The Afterlife - Heaven, Hell, Purgatory

I said I would get back to you about the belief of the chosen People before Christ and of Jews up to the present day concerning the Afterlife.

Although I have consulted Catholic sources and also Wikipedia, when seeking authoritative information about a religion I always consult sources within that religion itself. I want to know what Jews can tell us about what they believe, as well as commentaries from outside their religion. The link I have found most useful is

https://www.near-death.com/religion/judaism/afterlife-beliefs.html

- a page from a large website concerning Judaism written by Jews.

Some preliminary points, with your patience.

HISTORICAL STUDIES

A cardinal point about historical studies is to realise that certain issues, which have been discussed and judged in more recent times, had not always been considered at all in the more remote past. If we neglect this, we end up trying to assign our forebears to one or other side of a controversy which had not, in fact, been present to their minds.

The first thing to notice is that God's revelation to His chosen People was made only gradually. It was only from Christ that the final, and perfect, Revelation was made. God did not choose to appear in the sky 4,000 years ago (or 50,000) with a copy of the Apostles' Creed.

MONOTHEISM

Attentive reading of the OT shows that, in the very earliest recorded period, it might not have been clear and definite in their minds that Yahweh was the only God. Several passages, e.g.

Exodus 15:11 (KJV) Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?

- Are at least ambiguous. Is the writer asking a purely rhetorical question, or does he share the common belief of the time that each nation had its own protector god?

It is not inconceivable that the earliest Hebrews, while being faithful to Yahweh, did not trouble themselves over the implication of other deities for other nations. In fact, it is clear that the Israelites were constantly relapsing into polytheism right up until the relatively recent date of 586 B.C., in which year, the majority of the Jews were exiled to Babylon and Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. God, via the prophets, constantly rebukes His people for their idolatry, up to and including the terrible religion of Baal and Moloch: 'You have

2 Kings 23:10 (KJV) And he [Josaiah] defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech.

2 Kings 23:24 (KJV) Moreover the workers with familiar spirits, and the wizards, and the images, and the idols, and all the abominations that were spied in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, did Josiah put away, that he might perform the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the LORD.

THE AFTERLIFE

C.S. Lewis reflects on the fact, intriguing to us, that the early Hebrews either did not believe in an afterlife or were not especially interested in it. It is a lesson in humility for us all.

to quote from the link cited above:

<<The core of Judaism is a covenant relationship - which is both a contractual agreement and a "marriage" of love - between Yahweh and his chosen people. Because Judaism is built around a relationship involving agreements and promises in this life, the afterlife is less essential for Judaism than for other world religions. It would, in fact, be relatively easy to imagine Judaism without any afterlife beliefs whatsoever. Because of the non-centrality of the afterlife for Judaism, this tradition has been able to entertain a wide variety of different afterlife notions throughout its history, more so than perhaps any other religion.

The ancient Hebrews emphasized the importance of the present life over the afterlife. As with both the ancient Greeks and Mesopotamians, the afterlife, if it was considered at all, was conceived of as a pale shadow of earthly life, much like the Greek Hades. Also similar to the Greek Hades, in the Hebrew afterlife no distinction was made between the treatment of the just and the unjust after death. Instead, rewards and punishments were meted out in the present life, and in the covenant "contract" Yahweh promised to do just that.

Reflection on the inequalities of this life and on the apparent failure of Yahweh to make good on his covenant promises led serious religious thinkers to consider the option of resurrection. The resurrection of ordinary human beings seems to have originated in the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism. As a result of several centuries of Persian control of the Middle East region, Jews were brought into contact with Zoroastrian religious ideas and the notion of resurrection. Zoroaster combined resurrection with the idea of a final judgment, in which the entire human race is resurrected and individuals rewarded or punished. This concept clearly appealed to Jewish religious thinkers of the time as an adequate way of coming to grips with the injustices that were so apparent in this life.

As implied in the Book of Daniel, the Jewish notion of resurrection in the Maccabeean period was tied to a notion of judgment, and even to separate realms for the judged. In rabbinical thought, the model for heaven was Eden. The rabbinic word for hell, "Gehenna", is taken from the name of a valley of fire where children were said to be sacrificed as burnt offerings to Baal and Moloch (Semitic deities). Gehenna is a place of intense punishment and cleansing. This place is also known as "She'ol" and other names. This line of Jewish thought argues that after death the soul has to be purified before it can go on the rest of its journey. The amount of time needed for purification depends on how the soul dealt with life. One Jewish tradition states that a soul needs a maximum of 11 months for purification, which is why, when a parent dies, the kaddish (memorial prayer) is recited for 11 months. The concept of Gehenna as a place for temporary purification was the source for the orthodox Christian doctrine of "purgatory."

