Resurrection Of The Dead In Early Judaism 200 Bcece 200 First Edition Elledge

Resurrection Of The Dead In Early Judaism 200
Bcece 200 First Edition Elledge download
https://ebookbell.com/product/resurrection-of-the-dead-in-early-
judaism-200-bcece-200-first-edition-elledge-5893726
Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com

Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.
Raised From The Dead According To Scripture The Role Of Israels
Scripture In The Early Christian Interpretations Of Jesus Resurrection
Lidija Novakovic
https://ebookbell.com/product/raised-from-the-dead-according-to-
scripture-the-role-of-israels-scripture-in-the-early-christian-
interpretations-of-jesus-resurrection-lidija-novakovic-11171360
On The Resurrection Of The Dead A New Metaphysics Of Afterlife For
Christian Thought Routledge New Critical Thinking In Religion Theology
And Biblical Studies 1st Edition James T Turner Jr
https://ebookbell.com/product/on-the-resurrection-of-the-dead-a-new-
metaphysics-of-afterlife-for-christian-thought-routledge-new-critical-
thinking-in-religion-theology-and-biblical-studies-1st-edition-james-
t-turner-jr-22041250
Baptism On Account Of The Dead 1 Cor 1529 An Act Of Faith In The
Resurrection Academia Biblica Society Of Biblical Literature Paper
Michael F Hull
https://ebookbell.com/product/baptism-on-account-of-the-
dead-1-cor-1529-an-act-of-faith-in-the-resurrection-academia-biblica-
society-of-biblical-literature-paper-michael-f-hull-2197434
The Resurrection Of The Dead Karl Barth
https://ebookbell.com/product/the-resurrection-of-the-dead-karl-
barth-59370902

Debates Over The Resurrection Of The Dead Constructing Early Christian
Identity Outi Lehtipuu Lehtipuu
https://ebookbell.com/product/debates-over-the-resurrection-of-the-
dead-constructing-early-christian-identity-outi-lehtipuu-
lehtipuu-23393494
Jacob Of Sarugs Homily On The Creation Of Adam And The Resurrection Of
The Dead Edward G Mathews Jr
https://ebookbell.com/product/jacob-of-sarugs-homily-on-the-creation-
of-adam-and-the-resurrection-of-the-dead-edward-g-mathews-jr-46553572
Jacob Of Sarugs Homily On The Creation Of Adam And The Resurrection Of
The Dead Unknown
https://ebookbell.com/product/jacob-of-sarugs-homily-on-the-creation-
of-adam-and-the-resurrection-of-the-dead-unknown-50342134
The Dead Celebrity Cookbook A Resurrection Of Recipes From More Than
145 Stars Of Stage And Screen Decaro
https://ebookbell.com/product/the-dead-celebrity-cookbook-a-
resurrection-of-recipes-from-more-than-145-stars-of-stage-and-screen-
decaro-6644954
Shakespearean Resurrection The Art Of Almost Raising The Dead Sean
Benson
https://ebookbell.com/product/shakespearean-resurrection-the-art-of-
almost-raising-the-dead-sean-benson-51831498

RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD IN EARLY JUDAISM
200 bce–ce 200

Resurrection of the Dead
in Early Judaism
200 bce–ce 200
C. D. ELLEDGE
1

1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6 DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© C. D. Elledge 2017
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2017
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016958220
ISBN 978–0–19–964041–6
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

For Beki
(Matthew 22:30)

Acknowledgments
I wish to express my gratitude to the many people whose generous contributions
enriched the planning, research, and writing of this book.
Tom Perridge, Senior Commissioning Editor in Religion at Oxford University
Press, was invaluable in the planning and development of this volume, as were
Karen Raith and the entire production staff in bringing it to completion.
Several important scholars gave unstintingly of their own research time and
expertise to offer early assessments of individual chapters, including J. Blake
Couey, Alex Jassen, Jonathan Klawans, Outi Lehtipuu, and Émile Puech. Their
insights and criticisms substantially contributed to my research.
Oakley Clark evaluated individual chapters for style and argument. Sonja
Timmerman of the Gustavus Adolphus College library greatly assisted in the
availability of many an obscure tome important to my research.
Many scriptural citations follow the New Revised Standard Version, and are
so acknowledged throughout the book; copyright © 1989 National Council of
the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, used by permission, all
rights reserved. Several citations of 1 Enoch follow George W. E. Nickelsburg’s
translation and are used by permission of Augsburg Fortress © 2001, all rights
reserved (1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1–36;
81–108, Hermeneia (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001)). I am grateful to
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company for permission to utilize a chart that
appeared in an earlier publication.
Most importantly, this book would not have been possible apart from the
patient understanding and virtuous support of my wife Beki, who gracefully
shouldered innumerable tasks, great and small, that made it possible for me to
invest my fullest energies in this project. It is only right that this book be dedi-
cated to her in the fullest appreciation of her love and unwavering commitment
to myself and to our beloved children, Annabelle and Elijah.

Contents
List of Abbreviations xi
1. Studying Resurrection Today 1
2. Diversity 19
3. Origins, Contexts 44
4. Legitimation 66
5. Denial 87
6. Resurrection and Immortality 107
7. Resurrection and the Book of Watchers 130
8. The Dead Sea Scrolls 150
9. Josephus 175
Conclusion 199
Bibliography 217
Index of Modern Authors 241
Index of Ancient Sources 245

List of Abbreviations
Note: Abbreviations of ancient writings may be found in their full form in the
Index of Ancient Sources.
AB Anchor Bible
ABD Anchor Bible Dictionary
AGJU Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des
Urchristentums
ANCL Ante-Nicene Christian Library
ANET James Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old
Testament, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955)
AnBib Analecta biblica
APOT Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament
BA Biblical Archaeologist
BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
BBB Bonner biblische Beiträge
BETL Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium
BFCT Beiträge zur Förderung christlicher Theologie
BibOr Biblica et orientalia
BJS Brown Judaic Studies
BO Bibliotheca orientalis
BTB Biblical Theology Bulletin
BZNW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft
CBET Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
CBQMS Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series
CBR Currents in Biblical Research
CEJL Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature
CIIP Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae
ConBNT Coniectanea biblica, New Testament Series
ConBOT Coniectanea biblica, Old Testament Series
CRINT Compendia rerum iudaicarum ad novum testamentum

xii List of Abbreviations
DJD Discoveries in the Judaean Desert
DSD Dead Sea Discoveries
EB Études bibliques
ESCJ Studies in Christianity and Judaism
FB Forschung zur Bibel
HdO Handbook of Oriental Studies
HDR Harvard Dissertations in Religion
HSM Harvard Semitic Monographs
HTR Harvard Theological Review
HTS Harvard Theological Studies
HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual
IEJ Israel Exploration Journal
JAAR Journal of the American Academy of Religion
JAL Jewish Apocryphal Literature
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JGRChJ Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism
JIGRE Jewish Inscriptions of Graeco-Roman Egypt
JJMJS Journal of the Jesus Movement in its Jewish Setting
JJS Journal of Jewish Studies
JR Journal of Religion
JSJ Journal for the Study of Judaism
JSJSup Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplement
JSNT Journal for the Study of the New Testament
JSNTSup Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement
JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement
JSP Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha
JSPSup Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Supplement
JSS Journal of Semitic Studies
JTS Journal of Theological Studies
KJV King James Version
LCL Loeb Classical Library
LXX Septuagint
MT Masoretic Text
NKZ Neue kirchliche Zeitschrift

List of Abbreviations xiii
NovT Novum Testamentum
NovTSup Novum Testamentum Supplement
NRSV New Revised Standard Version
NZSTh Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie und
Religionsphilosophie
OTL Old Testament Library
OTP James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha,
2 vols (New York: Doubleday, 1985)
OtSt Oudtestamentische Studiën
PTSDSSP Princeton Theological Seminary Dead Sea Scrolls Project
RB Revue biblique
REJ Revue des études juives
RevQ Revue de Qumrân
RSR Recherches de science religieuse
SBLDS Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series
SBLEJL Society of Biblical Literature Early Judaism and its Literature
SJHC Studies in Jewish History and Culture
SJT Scottish Journal of Theology
SNTSMS Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series
SPhilo Ann Studia Philonica Annual
STDJ Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah
StPB Studia Post Biblica
SVF Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta
SVTP Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha
TANZ Texte und Arbeiten zum neutestamentlichen Zeitalter
TSAJ Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism
VC Vigiliae christianae
VT Vetus Testamentum
VTSup Vetus Testamentum Supplement
WBC Word Biblical Commentary
WUNT Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament
WZKM Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes
Z AW Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
ZNW Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft
ZTK Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche

1
Studying Resurrection Today
Scholarly interest in the afterlife and resurrection has always been strong. Yet
recent decades have generated a broad spectrum of reflection on the question
in biblical, religious, and theological studies. Monumental volumes surveying
a broad range of evidence have proposed large-scale theoretical approaches to
resurrection in Judaism and Christianity—and beyond.1 The purpose of this
book is to reexamine a narrower range of crucial evidence for resurrection
within early Judaism, beginning with its first clear attestations in Jewish litera-
ture in the Hellenistic period (c.200 bce). The evidence for resurrection would
flourish in subsequent centuries prior to the redaction of the Mishnah, which
would bring its own distinct reinterpretation of earlier hopes in the revivifica-
tion of the dead (c.ce 200). The scope of the study will, thus, focus especially
upon resurrection in the latest writings of the Hebrew Bible, the Apocrypha,
Pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as the writings of other Hellenistic
Jewish authors. Later rabbinic writings, early Christian sources, and inscrip-
tions are also incorporated secondarily as they shed additional light upon select
features of the evidence in question. This prioritization of materials allows for
a deeper look into how particular literary works utilized the discourse of resur-
rection, while also retaining larger comparative insights into what these mater-
ials may teach us about the gradual flourishing of resurrection within the early
Jewish environment.
Such a reexamination is urgent on a number of interrelated fronts. The treat-
ment of resurrection in early Judaism has frequently become the “background”
to its later reinterpretations in rabbinic Judaism and Christianity. While such a
treatment is certainly reasonable, it also invites the occasional hazards of retro-
jecting theories about later evidence into earlier contexts or creating linear devel-
opments that only reach fruition within later normative traditions. There are
also the hazards of either overemphasizing or neglecting the actual significance
of resurrection, as its own standing among early Jewish theologies remains a
1 N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God,
vol. 3 (Minneapolis, M.N.: Fortress Press, 2003); Alan Segal, Life after Death: A History of the
Afterlife in the Religions of the West (New York: Doubleday, 2004).

2Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism
matter of dispute.2 Additionally, more recent discoveries have offered new evi-
dence for assessing the varied forms that resurrection took even within its early
Jewish context. One may cite advances in the interpretation of 1 Enoch 1–36
and 91–108,3 as well as more recently published Dead Sea Scrolls, like the Messianic
Apocalypse and Pseudo-Ezekiel4—alongside renewed interest and controversy
surrounding Josephus as a source for early Jewish theologies.5 Social-scientific
methods of analysis have been applied to resurrection in Judaism and Christianity,
yielding new possibilities for understanding the roles that it played within the
diverse currents of Jewish religion in the Hellenistic and Roman eras.6 The
problems raised by these developments transcend the wooden structure of a
“background” to later normative traditions. This study prioritizes the early
Jewish evidence as historically and theologically momentous within its own
contexts. The theological vibrancy of its varied expressions and its diverse
receptions in multiple constituencies make resurrection a remarkable instance
of the characteristics of early Jewish thought in the broadest sense. The prob-
lems encountered in the study of resurrection today—its diversity, its varied
receptions among multiple movements, the forms of its legitimation, and its
relation to earlier scriptural traditions—also frequently parallel the contempor-
ary challenges of studying other major concerns among early Jewish theologies.
DEFINING RESURRECTION
Early Judaism envisioned resurrection in varied ways. Given the wide spectrum
of literary and conceptual expression, definitions will necessarily fall short of
the complexities posed by the evidence. Even so, it is necessary and possible to
describe the general contours of the discourse of resurrection. These basic
structures of resurrection were already available in earlier prophetic texts (Isa.
2 On the tendency to neglect resurrection in modern Judaism, for example, see Segal, History
of the Afterlife, 597–99; and Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The
Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (New Haven, C.T.: Yale University Press, 2006), 1–22.
3 George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1–36,
81–108, Hermeneia (Minneapolis, M.N.: Fortress Press, 2001); Loren T. Stuckenbruck, 1 Enoch
91–108, CEJL (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007).
4 Émile Puech, Qumran Cave 4.XVIII: Textes hébreux (4Q521–4Q528, 4Q576–4Q579), DJD 25
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1998); Devorah Dimant, Qumran Cave 4.XXI: Parabiblical Texts, part 4:
Pseudo-Prophetic Texts, DJD 30 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2001).
5 Jonathan Klawans, Josephus and the Theologies of Ancient Judaism (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2012); Steve Mason, Flavius Josephus on the Pharisees: A Composition-Critical
Study, StPB 39 (Leiden: Brill, 1991); “What Josephus Says about the Essenes in His Judaean War,”
in Text and Artifact in the Religions of Mediterranean Antiquity: Essays in Honour of Peter Richardson,
ed. S. Wilson and M. Desjardins, ESCJ 9 (Waterloo, O.N.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2000),
423–55.
6 Segal, History of the Afterlife, 293–350; Claudia Setzer, Resurrection of the Body in Early Judaism
and Early Christianity: Doctrine, Community, and Self-Definition (Leiden: Brill, 2004).

3Studying Resurrection Today
26:19; Ezek. 37:1–14); yet the Hellenistic–Roman eras saw an increasing literal
ization of such precedents across multiple sectors of Judaism in a diversity of
forms. Resurrection did differ significantly from other popular conceptions of
the afterlife in antiquity. Those who asserted resurrection made a specialized
claim that was conscientious and selective. Above all, resurrection is distin-
guished by divine agency, it is an eschatological and gracious event whose
ultimate cause is God. As stated by Hiroshi Obayashi, resurrection “must be
conferred by God by his gratuitous act of raising humanity out of death.”7
Likewise, Jon Levenson regards this eschatological feature of divine agency as
essential to its proper definition: “Resurrection we must define as an eschato-
logical event, that is, one that is expected to occur in history but also to trans-
form and redeem history and to open onto a barely imaginable world beyond
anything that preceded it.”8 It is nothing less than a divine intervention that
turns the scales of existence from the present reality of death toward the eschato-
logical reality of a renewed life.
Levenson’s further reference to the new and ideal world that resurrection
inaugurates also poses the qualitative character of the hope. Resurrection is to
be defined by the new, qualitatively different life into which the dead are raised.9
This distinguishes resurrection from mere resuscitation and from reincarna-
tion. This new, exalted existence, however, is reflected in a wide diversity of
expressions within early Jewish literature. Some Jews expressed this qualitative
enhancement through emphasis upon a new form of embodiment; others,
in the new sphere of the cosmos into which the dead would be raised; others, in
the contrast between the present mortal life and everlasting life; others, in com-
parisons between risen humanity and angelic existence; others, in the restor-
ation of life to an ideal past; still others, in the belief that resurrection will
represent a new creation of the deceased. Jewish thought within this era, in fact,
displays substantial creativity, variation, and imagination in its exploration of
how the risen life would be distinguished from the old. Yet what the varied forms
of expression commonly indicate is that resurrection will mark the entrance
into a new and exceptional mode of human existence. This realization is insight-
fully stated in the Dead Sea Scroll known as the Messianic Apocalypse , which
enumerates the resurrection among the unprecedented works that will inaug-
urate the eschatological age: “wondrous things which have not existed, the
Lord will do, even as he s[aid. For he will heal the slain, and the dead he will
cause to live” (4Q521 frgs. 2 II + 4 lines 11–12).10
Accentuating this enhanced life, of course, is the full acknowledgment of
death itself as a cessation of the meaningful, vital existence one enjoys among
7 Hiroshi Obayashi, ed., Death and Afterlife: Perspectives of World Religions, Contributions to
the Study of Religion 33 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992), xix.
8 Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel, 20.
9 Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel, 106–107.
10 Puech, Qumran Cave 4, 10–11.

4Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism
the living. As the “reversal of death,”11 resurrection is a divine grace bestowed
explicitly upon “those who sleep in the land of dust” (Dan. 12:2). Of course,
conceptualizations of “death” within the biblical world did not typically mark
total annihilation, but could be characterized by degrees of lifelessness that might
range from endangerment or sickness to actual biological death.12 The descent
from life into death could be experienced amid current persecutions, national
decline, or personal calamity, circumstances that might lead to eventual and
literal death. While scholarly discussions have been most concerned with res-
urrection from literal death, select pieces of the literary evidence in early Judaism
(e.g., the Thanksgiving Hymns) also meaningfully apply the discourse to a lar -
ger range of death scenarios. Moreover, even the fully dead are frequently
imagined as somehow still lifelessly existent within Sheol. Some expressions
of resurrection, thus, remained compatible with an interim existence for the
lifeless dead. Yet even in these cases, resurrection carried with it the realization
that death marked the definitive end of meaningful existence in the world as
presently constituted. As the Epistle of Enoch poignantly consoles the right-
eous dead, they must not grieve, even if their souls have descended into Sheol
in sorrow (1 En . 102:5). As it embraces the full reality of mortality, resurrection
is to be distinguished from conceptions of afterlife that diminish or detract
from the full and decisive impact of death.
Since resurrection insists upon a gracious act of divine agency to restore life
among the dead, it can sometimes be distinguished from another ancient con-
ception of the afterlife with which it was also occasionally combined—the immor-
tality of the soul.13 The varied forms in which resurrection is attested indicate
that it was not an exclusive belief that banished all other possible conceptions
of the afterlife from consideration. While resurrection made a specialized claim,
it was still adaptable to belief in the immortality of the soul and a variety of
mythological conceptions about the fate of the dead. At the same time, the dis-
tinctive character of the resurrection claim limited the boundaries of its adapt-
ability. Unlike some versions of immortality, resurrection does not directly rely
upon an anthropological understanding of the human soul as possessing innate
elemental properties that are themselves essentially immortal. Resurrection
does not depend upon the inherent properties of the soul, but rather upon the
God who raises the dead, who actively bestows life once again after it has fully
ceased. Even where the two conceptions are combined, the present existence of
the immortal soul/spirit beyond the death of the human still awaits a future
divine action that awakens it into a more glorious existence. Neither is the risen
life a cyclical probationary experience or a purgation to a higher state;14 resur -
rection inaugurates the final blessed state itself.
11 Geza Vermes, The Resurrection: History and Myth (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 3.
12 Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel, 38–44.
13 Vermes, Resurrection, xvi.
14 T. Francis Glasson, Greek Influence in Jewish Eschatology (London: S.P.C.K., 1961), 30.

