Death and the Next World in Ancient Judaism

Because biblical texts generally regard this world as primary, God is said to reward and punish in this life. After death, the dead have no ability to praise God (see Psalm 6:6), suggesting that they live a semiconscious existence, whether they are righteous or wicked. This biblical view, which lacks a belief in a substantive and meaningful afterlife, continued to be voiced by some Jews, such as the Sadducees and the authors of Ecclesiastes and Ben Sira, throughout the Second Temple period.

At the same time, however, two alternative conceptions of the afterlife seem to have emerged in the last centuries before the Common Era. Influenced by Persian apocalyptic thought, some Jews adopted a belief in the resurrection of the dead. In this conception, at the end of days and after the final judgment, the righteous would be resurrected and live for eternity. Other Jews, under the influence of Greek philosophical thought, embraced Plato’s distinction between body and soul and the belief that the soul never dies. Although both of these conceptions of the afterlife differ from the older Israelite view, they present contrasting visions of life after death. According to the first view, people—at least the righteous—can experience eternal life but first must die. According to the second view, death can be escaped altogether, because the true essence of a person, their soul, never dies. Jews who accepted either of these beliefs increasingly understood this life as merely the prelude to the next world.

Many of the Second Temple–era Jews who affirmed the resurrection of the dead (such as Paul of Tarsus, Pseudo-Philo, and the author of Psalms of Solomon) or the immortality of the soul (such as the author of the Wisdom of Solomon) regarded death as the ultimate destination for the wicked. Other Jews of the period deemed this ideological position untenable because the wicked could escape punishment through death. To defend God’s justice, many Second Temple Jews (such as the Pharisees, the Essenes, Philo, and the authors of 1 Enoch) maintained that the wicked would be sent to Gehenna or Hades (hell), where they would experience eternal tortures or torments.

In late antiquity, the Palestinian and Babylonian rabbis accepted the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead and formally regarded it as a central Jewish dogma (see m. Sanhedrin 10:1). They also affirmed the immortality of the soul, although that belief did not find formal expression or rise to the level of doctrine. Because the rabbis adopted both Second Temple afterlife conceptions—resurrection and immortality—their writings are sometimes inconsistent on matters of eschatology. The rabbis describe the period of the afterlife as the “next world” (‘olam ha-ba’), but it is usually unclear whether the term refers to the soul’s existence after death or the world that will arise after the resurrection of the dead at the end of days. In general, the rabbis are less interested in the details of the afterlife than in using ‘olam ha-ba’ discourse as a cultural and social tool to express their values and concerns. As such, they often ruminate on which people will or will not gain acceptance to the next world.

The rabbis were well aware that, with rare exceptions such as Daniel 12, the Hebrew Bible does not explicitly mention the resurrection of the dead or the immortality of the soul. Yet through decontextualized and sometimes counterintuitive readings of biblical texts, they found divine confirmation of their conceptions of the afterlife.

Second Temple and early rabbinic texts also discuss the coming of the Messiah, literally, “anointed one.” The nature of this figure and the significance of his presence on earth varies among texts. Some portray the Messiah as thoroughly human, functioning as a mere sign of a new era. Other texts depict a Messiah akin to, or perhaps even identified with, God, able to perform grand miracles and destroy entire nations.

Scholars have posited historically contingent explanations for the rise in Jewish messianism at the turn of the era, noting that messianism is appealing during times of disaster, transition, and inexplicable suffering. Although specific moments might offer an opportunity for the optimism found in messianism, messianism also would prove itself a highly durable belief across space and time, beyond particular historical moments and crises.