Jewish notions of anthropology in the Second Temple period resist systematization. They floated in a sea dominated by Greek philosophy and ideas about the human soul, death, and the afterlife that themselves are diverse and at times somewhat contradictory. Unshakable was the Jewish conviction of God’s justice and ultimate settling of accounts in the judgment. While earlier Jewish writings emphasize divine justice being meted out in this life, those of the exilic and postexilic periods place a greater emphasis on individual rewards in the world to come based on one’s conduct in this world.

The promise of reward at the eschaton generated speculations about heaven, hell, death, and the afterlife that we find attested in various Jewish apocryphal and pseudepigraphal writings, as well as in the writings of Philo and Josephus. Our limited sources, both Jewish and non-Jewish, preclude determining how and when such speculations about the fate of the dead arose within Israel. Clearly, however, the mixture of ideas found in Jewish literature of this period demonstrate that Greek philosophy made definite inroads on Jewish ideas about the human being, death, and the afterlife. We will look first at the most prominent Greek writers and philosophers before turning to the relevant Jewish writings and noticing their relation to Greek ideas. Finally, we will draw some conclusions in terms of the extent to which later Jewish writings were able to maintain a biblical anthropology.

Greek Views of Anthropology

Beginning with Homer, Greek literature provides a wealth of speculation regarding the nature of human beings, death, and the afterlife. The earliest Greek conceptions of which we can be sure identify the human “soul” (psychē) with the breath which the dying person struggles to retain until at last the “ghost” is given up.¹ In the writings of Homer, one of the most revealing episodes about death occurs in the Iliad during a conversation between the sleeping Achilles and his dead friend Patroclus. His friend’s soul is described as “like his very self ” in height, appearance, and voice (Iliad 23.66, 67).² Patroclus converses intelligently with Achilles and complains that, because his body has not yet been buried, he is unable to join the spirits who are at rest beyond the river Styx but must wander aimlessly through the house of Hades, the master of the underworld. However, it becomes evident that the soul of Patroclus is only a faint shadow of the man, because when Achilles, promising to bury him, reaches out to grasp his friend, the soul vanishes “like a vapour” and goes back beneath the earth “gibbering faintly” (Iliad 23.100, 101). Achilles learns that he will soon join his friend in death, but the impression is left also that the souls of the dead have no lasting substance or existence. They are only “shadows” (skiai)³ or “images” (eidōla) of the person. The startled Achilles exclaims “So it is true! Something of us does survive in Hades’ Halls, some spirit and image of a man, but without real existence” (Iliad 23.103, 104).⁴ Achilles can help his friend arrive in Hades, “but he will not find a full or enriching existence there, and he will certainly not return.”⁵

Homer’s Odyssey contains a similar episode. Odysseus, obliged to sail to the house of Hades, is asked by the dead seer Teiresias, “Why hast thou left the light of the sun and come hither to behold the dead and a region where there is no joy?” (Odyssey 11.93, 94).⁶ As Odysseus speaks one by one with dead souls (psychē) he asks his deceased mother about his wife. He is told that his wife worries for his safety but that his possessions are secure, and that his father is grief-stricken. When his mother tells him that it was her love for him that caused her death, Odysseus tries to embrace her. “Thrice I sprang towards her, and my heart bade me clasp her, and thrice she flitted from my arms like a shadow or a dream [skiē eikelon ē kai oneirō eptat]” (Odyssey 11.206–208). Then he begins to wonder whether this was really his mother or just “some phantom” (ti . . . eidōlon, Odyssey 11.213). So he asks her why she moves away. His mother explains that all the dead are like this, that as soon as life leaves the body “the soul flits away as in a dream.”⁷ In other words, the dead have no substance, nothing to grasp or hold on to. Besides this, the dead have no real memory or intelligence until they taste the blood of the sacrifices made by Odysseus (11.146–148).⁸ When Odysseus calls Achilles “a great prince among the dead,” the reply by Achilles reinforces the point: “‘Say not a word,’ he answered, ‘in death’s favour; I would rather be a paid servant in a poor man’s house and be above ground than king of kings among the dead’” (11.485, 488–491).⁹

After this, Odysseus sees Minos, the son of Zeus, sitting in judgment with the ghosts gathered around him to learn what judgments (dikai) he would render them. Orion was given a great unbreakable bronze club with which to drive the ghosts of the wild beasts he had killed. Another dead soul, Tityus son of Gaia, was stretched out on the ground trying to fight off two vultures who were digging into his liver, but he could not. This was his punishment for raping Zeus’s mistress. He also saw Tantalus, up to his chin in water but unable to quench his thirst with it because every time he stooped to drink the water vanished, leaving nothing but dry ground. He saw Sisyphus engaged in his endless struggle to roll the heavy boulder to the top of the hill. Finally, fearing for his own safety, Odysseus leaves the house of Hades and returns to his ship for the homeward journey.

