NOTES

Introduction

1. The words of Robert J. Lifton, as reported in the New York Times, 14 January 2003, B: 2. One could certainly think of an exception or two.

2. Lisa Miller’s cover-story in Newsweek of 12 August 2002, p. 44, investigated the bitter ironies of these conflicting religious motivations, pointing out that both the victims and the oppressors expect rewards in heaven for their efforts on behalf of their religion.

3. Walls, Heaven, p. 3

4. De resurrectione carnis, 1.

5. Since the US census is not allowed to ask questions about religion, George Gallup Jr.’s continuing interest in our religious life has provided researchers with major and significant measures of our religiosity. See Gallup and Castelli, The People’s Religion.

6. Ibid.

7. See de Toqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2, bk. 1, chs. 5-7: “How Religion in the United States Avails Itself of Democratic Tendencies,” “The Progress of Roman Catholicism in the United States,” and “What Causes Democratic Nations to Incline Toward Pantheism.”

8. Lenski, The Religious Factor.

9. Gallup and Castelli, The People’s Religion, p. 54.

10. Carter, The Culture of Disbelief.

11. Neimeyer and Van Brunt, “Death Anxiety,” pp. 64-66.

12. See Greeley and Hout, “Americans Increasing Belief,” p. 813.

13. The title is from Garrett, The Demise of the Devil, which is a very competent analysis of the meaning of magic in Luke-Acts. The title is quite relevant to the American context as well.

14. Gallup, Adventures in Immortality, pp. 55-66.

15. Pace Delbanco, The Death of Satan. Also see Walls, Hell. See La Civilta Catholica (Summer 1999), which endorsed the belief that hell is a place of psychological rather than physical torment; “The Emptiness of Hell,” Macleans 8, September 1999, p. 35; and “Hell Hath No Fury,” U.S. News and World Report, 31 January 2000, pp. 45-50.

16. Quoted from Walls, Hell., p. 1.

17. L. Clark, From Angels to Aliens, pp. 24-45.

18. See the documentary “Hellhouse” directed and produced by George Ratliffe. For an account of the popularity of exorcism in American life, see Cuneo, American Exorcism.

19. Gallup and Castelli, The Peoples Religion, pp. 47-48.

20. We shall return to the meaning of transcendent in the last chapter. For now, it is enough to say that transcendent values are those values to which we give ultimate significance. The theological term originally described God-that he was necessarily greater than the universe, therefore transcending it. This protected us from thinking that God was the same as the universe. The converse term in traditional theology is God’s immanence, His presence in all of our lives. Both were necessary to achieve even an outline of what Jews, Christians, and Muslims normally think of God.

21. See the interesting paper of L. Clark, “U.S. Adolescent Religious Identity.”

22. See Moody, Life After Life; Morse, Closer to the Light, also Transformed by the Light.

23. The Tibetan Buddhist community in the United States has seen in them confirmation of the truth of a number of phenomena, described in their religious writings. In particular, the bright light is well documented in the Bardol Thodol, the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead.

24. Gallup, Adventures in Immortality, pp. 1-54.

25. See Morse, Closer to the Light.

26. See, for example, Bloch and Parry, Death and the Regeneration of Life.

27. See Pearson, The Archaeology of Death and Burial, pp. 53, 147-151. This does not absolutely prove that they believed in life after death. They may just have been observing a taboo or a gift-giving rite. But chances are that some kind of continuity of personality on the other side of the grave was responsible for the inclusion of these grave goods.

28. New York Times, 24 December 2002, p. F2.

29. See Chidester, Savage Systems.

30. Cullmann et al., Immortality and Resurrection.

31. Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying. There were many and important books which tried to counter society’s “denial of death” with a more honest appraisal, constituting a kind of “death awareness” movement. See E. Becker, The Denial of Death; Aries, Western Attitudes Toward Death; Wass and Neimeyer, Dying: Facing the Facts.

32. See “Expert on Death Faces Her Own Death: Kübler-Ross now questions her life’s work,” The San Francisco Chronicle, 31 May 1997. My thanks to several students who have investigated this story in the past few years, especially to Elise Cucchi of Williams College.

Chapter 1. Egypt

1. See Keel and Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God.

2. J. Davies, “Death, Burial,” p. 29.

3. See McDonald, The Tomb of Nefertari, p. 91.

4. John Wilson, “Egypt,” p. 83.

5. Diodorus Siculus, An Account of Egypt, 1.70

6. J. Wilson, The Culture of Ancient Egypt.

7. For more detail, see Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt.

8. Quirke and Spencer, The British Museum Book of Ancient Egypt, pp 36-37.

9. See Morenz, Egyptian Religion, p. 183.

10. See S. Walker, Ancient Faces.

11. J. Taylor, Death and the Afterlife, pp. 46-91.

12. A. B. Meiser, Pyramid Texts (New York: Longmans, Green, 1952),1.92, 1. 390a.

13. Ibid., I.234, 1473b-1474b.

14. Siliotti, Dwellings in Eternity, p. 87.

15. See Stilwell, “Conduct and Behavior,” who summarizes where each major Egyptologist thinks the beginning of the democratizing process of immortalization, pp. 198-205.

16. Hornung, “Ancient Egyptian Religious Iconography,” pp. 1722-23.

17. J. Davies, Death, Burial, and Rebirth, p. 32.

18. Meeks and Favard-Meeks, Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods, p. 142.

19. Other versions suggest that the penis was found and buried at Mendes. See Van Dijk, “Myth and Mythmaking,” p. 1700.

20. Morenz, Egyptian Religion, p. 204-5.

21. See Assmann, Aegypten, pp. 151-57.

22. See Mettinger, “The Riddle of Resurrection,” pp. 168-72 for a more complete description of these important rituals.

23. See Wilson, “Egypt,” pp. 39-133; also The Culture of Ancient Egypt.

24. Quirke, Ancient Egyptian Religion, pp. 158-59.

25. See Forman and Quirke, Hieroglyphs and the Afterlife, p. 7.

26. The Canaanites turned Mot into a god who battled Ba’al for sovereignty. Because of Arab influence in Andalousia, the term enters Spanish even in the word Matador, the death-dealer, the executioner.

27. See the informative book by Hornung, Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife.

28. ANET, pp. 33-34.

29. Forman and Quirke, Hierglyphs, p. 23.

30. ANET, p. 32.

31. Pyramid Text 302, north wall of the central chamber, quoted from Foreman and Quirke, p. 57.

32. See Brandon, The Judgment of the Dead, pp. 12-13.

33. His vital force, which dwells in him as a separate entity, and which he is supposed to retain in death. For further views as to the nature of the “ka” see CAH 1:334-37; Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 38: 257-60.

34. Erman, The Ancient Egyptians, pp. 2-3.

35. Assmann, “Resurrection in Ancient Egypt,” p. 130.

36. J. Taylor, Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt, p. 162.

37. In fact, the bird-like qualities of the dead spirits is widespread, appearing in Mesopotamia as well as Israel. It also shows up in later Islam. It is difficult to know how to account for it.

38. J. Taylor, Death and the Afterlife, p. 20.

39. See Stilwell, “Conduct and Behavior,” pp. 198ff. Stilwell makes his case that the judgment scene is early, perhaps even coterminous with the ba. This cannot be demonstrated from current evidence, though there are suggestions even in the texts so far quoted that the Pharaoh himself had to be judged righteous by standards appropriate to his functions and station. Note the very helpful compendium of Egyptian texts on the afterlife in the dissertation’s appendices, as well as the annotated lists of the attributes of the Egyptians’ souls.

40. Hornung, “Ancient Egyptian Religious Iconography,” pp. 1718-23.

41. See Hornung, “Ancient Egyptian Religious Iconography,” p. 1711; and Agyptische Unterweltsbucher.

42. Hodel-Hönes, Life and Death in Ancient Egypt, pp. 2f.

43. J. Taylor, Death and the Afterlife, p. 16.

44. See M. Fox, Ancient Egyptian Love Songs, pp. 2of; 53 n. 34.

45. Blackman, Middle Egyptian Stories, p. 37.

46. See the interesting article of Assmann, “A Dialogue Between Self and Soul.

47. Whitehead, The Making of Religion, p. 6.

48. Assmann, “A Dialogue Between Self and Soul,” p. 403.

49. Assmann, Ma’at, pp. 123-153.

50. See also Assmann, “Confession in Ancient Egypt.”

51. See Dorn, “The Beatific Vision,” esp. pp. 37-44, which summarizes the doctrine of immortality in Egypt and other ancient cultures before moving on to its main purpose, an evaluation of the notion of a beatific afterlife in the biblical Psalms.

52. For more detail and for the relationship between the priesthood and the land exclusive of the cult of the dead, see Sauneron, The Priests of AncientEgypt.

53. See Bonnet, “Sargtexte,” pp. 669-70; Attitude of the Ancient Egyptians; see also Stilwell, Conduct and Behavior, for a short survey of the various Egyptologists’ opinions.

54. Brandon, The Judgment of the Dead, pp. 21-48.

55. See Assmann, “Conversion, Piety, and Loyalism,” p. 41. See also R. Meyer, “Magical Ascesis and Moral Purity.”

56. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Autobiographies, pp. 42-46.

57. Brandon, The Judgment of the Dead, p. 47.

58. Freed, Markowitz, and D’Auria, Pharaohs of the Sun.

59. Hornung, Akhenaten and the Religion of Light, pp. 95-104.

60. Ibid., pp. 95-96.

61. Brandon, The Judgement of the Dead, pp. 30-34.

62. In some simple sense, a tip is a payment to ensure that someone will do what they are supposed to do while a bribe is a payment to ensure that someone will do what they are not supposed to do. The Arabic word bakshish covers both cases.

63. Forman and Quirke, Hieroglyphs, pp. 153-54.

64. Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, esp. pp. 261-310.

65. See J. Davies, Death, Burial, and Rebirth, pp. 35-36. From Diodorus Siculus, An Account of Egypt, p. 209.

66. Forman and Quirke, Hieroglyphics, pp. 175-77.

67. See ibid., p. 178.

68. See Mazar, Archeology, p. 447.

69. See Mettinger, “The Riddle of Resurrection,” esp. pp. 167-183.

70. The Israelites too felt that either one was resurrected or nothing happened, much as the Egyptians feared that sinners would be devoured on the way to their reward. However, there were some sinners who were so bad that they would be punished forever.

71. As we shall see, the elite teachers in Israel in the Hellenistic period sometimes received pre-eminence through astral immortality. That is where the first important connection is to be made.

72. Smolar, Aberbach and Curgin, Studies in Targum Jonathan.

73. Melzer, Letters from Ancient Egypt, p. 215, as quoted in Lesko, “Death and the Afterlife,” p. 1765.

Chapter 2. Mesopotamia and Canaan

1. This chapter will not attempt a history of the Sumerians. See “Sumer” pp. 454-63 in IDB, vol. 4. See also The Anchor Bible Dictionary. This chapter will also ignore Hittite views, which are not important to the development of biblical notions of the afterlife. For a summary see, Dorn, “The Beatific Vision,” pp. 46ff. For cuneiform, see Crystal, Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, p. 200.

2. See Lambert, “Myth and Mythmaking.”

3. See also Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia. In many ways this is a more accurate translation but it lacks line numbers.

4. See Scurlock, “Death and the Afterlife.” The bird-like qualities of the dead can be seen in the Egyptian ba, as well as in Canaan, Israelite, and in Islam.

5. See Lambert, “Myth and Mythmaking.”

6. See Geller, “Some Sound and Word Plays.” Geller shows that similar wordplays to those in Genesis [Adam (man) created from the Adamah (ground), Isha (woman) from Ish (man)] are present in this Babylonian creation story. In the Atramhasis myth, the eemmum (ghost) comes from temum (wisdom, report, instruction, command), thus reprising the notion of wisdom inherent in knowing our mortality.

7. For a good description of the problem, see S. L. Sanders, “Writing Ritual and Apocalypse,” pp. 22-54.

8. Ibid., p. 143.

9. See Ibid., p. 140.

10. Jacobsen, “Investiture and Anointing of Adapa.”

11. See Izre’el, Adapa and the South Wind, p. 137.

12. Ibid.

13. Jacobsen, The Sumerian King List, pp. 80-81.

14. Oppenheim, “The Interpretation of Dreams,” p. 259, see also pp. 267, 282, and 287. Also see Tabor, Things Unutterable, p. 102.

15. More exactly, Anu and Dingir were the same sign (and Anu was, of course, an astral god). Later, it became the sign for all gods. Thanks to Ben Sommer for this observation.

16. Keel, Symbolism of the Biblical World, p. 308; Moscati, Face of the Ancient Orient, p. 41.

17. See S. L. Sanders, “Writing Ritual and Apocalypse;” Dorn, “The Beatific Vision,” pp. 78-103; Arbel, “Beholders of Divine Secrets.”

18. koḥl, collyrium, a blue eye-shadow, is cognate with the Arabic Alkahool, which is, in turn, evidently the source of our word “alcohol,” perhaps from blue impurities that were part of its manufacture.

19. The Urnammu text demonstrates Dummuzi’s return. In the text, after Urnammu, the founder of the Third Dynasty of Ur, dies, Inanna intervenes and complains to Enlil that she wants him back. This closely resembles her intervention for Dummuzi. See Mettinger, “The Riddle of Resurrection,” p. 196.

20. A strong form of this observation, studied as “Dying and Rising Gods,” has been recently revived by Mettinger, “The Riddle of Resurrection.” He himself gives a very full account of the opposition to this position, starting with the “Covent Garden” school of myth interpretation (based on its use of agricultural metaphors to explain the myth), its dependence on Christian scholars looking for earlier patterns similar to Christianity, and the further helpfulness of the metaphor in the study of several pagan cults, particularly in Syria in the Hellenistic period. An impressive piece of scholarship, the book nevertheless does not completely establish the continued usefulness of the term, though in some “soft” form it does designate a series of possibly related myths, which report the death of the god. “Resurrection” when applied to an annually reviving god does not mean the same as the resurrection of historical humans in Judaism and Christianity, as we shall see in the following chapters.

21. See Garelli’s review of “Cuneiform Texts from Cappadocian Tablets;” Hirsch, “Gott der Väter,” pp. 56ff. For more information, see Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, p. 10 n. 25.

22. Soden, “Zum Schlusstück von Istars Unterweltsfahrt,” p. 194, the quotation is from Sladek, “Inanna’s Descent to the Netherworld,” p. 262, quoted from Mettinger, “The Riddle of Resurrection,” p. 193.

23. Mettinger, “The Riddle of Resurrection,” p. 204.

24. See, for example, Kluger, Archetypal Significance of Gilgamesh. As the title suggests, she offers a Jungian interpretation of the myth.

25. Our use of the name Gilgamesh is conventional. The signs can be read in a number of ways-Izdubar, Bilgamesh, etc,-and the Sumerian stories used Sumerian names. Also the epic was assembled from separate stories, which appeared even in literary form as early as Sumer but also evidently orally before that. The story of the composition is fascinating, even confirming theories of biblical composition as well. See Tigay, Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic.

26. See R. Harris, “Images of Women;” and especially Frymer-Kensky, “The Marginalization of the Goddess.”

27. See also the language used of the friendship between David and Jonathan: e.g., 1 Sam 18:1, 3; 20:17; and especially 2 Sam 1:26.

