Torah Study Blog

This week we continue our exploration of the afterlife. Before we delve into Jewish interpretation we want to correct an error from last week: It was mentioned that, in Christianity, there is no mention of what happened to Jesus during the 3 days he was dead – which would have been an eyewitness account of the afterlife. In fact, there is a mention in the Christian Bible: The 1st Epistle of Peter says, “He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits.” (1 Peter 3:18-19) The “imprisoned spirits” are all those who had died and we know, from the Hebrew Bible, that those who have died are in a dark, cold, place called Sheol. Christian leaders, just like Jewish leaders, would strive to interpret and bring meaning to everyday life. Using the line from 1st Peter, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says Jesus’s time in Sheol had a vital purpose: “In his human soul united to his divine person, the dead Christ went down to the realm of the dead. He opened heaven’s gates for the just who had gone before him.” (CCC 637)

It is universal that people have a fear of the unknown. Our leaders and leaders of other cultures created stories to answer the question of what happens after death. In the epic of Gilgamesh, which was complied around 1900 BCE, the “shades,” or spirits of the dead, tell Gilgamesh that in the netherworld you miss the people you love and the things you used to love to do.

Last week we looked at a Neo-Assyrian myth dated to around 1500 BCE that describes the netherworld as a place that is dark and where the dwellers thirst for light.

A story attributed to the Greek philosopher Plato and dated to roughly 380 BCE tells of a man named Er who died and came back to tell of his experiences. Er said that after death, there are judges who pass sentence on the newly dead. The just people will go up, and the unjust will go down.

For our Jewish philosophers, we start with the Book of Ecclesiastes, which is one of the newer books of the Bible and can be dated to about 250 BCE.

The Book of Ecclesiastes falls under the umbrella of what is called Wisdom Literature. Although the Book has been attributed to King Solomon, scholars can tell by linguistic references that this is not correct. The Book opens by identifying itself as the words of Koheleth, which can be translated to Assembler, and Jewish scholars more commonly refer to the Book as Koheleth.

In chapter 3, Koheleth says:
Alongside justice there is wickedness,
Alongside righteousness there is wickedness...
For in respect of the fate of man and the fate of beast, they have one and the same fate: as one dies so dies the other, and both have the same lifebreath; man has not superiority over beast, since both amount to nothing. Both go to the same place; both came from dust and both return to dust. Who knows if a man’s lifebreath does rise upward and if a beast’s breath does sink down in the earth? (Ecclesiastes 3:16-21)

Ecclesiastes says, “who knows,” so you might as well enjoy life while you have it. But, using the imagery from the Greek story, Koheleth allows that it is possible that a man’s lifebreath goes somewhere after death.

Our biblical literature reflects many different voices. The afterlife is a great example of that. There is not one definitive statement that says – this is it! It reflects the reality that we simply don’t know what happens.

In the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, there is no concept of an afterlife. The rules are that if you follow God’s commandments, you will have rain for your crops, your children will thrive, etc. If you don’t follow God’s commandments bad things will happen. But whatever happens, happens in this world. Not in the world to come.

The Book of Daniel, one of the latest books in the Bible, is the ONLY book with a clear message of an afterlife, saying, “Many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to eternal life, others to reproaches, to everlasting abhorrence. (Daniel 12:3) This is a clear reference to rising and being judged. The Book of Daniel, while only being a minor book in Judaism, but becomes quite important in Christianity with its concept of afterlife.

The Book of Enoch was written by a Jew at roughly the same time as the Book of Daniel, roughly 2nd century BCE, but it does not make it into the Hebrew Bible. Enoch is in the Christian Bible and it describes that all the souls gather in one place, “until their day of their judgment and the appointed time of great judgment is upon them.”

Josephus lived in the 1st century CE and he recorded what he saw in the Jewish community around him. The two main leaders of the Jewish people were the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The Sadducees were people of privilege and their lives were pretty good. They had no need of an afterlife and, since the Torah does not indicate an afterlife, the Sadducees did not accept that concept. The Pharisees, on the other hand, led people who had been uprooted from their land and were largely unsettled. They did not have extra money to purchase the sacrifices required at the Temple – from which the Sadducees benefited. The Pharisees taught about an afterlife, and a soul, and punishment for the wicked.

The Pharisees taught that the divine word was not just what was in the Torah, but it was also oral instruction that Moses received at Mt Sinai and passed down. This oral tradition became as authoritative as what was written in the Torah. In fact, the oral tradition could even overturn what was in the Torah. This oral tradition is what eventually became the Talmud, which is the foundational text of the Judaism we practice today.

Next week we will go to Hell.

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misquotes or misunderstandings in what Rabbi Jaech taught us are the responsibility of Tara Keiter