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247 CHAPTER TWELVE RESURRECTION: THE BIBLE AND QUMRAN Émile Puech In every age, man has asked himself about the meaning of his existence, of the universality and inexorableness of death which strikes unexpectedly . To this basic question he does his best to find answers which, inevitably, reflect his cultural environment and his general immersion in human history. Embedded in the civilizations of the ancient Near East, biblical man was no exception. This is particularly true of the Canaanite milieu of the late second millennium B.C., whose culture, language, script, literature, and religious practices, ancient Israel absorbed. Well known are all the difficulties the prophets and sages of Israel encountered in overcoming these deeply rooted cultural and cultic traditions in order to impose the monotheism associated with the God of the Covenant. Within this Canaanite milieu there was belief in a more or less diffuse notion of life after death, founded, no doubt, at least in part upon observations of the cycles of nature without it being, however, a notion of reincarnation . It was familiar with the cult practices performed over the tomb of one who had departed for “the land of no return” (ers[et la ta4ri) and who had come under the power of the infernal deities. In fact, death then is not taken as an ultimate dissolution, but as an entrance into another world: one of silence and shadows. I. THE BIBLE Even more than the Canaanite Baal, vanquisher of Mot (Death) and Yamm (Sea), Yahweh is the God of the living and the dead, the creator of heaven and earth—Sheol is under his domination (1 Sam 2:6). The God of the covenant is a jealous God who would not tolerate a cult of the dead incompatible with monotheism. He is considered to be the judge who loves justice and the law—indeed he does not allow an offense to go unpunished even after death. For divine justice is not to be taken as flawed on account of the present prosperity of the wicked or the premature death 248 RESURRECTION: THE BIBLE AND QUMRAN of the just. The recognition of individual responsibility by the prophets and sages (Jer 31:29–30, Ezekiel 18 and 33, etc.) parallels that of retribution beyond the grave (Psalm 73; Prov 12:28, 14:32, etc.). Without doubt, in death all men return to the earth, but the meaning of Sheol has received a new connotation. From indicating a dwelling place of shadows and silence common to all, it comes to designate a place of temporary sojourn, of sorting out, of rewards and punishments (Ps 16:9–10; 49:10–16;1 Prov 15:24) and, finally, the place of eternal chastisement. Ezekiel 37 If God, the creator, causes descent to Sheol, he also causes ascent from it. He is the one who brings about death, but also the one who gives life, the one who strikes down and heals, judging and correcting the behavior of his wayward people. Note Hos 6:1–3 or, again the parable of the dry bones in Ezek 37:1–14, which, at the time of the exile, originally alluded to the restoration of Israel as a nation upon its land. Nevertheless, the choice of metaphor, for it to be comprehensible, suggests that the reader/audience could be familiar with a belief in resurrection/return to life. This is also what seems to underline the language of the account of a creation in two stages: the reformation of the body and the infusion of the spirit. But given the prophetic remarks over the graves (Ezek 37:12–14), the metaphor of the restoration of Israel upon its own land must have fueled speculation and brought in another belief to which later tradition witnesses: the resurrection of the dead of the people of God and even that of only the just of the people, according to the degree of the refinement of the notion of individual as opposed to collective responsibility. Isaiah 26 The “little apocalypse” of the book of Isaiah is situated within the context of the sages’ and the pious’ rereading of the prophetic writings. Some verses of this poetic description announce the ultimate vanishing of the enemies (Isa 26:14), in contrast to life returned to the dead of the people 1. See Émile Puech, La croyance des Esséniens en la vie future: immortalité résurrection, vie éternelle? Histoire d’une croyance dans le judaïsme ancien (Ebib 21–22; Paris...

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