28. T. Abusch, “Ishtar’s Proposal and Gilgamesh’s Refusal.”

29. See T. Abusch, “The Epic of Gilgamesh;” “Ishtar’s Proposal and Gilgamesh’s Refusal.”

30. See also The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated and edited by B. Foster.

31. See Dorn, “The Beatific Vision,” p. 47.

32. Translation by Tigay, p. 168, taken from Gardner and Maier, Gilgamesh Translated, p. 214.

33. Ibid., p. 57.

34. Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying. Also see Ray, “The Gilgamesh Epic.”

35. See Tigay, Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic and Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism.

36. Gadd, RA, pp. 126ff; for a new translation of this additional material, see George, The Epic of Gilagmesh, pp. 175-208.

37. George, The Epic of Gilgamesh, p. 177.

38. The primary translation is in French, Antoine Cavigneaux and Farouk N. H. Al-Rawi, Gilgames et la mort: Textes de Tell Haddad VI avec un appendice sur les textes funéraires sumériens, Cuneiform Monographs (Groningen: Styx, 2000). It has now also been translated into English, George, The Epic of Gilgamesh, pp. 195-208. George had access to further fragments from Nippur. There is no evidence that this was ever included in the so-called Epic.

39. For example, see Sommers, “Expulsion As Initiation,” pp. 26-29 and notes.

40. The punishments essentially set up the marriage power arrangements of the Hebrew world and end the comic, “topsy-turvey” which had existed until that time: “To the woman he said, ‘I will greatly multiply your pain in child-bearing; / in pain you shall bring forth children, / yet your desire shall be for your husband, / and he shall rule over you.’ And to Adam he said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, / and have eaten of the tree / of which I commanded you, / “You shall not eat of it,” / cursed is the ground because of you; / in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life’” (Gen 3:16-17). See next chapter for more details.

41. There is some evidence, in fact, that the Akkadian Ishtar was originally a male deity who was subsumed to her closest correlative, the female Inanna.

42. From Livingstone, “Court Poetry and Literary Miscellanea,” p. 71, as quoted in Scurlock, “Death and Afterlife,” p. 1887.

43. Scurlock, “Death and the Afterlife.”

44. See daSilva, “Offrandes allimentaires aux mortes en Mesopotamie.”

45. M. Pope, “Cult of the Dead at Ugarit;” for Mesopotamia see J. S. Cooper, “The Fate of Mankind,” pp. 19-33; Tsukimoto, Untersuchungen zur Totenplege; Bernstein, The Formation of Hell, p. 1-18.

46. See Shaffer, “The Sumerian Sources of Tablet 12 of the Gilgamesh Epic,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1963), pp. 116-119, as quoted in Scurlock, p. 1888.

47. See Abusch, “Ascent to the Stars,” pp. 15-39; S. Sanders, “Writing Ritual and Apocalypse.”

48. S. Sanders, “Writing Ritual and Apocalypse,” p. 161.

49. Ibid., p. 158.

50. For the connection between Israelite Apocalyptic, Jewish mysticism, and shamanism, see Davila, “The Hekhalot Literature and Shamanism;” “The Dead Sea Scrolls and Merkavah Mysticism,” pp. 249-64; “4QMess ar (4Q534) and Merkavah Mysticism.”

51. See Cross, “Yahweh and ‘’El,” in Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, p. 45.

52. See Cross, “’El and the God of the Fathers,” in Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, p. 13.

53. Coogan, Stories from Ancient Canaan, pp. 86-115.

54. For a very full treatment of the correspondences and differences among the principal gods of the Middle East, see Mettinger, The Riddle of Resurrection. See especially his very intelligent discussion of Ugaritic Ba’al, Melqart-Heracles, Adonis, Eshmun-Asclepius, Dumuzi-Tammuz and the West Semitic gods.

55. The Hebrew root occurs in many ways-as mawet or mavvet (death), as well as the word met (dead).

56. See also Judg 6:25ff; 1 Kgs 15:13; 16:33; 81:19; 2 Kgs 13:6; 17:16; 18:4; 21:3-7; 23:4ff; 2 Chr 15:16.

57. See Pope’s Song of Songs.

58. See Grey, Near Eastern Mythology, pp. 70-75.

59. The first captivity, including the exile of King Jehoiachin, begins in 597 BCE. The city of Jerusalem was destroyed in 587, starting the second and greater exile to Babylonia. The year 539 is the usual dating for Edict of Cyrus to return to the land of Israel.

60. Stager and Wolff, “Child Sacrifice at Carthage;” Stager, “Carthage.”

61. See Mettinger, “The Riddle of Resurrection.”

62. Ibid., p. 58. But see the connection with the destruction of the idols in Josiah’s reign.

63. Grey, Near Eastern Mythology, p. 94.

64. See the interesting book by D. Wright, Ritual in Narrative, esp. pp. 100-22.

65. See, for example, Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 142-69; Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, pp. 33-55; also see Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions, pp. 115-20. Perhaps Peacock, Rites of Modernization can be seen to be relevant with allowances for the difficulty in applying the term “modernization” to this context. The epic story however does have implications for social and symbolic appreciation of the predicament of mortality.

66. D. Wright, Ritual in Narrative, pp. 118ff.

67. See Douglas, Purity and Danger; “The Contempt of Ritual;” “Deciphering a Meal.”

68. The Passover seder, based as it is on a similar Greek drinking party called a “symposium,” which implicitly has similar family functions, is a pale reflection in terms of the behaviors that were typical at these banquets.

69. See, for example, the three volume study of Psalms for the Anchor Bible by Mitchell Dahood, which claims that the Israelite notion of a beatific afterlife is based on Ugaritic parallels. There seems to be little or no beatific afterlife in Ugarit and, as we shall see, little that can be said about Hebrew views of the afterlife.

70. J. Z. Smith, “Dying and Rising Gods;” Drudgery Divine. Also see M. S. Smith, “Dying and Rising Gods.”

71. See the different discussion of Mettinger, “The Riddle of Resurrection.”

72. However, see McLaughlin, marzeaḥ in the Prophetic Literature, who disputes Spronk’s and Pope’s interpretation of the texts, trying to disconnect the marzeaḥ practice from funerals and also disputing that the word za’atar refers to the herb in this context.

73. In this section, I am indebted, both for the translation and the organization of the material, to the fine work of Spronk, Beatific Afterlife in Ancient Israel, esp. pp. 145-202.

74. Hallote, Death, Burial, and Aferlife, pp. 12, 60.

75. For complete bibliography on the marzeaḥ or, more properly, the marziḥ in Ugaritic, see T. Lewis, Cults of the Dead.

76. An exhaustive study of the phenomenon can be found in Pope’s commentary to Song of Songs. See esp. pp. 210-29. He does not discuss the origins-that is merely a logical inference-but it is supported by J. Armstrong, Alcohol and Altered States.

77. See Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit, pp. 192-210; it is the expanded and translated version of the book in the previous note.

78. Nut-tree gardens are Jewish symbols for mystical practices as well. As difficult as it may be to believe at first, there is a historical relationship between these two phenomena through Song of Songs.

79. See Cross, “The Divine Warrior” in Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, pp. 91-111, esp. p. 102.

80. Finkelstein and Silberman, The Bible Unearthed.

81. Lapp, “If a Man Die,” p. 145.

Chapter 3. The First Temple Period in Israel

1. Damrosch, The Narrative Covenant.

2. Hallote, Death, Burial, and Afterlife, pp. 28-29; also see the expert opinion of Bloch-Smith (Judahite Burial Practices).

3. Bleiberg, Jewish Life in Ancient Egypt, pp. 14-20.

4. However, T. Lewis (Cults of the Dead, pp. 104-117), after reviewing all the marzeaḥ texts of Ugarit, says that it is unlikely to be a marzeaḥ and the fast which Saul was keeping beforehand is likely to be more meaningful. I think Lewis is right; the rite is meant to be a necromancy, not a wake.

5. Pace Schmidt. In spite of his learned and interesting book, Israel’s Beneficent Dead, it seems much more likely to me from this evidence and more as well that these practices were early and not introduced in Israelite history first during Assyrian rule.

6. See M. S. Smith, The Early History of God.

7. Toorn, “Nature of the Biblical Teraphim;” also Family Religion in Babylonia; Brichto, The Names of God.

8. See A. Cooper and Goldstein, “The Cult of the Dead,” p. 295.

9. The punctuation of v 20 has been altered for sense.

10. Douglas, Leviticus as Literature, p. 99.

11. Ibid., pp. 87-108.

12. See for example, A. Cooper and Goldstein, “At the Entrance to the Tent;” “The Cult of the Dead;” “Exodus and Ma⋅s⊙t.”

13. Besides Amos 6:7, Barstad in “Religious Polemics of Amos Studies” has argued that two other passages in the book of Amos reflect the marzeaḥ without actually using the term: Amos 2:8 and 6:4-6.

14. McLaughlin, marzeaḥ, p. 83.

15. See Andersen, Amos.

16. McLaughlin, marzeaḥ, pp. 185-95.

17. A. Cooper and Goldstein, “The Cult of the Dead.”

18. See Aberbach and Smolar, “Aaron, Jeroboam, and the Golden Calves.”

19. Finkelstein and Silberman, The Bible Unearthed.

20. See Hallote, Death, Burial, and Afterlife, p. 126. Hallote suggests that it might be translated as the Valley of the “Screaming Son.”

21. See P. Johnston, Shades of Sheol, pp. 68-85; for notions of a threatening underworld, see pp. 86-124.

22. IDB, 1: 788 viz. “dead, the abode of.”

23. The picture occurs in Ugarit (I *AB, 1 1-3).

24. Dahood, Psalms; “The Ebla Tablets.”

25. See P. Johnston, “The Pervasive Underworld?” in Shades of Sheol, pp. 98-124 for a good review of the evidence.

26. Italics mine and used to emphasize that the pronoun is not in keeping with our ordinary interpretation of the passage.

27. For an interesting treatment of the ancestor cult in ancient Israel, see Brichto, “Kin, Cult, Land, and Afterlife.”

28. See Bailey, “Old Testament View of Life After Death.”

29. Gen 25:8; 25:17; 35:29; 49:33. “He died” is omitted for Jacob, see also Gen 49:29. See P. Johnston, Shades of Sheol, p. 33.

30. See unpublished paper of Jonah Steinberg “Sheol: New Perspectives on the Netherworld in the Eschatological Ideologies of the Hebrew Bible.” (Wächter, TWNT, 909.)

31. Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, esp. pp. 133-47. Her book is a most responsible summary of the whole problem.

32. E. Meyers, “Secondary Burials in Palestine.”

33. Heidel, The Gilgamesh Epic.

34. Alternatively, the phrase “gathered to one’s ancestors” may witness to a common trait of oral cultures. People remember the names of their immediate forbears but gradually they are absorbed into the collective group of ancestors, with the exception of a few specially important ancestral heroes.

35. E. Meyers, Jewish Ossuaries.

36. This is particularly interesting because the Deuteronomic reforms of Josiah were key in breaking down the rampant cult of the dead around Jerusalem, which probably further served the unification of the Jerusalem priesthood as well.

37. See the previous chapter, on Mesopotamia and Canaan, n. 60. See also T. Lewis, Cults of the Dead, p. 144.

38. See the excellent book by Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, pp. 132-51.)

39. Ibid., esp. pp. 133-51, which is used throughout this section.

40. Hallote, Death, Burial, and Aferlife, pp. 36-37.

41. Ibid., pp. 31-43.

42. J. Davies, Death, Burial, and Rebirth, pp. 71-83.

43. Barr, The Garden of Eden; J. W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting.

44. Barr, The Garden of Eden.

45. See Eduard Löhse, “ in Hebrew Thought,” in TDNT.

46. Lev 19:28 for “dead soul;” Num 6:6, where “nefesh” all by itself designates a corpse.

47. Bremmer, Rise and Fall of the Afterlife, pp. 11-40.

48. See ch. 8 under the topic of the Septuagint, for a fuller discussion of these passages.

49.Literally their breath or spirit, as below. The parallel is key, as it shows God’s immortal breath in contrast to human breath, which fails.

50. Or your breath.

51. De Boer, The Defeat of Death, p. 43.

52. See, for example, Aufrecht’s excellent book, Studies in the Book of Job, with excellent contributions by Ronald J. Williams, Peter C. Craigie, and Claude E. Cox.

53. J. Roberts, “Job’s Summons to Yahweh.”

54. See P. Johnston, Shades of Sheol, pp. 211-14, for a good review of the textual problems.

55. Possibly these are two different versions of the same Israelite tradition.

56. In the meantime, see Kvanwig, Roots of Apocalyptic; Vanderkam, Enoch; Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis.

57. Pope, Song of Songs.

58. See G. Wright, Old Testament Against its Environment.

59. A. Segal, Rebecca’s Children.

60. Later in the story we find out that stars are angels but that is another issue entirely. In point of fact, the equation of the stars with the angels is much earlier than the Genesis ch. 1 creation story.

61. Childs, Myth and Reality.

62. See ANET, pp. 37-41 for the story of Enki and Ninhursag.

63. Alternatively, it may signify the Tigris or the Nile in an anachronistic way.

64. I know that many feminists want to see some justification for equality of the sexes in this passage. Our modern ethics are in need of no biblical justification.

Chapter 4. Iranian Views of the Afterlife and Ascent to the Heavens

1. See A. Segal, Rebecca’s Children, pp. 13-37.

2. S. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness Boundaries.

3. The best place to start one’s study of Zoroastrianism in English is Oxtoby, “The Zoroastrian Tradition.”

4. Mary Boyce, A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism; Zoroastrians; Study of Zoroastrianism; J. R. Russell, Zoroastrianism in Armenia.

5. See Oxtoby, “The Zoroastrian Traditions,” p. 159.

6. A good guess would be around 800-750 BCE, though no one really has convincingly dated Zarathustra’s life.

7. Gnoli, “Zoroastrianism.”

8. The other major possibility is that Zarathustra preached a more radical religion than was adopted in his name.

9. Zaehner, Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism.

10. See also Zaehner, The Teachings of the Magi; A Zoroastrian Dilemma.

11. Gnoli, “Zoroastrianism.”

12. See Gnoli, “Ateshgah.”

13. See Oxtoby, “Interpretations of Iranian Dualism,” pp. 62-63.

14. Boyce, Zoroastrianism, p. 73.

15. BeDuhn, The Manichean Body; Klimkeit, gnōsis on the Silk Road; Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road.

16. They may have been somehow alienated from their other Sanskritic language-speaking brethren because the word for god in Sanskrit is deva, demon is asura, while in the Avestan dialects, it is just the contrary: daeva means demon and ahura is god. Linguistic specialization alone might account for the variation between these cognate words in closely related languages. So attributing Iranian dualism to feelings of hostility against their neighbors is a lot to conclude from etymology alone. On the other hand, it is hard to believe that anyone in Zoroastrian Iran would have identified willingly with the dregvans and it is easy to understand how powerful a political belief dualism is for demonizing one’s enemies.

