Jon D. Levenson. Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
A prominent scholarly narrative is that the concept of the
resurrection of the dead is absent throughout the vast majority of the
Hebrew Bible, which largely maintained that all of the departed go down
to Sheol, the underworld. According to this narrative, the idea of
resurrection emerged in ancient Judaism due to Zoroastrian influence, as
the Jews were under Persian authority in the late exilic and
post-exilic periods. An impetus for the incorporation of resurrection
into Judaism was the persecution of faithful Jews during the Hellenistic
period, as the martyrdom of righteous Jews called into question the
traditional notion that God rewards the righteous in this life, leading
to the idea that the righteous would be rewarded in the afterlife. This
prominent scholarly narrative affirms that the Sadducees went with the
traditional idea that there was no bodily resurrection, whereas the
Pharisees adopted the newer concept. Nowadays, within much of Judaism,
there is not much of a belief in the afterlife, as many Jews hold that
living this life fully is an essential aspect of their religion.
Jon Levenson calls much of this scholarly narrative into question.
While he does not wholly deny Zoroastrian influence or the role of
Hellenistic context in the acceptance of resurrection within Judaism, he
does not believe that they are sufficient to account for it. For one,
whereas Daniel 12 presents some of the dead as people who are asleep and
are waking up, Zoroastrianism did not use the metaphor of sleep in its
own depiction of resurrection. Second, Levenson notes that there was an
awareness or a motif of righteous people being unjustly killed prior to
the Hellenistic period. Within the Hebrew Bible, Cain killed Abel,
Jezebel killed the prophets of the LORD, and she also had Naboth killed.
Levenson’s own belief is that the concept of resurrection within
Judaism was, at least in part, an outgrowth from prominent themes that
were in pre-exilic strands of Israelite religion, themes that were about
God bringing life out of death.
Does that mean that Levenson is arguing that the idea of the bodily
resurrection of individuals was within pre-exilic Israelite religion?
Well, not entirely. He does not think that we see in the Hebrew Bible
the idea that everyone went to Sheol after death, for he argues that
people who went to Sheol were either wicked or died prematurely or
tragically. The righteous, by contrast, lived long and had lots of
progeny, living on through them, in a sense. The reward of the
righteous who were unjustly put to death was God’s punishment of the
murderer. There was also a view that one could experience immortality,
at least temporarily, by participating in worship at the temple, as one
encountered the world of eternity. The restoration of Israel is also
likened to resurrection within the Hebrew Bible. Moreover, there was a
concept of resurrection even within Israel’s ancient Near Eastern
context, for Baal came to life after dying, and that meant fertility for
the land. Levenson also contends that the view of death in ancient
Israel was rather fluid, for it could encompass disease and attacks by
enemies, both of which would lead to literal cessation of life, unless
God intervened; thus, God delivering people from death in the Hebrew
Bible could mean deliverance from disease or peril, not necessarily
actual death. While Levenson is arguing that the theme of God bringing
life out of death is prominent throughout the Hebrew Bible, that often
does not entail righteous individuals literally rising from the dead, as
far as Levenson is concerned.
But there are exceptions, or at least possible exceptions, Levenson
notes. Elijah and Elisha raised people from the dead. In addition, God
“took” Enoch and Elijah, and the Psalmist sometimes asked God to take
him as well (Psalm 49:15-16; 73:23-28). Levenson does not dogmatically
proclaim that this means, according to the biblical tradition, that
Enoch and Elijah never died, or that the Psalmist had a notion of an
afterlife for the righteous, but Levenson does not appear to dismiss
that possibility, either. On page 105, he states, “Although
some—-perhaps most—-are ‘sent down’ to Sheol (e.g., I Kgs 2:9), others
God ‘takes’ himself, continuing even at or beyond death his reliable
protection of those who find refuge in him.”
The book is excellent in that it thoughtfully addresses the sorts of
questions I have had over the years. I have wondered: if the Hebrew
Bible believes that everyone will eventually die and go to Sheol, then
why does it emphasize the theme that the righteous will live, whereas
the wicked will die? What is the reward for righteousness, according to
this theme, if everyone dies in the end, anyway? I have also been
somewhat skeptical about the argument (or the implication) that Israel did not notice
that the world was unfair and that righteous people died prematurely or
unjustly, until the Hellenistic period. How, then, could prominent
strands of ancient Israelite religion, which made their way into the
Hebrew Bible, still hold fast to a notion of justice in this life: that
God punishes the wicked by killing them, while prolonging the lives of
the righteous and giving them offspring? Levenson apparently takes a
stab at this sort of question on page 193, where he states:
“For God’s vindication of the oppressed could be realized after the
latter’s death, quite without objection (however inadequate this may
seem to us). The opposing view, that people receive in their own
lifetime only and exactly what their deeds warrant, is in the nature of
an intellectualistic and schematic formula useful (then as now) for
moral exhortation but hardly the unanimous view of the culture. It
exerted a profound appeal in certain theologically self-conscious
circles, but biblical narratives are generally more subtle, more
lifelike, and more cognizant of tragedy.”
If I have any criticism of this book, it is that I wish that Levenson
had gone into more detail about this particular issue. Otherwise, the
book was excellent. There were times when Levenson was exploring
various aspects of a question and I was wondering where exactly he would
land, but I found those discussions to be meaty and satisfying. Plus,
he often summed up his arguments, anyway, so I was not lost as a reader.