Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [16]
Armed with these social and methodological tools, we will investigate the Jesus movement, the apostle Paul, and the Gospels. Then we will move on to the noncanonical gospels, the apocrypha of the Jewish and Christian communities, the Church Fathers and their major opponents, the Gnostics. Subsequently, we will consider the notions of life after death in the Mishnah, Talmud, and Rabbinic Judaism generally. The final chapter will explore Islam. The order of chapters is therefore roughly chronological throughout, although the chronology in each chapter will necessarily overlap with the others. It will be necessary to synchronize them from time to time so we can be aware of parallel beliefs in different religious traditions. At the end, after we have examined these early and foundational traditions in detail, we will look at later Jewish, Christian, and Muslim views.
To conclude, we will return to the issue of the matter of meaning and truth in the notion of afterlife. The enormous quantity of material does not yield easily either to a strictly historical or to a strictly topical approach. Our study will at least attempt to show that there are organic, historical relationships between the texts of the various literary genres and communities of belief. In every case, I try to ask the questions we have so far asked-what do these notions of the afterlife suggest about the ultimate meaning of life to these people? Why do they change over time? What social and historical issues lie behind these changes? How do the doctrines themselves condition further discussion and conflict within the various communities as they relate to other communities who value the same traditions? Why do we insist that life continues beyond the grave and why do we give credence to those who have experienced it and return to tell us about it?
PART ONE
THE CLIMATE OF IMMORTALITY
1
Egypt
DESERVEDLY OR NOT, ancient Egypt is known as a culture obsessed by the afterlife. Even the Egyptian cultures of the Neolithic era buried their dead with grave goods, suggesting a continuation of life in the grave. The Hebrews may have been deeply influenced by the Egyptians. When the Hebrews finally arrived in the land of Canaan to stay, by 1200 BCE, they arrived from Egypt. During the Egyptian captivity of the Hebrews, the major beliefs of Egyptian afterlife had already been developed and practiced for a millennium. According to the Biblical account, Egypt had been the home of the Israelites, who were sojourners there for four hundred years. Canaan itself was nominally under the influence of Egypt, as the Canaanites were Egyptian vassals. The material culture of Canaan shows innumerable Egyptian influences. Egypt was the strongest political force in the area until the Middle Iron Age, and Egyptian influences appear frequently in Canaanite and Israelite religious, political, and decorative motifs until the rise of Assyria.1 Nevertheless, the Hebrews were not overly impressed with Egyptian religion.
Egyptian Geography and Its Effect on Egyptian Myths
THE GREEKS, on the other hand, were impressed. For the Greeks, Egypt was an ancient, mysterious, and mystical world. The pyramids were already two millennia old in the sixth century BCE, when Herodotus visited Egypt. He stood at a comparable distance to the pyramid’s builders as we do to Jesus’s followers and so he stood in appropriate awe of Egypt’s antiquity. He also singled out Egyptian science, in particular its effective use of geometry, as worthy of great veneration.
Ancient Egypt gives us the longest continuous history in the ancient world. It was a fabulously wealthy and stable culture. Egypt’s stability depended on its wealth and its insulation from the rest of the ancient world by oceans, deserts, and mountain ranges. The Nile river gave