17. See, for example, the thoughtful book by J. R. Russell, Zoroastrianism in Armenia.

18. Boyce, Study of Zoroastrianism.

19. See Hultgård, “Persian Apocalypticism,” p. 67.

20. See Duchesne-Guillemin, The Hymns of Zarathustra, pp. 143-44; also Symbols and Values in Zoroastrianism.

21. For more detail, see Boyce, Zoroastrians, pp. 14-15.

22. See Kreyenbroek, Sroasa in the Zoroastrian Tradition.

23. See Kotwal and Boyd, A Guide to the Zoroastrian Religion, p. 78.

24. See Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road, pp. 28-29. His information, in turn, comes from Janos Harmatta, “Religions in the Kushan Empire,” p. 315; and Trinkhaus, “Mortuary Ritual and Mortuary Remains,” p. 677.

25. A year is often said to be the time that it takes for the bones to be purified of all the remaining flesh in Jewish as well as some Zoroastrian texts.

26. J. R. Russell, “Death in Persia.”

27. Tibetan Buddhists also expose the dead to predation, and probably originally for similar purposes. In Tibet, the ground is too frozen to bury, and there is not enough wood to burn. In current Buddhism, “sky burial” serves to remind the faithful of the transitoriness of life. The Persian nomadic raiders probably did not want to bury their dead and leave them and yet did not want to burn them because that was against purity laws.

28. Any culture which participates in human history long enough will run into conflicting notions of burial and depiction of the posthumous self. It would be wrong to push the analogy too far, given the inventiveness of the human mind, but the correlation is hard to miss where it occurs.

29. J. Davies, Death, Burial, and Rebirth, p. 44, from Nigosian, The Zoroastrian Faith, p. 55.

30. See West, Pahlavi Texts.

31. See McDannell and Lang, Heaven: A History, pp. 111-44.

32. Colpe, “Syncretism;” also see Die religionsgeschichtliche Schule.

33. The rabbis also report that the capital punishment “burning” could be executed in Persian times by pouring molten metal into the victim.

34. Haoma is probably not the amanita mushroom-pace Allegro, The Sacred Mushroom; and Wasson, The Road to Eleusis-but henbane, a less dramatic psychotropic herb.

35. Shaked, “Quests and Visionary Journeys.”

36. Ibid., p. 68. See B. T. Anklesaria, Khurdah Avistābātarjamah-i Pahlavī-iān (Shiraz: 1976), pp. 5-6, beginning 18-19.

37. See J. R. Russell, “Death in Persia,” p. 8.

38. For the whole story in the Dâstân-i Mēnōk-i Krat see Zaehner, The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism, pp. 302-5.

39. See Bode, Man, Soul, Immortality in Zoroastrianism, pp. 107-8.

40. M. Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics.

41. Is the last heir described as the suffering servant in Isa 53?

44. For the background to these notions, see Newman, Paul’s Glory Christology.

42. D. Smith, Religion of the Landless, see esp. pp. 49-90.

Chapter 5. Greek and Classical Views of Life After Death

1. The bibliography is endless. As an introduction to the various aspects of the field, see Rhode, Psyche; Sourvinou-Inwood, ‘Reading’ Greek Death; Garland, The Greek Way of Death. Also see Cullmann et al., Immortality and Resurrection; S. Johnston, Hekate Soteira; Bremmer, Early Greek Concept of the Soul; S. Johnston, Restless Dead; Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek Religion; Knight, Ancient Greek and Roman Beliefs; Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered; Bolt, “Life, Death, and the Afterlife in the Greco-Roman World;” N. Wright, “Shadows, Souls and Where They Go,” in Resurrection, which, unfortunately, appeared after this chapter was written; Bernstein, The Formation of Hell, pp. 21-129.

2. See Ogden, “Greek Sorcerers.”

3. Ibid., p. 14.

4. Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer.

5. See the discussion in Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered, pp. 26-27; also see Sourvinou-Inwood, ‘Reading’ Greek Death, esp. pp. 17-140.

6. See Bremmer, Early Greek Concept of the Soul; also Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered, p. 31.

7. Snell, Discovery of the Mind, p. 8.

8. For example, kradie, etor, ker, which seem to be related to the heart, while phrenes is related to the lungs and psyche or anemos with the life force or breath. See Onians, Origins of European Thought About the Body; Snell, The Discovery of the Mind.

9. See C. Taylor, Sources of the Self, p. 120.

10. See again Garland, The Greek Way of Death; Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World; Morris, Death-Ritual and Social Structure.

11. See S. Johnston, Restless Dead.

12. Garland, The Greek Way of Death, p. 21.

13. See Cancik-Lindemaier, “Roman Funerary Customs,” p. 422.

14. On the history of the difficulty of deciphering this scene, see Brandon, The Judgment of the Dead, pp. 96-97; also see Stilwell, “Conduct and Behavior.”

15. See Brandon, The Judgment of the Dead, esp. ch. 4.

16. Toynbee and Perkins, Vatican Excavations; Hopkins and Letts, “Death in Rome.”

17. Garland, The Greek Way of Death, p. 60.

18. For another but closely related point of view, see T. Abusch, “Mourning the Death of a Friend.”

19. DeConick, Seek to See Him.

20. Murray, Homer: The Odyssey, vol. 1, p. 421.

21. Foley, Hymn to Demeter, p. 25.

22. Ibid., pp. 80-82.

23. See Kerenyi, “Eleusis.”

24. Many polemics against Canaanite child sacrifice can be found in Hebrew thought. And the famous story of the sacrifice of Isaac is deeply involved in the polemic. In the Hellenistic period, as we shall see, it became intimately connected with arguments about immortalization as well, when Christians and Jews argue over the most effective sacrifice, Isaac or Jesus, Isaac who was offered up for sacrifice or Jesus who was actually killed. Later still, the identity of the sacrificed offspring, Isaac or Ishmael, provides the Muslims with justification for saying that God’s favor has passed to them.

25. Burkert, Greek Religion; and Ancient Mystery Cults.

26. Wasson and Ruck, Persephone’s Quest; Wasson, Ruck, and Hofmann, The Road to Eleusis.

27. Frag. 15 = Synesius Dion 10, p. 48a.

28. See Foley, Hymn to Demeter, pp. 69-71.

29. Frag. 168 Sandbach = Stobaeus Anthologium 4.52.49. Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults, pp. 91-92. Also see the passage inspired by the Mysteries at Plato, Phaedrus, 250bc.

30. Lord, “Withdrawal and Return,” pp. 90-92 and 181-90.

31. See the Golden Bough which anthologizes myths of kingly succession and vegetation gods. Many historians of religion, influenced by this important work, came to the conclusion that all religion is conerned with this pattern, either in myth or in parallel ritual. Although these are certainly important motifs in religious life, that conclusion was overstated.

32. Euripides, Suppliants 533-34: “the spirit into the aether, but the body into the earth.” See Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered, p. 30 n. 69.

33. Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek Religion.

34. Ibid.

35. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, pp. 667-9. Cf. N. Turchi, Fontes Historiae Mysteriorum Aevi Hellenistici (Rome: 1923), p. 37; V. Macchioro, Zagreus; studi intorno all’orfismo (Florence: 1930), pp. 283-84; Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek Religion, pp. 173-75; Brandon, The Judgment of the Dead, pp. 91, 222 n. 89.

36. Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus in Diogenes Laertius 10.63.

37. Ibid., 10.139. Cf. also Lucretius 3.830: nihil igitur mors est ad nos neque pertinet hilum. Also see Cicero, de finibus 2.31.100; Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhonism 3.229. See Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered, p. 37, esp. n. 90.

38. Also non eram, eram, non sum, non curo.

39. Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes 1.18.42-19.43. See Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered, p. 39 nn. 96, 97.

40. This translation is taken from Plato’s Phaedo, trans. G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1977).

41. Piaget, Psychology of Intelligence; Moral Judgement of the Child; Adaptation and Intelligence.

42. See Sorabji, Aristotle on Memory, p. 35 for this suggestion.

43. Ibid., pp. 37-46.

44. See Brandon, The Judgment of the Dead, p. 88.

45. See: Adam, The Republic of Plato, vol. 2, pp. 433ff. Also introduction, pp. Lff. for a good bibliography on the myth of Er. The translation is from Shorey, The Republic, vol. 2, pp. 488ff.

46. Translation from Sorabji, Aristotle on Memory, p. 53.

47. Ibid., p. 44-47.

48. Copleston, A History of Philosophy.

49. “The Dream of Scipio” from Cicero, The Republic 6.9-26.

50. Ovid, Metamorphoses 14, pp. 805-52, esp. 823-28.

51. See Temporini, Die Frauen am Hofe Trajans, pp. 245ff.

52. She cannot even claim as her victory what Shakespeare’s Cleopatra does: “I am fire and air; my other elements I give to baser life” (Antony and Cleopatra, Act 5, scene 2, lines 201-2). We shall look at this scene again in the conclusion on this work.

53. See Festugière, Personal Religion among the Greeks.

54. Vergil, Eclogue 4. See Kraus, Vergils vierte Ekloge; Benko, Vergil’s Fourth Eclogue.

55. See e.g., Pliny, Naturalis historia 2.8.68. He remains skeptical. But Seneca and Dio make references to a comet at the death of Augustus. See further.

56. Cumont, Afterlife in Roman Paganism; see also Astrology and Religion; Lux Perpetua.

57. Cassius Dio, Roman History 56.42.3.

58. See P. Fossing, Catalogue of the Antique Engraved Gems and Cameos, pp. 177n, 1199, also 1203ff.

59. O. M. Dalton, Catalogue of Ivory Carvings of the Christian Era, p. 1 and plate 1. (“The Apotheosis of Romulus”). See the useful bibliography of Sr. Dominique Cuss, Imperial Cults and Honorary Terms in the New Testament (Freiburg: 1974), from whom I first heard of the triptych.

60. Corpus inscriptionam latinarum 6.29954.

61. N. Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, p. 55.

62. Compare this with our current beliefs, reiterated at every planetarium show and astronomical TV program, namely that we are such stuff as stars are made of-because the higher elements are formed only deep inside stars.

63. Cassius Dio, Roman History 69.11; Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.9.7-8; Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 4.8.2; Justin, 1 Apology 1.29; Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus 4.

64. See Z. Smith, “Hellenistic Religions,” in The New Encyclopedia Britannica. Macropaedia 8:749-51, 15th ed; Stendahl, Immortality and Resurrection. Also see Tabor, Things Unutterable, p. 63.

Chapter 6. Second Temple Judaism:

The Rise of a Beatific Afterlife in the Bible

1. The Hebrew is not so much ambiguous grammatically as ambiguous in context. The NRSV renders it as: “he will devise plans so as not to keep an outcast banished forever from his presence”; RSV: “but God will not take away the life of him who devises means not to keep his banished one an outcast”; both are attentive to the grammar but easy to interpret in a broader way. The LXX is not the source of the translation: “even as he devises to thrust his outcast from him.” It is exactly the opposite of the English translations and, one supposes, takes the Hebrew subordinating conjunction “without” in a less negative sense. The source of the optimistic translation is the Vulgate: nec vult perire Deus animam sed retractat cogitans ne penitus pereat qui abiectus est.

2. Consequently, it has been dated in practically every century since the tenth century bce to the first century CE.

3. See, for example, Sperber, Greek and Latin Legal Terms.

4. Seow, Ecclesiastes, p. 22.

5. M. Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics.

6. See the recent book by Bremmer for a convenient summary of these historiographical problems. Bremmer, Rise and Fall of the Afterlife, pp. 47-50.

7. Martin-Achard, From Death to Life, pp. 93-102. More recently, see Zimmerli, “Ezekiel 2,” pp. 253-266.

8. Canannite roots have been suggested by van Baudissen, Adonis and Esman, pp. 403-6; Riesenfeld, Repertorium lexicographicum graecum, pp. 4-7; Robinson, Job and His Friends; Martin-Achard, From Death to Life, pp. 70-73; and Nikolainen, Der Auferstehungsglauben, pp. 50-60. Persian influence has been championed by Böklen, Verwandtschaft der Jüdisch-Christlichen; Causse, Du Groupe Ethnique, esp. pp. 24-30. See Cavallin, Life after Death, p. 25.

9. Perhaps better: “(as) a corpse they shall arise,” a accusative of state, referring to the subject of the clause. See Schmitz, “Grammar of Resurrection in Isaiah 26: 19a-c.” His conclusion that the resurrection is literal is more speculative, but his observation that the phrase refers to national regeneration correctly interprets the passage in context.

10. As a good example of a circumspect late dating of the text, see Kaiser, Isaiah 13-39. He understands the text to emanate from Maccabean times, like Daniel. He also gives a very full bibliography of the other commentators on this passage. As do the following good commentaries on the subject: Seitz, Isaiah 1-39; Wildberger, Isaiah 13-27.

11. The parallel has been noted often but none so articulately as Nickels-burg, Resurrection, Immortality and Eternal Life, p. 17; also see “Future Life in Intertestamental Literature.”

12. See Isa 66:18-19.

13. Nickelsburg sees a relationship with the entire text of 3 Isaiah, which is generally the case but the most succinct parallel with resurrection is in Isa 66:14.

14. See Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic; D. Freedman and Cross, Studies in Ancient Yahwistic Poetry.

15. See the studies compiled by van Henten, Die Entstehung der jüdischen Martyrologie; as well as van Henten and de Jonge, “Datierung und Herkunft des vierten Makkabaerbuches,” pp. 136-49. Also see Weiner and Weiner, The Martyr’s Conviction.

16. Doran, “The Martyr;” p. 201.

17. See the extremely interesting and subtle treatment of Christian martyrdom in Castelli, Marytrdom and Memory.

18. See also 2 Macc 7:9, 14; 12:38-46.

19. Sir 24:8 also suggests the same, but it is normally dated a bit later.

20. See Holleman, “Resurrection and Parousia,” p. 144.

21. Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis. See the work of Elior, The Three Temples. It is less important to resolve these sectarian issues than to appreciate the sectarian nature of the afterlife notions in the Enoch literature.

22. The Enoch literature is possibly as old or older than the Daniel “son of man” traditions in which it participates. Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch; Black, The Book of Enoch; Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis; VanderKam, Enoch; J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination; Kvanvig, Roots of Apocalyptic.

23. VanderKam, Enoch, p. 8.

24. See S. Talmon, “The Calendar Reckoning;” Elior, The Three Temples; Arbel, Beholders of Divine Secrets. Elior ingeniously argues that Qumran evidens a priestly form of Judaism and that the solar calendar of Qumran was the original solar calendar of the Temple.

25. Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis.

26. Black, The Book of Enoch.

27. Elior, The Paradoxical Ascent to God; The Three Temples.

28. See Hurtado, One God, One Lord; Newman, Paul’s Glory Christology; Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology; Dean-Otting, Heavenly Journeys; Crane, The Languages of Criticism; Fossum, The Name of God; VanderKam, Enoch.

29. See for example, J. W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, who does not know this particular passage but is very careful to present every passage he does know as positive examples of dualism, which he wants to valorize in the tradition. His is not truly disinterested scholarship but a systematic attempt to see our mature Western notion of apocalyptic end and intermediary state for souls in heaven as grounded in biblical tradition. Of course, since both an apocalyptic end and this kind of intermediary state for souls is present, one can say that he is right. But the problem is that the passage is not exegeted by our very loquacious narrator and remains for a later time to spell out.

