like them, (whose) souls will not be killed on the day of judgment but will not rise from there.” At that moment I blessed the Lord of Glory and I said, “Blessed be my Lord, the Lord of righteousness who rules forever. (1 En 22, Charlesworth I, 25-26)

In this depiction, Enoch sees to the farthest west, where the sun goes down. The West is where the dead were located in Egyptian lore and the sun is the messenger to the dead in all the nations surrounding Israel. But in this depiction, in the far West, Enoch finds a great pit in which four different categories of dead are awaiting judgment. These are therefore temporary holding pens for the dead, not a permanent prison, as the judgment is still in the future. The dead are in a kind of intermediary state. Yet we already know their final disposition by the kinds of conditions in which they wait. It looks like a kind of heavenly, judicial bureacracy.

The writer of this passage was well acquainted with how ancient empires disposed of their war captives. The scene resembles nothing so much as a Mesopotamian frieze of the taking of a city after a siege, an image that the Assyrians especially valued because it demonstrated their overwhelming power. The inhabitants, those who are not killed outright, are divided up into various groups for their final disposal. Because this is a narrative journey and not merely a prophecy like Daniel, we are treated to a horrifying scene, meant to instill repentance in any who might hear it.

In back of it seems to be real experience with foreign ruling powers. Truly, the taking of a city would have been one of the most horrifying scenes of war that anyone of that time could have imagined. In any event, the heavenly scene then represents compensation for the indignities which the Jews and especially the pious among them had to endure, with God figured as the ultimate conqueror and bringer of justice. The Israelites of Second Temple times lived in a big empire or a complex of client states rather than as a completely independant country. But they lived on the border where skirmishes between empires sometimes happened. In fact, colonial and post colonial theory will help us understand the varieties of religious and social movements that arose in Second Temple times. Those responses will be outlined in the next few chapters. But one thing is clear: Unlike most of the Greek examples already discussed, this afterlife definitely contains punishments for sinners and rewards for the righteous, with no equivocation.

The presence of Abel in this Enoch vision is very important. He has become more than the first murder victim. In this context, Abel was the prototype of martyrs. Finally, there is the compartment for those who will remain in death forever, not being either good enough to be resurrected nor bad enough to be punished eternally. These categories seem to be dictated by the features of Israelite culture and law, as well as a reflection of the prophecy of Daniel 12 itself, which discusses the very good and the very bad but seemingly leaves the ordinary people dead forever. The Greek version of v 13b makes this clear when it says: “They shall not be punished on the day of judgment and they shall not be raised hence.” The Zoroastrians also exercised their imaginations on this intermediate group. They are not the persecutors nor the zealously pious. They are merely the ordinary folk, probably disdained for their lack of interest in the religious life.

Since this is a tour, conducted at a specific moment in time, we do not see the future restoration when the righteous will inherit the earth. But we are given several clear indications of the eventual judgment. In 1 Enoch 25, we see the tree of life (Gen 3:22), which the righteous will inherit at the final judgment when God descends to earth. As a result, the elect will receive the fruit of the tree and will achieve “long life”-this is obviously the Tree of Life from Eden.

Lastly, we should note that the issue of the principle of identity in the afterlife is addressed in a new way in this extended Enoch passage. The spirits are called “souls” but they are eventually resurrected bodily. The fact that they exist in an intermediary state has suggested to many that Platonic dualism was already present here.²⁹ But it seems doubtful to me that these are the immortal souls of Platonism. Rather they seem more like any number of souled beings in the ancient Near East.

The soul is the equivalent of ghost or spirit, as it is throughout Hebrew culture. In other words, there is, in this passage, no explicit new, philosophical speculation about what exactly immortality of the soul would entail in terms of the identity of the person, other than it means that the person will be resurrected. This passage seems to reflect the ancient Hebrew notion of “soul” as a person, which can be alive or dead in the Bible. Quite clearly here, they are the “shades,” a person who continues to live in the intermediary state. It is but an unsubstantial state, which retains the identity of the person until the resurrection for the just alone. But there is no specific notion of an immortal soul as in Platonic thought.

In fact, to pay too much attention to the influence of Platonism here is to mistake what is important about the passage: This narrative picture of the afterlife demands a new reification of a soul, similar to the explanations we have seen in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Canaan. One can hardly have a system of postmortem punishment and reward after death if there is no vehicle to pass on the moral identity of the person.

Conversely, this has ramifications for the definition of person in these passages. What applies to the afterlife also applies to life itself. The word nepeš, “soul,” is ancient. But here it is explicitly being used as a moral principle of postmortem identity and hence that identity is reified in life, which is a more complicated affair for people living both in a Jewish religious context and a wider imperial one. It is no longer possible for a person to have more or less of the quantity of soul, explaining his charisma or effectiveness. Instead, one’s moral identity, implicit in Hebrew thought throughout, needs to carry into the postmortem state.

Because the writers of the First Temple period were so adamantly opposed to the culture of the Canaanites, this Second Temple openness to the religious insights of other cultures seems an innovation. During the First Temple period, from the perspective of the editors of the Bible, the Israelites were involved in a desperate Kulturkampf with an abhorrent religion, which practiced idolatry, ritual prostitution, and infant sacrifice. We know that this is the projection backwards of Jews in the Persian period, who wished to warn their brothers against the dangers of acculturation. Even so, and in spite of the sensibilities of the YHWH-alone party in Hellenistic Jewish society, much imagery and sometimes even the religious practices of the other nations did enter Jewish culture.

Zoroastrianism was one source of interest to the Jews. The Zoroastrians had a prophetic religion, based on the revelations of a prophet, who preached the importance of staying away from evil and emulating the good. They had conquered the evil oppressors of the Israelites and their Shah, Cyrus, had even been proclaimed “Messiah” by Isaiah. The Jews were subsumed into the far-flung Persian Empire and their religion treated with respect. The Jews must have noticed that Zoroastrians, in many ways, lived a moral life from a Jewish perspective.

The same is true for Greek culture. We know about far more variation in Greek culture than we know about Persian culture and we know that not everything in Greek culture pleased Jewish sensibilities, just as not everything in Persian culture would have met their approval. But especially the Greek philosophical schools lived morally and abstemiously. There were issues of idolatry to face with both foreign cultures. The Zoroastrians venerated fire while the Greeks reverenced images. Both were suspicious but neither was in the same category as the immorality attributed to the Canaanites: human sacrifice and ritual prostitution. There may have been other Jewish issues with Zoroastrian purity laws and practices. There were certainly many, well-attested, moral issues which Jews raised about Hellenistic culture. But, even so, religious ideas from both flowed more freely into Jewish culture.

Part of the reason is surely the establishment of large empires with good communication. Life in large empires brought with it more cultural mixing than was possible for a small, embattled state in First Temple times. In some important way, the sect that produced Daniel stood over against acculturation to Greek ideas. It is, therefore, surprising that the book of Daniel would even broach using Canaanite imagery in the enthronement of the “Son of Man” and “ancient of days.” The Canaanite roots of the imagery of “the Son of Man” was likely not recognized by the sectarians.

The revelations of Daniel were delivered as prophecy and demanded acceptance on that ground. Evidently, large sections of Jewish society, including the Rabbinic community eventually, were willing to grant it legitimacy, though there is every reason to think that the Sadducees would never have allowed the book of Daniel in their canon because they opposed the whole idea of an afterlife. To see in detail how different parts of Jewish society reacted to these influences, we have to study their texts. It is to that task that we now turn.