Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [301]
SECOND BARUCH
In 2 Baruch (Syriac), the theme of angelic transformation receives enormous emphasis. It is set in the period of the destruction of the First Temple, though it is the destruction of the Second Temple that occasioned the text. This book has been influenced by Christianity and can be dated variously from the first to the third century CE. So it is hard to assess its exact social location. Besides the ascent and translation story, the book serves as a primer for the final disposition of the just and unjust in God’s grand scheme, protected by the imprimatur of Baruch’s revelatory experience.
Baruch follows several well-known techniques for achieving RASC, including fasting and lamentation, which are known to alter consciousness. First Baruch explicitly asks why one should remain righteous. The answer is clear: righteousness is God’s goal for humans, therefore no person should indulge in self-destructive enterprises (12:5-20:4). After Baruch repeats the preparatory rites, he receives revelations of disasters that will shortly overtake the world, followed by the apocalypse, including the coming of the Messiah, the resurrection of the dead, and the final judgment (20:5-30:5).
In the final “balancing of the books,” the righteous and the sinners both survived death so that the wicked could be punished. Not only was Baruch familiar with the texts in Daniel 12, which explicitly say that the evil and the good will be resurrected for the final judgment, he was also familiar with the visions in Ezra and relied on them to amplify his vision of the end (see particularly, 1 Enoch 22 and 4 Ezra 7:28ff.). Naturally, the details of the visionary literature itself were picked up in future visions. This is not necessarily the result of exegesis or literary allusion; it may just as easily be explained as the natural incorporation of known details into later visions because they appear in the visions of the apocalypticists after they have been studied.16 The novel details may have come from visions or they might not. Further study is necessary in each case.
After a few more visions, which are also explained, Baruch repeats his preparation procedure yet again to ask specifically about the nature of the resurrection (49:1-52:7):
Listen, Baruch, to this word and write down in the memory of your heart all that you shall learn. For the earth will surely give back the dead at that time; it receives them now in order to keep them, not changing anything in their form. But as it has received them so it will give them back. And as I have delivered them to it so it will raise them. For then it will be necessary to show those who live that the dead are living again, and that those who went away have come back. And it will be that when they have recognized each other, those who know each other at this moment, then my judgment will be strong, and those things which have been spoken of before will come. (50:1-4, end of chapter)
The dead must be raised in their exact form so that God’s justice will be evident to all. But then the righteous will be changed into a much more glorious form, as in 2 Baruch 51:3. This transformation conveniently solves the problem of identity in the afterlife before it goes on to the final consummation. In this further developed vision of the end, all the righteous share the rewards given by Daniel to “those who are wise.” This represents a significantly different view of the meaning of that expectation.
Second Baruch 51:3-5 portrays a gradual transformation of all believers into angelic creatures, as the process of redemption is fulfilled:
Also, as for the glory of those who proved to be righteous on account of my law, those who possessed intelligence in their life, and those who planted the root of wisdom in their heart-their splendor