Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [234]
Immortality of the Soul Used to Justify Suffering and Martyrdom in Other Jewish Literatures
THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS, Enoch, and the Daniel tradition can be contrasted with Wisdom of Solomon, which uses a Greek notion of immortality, but also combines it with a more traditionally Jewish notion of resurrection:
But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,
and no torment will ever touch them.
In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died,
and their departure was thought to be an affliction,
and their going from us to be their destruction;
but they are at peace.
For though in the sight of men they were punished,
their hope is full of immortality. (Wis 3:1-4)
The occasion of the discussion is the death of the righteous. These may be the martyrs but the description is so general as to include any righteous person who dies early or childless. As with the apocalyptic sensibility, the writer of Wisdom claims that the righteous dead are immortal, with God. The wicked will be punished, both on earth, and by not sharing the immortality of the righteous. God will overturn the plans of the evil, and disasters will follow them. Yet, unlike in the apocalyptic works, there is no obvious resurrection at the end of time. In fact, the issue in Wisdom 1:15-2:24 is strictly one of theodicy. If there is a restoration on earth, it is accomplished in the subtlest ways: “They will govern nations and rule over peoples, / and the Lord will reign over them forever” (3:8). It is not clear that this means resurrection or restoration of the martyrs at all.30
The theme is developed through contrast. When reading through the passage, at first, we think we will see the theme of Ecclesiastes return, with its marvelous critique of Persian Jewish and Greek Jewish affluence with incipient stoicism. Since there is no earthly justice, Epicureanism is the rational choice: Carpe diem! Yet this passage shows by rational progression that such beliefs lead not only to disregard of God, they finally lead to the persecution of the righteous.
The stoicism and epicureanism of the beginning is overturned by a more traditional Jewish view of God’s providence. This is an important, intellectual, and logical analysis of the eventual end of those who disregard God. In the end, it is the righteous who will triumph. The passage even ends with a reference to supernatural evil, created by the devil. Yet, how different is this from the analysis of the justification of the righteous in the Daniel and 2 Maccabees passage! It is much more like Philo’s or Josephus’ figuration of apocalypticism in terms of Platonism. There is no explicit discussion of the end of time and the world disruption which will reward the righteous with apocalyptic vengeance. Rather instead the work tries to show how divine Wisdom (as a separate hypostasis of God) has aided the righteous throughout Biblical history.
The Greek influence is a natural extension of explaining native Jewish notions of righteousness and the rewards of martyrdom to Greek audiences. The Greek influence is a hermeneutical processs, not just a translation of terms from one language to another but an attempt to translate notions of afterlife from one culture to another, where “resurrection” is better understood as “immortality.” Even more important is the social context of these ideas, which place it squarely in the higher classes of Jewish life, who have seen fit to articulate the inchoate notion of afterlife in the Bible with the help of Greek philosophy. The people who wrote these passages are concerned with God’s justice but they are not revolutionaries. They tell a story of those who deny life after death and wind up denying God. They stay as close as possible to the original Hebrew notions in the Psalms.
Similarly, we cannot tell from this passage whether the afterlife is immediately after death or at the end of time, whether it is experienced