ABSTRACT
Hebrews did not entertain an idea of an immortal soul that would survive death, nor that it might one day come back to earth. Even the great heroes of ancient Hebrew tradition were not given eternal life. Abraham, David, Moses – they all just went. They returned to dust without any hope of a heavenly sanctuary or eventual resurrection. Suffering and loss might be seen as divine punishment. Like the emergence of monotheism itself, big shifts in religion were once again driven by the politics of disaster. Geopolitical events brought the afterlife into the Jewish, and later Christian, tradition. A reunion with dead loved ones in this life, though, is the stuff of miracles. Cyprian of Carthage, a martyred bishop of the third century CE, was just one of many who encouraged his fellow Christians to keep the faith in the face of repression and suffering by imagining a future in the afterlife.
