Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [154]
Instead, he states positively that there is no reward or punishment in the life after death. It is the same reward for all. But his reaction is not despair; rather it is closer to stoic apatheia, stoic indifference. Like Sidduri in the old Babylonian version of The Gilgamesh Epic, he suggests a carpe diem (literally: “seize the day”) theme. Enjoy life. Eat and drink with enjoyment; let your family give you pleasure; dress well. This life is all that we can know. Don’t count on anything more.
Here, in Ecclesiastes, is the beginning of the position that Josephus and the New Testament associate with the Sadducees. This class comes from the highest level of the society but, by the first century CE, Josephus calls them boorish and too indifferent to the needs of their inferiors. Whatever their manners, their rejection of life after death is grounded in Scripture, particularly in the book of Ecclesiastes.
The Wisdom of Jesus Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus)
EVEN IN THE later book of the Wisdom of Jesus Ben Sira, also known as Sirach, Siracides or Ecclesiasticus, we find similar notions which stand heroically against any doctrine of beatific afterlife. All rewards and punishments are experienced in this life. Adversity is a test of one’s faith: “Opt not for the success of pride; remember it will not reach death unpunished” (Sir 9:12). Even more important is his famous discussion of death:
Give, take, and treat yourself well,
for in the netherworld there are no joys to seek.
All flesh grows old, like a garment;
the age-old law is: all must die. (Sir 14:16-17)
This text merely says that all die. But in Ben Sira there is no remedy for death on the other side of the grave. There are two principal ways in which a person outlasts death. The first is through children (Sir 30:4-5). They will represent their parents after death. The other way is by means of lasting reputation (Sir 41:11-13). For Ben Sira, they are both the most admirable and worthwhile life occupations.
The Hebrew text is actually more pessimistic on the issue of afterlife than is the Greek. In the Greek translation, several possible allusions to retribution in the hereafter are mentioned, especially Sirach 7:17b and 48:11b. The reasons for this may be that the translation was written after the publication of the visions of Daniel while the original certainly precedes them. The Greek version was likely glossed to contain the ever more popular notions of life after death.
The Arrival of the Notion of Resurrection
EVIDENCE OF the gradual imposition of the idea of beatific afterlife surfaces in the later prophets and psalms. One of the most famous passages occurs in Ezekiel 37, dated sometime around the victory of Cyrus over the Neo-Babylonian empire in 539 BCE. But it actually means less than has been attributed to it:
The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O LORD God, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the LORD God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the LORD.” So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain,