Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [111]
In this passage a superior person is prophesied for the end of time. He will be the saoshyant (savior) of later Zoroastrian literature. It would be unreasonable to suppose that this figure is the basis for the Jewish messiah. “Messiah” is a Judean term used throughout the First Temple period. But nowhere in First Temple Hebrew Scripture does “messiah” refer to a future king, only the present one. A future king is addressed as “branch” or “scion of David.” It is remarkable how infrequently the term is used even in intertestamental Judaism before the first century CE, and immediately after a short second Persian stint as rulers of Jerusalem. The expectation of a messiah in Judaism is understandable on its own terms as part of native Jewish religion. On the other hand, some of the cosmic imagery that is sometimes attached to the reign of the Messiah in the Greco-Roman period, especially his supernatural qualities, may well have been borrowed from Persia where they originally applied to the saoshyant.
The same source may explain the accelerated interest in an apocalyptic end in Israel. There was a “day of the LORD” in Israelite thought but it develops quickly into apocalypticism under the influence of Persian thought. In Persia, it underwent some development as well. In Yasna 43, that day is merely a hinted “turning point.” It receives further development in Yasna 44:15-16 which alludes to the ultimate confrontation between Truth and Lie. Ahura Mazda is implored to “bring his impetuous weapon upon the deceitful and bring ill and harm over them.” Two great opposing armies confront each other. Which side will be victorious? Obviously, tradition answers that it is the good, the light, and the moral.
The apocalyptic end will also be characterized by fleshly resurrection of the body. In Yasna 54 we have a description of the end of time: “The dead will rise in their lifeless bodies.”19 The vocabulary is consonant with the Jewish usage as well. This is the most important and interesting candidate for borrowing by the Hebrews, for resurrection does not truly enter Jewish life until after they have made contact with Persian society. It does not become explicit in Jewish life until after the contact has been firm for centuries, though the hints start almost immediately. The parallel vocabulary is not much to go on, but gives us ideas about one possible source of Jewish notions of the afterlife.
In the afterlife, the “soul” or “self” (Avestan: uruuan; Pahlavi: urvan) was to enjoy the fruits of its trials on earth. “Soul” is, of course, a very awkward way to translate this term. We can see here a parallel relationship between envisioning the afterlife and evaluating the notion of “self” in this world. As in all other cultures we have so far discussed, the narrative of the person’s journey after death was a particular way of meditating on who we are, whether we are those who inhabit these bodies or whether we are these bodies, and what the meaning and process of our maturation is. By talking of the urvan’s final disposition and the way to attain it, the Persians were expressing that part of our lives on earth is transcendent, that part of our earthly life lives on after us. For the Zoroastrian, it is the ethically good part of a person’s deeds and self. The person survived death as transformed into his urvan and achieved a happy afterlife through moral behavior.
An interesting subject for speculation is how the Zoroastrian notion of the resurrection of the earthly body affects notions of the “self.” One obvious answer to the question comes from comparing the Zoroastrian notion of the resurrection of the body to its converse: the Greek notion of the immortality of the soul. The Greek philosophical notion functions in part to validate a battle