Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [171]
The same is true for Greek culture. We know about far more variation in Greek culture than we know about Persian culture and we know that not everything in Greek culture pleased Jewish sensibilities, just as not everything in Persian culture would have met their approval. But especially the Greek philosophical schools lived morally and abstemiously. There were issues of idolatry to face with both foreign cultures. The Zoroastrians venerated fire while the Greeks reverenced images. Both were suspicious but neither was in the same category as the immorality attributed to the Canaanites: human sacrifice and ritual prostitution. There may have been other Jewish issues with Zoroastrian purity laws and practices. There were certainly many, well-attested, moral issues which Jews raised about Hellenistic culture. But, even so, religious ideas from both flowed more freely into Jewish culture.
Part of the reason is surely the establishment of large empires with good communication. Life in large empires brought with it more cultural mixing than was possible for a small, embattled state in First Temple times. In some important way, the sect that produced Daniel stood over against acculturation to Greek ideas. It is, therefore, surprising that the book of Daniel would even broach using Canaanite imagery in the enthronement of the “Son of Man” and “ancient of days.” The Canaanite roots of the imagery of “the Son of Man” was likely not recognized by the sectarians.
The revelations of Daniel were delivered as prophecy and demanded acceptance on that ground. Evidently, large sections of Jewish society, including the Rabbinic community eventually, were willing to grant it legitimacy, though there is every reason to think that the Sadducees would never have allowed the book of Daniel in their canon because they opposed the whole idea of an afterlife. To see in detail how different parts of Jewish society reacted to these influences, we have to study their texts. It is to that task that we now turn.
PART THREE
VISIONS OF RESURRECTION AND THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL
7
Apocalypticism and Millenarianism
The Social Backgrounds to the Martyrdoms in Daniel and Qumran
The Visions in the Book of Daniel
THE IMPLICATIONS of Daniel 12 are so crucial to understanding the conception of the afterlife in Judea and so important for the rise of Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that we must delve into its secrets more completely. The comparative, social-historical technique which we have been using to analyze other cultures’ views of the afterlife can be used to understand the development of Biblical views of the afterlife. Set in the context of the wider world, Biblical traditions about the afterlife show the same correlation with social institutions that we have seen in other cultures.
“Apocalypticism,” whatever else is implied, has meant the revelation of the secret of the coming end of time, the violent end of the world, and the establishment of God’s kingdom.1 Apocalypses are often pseudepigraphical, that is, fictitiously ascribed to an earlier hero or patriarch. Many apocalyptic books-notably Daniel and Revelation, the only two Biblical books in the genre-also have arcane symbolism, strict dualism of evil against good, and puzzling visions, the meaning of which is hardly clear from a first reading. Second Maccabees, with its martyrology, establishes a conventional story of religious martyrdom, whether or not the events happened in just the way the text describes, but, by comparison with Daniel, it is a book of critical history.
Apocalypticism has a long history. Possibly, some of the noncanonical books, especially I Enoch and related material, preceded the Biblical book of Daniel. We cannot be sure. History gives us many examples of movements arising full-blown in response to certain events, while others seem to simmer for a long while and focus into a movement after a previously existing literature