In the Book of Job first the longing for a resurrection is expressed (Job 14:13-15), and then, if the Masoretic text may be trusted, a passing conviction that such a resurrection will occur (Job 19:25, 26). The older Hebrew conception of life regarded the nation so entirely as a unit that no individual mortality or immortality was considered. Jeremiah (31:29) and Ezekiel (18) had contended that the individual was the moral unit, and Job’s hopes are based on this idea.
In the long run the old national point of view asserted itself in the form of Messianic hopes. These gave rise to a belief in a resurrection in order that more might share in the glory of the Messianic kingdom. This hope first finds expression in Isaiah 26:19, a passage which Cheyne dates about 334 B.C. The hope was cherished for faithful Israelites. In Daniel 12:1-4 (about 165 B.C.) a resurrection of “many . . . that sleep in the dust” is looked forward to. This resurrection included both righteous and wicked, for some will awake to everlasting life, others to “shame and everlasting contempt.”
In the earliest part of the Ethiopic Book of Enoch (1-36) there is a great advance on the conceptions of Daniel, although the book is of earlier date. Ch. 22 contains an elaborate description of Sheol, telling how it is divided into four parts, two of which receive two classes of righteous; the others, two classes of wicked. Of these, three classes are to experience a resurrection. One class of the wicked has been judged and has received its punishment. In II Maccabees the belief that all Israelites will be resurrected finds expression (comp. 6:26, 7:9-36, and 14:46). In the next Enoch apocalypse (Ethiopic Enoch, lxxxiii.—xc.), composed a few years after Daniel, it was thought that only the righteous Israelites would experience a resurrection. That was to be a bodily resurrection, and the body was to be subsequently transformed. This writer realized that the earth was not a fit place for YHWH’s permanent kingdom, and so the conception of a heavenly Jerusalem appears, of which the earthly Jerusalem city is the prototype.
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Author: Jewish Encyclopedia
Keywords: Resurrection, Resurect, Resurrect, Resurection, Raised to life, Raised back to life, Raised from the dead, Resurection of the dead, Resurrection of the dead, Life after death, Intermediate state, Immortal soul, Immortal spirit, Eternal soul, Raised
Bible reference(s): Job 14:13-15, Job 19:25-26, Psalms 88:10, Isaiah 26:19, Isaiah 42:5, Ezekiel 37:13, Daniel 12:1, Matthew 5:5, Matthew 22:23, Matthew 22:28, Matthew 22:30-31, Mark 12:18, Mark 12:23, Luke 14:14, Luke 20:27, Luke 20:33, Luke 20:35-36, John 5:29, John 11:24-25, Acts 17:32, Acts 23:8, Acts 23:6, Acts 24:15, Acts 24:21, Romans 6:5, 1 Corinthians 15:12-13, 1 Corinthians 15:21, 1 Corinthians 15:35, 1 Corinthians 15:42, 1 Corinthians 15:52, Philippians 3:11, 1 Thessalonians 4:16, 2 Timothy 2:18, 1 Peter 3:19, Revelation 20:5-6, Wisdom of Solomon 3:1, 2 Maccabees 7:9, 2 Esdras 4:23, 2 Esdras 7:32
Source: Isidore Singer (editor), The Jewish Encyclopedia (12 Volumes), (1906).
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