ABSTRACT
From its earliest scriptures, Judaism has never had a single systematic picture of death and the afterlife. Rather, throughout its history Judaism has employed various images, metaphors, and ways of speaking about the afterlife. Jewish teachers across the ages disagree on many interpretive aspects of these various images. These images have developed through each successive era of Jewish history as each new generation returns to the traditions of the past with new questions from the present. A single chapter on the Jewish views of death and the afterlife, therefore, cannot adequately survey the full breadth of this rich tradition. The present chapter surveys some of the key developments in five important eras of Jewish thought: Biblical Judaism, late Second Temple Judaism, Rabbinic Judaism, medieval Judaism, and modern Judaism. While each era develops the diversity of Jewish thought, it does so by responding to the questions and theological trajectories emerging from the received traditions of the past. Thus in the midst of this diversity, key themes develop across the generations as central components to the Jewish understanding of the afterlife. Across this mosaic of tradition, the Jewish views of death and the afterlife frequently reflect the conviction that the afterlife is a place of justice over which God remains sovereign. Whether one speaks of the resurrection or postmortem existence in Sheol, the Garden of Eden, or the world to come, the afterlife serves as a time for distributing the just rewards and punishments merited by one’s physical life.
