Table Of ContentResurrection, Hell and the Afterlife
This book begins by arguing that early Greek reflection on the afterlife and
immortality insisted on the importance of the physical body whereas a wealth
of Jewish texts from the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism and early
(Pauline) Christianity understood post-mortem existence to be that of the
soul alone. Changes begin to appear in the later New Testament where the
importance of the afterlife of the physical body became essential, and such
thoughts continued into the period of the early Church where the significance
of the physical body in post-mortem existence became a point of theological
orthodoxy. This book will assert that the influx of Greco-Romans into the
early Church changed the direction of Christian thought towards one which
included the body. At the same time, the ideological and polemical thrust of
an eternal tortuous afterlife for the wicked became essential.
Mark T. Finney is Lecturer in Religion in the Department of History at the
University of Sheffield. His recent publications include Honour and Conflict in
the Ancient World (T&T Clark 2012). His research interests include: concepts
of afterlife in Jewish and Christian traditions and conflict and violence in the
Abrahamic faiths.
BibleWorld
Series Editors: Philip R. Davies and James G. Crossley,
University of Sheffield
BibleWorld shares the fruits of modern (and postmodern) biblical scholar-
ship not only among practitioners and students, but also with anyone inter-
ested in what academic study of the Bible means in the twenty-first century.
It explores our ever-increasing knowledge and understanding of the social
world that produced the biblical texts, but also analyses aspects of the Bible’s
role in this history of our civilization and the many perspectives—not just
religious and theological, but also cultural, political and aesthetic—which
drive modern biblical scholarship.
Resurrection, Hell and the
Afterlife
Body and Soul in Antiquity, Judaism
and Early Christianity
Mark T. Finney
First published 2016
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Finney, Mark T., author.
Title: Resurrection, hell, and the afterlife : body and soul in antiquity,
Judaism, and early Christianity / by Mark T. Finney.
Description: 1 [edition]. | New York : Routledge, 2016. | Series:
BibleWorld | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015041565 (print) | LCCN 2015042811 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781138647657 (hbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315626888 ()
Subjects: LCSH: Future life. | Future life—Judaism. | Future life—
Christianity.
Classification: LCC BL535 .F56 2016 (print) | LCC BL535 (ebook) |
DDC 202/.3093—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015041565
ISBN: 978-1-138-64765-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-62688-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Abbreviations vii
Introduction 1
1 Afterlife in Antiquity: Post-Mortem Existence in its
Greco-Roman Context 6
2 Biblical Beginnings: Death and Afterlife in the Hebrew Bible 25
3 The Priority of the Soul: Constructions of Afterlife in Second
Temple Judaism 49
4 Life after Death in Additional Jewish Literature: The Dead
Sea Scrolls and Later Rabbinic Thought 78
5 New Testament Beginnings: Afterlife in the Thought of the
Apostle Paul 100
6 The Priority of the Body: Post-Mortem Existence in the Later
New Testament 123
7 The Rise of Gehenna: Afterlife in Early Christianity 144
8 What the . . .? Developments of Hell in its Jewish and
Christian Contexts 158
Conclusion 177
Ancient Sources Index 185
Author Index 201
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Abbreviations
Abbreviations are taken from Hornblower, S. & Spawforth, A. (eds) (1996)
Oxford Classical Dictionary . 3rd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
and from Alexander, P.H. e t al (eds) (1999) The SBL Handbook of Style
for Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Early Christian Studies . Peabody:
Hendrickson.
Authors and works omitted from both the O CD and the SBL Handbook
are notated in full. Other works include:
Brenton, L.C.L. (1851) The Septuagint with Apocrypha. Peabody:
Hendrickson.
Danby, H. (1933) The Mishnah. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Elliot, J.K. (ed.) (1993) The Apocryphal New Testament. Oxford: Clar-
endon Press.
Grimm-Thayer (1879) Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament.
London: Forgotten Books.
Louw, J.P. & (1988) Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament
Nida, E.A. (eds) based on Semantic Domains. New York: American Bible
Society.
UBS (1971) United Bible Societies A Concise Greek-English
Dictionary of the New Testament. Stuttgart: Deutsche
Bibelgesellschaft.
TDNTW Verbrugge, V.D. (ed.) (2000). The NIV Theological
Dictionary of New Testament Words. Grand Rapids:
Zondervan.
Ancient texts are taken from the L oeb Classical Library unless otherwise
indicated and with the following additions:
Herodotus Rawlinson, G. (1996) Histories. Ware: Wordsworth
Classics.
viii Abbreviations
Homer Hammond, M. (1987) Iliad. London: Penguin.
Lattimore, R. (1951) Iliad. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press.
Lattimore, R. (1975) Odyssey. New York: HarperCollins.
Shewring, W. (1980) Odyssey. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Justin Martyr Falls, T. (1948) Dialogue with Trypho. Washington: The
Catholic University of America Press.
Juvenal Rudd, N. (1992) The Satires. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Livy De Sélincourt, A. (1960) The Early History of Rome.
London: Penguin.
Tacitus Grant, M. (1989) Annals. London: Penguin.
English translations of the Bible are taken from the NRSV unless otherwise
indicated.
Introduction
My preliminary thoughts on this topic emerged during research on the
apostle Paul and particularly on his various statements in 1 Corinthians 15.
There—the longest chapter in the Pauline corpus—the apostle engages with
a number of Corinthian interlocutors over what appears to be sharply dif-
fering opinions of the afterlife. The apostle insists that his prior teaching is
of “first importance” (15.3), that Christ died and was buried, that he was
raised and appeared to many people–including key figures of the nascent
Christ-movement, and finally, that he appeared to Paul himself. Yet, the apos-
tle is perplexed as to why, when Christ was preached as raised from the dead,
some of the Corinthians now assert that there is no resurrection of the dead.
Indeed, Paul affirms that if this is the case, then his ministry among them has
been in vain and the faith of the Corinthians is actually worthless.
The narrative of 1 Corinthians 15 proceeds to questions surrounding the
manner of the resurrection and the kind of body that will be involved, and
this is answered by an extensive Pauline discourse on the very fabric of the
resurrection. Here, the apostle turns the discussion to speak of seeds, grain,
and wheat, and then the flesh of men, beasts, birds, and fish. He moves
on to articulate the resurrection in terms of heavenly and earthly bodies,
of the glory of the sun, moon, and stars, all of which are somehow linked
to the resurrection of the dead (v. 42). His central argument begins here,
and in a series of balanced antitheses, employs the language of perishable/
imperishable, dishonour/glory, and weakness/power, before arriving at his
point of focus, that the natural body is buried and from it is raised a spir-
itual body. The Adam/Christ typology makes this explicit: the first man,
Adam, came from the earth; the last man, Christ, is from heaven, a life-giving
spirit. Paul sees this as paradigmatic for Christ-believers in that those who
have borne the image of the earthly will also bear the image of the heav-
enly (v. 49). How much of this was understood, or if understood actually
accepted by Paul’s Corinthian conversation partners is uncertain; he himself
concludes the discourse by describing it in terms of a “mystery” (v. 51).
If an attempt to explicate 1 Corinthians 15 was the starting point for
this project, then the direction was quite clear: to ascertain firstly, the
framework of afterlife belief from Paul’s Greco-Roman interlocutors at
Description:This book begins by arguing that early Greek reflection on the afterlife and immortality insisted on the importance of the physical body whereas a wealth of Jewish texts from the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism and early (Pauline) Christianity understood post-mortem existence to be that of the s
