Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [458]
56. Cumont, Afterlife in Roman Paganism; see also Astrology and Religion; Lux Perpetua.
57. Cassius Dio, Roman History 56.42.3.
58. See P. Fossing, Catalogue of the Antique Engraved Gems and Cameos, pp. 177n, 1199, also 1203ff.
59. O. M. Dalton, Catalogue of Ivory Carvings of the Christian Era, p. 1 and plate 1. (“The Apotheosis of Romulus”). See the useful bibliography of Sr. Dominique Cuss, Imperial Cults and Honorary Terms in the New Testament (Freiburg: 1974), from whom I first heard of the triptych.
60. Corpus inscriptionam latinarum 6.29954.
61. N. Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, p. 55.
62. Compare this with our current beliefs, reiterated at every planetarium show and astronomical TV program, namely that we are such stuff as stars are made of-because the higher elements are formed only deep inside stars.
63. Cassius Dio, Roman History 69.11; Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.9.7-8; Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 4.8.2; Justin, 1 Apology 1.29; Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus 4.
64. See Z. Smith, “Hellenistic Religions,” in The New Encyclopedia Britannica. Macropaedia 8:749-51, 15th ed; Stendahl, Immortality and Resurrection. Also see Tabor, Things Unutterable, p. 63.
Chapter 6. Second Temple Judaism:
The Rise of a Beatific Afterlife in the Bible
1. The Hebrew is not so much ambiguous grammatically as ambiguous in context. The NRSV renders it as: “he will devise plans so as not to keep an outcast banished forever from his presence”; RSV: “but God will not take away the life of him who devises means not to keep his banished one an outcast”; both are attentive to the grammar but easy to interpret in a broader way. The LXX is not the source of the translation: “even as he devises to thrust his outcast from him.” It is exactly the opposite of the English translations and, one supposes, takes the Hebrew subordinating conjunction “without” in a less negative sense. The source of the optimistic translation is the Vulgate: nec vult perire Deus animam sed retractat cogitans ne penitus pereat qui abiectus est.
2. Consequently, it has been dated in practically every century since the tenth century bce to the first century CE.
3. See, for example, Sperber, Greek and Latin Legal Terms.
4. Seow, Ecclesiastes, p. 22.
5. M. Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics.
6. See the recent book by Bremmer for a convenient summary of these historiographical problems. Bremmer, Rise and Fall of the Afterlife, pp. 47-50.
7. Martin-Achard, From Death to Life, pp. 93-102. More recently, see Zimmerli, “Ezekiel 2,” pp. 253-266.
8. Canannite roots have been suggested by van Baudissen, Adonis and Esman, pp. 403-6; Riesenfeld, Repertorium lexicographicum graecum, pp. 4-7; Robinson, Job and His Friends; Martin-Achard, From Death to Life, pp. 70-73; and Nikolainen, Der Auferstehungsglauben, pp. 50-60. Persian influence has been championed by Böklen, Verwandtschaft der Jüdisch-Christlichen; Causse, Du Groupe Ethnique, esp. pp. 24-30. See Cavallin, Life after Death, p. 25.
9. Perhaps better: “(as) a corpse they shall arise,” a accusative of state, referring to the subject of the clause. See Schmitz, “Grammar of Resurrection in Isaiah 26: 19a-c.” His conclusion that the resurrection is literal is more speculative, but his observation that the phrase refers to national regeneration correctly interprets the passage in context.
10. As a good example of a circumspect late dating of the text, see Kaiser, Isaiah 13-39. He understands the text to emanate from Maccabean times, like Daniel. He also gives a very full bibliography of the other commentators on this passage. As do the following good commentaries on the subject: Seitz, Isaiah 1-39; Wildberger, Isaiah 13-27.
11. The parallel has been noted often but none so articulately as Nickels-burg, Resurrection, Immortality and Eternal Life, p. 17; also see “Future Life in Intertestamental Literature.”
12. See Isa 66:18-19.
13. Nickelsburg sees a relationship with the entire text of 3 Isaiah,