These stories impacted Greek and Roman musings about the dead and reverberated through subsequent centuries. Hesiod describes the house of Hades as a chill, dank place (Works, 155). Virgil, in his epic poem Aeneas, written in the late first century BC, also describes a visit to the underworld. Aeneas finds the land of the dead to be a place of personified troubles: Sickness, Grief, Care, Hunger, Need, and Pain, evil pleasure of the mind, Discord with “her snaky hair entwined with blood-wet ribbons” and many other monstrous creatures.¹⁰ As Aeneas grabs his sword, his friend reminds him that these ghosts are but “faint, bodiless lives, flitting under a hollow semblance of form,” shadows and nothing more (Virgil, Aeneas 6.290–294). They may even have “bodies” of a sort and bear scars from the wounds they received (e.g., 6.447, 448, 494–496),¹¹ but these vestiges of humanity serve only to mock their pitiful state. If heroes like Agamemnon, Achilles, Ajax, and others were miserable in Hades, “what hope was there for anyone else?”¹² Only the gods had immortality; only they had immortal bodies.¹³

Greek myths could envision a resurrection of a person’s existing body, but it was impossible to restore or recreate the body once it had been destroyed.¹⁴ When hapless Pelops was chopped up and made into a stew for the gods by his father, Tantalus, and Demeter ate his left shoulder, the gods could reassemble the body parts of the boy but none could re-create the missing limb. Instead, he was given “a gleaming ivory shoulder” (Pindar, Olympionikai 1.25–27).

Socrates, Plato, and those philosophers who followed them, present a vivid contrast to this gloomy portrait. Death was not to be feared, but something to look forward to.¹⁵ Socrates considered it at worst a “dreamless sleep” and at best a state of incomparable happiness, with people spending eternity in Hades doing what they had done on earth.¹⁶ Socrates himself hoped to engage the famous dead in debate (Plato, Apologia 40c–41c; idem, Respublica 2.363c–e; 6.498d).¹⁷ Pindar and Pythagoras had believed the soul was immortal, but Plato built his entire philosophical system around it. Death was to be welcomed as the moment of freedom for the soul finally able to slip the bonds of its earthly body prison.¹⁸ Corpses are nothing more than phantoms (eidōla). The real person is the soul, which is nonmaterial and immortal (athanatos), but, when combined with an earthly body, becomes a living being (zōon) and mortal (thnēton).¹⁹ If the soul attaches itself to the physical pleasures of the body rather than to the invisible world of the mind and philosophy, it will be weighed down by this, and when the body dies, the soul will never rise above the visible world (Plato, Phaedo 80–83). Underlying all of this is an ontology based on a theory of “unchanging, ideal ‘forms’ (eidoi) or ideas . . . in the intelligible world and their constantly changing counterparts in the visible world (‘images’ [eikones]).”²⁰ If the soul is immortal, it preexisted the body and will exist after it is dead; therefore, the “learning” of virtue is really just recollection and does not need to be taught (Plato, Meno 81a–e), as the Sophists had claimed. The pains and pleasures of this bodily existence are really illusory. The real business of life is to nurture the soul that survives the body.

Very different is Aristotle. He identified the body as “matter” and the soul as “form,” but it is only the combination of the two that is alive. The soul by itself is merely a potentiality. It has no independent existence, as we find in Plato.²¹ It animates the body to do certain things, including growth, movement or rest, and perception, but the soul is not the cause of individual personality. Who we are as individuals is the result of our unique combination of form and matter. Rationality is a capacity unique to human soul and has two aspects. The passive aspect receives sense impressions from the outside world, while the active aspect works on the level of abstractions. It is this latter aspect of reason (nous) that proves its nonmaterial nature. Human reason is able to generate thoughts that have no corresponding material object.²² This is the closest Aristotle could bring himself to conceive of something divine and immortal. But because this aspect of soul is pure thought, independent of matter, it is indivisible, impassible, and, of itself, has no personality. When the body dies, the passive aspect of reason perishes, while the active aspect remains as an impersonal actuality.²³

Somewhat similar to Aristotle, Epicurus conceived of the soul as consisting of particles held in place by the body until death, at which point these particles are scattered and no sentience is possible.²⁴ Although clearly dependent on the ideas of Democritus about atoms, Epicureans went further by explicitly denying the possibility that the particles of a person’s soul and body, while they might have come together by chance, could somehow be reassembled after death.²⁵ Stoics likewise believed in the dissolution of body and soul at death. And although their views of how that knowledge should affect life in the present differed substantially from the Epicureans, the idea taught by these rival philosophies, that personal existence ceases at death, became highly influential, as attested in numerous tombstones from the first century BC to the first century AD bearing the epitaph, common in both Greek and Latin and often in abbreviated form, “I was not, I was, I am not, I don’t care.” Other epigraphs convey similar sentiments: “When life ends, all things perish and turn to nothing!”; “We are and were nothing. Look, reader, how swiftly we mortals pass from nothing to nothing!”²⁶ By one estimate, “at most 10 percent of the funerary epigrams contain even a hint of a hope for an afterlife.”²⁷

Jewish Views of Anthropology

Many Jewish writings of the Second Temple period reflect continuity with the Hebrew Bible’s perspective on death and the afterlife while others reflect discontinuity. We will begin by examining how the Septuagint reflects Jewish thought on these topics before turning to other writings of the period, proceeding in roughly chronological order.

