NOTES for Ma2 12:45

The biblical books tell us little or almost nothing about the state after death, whether good or evil. Pagan tradition is far more informative in this respect: in both Egyptian and Greek religion there is not only a developed teaching about the afterlife, but also a fully reflected thought about posthumous recompense. The Bible, however, is concentrated not on posthumous existence, but on that universal resurrection that awaits everyone on the day of Judgment and of the Messiah's coming.

The little that is said in the Bible about the afterlife as such is not a reflection of the Yahwist tradition proper. Rather, here one can speak of a pre-Yahwist, pre-biblical tradition, certain elements of which entered Yahwism and were reflected in the Bible. Such are the biblical ideas about Sheol, about the world of shades, where after death everyone without exception goes and where there is no difference between those who were righteous in the world of the living and those who sinned during earthly life. Views of this kind were characteristic of virtually all peoples of the earth from prehistoric times, and there is nothing properly Yahwist in them.

It was on the basis of such ideas that later theories of posthumous recompense subsequently developed in some pagan religions, particularly the Egyptian and Greek. And yet in Yahwism some thoughts did appear about what happens after death, alternative to those associated with the image of Sheol, although this happened quite late, later than among neighboring peoples. But even they were inseparable from reflection on the universal resurrection. As is evident, by the time of the Maccabean wars, around the middle of the second century BC, they were already quite widespread. The point is that Sheol, by its very nature, appeared to believing Yahwists as a rather gloomy place, one the righteous plainly did not deserve.

That is why, already in the Hellenistic period, ideas began to take shape in Yahwism about an afterlife more suitable for the righteous. Still, they differed radically from those of neighboring peoples, for example, from those of the Egyptians. In Egypt, as throughout the pagan world, the afterlife was usually a final state for a person, since the doctrine of reincarnation did not become widely spread in the Near Eastern region. From the Yahwist point of view, however, it was an intermediate state, preceding the day of the Last Judgment and the universal resurrection, when every righteous person would receive his reward. The question was only where the righteous person would have to spend the time separating the day of his death from the day of Judgment.

In the Hellenistic period, the answer to this question took the form of reflection on the afterlife of the righteous person, who either falls asleep in a deep and peaceful sleep in order to awaken on the day of the universal resurrection and receive the deserved reward, or is immersed in a state of calm and deep contemplation of the glory of God, from which he emerges on that same day of Judgment. There was no single opinion, but it was supposed that, in any case, the righteous person avoided Sheol.

Precisely in order to avoid it with certainty, purification sacrifices were sometimes offered for the recently dead, usually when they had intended to offer them themselves but had not managed to do so because of unexpected death. There was nothing surprising here: the righteous, as was supposed, go not to Sheol but straight to the throne of God, the same place to which, according to ideas generally accepted in that era, the incense from sacrifices ascended. In that case the sacrifice was not in vain: it was credited to the righteous person who would rise on the day of Judgment.