The Afterlife in Judaic Thought: a Study in Eschatology

By Dr. Martin Sicker

The central theme of this study is the eschatology of Judaism as conceived by its proponents from remote antiquity to the present day, eschatology being a branch of theology concerned with the end of history and time as we know it. Eschatological theories and beliefs will be found in every culture where its thinkers struggle to make sense of their lives and history, and most particularly regarding what happens to them and their world after their lives come to an end. As a consequence, such beliefs or theories must necessarily be highly imaginative because they relate to a period beyond time. The very term ‘afterlife’ captures the frustrating ambiguity of the notion of eschatology for neither our language nor our conceptual skills can deal with an ‘end’ to time. There is no ‘after’ to time, for the term ‘after’ is itself a time-related notion. There is only an ‘after’ within time. Nonetheless, eschatological notions attempt to takes us beyond time.

Judaism tends to be precise where it touches human activity, while thought and doctrine remain fluid. Thus we find widely varying conjectures by individual Jewish sages in antiquity, further imaginative guesses by medieval rabbis and philosophers, and continuing attempts to grapple with the subject in the modern and contemporary eras. This examination of Judaic eschatological thought is subdivided into seven topical chapters: The idea of an afterlife, the resurrection of the dead, the immortality of the soul, transmigration or reincarnation, modern religious ideas relating to resurrection and immortality, messianism, and divine reward and retribution after death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669812555

Dr. Martin Sicker

Dr. Martin Sicker is a writer and lecturer on the Middle Eastern geopolitical and cultural history, with a special focus on Jewish history and religion. He is the author of 62 previous books on these subjects as well as on geopolitics, political theory, and political economy.

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2 Volume 1916 Holy Bible 24 Books of the Old Testament Hebrew & English

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Contents

Preface

1. The Idea of an Afterlife

2. Resurrection of the Dead

3. Immortality of the Soul

4. Transmigration or Reincarnation

5. Modern Views on Resurrection and Immortality

6. Messianism

7. Reward and Retribution after Death

References

Notes

Preface

Generally speaking, the central theme of this study is the eschatology of Judaism as conceived by its proponents from remote antiquity to the present day. Eschatology, derived from the Greek eschatos (‘end’ or ‘final’) and logos (‘reasoning about’) is a branch of theology concerned with the end of history and time as we know it. Eschatological theories and beliefs will be found in every culture where its thinkers struggle to make sense of their lives and history, and most particularly regarding what happens to them and their world after their lives come to an end.

It has been asserted that realistically, All eschatologies are imaginative constructs. The must be imaginative not only because they deal with events that no human has ever beheld, but even more because these events will inaugurate an age which is properly timeless. The very phrase ‘end of days,’ captures the frustrating ambiguity of the notion of eschatology for neither our language nor our conceptual skills can deal with an ‘end’ to time. There is no ‘after’ to time, for ‘after’ is itself a temporal notion. There is only an ‘after’ within time. But eschatology takes us out of time, as does any talk of creation. As with eschatology, creation-talk—even the ‘big bang’ of modern astronomy—is an imaginative construct.¹

As a tradition-oriented popular modern writer put it, What the hereafter was like; what resurrection of the dead actually meant; where and how these things would happen; what one was required to believe; these things, in the characteristic way of Judaism, escaped definition. We find conjectures of individual rabbis in the Talmud, and further guesses by medieval authorities, which differ widely. Judaism is precise where it touches acts. Thought and doctrine remain fluid. I cannot therefore describe the hereafter and the resurrection of Judaism.²

Nonetheless, after writing several dozen books on different aspects of Judaic thought, which studiously avoided the subject matter of the present work, I decided on my recent ninetieth birthday, that the time had come to examine the doctrines and concepts of Judaic eschatology. In so doing, I was fully aware that for the reasons given in the preceding citation there was very little, if anything, that I could add to elucidate the subject matter beyond highlighting the relevant eschatological ideas and notions articulated in one form or another over the past two and a half millennia. It is noteworthy in this regard that the relevant ideas and notions have been and continue to be discussed from a variety of perspectives: religion, philosophy, history, sociology, and mysticism.

For purposes of analysis, this examination of Judaic eschatological thought is subdivided into seven topical chapters: The idea of an afterlife, the resurrection of the dead, the immortality of the soul, transmigration or reincarnation, modern religious ideas relating to resurrection and immortality, messianism, and the ideas of reward and retribution after death.