The Septuagint

To what extent the Septuagint²⁸ represents a shift toward Greek anthropological concepts is disputed.²⁹ Key terms such as “soul,” psychē (usu. translating nefesh), and hadēs (translating she’ol) occur frequently (954 and 107 times, respectively).³⁰ But do these terms merely carry over the meaning of the Hebrew terms they translate, or are they already freighted with Greek nuances?

A careful linguistic study of psychē indicates that the Septuagint “has a tendency to consider the ‘soul’ in a more individualistic way than does the Hebrew text” but not of individual souls in the Platonic sense.³¹ It is those cases in which the semantic range of nefesh does not overlap with psychē that are most telling. For example, in Isaiah 43:4 the Hebrew text speaks of giving “princes for your nefesh” which the Septuagint translates as “princes for your head.” Significantly, in order to specify individuality the translator must resort to a word other than “soul” so that “what makes the person is not so much ‘soul’ as ‘head.’ ”³² It would appear that, because of the Greek understanding of the soul, the meaning of the Hebrew could not accurately be conveyed were it to be so translated. Further evidence that the idea of “soul” in the Septuagint is imbued more with Hebrew than Greek nuances is the fact that psychē is chosen to translate nefesh even when the latter means “corpse” (e.g., Lev 19:28; 21:1; Num 5:2), a meaning not at all encompassed by the Greek word.³³ When the Septuagint refers to the soul of a person it comprehends the whole being or life of the person and cannot be construed in terms of a bipartite (body-soul) or tripartite (body-soul-spirit) concept of human nature.³⁴

Compared to the Hebrew Bible, which generally contains no more than hints of a future resurrection,³⁵ the Septuagint in places makes this hope much more explicit. For example, the Septuagintal Job affirms: “For if a person should die, having finished the days of his life, he will live; I would endure until I exist again” (14:14).³⁶ Even clearer is the addition in Job 42:17a: “Yet it is written of him [Job] that he will arise again with those whom the Lord resurrects.”³⁷ Psalm 1:4, 5 implies the possibility of resurrection for the righteous by denying it for the ungodly, who are “like the dust that the wind hurls from the face of the earth. Therefore the ungodly shall not resurrect in the judgment, nor sinners in the counsel of the righteous.”³⁸ The hope of the resurrection appears also in Isaiah 26:19: “The dead shall rise, and those in the tombs shall be raised. Then those in the earth shall rejoice, for the dew from You is healing to them, but the land of the ungodly shall perish.”³⁹ None of these passages suggests an existence separate from the body. Hope after death is anchored in a future bodily resurrection.

A similar picture emerges from a study of the use of hadēs in the Septuagint. It is not a place of final rewards but conforms to the Hebrew notion of she’ol in referring to the grave as a place of darkness and destruction, the absence of life rather than its shadowy continuation.⁴⁰ Not only in the Septuagint but also in other Jewish literature of the period, hadēs differs from the contemporary Greek concept in “the absence of a clearly defined division into two parts, and . . . the emphasis placed on its association with death and the grave as abnormal facts following in the wake of sin.”⁴¹ Philosophical terms either do not occur at all in the Septuagint or are used in a more general, nontechnical sense.⁴² It is also evident that the earlier, biblical portions of the Septuagint conform more closely to the usage of the terms in the Hebrew Bible than some of the later, parabiblical portions.⁴³

1 Enoch

The book of 1 Enoch contains a number of scenes that seem to mix Jewish apocalyptic with Greek mythology.⁴⁴ In what is considered one of its earliest portions, the book of Enoch describes the origin and spread of wickedness in terms of heavenly angels mating with the daughters of human beings and giving birth to giants (6:1–7:1; 9:7, 8). These giants constitute an obscene mixture of the heavenly and the earthly.⁴⁵ In an apparent allusion to the story of Prometheus, they are also called “titans” (10:9). Their size and immoral origins render them uniquely able to spread wickedness, violence, and murder. Like God’s hearing the cry of Abel’s blood, the heavenly watchers hear the souls of the righteous crying for vengeance (9:3, 10), which leads to the destruction of the giants by Noah’s flood. Yet the evil spirits of the giants that came out of their bodies and women “sirens” (seirēnas) live on to torment human beings until they meet their end in the judgment (15:8–12; 19:1, 2).

The fallen angels are to be bound in darkness beneath the hills of the earth until the final judgment (10:4–6, 11, 12), when “they will be led away to the fiery abyss, and to the torture, and to the prison where they will be confined forever” (10:13). Next Michael is seen executing eternal punishment on all the wicked in “the fiery abyss” (10:11–16). This is followed by a glimpse of the resurrected⁴⁶ righteous begetting thousands and living on earth in peace and abundance (10:16–19). Another scene depicts “a great and high mountain” in the west having chambers “that the spirits of the souls of the dead might be gathered into them” (22:1, 3).⁴⁷ According to one influential reconstruction, the original form of the text seems to reflect only a modest adjustment of the traditional Jewish view of Sheol: its location in a western mountain rather than underground and a postmortem judgment.⁴⁸ “The first author thought of the pits as collecting places for human souls without respect to their moral character or the circumstances of their lives. As in 102:7, and in many biblical descriptions of Sheol, the land of the dead is a place of darkness, even for the righteous.”⁴⁹

A secondary vision and interpretation seems to have been inserted in verses 5–13, making these separate compartments represent different fates: a bright fountain of water for the righteous (v. 9); “great torment, . . . scourges and tortures” for the wicked (v. 11); and simple confinement for those already punished in their lifetimes (v. 13). There is also the soul of Abel crying for vengeance against Cain (vv. 5–7). While, on the one hand, this is not so unlike characters in Greek mythology (cf. n. 11 above), Abel’s soul does nothing more than cry out.⁵⁰ Next is a glimpse of the paradise that surrounds the throne of God. Michael, the “leader” of the angels (24:6), explains that the tree of life will be food for the righteous so that “they will live a long life upon the earth, such as your fathers lived also in their days, and torments and plagues and suffering will not touch them” (25:6). Reference to the fragrances of the fruit being “in their bones” suggests that a bodily resurrection of the righteous is envisaged.⁵¹

Even the view of Hades as an intermediate place in 1 Enoch 51:1 bears little resemblance to the Greek concept: “In those days, Sheol will return all the deposits which she had received and hell will give back all that which it owes.”⁵² A resurrection seems clearly implied, because the righteous and holy are singled out among the dead as those who will be “saved” (51:2).⁵³ More explicit still is the Epistle of Enoch: “the righteous shall arise from their sleep;”⁵⁴ “the souls of the pious who have died will come to life . . . and their spirits will not perish” (103:4). The soul and the spirit are used here interchangeably of the person (as soul and heart are in 98:7),⁵⁵ but whether a bodily resurrection is implied is less clear.⁵⁶ In any case, the triumphant assurance effectively answers the taunt of the wicked who asserted that, because there is no afterlife, the righteous gain nothing for their goodness (102:6–8),⁵⁷ whereas they have enjoyed this life and die in wealth and honor (103:6). Images of burning appear in 1 Enoch to describe the punishment of the wicked, but (as in the Qumran texts)⁵⁸ they are frequently coupled with terms that indicate not just torment but complete destruction (e.g., 1:9; 10:14–16, 21; 53:2, 5; 91:8).⁵⁹ Thus the wicked suffer the very fate that they had envisaged for the righteous, who, by contrast “will shine like the luminaries of heaven” (104:2; cf. Dan 12:3).

In summary, while 1 Enoch, composed as it was over a considerable period of time by several different writers and editors, does not present a single, unified picture of human beings and their ultimate destiny, the mixture of Jewish and Greek images, when taken as a whole, generally anticipate a resurrection of the righteous to a peaceful, pleasant life and the resurrection or gathering of the wicked (100:4) to judgment and destruction.⁶⁰

Jubilees

A number of references to death and human destiny in Jubilees are comparable to early Jewish ideas.⁶¹ Death is conceived in terms of an “eternal sleep” (36:18) and future hope is described in terms of a purified Israel who “will dwell in confidence in all the land,” which “will not have any Satan or any evil (one). And the land will be purified from that time and forever” (50:5).⁶² Isaac is warned by Abraham against committing a “sin leading to death” in which case “your name and your memory will perish [Heb. ’bd] from [the] wh[ole earth].”⁶³ Those who profane the Sabbath will be “cut off [fore]v[e]r.”⁶⁴

Having no hope means to descend into Sheol, face judgment, and not be remembered on the earth but to be destroyed as the Sodomites were (22:22; cf. 7:29). Those who seek to harm others will be cut off, their descendants will perish, and on the day of wrath they will suffer punishment “by a burning and devouring flame” and “be erased from the Book of Human Instruction and enter not the Book of Life, but destruction.”⁶⁵ The passage goes on to say, though, that “their judgment will always be renewed with eternal reproach and execration and wrath and torment and indignation and plagues and sickness” (36:10). If eternal torment is meant here it would be the only mention of it in Jubilees, but wording earlier in the same verse points away from this interpretation toward a picture of total destruction: “with devouring burning fire just as he burned Sodom.” In addition, “the sinner is not found in ‘the book of life’ (i.e., listed among the living) but is ‘appointed to destruction.’ ”⁶⁶

There is only one reference in Jubilees that seems to support a dualistic view of human beings:

And then the Lord will heal his servants, and they will rise up and see great peace. And they will drive out their enemies, and the righteous ones will see and give praise, and rejoice forever and ever with joy; and they will see all of their judgments and all of their curses among their enemies. And their bones will rest in the earth, and their spirits will increase joy, and they will know that the Lord is an executor of judgment; but he will show mercy to hundreds and thousands, to all who love him. (23:30, 31)

According to Nickelsburg, there may be a contrast in verse 31 of “their bones resting in the earth with the joy experienced by their spirits, presumably in heaven.”⁶⁷ He admits, however, that the picture is not totally clear since the healing and rising up of the “servants” in verse 30 may refer to their resurrection.⁶⁸ Then again this triumphant picture may be no more than “poetic hyperbole, describing those who die with assurance that justice has been done. They are portrayed as joyous dead who lie in the earth contented with God’s certain vindication of the righteous.”⁶⁹ In short, nothing certain can be gathered from such an ambiguous reference, especially since other parts of Jubilees seem to present the nature and future of human beings more in line with earlier Jewish texts.

Qumran Literature

The corpus of materials found in the caves near Khirbet Qumran in the Dead Sea region, contain three main streams of written religious tradition within Judaism (biblical, apocryphal/pseudepigraphal, and sectarian).⁷⁰ While some have challenged the scholarly consensus linking this desert community to the Essene sect known from classical sources,⁷¹ it remains the most probable explanation.⁷²

Discussions of the anthropology of the Qumran sect have often focused on the antithesis found between “flesh” (basar) and “spirit” (ruakh) in Rule of the Community (1QS III.13–IV.26),⁷³ rather than on the use of “soul” (nefesh). Nevertheless, references to the soul are abundant and tend to conform to the wholistic view found in the HB.⁷⁴ Occasional mention of a “fleshly spirit” (ruakh basar) can in some contexts emphasize human weakness or mortality,⁷⁵ while in other places it refers to the spiritual orientation of a person toward good or evil, toward holiness or toward the flesh.⁷⁶ This latter sense evidences a shift in meaning compared with Old Testament usage, as does reference to “guilty flesh” (1QM XII.12), “evil flesh” (1QS XI.9), and similar expressions.⁷⁷

While several have suggested that some form of a realized eschatology was operative at Qumran,⁷⁸ we should not necessarily suppose that a monolithic uniformity of belief with regard to the afterlife prevailed among Jews there any more than for any other form of Judaism in the Second Temple period.⁷⁹ Several lines of evidence suggest that these desert dwellers believed in a resurrection from the dead at the conclusion of the final war that would give victory to the sons of light. This evidence includes the preservation of multiple copies of earlier texts affirming this belief (Daniel, 1 Enoch, Testament of Qahat, and Visions of Amram), putative references to resurrection in both sectarian and non-sectarian documents, and even the characteristically careful, intact burial of corpses oriented to the north (and, for those on the slopes, to the east) in apparent anticipation of their vindication at the end of the days.⁸⁰ As one scholar now admits, “to judge from the broader range of Scrolls that were either brought to or copied at Qumran, some people there believed in a resurrection of the dead.”⁸¹

We can be even more certain about their views regarding a recompense for the righteous, who, as a result of God’s “visitation” in judgment, will have “eternal enjoyment with endless life,” while the wicked shall suffer “destruction by the fire of the dark regions” “without there being a remnant or a survivor among them” (1QS IV.7, 13, 14). Although our limited knowledge of the community’s history and beliefs, as well as the fragmentary state of many of its documents, make a complete picture of Qumran’s eschatology virtually impossible, consideration of all the evidence we have mentioned would seem to call into serious question the reliability of Josephus’ description of Essene beliefs relative to the afterlife (to which we will turn in due course).

2 Maccabees

The book of 2 Maccabees, usually dated to the early first century BC,⁸² embraces the larger Jewish conviction of God’s justice and protection of his people and of his bringing vengeance on their enemies, but also of his use of pagan nations to punish his people when their sins require it. Written in a very different style from 1 Maccabees,⁸³ it offers the hope that “any Jews who suffered or perished undeservedly in the time of punishment will be resurrected to receive their recompense.”⁸⁴ Hope of the resurrection is an important theme of chapter 7, which describes the martyrdom of a mother and her seven sons who undergo gruesome punishments as the price of their refusal to eat pork.

