3.1 Negative Views of Death
Compared to Egypt’s ‘virtual embarrassment of riches’, Pitard notes tellingly: ‘One of the most striking aspects about the Heb-rew Bible is how little it actually talks about death and the af-terlife. The subject does not form a primary theme in any book
48Morenz, Egyptian Religion, 188.
49Morenz, Egyptian Religion, 189.
50Morenz, Egyptian Religion, 189-90.
51Herodotus II, 78; so Morenz, Egyptian Religion, 195.
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of the Hebrew Bible. What we find instead are (at best) scant, rather off-hand, ambiguous and non-specific references and allu-sions to the subject in a variety of contexts.’52 The biblical data have received renewed study in recent years, along with steadily increasing artifactual material, leading to several detailed schol-arly treatments.53 They need only be summarised briefly.
Sheol is the most common biblical term for the underworld, but even it occurs only infrequently. So arguably the under-world was not a particularly important concept for the canon-ical writers and redactors. Sheol almost never occurs in simple reportage or general prescription, but only in ‘first person’ con-texts, so is a term which connotes personal emotional engage-ment.54 Whatever its etymology, there is no hint of Sheol as a deity. Descriptive details are very sparse, but suggest a somno-lent, gloomy existence without meaningful activity or social dis-tinction. There is certainly no elaborate journey through the un-derworld. So there was no expressed concern with the ongoing fate of the dead.55
Instead, in the majority of its occurrences Sheol is used to de-scribe human fate. Sometimes it is a destiny which the righteous wish to avoid, or which in desperate circumstances they envis-age as divine punishment. More often it is the destiny wished for the ungodly. The occasional synonyms of Sheol portray the same picture. In sum, the underworld in Israel’s canonical literature is an infrequent theme and an unwelcome fate.
The Hebrew Bible mentions customs surrounding death only in passing. There are glimpses of 7-day and 30-day mourning periods, but no general policy is stated. Mourning customs are mentioned more frequently, with some variation over time. There
52W.T. Pitard, ‘Tombs and Offerings: Archaeological Data and Compar-ative Methodology in the Study of Death in Israel’, in: B.M. Gittlen (ed.), Sacred Time, Sacred Place: Archaeology and the Religion of Israel, Winona Lake 2002, 145-6.
53Most recently: P.S. Johnston, Shades of Sheol: Death and Afterlife in the Old Testament, Leicester 2002; Gittlen (ed.), Sacred Time, Sacred Place, Part IV; A.J. Avery-Peck, J. Neusner (eds), Judaism in Late Antiquity, Part 4:
Death, Life-After-Death, Resurrection and the World-to-Come in the Juda-isms of Antiquity (HO 1/49), Leiden 2000, Section 1.
54Strictly, Num. 16:33 is the one exception. But here the narrator simply repeats Moses’ words of v. 30 in describing the subsequent event. See further Johnston, Shades of Sheol, 70-2.
55See further Johnston, Shades of Sheol, 79-85.
is virtually no information on funerary rites, apart from the lavish burning of spices for kings. In particular, there is no reference to religious ceremonies at funerals – burial was simply conducted by the immediate family. Mourning and funerary customs were not apparently invested with religious significance.
Burial normally occurred on family land, though no infer-ence is ever drawn from burial locations about consultation or veneration of the dead. Non-burial, whether from exposure, ex-humation or cremation, was abhorrent. Archaeology confirms a consistent pattern of multiple, successive cave burial in the cent-ral hill country throughout the Late Bronze and Iron Ages. At each new interment, the skeletal remains of previous corpses were simply swept into a corner, and the bones of the dead were not accorded any special reverence. Burial was accompanied by vari-ous pottery assemblages, including bowls and jugs. These may have contained food for the dead at the time of burial, but there is no clear evidence of regular, ongoing nourishment of the dead in Judahite tombs.56Thus, while the act of burial was important, there was apparently no continued reverence for physical remains, and little if any attempt to feed the departed.
3.2 Contact with the Dead
Israel’s religious literature contains only occasional references to necromancy – in several prohibitions, one narrative account, and a few other texts. Apparently necromancy was not an issue which preoccupied its final editors. Two terms are normally used, ¯obˆot and yidd˘e ¯onˆım.57 But there was no fixed expression for nec-romancy, as shown by the use of these terms for both ‘spirit’
and ‘medium’, the variation between singular and plural, the oc-casional use of the first without the second, and the variety of associated verbs. Necromancy was not obviously associated with ancestor worship in the Hebrew Bible, though the two may well have coexisted in Israel’s experience. 1 Samuel 28, the only nar-rative account of necromancy, furnishes few details of its practice, but confirms that it was considered both illegal and effective, even if for Saul its apparent effect was simply to seal his fate.