Chapter 7. Apocalypticism and Millenarianism

1. Not every aspect of an apocalypse is concerned with the end. A number of scholars have isolated examples of non-eschatological apocalypses. See Front, Old Testament Apocalyptic.

2. See Charlesworth, Pseudepigrapha in Modern Research; Stone, Scriptures, Sects, and Visions.

3. See J. Collins and Nickelsburg, Ideal Figures in Ancient Judaism.

4. Goldstein, 1 and 2 Maccabees.

5. Also see Sibylline Oracles 3:381-400; Goldstein, 1 and 2 Maccabees.

6. See, e.g., Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic.

7. J. Collins, Apocalyptic Vision of Daniel; The Apocalyptic Imagination; “The Root of Immortality.”

8. For a very full treatment of these passages, see J. Collins, Apocalyptic Vision of Daniel, pp. 166-79.

9. Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology.

10. Plöger, Theocracy and Eschatology.

11. There is no relationship to the mystical group of the same name disciples of the Ba’al Shem Tov who trace their beginning to the eighteenth century and whose distinctive black or brown frock coats and caftans reflect their Polish ancestry.

12. See for example, the epochal writings of Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice; Power/Knowledge.

13. This is not the same thing as calling the group at Qumran “Sadducees.” Pace Schiffman, Sectarian Law in Dead Sea Scrolls. Elior’s (Temples) more recent reconstruction seems more suggestive and ingenious.

14. See Fletcher-Louis, All the Glory of Adam, p. 388.

15. DeConick, Seek to See Him, pp. 32-33.

16. Schiffman, Sectarian Law in Dead Sea Scrolls.

17. On August 30, 2000 The Israeli Supreme Court decided that Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archeological Review, a large-circulation journal that reports important archeological discoveries to the wider public, had violated a copyright in publishing the work of Elisha Qimron without permission. (See the New York Times, August 31, 2000, A:11.) Qimron’s reconstruction was included in Shanks’s Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of 1700 photographs of scroll fragments, published in 1991. Other scholars, including Eisenman and Wise, published the remaining texts without permission, including their own commentaries and opinions about their meanings. While most scholars were happy to see the remaining texts, the rushed commentaries of “the scholars in revolt” contained several errors of haste and many immoderate, personal opinions, so that everyone still awaits with anticipation the considered commentary of Elisha Qimron. See also Eisenman, Maccabees, Zadokites, Christians, and Qumran.

18. Puech, La Croyance des esséniens.

19. Ibid., pp. 747, 748, 781, 795; and see 4Q 521.

20. For recent bibliography on the Essenes, see for example Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis; VanderKam, Enoch. See also Elior, The Three Temples.

21. See Nitzan, “Harmonic and Mystical Characteristics;” Elior, The Three Temples; Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice; “He Has Established for Himself Priests;” Schaefer, “New Testament and Hekhalot Literature;” “Engel und Menschen in der Hekhalot-Literatur;” Hidden and Manifest God; Schiff-man, “Merkavah Speculation at Qumran;” Schuller, “Hymn from Cave Four Hodayot Manuscript.”

22. See E. Wolfson’s critique of Nitzan in “Mysticism and the Poetic-Liturgical Compositions.”

23. Fletcher-Louis, Luke-Acts, pp. 184-98; All the Glory of Adam. The following paragraphs are heavily indebted to his work. He has been followed in part by Steinberg, “Angelic Israel.” Steinberg advances the argument in several interesting ways. Also see Elior, The Three Temples.

24. See Newsom, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice.

25. Charlesworth, “Portrayal of the Righteous,” p. 136.

26. Milik, “‘4QVisions d’Amram,’” p. 94.

27. Noll, “Communion of Angels and Men.”

28. M. Smith, “Two Ascended to Heaven;” “Deification in 4QMa;” A. Segal, “The Risen Christ,” p. 308. Subsequently, M. Smith’s interpretation was given support by the readings of Schuller, “Hymn from Cave Four Hodayot Manuscript.”

29. Baumgarten, “Qumran-Essene Restraints on Marriage;” Qimron, “Celibacy in the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

30. See Wimbush, Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman Antiquity; Vaage and Wimbush, Asceticism and the New Testament.

31. Edmunds, The Shawnee Prophet.

32. See Wallace, Death and Rebirth of the Seneca.

33. Wallace, “Revitalization Movements.”

34. See Jarvie, The Revolution in Anthropology; Lantennari, Religions of the Oppressed.

35. On the Ghost Dance religion, see Barbar, “Acculturation and Messianic Movements,” for an analysis of its sources and unhappy outcome. Mooney, in his classic report to the Bureau of American Ethnology, “Ghost Dance Religion,” presented the first account of these events. See also, Overholt, “Ghost Dance of 1890.”

36. Wallace, “Revitalization Movements.”

37. For an exception, see Gager, Kingdom and Community.

38. On ancient Judaism and Christianity, see A. Segal Rebecca’s Children, pp. 70-71.

39. The term “deprivation” was first used in connection with messianic movements by the anthropologist Phillip Nash. He borrowed the term from a more general usage by the political scientist Harold Lasswell.

40. Further general statements on the characteristics of leaders and messianic movements are: Tescher, “A Theory of Charismatic Leadership;” Worsley, The Trumpet Shall Sound; Burridge, New Heaven, New Earth; Jarvie, The Revolution in Anthropology; I. Lewis, Religion in Context.

41. S. Cook, Prophecy and Apocalypticism.

42. Ibid., p. 2.

43. Turner, The Ritual Process; Dramas. Fields, and Metaphors.

44. Gager, Kingdom and Community; Horsley, Jesus and the Spiral of Violence; Boswell, Of the Christian Era.

45. See Elior, The Three Temples.

46. In the last fifty years, sociologists, anthropologists, and historians have produced a whole literature on messianic movements. See, for example, Barbar, “Acculturation and Messianic Movements;” chapters by R. Linton, A. F. C. Wallace, W. W. Hill, J. S. Slotkin, C. S. Belshaw, D. F. A. Geertz, and C. Geertz on “Dynamics in Religion,” in Lessa and Vogt, Reader, pp. 496-543; Y. Talmon in Lessa and Vogt, Reader, 2d ed., pp. 522-37; and Overholt, Channels of Prophecy.

Chapter 8. Religiously Interpreted States of Consciousness

1. Husser, Dreams and Dream Narratives.

2. The abbreviations are regularly used in psychological literature.

3. For a review of altered states of consciousness (ASC) and shamanism, see Winkelman, Shamanism.

4. See Aune’s very informative study, Prophecy in Early Christianity, pp. 81-152.

5. E. Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines, pp. 108-9.

6. Dean-Otting, Heavenly Journeys.

7. Nicholas D. Kristof, “Alien Abduction? Science Calls It Sleep Paralysis,” New York Times, July 6, 1999, F:1-2.

8. Austin, Zen and the Brain, p. 333; Tart, Altered States of Consciousness, pp. 73-113.

9. Merkur, gnōsis, pp. 44-54; “The Nature of the Hypnotic State,” p. 345.

10. P. Miller, Dreams in Late Antiquity, esp. pp. 3-123.

11. See for example Ripinsky-Naxon, The Nature of Shamanism; Merkur, Becoming Half Hidden; Grim, The Shaman, for a review of research.

12. Eliade, Le chamanisme et les techniques archaiques de Vextase (Paris: Librairie Payot, 1951), translated into English as Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy; also Yoga: Immortality and Freedom.

13. See the newly published book by Davila, Descenders to the Chariot, which attempts to see Merkabah mysticism as a shamanistic phenomenon. See also Bourgignon, Religion; and I. M. Lewis Religion in Context.

14. Davila, Descenders to the Chariot.

15. Persinger, Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs; Cardeña, Lynn, and Krippner, Varieties of Anomalous Experience; Newberg, D’Aquili, and Rause, Why God Won’t Go Away; Winkelman, Shamanism.

16. Newberg, D’Aquili, and Rause, Why God Won’t Go Away, pp. 171-72.

17. Persinger, Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs; also see Cardeña, Lynn, and Krippner, Varieties of Anomalous Experience, esp. the chapter on “out-of-body” experiences.

18. Newberg, D’Aquili, and Rause, Why God Won’t Go Away, p. 119.

19. Alverado, “Out-of-Body Experiences;” see M. Maddux, “Hallucinogenic Herb Attracts DEA Interest,” The Bergen Record, July 6, 2003.

20. Here I am relying on interviews with them, made for the TV show, “Between Life and Death.” Their findings are quite in consonance with the suggestions of Newberg, D’Aquili, and Rause. Since Ketamine is not licensed for human use in the US, all its users are technically abusers. But it has been used in various experimental settings to investigate its psychoactive properties. See Jansen, “Using Ketamine.”

21. Alvarado, “Out-of-Body Experiences.”

22. See Atran, “Waves of Passion,” pp. 174-96 in In God We Trust, for a cautionary note about how little of these processes we actually understand.

23. See A. Segal, “Taoist Ascent and Merkabah Mysticism.”

24. See for example, the summary discussion in J. Collins, Apocalyptic Vision of Daniel.

25. Rowland, The Open Heaven, pp. 217fr

26. Ibid., p. 218.

27. New confirmation of this point may be found in E. Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines, pp. 108-24, 383-92.

28. See Kilborne’s article, “Dreams;” and Hanson, “Dreams and Visions.” Also see P. Miller, Dreams in Late Antiquity.

29. See Saake, “Paulus als Ekstatiker;” Benz, Paulus als Visionaer.

30. Kim, “Origin of Paul’s Gospel.”

31. See A. Segal, “Heavenly Ascent in Hellenistic Judaism.”

32. Rohde, Psyche, p. 364.

33. Flanagan and Block, The Nature of Consciousness; McGinn, The Mysterious Flame; Dennett, Kinds of Minds, Consciousness Explained; Searle, The Mystery of Consciousness; E. Walker, The Physics of Consciousness; Chalmers, The Conscious Mind; Churchland, Matter and Consciousness; Norretranders, The User Illusion; Hasker, The Emergent Self.

34. Povinelli and Povinelli, “Arboreal Clambering.”

35. Gottsch, “Mutation, Selection, and Vertical Transmission.”

36. Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness.

37. One recent and useful language for dealing with these issues is that of “memes.” See Dawkins, The Selfish Gene; River Out of Eden; Blackmore, The Meme Machine. Another fruitful language can be carried over from computer software. It is not that we are computers but that our culture operates as a kind of software that is shared and developed between people. The “memes,” a Richard Dawkins neologism, therefore can be seen as a unit of cultural transmission or a software routine. But more on this at the end of the book.

38. Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri, pp. 48-49.

39. Copenhaver, Hermetica, p. 1.

40. S. Johnston, “Rising to the Occasion.”

41. Luck, “Theurgy and Forms of Worship in Neoplatonism.”

42. See M. Smith, Observations on Hekhaloth Rabbati. Also see Jamblique [Iamblichus], Les Mystères d’Egypte; Oracles Chaldaiques.

43. Proclus, Theol. Plat. I, 26.

44. G. Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul; “Apotheosis in Later Platonism,” pp. 111-12, 119; Luck, “Theurgy and Forms of Worship in Neoplatonism.”

45. See Stratton, “Naming the Witch.”

46. Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes, pp. 126-31.

47. See the description of the rite in PGM I.1-42 and 1.42-195. Compare it with the description of bringing down an angel in the Sefer Harazim and Sefer Hekhalot to swear him to accomplish one’s bidding. Also see the description in Ciraolo’s “Supernatural Assistants,” pp. 285-86.

48. R. Gray, Prophetic Figures, pp. 63-64; also see Zeitlin, “Dreams and Their Interpretation,” p. 12.

Chapter 9. Sectarian Life in New Testament Times

1. van der Horst, Ancient Jewish Epitaphs.

2. See J. Davies, Death, Burial, and Rebirth, p. 110.

3. Quotation from Longenecker, “‘Good Luck on your Resurrection.’”

4. See also 1QH 1.20-21; 2.20; 5:29-30, 34-39 as well as iQH 6.29-35; 11.10-14.

5. See the recent article by Longenecker, “‘Good Luck on Your Resurrection.’” See also the important work of Puech, La croyance des Esséniens.

6. The Enoch literature is possibly as old or older than the Daniel “son of man” traditions in which it participates. See Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch; Black, The Book of Enoch; Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis; VanderKam, Enoch; J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination; Kvanvig, Roots of Apocalyptic.

7. This is now reconfirmed by VanderKam, “Righteous One.” Also see Nickelsburg, “Salvation without and with a Messiah;” Kee, “Christology in Mark’s Gospel;” and Charlesworth, “From Jewish Messianology.”

8. On the other hand, it may also be that the “parables” have a pre-Christian or non-Christian origin, so far unattested, and this paragraph found its way into Ethiopian Christianity with a minimum of alteration. In that case, it has merely been subsumed within the Christian tradition because of its interpretation of the “son of man” which became such an important prophecy in the New Testament.

9. Elior, The Three Temples.

10. Charlesworth has “bull,” while Isaac, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1, p. 71 has “cow.”

11. See Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality and Eternal Life, pp. 123, 177-80, for a discussion of this passage. Nickelsburg justifiably criticizes Cullmann’s strict distinctions between Greek and Hebrew modes of thinking; but neither discusses adequately the fact that some Jews deliberately use the Greek concepts for hermeneutical purposes and philosophical credentials. See below.

12. Ibid., p. 123; Cavalin, Life After Death, p. 48. See de Boer, Defeat of Death, p. 57.

13. Aalen (” ‘Reign’ and ‘House’” p. 10) tries to use this verse to demonstrate that faith in the resurrection was accepted virtually everywhere in the land of Israel by the time of Jesus. Nothing could be further from the truth.

14. R. Scott, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, p. 91; see Dahood, “Immortality.”

15. See Cavallin, Life After Death, pp. 103-110 for more details.

16. See Birnbaum, The Place of Judaism.

17. Colson and Whitaker, Philo. Discussion is taken from Cavallin, Life After Death, pp. 135-46.

18. Philo’s text is Isa 54:1: “Sing, O barren one, who did not bear; / break forth into singing and cry aloud, / you who have not been in travail! / For the children of the desolate one will be more / than the children of her that is married, says the Lord.”

19. Pace N. Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, pp. 145, 421L, 492.

20. See for example, Baer, Philo’s Use of Male and Female; also Sly, Philo’s Perception of Women.

21. Smallwood, The Jews Under Roman Rule; S. Cohen, Maccabees to Mishnah.

22. See, for example, Bremmer, “Paradise.”

23. See the work of Netzer and especially: Hasmonean and Herodian Palaces; “Tyros, the Floating Palace;” Burrell, Netzer, and Netzer, “Uncovering Herod’s Seaside Palace.”

24. They denied the aristocrats access unless they were just. But it is clear from the New Testament alone that most of the ordinary folk thought it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.

25. Mason, “Was Josephus a Pharisee?;” M. Smith, Studies in the Cult of Yahweh.

26. See Mason, Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees.

27. This, in fact, is what I will try to show later on, when we have had a chance to look at Paul and the rabbis’ perspectives on resurrection. It may well be that this is also identical or close to the notions that we have seen briefly outlined in Enoch. It is certainly what Paul describes in far more detail in his letters, particularly 1 Cor 15, as we shall see. Thus, although we cannot be entirely sure about what the Pharisees actually believed, we also cannot blithely assume that they believed in exactly the same kind of resurrection that the Gospels describe, though they may have been, ironically, closer to the position of Paul. Paul, as we will see, had ideas that are at some odds with the Gospels and probably closer to what the Pharisees thought.