5Studying Resurrection Today
While resurrection may sometimes take place through an explicit restor
ation of the spirit to the risen body of the deceased, this is by no means univer-
sal. What has sometimes been classified as a “resurrection of one’s spirit”15 is
also attested among apocalyptic traditions, one in which the spirit itself survives
death and is raised by the deity into a higher mode of existence, without neces-
sarily any concern for the physical remains of the deceased. As John Collins
comments, “these formulations cannot be categorized in terms of the familiar
binary contrast of resurrection of the body and immortality of the soul.”16 Yet
even in such cases, it is the deity’s own power that grants resurrection to the
dead, not an innate power of the spirit itself. Richard Bauckham perceptively
states: “It was not from reflection on what human nature is that Jews came to
hope for eternal life, but from reflection on who God is: the sovereign Creator,
the righteous Judge, and the faithful Father of his people.”17
Early Jewish thought is frequently concerned with the new forms of embodi-
ment to which the dead will be raised.18 God will act, somehow, upon what
remains of the deceased to bring them into a new form of existence. Yet as the
phenomenon of the “spiritual resurrection” suggests, there is considerable diver-
sity in the ways in which that future embodiment is imagined. Later scholarly
and dogmatic terms, like “bodily resurrection,” seem only to approximate the
deeper complexity. As Alan Segal writes, the concept of “revivification of the
dead,” as articulated in the Mishnah, represents a broad, inclusive category that
extends eschatological life in the land of promise for “all Israel” (m. Sanh. 10:1),
in fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah 60:21.19 The usefulness, perhaps even
the necessity, of this broadly inclusive view of revivification consists precisely
in its ability to encapsulate the variety of highly diverse conceptual expressions
of embodiment that had characterized earlier Jewish thought. Writings like
2 Maccabees, for example, certainly demand a literal restoration of the very same
members of the body lost in death. Likewise, the Enochic Book of Watchers
appears to restore the dead to a very material life on earth that involves eating
the fruits of a paradisiac world (1 En . 24–25). Yet portions of the Epistle of
Enoch (1 En . 91–108) register no direct concern with the mortal body at all, but
envision resurrection as the future glorification of the spirit of the deceased
15 George W. E. Nickelsburg, Ancient Judaism and Christian Origins: Diversity, Continuity, and
Transformation (Minneapolis, M.N.: Fortress Press, 2003), 151; Pierre Grelot, “L’eschatologie des
Esséniens et le livre d’Hénoch,” RevQ 1 (1958–59): 118–21.
16 John J. Collins, “The Angelic Life,” in Metamorphoses: Resurrection, Body and Transformative
Practices in Early Christianity, ed. T. Karlsen Seim and J. Økland, Ekstasis: Religious Experience
from Antiquity to the Middle Ages 1 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009), 291–92.
17 Richard Bauckham, “Life, Death, and the Afterlife in Second Temple Judaism,” in Life in the
Face of Death: The Resurrection Message of the New Testament, ed. R. Longenecker (Grand Rapids,
M.I.: Eerdmans, 1998), 86.
18 Leonard J. Greenspoon, “The Origin of the Idea of Resurrection,” in Traditions in Transformation:
Turning Points in Biblical Faith, ed. B. Halpern and J. Levenson (Winona Lake, I.N.: Eisenbrauns,
1981), 252–53.
19 Segal, History of the Afterlife, 603–609.

6Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism
into a new mode of heavenly existence.20 Resurrection certainly restores the
dead to some type of embodied existence, yet the more precise details of that
existence remained open to a variety of explorations.
Many specimens of Jewish thought on resurrection are less directly con-
cerned with the embodiment of the risen than with the new cosmic locale into
which the dead will be transferred. Much of the discourse on resurrection in
early Judaism exhibits a strong cosmic-spatial orientation, a characteristic that
it shares with a broader range of early Jewish literature and thought.21 In this
sense, defining resurrection exclusively as a restoration to embodied life may
be insufficient. In many cases, resurrection is primarily a transference from
the spatial realm of the dead into another sphere in which the fullness of life is
restored. The locus classicus for resurrection in Daniel 12:1–3 describes resur-
rection as the exaltation of the dead from “the land of dust” to a new state of
existence that is compared with the brilliance of “the firmament” and “the
stars” of the celestial realm. For the Enochic Book of Watchers, resurrection
also involves a transference from the realm of the dead (1 En . 22:13) into other
spheres of the cosmos. The discourse of resurrection in early Judaism thus
embraces both anthropological and cosmic dimensions. It realigns the rela-
tionships between the body and the cosmos, as the dead pass from life, to death,
to revivification. The discourse of resurrection, in fact, offered powerful appeal
for early Jewish theologies to transform existing relationships between the body,
society, and the cosmos into an ideal reconfiguration.
CONTEMPORARY STUDY OF RESURRECTION
Certainly, newer literary and inscriptional evidence pertaining to afterlife has
demanded reconsideration of the different ways in which resurrection was
envisioned, as well as to the varied roles it played in different literary and social
contexts. The Dead Sea Scrolls that were more broadly publicized in the early
1990s featured at least two writings that featured resurrection, including the
Messianic Apocalypse (4Q521) and Pseudo-Ezekiel (4Q385)—and possibly other
manuscripts, as well. As they seem to date from the latter second century bce,
these compositions significantly increase awareness of the further develop-
ment of Jewish hope in resurrection within Palestinian society in the gener-
ation after the Maccabean Revolt (167–164 bce) and the composition of Daniel
20 Stuckenbruck, 1 Enoch 91–108, 497, 524.
21 Christopher Rowland, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early
Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1982); Jonathan Z. Smith, “Earth and Gods,” JR 49 (1969):
103–27; J. Edward Wright, The Early History of Heaven (New York: Oxford University Press,
2000); see also Martin S. Jaffee, Early Judaism (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1997),
92–124.

7Studying Resurrection Today
7–12. Moreover, these writings highlight the intertextual character of Jewish
discourse about resurrection, as scribes articulated the hope in the language of
earlier scriptures. The reception of writings favorable to resurrection by the
greater community of the Dead Sea Scrolls also provides an important vantage
for charting how resurrection gradually came into broader circulation and
incremental acceptance by a variety of Jewish movements in the second cen-
tury bce. Advances in the literary history of particular documents also have
important implications for resurrection. The Enochic Book of Watchers pro-
vides an important case in point. Due to increased awareness of the incremen-
tal development of 1 Enoch 1–36 in the late third century bce, an important
window into the character of resurrection prior to the Maccabean Revolt now
lies open. Inquiry into resurrection, therefore, must now consider its emergence
and meaning in Judaism prior to its later roles within the political crisis of the
Maccabean Revolt.
While newer evidence emerges, certain older problems persist. Perhaps
the most significant of these concerns ongoing debate over how to address the
question of origins. The old history-of-religions question of “internal Israelite
development” versus “foreign influence” continues to cast its shadow over more
recent approaches. While Jon Levenson articulates his own case for internal
development,22 other approaches continue to work within the parameters of a
model in which postexilic Jewish thought interpreted earlier traditions in the
confluence of Jewish interactions with Canaanite, Persian, Egyptian, Babylonian,
and Greek contemporaries. While this debate is typically waged over the latest
writings in the Hebrew Bible, Jewish literature of the Hellenistic and Roman
eras may also contribute additional insight to this ongoing discussion. The
diversity of varied conceptions of resurrection within this epoch discourages
the attempt to trace their origins to a single line of development. Amid the
diversity, one may identify a strong intertextual reliance upon earlier scriptural
traditions—as well as the occasional articulation of the resurrection hope in
the mythological language of its regional neighbors. In this sense, the forms
in which early Judaism expressed resurrection seem to forbid a dichotomous
approach to this old problem. Instead, they pose the larger question of how
particular expressions of resurrection may have emerged from a matrix of both
Israelite-Jewish and other ancient traditions.
A developing front in the study of resurrection has further involved the use
of social-scientific criticism. Social awareness of the flourishing of resurrection
in the Hellenistic and Roman eras was certainly already a feature of earlier com-
mentary on resurrection prior to the increasing development of socio-literary
approaches of the 1980s. Louis Finkelstein’s study of the Pharisees illustrates a
remarkable early twentieth-century attempt to address the social factors that
shaped the Pharisaic acceptance of resurrection:
22 Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel, 180–85.

8Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism
Crushed under the heel of the oppressor and exploiter, the artisan and trader of
Jerusalem in the fourth century b.c.e. sought compensation in an ideal world beyond
the grave, where all human inequalities would be leveled down before the over-
whelming power of God. The bitterer his lot in this world, the more passionately
he clung to his hopes of the next. An abstract immortality might satisfy the phil
osopher; the hungry slum-dweller of Jerusalem could be comforted by nothing less
than the Egyptian and Persian doctrine of physical resurrection and restitution.23
Finkelstein’s approach to the emergence of resurrection among the Pharisees
anticipates a variety of later sociological explanations. For Finkelstein’s hard-
working, urban Pharisees, the experience of foreign imperial rule appears to
have opened the Pharisaic movement to the importation of originally “Persian”
and “Egyptian” conceptions of afterlife. Other scholars, however, have empha-
sized the extent to which the intensive reinterpretation of “native” traditions
and predisposed beliefs may characterize Judaism’s indigenous responses to
imperial rule.24 Socioeconomic deprivation also characterizes Finkelstein’s
approach, yet more recent studies have exhibited more sophisticated and var-
ied approaches to deprivation as a social factor.
Segal, for example, emphasizes more conceptual approaches to deprivation,
including status and cognitive dissonance that were the direct result of Greek
and Roman imperialism in the Near East.25 Segal’s treatment is also sensitive to
the recognition that different movements within a socially variegated Judaism
expressed their deprivation differently. “Millenarian” apocalyptic movements
gravitated to more radical, revolutionary portraits of resurrection, even as the
Pharisees preferred more ambiguous conceptions that offered a conciliatory out-
look on the present circumstances of Judaism within the Hellenistic and Roman
empires.26 For Segal, the more millenarian sociological response was also accom-
panied by “religiously inspired”/“religiously altered states of consciousness,” in
which apocalyptists believed themselves to have witnessed the afterlife through
their own mystical journeys.27 As the Epistle of Enoch implies, it is the seer’s
authority to envision the souls of the deceased (1 En . 93:12) that grants assur-
ance of the fate of the dead and final judgment. The Jewish aristocracy, on the
other hand, either maintained traditional denials of a meaningful afterlife or
occasionally gravitated toward a moderate affirmation of the immortality of the
soul, as illustrated by Philo and Josephus. Segal shows how some movements
utilized the hope in more socially volatile, revolutionary ways, while others pre-
sented resurrection as a more moderate accommodation between eschatological
hopes and the current imperial situation of Judaism within the world.
23 Louis Finkelstein, The Pharisees: The Sociological Background of their Faith, vol. 1, 2 vols.
(Philadelphia, P.A.: Jewish Publication Society, 1938), 145.
24 Sheldon Isenberg, “Millenarism in Greco-Roman Palestine,” Religion 4 (1974): 34–36.
25 Segal, History of the Afterlife, 319–21.
26 Segal, History of the Afterlife, 293–321, 379–82.
27 Segal, History of the Afterlife, 322–50.

9Studying Resurrection Today
The social situation of Judaism in the Hellenistic era, however, was not only
pressured by the external forces of empire; it was also characterized by increas-
ing diversity, variegation, and conflict from within as different movements estab-
lished their own rival claims to authority. Beliefs about death and the afterlife
played a recurrent role in the divergent wisdoms that were forged within this
contentious environment. Claudia Setzer argues that resurrection functioned
as a powerful symbol in the “identity formation” of competing religious move-
ments. Resurrection condensed within itself much larger theological claims
about God’s power, eschatology, scripture, and divine justice. As such grand
issues were directly at stake in questions about the afterlife, the discourse of
resurrection offered “an implicit protest against competing groups” that also
fortified “self-definition and social control” in particular movements.28 Following
these assumptions, Setzer argues that both the Pharisees and later Tannaim
utilized resurrection in strategic ways that allowed them to position themselves
over and against their rivals as leaders of the Jewish community, which they
strived to reorganize around their own interpretation of earlier tradition.
While the external pressures of empire and the internal conflicts of rival
movements are certainly crucial to the social context in which resurrection
emerged, a larger, unresolved question is the actual extent of its reception across
the breadth of diverse groups that constituted early Judaism. Certainly, much
interpretation of resurrection has frequently followed what might be called the
“myth of dominance”: that early Judaism exhibited a rapidly accelerating popu-
larity of the resurrection hope outside of the aristocratic classes that would
finally culminate in its supremacy as a non-negotiable belief for “all Israel” in
the Mishnah. One thus frequently encounters among scholars the assessment
that by the first century ce resurrection had ascended into a position of dom-
inance among Jewish attitudes toward death and the afterlife. This dominance
further left its deep impressions upon nascent Christianity. To cite only one of
many luminaries who have taken this position, R. H. Charles could state with
confidence that in the first century ce, resurrection was accepted by the “entire
Jewish nation, except for the Sadducees.”29 Charles’ assessment, however, is not
merely a relic of earlier commentary. His judgment arose from exacting study
of many of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha that continue to provide the
most accessible literary evidence for studying resurrection today.
Nor was his assessment an isolated one, as several contemporary scholars
reflect a similar estimation of how dominant resurrection had become by the
first century. N. T. Wright insists that “resurrection was not simply a doctrine
of the Pharisees . . . All the evidence suggests that, with the few exceptions noted
28 Setzer, Resurrection of the Body, 52.
29 R. H. Charles, A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life: In Israel, in Judaism, and in
Christianity; or Hebrew, Jewish, and Christian Eschatology from Pre-prophetic Times till the Close
of the New Testament Canon (London: A. & C. Black, 1913), 179.

10Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism
already, it was widely believed by most Jews around the turn of the common
era.”30 The “few exceptions” included 4 Maccabees, Philo of Alexandria, the
Sadducees, and Ben Sira.31 Likewise, Bauckham also positions resurrection within
a larger trajectory in which an optimistic belief in life after death become dom-
inant: “in the late sixth century b.c.e., there may not have been any such belief
at all . . . At the end of the period, however, in the late first or early second cen-
tury c.e., belief in life after death had become dominant within Judaism.”32
Another way in which the dominance of resurrection is occasionally expressed
is that it was the preferred option for envisioning life after death, as well stated
by John Day: “The dominant concept of a blessed afterlife in Judaism was that
of the resurrection of the body.”33 The implications for understanding the com-
plex interrelationships between early Jewish and nascent rabbinic conceptions
are also profound, relative to this issue. Early Judaism would provide a clear
trajectory of development into the Mishnah’s articulation of revivification of
the dead. Likewise, the implications for relationships between early Judaism
and nascent Christianity are also crucial: the dominance of resurrection in
earlier Judaism would only pave a broad pathway for the strong and decisive
reception that resurrection would have within the church in the first century.
Certainly, there are features of the evidence for resurrection that may further
support “the myth of dominance.” Resurrection is repeatedly attested within a
broad range of literary genres across the period from c.200 bce–ce 200. One
may confidently state that most of the major Jewish literary apocalypses com-
posed within these centuries contain some reference to resurrection: 1 Enoch
(Book of Watchers; cf. Epistle of Enoch, Similitudes), Daniel, 4 Ezra, and
2 Baruch. Among other revelatory literatures, the Jewish Sibyllines also attest
resurrection (Fourth Sibylline Oracle ). Eschatologically inspired exhortations,
such as the Messianic Apocalypse (4Q521) and the Epistle of Enoch, feature the
hope. The vast early Jewish literature that continues to unfold under the head-
ing of “scriptural rewriting” occasionally features resurrection as one of the
theological motifs interwoven within the structure of earlier scriptures, as
illustrated in Pseudo-Ezekiel (4Q385) and Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities
(3:10, 51:5). Historical narratives, likewise, feature the hope in 2 Maccabees; and
resurrection may plausibly underlie several passages of Josephus (War 2:163,
3:375–76). Poetic works allude to resurrection in the Psalms of Solomon (3:11–12)
and in the Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides (99–115). The reception of resurrection
among sapiential instructions seems to have been more limited or perhaps non-
existent; nevertheless, some scholars have advanced arguments that the
Wisdom of Solomon and Qumran’s 4QInstruction (4Q418) may have referenced
30 Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 147; cf. 130, 203–205.
31 Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 131–46.
32 Bauckham, “Life, Death, and the Afterlife,” 80.
33 John Day, “Belief in Life after Death in Ancient Israel,” in After the Exile: Essays in Honour of
Rex Mason, ed. J. Barton and D. Reimer (Macon, G.A.: Mercer University Press, 1996), 240.