56Pace E. Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices and Beliefs about the Dead (JSOT.S, 123), Sheffield 1992, 122-26; cf. review by P.S. Johnston, VT 44 (1994), 419-20. See also Pitard, ‘Tombs and Offerings’, 155.
57Hebrew is given in transliteration in this more general article, at the author’s request (The Editors).
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Some scholars now argue that necromancy was generally ac-cepted in Israel until the exclusive Yahwism promulgated in Hez-ekiah’s and (particularly) Josiah’s reforms, and that this can be discerned through a close study of various texts. Thus, for in-stance, it is detected in a pre-Deuteronomistic version of 1 Samuel 28, and in the polemical exchange of Isaiah 28.58 But these pro-posals raise as many issues as they seek to resolve.59
Friedman and Overton have recently argued source-critically that an early lay source underlying Genesis to Kings spoke of death and the dead naturally and uncensoriously, while later priestly redactions sought to circumscribe death and to proscribe contact with the dead.60 In similar vein, the lay prophets Elijah, Elisha and Isaiah engaged with death more openly than did the priestly prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel or the priestly-influenced Deuteronomist and Chronicler.
However, the fact that the Deuteronomistic History readily included references to death, Sheol and necromancy from the posited lay source shows that its redactor was not unhappy with this material.61 Similarly, the distinction between prophets is overdrawn, since ‘(First) Isaiah’ is hardly ‘filled with allusions to afterlife experience’,62 whereas Ezekiel, however priestly, still conveys a vision of defiling bones returning to life.63 Certainly there were varied perspectives in Israel on death and the dead, and priestly concern over defilement may well illuminate some source-critical issues, but this thesis is overstated.
58E.g. respectively J. Tropper, Nekromantie (AOAT, 223), Neukirchen-Vluyn 1989; K. van der Toorn, ‘Echoes of Judaean Necromancy in Isaiah 28,7-22’, ZAW 100 (1988), 199-217.
59For detailed critique, see Johnston, Shades of Sheol, 153-60.
60R.E. Friedman, S.D. Overton, ‘Death and Afterlife: The Biblical Silence’, in: Avery-Peck, Neusner (eds), Judaism in Late Antiquity, Part 4, 35-59. Cf.
also R.E. Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible?, San Francisco21997; Idem, The Hidden Book in the Bible, San Francisco, 1998.
61Friedman and Overton answer that the Deuteronomist (their singular) limited his perspective to the framework (p. 52). But this undermines their proposal of competing ideologies.
62Friedman, Overton, ‘Death and Afterlife’, 53. Of the terms cited, two are rare: r˘ep¯a ˆım (Isa. 14:19; 26:14, 19), ittˆım (Isa. 19:3); the other, ˇs˘e ˆol, occurs 8 times in 5 contexts (Isa. 5, 7, 14, 28, 38, including emendation of Isa. 7:11).
63While this applies to national restoration (so Friedman and Overton,
‘Death and Afterlife’, 52-3; Johnston, Shades of Sheol, 222-4), it still engages with death imagery.
3.3 Respect for the Dead
The Israelites may have been tempted to venerate their dead as other ancient peoples did. Several scholars have argued recently that such ancestor cults were widespread in Israel and Judah until the late monarchy reforms, and have identified vestigial traces of this practice in various biblical texts.64 But it is only glimpsed in a small number of texts.65
Num. 25:2 records the apostasy of the wilderness generation with the Moabites, and Ps. 106:28 describes this as their eating
‘sacrifices of the dead’. But neither text elaborates further on the nature of the cult, and both describe Yhwh’s punishment of Is-rael for their participation in it. This is the only biblical reference to such sacrifices. Isaiah 57 and Ezekiel 43 (if pigrˆe malkˆehem in-dicates offerings, vv. 7, 9) may reflect veneration of the dead, but other posited references to such a cult are mostly unlikely. For instance, the interpretation of Saul’s meal at Endor as part of a death cult (1 Sam. 28:20-25) involves supposing a very different original story and substantial Deuteronomistic rewriting.
A marz¯eah. was apparently a social gathering linked with drinking and feasting (e.g. Amos 6:7) but only occasionally with the dead (e.g. Jer. 16:5-9),66 and the term itself is too general to indicate a cult of the dead. The interpretation of t˘er¯apˆım as ancestor images is possible but not essential, and in any case they are of minimal importance in the prophetic critique of religious malpractice. Pillars feature more frequently, but their function is unclear. Kinship names may refer to ancestors and imply their veneration, but these names are a minority in Israel, and such as-sociation may be vestigial. There is insufficient evidence to link respect for parents, levirate marriage, annual sacrifice or other cultic practice with the cult of the dead.