28. See Puech, La Croyance des Esséniens.

29. See Lachs, A Rabbinic Commentary.

30. Pace N. Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, p. 172. At any rate, the point I make in this section is that Jewish eschatological notions are here figured in a very Hellenistic context in which immortality of the soul is prevalent. Any expressions of resurrection, if they exist, have been made secondary to the expression of a more Hellenistic notion of life after death, namely immortality of the soul. Both conceptions of the afterlife are present in Jewish society at this time.

31. This is counter to the argument of Holleman, Resurrection and Parousia.

32. For my views in more detail, see A. Segal, Rebecca’s Children, esp. pp. 68-116; and Paul the Convert; also see Gager, Kingdom and Community.

33. Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus.

34. Archeology helps establish the context of the New Testament but it does not yet touch the basic religious claims of Christianity. What is obvious for the New Testament is true of the Old, by the way, and the archaeology, while plentiful, is still more difficult to evaluate.

35. See Gager, Kingdom and Community, esp. pp. 2-18.

36. Crossan, The Historical Jesus.

37. For a new discussion of the presence of Jesus in the life of the church, see Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ.

38. For example, Crossan, The Cross That Spoke; Who Killed Jesus?; Barth, The People of God.

39. See Klawans, Impurity and Sin.

40. E. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism; Paul and Palestinian Judaism.

41. S. Davies, Jesus the Healer; Borg, Meeting Jesus Again; Witherington, Jesus the Seer.

42. Dahl, The Crucified Messiah.

Chapter 10. Paul’s Vision of the Afterlife

1. For a detailed and most instructive treatment of what Paul’s reports can tell us about Jesus, see Akenson, Saint Saul.

2. For the most recent treatment of the theme see McKnight, Turning to Jesus. Also see A. Segal, Paul the Convert.

3. Schweitzer, Mysticism of Paul the Apostle. Schweitzer was right about the mysticism but he misidentified the source of it because he did not know enough about Judaism in Jesus’ day. The mysticism that best demonstrates his point is the Jewish mysticism later known as Merkabah Mysticism, which will be discussed in the pseudepigraphical literature.

4. Perkins, Resurrection, p. 197.

5. It is a similar question that appears to occasion the remarks of 1 Cor 15, concentrating so fully on resurrection. With Paul we can begin to discuss the effect of Jewish mystical and apocalyptic visions not just as a warning of the end of time and as vindication for those who stay faithful to the precepts of Judaism but as an important spiritual experience within the life of an individual (in this case a Christian, but Paul did not understand the difference between “Jew” and “Christian” in quite the way we do; he never uses the term Christian).

6. See, for example, the discussion of Lorenzen, Resurrection and Discipleship, pp. 127-146.

7. Paradise or the garden of Eden was often conceived as lying in one of the heavens, though the exact location differs from one apocalyptic work to another. See Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell. See 2 Enoch, for an example that locates it in the third heaven. But 2 Enoch may have been influenced by Paul’s writings.

8. In different ways, the close relationship between mysticism and apocalypticism has been touched upon by several scholars of the last decade, myself included. See A. Segal, Two Powers; Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkabah Mysticism; esp. Rowland, The Open Heaven; as well as Fossum, The Name of God.

9. Also see A. Segal, Heavenly Ascent; Dean-Otting, Heavenly Journeys; Culianu, Psychanodia. Culianu has also published a more general work, Expériences de l’Extase. The verb harpazo in Greek and its Latin equivalent rapto are sometimes shared with pagan ascensions (sol me rapuit, “the sun has ‘abducted’ me”), but also probably initially denotes both the rapture of vision and the specific heavenly journeys of Enoch (Hebrew: laqah = Greek: metetheken.

10. See Baird, “Visions, Revelation, and Ministry.”

11. Encounters with the divine and heavenly journeys are fraught with danger. Jacob was wounded by his wrestling with the angel (Gen 32:25). Three of the four rabbis who entered paradise suffered injury (b. Hagigah 14b). See Baird, “Visions,” p. 660 and Johann Maier, “Das Gefaehrdungsmotiv.”

12. See the discussion between Goulder and A. Segal in “Transformation and Afterlife,” and Goulder’s response, pp. 137-152. See the chapter on Rabbinic Judaism in this book for further discussion of the limits of irony; and see Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity.

13. Morray-Jones, “Paradise Revisited.”

14. See Morray-Jones, A Transparent Illusion.

15. B. Taylor, “Recollection and Membership.” Also see Beckford, “Accounting for Conversion;” Snow and Machalek, “The Sociology of Conversion.”

16. See Tabor, Things Unutterable. See Kim, The Origin of Paul’s Gospel, who suggests 2 Cor 12 is Paul’s conversion experience; and his new book, Paul and the New Perspective, which argues strongly that it is. Scholarship is divided as to whether or not Gal 1 and 2 Cor 12 can be identified as the same experience and that it is to be identified with the Damascus Road experience. Baird (“Visions”) reports that recently most scholars assume a distinction (p. 652 and n. 2). A good example of this position would be Dunn, Spirit, p. 103. The following earlier writers maintained the identification between the two experiences: Knox, “Fourteen Years Later” and “The Pauline Chronology.” Yet, in a footnote to his Chapters in a Life of Paul, p. 78, he abandoned the notion. See Riddle, Paul: Man of Conflict, p. 63; Buck and Taylor, Saint Paul, pp. 220-26; Enslin Reapproaching Paul, pp. 53-55.

17. Hengel, The Pre-Christian Paul.

18. See Dunn, Spirit, for instance, pp. 107-9.

19. See Hekhaloth Rabbati 20 Wertheimer, I, pp. 98-99; Schaefer, Synopse, §§198-99; and Schiffman, “The Recall of Nehuniah ben Hakkanah;” also see Lieberman’s corrections to Schiffman in Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkabah Mysticism, p. 241. For the latest voices in the discussion, see Davila, Descenders in the Chariot; Morray-Jones, A Transparent Illusion; Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines.

20. Malherbe, The Cynic Epistles; Moral Exhortation; Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics. See the interesting article by Lampe, “Paul’s Concept of a Spiritual Body.”

21. See the interesting theory of Mettinger, The Dethronement of Sabaoth, for the origin of the kavod idea and its original function in biblical literature.

22. See Halperin, The Faces of the Chariot.

23. Odeberg, The Hebrew Book of Enoch; Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Jewish Gnosticism. Also see M. Smith, “Observations on Hekhaloth Rabbati;” Altmann, “Sacred Hymns in Hekhaloth Literature;” “Narboni’s ‘Epistle on Shiur Koma’” p. 195.

24. A. Segal, Two Powers; Halperin, The Merkabah in Rabbinic Literature; Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkabah Mysticism; Dan, “The Concept of Knowledge;” Ancient Jewish Mysticism; Chernus, “Individual and Community;” “Visions of God;” Mysticism in Rabbinic Judaism.

25. Quispel, Gnostic Studies; Dahl, “History and Eschatology,” in Crucified Messiah, Bowker, “‘Merkabah’ Visions;” Schaefer, “New Testament and Hekhalot Literature.” Betz, in Galatians Hermeneia, suggests several relationships between Jewish mysticism and Greco-Roman magic. Also see Rowland, The Open Heaven. See Stroumsa “Form(s) of God,” who summarizes the basic ideas of the Shiur Koma and notes their relevance to early Christianity.

26. In Schaefer, Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur.

27. M. Cohen, Shiur Komah; Elior, Hekhaloth Zutartey. For the complete bibliography, see Halperin, The Faces of the Chariot, pp. 567-69.

28. For recent study of the material, see Fossum, Image of the Invisible God; Morray-Jones, A Transparent Illusion; Janowitz, The Poetics of Ascent; Davila, Descenders of the Chariot; Arbel, “Beholders of Divine Secrets;” Elior, The Three Temples. The issues are discussed in full in Giesehen, Angelomorphic Christology.

29. See Quispel, “Hermetism and the New Testament.”

30. Strugnell, “The Angelic Liturgy at Qumran;” Newsom, 4Q Serek Shirot Olat Hassabbat; Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice.

31. See Steinberg, “Angelic Israel.” The recent book of Fletcher-Louis, All the Glory of Adam, confirms these notions. In fact, the notion that liturgy provided the way in which eschatology was realized in early Christianity was presaged by Aune, The Cultic Setting; and Gleason, “Angels and the Eschatology.”

32. Another unemphasized aspect of the journey motif is that it is a kind of travel narrative, purporting to be the actual experience of a trustworthy patriarch of the profoundly moral structure of the cosmos confirming the biblical account, which reassures the righteous of their final reward.

33. See Newman, Paul’s Glory Christology; also see Capes, Yahweh Text.

34. See Knibb, “Date of the Parables of Enoch;” also see Milik and Black, The Books of Enoch. Though Milik and Black’s dating of Hekhaloth literature has been criticized, the book does contain a good summary of the scholarship on the problem until their publication.

35. If that is so, ought we to count Wis 5:5-8 as a similar passage? In any event, Smith’s translation parallels other hints of ascension in the Qumran texts. See, for example, 4QAgesCreat, 2; 4QpIsa 11:1-4; 1QSb C; 1QH 3:3, 3:19, 6:12, 7:22, 18:16, and frag. 2. These passages are discussed in Allan J. Pan-tuck’s “Paul and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Ascent and Angelification in First Century Judaism,” (unpublished).

36. Callan in “Prophecy and Ecstasy” shows how Paul wished to limit the term ecstasy. Prophecy for Paul was not ecstatic, in that it needed not be accompanied by trance. Therefore, our use of it, though proper, also remains an etic term.

37. Neher, “Le Voyage;” Séd, “Les Traditions.” Also see Morray-Jones, A Transparent Illusion.

38. The most recent good analysis of pseudepigraphal writing is Meade, Pseudonymity and Canon. Mystical notions are not even mentioned.

39. Quispel, “Hermetism and the New Testament.”

40. The use of the mirror here is also a magico-mystical theme, which can be traced to the word ’eyyin occuring in Ezekiel 1. Although it is sometimes translated otherwise, ’eyyin probably refers to a mirror even there, and possibly refers to some unexplained technique for achieving ecstasy. The mystic bowls of the magical papyri and Talmudic times were filled with water and oil to reflect light and stimulate trance. Paul’s opponents looked into the mirror and saw only the text. But because Paul and those truly in Christ actually behold the glory of the Lord, they have clearer vision.

41. See Gaventa, Darkness to Light, pp. 45-48.

42. Dahl, The Crucified Messiah; Dunn, Baptism in the Holy Spirit.

43. Jonah Steinberg is finding evidence that the rabbis sought transformation too and thought of themselves as angels on earth.

44. See Bockmuehl, Revelation and Mystery, pp. 167-77.

45. Ibid., p. 158

46. Ibid., p. 159.

47. Wedderburn, “Problem of the Denial.”

48. Like me, Lampe suggests that Paul was arguing against Greek notions of immortality and replacing them with his own. See “Paul’s Concept of a Spiritual Body.”

49. Lorenzen, Resurrection and Discipleship, p. 158.

50. This has recently been reaffirmed by N. Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God.

51. This is, in fact, the position of B. Pearson, in The Pneumatikos-Psychikos Terminology; and Horsley in “Pneumatikos Vs. Psychikos.” They maintain that Philonic exegesis, in fact, defines the background of the opponents of Paul at Corinth. They were people who knew Philo’s exegesis of the two creation stories in Genesis as talking about two anthropoi to different “humanities,” the spiritual (the idea of man) and earthly man (the mortal, embodied human). This, Paul defeats with this own exegesis. See de Boer, The Defeat of Death, p. 101.

52. See the summary article of M. Smith, “Ascent to the Heavens;” as well as the works of Odeberg, Meeks, and Dahl.

53. See A. Segal, Two Powers, pp. 205-19; also see Hurtado, One God, One Lord.

54. This was one of the consensual statements of the NEH conference on first-century Jewish messianism. The papers and agreements of the conference have been published in Charlesworth et al., The Messiah. This was the original perception of Dahl in the title essay in The Crucified Messiah.

55. See A. Segal, Rebecca’s Children, pp. 60-67, 78-95 for a thumbnail sketch of this development.

56. The Hebrew makes clear that the two Lords refer to different personages, one God and the second the King. But the Greek uses kyrios to refer to both “Lords.” Thus, it is easy to make both “Lords” into divine designations. See Bousset, Kyrios Christos.

57. See, e.g., TDNT 9, p. 661.

58. See Wink, The Human Being, pp. 207-211.

59. Other ancient authorities add “of God.”

60. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ.

61. Ibid., p. 206

62. Dunn, Jesus and the Spirit, p. 327.

63. See Perkins, Resurrection, p. 293; W. Meeks, The First Urban Christians, p. 277.

Chapter 11. The Gospels in Contrast to Paul’s Writings

1. McKnight, Turning to Jesus. McKnight wisely adopts the model of religious conversion developed by Lou Rambo in his book Understanding Religious Conversion.

2. Like every facet of the Christian Scriptures, the resurrection traditions have received a great deal of attention in modern scholarship. See C. F. Evans, Resurrection and the New Testament; Fuller, Formation of the Resurrection Narratives; Lake, Historical Evidence for the Resurrection; Gardner-Smith, Narratives of the Resurrection; R. Brown, The Gospel According to John, pp. 966-78; The Death of the Messiah; Marxsen, The Resurrection of Jesus Christ; Schillebeeckx, Christ, pp. 30-42; O’Collins, Interpreting the Resurrection; Os-borne, The Resurrection of Jesus; Carnley, The Structure of Resurrection Belief; Perrin, The Resurrection; Benoit, The Passion and Resurrection; Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered; Davis, Risen Indeed; Davis, Kendall, and O’Collins, The Resurrection; Lüdemann, Die Auferstehung Jesu.

3. This is certainly the opinion of Lüdemann as well. See What Really Happened to Jesus, p. 18.

4. Some of the most ancient authorities bring the book to a close at the end of verse 8. One authority concludes the book with the shorter ending; others include the shorter ending and then continue with verses 9-20. In most authorities verses 9-20 follow immediately after verse 8, though in some of these authorities the passage is marked as being doubtful.

5. See Beare, The Earliest Records of Jesus.

6. Crossan, The Cross That Spoke; Who Killed Jesus?

7. See also Lüdemann, What Really Happened to Jesus, pp. 17-24.

8. This fact seems to me to pass the criterion of dissimilarity and argue strongly for the historicity of the person Jesus. No one would have made up a story of a Savior who was resurrected and then neglected to narrate it. On the other hand, it does nothing for the historicity of the resurrection itself.

9. The attempt to link this figure with the man who ran away naked at the arrest of Jesus (Mark 14:51-52) is not convincing. That young man is fleeing, not sharing the death of Jesus. See Perkins, Resurrection, pp. 118-19.

10. That changes radically with the book of Revelation.

11. “Spirit” can be more or less equated with the English word “ghost” in this context.