The dying words of the second son affirm the hope of the resurrection: “the King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because we have died for his laws” (7:9).⁸⁵ The third son is even more explicit. Sticking out his tongue and offering his hands and feet to be cut off like the first brother’s was, he replies, “I got these from Heaven, . . . and from him I hope to get them back again” (v. 11). This hope, based on God as the Creator of all things, contrasts sharply with the dead souls in Homer who die maimed and can only hope in the netherworld for prosthetics to replace their limbs. In the context of the Maccabean story, Antiochus Epiphanes seeks to induce the other brothers to give in and eat the unclean food. Under Greek assumptions about the afterlife, the cutting off of limbs and cutting out of the tongue could be considered a powerful inducement to comply with the command. The fourth brother likewise expresses hope in the resurrection, but tells the king, “for you there will be no resurrection [anastasis] to life!” (v. 14). The word anastasis is used more than forty times in the New Testament to refer to resurrection from the dead. The fifth brother in the midst of similar torture, reminds the king of his mortality, that he will perish (phthartos),⁸⁶ and also that he and his descendants will be tortured by God’s mighty power (v. 17).

The mother’s final words to her seventh and remaining son return to the theme of God as the Creator, emphasizing creation ex nihilo, that God did not make the heaven and the earth “out of things that existed” (ex ontōn, v. 28). Very similar words are later used by Paul to describe Abraham’s faith in God’s power to raise the dead (Rom 4:17). The mother urges her son, “Accept death, so that in God’s mercy I may get you back again along with your brothers” (2 Maccabees 7:29). The remaining son, like the others, steadfastly refuses to disobey God, laying down “body and life” (sōma kai psychēn, v. 37) in hope of the resurrection: “My brothers, having borne pain for a short while, now have inherited eternal life under the terms of God’s covenant” (v. 36).⁸⁷ Since the immediate context centers on the hope of the resurrection, these words cannot be construed as a reference to the Greek dualistic concept of an immortal soul, which perhaps is why the NRSV in this passage translates psychē as “life” rather than “soul.”⁸⁸ A similar expression occurs in verse 23, “breath and life” (to pneuma kai tēn zōēn)—which the Creator will give back again. Several times in the Apocrypha the idea of going to the grave and back occurs. In these contexts hadēs seems to refer, not to an underworld in which the dead carry on a shadowy existence, but simply to the grave, the equivalent in Greek of Sheol.⁸⁹ The book of 3 Maccabees expands on this story of the mother and her seven sons, using the term hadēs several times but again in the sense of death or the grave.⁹⁰ Later in 2 Maccabees the hope of resurrection is used to justify prayer for the dead (12:44), providing further confirmation that a bodiless existence is not in view.

4 Maccabees

In contrast to 1–3 Maccabees and the Jewish writings we have mentioned so far, 4 Maccabees, dated somewhat later (ca. first century AD),⁹¹ is thoroughly dualistic in its outlook. By cultivating reason (logismos), the soul can be nurtured and the emotions and passions of the body kept under control.⁹² The dying testimonies of the Maccabean martyrs illustrate “that one can cheerfully give up one’s body; the true gift of God is the soul which cannot be taken away.”⁹³

Let us not fear him who thinks he is killing us, for great is the struggle of the soul and the danger of eternal torment lying before those who transgress the commandment of God. Therefore let us put on the full armor of self-control, which is divine reason. For if we so die, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob will welcome us, and all the fathers will praise us. (13:14–17)

This passage presents two alternative destinies: eternal torment as punishment for transgressing God’s law versus a welcome into bliss by the patriarchs as a reward for exercising self-control through divine reason. The author likens the resistance of the mother and her seven sons to an athletic competition with the prize being “immortality in endless life” (17:12). Because they endured, “they now stand before the divine throne and live the life of eternal blessedness” (17:17, 18; cf. 9:8; 17:5), having “received pure and immortal souls from God” (18:23). It was beneficial for them to hasten their death by being tormented now and “running the course toward immortality” (14:5). But for those who transgress the commandment of God, rather than a crown of life being laid up for them, their souls will have to endure “eternal” (13:15) and “unceasing torments [akatalytous . . . basanous]” (10:11). Antiochus Epiphanes was “punished on earth and is being chastised after his death” (18:5). There is no mention whatsoever of resurrection. The body can be safely cast away at death as long as one keeps his soul pure.

Wisdom of Solomon

Not so different from the perspective of 4 Maccabees in terms of anthropology is Wisdom of Solomon, which likewise seems to reflect a dualistic contrast of soul and body: “for a perishable body [phtharton . . . sōma] makes the soul heavy, and this earthy tent weighs down the mind filled with cares” (9:15).⁹⁴ Apparently, the author even assumes the soul’s preexistence—which would make sense if the soul were inherently immortal: “As a child I was naturally gifted, and a good soul fell to my lot; or rather, being good, I entered an undefiled body” (8:19, 20).⁹⁵

At the same time, like many Jewish writings, Wisdom of Solomon stresses distinct destinies depending on whether a person chooses the path of wickedness or the path of righteousness. According to 2:1–3, the wicked, because they do not share this view, taunt the righteous with these sentiments:

. . . no one has been known to return from Hades.
For we were born by mere chance,
and hereafter we shall be as though we had never been,
for the breath in our nostrils is smoke,
and reason is a spark kindled by the beating of our hearts;
when it is extinguished, the body will turn to ashes,
and the spirit will dissolve like empty air.⁹⁶

Not content with their own pessimistic picture of life and death, the wicked decide to test how confident believers are of life after death by torturing them and killing them (2:17–20).