1

The Idea of an Afterlife

It has been asserted that it is an inherent characteristic of man to think about the future. As a modern philosopher put it, To think of the future and to live in the future is a necessary part of his nature . . . It is more than mere expectation, it becomes an imperative of human life. And this imperative reaches far beyond man’s immediate practical needs—in its highest form it reaches beyond the limits of his empirical life.³ Indeed, since the emergence of thinking man on earth, there has existed an abiding conviction, incapable of proof but nonetheless unshakeable, among many if not most people that there is some kind of human existence beyond the limits of one’s temporal life, that is, after one’s death. In this vein, it has been asserted: The after-life has not been ‘thought up’; it is not a rational construction of a religious philosophy imposed on believing man. It has sprung from within the hearts of masses of men . . . a hope beyond and above the rational, a longing for the warm sun of eternity. The after-life is not a theory to be proven logically or demonstrated by rational analysis. It is to the soul what oxygen is to the lungs. There is little meaning to life, to God, to man’s constant strivings, to all of his achievements, unless there is a world beyond the grave.⁴ It also has been asserted in this regard:

The intuition that life is not totally annihilated when death descends has been supported by several considerations. One is the very universality of the intuition. It occurs among all people, in all cultures, from the most primitive to the most sophisticated. The expression of this belief has reflected the culture of the people among whom it occurs, and it has sometimes taken forms grotesque and occasionally even repulsive. The cult of the dead which flourished in ancient Egypt was an abomination. It led the Pharaohs to build the pyramids as sepulchers for their mummies on which an enslaved country labored through the years. The Bible protested against practices such as these. The Biblical conception that a dead body is unclean and that a priest especially must not be in contact with it reflects a struggle to free religion from a preoccupation with death and to center it instead in life. . . . The universality of the intuition that something of man survives his mortal career deserves consideration among all the factors to be weighed in understanding the destiny to which the Creator called us when He gave us birth.⁵

In this vein it has been suggested that both life and death are aspects of a greater mystery, the mystery of being, the mystery of creation . . . The problem of how and whether I am going to be after I die is profoundly related to the problem of who and how I was before I was born. The mystery of an afterlife is related to the mystery of preexistence. . . .Human life is on its way from a great distance; it has gone through ages of experience, of growing, suffering, insight, action. We are what we are by what we come from. There is a vast continuum preceding individual existence, and it is a legitimate surmise to assume that there is a continuum following individual existence. Human living is always being under way, and death is not the final destination.⁶

Thus, looking beyond the earthly horizon by which man’s finite existence is bound, Judaism holds out the hope of a world to come, in which the whole of human life, in its individual patterns and its historical configurations, will, in accordance with the divine purpose of Creation, find its fulfillment . . . . Unlike other creeds, Judaism refuses to admit a real dualism between the heavenly and the earthly, the temporal and the eternal. Both are treated as organically connected, with the latter as an inevitable result and development of the former.⁷

The idea of survival after death poses contradictions and difficulties that have been thoroughly worked over in massive theological controversies and trivial parlor disputes over the centuries. Some of the most pathetic passages in medieval philosophy are the attempts of pious authors to plod through all the challenges, to describe what a resurrected body will look like, to explain which of a man’s three successive wives will be in his world to come, and so forth. The literature of Judaism abounds in warnings that this kind of thing is futile and silly.⁸

The afterlife is referred to in the traditional rabbinic literature as Olam Haba, or the World to Come. However, it should be noted that the same term "is also used to refer to the renewed utopian world of the future—the Olam HaTechiyah, the Resurrected World or World of Resurrection." The Olam Haba is where righteous souls go after their death, and it is assumed that they have been going there since the first death, presumably that of Adam. Olam Haba is also sometimes referred to as the Olam HaNeshamot, the World of Souls. It is where souls thrive in a disembodied state, enjoying the pleasure of proximity to God. "Thus, genuine near-death experiences are presumably glimpses into the World of Souls, the place most people think of when the term afterlife is mentioned."⁹

It has been pointed out that the world-to-come (olam haba) has two meanings in Judaism. It refers to the world that is constituted after the messianic era as well as to the period of life after death of the individual.¹⁰ With regard to the former, it has been suggested that the English translation of olam haba as ‘world to come’ can be misleading because "it is not a new ‘place’ that is promised, but a new time, a new age. Just as the intermediate period that is history follows upon a primal age that is prelude, so it culminates in a new age that is both postlude and fulfillment. The distinction is not spatial, between one ‘world’ and another (‘this world’ and the ‘world-to-come’) but temporal, between one time or aeon and another (‘this age’ and the ‘age-to-come’). The difference is crucial, for only if it is understood in terms of time can the eschatological outcome be relevant to the historical process . . . The historical process in time culminates in, is fulfilled and judged by, the ‘new time’ of the Kingdom of God . . . and the judgment that initiates it."¹¹ In this regard, it is noteworthy that in some instances where olam haba appears in the Talmud, it appears to refer to the onset of the Messianic era.¹²