11Studying Resurrection Today
resurrection. Altogether, this is an impressive array of attestation within very
different literary genres and among writings that are believed to have derived
from otherwise diverse sectors of early Judaism.
Likewise, the geographical distribution of the literary evidence is impressive.
In cases where there is strong scholarly conviction regarding the provenience
of these writings, the evidence certainly transcends the narrower confines of
Palestine, which represents the cradle of the earliest clear references to resur-
rection within the Enochic Book of Watchers, the Epistle of Enoch, and Daniel.
The Diaspora enthusiastically received the resurrection hope, as indicated by
works associated with Egypt/North Africa (2 Maccabees, Pseudo-Phocylides,
Sibylline Oracles). One cannot, therefore, dichotomize between Palestine and
the Diaspora on the question of resurrection.34 As the literary circles that pro-
duced this vast range of literature were likely themselves to have been highly
diverse and variegated, representing different, and even in some cases conflict-
ing factions, one may certainly interpret the generic and regional distribution
of the resurrection hope among early Jewish writings as a strong index of wide-
spread popularity. Perhaps those who interpret resurrection as “dominant” might
also be further encouraged by the assessment of Josephus, who wrote of Jews
more generally, “Each man, having his own conscience to bear witness, has trust-
ed, as the lawgiver prophesied . . . if it should prove necessary for them to die
willingly that they come into being again and receive a better life from the revo-
lution [of the ages]” (Apion 2:218). Josephus implies that such beliefs were vir-
tually universal among Jews even from the time of “the lawgiver” himself.
The estimation that resurrection had become dominant in Jewish thought by
the first century ce is certainly a reasonable interpretation of the evidence.
Geza Vermes, however, has shown that it can and should be challenged. Among
his final publications, Vermes advanced a brief, yet serious reconsideration of
the actual prevalence of the resurrection hope within early Jewish society. While
acknowledging that “by the second century ce faith in bodily resurrection was
an essential constituent of the Pharisaic-rabbinic religion,”35 Vermes casts more
serious doubt upon the dominance of resurrection within the greater Jewish
community. Several factors lead him to this reassessment. The Jewish sects of
the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes represented only a very small fraction of
the Jewish populace in the first century.36 Approximate numbers for Pharisees
and Essenes in ancient sources range from 4000–6000, a fraction of the estimated
34 A generalization that may occasionally be observed among various scholars, Harry A.
Wolfson, Philo, 2 vols. (Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press, 1948), 1:396; Martin Hengel,
Jews, Greeks, and Barbarians: Aspects of the Hellenization of Judaism in the Pre-Christian Period
(Philadelphia, P.A.: Fortress Press, 1980), 124; Vermes, Resurrection , 30.
35 Vermes, Resurrection, 48.
36 See also Anthony J. Saldarini, Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees in Palestinian Society:
A Sociological Approach (Wilmington, D.E.: Michael Glazier, 1988), 3–4. Saldarini suggests that the
entire governing class and its retainers (among whom the scribes and Jewish sects emerged) typic-
ally comprised only 5–7% of the total populace (p. 38).

12Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism
Jewish population of Palestine (500,000–600,000).37 Moreover, Vermes argues
that among the three sects it was the Pharisees alone who unequivocally advo-
cated a form of bodily resurrection; and their influence was predominantly
among city dwellers of moderate means, artisans, and traders.38 Applying the
views of Pharisees to the totality of their contemporaries is, therefore, a dramatic
leap of judgment.
Vermes’ assessment follows within a strand of studies that has critically reas-
sessed the actual religious and social position of the Pharisaic–rabbinic move-
ment within the first and second centuries ce. 39 As the Pharisaic–rabbinic
tradition may have lacked dominance on theological matters in these eras, one
remains correspondingly cautious about the extent to which the subtleties of
their eschatology held sway. He also distinguishes Pharisaic advocacy of res-
urrection from the more elite Hellenistic intellectuals, like Philo, who favored
immortality and avoided resurrection. Without any confirmation from inscrip-
tions to substantiate the dominance of resurrection, Vermes concludes that “the
notion of bodily resurrection propagated by the Pharisees was alien to first-
century Hellenistic Jews and was on the whole unfamiliar in most layers of
Palestinian Jewry.”40
Another way to support this judgment would be to reiterate the contempor-
ary awareness that the elite scribes who occasionally referenced resurrection
within literary works constituted a vast minority of the larger Jewish popula-
tion, whose opinions on the subtleties of the afterlife remain unknown. As with
the “myth of dominance,” Vermes’ position also has important implications for
understanding the reception of resurrection within later rabbinic Judaism and
early Christianity. His approach poses the potential discontinuities between
the diverse attitudes toward death in early Judaism and their later receptions
within rabbinic Judaism and Christianity. Within both nascent movements,
resurrection came to hold a position of prominence that it had not previously
occupied. For early Christianity, in particular, “The New Testament completely
altered the vista and changed the perspective. In it the individual resurrection
of one Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, predominates.”41
Of course, Vermes’ approach can also be criticized on numerous points. He
defines resurrection more narrowly as bodily and corporeal in character; thus,
the range of evidence for this precise belief about resurrection is itself more
37 Vermes, Resurrection, 49. 38 Vermes, Resurrection, 50–51.
39 Martin Goodman, State and Society in Roman Galilee, A.D. 132–212, Oxford Centre for
Postgraduate Hebrew Studies (Totowa, N.J.: Roman & Allanheld, 1983), 90–108; Lee I. Levine,
The Rabbinic Class of Roman Palestine in Late Antiquity (Jerusalem: Izhak Ben-Zvi Institute and
Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1989), 18–20; Shaye J. D. Cohen, “The Rabbi in Second
Century Jewish Society,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism , ed. W. Davies and L. Finkelstein,
4 vols. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984–2006), 3:922–90.
40 Vermes, Resurrection, 55. Cf. Mary Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism , HdO, Section 1, The
Near and Middle East (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 3:435.
41 Vermes, Resurrection, 60.

13Studying Resurrection Today
limited. He further banishes the possibility of resurrection among Essenes, a
feature that he finds confirmed by the rarity of resurrection among the Dead
Sea Scrolls. Other scholars have read the evidence as more complex than a
simple absence of resurrection among the scrolls and Essenes more generally.
Moreover, one might also criticize the assumption that resurrection was “alien”
to “Hellenistic Jews,” in light of 2 Maccabees, Pseudo-Phocylides, and the Fourth
Sibylline Oracle. The influence of the Jewish sects could also have been at least
somewhat more profound than Vermes estimates, as they seem to have repre-
sented religious figures whose reputation was widespread, even if their num-
bers were more limited. Yet, in spite of these criticisms, Vermes’ perspective
serves as a beneficial corrective to the assumption that resurrection was dom-
inant in the first century. This book takes Vermes’ challenge seriously and
attempts to construct a profile of resurrection within early Jewish writings, one
that neither overemphasizes its dominance nor diminishes its importance among
the theologies of early Judaism.
THE DYNAMIC RECEPTION OF A CONTROVERSIAL
THEODICY
Rather than “dominance,” resurrection appears to have constituted a more
specialized eschatological discourse among Jews in antiquity, one that remained
paradoxically popular, yet also controversial.42 Such an approach to the resur -
rection phenomenon is valuable for a variety of reasons. Apart from the myth
of dominance, one may more deeply appreciate the dynamism and variety of
early Jewish thought on death and afterlife. Resurrection constituted a flourish-
ing and appealing way of articulating the hope of life after death. While it was
insurgent and growing in its reception within multiple sectors of Judaism, it
was still not the only available option even among those Jews who were opti-
mistic about a meaningful hereafter. Moreover, the enduring fortitude of the
traditional denial of the afterlife seems to have remained a compelling option
for Jews in the centuries surrounding the turn of the eras. While most contem-
porary evidence for assessing these issues emerges from the limited perspec-
tives of literary circles, the views of the greater Jewish populace also remain
mysterious. Recognizing these features of the contextual setting of resurrection
restores the hope to its proper framework. The story told in the literature of
Judaism in the Hellenistic and early Roman eras is not that of a belief that had
already become dominant, but rather of the dynamic reception of an insurgent
42 Here, I am indebted to Devorah Dimant’s way of expressing this balance between popularity
and controversy: “Resurrection, Restoration and Time-Curtailing in Qumran, Early Judaism, and
Christianity,” RevQ 19 (1999–2000): 527.

14Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism
and controversial theodicy. Although the term “theodicy” would have its ori-
gins in the Enlightenment, ancient religion and philosophy also carried out
their own diverse explorations of how divine justice was at work within the
cosmos, historical events, and social experiences. Shaped by their own contex
tual settings in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman eras, early Jewish theolo-
gies were prolific in the creativity and diversity of their explorations of theodicy.
The discourse of resurrection arose as one of the more radical expressions of
divine justice within this highly generative context.
Shannon Burkes helps to contextualize the emergence of resurrection within
the even more vast arena of Judaism’s diverse theological reflections on death
after the exile.43 Within this environment Judaism joined its regional neighbors
in a radical questioning of conventional attitudes, including traditional beliefs
about life, death, and the boundaries between them.44 While Burkes situates
the origins of this phenomenon in the Persian era, other scholars have accentu-
ated the extent to which the Greek empire itself resulted in an even more inten-
sified “cosmic paranoia”45 among Near Eastern cultures, one represented in the
anthropological realm in the form of attitudes toward the body, life, and death.
As demonstrated in the remarkable volume, Theodicy in the World of the Bible,
edited by Antti Laato and Johannes C. de Moor,46 concern for death provides
only one dimension of the prolific approaches to theodicy that emerged within
the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman eras. The hope of national political restor
ation and confidence in “this-worldly” retribution certainly remained strong,
apart from more explicit reflection on the fate of the dead.
Nevertheless, death, the body, and the question of afterlife also presented a
prominent vehicle for focused exploration. Mary Douglas describes the signifi-
cance of the body as a complex symbolic system that is invested with immense
meaning for human cultures.47 It is all the more the case that the death of the
body presents a crucial anomaly that threatens a culture’s tenuous systems of
meaning and order.48 Likewise, for Peter Berger, death comprises the ultimate
“marginal situation” that threatens the very reality of a fragile social order: “The
power of religion depends, in the last resort, upon the credibility of the banners
43 Shannon Burkes, God, Self, and Death: The Shape of Religious Transformation in the Second
Temple Period, JSJSup 79 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 8–10.
44 Shannon Burkes, Death in Qoheleth and Egyptian Biographies of the Late Period, SBLDS 170
(Atlanta, G.A.: Society of Biblical Literature, 1999), 7.
45 Jonathan Z. Smith, Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religion (1978; Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1993).
46 Antti Laato and Johannes C. de Moor, eds., Theodicy in the World of the Bible (Leiden: Brill,
2003).
47 Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (New York: Vintage, 1973), 93;
see also Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966), 115; Fiona Bowie, The Anthropology of Religion (Oxford: Blackwell,
2000), 39.
48 Douglas, Purity and Danger, 39–40; see further Philippe Ariès, The Hour of Our Death, tr. H.
Weaver (New York: Knopf, 1981), 559–60; and Obayashi, Death and Afterlife, xi.

15Studying Resurrection Today
it puts in the hands of men as they stand before death, or more accurately, as
they walk, inevitably toward it.”49 The variety of theodicies that religions devise
guard against the severe anomy that is posed by the death of the body.
As one of many “banners” that Judaism raised before death in the Hellenistic
and Roman eras, resurrection into a newly embodied life emerged as a power-
ful discourse that legitimated particular movements within Judaism amid their
tenuous circumstances. As resurrection emerged, it did so within Judaism’s
own distinct history of Greek rule, one that further contributed to increasing
alienation and conflict among scribal circles in the latter half of the third cen-
tury bce.50 The dynamics of fragmentation also continued in the aftermath of
the Maccabean Revolt.51 Responses to the larger problem of Greek rule were,
thus, further variegated along the fractures of more internal tensions, as reli-
gious movements turned to an intensive reinterpretation of earlier traditions,52
and formed their own “power centers” that sought to guide the greater society.53
The literature of early Judaism chronicles the resultant proliferation of theodi-
cies that emerged from within this fragmented, yet highly creative, environ-
ment. Amid the variety of theodicies, there appears to have been no dominant
approach, but rather an investment of intense intellectual energy by varied
groups in configuring the appropriate relationships between life, death, and
divine justice. In its “sectarian” forms, early Judaism even reveals the awareness
that its varied theodicies could rival each other in their respective treatments of
the afterlife.
As the question of the afterlife was far from settled, this study further raises
the question of how believers in resurrection authenticated the controversial
claim. Not all references to resurrection provide a clear answer to this question.
Certainly, one does not find in the early Jewish evidence the kind of explicit
scriptural argumentation that would characterize later rabbinic Judaism and
Christianity. Nevertheless, the discourse of resurrection does possess more
subtle strands that expressed the hope in continuity with the language of earlier
tradition. A variety of texts express the hope in the language of the original
creation of heaven and earth, forging a basic harmony between the classic affir
mation of the deity’s creation of the world and the more emergent eschato-
logical claim of resurrection. The intertextual character of discourse about
resurrection illustrates the highly complex weave within which claims about
resurrection were also articulated in the language of earlier prophetic hopes.
Such language for resurrection has sometimes been interpreted as a clue to its
49 Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City,
N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967), 52, 53–80; see also Zygmunt Bauman, Mortality, Immortality and Other
Life Strategies (Stanford, C.A.: Stanford University Press, 1992), 4–5.
50 Isenberg, “Millenarism in Greco-Roman Palestine,” 27–28.
51 E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 bce–66 ce (London: SCM Press, 1992), 13–29.
52 Isenberg, “Millenarism in Greco-Roman Palestine,” 27–28.
53 Saldarini, Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees, 6.

16Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism
actual internal historical development from within Israelite tradition. Without
necessarily denying this possibility, however, the present study interprets these
intertextual features as forms of legitimation that affirmed the integrity of the
resurrection hope in continuity with earlier scriptures. In a context in which
beliefs about life after death were controversial and diverse, those who wrote
about resurrection frequently ennobled their discourse in the raiment of earlier,
more established theological and scriptural traditions.
The emergence of resurrection also transpired within an environment of a
variety of other discourses on death and the afterlife. Thus, it remains essen-
tial to contextualize resurrection by assessing evidence that pursues other
options. This includes attention to the vitality of belief in the immortality of
the soul, an awareness that was sometimes, but certainly not always, accom-
panied by belief in resurrection. Although the evidence is somewhat more
limited in range, this study also weighs the extent to which a total denial of
afterlife remained an appealing form of authentic Jewish theology through-
out the Second Temple period. Comparisons between the forms of legitimat-
ing resurrection and the deeper theological rationale for denying the afterlife
altogether highlight the diverse ways in which Jews considered the question
of death in relation to the creation, earlier scriptural traditions, and the prob-
lems of divine justice.
Even within this challenging context, the discourse of resurrection itself
took on a dazzling array of different forms and functions. An important impli-
cation of the very distribution of resurrection across a range of different literary
genres is that individual writings may describe the hope with varying levels of
denotative concreteness and connotative imagination. In the effort to envision
an unprecedented eschatological reality, those who wrote about resurrection
frequently utilized language at its empirical limits. One is not, therefore, sur-
prised to encounter tensions between an apocalyptic work, like Daniel, which
describes resurrection through an evasive array of prophecy, simile, and inter-
textual allusion—and an historical narrative like 2 Maccabees, which exhibits a
more concrete, even anatomical, concern for the physiology of resurrection. By
its very nature, the evidence challenges the modern scholar not only in terms
of varied eschatological conceptions, but also in relation to the particular liter-
ary techniques in which resurrection was described. Indeed, if Douglas and
Berger have correctly pointed to the significance of the body as a crucial symbol
for societies, then language about the body within literary texts may concern
far more than the precise physiology of death. Language for the body, its death,
and its afterlife may symbolically embrace a larger array of theological, social,
and rhetorical roles. Recognizing that resurrection comprised a complex dis-
course that was flexibly adapted to a wide range of literary works, this book
attempts to restore early Jewish texts on resurrection more fully within their
own distinct literary settings. Resurrection plays very distinct roles within each
of the literary works that expressed the hope. The scribal circles who wrote of

17Studying Resurrection Today
resurrection also accommodated their particular expressions of the hope to the
main conceptual themes and problems of the documents that they composed.
A significant portion of the present work, therefore, is devoted to assessing
the range of imagery and expectation in which Jews imagined resurrection.
Preference is given to literary works in which resurrection plays a prominent
role—especially Daniel, portions of 1 Enoch , two Dead Sea Scrolls that prom-
inently feature resurrection (Messianic Apocalypse , Pseudo-Ezekiel), 2 Maccabees,
4 Ezra, and 2 Baruch . Given the presence of resurrection in different literary
genres and cultural environments, two specific issues seem to have generated
the widest fluctuations in matters of detail. These include the varied modes of
embodiment in which Jews expressed resurrection and the ways in which they
positioned resurrection in relation to the spatial dimensions of the cosmos.
Resurrection illustrates how even particular and selective claims in early Jewish
theology, advanced by a relatively narrow range of groups, took on a variety of
diverse forms. Interpreters have sometimes criticized this feature of its theology
as vague,54 confused, or epigonic.55 Others have attempted to provide a more
harmonistic presentation that overarches the manifest plurality of expression.56
The present work, however, regards the diverse conceptions of resurrection
in early Judaism as themselves valuable windows into the prolific creativity of
early Jewish theologies. It takes seriously the contemporary recognition that
ancient Judaism existed throughout “a spectrum with many hues and blends, a
religious and cultural phenomenon influenced by the specifics of the Jews’ his-
torical circumstances and inseparable from their non-Jewish environment.”57
Resurrection tells the modern scholar an important story about the character
of Jewish thought within this environment. As it gained reception among dif-
ferent groups, resurrection itself came to be expressed in increasingly diverse
ways. Such diversity of expression need not be interpreted as a deficiency within
early Jewish theology, nor should harmonization necessarily provide too easy
an immediate solution. Rather, the diverse expressions of resurrection might
comprise a “sequence of variants,” in which religious awareness is elaborated in
variegated symbolic forms that differ relative to historical contingencies and
modes of experience.58 Abounding in repeated variation, corrective reinter -
pretation, intertextual allusion, and forms of legitimation, the ancient evidence
for resurrection illustrates how early Jewish thought seems to have placed few
limits on the ways in which the hope could be imagined. Instead, the very pro-
liferation of forms in which the controversial eschatological claim flourished
54 Sanders, Judaism, 298.
55 Wilhelm Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums im späthellenistischen Zeitalter, ed. H. Gressmann,
Handbuch zum Neuen Testament 21, 3rd edn. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1926), 298, 472.
56 Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 129, 143–47, 168–75, 181–86, 195; Bauckham, “Life,
Death, and the Afterlife,” 94.
57 Nickelsburg, Ancient Judaism and Christian Origins, 3.
58 Eric Voegelin, “Immortality: Experience and Symbol,” HTR 60 (1967): 266, 271–73.

18Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism
allowed for a high degree of adaptability to different movements and literary
works. Diversity and adaptability, in fact, seem to factor among the most sig-
nificant features that accelerated its reception and popularity among Jews in
antiquity.
With these general questions and assumptions in view, the book also includes
supporting chapters that examine particular domains of the evidence more
distinctly. These chapters serve to retain a deeper focus on the reception of
resurrection within particular literary traditions, while still viewing them com-
paratively upon a larger map. As there is now wide acceptance that the Enochic
Book of Watchers contains the earliest clear reference to resurrection in the
Hellenistic period, the form of resurrection described in this writing warrants
closer examination, as do the historical and theological implications that arise
from this recognition. The evidence for resurrection in the Dead Sea Scrolls
illustrates how the hope had begun to emerge somewhere on the periphery of
the eschatological concerns of those who preserved the scrolls, in ways that not
only shed light on the dynamic reception of resurrection across various move-
ments in Judaism, but also broaden the spectrum of literary imagination in
which Jews described resurrection. As Josephus is both necessary and prob-
lematic to any consideration of this topic, Chapter 9 demonstrates how his own
references to afterlife are conditioned by his ethnographic methods and con-
textual setting, which, properly understood, nevertheless yield some valuable
perspectives on resurrection itself.
While this study will not complete the journey, it is hoped that this treatment
will inform further discussions of the nascent rabbinic and early Christian
receptions of resurrection. Such later receptions are perhaps best viewed in
light of the current study within an evolutionary framework:59 certainly, there
remain significant continuities with tendencies that can be observed within
earlier Jewish theologies of resurrection; yet there are also new transformations
that distinguish the emerging rabbinic and early Christian approaches from
earlier tradition, as well as from one another.60 Their reactualizations of earlier
discourse were diverse and aggressive, making the lines of a clear linear devel-
opment out of earlier Judaism more challenging to draw. Nevertheless, the
relationships between creation and resurrection, as well as the intertextual char-
acter of language for resurrection, so ardently developed within early Jewish
literature, certainly had their own prominent revivifications in later tradition.
This study, thus, concludes with an assessment of both continuity and change
in the ongoing reinterpretation of resurrection in Mishnah Sanhedrin and in
the letters of Paul, as the theological heirs of early Judaism brought forth from
the treasuries of the past “things new and old” (Matt. 13:52).
59 Lawrence H. Schiffman, From Text to Tradition: A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic
Judaism (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav, 1991), 3–5, 13.
60 Segal, History of the Afterlife, 603–19.

2
Diversity
The extent of conceptual diversity challenges even the noblest attempts at
studying resurrection. Some interpreters, such as Richard Bauckham, argue
cogently for an overarching unity to the manifest plurality of conceptions:
“Most of the texts are thoroughly consistent with each other . . . images that
might not be fully consistent if taken entirely literally may nevertheless con-
verge in the impression they convey.”1 He further supports this view by demon-
strating how a variety of works reveal popular formulae for resurrection at least
as early as the first century ce.2 Some tension may be exhibited between “uni-
tary” and “dualistic” treatments of anthropology; yet on the whole, Jews
expected the whole person to be restored to life in the resurrection.3 One could
further add to Bauckham’s assessment the widespread intertextuality of lan-
guage from Isaiah 24–27, 65–66, and Ezekiel 37:1–14 as an additional factor that
remains consistent across many specimens of resurrection hope. Likewise,
N. T. Wright asserts a basic conceptual consistency across the breadth of early
Jewish evidence for resurrection. Most Jews widely accepted a “two-stage
eschatology” in which the dead would rest within “an interim state” until the
resurrection, which would restore a fully embodied life.4 From the perspectives
of Bauckham and Wright, Jewish thought on resurrection in the Hellenistic–
Roman eras was, therefore, relatively cohesive. In fact, one might even follow
their claims to the conclusion that resurrection was one of the more coherent
strands within early Jewish thought, meandering through movements that
were otherwise variegated and even in conflict.
1 Richard Bauckham, “Life, Death, and the Afterlife in Second Temple Judaism,” in Life in the
Face of Death: The Resurrection Message of the New Testament, ed. R. Longenecker (Grand Rapids,
M.I.: Eerdmans, 1998), 94.
2 Richard Bauckham, “Resurrection as Giving Back the Dead,” in Richard Bauckham, The Fate
of the Dead: Studies on the Jewish and Christian Apocalypses, NovTSup 93 (Leiden: Brill, 1998),
269–89.
3 Bauckham, “Resurrection as Giving Back the Dead,” 275–77.
4 N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God: Christian Origins and the Question of
God, vol. 3 (Minneapolis, M.N.: Fortress Press, 2003), 129–30, 143–47, 168–75, 181–86, 195,
203–205.

20Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism
The present chapter argues that, in spite of certain consistent features, the
varied “images” of resurrection ultimately express a significant range of con-
ceptual diversity. Some of the more formidable challenges within the evidence
arise from the ambiguity of particular expressions for resurrection, which are
often shaped by the “multivalent” character of apocalyptic language.5 The dis-
course of resurrection frequently mythologizes the destiny of the wicked and
the good with a sophisticated arsenal of cosmic and intertextual imagery, mak-
ing a precise understanding of what particular texts may say about resurrection
challenging. Amid such problems, there are also tensions among different writ-
ings in their respective treatments of embodiment and in the cosmic domain of
eschatological life. This range of diversity is not only significant for understand-
ing the varied shapes that resurrection would take in early Judaism; it is also
important for appreciating the different roles that the discourse of resurrection
would play within particular literary works. Resurrection illustrates very well
how early Judaism refracted even specialized concepts like resurrection into a
theological spectrum of considerable variety.
MODES OF EMBODIMENT
One of the more conspicuous fractures in the evidence concerns human
embodiment. Two issues, in particular, exhibit significant variation. One prob-
lem concerns how the sources treat the physical human remains of the deceased.
Are they explicitly included in the resurrection; and if so, then how? Later
Jewish liturgy would specify a revivification of “the corpses of the dead” (b. Ber.
60b).6 The early Christian apologists would frequently emphasize the material
“continuity”7 of “the same body” (Justin Martyr, First Apol . 8), as it passes from
death to resurrection.8 Yet earlier literature is often more ambiguous and varied
on whether and how human remains might participate in resurrection. The
other problem concerns the new form of embodiment that the resurrection life
would take. The range of options defies an easy categorization between “earthly”
and “heavenly” conceptions, as even more earthly conceptions may possess
new, transcendent features; and conceptions of heavenly transformation may
still retain certain features of bodily, even physical, existence. To make matters
5 John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature,
2nd edn. (Grand Rapids, M.I.: Eerdmans, 1998), 51–2; see also David S. Russell, “Apocalyptic
Imagery as Political Cartoon?” in After the Exile: Essays in Honour of Rex Mason, ed. J. Barton and
D. Reimer (Macon, G.A.: Mercer University Press, 1996), 191–92.
6 Cf. Midr. Lev. Rab. 18:1.
7 Caroline Walker Bynum, Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 6–7.
8 Cf. Tertullian, Res . 14; Apocryphon of Ezekiel.

21Diversity
more complex, language about the body within the literary works that feature
resurrection is not always concerned with pure physiology; the restoration
of life into embodied existence constitutes a powerful discourse that may be
utilized to address a much broader range of conceptual concerns.
Daniel
Uncertainty lingers over the particular form of existence implied in one of the
essential, landmark texts on resurrection, Daniel 12:1–3. In a passage that is
most frequently dated to the years of the Maccabean Revolt (167–164 bce),
Daniel’s compact resurrection prophecy leaves behind many unresolved ques-
tions. The prophecy has been characterized as “a flight of the imagination,”9
“tantalizingly vague,”10 or as possessing “an extraordinary thematic density”:11
Many of those who sleep in the land of dust shall awaken,
some to everlasting life and some to reproaches, to everlasting abhorrence.
But the wise shall shine like the shining of the firmament,
and those who turn the multitudes to righteousness,
like the stars forever and ever. (Dan. 12:2–3)
Many interpreters have read the passage as assuming a transformation of
deceased physical remains into a new state of existence.12 In this reading, the
body of the deceased is “sleeping in the land of dust,” from which it shall
“awaken” to its eschatological destiny. Daniel’s reliance upon the language of
earlier Isaianic prophecies (Isa. 26:19, 66:24),13 which reference the corpses of
the dead, might also imply an awakening of the physical body.14 Other readings
contest this view, arguing instead that the passage expresses no concern for the
body of the deceased.15 Daniel’s apparent reliance upon Isaiah 26:19 and 66:24
9 John E. Goldingay, Daniel , WBC 30 (Nashville, T.N.: Nelson, 1996), 306.
10 S. G. F. Brandon, The Judgment of the Dead: The Idea of Life after Death among the Major
Religions (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967), 66.
11 André Lacocque, The Book of Daniel, tr. D. Pellauer (Atlanta, G.A.: John Knox, 1979), 234.
12 George W. E. Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in Intertestamental
Judaism and Early Christianity, HTS 56, expanded edn. (Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University
Press, 2006), 38; Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven, C.T.: Yale University Press,
1995), 123; Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 109; H. C. C. Cavallin, Life after Death: Paul’s
Argument for the Resurrection of the Dead in 1 Cor. 15; Part 1, An Inquiry into the Jewish
Background, ConBNT 7 (Lund: Gleerup, 1974), 22.
13 H. L. Ginsberg, “The Oldest Interpretation of the Suffering Servant,” VT (2013): 25–28. This
article was originally written in 1953.
14 Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life (2006), 38; Cavallin, Life after
Death, 22, 27; Carol Newsom, Daniel: A Commentary, OTL (Louisville, K.Y.: Westminster/John
Knox Press, 2014), 364.
15 Adela Yarbro Collins, “Apotheosis and Resurrection,” in The New Testament and Hellenistic
Judaism, ed. P. Borgen and S. Giversen (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1995), 88.

22Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism
actually avoids the language of “corpses” found in those very texts. The prophecy
could, thus, envision a resurrection of the spirit/shade of the dead, rather than
a transformation of the deceased body.
While the prophecy is somewhat evasive on the fate of the deceased body, it
is at least allusive on the question of its future destiny. Raised from “the dust,”
the righteous will now enjoy everlasting life; and “the wise” will further shine
like the heavens, transformed into a new state that is comparable to the bril-
liance of the firmament and stars. It is possible that verse 3 marks a distinctly
exalted resurrection for “the wise,” the courageous teachers who have suffered
downfall in earlier stages of the vision (11:33–35).16 For many interpreters, the
star-like exaltation of “the wise” bears strong resemblance to ancient conceptions
of astral immortalization familiar to Greek, Roman, and Egyptian mythologies.17
If so, then resurrection involves a new and somehow transformed embodi-
ment, one that will be comparable to the stars.18 Even so, the prophecy main-
tains restraint in its use of astral imagery.19 Daniel presents such astral imagery
within a poetic simile that lacks a more direct equivalence between the risen
righteous and stars that one might compare with Greek cosmology,20 or with
other Jewish apocalyptic traditions.21 The stars are frequently a positive ideal
elsewhere in Daniel, associated with the deity and angels. Yet negative charac-
terizations were also possible (Deut. 4:19; 2 Kgs. 23:5; 1 En . 18:13–16, 21:1–6, chs.
86, 88).22 Daniel’s minimalist comparison may evade the dangers of too literal
an identification with the stars. Rather than a literal equivalency with the heavenly
bodies, Wright reads the imagery as language for the authoritative status that the
wise will obtain at the time of redemption.23 Thus, Daniel’s language of embodi-
ment may address the question of legitimate rule in the wake of Antiochus’
cultic transgressions, a major theme of the entire vision of Daniel 10:1–12:4.
Amid the uncertainties, it still seems plausible that Daniel presents this
exaltation in some kind of continuity with the deceased body. It is difficult, in
16 Newsom, Daniel, 364.
17 Ernst Sellin, “Die alttestamentliche Hoffnung auf Auferstehung und ewiges Leben,” NKZ 30
(1919): 261–63; Martin, The Corinthian Body , 118, 123; Stephen Bedard, “Hellenistic Influence on
the Idea of Resurrection in Jewish Apocalyptic Literature,” JGRChJ 5 (2008): 180–6.
18 Cavallin, Life after Death, 27.
19 Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God
of Life (New Haven, C.T.: Yale University Press, 2006), 90.
20 “I live in the stars of heaven, raised by my father”; Alberto Bernabé Pajares and Ana Isabel
Jiménez San Cristóbal, Instructions for the Netherworld: The Orphic Gold Tablets, tr. M. Chase,
Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 162 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 42–43. Cf. also Plato, Resp . 621b,
Tim. 42b; Franz Cumont, Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans (1912; New York:
Dover, 1960), 32–41.
21 E.g., 1 En. 104:2–6; 4 Ezra 7:97–98; 2 Bar . 48:50, 51:1–10; cf. Ps. Sol. 3:11–12; 1 En . 5:7, 38:4,
58:3.
22 Alan Scott, Origen and the Life of the Stars: A History of an Idea (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1991), 90–93; Mark Adam Elliott, “Origins and Functions of the Watchers Theodicy,” Henoch 24
(2002): 66–67.
23 Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God, 112–13.

23Diversity
fact, not to regard the imagery of “dust” (רפﬠ) in the passage as evoking the fate
of the human body and its decay within the earth.24 Within the larger context
of Daniel 10:1–12:4, that which sleeps “in the land of dust” is, in fact, the body of
the deceased wise teachers who have fallen “by the edge of the sword or (were)
burned or captured or plundered” in the preceding stages of the vision (11:33).
Such earlier reference to their physical death may anticipate the awakening of
their suffering bodies in the resurrection. Even if Daniel’s astral simile is some-
what restrained, their future embodiment is likely to be modeled on the ana
logy of an angelic, heavenly existence. As Daniel 8:10 directly associates angels
with the stars, the new celestial destiny of the righteous may also be understood
as somehow comparable with the existence of angelic beings. Collins, in par-
ticular, is convinced that the astral simile of the passage is “an apocalyptic
idiom for fellowship with the angels.”25
On this basis, one may conjecture that descriptions of angelic beings else-
where in Daniel might approximate the new form of embodiment the wise will
enjoy in the resurrection. Elsewhere in Daniel angelic beings resemble “men,”
yet also “look like a son of the gods” (Dan. 3:25, 28; 8:15). If the unnamed “man”
of Daniel’s vision in chapter 10 is also an angelic being (e.g., Gabriel), angels
may also “look like a man” (10:18), “dressed in linen, with a belt of fine gold from
Ophir around his waist. His body was like chrysolite, his face like the appearance
of lightning, his eyes like torches of fire, his arms and feet like the glance of
burnished bronze” (10:5–6).26 Such descriptions may imply that the eschato-
logical existence of the wise “like the stars” could still take the form of a glori-
fied human embodiment. Beyond such comparisons, however, it is difficult to
delve further into Daniel’s assumptions about the more precise characteristics
of the resurrected existence.
The Book of Watchers (1 En . 1–36)
Daniel’s brief prophecy has frequently appeared to interpreters as a formulaic,
minimalist summation of a hope that had already obtained a following in
apocalyptic circles prior to the Maccabean Revolt.27 This view may be confirmed
by the Enochic Book of Watchers, which Nickelsburg dates to a compositional
24 Gen. 2:7, 3:17–19, 18:27; Pss. 22:29, 30:9, 104:29; Job 10:9, 17:13–16, 20:11, 21:23–26;
Eccles. 12:7.
25 John J. Collins, Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel, Hermeneia (Minneapolis,
M.N.: Fortress Press, 1993), 318. On resurrection as angelic life, see, further, 1 En . 51:4, 2 Bar.
51:10–12; Wilhelm Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums im späthellenistischen Zeitalter, ed.
H. Gressmann, Handbuch zum Neuen Testament 21, 3rd edn. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1926), 277.
26 Trans. Collins, Daniel , 361.
27 R. H. Charles, A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life: In Israel, in Judaism, and in
Christianity; or Hebrew, Jewish, and Christian Eschatology from Pre-prophetic Times till the Close
of the New Testament Canon (London: A. & C. Black, 1913), 138.

24Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism
process that transpired throughout the third century bce.28 A fuller treatment
of this important expression of resurrection is provided in Chapter 7 of this
study; yet for the moment it will suffice to document how the work treats the
embodied features of the afterlife. Enoch’s cosmic tour, related in chapters
20–36, deals explicitly with the fate of the dead in two complementary visions
(1 En. 22:1–14 and 24:1–27:5).29 The former describes the immediate fate of “the
spirits” of all humans “until the great day of judgment” (22:4), while the latter
envisions the future judgment itself (25:3–7).30 The first vision forbids resur -
rection to some of the spirits of the wicked, who are imprisoned within a cos-
mic mountain until the judgment. Their spirits will be punished no further.
“Nor will they be raised from there” at the time of judgment (22:13). Stated
negatively, belief in a kind of resurrection is expressed by prohibiting this par-
ticular group from participation. The vision is entirely concerned with “the
spirits” (πνεύματα, חור in 4QEne) of the dead.31 Of course, “spiritual” existence
throughout the passage also involves characteristics that maintain some con-
tinuity with bodily life.32 For example, the spirits of the righteous experience
light and drink water (22:2, 9); some spirits endure pain and will experience
corporeal punishments (scourges, tortures, and bonds; 22:11).
In the ensuing vision of 1 Enoch 24:1–27:5, Watchers treats the judgment
itself, as Michael explains to Enoch the final destiny of the righteous:
And as for this fragrant tree, no flesh has the right to touch it until the great judg-
ment, in which there will be vengeance on all and a consummation forever.
Then it will be given to the righteous and the pious, and its fruit will be as food for
the chosen.
And it will be transplanted to the holy place, by the house of God, the King of
eternity.
Then they will rejoice greatly and be glad,
and they will enter into the sanctuary.
Its fragrance will be in their bones, and they will live a long life upon the earth,
such as your fathers lived also in their days, and torments and plagues and suffer-
ing will not touch them. (1 En . 25:4–6)33
While this vision does not literally portray a resurrection, it probably assumes
one, as it describes the final destiny of “the righteous,” whose spirits were pre-
viously held in an interim state in the vision of 22:1–14 “until the great judg-
ment.” Now that very judgment is described, both in terms of the righteous
28 George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1–36,
81–108, Hermeneia (Minneapolis, M.N.: Fortress Press, 2001), 293.
29 Cf. Marie-Theres Wacker, Weltordnung und Gericht: Studien zu 1 Henoch 22, FB 45
(Würzburg: Echter Verlag, 1982), 286.
30 Cf. Charles, Doctrine of a Future Life, 219–20.
31 Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 306. 32 Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 306.
33 Translation, Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 312.

25Diversity
(25:2–7) and the wicked (27:1–5). In the present context, there is no further
reference to “the spirits” of the righteous; instead, they appear to have been
restored to a fully embodied life in which they will physically eat paradisiac
fruit in an earth purified of wickedness. The fragrances of the tree of life will
literally be “in their bones,” allowing them “a long life upon the earth, such as
your fathers lived also in their days.” In this instance, Enoch’s vision of revital-
ized human embodiment grants assurance that an antediluvian humanity will
one day be restored beyond the present violence and corruption that character-
ize the Watchers’ tyrannical dominion (7:1–9:11).
The Epistle of Enoch (1 En . 91–108)
It is remarkable, given the influence of the Book of Watchers upon later units of
1 Enoch, that the later authors of the Enochic corpus envisioned resurrection in
moderately different terms.34 The Epistle of Enoch (1 En . 91–108) provides an
important illustration. The main discourses of the work (94:6–104:8) appear to
have been composed within the first third of the second century bce, thus pro-
viding an additional specimen that may also antedate Daniel.35 In an extended
unit of the Epistle (102:4–103:4), Enoch rhetorically addresses the righteous
who have died (102:4), consoling them and interpreting their unjust demise.
The Epistle presents the death of the suffering righteous as a separation of
spirit/soul (πνεῦμα, ψυχαί) from body.36 While the wicked rejoice over the
deceased body of the righteous, their spirit descends into Sheol in tribulation
(102:4–11). Enoch, however, consoles the dead with the promise of life: “they
will rejoice and be glad; and their spirits will not perish” (103:4). The Ethiopic
version is even more explicit: “their spirits which died in righteousness will
come back to life” (103:4);37 further, they “will shine as a light of heaven; you
will shine and be seen, and the gates of heaven will be opened to you” (104:2).38
Finally, the righteous are granted companionship “with the host of heaven”
(104:6), a further allusion to their celestial or even angelic destiny.39 Nowhere,
34 Pierre Grelot, “L’ eschatologie des Esséniens et le livre d’Hénoch,” RevQ 1 (1958–9): 122–23.
35 Loren T. Stuckenbruck, 1 Enoch 91–108, CEJL (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007), 9, 211–15;
Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 426–27; Randal A. Argall, 1 Enoch and Sirach: A Comparative Literary and
Conceptual Analysis of the Themes of Revelation, Creation and Judgment, SBLEJL 8 (Atlanta, G.A.:
Scholars Press, 1995), 7.
36 Greek references follow Frederic G. Kenyon, ed., The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri:
Descriptions and Texts of Twelve Manuscripts on Papyrus of the Greek Bible, Fasc. VIII: Enoch and
Melito (London: Oxford University Press/Emery Walker, 1941).
37 Stuckenbruck, 1 Enoch 91–108, 513.
38 Greek: “you will give light as lights of heaven, and you will shine; the gates of heaven will be
opened to you”; Stuckenbruck, 1 Enoch 91–108, 561.
39 Other passages may also allude to resurrection, yet are less certain (91:10, 92:3, 96:1–3).
For discussion, see Cavallin, Life after Death, 42–43; Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 415, 432–33;
Stuckenbruck, 1 Enoch 91–108, 293–94.

26Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism
however, does the Epistle register any concern for the fate of the body that has
been lost in death.40 As Nickelsburg comments, reference to “the body of your
flesh” (102:5), which endures suffering, is even contrasted with the “soul,” which
descends into Sheol at death and ultimately participates in resurrection.41 It is
this soul/spirit that is to be given new life by God at the judgment.42
Such a conception of spiritual resurrection may represent an interpretive
departure from the Book of Watchers. At least, it seems to be the case that the
Epistle may have crafted its conception of a spiritualized resurrection more on
the basis of chapter 22,43 which is also concerned with the “spirits” of the dead,
than on chapters 24–25, which celebrate the revitalized embodiment of the
righteous. Argall demonstrates, in fact, how the Epistle applies to “the souls of
the pious” (103:3–4) earlier Enochic language that had previously described the
revitalization of those who would “live a long life upon the earth” in the vision
of chapter 25:3–7.44 The Epistle also bears some resemblance to the celestial-
astral language of Daniel, yet develops such astral imagery with greater empha-
sis on the visible radiance of the righteous, as they enter the portals of heaven
(104:2). Accompanying this heavenly exaltation is also a more explicit claim
that they will enter into an angel-like status (104:6).45 The author’s distinctions
between body and spirit ultimately accentuate “the categorical separation”
between the present suffering of the righteous and their future heavenly glorifi-
cation.46 The diversity inherent within the larger Enochic corpus is further
expanded by the Similitudes (chs. 37–71), a unit of the work composed closer to
the turn of the eras. The Similitudes even guarantee future embodiment expli-
citly to those “destroyed by the desert,” “devoured by wild beasts,” “devoured by
fish of the sea” (61:5). Resurrection applies even to these unusual cases.
2 Maccabees
Further expanding the diverse modes of embodiment in our evidence, 2
Maccabees represents one of the most intensely physical understandings that
can be found in early Jewish literature. While its precise setting in the late second/
early first century bce remains uncertain,47 it illustrates the continued flourish -
ing of varied conceptions of resurrection. In an extended narrative (6:12–7:42),
40 Cavallin, Life after Death, 43–44. To the contrary, Edmund F. Sutcliffe, The Old Testament
and the Future Life, Bellarmine Series 8 (London: Burns, Oates, & Washbourne, 1946), 167.
41 Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 518–19; J. T. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of
Qumrân Cave 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 54; Stuckenbruck, 1 Enoch 91–108, 497–524.
42 Future judgment is also carried out upon “the spirits” of the wicked (1 En . 98:10).
43 Stuckenbruck, 1 Enoch 91–108, 204–11, 535; Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 307.
44 Argall, 1 Enoch and Sirach, 186–87. 45 Stuckenbruck, 1 Enoch 91–108, 569.
46 Stuckenbruck, 1 Enoch 91–108, 497.
47 On the dating, see Daniel R. Schwartz, who argues for an earlier dating, c.143/142 bce;
2 Maccabees, CEJL (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 11–15.

27Diversity
2 Maccabees conscientiously magnifies the resurrection as a re-creation of the
very same body that has died for the laws. This unit within the work is among
those that have been most frequently attributed to the epitomist who con-
densed the book into its present form (2:23) or to an original source reworked
by the epitomist.48 If so, the epitomist sought to accentuate resurrection in his
new rendition of the history of Jason of Cyrene. It offered a crucial complement
to the earlier historical narrative of the Maccabean martyrs.
Gruesome scenes of martyrdom highlight the narrative, in which the righteous
are vaporized, scalped, dismembered, and otherwise physically mutilated. Even
so, the martyrs profess their hope in a resurrection in which the very same mem-
bers of the body will be restored to them in a new and everlasting life (7:7, 9–11).49
In affirming such radically physical claims, 2 Maccabees draws upon creation
theology, envisioning the resurrection as a re-creation of the righteous martyrs. As
argued by their faithful mother, who watches these horrific executions:
[T]he creator of the cosmos, the one who shaped the origin of the human and
invented the origin of all things, shall restore breath and life to you again with mercy,
since now you disdain your very selves for the sake of his laws. (2 Maccabees 7:23)50
The drastic language of physical mutilation and restoration within the narra-
tive ultimately highlights the contrast between the law of the Greek king who
has power to destroy life and the law of the “creator of the cosmos” whose
power will restore life and breath through the resurrection (7:30). As the mar-
tyrs hope to receive life back again from God “with mercy” (7:23, 29, 37), the
language of resurrection further expresses the larger drama of divine wrath,
mercy, and national restoration that is central to 2 Maccabees (1:24; 2:7, 17–18;
6:12–17; 7:6; 8:5, 27–29; 10:4, 26; 11:9–10; 13:12). Their martyrdoms for the law
end the wrath that has come upon the nation (7:18, 32, 38); and their resurrec-
tion will affirm the promise of Deuteronomy 32:36: “he will have compassion
upon his servants” (2 Macc. 7:6, 33). One passage within the work may present
an alternative interpretation of the afterlife. As the martyr Eleazar dies, he
claims, “ ‘I endure these harsh sufferings in my body, but suffer them glad in
soul because of the fear of him.’ So in this way, he exchanged this life for another”
(2 Macc. 6:30–31).51 Robert Doran detects here the possible hint of a more
dualistic language of body and soul (cf. 14:38), as well as the hope of an
“exchange” into a new life immediately at death. Such language is also attested
for the immortalization of Graeco-Roman heroes (Isocrates, Archid. 17, Evag.
15).52 Perhaps this passage suggests some range of conceptions present even
within the book itself.
48 Schwartz, 2 Maccabees, 19–24. 49 Trans. NRSV.
50 Trans. revised from NRSV.
51 Trans. follows Robert Doran, 2 Maccabees: A Critical Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis,
M.N.: Fortress Press, 2012).
52 Greek: μεταλλάσσω; Doran, 2 Maccabees , 155; Schwartz, 2 Maccabees , 306, 488–89.

28Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism
Dead Sea Scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls contain few indisputable references to resurrection. This
problem is taken up in greater detail in Chapter 8 of this volume. Nevertheless,
the two writings that explicitly mention resurrection appear to reflect the
broader diversity of conceptions within Judaism in the second century bce.
The Messianic Apocalypse (4Q521) refers to resurrection as a “revivification” of
the righteous that will parallel the prophetic promises of Isaiah 51:14, 61:1–2,
and Psalms 146:5–9:
For he will heal the slain, and the dead he will cause to live, to the poor he will
bring glad tidings,
and the [low]ly he will satis[fy], he will lead forth the exiles, and the hungry he will
enrich . . . (4Q521 frgs. 2 II + 4 12–13)53
Since the new life coincides with a number of earthly hopes, including physical
healing, the feeding of the hungry, and the restoration of political exiles, there
is nothing to exclude the possibility that the resurrection will restore a func-
tioning bodily life to the dead—even if the writing does not provide further
detail. The redemption of the dead into a new form of embodied existence
offers consolation within the work that the deity will keep the divine promises
to the faithful, even across the chasm of death.
An explicitly physical resurrection is promised in Pseudo-Ezekiel, which rests
heavily upon the literal language of the prophet’s famous vision in Ezekiel 37:1–14.
The author’s creative rewriting of the vision unifies the “bones,” “tendons,” and
“breath” into a restored human embodiment. Thus, at the resurrection, “a great
host of men came to life and blessed the lord of Hosts, wh[o caused them to
live” (4Q385 frg. 2, lines 8–9). In contrast to its source in Ezekiel 37, the author
of Pseudo-Ezekiel provides no political interpretation of the vision; instead, his
rendition concerns the personal destiny of the suffering righteous. Relying on
the explicitly physical imagery of Ezekiel, a future resurrection of the righteous
to bodily life resolves the paradox of innocent suffering and ensures Israel’s
eschatological restoration. Other portions of Pseudo-Ezekiel seem, further, to
envision a series of terrestrial eschatological hopes in which the risen righteous
will participate, including the restoration of land to Israel (frg. 3).
4 Ezra/2 Baruch
Even as resurrection played important roles within the theodicies of writings
composed within the Hellenistic era, it continued to do so within the Jewish
53 Translation follows Émile Puech, Qumran Cave 4.XVIII: Textes hébreux (4Q521–4Q528,
4Q576–4Q579), DJD 25 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 10–11.

29Diversity
apocalypses composed after Rome’s triumph in the Great Revolt. Resurrection
and eschatological life highlight select moments of the complex theological
dialogues that are undertaken within 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch . Each of these works,
in its own way, also illustrates how concerns over embodiment became integral
to their own explorations of divine justice. One of the major angelic discourses
in 4 Ezra is explicitly designated “on death” (7:78; ܐܬܘܡ ܠܥ, de morte). While
other portions of the document (4:42, 7:32, 14:34–35) also reference a future
eschatological resurrection, the principal concern of this extended teaching
“on death” is to provide assurance that divine justice will immediately await the
righteous and wicked at death. The teaching emerges in response to Ezra’s own
perplexity over divine justice, in particular, his uncertainty over whether judg-
ment will happen in the more distant eschatological future or immediately at
death (7:75). In the ensuing response, the righteous and wicked will immedi-
ately pursue a sevenfold path after death, in which divine justice is carried out
upon the soul in a preliminary way. For the righteous, who have kept the law
faithfully, this journey will culminate in the transformation of their spirit and
their ultimate vision of the deity:
The sixth order, when it is shown to them how their face is to shine like the sun,
and how they are to be made like the light of the stars, being incorruptible from
then on. The seventh order, which is greater than all that have been mentioned,
because they shall rejoice with boldness, and shall be confident without confusion,
and shall be glad without fear, for they hasten to behold the face of him whom they
served in life and from whom they are to receive their reward when glorified.
(4 Ezra 7:97–98)54
This unit of 4 Ezra self-consciously ascribes afterlife to “the spirit” or “soul”
(anima, 7:78( ) ܐܬܡܫܢ). At the apex of the soul’s paths beyond life is its ultimate
transformation, so that its “countenance shall begin to shine like the sun”
(incipiet vultus eorum fulgere sicut sol), and “they shall begin to resemble the
light of the stars” (incipient stellarum adsimilari lumini ; 7:97).55 Spiritual life,
thus, still maintains some continuity with material features of the body, pos-
sessing a “face” (vultus ) and visibly shining like the heavenly bodies. This
expectation resonates well with astral imagery found in Daniel and the Epistle
of Enoch.
This discourse on the immediate fate of the soul at death is complemented
elsewhere in 4 Ezra with hopes of a future eschatological resurrection, as the
earth returns the dead: “And the earth shall return those who sleep within her;
and the dust, those who dwell in silence within it; and the chambers shall return
54 Translation: Michael E. Stone, Fourth Ezra: A Commentary on the Book of Fourth Ezra, ed.
F. Cross, Hermeneia (Minneapolis, M.N.: Fortress Press, 1990), 237.
55 Latin citations follow Robert A. Bensly, The Fourth Book of Ezra, Texts and Studies,
Contributions to Biblical and Patristic Literature 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1895).

30Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism
the souls that have been committed to them” (7:32). Reading each line of 7:32 as
synonymous parallelism, the passage may envision a “spiritual resurrection,” in
which the souls (animae , ܐܬ
ܵ
ܫܦܢ) of the deceased are raised out of the earth
without particular concern for the deceased body. On the other hand, reading
the lines as a complementary expression of distinct realms for particular human
remains, the passage may imply that the bodies housed in the earth and dust
will be reunited with the spirits preserved in the “chambers” of souls.56 If so, then
resurrection will involve both the physical and spiritual remains of humans.
This seems a reasonable interpretation of the passage, especially since the lan-
guage of the earth “giving back” the remains of the dead in other literature pres-
ents a reconstitution of the whole person (cf. 2 Bar . 50:2–4).57 On the whole,
however, 4 Ezra is far more substantially invested in the immediate fate of
the spirit at death (7:75–101); further details regarding the redemption of the
deceased physical body appear to have represented a less urgent priority. The
brief resurrection prophecy of 7:32 seems to offer a longer-term vision of final
revivification beyond the author’s more immediate preoccupation with the
present destiny of the soul.
Like 4 Ezra, its contemporary apocalypse, 2 Baruch also contains its own
dialogue on the fate of the dead (2 Bar . 49–52); yet 2 Baruch specifically
addresses the more specialized question of “the form” in which the wicked and
righteous will live in the afterlife:58 “In what likeness will the living live in your
day?” (2 Bar . 49:2). Thus, Baruch’s question about the afterlife differs from that
of Ezra. The divine answer offers a sophisticated concern for the “shape” of the
dead:
For the earth shall then assuredly restore the dead, which it now receives, in order
to preserve them. It shall make no change in their form, but as it has received,
so shall it restore them, and as I delivered them unto it, so also shall it raise them.
(2 Bar. 50:2–3)59
Initially, 2 Baruch insists on the redemption and judgment of the same body
that has entered into the earth.60 One may assume that this initial phase of
resurrection is, therefore, a mirror image of the body prior to death.61 The pur -
pose of this emphasis upon a reciprocal form of embodiment is apparently that
56 Stone seems to prefer this option, Fourth Ezra, 219.
57 Bauckham, “Resurrection as Giving Back the Dead,” 278–80.
58 Liv Ingeborg Lied, “Recognizing the Righteous Remnant? Resurrection, Recognition and
Eschatological Reversals in 2 Baruch 47–52,” in Metamorphoses: Resurrection, Body and Trans
formative Practices in Early Christianity, ed. T. Karlsen Seim and J. Økland (Berlin: de Gruyter,
2009), 317.
59 Trans. APOT 2:508.
60 Cf. Tanḥ A Wayiggash 104b; C. G. Montefiore and H. Loewe, A Rabbinic Anthology
(Philadelphia, P.A.: Jewish Publication Society, 1960), 593. Cf. also b. Sanh . 91b: “They shall rise
with their defects and then be healed.”
61 Lied, “Recognizing the Righteous Remnant?” 322.

31Diversity
the dead must be personally identified for justice.62 If so, the language of
embodiment in the afterlife has become an important literary vehicle for the
author’s affirmation of divine justice. Once identified, however, this body will
undergo even further transformation:
And it shall come to pass, when that appointed day has gone by, that the shape of
those who are condemned will be changed, and the glory of those who are justi-
fied. For the shape of those who now act wickedly shall become worse than it is, as
they shall suffer torment. Also the glory of those who have now been justified in
my law, who have had understanding in their life, and who have planted in their
heart the root of wisdom, then their splendor shall be glorified in transformations,
and the form of their face shall be turned into the light of their beauty, that they
may be able to acquire and receive the world which does not die, which is prom-
ised to them. (2 Bar . 51:1–3)63
Even the initial form of the risen body will itself be further “transformed”
(ܐܦܠܚܬܡ) into greater glory. For the righteous, who have kept the law, this new
form will take on the luminous features of angelic life (51:5); the righteous will
be “equal to the stars” (51:10), even greater in excellence than the angels them-
selves (51:12). In this case, 2 Baruch shares with Daniel and the Epistle of
1 Enoch a celestial and angelic model for the risen life; yet such beliefs in 2
Baruch insist more literally on both astral and angelic embodiment.64 Moreover,
51:12 suggests further transformation into an existence even greater than that of
angels.65 What is perhaps most surprising about 2 Baruch is that the demands
of justice require something more than simply a bodily resurrection; instead,
resurrection inaugurates a process of celestial transformation for participation
in a transcendent world.66 Thus, resurrection of the body itself is merely “an
intermediary phase before the ultimate goal, which is a transformed reality.”67
This treatment of resurrection may provide an interesting comparison with its
contemporary apocalypse, 4 Ezra, which emphasized the immediate trans-
formation of the soul at death, followed eventually by an eschatological resur-
rection. For 2 Baruch , however, that order is somewhat reversed: an initial
eschatological resurrection will inaugurate further transformations into a tran-
scendent world. The two works also pursue different questions about the after-
life itself, with Ezra questioning the timing of postmortem judgment and
Baruch inquiring about the form of eschatological life.
62 Charles, Doctrine of a Future Life, 334–35. 63 Trans. revised from APOT 2:508.
64 Martin, The Corinthian Body, 118.
65 On this point, see Pierre Bogaert, Apocalypse de Baruch: Introduction, Traduction du
Syriaque et Commentaire, Sources Chrétiennes 144, 2 vols. (Paris: Cerf, 1969), 2:95.
66 Bogaert, Apocalypse de Baruch, 1:419.
67 Outi Lehtipuu, “Biblical Body Language: The Spiritual and the Bodily Resurrection,” in
Anthropology in the New Testament and Its Ancient Context: Papers from the EABS-Meeting in
Piliscsaba/Budapest, ed. M. Labahn and O. Lehtipuu, Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and
Theology 54 (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 158.

32Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism
LANDSCAPES OF REDEMPTION
Resurrection ultimately concerned more than bodies in early Judaism.
Individual writings invest significant attention in how death, the afterlife, and
human existence stand within the larger spatial arena of creation. This is espe-
cially the case for apocalyptic thought, which frequently locates human
redemption within the mysteries of the entire cosmos.68 Much of the literary
evidence, in fact, expresses resurrection, not so much in specific claims about
embodiment, but rather in the spatial transference of existence from one cos-
mic realm into another. Some interpreters have utilized the language of “this-
worldly” and “other-worldly” characteristics to categorize the diversity of the
evidence.69 Yet it seems more fitting to recognize that the heavens, the earth,
and other cosmic domains play an integrated and interactive role within cre-
ation. Resurrection frequently transports the dead from and to a variety of
spatial realms, in which the deity has already preconfigured justice into the
very structures of the creation.
Daniel
Again, Daniel’s resurrection prophecy presents several ambiguities in its use of
cosmic imagery. Some interpreters have argued that Daniel 12:1–3 ultimately
envisions a resurrection of the righteous back to life upon the earth.70 By con-
trast, Daniel’s heavenly imagery may imply a celestial destiny. If the author
locates the risen body in association with the “stars” and “firmament” of 12:3,
then it appears that the risen life may be lived out within the company of the
heavenly bodies and angelic hosts. The poetic parallelism of Daniel’s prophecy,
in fact, expresses the resurrection as an exaltation from the cosmic realm of
“dust” (רפﬠ־תמדא) (12:2) to a mode of existence comparable to that of the “firma-
ment” and “stars” (12:3). While Daniel 7–12 is hardly counted among the more
cosmically oriented apocalypses in early Judaism, the work still transpires
within a cosmic background that exerts itself vividly in the resurrection proph-
ecy and in other crucial scenes. The use of Daniel’s cosmic imagery elsewhere
68 Ulrich Luck, “Das Weltverständnis in der jüdischen apokalyptik Dargestellt am äthiopis-
chen Henoch und am 4 Esra,” ZTK 73 (1976): 285–8; Christopher Rowland, The Open Heaven:
A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 80–84;
Carol A. Newsom, “The Development of 1 Enoch 6–19: Cosmology and Judgment,” CBQ 42
(1980): 310–29.
69 Charles, Doctrine of a Future Life, 247–50; cf. Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline
of Interpretive Sociology, ed. G. Roth and C. Wittich (Berkeley, C.A.: University of California Press,
1978), 526–27.
70 Robert Goldberg, “Bound Up in the Bond of Life: Death and Afterlife in the Jewish
Tradition,” in Death and Afterlife: Perspectives of World Religions, ed. H. Obayashi, Contributions
to the Study of Religion 33 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992), 104.

33Diversity
may help to illumine his comparisons between the resurrected wise and the
stars of heaven. The vision of Daniel 7 is the paramount example of the author’s
utilization of cosmic imagery.71 The four beasts arise from “the great sea,” as it
is agitated by “the four winds of heaven” (7:2–3). The Ancient One’s throne
appears amid a “river of fire” within which the fourth beast is destroyed (7:9–10).
Such imagery within the work places the political activities of kings and empires
on a more vast cosmic and mythological scale.72
This characteristic of Daniel’s cosmic imagery is well illustrated in the “Little
Horn,” whose wars against the holy ones and the heavens occupy the two visions
of chapters 7–8. Among the cosmic powers exerted by the “Little Horn,” in fact, is
his violation of the heavens: he “grew great up to the host of heaven, and threw
down some of the host and some of the stars to the earth and trampled on them”
(8:10). Here, Antiochus’ cultic innovations are mythologically (cf. Isa. 14:12–15)
represented in terms of their ramifications throughout the cosmos, disrupting
the proper configuration of the heavens.73 In the corresponding interpretation of
the vision, it appears that “the host and some of the stars” correspond with “the
mighty, the holy people” whom Antiochus will “destroy” (8:24), as he prepares to
“rise up against the Prince of Princes” (v. 25). The correspondence between the
vision (8:10) and its interpretation (8:24) would suggest that the fallen powers are
angelic or possibly legitimate human rulers—or even some combination of the
two.74 This passage (8:10) is important for understanding the astral imagery of
Daniel’s resurrection prophecy, because it is the last place in the book (prior to
12:1–3) where the visions directly address the configuration of the heavens.
As the apocalypse of Daniel 10:1–12:4 elaborates upon many of the same con-
cerns found in the vision of chapter 8,75 one may appreciate how the resurrec-
tion prophecy of Daniel 12:1–3 resolves the problem of the configuration of the
heavens. The resurrection restores righteous authorities into the heavens, yet
this time in the form of the wise teachers, whose exaltation out of the dust now
compensates for the fallen heavenly powers.76 In fact, the language of the
prophecy in 12:1–3 reverses the cosmic defeat of the heavenly powers (8:10).
Where “some of the host” of heaven and “some of the stars” have been “thrown
down . . . to the earth . . . and trampled” by Antiochus (8:10), the resurrection
71 Richard J. Clifford, “History and Myth in Daniel 10–12,” BASOR 220 (1975): 23–26; Russell,
“Apocalyptic Imagery as Political Cartoon?” 195.
72 Collins, Daniel, 289.
73 Choon-Leong Seow, Daniel , Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville, K.Y.: Westminster
John Knox Press, 2003), 122.
74 Seow, Daniel, 131; Goldingay, Daniel , 209–10.
75 On the relationships between Daniel 8 and 10:1–12:4, see further, Collins, Daniel , 377;
Clifford, “History and Myth in Daniel 10–12,” 23–26; Matthias Henze, “The Use of Scripture in the
Book of Daniel,” in A Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism, ed. M. Henze (Grand
Rapids, M.I.: Eerdmans, 2012), 280; Gabriele Boccaccini, Roots of Rabbinic Judaism: An Intellectual
History, From Ezekiel to Daniel (Grand Rapids, M.I.: Eerdmans, 1992), 189.
76 Cf. Seow, Daniel , 17, 188.

34Resurrection of the Dead in Early Judaism
prophecy exalts “many of those who sleep in the land of dust,” so that they
“shine like the shining of the firmament . . . like the stars forever and ever” (12:2, 3).
One could also read the exaltation of the wise as a reversal of Antiochus’ own
failed ascent into the heavens (8:9–12, 23–25; cf. Isa. 14:12–14). While 8:10–12
associates the fall of the heavenly powers with the decline of “truth,” the resur-
rection will reinaugurate the righteous instruction of the wise in their newly
exalted position. Through their resurrection, the wise are reintegrated into a
new position of dominion within the world.77 In this sense, Daniel’s astral
imagery may have less to do with a particular conception of embodiment in the
resurrection and more to do with the exalted status that the wise will be given
within the cosmos at the end of days.
The Book of Watchers (1 En . 1–36)
Cosmic landscapes play a central role in the visions that conclude the Book of
Watchers (1 En. 20–36). In the brief passage that denies an apparent resurrec-
tion to some of the wicked dead, resurrection is expressed as a transference of
the spirits of the dead from one cosmic locale to another: “nor shall they be
raised from there” (1 En . 22:13). Enoch’s vision of the dead describes a western
mountain, in which “the spirits of the dead” have been divided into a complex
series of four categories, “until the time of the day of the end of the great judg-
ment, which will be exacted from them” (22:4):
From there I traveled to another place. And he showed me to the west a great and
high mountain of hard rock. And there were four hollow places in it, deep and very
smooth. Three of them were dark and one, illuminated; and a fountain of water
was in the midst of it. (1 En . 22:1)78
The great mountain with its apparent caves/pits for the dead has been likened
to a necropolis for all humanity.79 Moreover, the darkness of the pits may recall
traditional images of Sheol,80 even if this feature of the mountain has been
mercifully suspended for the righteous, who are further separated from the
wicked by a fountain and light (22:1, 9). The mountain also recalls Babylonian
Mount Mashu (Gilgamesh Epic , Tablet IX), which descends into the under-
world in the west.81 Raphael’s interpretation of the geography makes it certain
77 Cf. Clifford, “History and Myth in Daniel 10–12,” 26.
78 Translation, Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 300.
79 Wacker, Weltordnung, 133–39; Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 304.
80 Job 10:19–21; Pss. 49:14–20, 88:1–6; cf. also 1 En. 103:7–8. Bauckham uses the term Sheol
for the mountain; Richard Bauckham, “Early Jewish Visions of Hell,” in The Fate of the Dead, 53;
cf. Brandon, Judgment of the Dead, 68.
81 Pierre Grelot, “La géographie mythique d’Hénoch et ses sources Orientales,” RB 65 (1958):
55–60. Cf. also Canaanite analogies in Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, The Riddle of Resurrection: “Dying
and Rising Gods” in the Ancient Near East, Coniectanea Biblica Old Testament Series 50

35Diversity
that confinement in the pits of the mountain is universal: “For this very (pur-
pose) they were created, (that) here the souls of all the sons of men should be
gathered” (22:3–4).82 In its vivid description of the immediate destiny of the
dead, the vision of chapter 22 has frequently been recognized as the earliest
Jewish text to exhibit a fully developed conception of an interim state.83
Raphael continues to clarify that the great mountain temporarily houses the
spirits in categories that differ according to their ethical qualities during life
(22:8–14). In terms of the present form of the text, the vision introduces four
distinct zones. Three are dark and confine the spirits of the wicked; the other is
illuminated and houses the spirits of the righteous. For one group (those who
escaped justice within their own lifetime), the vision declares current torment
upon their spirits in the mountain pit, until the judgment (22:10): “Here their
spirits are separated for this great torment, until the great day of judgment.”
This present locale, however, is temporary; and the ensuing description of their
final destiny alludes to their eventual seclusion somewhere else: “There he will
bind them forever.” The spatial relationships between “here” and “there” in the
passage may suggest a translocation at the future judgment.84 Two possible
candidates for their future location may be identified. If “there” is an allusion to
the earlier binding of the Watchers and the wicked (10:11–14, cf. 21:7–10), then
perhaps the reference is to the fiery abyss described in that earlier context.85 Or
the passage may anticipate the Valley of Hinnom, as described in the ensuing
vision of 26:3–27:4.86 Yet in either case the passage envisions a transference of
the spirits of this group out of the mountain of the dead for final judgment.87 A
second group that was murdered during the days of wickedness is also housed
within the mountain; their fate is unspecified. Finally, a third wicked group is
identified as the godless companions of the lawless. This group will not be pun-
ished further. They are also explicitly forbidden any type of resurrection out of
their present spatial context (22:13).
The vision of chapter 22 certainly resolves the question of justice for the
wicked, but it leaves open the matter of final justice for “the spirits of the right-
eous.” This shortcoming is addressed in the visions of chapters 24–25, which
describe the judgment itself and the final redemption of the righteous.88 As
Enoch’s cosmic itinerary shifts away from the western mountain and toward
the northwest, he beholds the configuration of the deity’s enthronement upon
(Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001), 61. Cf. also “the Mount of Targhuzizza . . . the Mount of
Tharumegi” (ANET 1:135).
82 4QEne: אשנא ינב לכ ת[שפנ. Trans. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 300.
83 Wacker, Weltordnung, 30.
84 Wacker, Weltordnung, 197–99; Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 308; Bauckham, “Early Jewish Visions
of Hell,” 53.
85 Wacker, Weltordnung, 197–99; Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 308.
86 Bauckham, “Early Jewish Visions of Hell,” 53.
87 Likewise, Charles, Doctrine of a Future Life, 219. 88 Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 314.

Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content

2640. Again from Publilius Syrus, Sent. 189 (ed. Dietrich):—'Fortuna
uitrea est; tum quum splendet frangitur.'
2642. Seur (E. sure) and siker are mere variants of the same word;
the former is O. F. seur, from Lat. acc. secūrum; the latter is from
Lat. sécŭrus, with a different accentuation and a shortening of the
second vowel. We also have a third form, viz. secure.
2645. Again from Publ. Syrus, Sent. 173:—'Fortuna nimium quem
fouet, stultum facit.'
2650. From Rom. xii. 19; cf. Deut. xxxii. 35, Ps. xciv. 1.
2653. From Publ. Syrus, Sent. 645:—'Veterem ferendo iniuriam
inuites nouam.'
2655. Holden over lowe, esteemed too low, too lightly.
2656. From Publ. Syrus, Sent. 487:—'Patiendo multa [al. inulta]
eueniunt [al. ueniunt] quae nequeas pati.' Mowe suffre, be able to
endure. For mowe, Wright wrongly prints nowe; MS. Hl. has mowe,
correctly.
2663. From Caecilii Balbi Sententiae, ed. Friedrich, 1870, no. 162:
—'Qui non corripit peccantem gnatum, peccare imperat.'
2664. 'And the judges and sovereign lords might, each in his own
land, so largely tolerate wicked men and evil-doers,' &c. Lat. text:
—'si multa maleficia patiuntur fieri.'
2667. Let us now putte, let us suppose; Fr. text—'posons.' A more
usual phrase is 'putte cas,' put the case; cf. note to 2681.
2668. As now, at present; see 2670.
2671. From Seneca, De Ira, ii. 34, § 1:—'Cum pare contendere,
anceps est; cum superiore, furiosum; cum inferiore, sordidum.'

2675. From Prov. xx. 3.
2678. From Publilius Syrus, Sent. 483:—'Potenti irasci sibi periclum
est quaerere.'
2679. From Dion. Cato, Dist. iv. 39:—
'Cede locum laesus Fortunae, cede potenti;
Laedere qui potuit, aliquando prodesse ualebit.'
2681. Yet sette I caas, but I will suppose; Fr. text—'posons,' as in
2667 above.
2684. First and foreward; Fr. text—'premierement.' See note to 2431
above.
2685. The poete; Fr. text, 'le poete.' Not in the Latin text, and the
source of the quotation is unknown. Cf. Luke, xxiii. 41.
2687. Seint Gregorie. Not in the Lat. text; source unknown.
2692. From 1 Pet. ii. 21.
2700. Referring to 2 Cor. iv. 17.
2702. From Prov. xix. 11, where the Vulgate has:—'Doctrina uiri per
patientiam noscitur.'
2703. From Prov. xiv. 29, where the Vulgate has:—'Qui patiens est
multa gubernatur prudentia.'
2704. From Prov. xv. 18.
2705. From Prov. xvi. 32.
2707. From James, i. 4:—'Patientia autem opus perfectum habet.'
2713. Corage, desire, inclination; cf. E. 1254.

2715. The Fr. text is fuller: 'et si ie fais un grant exces, car on dit que
exces n'est corrige que par exces, c'est a dire que oultrage ne se
corrige fors que par oultrage.'—Mr. Perhaps part of the clause has
been accidentally omitted, owing to repetition of 'exces.'
2718. 'Quid enim discrepat a peccante, qui se per excessum nititur
uindicare?'—Cassiodorus, Variarum lib. i. epist. 30.
2721. Lat. text:—'ait enim Seneca, Nunquam scelus scelere
uindicandum.' Not from Seneca; Sundby refers us to Martinus
Dumiensis, De Moribus, S. 139.
2723. Withouten intervalle ... delay; the Fr. text merely has 'sans
intervalle.' Chaucer explains the word intervalle.
2729. 'Qui impatiens est sustinebit damnum'; Prov. xix. 19.
2730. Of that that, in a matter that.
2731. Lat. text (p. 95):—'Culpa est immiscere se rei ad se non
pertinenti.' Sundby refers us to the Digesta, l. xvii. 36.
2732. From Prov. xxvi. 17.
2733. Outherwhyle, sometimes, occasionally; cf. 2857. So in Ch. tr.
of Boethius, bk. iii. pr. 12. 119 (vol. ii. p. 89); P. Plowman, C. vi. 50,
vii. 160, xxii. 103, &c.
2740. From Ecclesiastes, x. 19:—'pecuniae oboediunt omnia.'
2741. All the copies have power; but, as Mätzner remarks, we
should read poverte; the Fr. text has povrete.
2743. Richesses ben goode; the Lat. text here quotes 1 Tim. iv. 4.
2744. 'Homo sine pecunia est quasi corpus sine anima' is written on
a fly-leaf of a MS.; see my Pref. to P. Plowman, C-text, p. xx.

2746. All the MSS. have Pamphilles instead of Pamphilus. The
allusion is to Pamphilus Maurilianus, who wrote a poem, well-known
in the fourteenth century, entitled Liber de Amore, which is extant in
MSS. (e.g. in MS. Bodley 3703) and has been frequently printed.
Tyrwhitt cites the lines here alluded to from the Bodley MS.
'Dummodo sit diues cuiusdam nata bubulci,
Eligit e mille, quem libet, illa uirum.'
Sundby quotes the same (with ipsa for illa) from the Paris edition of
1510, fol. a iiii, recto. Chaucer again refers to Pamphilus in F. 1110,
on which see the note.
2748. This quotation is not in the Latin text, and is certainly not from
Pamphilus; but closely follows Ovid's lines in his Tristia, i. 9. 5:—
'Donec eris felix, multos numerabis amicos;
Tempora si fuerint nubila, solus eris.'
See notes to B. 120 and B. 3436.
2751. Neither is this from Pamphilus, but from some author quoted
by Petrus Alfonsi, Discip. Cler. vi. 4, who says:—'ait quidam
uersificator, Clarificant [al. Glorificant] gazae priuatos nobilitate.'
2752. We know, from the Lat. text, that there is here an allusion to
Horace, Epist. i. 6. 37:—
'Et genus et formam regina pecunia donat.'
2754. The Lat. text has mater criminum, and the Fr. text, mere des
crimes. It is clear that Chaucer has misread ruines for crimes, or his
MS. was corrupt; and he has attempted an explanation by subjoining
a gloss of his own—'that is to seyn ... overthrowinge or fallinge
doun.' The reference is to Cassiodorus, Variarum lib. ix. epist. 13:
—'Ut dum mater criminum necessitas tollitur, peccandi ambitus
auferatur.'

2756. 'Est una de aduersitatibus huius saeculi grauioribus libero
homini, quod necessitate cogitur, ut sibi subueniat, requirere
inimicum'; Petrus Alfonsi, Disciplina Clericalis, iv. 4.
2758. Lat. text:—'O miserabilis mendicantis conditio! Nam, si petit,
pudore confunditur; et si non petit, egestate consumitur; sed ut
mendicet necessitate compellitur'; Innocentius III (Papa), De
Contemptu Mundi, lib. i. c. 16. See note to B. 99, at p. 142.
2761. 'Melius est enim mori quam indigere'; Ecclus. xl. 29; cf. A. V.,
Ecclus. xl. 28. See note to B. 114, at p. 142.
2762. 'Melior est mors quam uita amara'; Ecclus. xxx. 17. The Fr.
text has:—'Mieulx vault la mort amere que telle vie'; where, as in
Chaucer, the adjective is shifted.
2765. How ye shul have yow, how you ought to behave yourself. In
fact, behave is merely a compound of be- and have.
2766. Sokingly, gradually. In the Prompt. Parv. we find 'Esyly, or
sokyngly, Sensim, paulatim.' And compare the following:—'Domitius
Corbulo vsed muche to saie, that a mannes enemies in battaill are to
be ouercomed (sic) with a carpenters squaring-axe, that is to saie,
sokingly, one pece after another. A common axe cutteth through at
the first choppe; a squaring-axe, by a little and a little, werketh the
same effecte.'—Udall, tr. of Erasmus' Apophthegmes, Julius Caesar, §
32.
2768. From Prov. xxviii. 20.
2769. From Prov. xiii. 11.
2773. Not in the Latin text.
2775. 'Detrahere igitur alteri aliquid, et hominem hominis
incommodo suum augere commodum, magis est contra naturam,
quam mors, quam paupertas, quam dolor, quam cetera, quae

possunt aut corpori accidere aut rebus externis'; Cicero, De Officiis,
iii. 5.
2779. 'For idleness teacheth much evil'; Ecclus. xxxiii. 27.
2780. From Prov. xxviii. 19; cf. xii. 11.
2783. Cf. Prov. xx. 4.
2784. From Dionysius Cato, Distich. i. 2:—
'Plus uigila semper, nec somno deditus esto;
Nam diuturna quies uitiis alimenta ministrat.'
2785. Quoted again in G. 6, 7; see note to G. 7.
2789. Fool-large, foolishly liberal; Fr. text, 'fol larges.' Cf. 2810.
2790. Chincherye, miserliness, parsimony; from the adj. chinche,
which occurs in 2793. Chinche, parsimonious, miserly, is the
nasalised form of chiche; see Havelok, 1763, 2941; and see Chinch
in the New E. Dictionary. To the examples there given add:—'A
Chinche, tenax: Chinchery, tenacitas'; Catholicon Anglicum.
'But such an other chinche as he
Men wisten nought in all the londe.'
Gower, Conf. Amant. ii. 288.
2792. From Dionysius Cato, Distich. iv. 16:—
'Utere quaesitis opibus; fuge nomen auari;
Quo tibi diuitias, si semper pauper abundas?'
2795. From Dionysius Cato, Distich. iii. 22:—
'Utere quaesitis, sed ne uidearis abuti;
Qui sua consumunt, quum deest, aliena sequuntur.'

2796. Folily, foolishly. We find M. E. folliche, both adj. and adv., and
follichely, folily as adv. It is spelt folily in Wycliffe, Num. xii. 11, and
in the Troy-book, 573; also folili, Will. of Palerne, 4596; folyly, Rom.
of the Rose, 5942 (see the footnote).
2800. Weeldinge (so in E., other MSS. weldinge), wielding, i. e.
power.
2802. Not in the Latin text.
2807. Compare Prov. xxvii. 20.
2811. 'Quamobrem nec ita claudenda est res familiaris, ut eam
benignitas aperire non possit; nec ita reseranda, ut pateat omnibus';
Cicero, De Officiis, ii. 15.
2818. See Prov. xv. 16; xvi. 8.
2820. The prophete, i. e. David; see Ps. xxxvii. 16.
2824. See 2 Cor. i. 12.
2825. 'Riches are good unto him that hath no sin'; Ecclus. xiii. 24.
2828. From Prov. xxii. 1.
2829. The reference seems to be to Prov. xxv. 10 in the Vulgate
version (not in the A. V.):—'Gratia et amicitia liberant; quas tibi
serua, ne exprobrabilis fias.'
2832. The reference is clearly to the following:—'Est enim indigni [al.
digni] animi signum, famae diligere commodum'; Cassiodorus,
Variarum lib. i. epist. 4. This is quoted by Albertano (p. 120), with
the reading ingenui for indigni; hence Chaucer's 'gentil.' Mätzner
refers us to the same, lib. v. epist. 12:—'quia pulchrum est
commodum famae.'

2833. 'Duae res sunt conscientia et fama. Conscientia tibi, fama
proximo tuo'; Augustini Opera, ed. Caillou, Paris, 1842, tom. xxi. p.
347.—Mr.
2837. Fr. text:—'il est cruel et villain.'—Mr.
2841. Lat. text:—'nam dixit quidam philosophus, Nemo in guerra
constitutus satis diues esse potest. Quantumcunque enim sit homo
diues, oportet illum, si in guerra diu perseuerauerit, aut diuitias aut
guerram perdere, aut forte utrumque simul et personam.'—p. 102.
2843. See Ecclesiastes, v. 11.
2851. 'With the God of heaven it is all one, to deliver with a great
multitude, or a small company: For the victory of battle standeth not
in the multitude of an host; but strength cometh from heaven.' 1
Macc. iii. 18, 19.
2854. The gap is easily detected and filled up by comparison with
the Fr. text, which Mätzner cites from Le Menagier de Paris, i. 226,
thus:—'pour ce ... que nul n'est certain s'il est digne que Dieu lui
doint victoire ne plus que il est certain se il est digne de l'amour de
Dieu ou non.' We must also compare the text from Solomon, viz.
Ecclesiastes, ix. 1, as it stands in the Vulgate version.
2857. Outher-whyle, sometimes; see note to 2733.
2858. The seconde book of Kinges, i. e. Liber secundus Regum, now
called 'the second book of Samuel.' The reference is to 2 Sam. xi.
25, where the Vulgate has: 'uarius enim euentus est belli; nunc hunc
et nunc illum consumit gladius.' The A. V . varies.
2860. In as muchel; Fr. text:—'tant comme il puet bonnement.' This
accounts for goodly, i. e. meetly, fitly, creditably. Cotgrave has:
'Bonnement, well, fitly, aptly, handsomely, conveniently, orderly, to
the purpose.'

2861. Salomon; rather Jesus son of Sirach. 'He that loveth danger
shall perish therein'; Ecclus. iii. 26.
2863. The werre ... nothing, 'war does not please you at all.'
2866. Seint Iame is a curious error for Senek, Seneca. For the Fr.
text has:—'Seneque dit en ses escrips,' according to Mätzner; and
MS. Reg. 19 C. xi (leaf 63, col. 2) has 'Seneques.' There has clearly
been confusion between Seneques and Seint iaques. Hence the use
of the pl. epistles is correct. The reference is to Seneca, Epist. 94, §
46; but Seneca, after all, is merely quoting Sallust:—'Nam concordia
paruae res crescunt, discordia maximae dilabuntur'; Sallust,
Jugurtha, 10.
2870. From Matt. v. 9.
2872. Brige, strife, contention; F. brigue, Low Lat. briga. 'Brigue, s. f.
... debate, contention, altercation, litigious wrangling about any
matter'; Cotgrave. See Brigue in the New E. Dict.
2876. Here Hl. has pryde and despysing for homlinesse and
dispreysinge, thus spoiling the sense. The allusion is to our common
saying—Familiarity breeds contempt.
2879. Syen, saw; Cm. seyen; Ln. sawe; Cp. saugh.
2881. Lat. text (p. 107):—'scriptum est enim, Semper ab aliis
dissensio incipiat, a te autem reconciliatio.' From Martinus
Dumiensis, De Moribus, Sent. 49.
2882. The prophete, i. e. David; Ps. xxxiv. 14.
2883. The words 'as muchel as in thee is' are an addition, due to the
Fr. text:—'tant comme tu pourras.'—Mr.
2884. The use of to after pursue is unusual; Mätzner compares
biseke to, in 2940 below and 2306 above.

2886. From Prov. xxviii. 14.
2891. Fr. text:—'Pour ce dit le philosophe, que les troubles ne sont
pas bien cler voyans.' Cf. the Fr. proverb:—'À l'œil malade la lumière
nuit, an eie distempered cannot brook the light; sick thoughts
cannot indure the truth'; Cotgrave.
2895. From Prov. xxviii. 23.
2897. This quotation is merely an expansion of the former part of
Eccles. vii. 3, viz. 'sorrow is better than laughter'; the latter part of
the same verse appears in 2900, immediately below.
2901. I shal not conne answere, I shall not be able to answer; Fr.
text:—'ie ne sauroie respondre.'—Mr.
2909. From Prov. xvi. 7.
2915. Fr. text:—'ie met tout mon fait en vostre disposition.'—Mr.
2925. Referring to Ps. xx. 4 (Vulgate)—'in benedictionibus
dulcedinis'; A. V.—'with the blessings of goodness,' Ps. xxi. 3.
2930. From Ecclus. vi. 5:—'Verbum dulce multiplicat amicos, et
mitigat inimicos.' The A. V. omits the latter clause, having only:
—'Sweet language will multiply friends.'
2931. Fr. text:—'nous mettons nostre fait en vostre bonne
voulente.'—Mr.
2936. Hise amendes, i. e. amends to him. For hise or his, Cp. Ln.
have him, which is a more usual construction. Cf. 'What shall be thy
amends For thy neglect of truth?' Shak., Sonnet 101. 'If I have
wronged thee, seek thy mends at the law'; Greene, Looking-Glass
for London, ed. Dyce, 1883, p. 122.
2940. Biseke to; so in 2306; see note to 2884.

2945. From Ecclus. xxxiii. 18, 19:—'Hear me, O ye great men of the
people, and hearken with your ears, ye rulers of the congregation:
Give not thy son and wife, thy brother and friend, power over thee
while thou livest.'
2965. Not from Seneca, but from Martinus Dumiensis, De Moribus,
S. 94 (Sundby). The Lat. text has:—'ubi est confessio, ibi est
remissio.'
2967. Neither is this from Seneca, but from the same source as
before. Lat. text has:—'Proximum ad innocentiam locum tenet
uerecundia peccati et confessio.'
2973. Lat. text:—'Nihil enim tam naturale est, quam aliquid dissolui
eo genere, quo colligatum est.' From the Digesta, lib. xvii. 35.
2984. Lat. text:—'Semper audiui dici, Quod bene potes facere, noli
differre.' Fr. text:—'Le bien que tu peus faire au matin, n'attens pas
le soir ne l'endemain.'
2986. Messages, messengers; Cp. messagers; Hl. messageres. See
B. 144, 333. In 2992, 2995, we have the form messagers.
2997. Borwes, sureties; as in P. Plowman, C. v. 85. In 3018 it seems
to mean 'pledges' rather than 'sureties.'
3028. A coveitous name, a reputation for covetousness.
3030. From 1 Tim. vi. 10. See C. 334.
3032. Lat. text (p. 120):—'Scriptum est enim, Mallem perdidisse
quam turpiter accepisse.' This is from Publilius Syrus, Sent. 479:—
'Perdidisse ad assem mallem, quam accepisse turpiter.'
3036. Also from P. Syrus, Sent. 293:—
'Laus noua nisi oritur, etiam uetus amittitur.'

