Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism, 200 BCE-CE 200

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. D. Elledge
Keyword(s):  
Dead Sea ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
Early Judaism ◽  
Resurrection Of The Dead ◽  
Spatial Parameters ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Eschatological Belief ◽  
1 Enoch

Belief in resurrection of the dead became one of the most adamant conceptual claims of Christianity and rabbinic Judaism. This book provides a focused analysis of the gradual emergence and diverse receptions of the discourse of resurrection within early Jewish literature, from its early emergence within portions of 1 Enoch (c.200 BCE), until its standardization as a non-negotiable eschatological belief in the Mishnah (c.CE 200). Within this historical environment, resurrection emerged as an insurgent and controversial theodicy that challenged more traditional interpretations of death. The study further demonstrates how scribal circles legitimated the controversial eschatological claim by clothing it in the raiment of earlier scriptural language, grounding it in the theology of creation, and insisting that it was essential to the affirmation of divine justice. As resurrection gained a reception in multiple movements within early Judaism, a diverse range of conceptions flourished, including a fascinating variety of assumptions about the embodied character of eschatological life, as well as how resurrection would transpire within larger cosmic-spatial parameters of the world. The hope also maintained a somewhat tensive relationship with belief in the immortality of the soul, another popular approach to the afterlife within early Judaism. Supportive chapters explore the emergence of resurrection within specific literary texts and collections, including 1 Enoch, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, and select inscriptions. As the nascent church and early rabbinic Judaism developed their own approaches to resurrection, they remained both the heirs and creative reinterpreters of earlier Jewish theologies of resurrection.

Resurrection

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter van Inwagen
Keyword(s):  
Second Temple ◽  
Second Temple Judaism ◽  
Fourth Gospel ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Resurrection Of The Dead ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Raising Of Lazarus

The Judaeo-Christian belief in a future general resurrection of the dead arose in late second-temple Judaism (see, for example, Daniel 12: 2 and John 11: 24). (Whether there would be a resurrection of the dead was one of the main points that divided the Pharisees and the Sadducees.) When the new Christian movement appeared – before it was clearly something other than a party or sect within Judaism – it centred on the belief that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth had been, in a literal, bodily sense, raised from the dead (resurrectus) and that his resurrection was, in some way, the means by which the expected general resurrection of the dead would be accomplished. Indeed, resurrection was so pervasive a theme in early Christian preaching that it was apparently sometimes thought that Christians worshipped two gods called ‘Jesus’ and ‘Resurrection’ (Anastasis). The early Christians generally said that ‘God raised Jesus from the dead’. In post-New Testament times, it became more common for Christians to say that ‘Jesus rose from the dead’. Belief in the resurrection of Jesus and a future general resurrection continue to be central to Christianity. Christians have always insisted that resurrection is not a mere restoration of what the resurrected person had before death (as in the story in the fourth Gospel of the raising of Lazarus) but is rather a doorway into a new kind of life. The status of a belief in the general resurrection in rabbinic Judaism is difficult to summarize. It should be noted, however, that a belief in the resurrection of the dead is one of Maimonides’ ‘thirteen principles’, which some Jews regard as a summary of the essential doctrines of Judaism. A belief in a general resurrection of the dead is one of many Judaeo-Christian elements that have been incorporated into Islam.

Future Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism: Social Dynamics, Contested Evidence

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 394-421
Author(s):  
C.D. Elledge
Keyword(s):  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Early Judaism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Resurrection Of The Dead ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence ◽  
Sociological Studies

In its significance to both Jewish and Christian studies, resurrection of the dead remains a vital subject of biblical research; and it is now widely recognized that the religious culture of early Judaism (ca. 200 BCE—CE 200) played a crucial role in both its origination and early reception. In the present landscape of study, perhaps the most recent methodological advances arise from sociological studies, which attempt to contextualize resurrection within the social dynamics of the religious movements that advanced this hope. Moreover, at the exegetical level, many vexing pieces of evidence have produced conflicting readings of precisely what individual traditions may say about resurrection. The present article treats these topics, including (1) the application of social-scientific methods to the study of resurrection, and (2) readings of contested literary and epigraphic evidence that remains crucial to the scholarly study of the resurrection hope in early Jewish culture.

Diversity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. D. Elledge
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Parameters ◽  
Eschatological Belief ◽  
Human Destiny ◽  
1 Enoch

This chapter examines the conceptual diversity of expressions of resurrection in a variety of early Jewish writings (Daniel, 1 Enoch, 2 Maccabees, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, Messianic Apocalypse, Pseudo-Ezekiel). Two categories, in particular, appear to have offered broad fluctuation. First, differing modes of embodiment may be identified within the evidence, including beliefs about the fate of the deceased body, as well as varied assumptions about what the newly embodied eschatological life would be like. Second, representations of resurrection also differ in how they locate human destiny within the larger spatial parameters of the cosmos. This diversity has sometimes been interpreted as a deficiency within early Jewish theologies, yet the present chapter explains this as the result of the adaptability of resurrection to a variety of intellectual contexts, a factor that accelerated the reception of resurrection as a widespread eschatological belief, even among competing groups.

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