Certainly some associations with death and the dead were
64Notably: K. Spronk, Beatific Afterlife in Ancient Israel and in the An-cient Near East (AOAT, 219), Neukirchen-Vluyn 1986; T. J. Lewis, Cults of the Dead in Ancient Israel and Ugarit (HSM, 39), Atlanta 1989; Idem, ‘How Far Can Texts Take Us? Evaluating Textual Sources for Reconstructing An-cient Israelite Beliefs about the Dead’, in: Gittlen, Sacred Time, Sacred Place, 169-217.
65For detailed critique, see Johnston, Shades of Sheol, 167-95.
66Other suggested biblical references to a marz¯eah. (funerary or otherwise) are unconvincing.
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condemned by the prophets, and some practice of grave food was deemed inappropriate for the tithe (Deut. 26:14). But the almost casual mention of such grave offerings here and the complete lack of censure elsewhere suggest that they were not inimical to Yah-wism, and therefore that they did not involve veneration of, or communion with, the dead. Further, the fact that there is so little censure of death cults, by writers who have no qualms against lambasting other practices deemed illegitimate, strongly suggests that such cults were not a major preoccupation of the writers.
Thus the Hebrew Bible does not substantiate the view that an-cestor veneration was widespread in Israel and that evidence of it was later suppressed. On the contrary, it suggests that, while it may have occurred, it was of limited importance. For all their other perceived faults, the Israelites envisaged in the texts seem to have been more concerned with the living than the dead. This portrayal is not significantly altered by archaeology, which has provided plenty of evidence for heterodox religion but not for necromancy or ancestor cults.
3.4 Positive Views of Death
Two biblical characters apparently escaped death. Enoch simply
‘was no more, for God took him’ (Gen. 5:24), and Elijah ‘ascen-ded in a whirlwind into heaven’ (2 Kgs 2:11). However, neither became a paradigm for the righteous in any form; their fate is never invoked by psalmists or others facing the trauma of im-pending, unwelcome death. These two may have escaped death, but this had no reported relevance to Israelite aspirations.
Several proverbs juxtapose wise and foolish, life and death, upward and below, and therefore may imply differentiated post-mortem fates. But proverbs are by definition pithy sayings, with-out immediate context and easily misunderstood. Job 19:25-27 may also exhibit post-mortem hope, though the physical expres-sion here of Job’s hope and its eventual fulfilment (42:5) imply otherwise. At the same time, the textual difficulties of these pas-sages probably reflect instead a later afterlife belief, and the de-sire of some scribes and translators to emend accordingly.67
A few psalms seem to affirm continued communion with God after death. Psalm 16 builds on the delight of present experience,
67Cf. J.F.A. Sawyer, ‘Hebrew Words for the Resurrection of the Dead’, VT 23 (1973), 232-3.
and projects it into the future. Psalm 49 asserts that unjust re-ward in this life will be reversed at death, with the foolish rich consigned to Sheol and the oppressed psalmist ransomed from it. And Psalm 73 combines the themes of continued communion with God and rectification of present injustice to affirm that
‘afterward’ God will receive the author. These psalms give no elaboration of how, when or where this communion would occur.
They simply affirm it in faith. While for most Israelites, hope remained firmly anchored in the present life, a few apparently glimpsed continued communion with God beyond it.68
Belief in resurrection eventually emerged, arguably develop-ing mainly from reflection on Israel’s God and Israel’s experi-ence. The songs of Moses and Hannah celebrate Yhwh’s power to ‘kill and make alive’ (Deut. 32:39; 1 Sam. 2:6). They may have affirmed this theoretically rather than experientially, but they affirmed it nonetheless. The prophetic tradition recorded two instances of resuscitation following the intercession of Elijah and Elisha, and one due to contact with Elisha’s bones (1 Kgs 17:22; 2 Kgs 4:35; 13:21). Isolated, rural cases perhaps, but never-theless food for thought for later writers. Yhwh’s initial creative power is invoked in Ezekiel’s vision, when he prophesies to the breath and it immediately brings the reconstituted bodies to life (Ezek. 37:9-10).69Thus Yhwh’s proclaimed power to renew life, its occasional experience in life and in vision, his authority over the underworld,70 and the desire for unending communion with him all contribute to Israelite belief in resurrection.
Israel’s experience was one of judgment and mercy, of de-struction and restoration, of exile and return. This forms the backdrop of so much of her prophetic literature, and in particular of the resurrection motif which it occasionally employs. Imminent judgment overshadows Hosea’s promise of renewal (Hos. 6:1-3), its devastating effect on the exiles gives sharp relief to Ezekiel’s vision of return (Ezek. 37:1-14), while disappointment at its in-completeness underlies the Isaianic delight in resurrection (Isa.
68On these texts see further Johnston, Shades of Sheol, 199-217.
69Cf. B.C. Ollenburger, ‘If Mortals Die, Will They Live Again? The Old Testament and Resurrection’, Ex Auditu 9 (1993), 29-44; the Maccabean martyrs continually invoke this same creative power.
