C. D. Elledge
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- August 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780199640416
- eISBN:
- 9780191822872
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199640416.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism, Religious Studies
Some scholars have traditionally battled over distinctions between resurrection and immortality. This chapter examines the problem as reflected in early Jewish writings. Josephus and ...
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Some scholars have traditionally battled over distinctions between resurrection and immortality. This chapter examines the problem as reflected in early Jewish writings. Josephus and Pseudo-Phocylides reveal how the two concepts might stand in some complementary relation to each other. In these cases, resurrection demonstrates its adaptability to differing philosophical contexts within Judaism and its clear compatibilities with conceptions of immortalization. Wisdom of Solomon, Philo, and 4 Maccabees, however, may be viewed as more intentionally avoiding overt reference to resurrection in an exclusive preference for immortality. These writings indicate that within some approaches to theodicy in early Judaism, the immortality of the soul was a sufficient expression of divine justice on its own, apart from resurrection. Such tensions between resurrection and immortality comprise yet another facet of diversity within ancient Jewish reflection on the future life.Less
Some scholars have traditionally battled over distinctions between resurrection and immortality. This chapter examines the problem as reflected in early Jewish writings. Josephus and Pseudo-Phocylides reveal how the two concepts might stand in some complementary relation to each other. In these cases, resurrection demonstrates its adaptability to differing philosophical contexts within Judaism and its clear compatibilities with conceptions of immortalization. Wisdom of Solomon, Philo, and 4 Maccabees, however, may be viewed as more intentionally avoiding overt reference to resurrection in an exclusive preference for immortality. These writings indicate that within some approaches to theodicy in early Judaism, the immortality of the soul was a sufficient expression of divine justice on its own, apart from resurrection. Such tensions between resurrection and immortality comprise yet another facet of diversity within ancient Jewish reflection on the future life.