The problem, in the author’s view, is that the wicked are ignorant of creation. God, he says, made human beings “in the image of his own eternity” (2:23). Death is not to be feared, because “the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them” (3:1). In fact, they only “seemed to have died” (v. 2). Death is not the end of them: “Now they are at peace. Their hope is for immortality, a deathless life to which they look forward.”⁹⁷ Creation is not bad in itself, but death has entered it. God did not create death; it entered the world as a result of the devil’s envy (2:24) and the ungodly bring it upon themselves by their words and deeds (1:12, 16). Righteousness, by contrast, is immortal (1:15)—thus the importance of wisdom in order to live a righteous life.

Putting all these pieces together does not lead to as disparate a picture as some may suggest. The author appears to believe that immortality is the natural state of human beings, but that sin changes everything. It has real power to kill not just the body but the soul also—which is why it is so important to choose the path of righteousness and life rather than death and destruction (1:12, 16). Even should the righteous die prematurely they “will be at rest” (4:7). Later it is affirmed that the one who follows the path of wisdom “shall have immortality” (8:13).

When will this be? When will the righteous be vindicated? As the subsequent verses make clear, it is “in the time of their visitation” which, in the larger context of the book, refers to God’s intervention on their behalf. At that time “they will shine forth, and will run like sparks through the stubble. They will govern [lit. “judge” krinousin] nations and rule over peoples, and the Lord will reign over them forever” (3:7, 8). The close similarity of these ideas to Daniel 7:22, 26, 27 and 12:1–3 as well as the reference to the wicked being confronted by the righteous, who will “stand with great confidence” to face their oppressors (Wisdom of Solomon 5:1), suggests that resurrection may be implied.⁹⁸ This possibility is strengthened later in the book when it is affirmed that God, who has power over life and death, leads “mortals down to the gates of Hades and back again” (16:13). Thus the original destiny of humankind, for immortality in a state of incorruption (2:23), is restored.⁹⁹

Philo

While sharing with Wisdom of Solomon a dualistic outlook, Philo carries forward the implications of this paradigm more consistently. For example, he provides us with one of the earliest examples of a thoroughly Platonic reading of the Genesis account of the creation of humans. He accomplishes this by distinguishing the man formed from the dust in Genesis 2 from the human being of Genesis 1:

there is a vast difference between the man thus formed and the man that came into existence earlier after the image of God: for the man so formed is an object of sense-perception, partaking already of such or such quality, consisting of body [sōmatos] and soul [psychēs], man or woman, by nature mortal; while he that was after the (Divine) image was an idea or type or seal, an object of thought (only), incorporeal [asōmatos], neither male nor female, by nature incorruptible [i.e, “imperishable,” aphthartos].¹⁰⁰

The body here, as in Wisdom of Solomon 9:15, is perishable. Philo then goes further in affirming that the idea of what it means to be human is genderless and imperishable. The dust and the breath referred to in Genesis 2:7 seem to be ontologically independent of each other, the former associated with this earthly life and the latter with the divine: “For there are two things of which we consist, soul and body. The body, then, has been formed out of earth, but the soul is of the upper air [aitheros], a particle detached from the Deity.”¹⁰¹ The dead body, because it undergoes decay and decomposes back to dust, is corrupt and polluted, whereas the soul, being a spark of the divine, is untouched by these processes.¹⁰² The essence of human beings is this soul, which Philo describes as “that God-like creation with which we reason”¹⁰³—“endowed with mind” (eis noeran).¹⁰⁴

The soul itself is preexistent, comparable to the substance of angels, but becomes a human being by taking on a bodily form.¹⁰⁵ In fact, the air is teeming with incorporeal souls. It is “like a populous city, . . . full of imperishable and immortal citizens, souls equal in number to the stars.”¹⁰⁶ This suggestion is not so different from Plato, who referred to the existence of beings between god and humans.¹⁰⁷ According to Philo, some of these immortal souls desire a mortal life and become entangled with the body, but others are wiser, considering the body (sōma) “a prison and a tomb [sēma].”¹⁰⁸ When the body dies, the soul is freed¹⁰⁹ to “live according to its proper life, being released from the evil and dead body to which it is bound.”¹¹⁰

At death the soul returns to God (On the Life of Abraham 258), but exactly what that meant for Philo is less clear. He can be understood to teach, not the idea of heavenly bliss for individual souls but their reabsorption back into the Divinity to which they essentially belong.¹¹¹ More likely, however, he believed in an afterlife for individuals because he speaks of distinct, and possibly somewhat different, heavenly destinies for Abraham and Jacob, Isaac, and Moses (On the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain 5–8).¹¹² The wicked, on the other hand, are consigned to “the depths of Hades” (On Dreams 1.151). By this, Philo says he refers not to “that mythical place” believed by some but to be “the true Hades,” which “is the life of the bad, a life of damnation and blood-guiltiness, the victim of every curse” (On the Preliminary Studies 57). Elsewhere he describes the wicked as rejoicing “in a form of living, which is not worth the pains” (Who is the Heir? 45). In the end they “will be dragged to the farthest realm below, borne to Tartarus itself,” which is described as “profound darkness.”¹¹³ Based on his description of Hades as a metaphor of the worthless, wicked life, we should probably also understand his few references to Tartarus metaphorically—not as a literal place but as “the absence of immortality.”¹¹⁴