12. I would argue that in the modern world doubt is important to keep faith from becoming fanaticism. One must face up to and include doubt within faith. But in the ancient world it was different.

13. Dahl, The Crucified Messiah.

14. Eskola, Messiah and the Throne, p. 352.

15. Pagels, The Origin of Satan.

16. Fossum, “Ascensio, Metamorphosis.”

17. See Ulansey, “The Transfiguration;” “The Heavenly Veil Torn.”

18. S. Davies suggests something like this in his book Jesus the Healer. He suggests that the vision is actually Jesus’ shamanic trance. That seems hasty but it is not entirely different from saying that it is a model for that of the Early Church, reflecting some of the visions that were actually experienced by the early followers of Jesus.

19. See for example J. W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, pp. 127-29.

20. See Milikowsky, “Which Gehenna?” He argues that Luke has adapted immediate post-mortem punishment and immortality of the soul. For Muslim views of the afterlife, see ch. 15.

21. For a critical review of the Q-hypothesis, see Goodacre, The Case Against Q; for a positive evaluation of the hypothesis see Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q.

22. See Riley, Resurrection Reconsidered, pp. 127-75; and from another perspective DeConick, Seek to See Him. Also see Pagels, Beyond Belief.

23. DeConick, Seek to See Him; Patterson, Gospel of Thomas and Jesus; S. Davies, The Gospel of Thomas; Valantasis, The Gospel of Thomas.

24. Charlesworth, The Pseudepigrapha and Modern Research; The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, pp. 725-71.

25. Dodd, The Bible and the Greeks.

26. Of course, there need be no actual relationship between the two groups. But the ascetic tendencies, the communal life, and the quest for a vision of God suggest that there is at least phenomenological similarity between them.

27. DeConick, Seek to See Him, pp. 3-42; Voices of the Mystics.

28. Fletcher-Louis, All the Glory of Adam; Luke-Acts: Angels.

29. The study of women in Late Antiquity, a much neglected topic, has expanded exponentially in the last few years. Besides the work noted previously, for a start on the issue, as well as on the issues inherent in gender and asceticism, see Cameron and Kuhrt, Images of Women in Antiquity; Burrus, Chastity As Autonomy; Kraemer, Maenads, Martyrs, Matrons, Monastics; Elm, ‘Virgins of God’; E. Clark, Reading Renunciation; Kraemer and D’Angelo, Women and Christian Origins; Castelli and Rodman, Women, Gender, Religion.

30. See Antti, The Women Jesus Loved, p. 49.

31. Buckley, Female Fault and Fulfillment.

32. P. Brown, The Body and Society, p. 114.

33. Ibid., p. 118.

34. Ibid., p. 116.

35. See Elizabeth Castelli’s chapter in Kraemer and D’Angelo, Women and Christian Origins, p. 279.

36. Cary, Augustine’s Invention, p. 42.

37. W. Meeks, “The Image of the Androgne,” p. 166.

38. Buckley, Female Fault and Fulfillment, p. 125.

39. W. Meeks, “The Image of the Androgyne,” p. 195.

40. Buckley, Female Fault and Fulfillment, p. 126.

41. Ibid., p. 127.

42. On the role of Scripture in asceticism, see E. Clark, Reading Renunciation; K. Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride.

43. Pagels, The Gnostic Paul.

Chapter 12. The Pseudepigraphic Literature

1. See Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome, pp. 75-76.

2. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome, offers a handy place to find the classical antecedents to the martyrdom tradition, some of which have already been discussed in this work as well.

3. See A. Segal, “‘He Who Did Not Spare,’” reprinted with some minor improvements as “The Sacrifice of Isaac.” I published some further reflections on the theme in “The Akedah.”

4. See A. Collins, Cosmology and Eschatology; J. Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, pp. 210-15; “Political Perspective Revelation to John;” and more generally, Cosmology and Eschatology, pp. 198-217.

5. See A. Collins, Cosmology and Eschatology, p. 201; A. Segal, Rebecca’s Children, pp. 78-96 esp., p. 94.

6. See Wiley, Original Sin, though this conclusion is not found there.

7. Tertullian Apol. 39.2, cf. 32.1. See Gager, Kingdom and Community, pp. 44-45.

8. Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, pp. 78-80.

9. An example of this process might be sought in the continuing interest in the painful final disposition of sinners in hell in all of the world’s great religions-from Islam and Hinduism into Chinese and Tibetan Buddhisms, which favor greatly elaborated views of hell as well. On the other hand, in permissive America, both Satan and hell have nearly fallen out of religious life, except in the fundamentalistic and evangelical communities where their reality, as well as the reality of the coming millennium, is still assumed and strongly emphasized.

10. Wiley, Original Sin, pp. 46-55.

11. See ch. 13.

12. 1 En 51:1; 4 Ezra 7:32; Rev 20:13; Pseudo-Philo, L.A.B. 3:10; 33:3; 2 Bar. 21:23; Apoc. Pet. 4:3-4; 4:10-12; an apocryphal quotation in Tertullian, Res. 32.1; 2 Bar. 42:8; 50:2; 4 Ezra 4:41-43a; Pseudo-Philo, Midrash on Ps. 1:20; Midrash Rabba on Cant. 2:1:2; Pirqe de R. Eliezer 34; Pesiqta Rabbati 21:4; b. Sanh 92a; Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, p. 271-74.

13. Stone, Fourth Ezra.

14. See Cavallin, Life After Death, pp. 80ff.

15. See Bergren, Fifth Ezra; “People Coming from the East;” “List of Leaders in 5 Ezra.”

16. For more issues inherent in this passage, including the perplexing behavior of the Messiah, see Cavallin, Life After Death, p. 86 and literature mentioned there.

17. Translation by Klijn, in Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1, p. 638.

18. See Cavallin, Life After Death, p. 89.

19. See also 2 En 18; 31; Gos. Bart.; and Budge, Book of the Cave of Treasures, pp. 56ff. In any case, these stories are probably to be understood as originating in the story of the Fall of Ḥellal ben Shaḥar (Vg. Lucifer) in Isa 14, perhaps combined with Ezek 28.

20. Bauckham, The Fate of the Dead, p. 66; Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell; Ascent to Heaven.

21. See Klijn, p. 619, and Gaylord, p. 659, in Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1.

22. See Tabor, Things Unutterable, pp. 84-85.

23. See de Boer, Defeat of Death, p. 67.

24. See Dean-Otting, Heavenly Journeys, p. 79.

25. See J. Becker, Untersuchungen zur Enstehungsgeschichte, pp. 353ff. and Cavallin, Life After Death, p. 54.

26. Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality and Eternal Life, pp. 161, 165, 179; also see “Future Life in Intertestamental Literature.”

27. Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality and Eternal Life; “Future Life in Intertestamental Literature.”

28. Tabor, Things Unutterable, pp. 85-86.

29. See E. Sanders, The Testament of Abraham.

30. Kraemer, When Aseneth Met Joseph. Kraemer opines that the book is most likely Christian and third century, at least in its current form.

31. It looks suspiciously like a sign of the cross is made over the bread.

32. Valantasis, Spiritual Guides of the Third Century.

33. Hick, Arguments for the Existence of God.

34. See on a related theme, Charlesworth, “The Jewish Roots of Christology.”

35. Black, “The Throne-Theophany Prophetic Commission;” Rowland, “Vision of the Risen Christ;” Fossum, “Jewish Christian Christology and Jewish Mysticism.”

36. Of course, 3 En must be seen as a late document. See Hurtado, “Binitarian Shape of Christian Devotion,” pp. 384-85; Horton, The Melchizedek Tradition; Kobelski, Melchizedek and Melchiresa; Noll, “Angelology in the Qumran Texts;” Quispel, “Gnosticism and the New Testament;” “Origins of the Gnostic Demiurge.”

37. See A. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven, pp. 182-219; Schaefer, Rivalitaet zwischen Engeln und Menschen, pp. 9-74; Kuhn, “Angelology of the Non-Canonical Apocalypses;” Stier, Gott und sein Engel.

38. For the growing consensus that apocalypticism implies visionary or “mystical” experience as well as secret knowledge of the end of time, see Rowland, The Open Heaven. See Charlesworth, “Portrayal of the Righteous.” See Idel, Kabbalah, who stresses the theme of transformation, but does not consider the Pauline corpus. This is a confirmation of the transformation vocabulary which we noted as important in the previous chapter.

39. Translated by M. Pravednoe in Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1, p. 152.

40. J. Z. Smith, “The Prayer of Joseph.” See Denis, Fragmenta Pseudepigraphorum, pp. 61-62.

41. Goodenough, By Light, Light, pp. 199-234; W. Meeks, The ProphetKing; “Divine Agent and His Counterfeit;” Holladay, Theios Aner in Hellenistic Judaism, pp. 103-69.

42. W. Meeks, “Divine Agent and His Counterfeit,” p. 45; also see Hurtado, “Exalted Patriarchs,” in One God, One Lord.

43. See Quispel, “Ezekiel 1:26 in Jewish Mysticism;” “gnōsis;” Quispel’s review of Hellenistische Erloesung in christlicher Deutung by J. Frickel, in VC 39 (1985). Also see Holladay, “Portrait of Moses in Ezekiel;” Jacobson, “Mysticism and Apocalyptic;” van der Horst, “Moses’ Throne Vision in Ezekiel;” and “Exagoge of Ezekiel.”

44. See Jacobson, The Exagoge of Ezekiel, lines 68-89, pp. 54-55.

45. See A. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven; also see Dahl, “History and Eschatology,” in Crucified Messiah; Quispel, “Origins of the Gnostic Demiurge.” See esp. Fossum, Image of the Invisible God, p. 24 n. 30; and Hurtado, One God, One Lord.

46. See for example, T. Sim 5:4; T. Levi 10:5; 14:1; T. Jud 18:1; T. Zeb 3:4; T. Dan 5:6; T. Naph 4:1; T. Ben 9:1. See Hurtado, “Exalted Patriarchs,” in One God, One Lord.

47. The term often used to describe Merkabah mystics, “the descenders into the chariot” yordei merkabah, seems to me best understood as referring to this position, (Pace Gruenwald, Apocalyptic).

48. See Lewin, Otsar Ha-Geonim, Hagigah, Teshuvoth, pp. 14-15.

49. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; and M. Smith, “Observations on Hekhaloth Rabbati.” Also see the Jewish-Christian evidence, for instance, Ps.-Clem. Hom. 17.16. See Fossum, Image of the Invisible God, pp. 13-39.

50. See the interesting theory of Mettinger, The Dethronement of Sabaoth, for the origin of the Kabod idea and its original function in biblical literature.

51. See Halperin, The Faces of the Chariot.

52. Odeberg, The Hebrew Book of Enoch; Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism. Also see M. Smith, “Observations on Hekhaloth Rabbati;” Altmann, “Sacred Hymns in Hekhaloth Literature;” “Moses Narboni’s ‘Epistle on Shiur Koma’” p. 195.

53. A. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven; Halperin, The Merkabah in Rabbinic Literature; Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkabah Mysticism; Dan, “The Concept of Knowledge;” “Ancient Jewish Mysticism;” Chernus, “Individual and Community in Hekhaloth Literature;” “Visions of God in Merkabah Mysticism;” Mysticism in Rabbinic Judaism.

54. Quispel, Gnostic Studies; Dahl, “History and Eschatology,” in Crucified Messiah; “Cosmic Dimensions and Religious Knowledge;” W. Meeks, The Prophet King Fossum, Image of the Invisible God; Rudolph, “Ein Grundtyp gnostischer Urmensch-Adam-Spekulation;” Tardieu, Trois mythes gnostiques, pp. 85-139; Bowker, “‘Merkabah’ Visions;” Kee, “The Transfiguration in Mark;” Neher, “Le voyage mystique des quatre;” Sed, “Les traditions secretes;” Schaefer, “New Testament and Hekhalot Literature;” “Engel und Menschen in der Hekhalot-Literatur;” Charlesworth, “Portrayal of the Righteous;” Hurtado, One Lord, One God. Betz, Galatians Hermeneia, suggests several relationships between Jewish mysticism and Greco-Roman magic. Also see Rowland, The Open Heaven; Stroumsa “Form(s) of God;” who summarizes the basic ideas of the Shiur Koma and notes their relevance to early Christianity.

55. In Schaefer, Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literature.

56. M. Cohen, Shiur Komah; Elior, Hekhaloth Zutartey. For the complete bibliography, see Halperin, The Faces of the Chariot, pp. 567-69.

57. The ten volume compendium known in English as The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. by Kittel, has scarcely a dozen references to Ezekiel 1, although it is a crucial passage informing the christology of the New Testament, as Gilles Quispel has so cogently pointed out. See Quispel, “Hermetism and the New Testament.”

58. See Saul Lieberman, “Metatron, the Meaning of His Name and His Functions,” Appendix in Gruenwald’s Apocalyptic and Merkabah Mysticism, pp. 235-41, esp. 237-39. Pace Stroumsa, “Form(s) of God.”

59. See Morray-Jones, A Transparent Illusion; and Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism.

60. L’Orange, Apotheosis in Ancient Portraiture.

61. Morray-Jones, A Transparent Illusion.

62. Virtually every scholar of these documents has offered a different entiology for “descenders” into the chariot. No crucial text has suggested itself to settle the issue. See Morray-Jones, A Transparent Illusion; and Davila, Descenders in the Chariot.

63. See A. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven.

64. Michael Swartz suggests that they are students who need divine help memorizing Torah from evidence in the Sar Torah sections of the documents. This is as good a guess as anyone has been able to make. It is also true that the texts become very popular in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance with a group of Jewish mystics in Southern France known as the Hasidei Ashkenaz.

65. Lesses, Ritual Practices to Gain Power, pp. 279-367.

66. See ch. 5.

67. Griffiths, Apuleius of Madauros, p. 89.

68. See A. Segal, “Hellenistic Magic.”

69. See Burkert, Law and Science, pp. 366ff.; Gottschalk, Heraclides of Pontus, 98ff; Ulansey, Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries, p. 86.

70. Love was a mysterious and magical power and hence even the implication of sexual congress might have been helpful in understanding the power which magicians had over their angelic helpers.

71. See the fine article by Ciraolo, “Supernatural Assistants.”

72. The so-called Mithras Liturgy is one of the most controversial texts coming to us from antiquity. It can be isolated from lines 475-834 of the Paris Magical Papyrus, probably a third century Egyptian magician’s grimoire, which was discovered early enough in this century to have impressed Karl Jung to the extent that it stimulated him to formulate the doctrine of the collective unconscious. Albrecht Dieterich suggested that it was a liturgy from the Mysteries of Mithras, a religion that was extremely popular in the Roman legions but has left us scarcely any literary remains. Others have felt that this is just a magical procedure. To me the value of this discussion rests with the scholarly uncertainty about just what magic is. In fact, magic itself becomes a kind of religion in late Antiquity. See A. Segal, “Hellenistic Magic.”

73. This text is the very able translation of M. Meyer, quoted from his work, The Ancient Mysteries, pp. 213-21.

74. Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes.

