Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life, and: Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion (review)

After an extended period of relative neglect, we are now gifted with two major contributions to the study of views of the afterlife by two accomplished scholars of Judaism: Professors Jon Levenson of Harvard University and Alan Segal of Barnard College. Both volumes reflect massive scholarly research, rely on detailed textual analyses, and demand a close reading. Though Segal's work should be more accessible to the general reader, both are primarily designed for the reader with a background in the study of religion

For all their similarities, the two books could not be more different. Segal, as his subtitle indicates, gives us a massive overview (over 700 pages, excluding notes, a generous index —sadly lacking in Levenson—and an exhaustive bibliography) of the topic "Western religion." Beyond the Jewish material, his reach extends to pre-biblical and eastern religions, Greek and classical views, rabbinic, Qumran and sectarian beliefs, and of course, Christianity and Islam in all of their varieties. We also learn about native American beliefs, modern fundamentalisms and the psychological underpinnings of belief in the afterlife.

Levenson is sharply focused on the Jewish material. His book is a polemic. On the very first page of his Preface, he informs the reader of its thesis: he is writing to counter what he calls "the consensus view among specialists in the Hebrew Bible or postbiblical Judaism and informed non-specialists alike" on the centrality and the origins of the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead in Jewish thought. That consensus view, in brief (and using Levenson's language), claims that in the Hebrew Bible itself until very late in the Second Temple period there is neither an expectation nor a hope to transcend death. When the doctrine of resurrection does appear, it serves to solve "a new and embarrassing theological crisis," namely to deal with the "insult to the notion of a just God" delivered by the death of martyrs (in the pre-Maccabean period); effectively, the doctrine is designed to prove that after all, God is just. Though the doctrine survived in the Judaism of "the ancient rabbis," it was never deeply rooted therein and remained a "minor and indispensable item" in classical Jewish theology.¹

In opposing this consensus view, Lev-enson argues that the doctrine of resurrection was central to the rabbis' vision of redemption and Jewish peoplehood, and that the doctrine is rooted from the outset in aspects of biblical thought that are largely overlooked by modern scholars. It was not a "jarring innovation" of Second Temple Judaism, but grew gradually and unevenly out of a convergence of familiar biblical themes: the God of the Bible was a God who loved life and promised life and had the power to grant eternal life to God's people.

In defense of his thesis, Levenson explores in meticulous detail a range of biblical narratives (e.g., Elisha's encounter with the Shunamite woman and Saul's with the dead Samuel); pertinent biblical themes such as Sheol, the metaphors of barrenness and fertility of women and of Zion, exile and redemption; and the central texts that must figure in any discussion of the issue—Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones, and the first "transparent and indisputable" prediction of the resurrection of the dead in Daniel 12.²

Segal studies these texts and issues as well, but he also devotes almost 200 pages to the evolution of Christian views in Paul, the New Testament, the Pseudepigrapha and the Church Fathers. He is more interested in tracing influences and historical development, not in scholarly polemics. He contextualizes the varying views of the afterlife in their respective believing communities. At many points in his study, he relates the...