The first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus stated that the Pharisees, the Jewish sect that founded rabbinic Judaism to which Paul once belonged, believed in reincarnation. He writes that the Pharisees believed the souls of evil men are punished after death. The souls of good men are "removed into other bodies" and they will "have power to revive and live again.">>

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From

http://www.uscatholic.org/articles/201801/what-early-christians-learned-jews-about-afterlife-31281

hell, and judgment.

Throughout the gospels Jesus often speaks of the future life, of the fates reserved for the virtuous and the wicked. Not every Jew at the time shared those views, and the influential faction of the Sadducees even denied the afterlife. Even so, the early Christians were firmly rooted in the Jewish beliefs of the time: Death was assuredly not the end.

But the more we investigate the Hebrew Bible, the more surprised we should be by this fact. Through most of the early history of the Hebrew people, the afterlife was anything but an obvious or accepted doctrine, and only in the three centuries or so before Jesus’ time did that situation change. Those centuries mark a tectonic shift in religious thought, and Jesus’ followers were at its heart. Both the books of Wisdom and Maccabees served as key manifestos for that revolution.

When Old Testament books and authors discuss the afterlife, the picture they present is anything but hopeful. Before the sixth century BCE individuals who died survived at best as shades who had little distinct identity. In the grim words of Psalm 115, “The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any that go down into silence.”

The Bible refers often to Sheol, the place of the dead, but this miserable place was not reserved for notorious sinners or wrongdoers. Regardless of your goodness or piety, the ultimate fate of humanity was the grave with its maggots and worms. In the third century BCE the author of Ecclesiastes wrote that the same fate ultimately comes to righteous and evil alike. All go down to Sheol. “But whoever is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no more reward, and even the memory of them is lost” (Eccl: 9:4–5). Only the fact that the book was credited to King Solomon ensured that such a materialist manifesto remained within the biblical canon.

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Later readers, Jewish and Christian, can point to some passages as indicating a belief in survival or resurrection, such as Ezekiel’s story of the valley of dry bones (37:1–14). Usually, though, such texts are visions of a collective future resurrection of the Hebrew people rather than of any given individual.

So what changed? Jewish beliefs were first transformed at the time of the Exile to Babylon in the sixth century BCE, and ideas of an afterlife become much more obvious in so-called post-Exilic works written after the 520s.

The main reason for change was the increasingly firm monotheism taught originally by the great prophets. They rejected any suggestion that the God of Israel had consorts or companions and scoffed at images of God sitting in a heavenly court with fellow deities and goddess wives. Nor was God the lord of the Hebrew nation alone while other divine figures ruled only their particular peoples. For prophets like Isaiah or Jeremiah God was absolutely and sternly alone, the one creator and Lord of the whole earth.

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Afterlife beliefs became much more popular and widespread from the third century BCE onward, when ideas of heaven, hell, and resurrection were freely discussed in highly influential writings that are not included in most canonical Bibles. The most important was the first Book of Enoch, which Jesus certainly knew and which early Christians regarded as inspired scripture.

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Probably written in the late second century BCE, the most astonishing thing about 2 Maccabees is that so little in it surprises us today. Throughout, we read stories that exactly fit our expectations of how God’s martyrs should behave.

When one resistance hero has his hands severed, he declares that he will receive them again after his death. His brother proclaims a similar faith and warns his persecutors that they, unlike he, will have no resurrection which they can look forward.

Nothing here differs from a thousand later accounts of martyrs and confessors, Jewish or Christian, but this is the first time that such themes have appeared in the biblical tradition. The book’s language of a “resurrection to life” sounds very close to later Christian usage.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayer_for_the_dead#Judaism

Prayers for the dead form part of the Jewish services. The prayers offered on behalf of the deceased consist of: Recitation of Psalms; Reciting a thrice daily communal prayer in Aramaic which is known as Kaddish. Kaddish actually means "Sanctification" (or "Prayer of Making Holy") which is a prayer "In Praise of God"; or other special remembrances known as Yizkor; and also a Hazkara which is said either on the annual commemoration known as the Yahrzeit as well on Jewish holidays.

The form in use in England contains the following passage: "Have mercy upon him; pardon all his transgressions ... Shelter his soul in the shadow of Thy wings. Make known to him the path of life."^[1]

El Maleh Rachamim is the actual Jewish prayer for the dead, although less well known than the Mourner's Kaddish. While the Kaddish does not mention death but rather affirms the steadfast faith of the mourners in God's goodness, El Maleh Rachamim is a prayer for the rest of the departed. There are various translations for the original Hebrew which vary significantly. One version reads:

God, filled with mercy, dwelling in the heavens' heights, bring proper rest beneath the wings of your Shechinah, amid the ranks of the holy and the pure, illuminating like the brilliance of the skies the souls of our beloved and our blameless who went to their eternal place of rest. May You who are the source of mercy shelter them beneath Your wings eternally, and bind their souls among the living, that they may rest in peace. And let us say: Amen.