Josephus

The writings of Josephus represent a similar, though less explicitly philosophical, attempt at making Judaism understandable within the Greco-Roman world. Of course, such an aim also makes it difficult to determine the extent to which he may have colored his representation of the views of the Jewish sects and even his own views regarding human nature and the afterlife in order, like Philo, to make them more appealing.

The clearest and most detailed statement of what Josephus seems to have believed relative to our topic¹¹⁵ is in his speech against suicide at Jotapata. In it he affirms that all “have mortal bodies, composed of perishable matter, but the soul lives for ever, immortal: it is a portion of the Deity housed in our bodies.”¹¹⁶ The souls of those who “depart this life in accordance with the law of nature [rather than by suicide] . . . are allotted the most holy place in heaven, whence, in the revolution of the ages, they return to find in chaste bodies a new habitation.”¹¹⁷ For those who would take their own life, on the other hand, “the darker regions of the nether world receive their souls.”¹¹⁸ In this brief statement Josephus expresses a belief in the immortality of the soul, with language reminiscent of what we have seen in Philo,¹¹⁹ and that a place in heaven awaits the righteous soul.

Josephus also has the Pharisees and the Essenes affirming the soul’s immortality.¹²⁰ Yet, as one scholar asks, “would it not be surprising that upon the subject of conceptions of the life after death, a current of Jewish belief as conservative as Essenism should allow itself to be won over by the Greek influence it combated so vigorously elsewhere?”¹²¹ Examples of this conservatism and rejection of Hellenism include: Qumran’s use of Hebrew, rather than Aramaic or Greek, as the dominant language of the community, the avoidance of Greek loanwords otherwise common in postbiblical Hebrew and Jewish Aramaic, and, despite their rejection of the temple cult, dating documents according to the service of the high priests rather than the reigns of Roman emperors.¹²² It strains credulity even further to suppose that Josephus accurately represents the Essenes in describing their view of a blissful afterlife thus: “Sharing the belief of the sons of Greece, they maintain that for virtuous souls there is reserved an abode beyond the ocean, a place which is not oppressed by rain or snow or heat, but is refreshed by the ever gentle breath of the west wind coming in from the ocean; while they relegate base souls to a murky and tempestuous dungeon, big with never-ending punishments.”¹²³

More likely, Josephus has recast the beliefs of these Jewish sects in terms that would make sense to his audience, who were heavily influenced by Greek ideas of the afterlife. As we have seen, mention of a bodily resurrection would have suggested to his Roman readers something like reentry into a decomposing corpse of a body, rather than into a bright and shiny new one. Nevertheless, Josephus does describe the Pharisees’ belief in immortality for the virtuous as a reviving to life again¹²⁴ and the reception of “another body,” while “the souls of the wicked suffer eternal punishment.”¹²⁵ He also describes Hades as a place for both the righteous and the wicked.¹²⁶ Only the Sadducees are described as affirming that “the soul perishes along with the body” and as denying rewards and punishments after death.¹²⁷ While Josephus himself seems to agree more closely with the beliefs of the Pharisees in affirming an afterlife in bodily form,¹²⁸ he also clearly regards the beliefs of the Essenes positively, which perhaps explains his desire to conform their beliefs more closely to Roman expectations.¹²⁹ As we have seen, however, the evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls would seem to point in quite a different direction.

Conclusion

In this rapid and brief survey, we have seen that Greek philosophical ideas regarding death and human nature became extremely influential within Israel during the Hellenistic period. Jewish writers clearly struggled with trying to make sense of their own heritage and beliefs in light of what many no doubt considered to be the more “progressive” and “sophisticated” ideas of Greek writers and philosophers. Although many Jewish writings nevertheless sought to retain the traditional views of the Old Testament, some modifications slowly but steadily begin to creep in.

The idea began germinating that some part of a person survives death, that the soul or spirit of a person is not lost forever. In some writings the soul is reunited with the body while in other Jewish writings, such as those of Philo, reacquiring a body with all its inherent limitations makes no rational sense. Adopting the common language of the Greco-Roman world, breathing the air of the larger Hellenistic culture, and facing the constant political pressures encouraged Jews not only to come to terms with their beliefs but also to try articulating them within the sophisticated Roman world of that time. In the process and in some cases, certain essential features of biblical anthropology disappeared or were merged with ideas foreign to the Hebrew Bible.