Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [375]
This first stubborn question, however, is quickly answered by reference to equity or “measure for measure,” a well-known Rabbinic dictum explaining God’s actions. The answer is explicitly that denying the world to come is the appropriate and equable punishment for someone who denies life after death, even though it seems harsh. Anyone who recants the “heresy” is admitted. It is interesting that the Rabbis are puzzled by a punishment that stands merely on a belief, not an action; while it is precisely belief that makes for salvation or damnation in Christianity, for instance. The question is more interesting and revealing than the answer, which satisfies the Rabbis.
What Is the Verse?
AFTER THIS, the Gemarah raises the issue that will dominate its discussion of life after death: How is resurrection derived from the Torah? Now, the Amoraim are expressly using the term “Torah” to refer only to the first five books of Moses, as is clear from the subsequent discussion. Since we know from historical analysis that the first sure reference to life after death is in the book of Daniel and that even the first hints of it are as late as the prophets, it seems a hopeless task to derive it from the the Mosaic Torah. But the issue is not history; it is hermeneutics. The Rabbis did not know of modern historical criticism; they wanted to see for themselves what could be said on the matter. They threw down a challenge to themselves, and they each tried to answer the challenge with the appropriate passage. The challenge creates the same kind of suspense that letting the previous Biblical generations off the hook did, except here they are trying to do the impossible.
Being absolute masters of the text of the Bible from their youths, they are clearly aware of the difficulty for their exegetical skills. The first candidate to answer the challenge is Numbers 18:28: “And you shall give the Lord’s heave offering to Aaron the priest.” Since Aaron died, this commandment now seems to to be falsified. But the Rabbis are pointing out that the commandment contains no time limitation so Aaron must be still “alive.” From Aaron’s resurrection we learn that we will be resurrected. But is it an adequate proof?
Immediately, the school of Rabbi Ishmael, who are credited with the rather modern notion that “the language of Torah is human language,” suggest what most modern interpreters would think first: perhaps the “to Aaron,” really means “to one like Aaron,” namely, to Aaron’s priestly descendants in the Aaronide line. The effect of this discussion was to bring the passage into question as the proof of life after death.
This is quite an astonishing moment. It is the first time within a community accepting resurrection as a religious doctrine that we actually see an argument about whether the belief in resurrection is true at all. To be sure it was debated within the Jewish community in the first century. And the Christians debated the nature of the resurrection. But, here, in the third century or later, the very scriptural demonstration of the belief was still under scrutiny. Such is characteristic of Rabbinic exegesis. The school of Rabbi Ishmael was not declared heretic and ostracized. Yet, no one would say that the Amoraic Rabbis denied the doctrine that Josephus claimed was central even to the Pharisees, predecessors to the Tannaim who themselves are the predecessors to the Amoraic Rabbis.
These Gemarah passages reflect very different historical times than the first century. The debates took place in relative freedom in the Parthian (Arsacid) and Sassanian Persian Empires. Even the most sacred assumptions were in principle subject to the same legal scrutiny as issues of marriage and divorce.
The issue of the scriptural basis for the doctrine of resurrection becomes a constant refrain, interrupted by intervening digressions.