Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [170]
Since this is a tour, conducted at a specific moment in time, we do not see the future restoration when the righteous will inherit the earth. But we are given several clear indications of the eventual judgment. In 1 Enoch 25, we see the tree of life (Gen 3:22), which the righteous will inherit at the final judgment when God descends to earth. As a result, the elect will receive the fruit of the tree and will achieve “long life”-this is obviously the Tree of Life from Eden.
Lastly, we should note that the issue of the principle of identity in the afterlife is addressed in a new way in this extended Enoch passage. The spirits are called “souls” but they are eventually resurrected bodily. The fact that they exist in an intermediary state has suggested to many that Platonic dualism was already present here.29 But it seems doubtful to me that these are the immortal souls of Platonism. Rather they seem more like any number of souled beings in the ancient Near East.
The soul is the equivalent of ghost or spirit, as it is throughout Hebrew culture. In other words, there is, in this passage, no explicit new, philosophical speculation about what exactly immortality of the soul would entail in terms of the identity of the person, other than it means that the person will be resurrected. This passage seems to reflect the ancient Hebrew notion of “soul” as a person, which can be alive or dead in the Bible. Quite clearly here, they are the “shades,” a person who continues to live in the intermediary state. It is but an unsubstantial state, which retains the identity of the person until the resurrection for the just alone. But there is no specific notion of an immortal soul as in Platonic thought.
In fact, to pay too much attention to the influence of Platonism here is to mistake what is important about the passage: This narrative picture of the afterlife demands a new reification of a soul, similar to the explanations we have seen in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Canaan. One can hardly have a system of postmortem punishment and reward after death if there is no vehicle to pass on the moral identity of the person.
Conversely, this has ramifications for the definition of person in these passages. What applies to the afterlife also applies to life itself. The word nepeš, “soul,” is ancient. But here it is explicitly being used as a moral principle of postmortem identity and hence that identity is reified in life, which is a more complicated affair for people living both in a Jewish religious context and a wider imperial one. It is no longer possible for a person to have more or less of the quantity of soul, explaining his charisma or effectiveness. Instead, one’s moral identity, implicit in Hebrew thought throughout, needs to carry into the postmortem state.
Because the writers of the First Temple period were so adamantly opposed to the culture of the Canaanites, this Second Temple openness to the religious insights of other cultures seems an innovation. During the First Temple period, from the perspective of the editors of the Bible, the Israelites were involved in a desperate Kulturkampf with an abhorrent religion, which practiced idolatry, ritual prostitution, and infant sacrifice. We know that this is the projection backwards of Jews in the Persian period, who wished to warn their brothers against the dangers of acculturation. Even so, and in spite of the sensibilities of the YHWH-alone party in Hellenistic Jewish society, much imagery and sometimes even the religious practices of the other nations did enter Jewish culture.
Zoroastrianism was one source of interest to the Jews. The Zoroastrians had a prophetic religion, based on the revelations of a prophet, who preached the importance of staying away from evil and emulating the good. They had conquered the evil oppressors of the Israelites and their Shah, Cyrus, had even been proclaimed “Messiah” by Isaiah. The Jews were subsumed into the far-flung Persian Empire and their religion treated