Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [454]
3. Bleiberg, Jewish Life in Ancient Egypt, pp. 14-20.
4. However, T. Lewis (Cults of the Dead, pp. 104-117), after reviewing all the marzeaḥ texts of Ugarit, says that it is unlikely to be a marzeaḥ and the fast which Saul was keeping beforehand is likely to be more meaningful. I think Lewis is right; the rite is meant to be a necromancy, not a wake.
5. Pace Schmidt. In spite of his learned and interesting book, Israel’s Beneficent Dead, it seems much more likely to me from this evidence and more as well that these practices were early and not introduced in Israelite history first during Assyrian rule.
6. See M. S. Smith, The Early History of God.
7. Toorn, “Nature of the Biblical Teraphim;” also Family Religion in Babylonia; Brichto, The Names of God.
8. See A. Cooper and Goldstein, “The Cult of the Dead,” p. 295.
9. The punctuation of v 20 has been altered for sense.
10. Douglas, Leviticus as Literature, p. 99.
11. Ibid., pp. 87-108.
12. See for example, A. Cooper and Goldstein, “At the Entrance to the Tent;” “The Cult of the Dead;” “Exodus and Ma⋅s⊙t.”
13. Besides Amos 6:7, Barstad in “Religious Polemics of Amos Studies” has argued that two other passages in the book of Amos reflect the marzeaḥ without actually using the term: Amos 2:8 and 6:4-6.
14. McLaughlin, marzeaḥ, p. 83.
15. See Andersen, Amos.
16. McLaughlin, marzeaḥ, pp. 185-95.
17. A. Cooper and Goldstein, “The Cult of the Dead.”
18. See Aberbach and Smolar, “Aaron, Jeroboam, and the Golden Calves.”
19. Finkelstein and Silberman, The Bible Unearthed.
20. See Hallote, Death, Burial, and Afterlife, p. 126. Hallote suggests that it might be translated as the Valley of the “Screaming Son.”
21. See P. Johnston, Shades of Sheol, pp. 68-85; for notions of a threatening underworld, see pp. 86-124.
22. IDB, 1: 788 viz. “dead, the abode of.”
23. The picture occurs in Ugarit (I *AB, 1 1-3).
24. Dahood, Psalms; “The Ebla Tablets.”
25. See P. Johnston, “The Pervasive Underworld?” in Shades of Sheol, pp. 98-124 for a good review of the evidence.
26. Italics mine and used to emphasize that the pronoun is not in keeping with our ordinary interpretation of the passage.
27. For an interesting treatment of the ancestor cult in ancient Israel, see Brichto, “Kin, Cult, Land, and Afterlife.”
28. See Bailey, “Old Testament View of Life After Death.”
29. Gen 25:8; 25:17; 35:29; 49:33. “He died” is omitted for Jacob, see also Gen 49:29. See P. Johnston, Shades of Sheol, p. 33.
30. See unpublished paper of Jonah Steinberg “Sheol: New Perspectives on the Netherworld in the Eschatological Ideologies of the Hebrew Bible.” (Wächter, TWNT, 909.)
31. Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, esp. pp. 133-47. Her book is a most responsible summary of the whole problem.
32. E. Meyers, “Secondary Burials in Palestine.”
33. Heidel, The Gilgamesh Epic.
34. Alternatively, the phrase “gathered to one’s ancestors” may witness to a common trait of oral cultures. People remember the names of their immediate forbears but gradually they are absorbed into the collective group of ancestors, with the exception of a few specially important ancestral heroes.
35. E. Meyers, Jewish Ossuaries.
36. This is particularly interesting because the Deuteronomic reforms of Josiah were key in breaking down the rampant cult of the dead around Jerusalem, which probably further served the unification of the Jerusalem priesthood as well.
37. See the previous chapter, on Mesopotamia and Canaan, n. 60. See also T. Lewis, Cults of the Dead, p. 144.
38. See the excellent book by Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, pp. 132-51.)
39. Ibid., esp. pp. 133-51, which is used throughout this section.
40. Hallote, Death, Burial, and Aferlife, pp. 36-37.
41. Ibid., pp. 31-43.
42. J. Davies, Death, Burial, and Rebirth, pp. 71-83.
43. Barr, The Garden of Eden; J. W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting.
44. Barr, The Garden of Eden.
45. See Eduard Löhse, “ in Hebrew Thought,” in TDNT.
46. Lev 19:28