ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an interreligious perspective on the end of bodily life. As Stadlan notes, there are two major competing schools of thought when it comes to defining death: death is either the cessation of integrated function or the cessation of neurological function. He holds that only the latter position is internally valid (for it has proposed a specific concept, criteria, and tests), externally valid (for instance, it corresponds with our intuition that a dicephalous body should be considered two persons), and fully consistent with a reasonable basis for personal identity. Stadlan then uses this basic framework to critique various understandings of death in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic sources, and he finds himself most sympathetic to the “respiratory-brain” definition of death of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. His closing remarks have extensive implications, for they suggest a contextual and non-literal approach to religious sources both within and outside the field of medicine.
