Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [153]
The context for these observations by Qoheleth is the seeming injustice and hypocrisy in the world. Ecclesiastes does not rely on a concept of life after death to guarantee justice. Instead, it makes a different observation: God is testing humanity by showing them how close they are to animals, suggesting that the wisdom to perceive the situation will itself permit humanity to regain the proper path. The only afterlife Qoheleth suggests is that we return to dust, just as Genesis 3 says. Qoheleth is reasserting traditional Hebrew values but he valorizes them in a very affecting personal voice, a self-possessed personal sensibility that we have not heard before in Jewish society.
Qoheleth goes out of his way to say that the fate of both animals and humans is the same: They all die. But he then asks a rhetorical question, querying whether anyone knows for sure whether human spirit goes up while animals go down into the earth? This is a most astonishing question, since until now the Israelites and the Jews after them have articulated clearly that humans normally go down to Sheol when they die. Qoheleth was aware of new ideas percolating in the area, ideas which suggested that we ascend to the heavens when we die. He denies their validity.
His opposition may even be influenced by the foreignness of the ideas. It may be the very fact that the Fravashi is Persian and the immortal soul is Greek that bothers him. In any event it looks as if some unstated and uncharacterized notions of a beatific afterlife were already known in Jewish Hebrew culture that Ecclesiastes is going out of its way to question it. Even though Ecclesiastes denies a beatific afterlife, or says that we should never count on reward after death, merely asking the question and suggesting that our spirits can go up rather than down to the grave suggests that we have entered another phase in Hebrew thought.
Qoheleth himself counts on observation of the world to defeat the notion. He suggests that any such traditions of human spirit heading upwards after death is counterintuitive:
This is an evil in all that happens under the sun, that the same fate comes to everyone. Moreover, the hearts of all are full of evil; madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. But whoever is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no more reward, and even the memory of them is lost. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished; never again will they have any share in all that happens under the sun. Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going. (Eccles 9:3-10)
In this passage, Qoheleth accepts the notion of Sheol. He reproduces the solace of the Old Babylonian version of The Gilgamesh Epic. He explicitly denies resurrection and return to this world after death. Logically, he is also sceptical of the prophetic notion