75. Copenhaver, Hermetica, p. 6.

76. S. Johnston, Hekate Soteira, p. 88; Restless Dead.

77. For Porphyry and Julian’s attitudes towards Christians, see Meredith, “Porphyry and Julian Against the Christians.”

78. Searle, The Mystery of Consciousness.

79. Rappe, Reading Neoplatonism, pp. 88-89.

80. Ibid.; and “Self-Knowledge and Subjectivity;” also see O’Meara, Plotinus: Introduction to the Enneads; Miles, Plotinus on Body and Beauty.

81. My thanks to two of my students, Lock Reynolds of Williams College and Avigail Ziv of Barnard College who, in researching these topics for their own papers, helped me explore this fascinating and complicated subject.

82. Finamore, lamblichus, p. 3.

83. See Ibid., pp. 33, 54 n.; Dodds, Proclus, p. 320; G. Shaw,Theurgy and the Soul.

84. See Finamore, lamblichus, p. 51.

85. Ibid., p. 101.

86. MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism, p. 110; and Christianizing the Roman Empire.

Chapter 13. The Church Fathers and Their Opponents

1. There are many studies already available on individual fathers and many book length surveys as well. Dewart, Death and Resurrection; Perkins, Resurrection; Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body; Gatch, Death, Meaning, and Mortality; R. Brown, Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus; Carnley, The Structure of Resurrection Belief; N. Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God.

2. See Gos. of Pet. 9-10, Hennecke-Schneemelcher, vol. 1, pp. 185ff.

3. Dewart, Death and Resurrection.

4. See Pagels, The Gnostic Paul.

5. Bianchi, Le Origini dello Gnosticismo; King, What Is Gnosticism?

6. See Dewart, Death and Resurrection, p. 36. Also see Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. Nevertheless, Gos. Barn. 6 calls infants guiltless, which limits any notion of inherited sinfulness.

7. See Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, throughout. Also see P. Brown, The Body and Society, throughout.

8. For more detail and a slightly different perspective on the growing difficulties between Judaism and Christianity, see Pagels, The Origin of Satan.

9. von Campenhausen, Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power, p. 17.

10. Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels.

11. See R. Fox, “Living like Angels.” Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent.

12. See Vaage and Wimbush, Asceticism and the New Testament; T. Shaw, The Burden of the Flesh; Burrus, Chastity As Autonomy; Elm, ‘Virgins of God’; P. Brown, The Body and Society; E. Clark, “Ascetic Renunciation and Feminine Advancement;” Jerome, Chrysostom and Friends; “Theory and Practice in Late Ancient Asceticism;” Reading Renunciation; K. Cooper, The Virgin and the Bride; Kraemer, “The Conversion of Women;” Ruether, “Misogynism and Virginal Feminism;” Kraemer and D’Angelo, Women and Christian Origins.

13. For the later tradtion, see Stroumsa, “Madness and Divinization.”

14. See Frank, Angelikos Bios, esp. 108-99.

15. Pseudo-Athanasius, The Burden of the Flesh, p. 1.

16. The quotation is from Grant and Graham, “1 Clement.”

17. 1 Clem. 42, Roberts, Donaldson and Crombie, p. 37. Also see Dewart, Death and Resurrection, here and throughout.

18. 2 Clem. 9, Roberts, Donaldson, and Crombie, p. 61. See Perkins, Resurrection; and Dewart, Death and Resurrection, for more commentary on this interesting passage.

19. For a summary of the research done on angelomorphism, see Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology. For martyrdom, see Straw, “‘A Very Special Death.’”

20. See van Hooff, From Autothanasia to Suicide; Droge and Tabor, A Noble Death; Seeley, The Noble Death; L. Smith, Fools, Martyrs, and Traitors; the classic: Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution. For a recent re-evaluation, see Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome.

21. Ign. Rom 4, Roberts, Donaldson, and Crombie, p. 212.

22. Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome, pp. 16-20.

23. Ign. Symr. 2 and 3, Roberts, Donaldson, and Crombie, pp. 241-42.

24. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution.

25. Layton, The Gnostic Gospels.

26. See Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures, pp. 217-22.

27. See Ibid., p. 241.

28. See Pagels, The Gnostic Paul.

29. The earlier classic, Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution, has been supplemented by Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, observation of the structural connection between resurrection notions and interest in marytrdom.

30. Origen, “Commentarium in 1 Corinthians,” pp. 466-47). See Pagels, Gnostic Gospels, pp. 11 and n. 366, p. 158.

31. See, for example, Fredriksen, “Vile Bodies,” pp. 73-85; “Beyond the Body/Soul Dichtonomy,” pp. 87-114.

32. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution, p. 245.

33. Ibid., p. 246.

34. See Droge and Tabor, A Noble Death; Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body.

35. Irenaeus, Haer. 1.30.13. See Pagels, Gnostic Gospels, p. 11 and n. 38, p. 158. I call this a modern perspective because this is the most often invoked explanation of the events in the modern period and it seems to me to be the most satisfactory explanation of the events.

36. NHL, p. 395.

37. Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures, p. 333.

38. See Pagels, Gnostic Gospels, p. 16.

39. Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures, p. 334.

40. Douglas, Natural Symbols.

41. NHL, p. 407.

42. NHL p. 408. This and the previous quotation are taken from Pagels, Gnostic Gospels, p. 92.

43. NHL, p. 342, from Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, p. 93.

44. I will discontinue putting gnostic in quotation marks to indicate that they are “so-called” gnostics but I would still maintain the arbitrary nature of the term.

45. Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures, p. 321.

46. Pagels, “The Mystery of the Resurrection.”

47. Pol. Phil. 7.1, Roberts, Donaldson, and Crombie, p. 73.

48. van Unnik, “The Newly Discovered Gnostic.”

49. For more detail, see Dewart, Death and Resurrection, pp. 36-114.

50. For a recent feminist meditation on this fact, see Schaberg, The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene.

51. R. Miller, The Complete Gospels.

52. Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures.

53. Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels.

52. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution.

54. Oden, In Her Words, p. 31; also see Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory.

55. It is what we expect at the end of life because of the heavenly journeyers-a long list of people that begins with Etana and Adapa and ends with some of those who claim to have been abducted by aliens.

56. See the very interesting treatment of this martyrology in Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory.

57. See A. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven.

58. “Samael” is Aramaic for the poison of ’El and is also a fairly common reference to Satan in rabbinic literature.

59. B. Pearson, “Revisiting Norea,” p. 275.

60. Schüssler-Fiorenza, Searching the Scriptures, p. 71.

61. Shalev, “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.” My thanks to Darcy Hirsh, a senior major in Religion at Barnard, with whom these interpretations were developed.

62. Jones, “A Case Study in ‘Gnosticism,’” p. 206.

63. P. Brown, The Body and Society, p. 23.

64. Jones, “A Case Study in ‘Gnosticism,’” p. 208.

65. Ibid., p. 216.

66. See Perkins, Resurrection, p. 363.

67. See Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, pp. 30-32.

68. See Dewart, Death and Resurrection, p. 73.

69. As quoted in ibid., p. 77.

70. Ibid., p. 84.

71. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, p. 21.

72. See ibid., p. 37; E. Evans, Tertullians Treatise on the Resurrection, pp. ix-xxxv; Cardman “Tertullian on the Resurrection.”

73. Satran, “Fingernails and Hair.”

74. Here Tertullian ignores a missionary advantage for resurrection that contemporary televangelists sometimes stress: resurrected flesh has more fun than resurrected souls.

75. Roberts, Donaldson, and Crombie, Writings of the Apostolic Fathers, vol. 15, p. 331.

76. See Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, p. 37.

77. See Dewart, Death and Resurrection, p. 120.

78. See ibid., p. 122.

79. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, pp. 64-66.

80. Perkins, Resurrection, p. 375.

81. Roberts, Donaldson and Crombie, Writings of the Apostolic Fathers, vol. 10, p. 139.

82. A. Scott, Origen and Life of Stars.

83. See Dewart, Death and Resurrection, p. 135.

84. It was Methodius who most significantly captained the opposition to Origen’s synthesis.

85. Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture.

86. Dennis, “Gregory on Resurrection of Body.”

87. Quoted from Dewart, Death and Resurrection, p. 148.

88. From A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nice Fathers, vol. 5, p. 416.

89. Ibid., p. 417.

90. See On the Soul and the Resurrection; Callahan, Saint Gregory of Nyssa, pp. 198-272.

91. Cf. Dennis, “Gregory on Resurrection of Body,” p. 56.

92. See Dewart, Death and Resurrection, p. 164.

93. See Ibid., p. 174.

94. Quotations from this sermon are taken from Mourant, Augustine on Immortality and quoted from Dewart, Death and Resurrection, p. 175.

95. See Dewart, Death and Resurrection, p. 176.

96. Fredriksen, “Vile Bodies,” pp. 84-85.

97. Fredriksen, “Beyond the Body/Soul Dichotomy,” p. 250.

98. Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, p. 99.

99. See, e.g., Burrus, Chastity As Autonomy.

100. See Cary, Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self.

101. See Ibid., pp. 112-13 and n. 48. According to Cary (p. 183), the first clear repudiation of the divinity of the soul in On the Quantity of the Soul, §§3 and 77, though this is tacked on to the beginning and the end of the treatise. In On The Morals of the Catholic Church, the fact that Christ is distinct from the soul is integral to the argument.

102. “Quantum sum” is one of the many verbal echoes of Augustine’s On the Quantity of the Soul. See Cary, Augustine’s Invention, p. 186. Passage is quoted, ibid., p. 126.

103. Pagels, The Gnostics Gospels; Adam, Eve, and the Serpent; Gager, “Body Symbols and Social Reality;” E. Clark, “New Perspectives on the Origenist Controversy,” in The Originist Controversey.

104. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, p. 109.

105. Ibid., pp. 106-7.

106. Foschini amassed a collection of more than forty interpretations of this verse, which followed scholarship up until 1951 in a series of two review articles for the CBQ. By now there are evidently many more. My thanks to Yorgason for surveying these positions in his term paper “Paul, The Corinthians, and the Rite of Baptism for the Dead.”

107. Perhaps it is as innocent as some of the Corinthian Christians waiting to be baptized until someone knowledgeable enough to perform it arrived. But before that could happen, some of the catechumens had died. This would certainly have occasioned the inquiries which Paul’s letter answers. But it might be something far more interesting, a widespread early practice of baptizing the dead relatives of the new Corinthian Christians.

108. Trumbower, Rescue for the Dead.

109. See also Matt 12:40; Rom 10:7; Acts 2:24-31; Eph 4:8-10; see W. Harris, The Descent of Christ.

110. Trumbower, Rescue for the Dead, p. 165.

111. Ambrose, On Valentinian, 51; Trumbower, Rescue for the Dead, p. 179.

112. Ibid., p. 228.

113. Ibid., p. 229.

114. Ibid., p. 241.

115. Ibid., p. 260.

Chapter 14. The Early Rabbis

1. L. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue.

2. L. Levine, Ancient Synagogues Revealed; The Ancient Synagogue.

3. Montefiore and Loewe, A Rabbinic Anthology, p. 580.

4. See A. Cohen, Everyman’s Talmud; Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts.

5. See A. Segal, The Other Judaisms, esp. pp. 109-30.

6. See, for example, S. Cohen, Maccabees to the Mishnah; also A. Segal, Rebecca’s Children.

7. Raphael, Jewish Views of the Afterlife; Elbogen, Jewish Liturgy.

8. Halivni, Peshat and Derash.

9. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts.

10. Neusner, Judaism: Evidence of the Mishnah; Formative Judaism.

11. Neusner, First-Century Judaism in Crisis; The Rabbinic Traditions; Ancient Israel after Catastrophe; Judaism in the Beginning of Christianity.

12. See Boyarin’s provocative book, Dying for God, that should be read as a speculative theory; also see Stern and Mirsky, Rabbinic Fantasies, esp. “Midrash Elah Ezkerah,” pp. 143-67, “Love in the Afterlife,” pp. 249-63; Steinberg, “Angelic Israel.”

13. This is a major theme of A. Segal, Paul the Convert.

14. The Talmud is comprised of the Mishnah plus a commentary, called the Gemara, from either Babylonia or Palestine. The Palestinian Gemara and the Mishnah forms the Palestinian Talmud, which is shorter and less authoritative than the Babylonian Talmud, the standard compendium on law for classical Rabbinic Judaism. It is a composite document that stretches from the third to the seventh century. Both the Mishnah and the Gemarahs are divided into six orders and, in turn, into sixty-three tractates. The Mishnah is the size of a large desk dictionary. Each of the Talmuds, with its various commentaries as it is printed today, is the size of an ample, multivolume encyclopedia. Today’s Talmud puts the Talmud text in the center, surrounded by even more commentaries endeavoring to reconcile even more contradictions.

15. The asterisk signifies that the passage is accepted as a proof.

16. It is even present in contemporary Reform Jewish liturgies. In the last century, the reference to resurrection was removed in many Reform prayer books. It is now sometimes being reinstated in Hebrew, although it is still often left out in English. Thus, the traditional form of the prayer remains intact but the congregation assents with its mind only to the censored form.

17. See, for example, Raphael, Jewish Views of the Afterlife, pp. 117-62; Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries; Urbach, “The Sages;” Bialik and Ravnitzky, “Sefer Ha-Aggadah;” Gillman, The Death of Death; Neusner, “Judaism;” Goldenberg, “Bound Up in the Bond of Life.”

18. Stern, “Jewish Concepts.”

19. See Urbach, The Sages, pp. 167, 308.

20. See H. Freedman, “Academy on High.”

21. Steinberg, “Angelic Israel.”

22. Shemot Rabba 443-49; Midrash Shir. 13b; Debarim Rabba 77.

23. See for example Bereishit Rabba 99.2 and Shemoth Rabba 263; also see Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews.

24. See Sysling, Teḥiyqat Ha-Metim.

25. Smelik, “On the Mystical Transformation.” He suggests that the Rabbis were reluctant to articulate these ancient Jewish traditions fully because they suggested that the righteous were gods. But they did not totally suppress the traditions either. See Steinberg, “Angelic Israel.”

26. For more detail, see E. Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines.

27. Raphael, Jewish Views of the Afterlife.

28. See Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories.

29. For more information on these interesting legends, see Lindbeck, Story and Theology; older studies include Yassif, The Sacrifice of Isaac; Margaliot, Elijah the Prophet.

30. Here Novack, The Image of the Non-Jew, is right on the mark. But Christian scholarship has preceded him. For the history of scholarship on this point, see Dunn, Jesus and the Spirit; S. Wilson, Gentiles and the Gentile Mission; Richardson and Hurd, From Jesus to Paul.

31. See S. Wilson, Gentiles and the Gentile Mission. My interpretation depends heavily on Wilson’s observations about the textual traditions though softens Wilson’s arguments a bit.

32. See, for example, Waitz, “Das Problem des sog. Aposteldecrets.”

33. Spiegel, The Last Trial; A. Segal, “‘He Who Did Not Spare His only Son,’” pp. 157–78 and reprinted as “The Sacrifice of Isaac;” “The Akedah;” Hengel, The Atonement; Levenson, The Death and Resurrection.

34. See “Hekhalot Rabbati” 113ff. and “Midrash Ezkerah” 3.40.38-42 in Schaefer, Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur. See particularly, R. Abusch, “The Marytrdom of Emperor Lupinus.”

