Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [11]
What History Can Tell Us
A BELIEF IN an afterlife is older than the human race if Neanderthal burials are to be trusted. We see many pieces of evidence of Neanderthal religion in sites of Mousterian culture. In particular, the Mousterians left flowers, grain, and other grave goods in their interments, suggesting that they believed the departed could use the implements they provided for them.27 Assuming for a moment that we are justified in concluding that the Neanderthals were not our species exactly but a closely associated one (an assumption that is still hotly debated), the notion of an afterlife would precede humanity. Belief in spirits, both benevolent (as in departed ancestors, for example) and malicious (as in ghosts) are virtually omnipresent in human culture, though they sometimes share the stage with more sophisticated notions of a beatific afterlife.
“Sharing the stage” is an appropriate phrase for how we reconcile our impressions of an afterlife. We have only to look at Shakespeare’s Hamlet to realize how easily we accept the combination of traditional Christianity with belief in spirits and ghosts. The New Testament itself contains the belief in spirits and demons. The belief in spirits and ghosts functions in a number of ways in a society-including enforcing moral standards, upholding various institutions, and guaranteeing appropriate burial of corpses.
The Bible, viewed historically, shows us how varied our views are, even within Western traditions. These variations are made even more evident by studying the Quran as scripture. Even if we look at only one tradition-either Judaism, Christianity, or Islam-we find that the view of the afterlife is fascinatingly varied. For example, we will see that the Bible itself at first zealously ignores the afterlife. When the Bible does discuss the afterlife, it does so to resolve very specific questions within its own culture. In fact, all the notions of life after death in the Hebrew Bible as well as those formed afterward seem to be borrowed to some degree or another. None of these notions were borrowed early nor without prejudice.
Previous, shorter studies of the subject have shown the dichotomy between resurrection of the body and immortality of the soul. Scholarship clearly understands immortality of the soul to be a Platonic Greek notion. Opinion about where the notion of resurrection of the body comes from is mixed. Many scholars, as we shall see, think it comes from Persia. Others think that it is a native Israelite belief, derived from specific experiences of tragedy. Many have thought that the two beliefs-resurrection of the body and immortality of the soul-are logically mutually exclusive. More recently scholars have shown they combine easily and quiet thoroughly rendering the old distinctions obsolete. This study, which examines the data a bit more carefully, will show that there is partial evidence for each of these opinions and evidence of the converse as well. The important factor for understanding the belief in the hereafter is not so much the origin of the notions but how the notions are used within a specific society at a specific time-what the metaphors are being used to express about our human predicament. Biblical notions of the afterlife in Biblical times were just as changeable, conflicting, and revealing as our own in this time. They existed in an exceptionally rich and very complex mythical polemic and equilibrium with their neighboring cultures.
First of all, study of notions of afterlife in the Bible will demonstrate the goals