Toward a History of Jewish Thought

The Soul, Resurrection, and the Afterlife

Zachary Alan Starr

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781532693076
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Theology

The work is a history of Jewish beliefs regarding the concept of the soul, the idea of resurrection, and the nature of the afterlife. The work describes these beliefs, accounts for the origin of these beliefs, discusses the ways in which these beliefs have evolved, and explains why the many changes in belief have occurred. Views about the soul, resurrection, and the afterlife are related to other Jewish views and to broad movements in Jewish thought; and Jewish intellectual history is placed within the context of the history of Western thought in general. That history begins with the biblical period and extends to the present time.

1.

The Ancient Israelites Had No Notion of a “Soul” and Envisioned Neither Reward Nor Punishment in a Postmortem Existence but Were Focused on the Here and Now

To the authors of the Hebrew Bible death

is simply the end of life, determined by God, and to be as readily accepted at his decision as the gift of life itself . . . There are neither attempts to overcome the mystery of death by mythopoeic fantasies, by bold analogical reasoning from the life of Nature, or by rituals of power, nor palliations of death’s final decree by efforts to maintain a link with the departed. Whatever of such is still present in traces of feeding the dead, or enquiring from them, is placed under strict interdict by unconditional attachment to Yahweh.”1

Consistent with this view, apart from Enoch and Elijah, “all biblical personalities die and the Bible repeatedly emphasizes that death is the ultimate fate of all human beings.”2 The biblical view is well-expressed in the book of Job:

Man born of woman is short-lived and sated with trouble.

He blossoms like a flower and withers;

He vanishes like a shadow and does not endure . . .

His days are determined;

You know the number of his months;

You have set limits that he cannot pass . . .

There is hope for a tree;

If it is cut down it will renew itself;

Its shoots will not cease.

If its roots are old in the earth,

And its stump dies in the ground,

At the scent of water it will bud

And produce branches like a sapling.

But mortals languish and die;

Man expires, where is he?

As the waters fail from the sea,

And the river is drained dry;

So man lies down and rises not . . .3

The concern of the Hebrew Bible, for the most part, is “this-worldly.” The focus of attention is on achieving well-being in the here and now. Accordingly, in Deuteronomy 11:13–15 and 28:1–14, the rewards the Israelites are offered for obedience to God’s commandments are material well-being—rainfall, crops, food, children, military victory, national security, health, and length of days—and, in Deuteronomy 11:16–17 and 28:15–68, the punishment the Israelites are threatened with for disobeying God’s commandments are the opposite—famine, poverty, illness, military defeat, and early death. Indeed, there does not appear to have been any idea on the part of the authors of the Hebrew Bible that, in the normal course of events, a person can survive death. Much less is there any idea until postexilic times that God will reward or punish someone in an afterlife.4 Accordingly, the Hebrew Bible evidences no notion of a place of customary postmortem reward or of customary postmortem punishment.

Nor does the Hebrew Bible express the notion that a certain part of a person—the “soul”—is rewarded or punished in an afterlife. In fact, the ancient Israelites had no notion of a soul at all. Human beings are not conceived dualistically, as composed of a body and a soul. Rather, human beings are conceived as psycho-physical wholes, composed of earthly stuff and having a life force given by God. Upon death, the earthly stuff returns to the earth, and the life force returns to God. While having no notion of a soul or of a postmortem reward and punishment, the ancient Israelites did believe that there is something that survives a person’s death. This something is neither the person himself or herself, nor the person’s soul. Rather, it is a shadowy double of the person (a “shade”), lacking vitality, knowledge, and feelings. The shade is conceived as residing underground in a place called Sheol. Sheol is viewed neither as a place of reward nor punishment, although it is inhospitable and undesirable.

Notwithstanding that the practice of necromancy is central to an episode in the life of King Saul, necromancy is at odds with the generally accepted conception of postmortem existence found in the Hebrew Bible. It likely reflects a cult ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• 1. The Ancient Israelites Had No Notion of a “Soul” and Envisioned Neither Reward Nor Punishment in a Postmortem Existence but Were Focused on the Here and Now
• 2. Resurrection as a Means of Postmortem Reward and Punishment Did Not Come to Be a Widely Accepted Idea Until Late in the Second Temple Period, but Has Roots in Earlier Biblical Material
• 3. During the Second Temple Period, Greek Ideas about the Soul and the Afterlife Penetrate Jewish Thought and are Used to Resolve the Problem of Moral Evil
• 4. Views about the Soul, Resurrection, and the Afterlife Continue to Evolve During the Rabbinic Period
• 5. During the Geonic Period, Saadia Systematizes Jewish Thinking about the Afterlife
• 6. Jewish Neoplatonic Philosophers Associate an Afterlife Reward with the Soul’s Ascension to the Divine Realm, Not Bodily Resurrection; and Belief in Intercessory Acts to Aide in the Purgation of Impure Souls Develops
• 7. Maimonides Represents a Turning Point from Neoplatonism to Aristotelianism
• 8. Nahmanides and Other Early Kabbalists Adopt the Concept of Transmigration of Souls
• 9. Baruch Spinoza Challenges the Scriptural Basis for Belief in the Immortality of the Soul and a Postmortem Reward or Punishment, and Denies that there Is Any Personal Immortality
• 10. In the Mid-Eighteenth Century, Moses Mendelssohn Publishes His Phädon, or On the Immortality of the Soul
• 11. In the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Reform Judaism Presents a Hodgepodge of Conflicting and Confused Ideas about the Soul, Resurrection, and the Afterlife
• 12. Conservative Judaism, Orthodoxy, and Hasidism Take Varying Approaches to the Soul, Resurrection, and the Afterlife
• 13. The Principle of Immanence Comes to Dominate the Intellectual Landscape of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
• 14. Increasing Numbers of Jews in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Reject Belief in a Soul, Resurrection, and an Afterlife as Unfounded, Unscientific, and Superstitious, and Emphasize that Virtue Is its Own Reward
• 15. Mordecai Kaplan, the Founder of Reconstructionism, Advocates Naturalism and This-Worldliness, as Does Sherwin Wine, the Leading Voice in Humanistic Judaism
• 16. Concluding Considerations Regarding the History of Jewish Thought with Respect to the Soul, Resurrection, and the Afterlife
• Bibliography