35. Fine, “Contemplative Death.”

Chapter 15. Islam and the Afterlife

1. J. Smith and Haddad, Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection; also see Ayyub, “Islam;” Brockopp, “Islam,” pp. 60-78; Chittick, “Your Sight Today Is Piercing.”

2. Very helpful in this regard is the Encyclopedia of Religion; Martin, Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies; Oxtaby, World Religions; as well as the introductions to Islam of Esposito (Islam) and K. Armstrong (Biography of the Prophet), for example.

3. During Muḥammad’s own day, his rival Musailimah (Thumamah ibn Kabir ibn Ḥabib) claimed the title. See the classic work of Widengren, Muḥammad, the Apostle of God, pp. 15ff. It is the second part of his monograph, The Ascension of the Apostle. This work is important even today, for its erudition and breadth of interest.

4. Peterson, “Muḥammad,” p. 502 n. 104.

5. Rodinson, Muhammed, p. 34.

6. See, for example the dissertation of F. Denny, which observed as early as 1974 that there was inadequate study of the apocalyptic nature of early Islam. More recently, M. Cook has given the phenomenon of Islamic apocalyptic further study in his Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic.

7. W. Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion.

8. Quoted from Idleman and Smith, The Islamic Understanding of Death, p. 1.

9. See Sachedina, Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism, p. 39.

10. See Ishaq, Life of Muḥammad, p. 232.

11. See, for example, M. R. Cohen, “The Legal Position of Jews.”

12. See M. Cook, Muḥammad; Crone and Cook, Hagarism.

13. Humphreys, Islamic History-A Framework, p. 69; Rippin, Muslims, p. ix, as cited in Warraq, below.

14. See Warraq, “Studies on Muḥammad,” esp. pp. 20-22.

15. Crone and Cook, Hagarism; Hawting, The First Dynasty of Islam.

16. Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins, pp. 1-54; also Crone and Cook, Hagarism.

17. Bulliet, Islam, pp. 38-39.

18. DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion.

19. B. Lewis, What Went Wrong? p. 120.

20. For this and further discussions on the relationship between the terms, see J. Smith and Haddad, Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection, pp. 18-21.

21. Ibid., pp. 54-55.

22. See B. Lewis, The Crisis of Islam, p. 44.

23. One exception to this reverence for Jerusalem are the followers of Ibn Wahhab (see below), who restrict their reverence to the sacred spaces in Saudi Arabia. This partly explains why Osama bin Laden is not as exercised by Israeli domination of Jerusalem as he is of the American presence in Saudi Arabia.

24. See Peterson, “Muḥammad,” p. 529, relying on Peters, Muḥammad and the Origins of Islam, pp. 144-47 and Widengren, Muḥammad, pp. 96-114.

25. See Peterson, “Muḥammad,” p. 526.

26. See Al-Ghazzali, The Precious Pearl.

27. Sells, Early Islamic Mysticism, pp. 248-49.

28. Muslims on the whole do not today identify the righteous dead with angels. Angels exist, of course. But they are the angels of Allah. (See for example, Cornell, “Fruit of Tree of Knowledge,” p. 88). There is a lively Muslim tradition of the superiority of humanity over the angels, as there is in Rabbinic Judaism. Indeed, in private conversations with me, most young American Muslims note that Christians believe that the dead become angels but that Muslims feel this impinges on the unity of God. This is confirmed in the study of the effects on teens of religion in the media by L. Clark, From Angels to Aliens, pp. 152-54.

29. See Lewinstein, “Revaluation of Martyrdom in Early Islam;” also see Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome, p. 19.

30. See Lewinstein, “Revaluation of Martyrdom,” p. 86.

31. See Firestone, Jihad.

32. Malik Muwaa’, 236 (no. 997) as quoted twice by Lewinstein, “Revaluation of Martyrdom in Early Islam,” pp. 86, 90-91.

33. D. Brown, “Martyrdom in Sunni Revivalist Thought,” p. 113.

34. Peterson, “Muḥammad,” pp. 547, 549.

35. There are certainly no equivalent rewards for women martyrs. Occasionally one even sees the notion that women are only accorded a place in heaven equal to the attainments of their husbands. But this is a minority opinion; see J. Smith and Haddad, Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection, pp. 157-82.

36. See Rustomji, “The Garden and the Fire.”

37. Wasserstrom, Between Muslim and Jew. See especially “Origins and Angels: Popular and Esoteric Literature in Jewish-Muslim Symbiosis,” pp. 167-205.

38. J. Smith and Haddad, Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection, pp. 183-92.

39. Newby, History of the Jews of Arabia, pp. 60-61

40. Wasserstrom cites Casanova, “Idris et ‘Ouzair,’” and B. Lewis, The Origins of Ismailism.

41. See Halm, Die islamische gnōsis; Momen, An Introductin to Shi’i Islam.

42. Halm, Die islamische gnōsis.

43. This is like the polemical attacks on Jewish mujassima (anthropomorphizers) whom they accuse of worshiping a divine “chief agent.”

44. The name “Ashma’ath” is possibly related to the Samaritan Ashima; see Fossum, The Name of God.

45. On all this, see Wasserstrom, Between Muslim and Jew, p. 185; also see A. Segal, “Ruler of the World,” in The Other Judaisms of Late Antiquity.

46. See Halperin, “Hekhalot and Mir’aj.”

47. See Waldman, “Eschatology in Islam,” pp. 131ff.

48. See J. Smith and Haddad, Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection, pp. 104ff.; Waldman, “Eschatology in Islam,” p. 132.

49. Maimonides, however, was forced to clarify his position and, especially in his Treatise on the Resurrection, he denied that Judaism preaches the extinction of the personal soul. It is hard to know how to put this together with the clear implications of the Guide for the Perplexed. The simplest synthesis is to assume that what Maimonides wrote in his Guide was only what could be proven by scientific and philosophical inquiry, but as a Jew he believed that a great deal more was revealed in Scripture. There are some who believe that Maimonides actually had an exoteric doctrine that approximated orthodox Jewish thinking and a more esoteric doctrine that correspondend to the beliefs of the philosophers. Some of the same kinds of ambiguity can be seen in Aquinas, who writes in full knowledge of Averroes and Maimonides. Aquinas’s concept of the soul is the “form of the body,” but his description of it owes as much to Aristotle as Plato. In contradistinction to the Sufis, Aquinas argues forthrightly for the soul’s indestructibility (Summa Theologica 1 q 76, art. 6).

50. B. Lewis, What Went Wrong? p. 142, however, attributes the origins of this dramatic form to a Turkish adoptation of Italian Commedia dell’arte performances, which became very popular all over Turkey and was renamed Orta Oyunu. One hears about the form starting at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

51. See B. Lewis, The Crisis in Islam, p. 36.

52. See Runciman, A History of the Crusades; Schimmelpfening, The Papacy; and my thanks to Yehuda Kurtzer for his term paper on the subject.

53. See Einbinder, Beautiful Death.

54. See Quasem, Salvation of the Soul.

55. See Ramadan, To Be a European Muslim; Islam, the West; Mernissi, Islam and Democracy; Fadl, The Place of Tolerance in Islam; Kurzman, Liberal Islam.

56. See Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God.

57. ḥamas means literally “fervor” in Arabic but it is, additionally, an acronym for “the Movement for Muslim Resistance, a religiously-based “liberation” movement. Ironically, ḥamas (with a samekh) means “violence” in Hebrew and is famously cited in Gen 6:11 and 13 as the condition which brought about the flood: “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and the earth was full of violence (ḥamas).” And, in verse 13, “God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh for the earth is filled with violence (ḥamas) through them; behold, I will destroy them with the earth.’”

58. Literally, “the Party of God,” the group is named after the founding events of Shi’ite Islam, which led inexorably to the martyrdom of Hussein. As a result, the very title of the group brings with it a rich tradition of martyrdom.

59. “The Base,” but, in this case, probably more correctly translated as “The Database Network.”

60. See Kepel, The Revenge of God.

61. Mylroie, A Study of Revenge; Emerson, American Jihad.

62. See D. Brown, “Martyrdom in Sunni Revivalist Thought,” p. 113; also see Kepel, Jihad, pp. 23-42.

63. Paul Berman has written a feature article on Sayyid Qutb for the New York Times Sunday Magazine: “The Philosopher of Islamic Terror,” March 23, 2003.

64. This is exactly Paul Berman’s description of the contribution of Sayyid Qutb in his article.

65. Droge and Taylor, A Noble Death; Boyarin, Dying for God.

66. See, for example, Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors.

67. No proof is needed to counter this absurd allegation that Israel took down the World Trade Center, though the evidence is that approximately the same number of Jews died in the attack as there are in the general population of New York and New Jersey-roughly 15 percent. Besides, Friedman, Longitudes and Attitudes; also see Barbara Walters’ 20/20 report of March 29, summarized as “Mosques and Malls: A Rare Look at Saudi Arabia,” at http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/2020/dailynews/2020_saudi_walters_020329.html for a summary of the program.

68. See Atran, In Gods We Trust; “Genesis of Suicide Terrorism.”

69. See “MSNBC Investigates” episode called “Shahid: The Mind of a Suicide Bomber,” broadcast in Winter 2002, which contains interviews with failed suicide bombers in Israeli jails.

70. Anyone who has watched Al-Jazeera can verify this information. Even the so-called independent Arab voice goes way beyond what could be called political support. See the new afterword in B. Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites, written well before the recent post-9/11 spate of suicide bombers in Israel.

71. Goldberg, “In the Party of God.” Nor are the activities of these extremist groups confined to the Middle East. The Islamists have formed international networks of economic support. They raise money by drug smuggling in Southeast Asia and cigarette smuggling in the United States, two skills which the usually unaffluent adherents may have perfected before their conversion to radical Islam. They also use criminal shakedowns to raise money from Arab shopkeepers throughout the world. The justification is that the money supports the widows and orphans of the suicide bombers. And some of it does, through payments to the families of the suicide bombers, though this is not continuing support and the families are not otherwise specially qualified for public assistance. But a great deal just goes into general funds or supports the ordinary nonsuicide soldiers. Another part of the money raised in these activities is then siphoned off into terrorist operations in non-Palestinian causes, like blowing up synagogues and Jewish civic institutions throughout the world, with prominent success in Argentina and Djerba.

72. ’ali, The Clash of Fundamentalisms, pp. 196-197. ’Ali makes the important point that the US is also a bastion of fundamentalist education.

73. Ajami, The Dream Falace of the Arabs, p. 312.

74. Kepel, The Revenge of God.

75. A reissue of the text was edited with an introduction by Marsden, The Fundamental. See Barr, Fundamentalism.

76. See Ammerman, “North American Protestant Fundamentalism.”

77. See Kepel, The Revenge of God, pp. 100-39.

78. Literally “tremblers,” the Ḥaredim are the self-styled, only true fearers of God. They take their self-description from Isa 66:2b: “But this is the man to whom I will look, he that is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.

79. See, for example, Lustick, For the Land the Lord; a similar tack is taken by J. Harris in “Fundamentalism.”

80. Lawrence, Defenders of God. Lawrence certainly deserves our thanks for early having pointed out the relationship between fundamentalism and the problematization of modern thought.

81. One thinks, for instance, of the Kiryas Yoel school district in Monsey and the deference shown to the Hasidic community in New York City. New York politics are, in general, more keyed to ethnicity than to political machines, at least in comparison with Chicago. See Fuchs, Mayors and Money.

82. Kepel, The Revenge of God, pp. 140-90.

83. See Shahak and Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel.

84. Careful thought would reveal that Messianism is not so much a Jewish Biblical belief as a postbiblical Jewish phenomenon, because the term “Messiah” always refers to the ruling king in the Bible and never to a future one. It is postbiblical thought and quintessentially Christianity that finds messianism to be fundamental to Biblical thought.

85. See K. Brown, “Fundamentalism and the Control of Women,” in Hawley, Fundamentalism and Gender.

86. The greatest danger is not just from him but from the fact that his group is but one among many terrorist movements growing out of Islamic fundamentalism. The subsequent defeat of the Taliban, which deprived Osama bin Laden of his sanctuary in Afghanistan, is perhaps one sign that the tide may be turning in the fight against Islamist extremism. Obviously, there have been many terrorist acts on a smaller scale all over the world, both before and after the World Trade Center disaster. The terrible scourge of suicide bombing in Israel is obviously a result of the perceived success of bin Laden’s operation. Under such circumstances, it will take years to root out the feeling that suicide bombing is an efficacious religious action, just as hard as rooting out the many different cells of terrorists around the world.

87. Atran, “Genesis of Suicide Terrorism.”

88. Kepel, Jihad.

89. See the complete analysis of the events in ch. 6 of Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory.

90. Bernall, She Said Yes.

91. See, for example, Lawrence, New Faiths, Old Fears.

92. See Ramadan, To Be a European Muslim; Muslims in France; Islam, the West.

93. Wolfe, Taking Back Islam; Sachedina, Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism; Abou El Fadl, The Place of Tolerance in Islam.

Afterword: Immortal Longing

1. See, for example, McDannell and Lang, Heaven; Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys; Near-Death Experience and Christian Hope; Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body; Aries, The Hour of Our Death; Zaleski and Zaleski, The Book of Heaven.

2. See for example the very full studies of Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body; and Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys.

3. See Gillman, The Death of Death.

4. L. Clark, in her study of teenage religion and the media, From Angels to Aliens, pp. 196-98, points out that many teenagers state that they “make up” their own religion. Clark shows that these created religions are mostly composed of bits and pieces of television shows and films. This public feature of the “creative religion” is important for its credibility.

5. Otto, The Idea of the Holy.

6. In his conclusion to In Gods We Trust, Atran asks whether religion is inherently either evolutionarily adaptive or maladaptive and decides that it is not essentially either one.

7. Tillich, The Courage To Be; Systematic Theology; The Dynamics of Faith.

8. See, for example, the helpful book of Diamond, Contemporary Philosophy and Religious Thought.

9. See, for example, Alvarado, “Out-of-Body Experiences.”

10. Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys, pp. 184-205.

11. Ibid., p. 205.

12. Balkin, Cultural Software, pp. 13-14.

13. Ibid.

14. Dawkins, “Viruses of the Mind.”

15. Balkin, Cultural Software, p. 13.

16. See Atran, “The Trouble With Memes,” in In Gods We Trust, pp. 236-62, for a cogent argument analysis of the limitations of evolutionary models.

17. Gottsch, “Mutation, Selection, and Vertical Transmission.”

18. See Blackmore, The Meme Machine.

19. For a review of this important concept see Neimeyer and Van Brunt, “Death Anxiety;” Neimeyer, Death Anxiety Handbook.

20. Green, Little Saint; see New York Times Book Review August 13, 2000, p. 4.

21. See Saler, Conceptualizing Religion, esp. pp. 50-69.

22. Greyson, “Reduced Death Threat.” Greyson reports that people who have had a Near Death Experience have significantly less death anxiety than people who have had a brush with death and no NDE or people without any significant brush with death.

23. Hick, Death and Eternal Life.

24. See Walls, Heaven, pp. 75-79.

25. In a way it is the converse of Shakespeare’s effective use of the notion of ghosts, abandoned in his own day, to serve the needs of his drama. For a more complete discussion of Shakespeare’s notion of life after death, see Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory, esp. pp. 151-204.

26. Bloom, Hamlet, p. 133.