With regard to the meaning of olam haba as referring to the period of life after the death of an individual, it has been pointed out that One of the beliefs deeply imbedded in Judaism is that God rewards those who obey Him and punishes those who disobey Him . . . When physical existence terminates, according to this belief, a final accounting takes place. Man faces his Maker, and he is judged for what he has made of his life. A good man is rewarded by being assigned to the abode of the righteous, a realm of bliss, while an evil man is doomed to suffer in a realm of punishment which is reserved for the wicked.¹³

Writing in the tenth century, this concept has been explored in depth by Saadia Gaon who concluded that reason forces upon us, in view of what we know of the wisdom and omnipotence and kindness to His creatures on the part of the Creator . . . is that it is incompatible with His character, that the measure of happiness reserved for this human soul be restricted to the mundane well-being and pleasure it finds in this world. For all well-being in this mundane world is bound up with misfortune, and all happiness with hardship, and all pleasure with pain, and all joy with sorrow. . . . It must, therefore, perforce be assumed that He has set aside for it a place in which it can lead an untroubled existence and attain pure happiness.¹⁴

The basic presumption in Judaic thought is that man is ultimately accountable to God for his actions, and that God will render just judgment on them as He sees fit. The necessary corollary to this is the assumption that man must have free will to act as he chooses if he is to be held accountable for acts deemed to be improper. If one conceives of God, the creator of man, as being all-powerful, can one at the same time seriously maintain that man is nonetheless free to act in opposition to the divine will? If an omnipotent God wills the good, can man controvert that will and choose evil? Why, we may ask further, would an omnipotent God permit evil to thrive at all? The prophet Habbakuk protested: How long, O Lord, shall I cry, and Thou wilt not hear? I cry out to Thee of violence, and Thou wilt not save. Why dost Thou show me iniquity and beholdest mischief [Hab. 1:2-3]? Put simply, the prophet is protesting against injustice apparently tolerated and therefore abetted by God.

More poignantly and with evident anguish, the prophet Jeremiah pleaded: Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? Wherefore are all they secure that deal very treacherously [Jer. 12:1]? The fact that he even raised these rhetorical questions surely reflects his own struggle to comprehend how the apparent rewarding of evil could be compatible with the idea of divine justice, when it appeared so patently unfair. The prophet’s cry of despair and implicit protest has reverberated throughout the subsequent history of humankind, its poignancy being especially appreciated throughout the long troubled history of the Jewish people, who for the most part steadfastly continued to insist upon both divine omnipotence and man’s freedom to act as he chose in defiance of the divine will.

The same vexing question was also raised and elaborated upon by the psalmist, who sought to offer a response that would be reiterated in one form or another through the millennia. He poignantly portrayed the anguish of a righteous person whose faith in divine justice had been shaken by observing the prosperity and wellbeing of the wicked: But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious at the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked (Ps. 73:2-3). He clearly was distressed that those whom he knew to be wicked appeared to thrive, while he, who had steadfastly maintained his faith in the Lord and lived righteously, was rewarded for his pains with unwarranted suffering. Surely in vain have I cleansed my heart, and washed my hands in innocency; For all the day have I been plagued, and my chastisement came every morning (Ps. 73:13-14). The evident injustice of it all disturbed him profoundly, Until I entered the sanctuary of God, and considered their end. . . . How are they become a desolation in a moment. . . . As a dream, when one awaketh, so, O Lord, when Thou arousest Thyself, Thou wilt despise their semblance (Ps. 73:17-20). The psalmist’s answer to the problem of divine justice is that the prosperity of the wicked is in a sense illusory, because it is transitory at best and subject to reversal and worse at any moment. Of this he was confident: For, lo, they that go far from Thee shall perish; Thou dost destroy all them that go astray from Thee (Ps. 73:27).

Many centuries later there would be a similar outcry among the scholars of the second-century academy of Rabbi Ishmael, who concocted a pun on the biblical passage, Who is like unto Thee among the mighty (elim) O Lord [Ex. 15:11]? They suggested that the verse might be read instead, "Who is like unto Thee among the silent (elmim)—Who is like unto Thee who hears the suffering of Your children and remains silent?"¹⁵ Nonetheless, prominent sages of the talmudic era adopted an eschatological approach to dealing with the awesome problem of theodicy that so troubled the prophets and other earlier teachers, an approach that has had great popularity throughout Jewish intellectual history because of its presumed explanatory power.

The advocates of this eschatological approach took the position that, although the wicked may prosper in this world, they will have to render account and pay for their transgressions in a world beyond history that awaits them. By contrast, while the righteous may suffer in this world, they will surely reap their just reward in the world to come. In this regard, it was taught by R. Simeon b. Yohai: The Holy One, blessed be He, gave Israel three precious gifts, and all of them were given only through sufferings. These are: The Torah, the Land of Israel and the world to come.¹⁶ According to a tradition recorded in the classical rabbinic literature, "Moses said to Israel: Do you see the wicked who prosper in this world? For two or three days they will prosper, but in