70The living could not escape Yhwh by fleeing to Sheol (Amos 9:2; Ps.
139:8), since it was ‘naked’ before him (Job 26:6). While the dead remained cut off from Yhwh, Sheol was not beyond his remit.
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26:19). Israel as a people experienced death and rebirth. National resurrection was a reality in their experience.
But that rebirth seemed only partial. The nation never re-gained its former autonomy and confidence (cf. Isa. 26:13), mighty empires would control its destiny (Dan. 7-12), and many faithful Jews would perish in the Antiochene persecution (Dan. 11:33).
How could the rebirth be complete? Yhwh had resurrected the nation as a whole; his power over death was unquestioned; his ability to raise the dead had been recorded. Perhaps then the answer to this unfulfilled post-exilic hope was one further de-velopment in belief: an individual, physical resurrection from the dead. However startlingly different it might seem, this be-lief clearly built on elements of Israelite faith and experience.
And however much the development may have been helped by non-Israelite resurrection belief (in whatever form), it emerged as distinctly Israelite and communal: Yhwh would resurrect his people. Those who slept in the dust of the earth would awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and contempt (Dan.
12:2).
The Hebrew Bible has no concept of judgment after death.71 Nor does it comment on the punishment or destruction of the wicked. These issues may be the logical consequence of the dif-ferentiated fates noted obliquely in Isaiah 26 and directly in Daniel 12, but they were not developed in the canonical texts.
The ‘shame and everlasting contempt’ (Dan. 12:2) remains un-explained and undeveloped. The non-canonical inter-testamental literature testifies to increased interest and speculation concern-ing the fate of the wicked as well as the righteous, and the New Testament pursues this further. But the Hebrew Bible stops short of this.72
71N.J. Tromp, Primitive Conceptions of Death and the Nether World in the Old Testament (BibOr, 21), Rome 1969, 22 n. 13, sees post-mortem judgment in Job 31:6, but the context implies present punishment. For weighing, cf.
also Prov. 16:2; 21:2; 24:12.
72On these texts see further Johnston, Shades of Sheol, 218-39.
4 Reflection
4.1 Socio-Political Factors
The southern Levant was of course geographically close to Egypt, and many factors might suggest ongoing relationships and mutual influence. Over the millennia Egyptians pursued trade, conduc-ted military campaigns, and maintained garrisons in the area.73 Egyptian presence and influence in the southern Levant is clearly attested by archaeological finds at various sites.
For its part, the Biblical text narrates many instances of in-teraction with Egypt. As well as the lengthy and detailed Joseph narrative74 and exodus tradition, it records Abraham’s brief so-journ, Jeroboam’s asylum, Shishak’s (Sheshonq’s) invasion, polit-ical manoeuvring and prophetic censure, and eventual emigra-tion. Even if late redaction of earlier material was highly in-terpretative, the final text records a tradition of long-standing interaction, with both positive and negative consequences.
And yet there was little mutual cultural or ideological influ-ence. As Redford comments:
In general, Egyptian culture transplanted poorly in west-ern Asia. At no time can we detect a collective will in the Egyptian peoples towards promoting their own way of life beyond their Sinai frontiers, either by colonisation or forcible conversion. It is even arguable that Egyptians res-isted such cultural proselytizing among the Asiatics who, in their perception, were a wholly worthless lot, to be ex-ploited, uprooted and enslaved for the benefit of Egypt.75
Egypt was self-consciously xenophobic, little interested in the re-ligious views of even close neighbours. It stood apart from the Semitic world in race, language and culture, and sought to
main-73E.g. campaigns of Merneptah and Sheshonq; garrisons at Bethshean and Deir el-Balah.
74M. G¨org, ‘Biblical Tradition’, Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, vol.
1, 183, notes that the redactor ‘was familiar with Egyptian titles and the way of life’, and used genuine terminology, e.g. for embalming.
75D.B. Redford, ‘Egypt and Western Asia in the Late New Kingdom: An Overview’, in: E.D. Oren (ed.), The Sea Peoples and Their World: A Reas-sessment, Philadelphia 2000, 7. Similarly Idem, ‘Egyptian’, in: J. Kaltner, S.L. McKenzie (eds), Beyond Babel, Atlanta 2002, 118.
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tain this distinction in practice as far as possible.76 Hence its garrisons in the Levant tended to rule through local elites rather than by direct intervention.77Conversely, Israel shared many cul-tural and religious concepts with its Semitic rather than Egyptian
tain this distinction in practice as far as possible.76 Hence its garrisons in the Levant tended to rule through local elites rather than by direct intervention.77Conversely, Israel shared many cul-tural and religious concepts with its Semitic rather than Egyptian