3040. For 'it is writen,' the Fr. text has 'le droit dit.' This indicates the
source. The Lat. text has:—'priuilegium meretur amittere, qui
concessa sibi abutitur potestate.' This Sundby traces to the
Decretalia Gregorii IX., iii. 31. 18.
3042. Which I trowe ... do; Lat. 'quod non concedo.'
3045. Ye moste ... curteisly; Lat. 'remissius imperare oportet.'
3047. Lat. text:—'Remissius imperanti melius paretur'; from Seneca,
De Clementia, i. 24. 1.
3049. 'Ait enim Seneca'; the Lat. text then quotes from Publilius
Syrus, Sent. 64:—'Bis uincit, qui se uincit in uictoria.'
3050. Lat. text:—'Nihil est laudabilius, nihil magno et praeclaro uiro
dignius, placabilitate atque clementia.' From Cicero, De Officiis, i. 25.
88.
3054. Of mercy, i. e. on account of your mercy.
3056. 'Male uincit iam quem poenitet uictoriae'; Publilius Syrus, Sent.
366. Attributed to Seneca in the Latin text.
3059. From James, ii. 13.
3066. Unconninge, ignorance; cf. Ayenbite of Inwyt, p. 131; Prick of
Conscience, l. 169.
3067. Misborn, borne amiss, misconducted. See Life of Beket, l.
1248.
The Monk's Prologue.
3079. The tale of Melibee (as told above) is about a certain Melibeus
and his wife Prudence, who had a daughter called Sophie. One day,
while Melibeus is absent, three of his enemies break into his house,
beat his wife, and wound his daughter. On returning, he takes

counsel as to what must be done. He is for planning a method of
revenge, but his wife advises him to forgive the injuries, and in the
end her counsels prevail.
3082. corpus Madrian, body of Madrian: which has been interpreted
in two ways. Urry guessed it to refer to St. Materne, bishop of
Treves, variously commemorated on the 14th, 19th, or 25th of
September, the days of his translations being July 18 and October
23. Mr. Steevens suggested, in a note printed in Tyrwhitt's Glossary,
that the 'precious body' was that of St. Mathurin, priest and
confessor, commemorated on Nov. 1 or Nov. 9. The latter is more
likely, since in his story in the Golden Legende, edit. 1527, leaf 151
back, the expressions 'the precious body' and 'the holy body' occur,
and the story explains that his body would not stay in the earth till it
was carried back to France, where he had given directions that it
should be buried.
3083. 'Rather than have a barrel of ale, would I that my dear good
wife had heard this story.' Cf. morsel breed, B. 3624.
lief is not a proper name, as has been suggested, I believe, by some
one ignorant of early English idiom. Cf. 'Dear my lord,' Jul. Caesar, ii.
1. 255; and other instances in Abbott's Shakesp. Grammar, sect. 13.
3101. 'Who is willing (or who suffers himself) to be overborne by
everybody.'
3108. neighëbor, three syllables; thannè, two syllables.
3112. Observe the curious use of seith for misseith.
3114. Monk. See him described in the Prologue, A. 165.
3116. Rouchester. The MSS. have Rouchester, (Hl. Rowchestre),
shewing that Lo stands alone in the first foot of the line. Tyrwhitt
changed stant into stondeth, but all our seven MSS. have stant.

According to the arrangement of the tales in Tyrwhitt's edition, the
pilgrims reach Rochester after coming to Sittingborne (mentioned in
the Wife of Bath's Prologue), though the latter is some eleven miles
nearer Canterbury. The present arrangement of the Groups remedies
this. See note to B. 1165, at p. 165.
3117. Ryd forth, ride forward, draw near us.
3119. Wher, whether. dan, for Dominus, a title of respect commonly
used in addressing monks. But Chaucer even uses it of Arcite, in the
Knightes Tale, and of Cupid, Ho. Fame, 137.
3120. The monk's name was Piers. See B. 3982, and the note.
3124. Cf. 'He was not pale as a for-pyned goost'; Prol. A. 205. Jean
de Meun says, in his Testament, l. 1073, that the friars have good
pastures (il ont bonnes pastures).
3127. as to my doom, in my judgment.
3130. Scan the line—Bút a góvernoúr wylý and wýs. The Petworth
MS. inserts 'boþ' before 'wyly': but this requires the very unlikely
accentuation 'govérnour' and an emphasis on a. The line would scan
better if we might insert art, or lyk, after But, but there is no
authority for this.
3132. Read—A wél-faríng persónë, after which comes the pause, as
marked in E. and Hn.
3139. The monk's semi-cope, which seems to have been an ample
one, is mentioned in the Prologue, A. 262. In Jack Upland, § 4, a
friar is asked what is signified by his 'wide cope.'
3142. 'Shaven very high on his crown'; alluding to the tonsure.
3144. the corn, i. e. the chief part or share.

3145. borel men, lay-men. Borel means 'rude, unlearned, ignorant,'
and seems to have arisen from a peculiar use of borel or burel, sb., a
coarse cloth; so that its original sense, as an adj., was 'in coarse
clothing,' or 'rudely clad.' See borrel and burel in the New Eng.
Dictionary.
shrimpes, diminutive or poor creatures.
3146. wrecched impes, poor grafts, weakly shoots. Cf. A. S. impian,
to graft, imp, a graft; borrowed from Low Lat. impotus, a graft, from
Gk. ἔμφυτος, engrafted.
3152. lussheburghes, light coins. In P. Plowman, B. xv. 342, we are
told that 'in Lussheborwes is a lyther alay (bad alloy), and yet loketh
he lyke a sterlynge.' They were spurious coins imported into England
from Luxembourg, whence the name. See Liber Albus, ed. Riley,
1841, p. 495; and Blount's Nomolexicon. Luxembourg is called
Lusscheburghe in the Allit. Morte Arthure, l. 2388. The importation
of this false money was frequently forbidden, viz. in 1347, 1348, and
1351.
3157. souneth into, tends to, is consistent with; see Prol. A. 307, and
Sq. Ta., F. 517. The following extracts from Palsgrave's French
Dictionary are to the point. 'I sownde, I appartayne or belong, Ie
tens. Thys thyng sowndeth to a good purpose, Ceste chose tent a
bonne fin.' Also, 'I sownde, as a tale or a report sowndeth to ones
honesty or dyshonesty, Ie redonde. I promise you that this matter
sowndeth moche to your dishonoure, Ie vous promets que ceste
matyere redonde fort a votre deshonneur.'
3160. Seint Edward. There are two of the name, viz. Edward, king
and martyr, commemorated on March 16, 18, or 19, and the second
King Edward, best known as Edward the Confessor, commemorated
on Jan. 5. In Piers the Plowman, B. xv. 217, we have—
'Edmonde and Edwarde · eyther were kynges,
And seyntes ysette · tyl charite hem folwed.'

But Edward the Confessor is certainly meant; and there is a
remarkable story about him that he was 'warned of hys death
certain dayes before hee dyed, by a ring that was brought to him by
certain pilgrims coming from Hierusalem, which ring hee hadde
secretly given to a poore man that askyd hys charitie in the name of
God and sainte Johan the Evangelist.' See Mr. Wright's description of
Ludlow Church, where are some remains of a stained glass window
representing this story, in the eastern wall of the chapel of St. John.
See also Chambers, Book of Days, i. 53, 54, where we read—'The
sculptures upon the frieze of the present shrine (in Westminster
Abbey) represent fourteen scenes in the life of Edward the
Confessor.... He was canonized by Pope Alexander about a century
after his death.... He was esteemed the patron-saint of England until
superseded in the thirteenth century by St. George.' These fourteen
scenes are fully described in Brayley's Hist. of Westminster Abbey, in
an account which is chiefly taken from a life of St. Edward written by
Ailred of Rievaulx in 1163. Three 'Lives of Edward the Confessor'
were edited, for the Master of the Rolls, by Mr. Luard in 1858. See
Morley's Eng. Writers, 1888, ii. 375.
3162. celle, cell. The monk calls it his cell because he was 'the keper'
of it; Prol. 172.
3163. Tragédie; the final ie might be slurred over before is, in which
case we might read for to for to (see footnote); but it is needless.
The definition of 'tragedy' here given is repeated from Chaucer's own
translation of Boethius, which contains the remark—'Glose. Tragedie
is to seyn, a ditee [ditty] of a prosperitee for a tyme, that endeth in
wrecchednesse'; bk. ii. pr. 2. 51. This remark is Chaucer's own, as
the word Glose marks his addition to, or gloss upon, his original. His
remark refers to a passage in Boethius immediately preceding, viz.
'Quid tragoediarum clamor aliud deflet, nisi indiscreto ictu fortunam
felicia regna uertentem?' De Consolatione Philosophiae, lib. ii. prosa
2. See also the last stanza of 'Cresus' in the Monkes Tale (vol. i. p.
268).

3169. exametron, hexameter. Chaucer is speaking of Latin, not of
English verse; and refers to the common Latin hexameter used in
heroic verse; he would especially be thinking of the Thebaid of
Statius, the Metamorphoseon Liber of Ovid, the Aeneid of Vergil, and
Lucan's Pharsalia. This we could easily have guessed, but Chaucer
has himself told us what was in his thoughts. For near the conclusion
of his Troilus and Criseyde, which he calls a tragedie, he says—
'And kis the steppes wheras thou seest pace
Virgile, Ovyde, Omer, Lucan, and Stace.'
Lucan is expressly cited in B. 401, 3909.
3170. In prose. For example, Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum and De
Claris Mulieribus contain 'tragedies' in Latin prose. Cf. ll. 3655, 3910.
3171. in metre. For example, the tragedies of Seneca are in various
metres, chiefly iambic. See also note to l. 3285.
3177. After hir ages, according to their periods; in chronological
order. The probable allusion is to Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum,
which begins with Adam and Nimrod, and keeps tolerably to the
right order. For further remarks on this, shewing how Chaucer
altered the order of these Tragedies in the course of revision, see
vol. iii. p. 428.
The Monkes Tale.
For some account of this Tale, see vol. iii. p. 427.
3181. Tragédie; accented on the second syllable, and riming with
remédie; cf. B. 3163. Very near the end of Troilus and Criseyde, we
find Chaucer riming it with comédie. That poem he also calls a
tragedie (v. 1786)—
'Go, litel book, go, litel myn tragédie,' &c.

3183. fillen, fell. nas no, for ne was no, a double negative. Cf. Ch. tr.
of Boethius—'the olde age of tyme passed, and eek of present tyme
now, is ful of ensaumples how that kinges ben chaunged in-to
wrecchednesse out of hir welefulnesse'; bk. iii. pr. 5. 3.
3186. The Harl. MS. has—'Ther may no man the cours of hir whiel
holde,' which Mr. Wright prefers. But the reading of the Six-text is
well enough here; for in the preceding line Chaucer is speaking of
Fortune under the image of a person fleeing away, to which he adds,
that no one can stay her course. Fortune is also sometimes
represented as stationary, and holding an ever-turning wheel, as in
the Book of the Duchesse, 643; but that is another picture.
3188. Be war by, take warning from.
Lucifer.
3189. Lucifer, a Latin name signifying light-bringer, and properly
applied to the morning-star. In Isaiah xiv. 12 the Vulgate has
—'Quomodo cecidisti de caelo, Lucifer, qui mane oriebaris? corruisti
in terram, qui uulnerabas gentes?' &c. St. Jerome, Tertullian, St.
Gregory, and other fathers, supposed this passage to apply to the
fall of Satan. It became a favourite topic for writers both in prose
and verse, and the allusions to it are innumerable. See note to Piers
the Plowman, B. i. 105 (Clar. Press Series). Gower begins his eighth
book of the Confessio Amantis with the examples of Lucifer and
Adam.
Sandras, in his Étude sur Chaucer, p. 248, quotes some French lines
from a 'Volucraire,' which closely agree with this first stanza. But it is
a common theme.
3192. sinne, the sin of pride, as in all the accounts; probably from 1
Tim. iii. 6. Thus Gower, Conf. Amant. lib. i. (ed. Pauli, i. 153):—
'For Lucifer, with them that felle,
Bar pride with him into helle.

Ther was pride of to grete cost,
Whan he for pride hath heven lost.'
3195. artow, art thou. Sathanas, Satan. The Hebrew sâtân means
simply an adversary, as in 1 Sam. xxix. 4; 2 Sam. xix. 22; &c. A
remarkable application of it to the evil spirit is in Luke x. 18. Milton
also indentifies Lucifer with Satan; Par. Lost, vii. 131; x. 425; but
they are sometimes distinguished, and made the names of two
different spirits. See, for example, Piers Plowman, B. xviii. 270-283.
3196. Read misérie, after which follows the metrical pause.
Adam.
3197. Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum Illustrium begins with a
chapter 'De Adam et Eua.' It contains the passage—'Et ex agro, qui
postea Damascenus,... ductus in Paradisum deliciarum.' Lydgate, in
his Fall of Princes (fol. a 5), has—
'Of slyme of the erthe, in damascene the feelde,
God made theym aboue eche creature.'
The notion of the creation of Adam in a field whereupon afterwards
stood Damascus, occurs in Peter Comestor's Historia Scholastica,
where we find (ed. 1526, fol. vii)—'Quasi quereret aliquis, Remansit
homo in loco vbi factus est, in agro scilicet damasceno? Non. Vbi
ergo translatus est? In paradisum.' See also Maundeville's Travels,
cap. xv; Genesis and Exodus, ed. Morris, l. 207; and note in
Mätzner's Altenglische Sprachproben, ii. 185.
3199. Cf. 'Formatus est homo ... de spurcissimo spermate'; Innocent
III., De Miseria Conditionis Humanae, i. 1 (Köppel).
3200. So Boccaccio—'O caeca rerum cupiditas! Hii, quibus rerum
omnium, dante Deo, erat imperium,' &c. Cf. Gen. i. 29; ii. 16.
Sampson.

3205. The story of Sampson is also in Boccaccio, lib. i. c. 17 (not 19,
as Tyrwhitt says). But Chaucer seems mostly to have followed the
account in Judges, xiii-xvi. The word annunciat, referring to the
announcement of Samson's birth by the angel (Judges xiii. 3), may
have been suggested by Boccaccio, whose account begins
—'Praenunciante per angelum Deo, ex Manue Israhelita quodam et
pulcherrima eius vxore Sanson progenitus est.' thangel in l.
3206=the angel.
3207. consecrat, consecrated. A good example of the use of the
ending -at; cf. situate for situated.—M. Shakespeare has consecrate;
Com. of. Err. ii. 2. 134.
3208. whyl he mighte see, as long as he preserved his eyesight.
3210. To speke of strengthe, with regard to strength; to speke of is
a kind of preposition.—M. Cf. Milton's Samson Agonistes, 126-150.
3211. wyves. Samson told the secret of his riddle to his wife, Judges
xiv. 17; and of his strength to Delilah, id. xvi. 17.
3215. al to-rente, completely rent in twain. The prefix to- has two
powers in Old English. Sometimes it is the preposition to in
composition, as in towards, or M. E. to-flight (G. zuflucht), a refuge.
But more commonly it is a prefix signifying in twain, spelt zer- in
German, and dis- in Mœso-Gothic and Latin. Thus to-rente = rent in
twain; to-brast = burst in twain, &c. The intensive adverb al, utterly,
was used not merely (as is commonly supposed) before verbs
beginning with to-, but in other cases also. Thus, in William of
Palerne, l. 872, we find—'He was al a-wondred,' where al precedes
the intensive prefix a- = A. S. of. Again, in the same poem, l. 661,
we have—'al bi-weped for wo,' where al now precedes the prefix bi-.
In Barbour's Bruce, ed. Skeat, x. 596, is the expression—
'For, hapnyt ony to slyde or fall,
He suld be soyne to-fruschit al.'

Where al to-fruschit means utterly broken in pieces. Perhaps the
clearest example of the complete separability of al from to is seen in
l. 3884 of William of Palerne;—
'Al to-tare his atir · þat he to-tere miȝt';
i. e. he entirely tore apart his attire, as much of it as he could tear
apart. But at a later period of English, when the prefix to- was less
understood, a new and mistaken notion arose of regarding al to as a
separable prefix, with the sense of all to pieces. I have observed no
instance of this use earlier than the reign of Henry VIII. Thus Surrey,
Sonnet 9, has 'al-to shaken' for shaken to pieces. Latimer has—'they
love and al-to love (i. e. entirely love) him'; Serm. p. 289. For other
examples, see Al-to in the Bible Word-book; and my notes in Notes
and Queries, 3 Ser. xii. 464, 535; also All, § C. 15, in the New E.
Dict.
3220. Samson's wife was given to a friend; Judges, xiv. 20. She was
afterwards burnt by her own people; Judges, xv. 6.
3224. on every tayl; one brand being fastened to the tails of two
foxes; Judg. xv. 4.
3225. cornes. The Vulgate has segetes and fruges; also utneas for
vynes, and oliueta for oliveres. The plural form cornes is not
uncommon in Early English. Cf. 'Quen thair corns war in don,' i. e.
when their harvests were gathered in; Spec. of Eng. pt. ii. ed. Morris
and Skeat, p. 70, l. 39. And again, 'alle men-sleeris and brenneris of
houses and cornes [misprinted corves] ben cursed opynly in parische
chirches'; Wyclif's Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 329.
3234. wang-toth, molar tooth. This expression is taken from the
Vulgate, which has—'Aperuit itaque Dominus molarem dentem in
maxilla asini'; where the A. V. has only—'an hollow place that was in
the jaw'; Judg. xv. 19.

3236. Judicum, i. e. Liber Judicum, the Book of Judges. Cf. note to
B. 93, at p. 141.
3237. Gazan, a corruption of Gazam, the acc. case, in Judg. xvi. 1,
Vulgate version.
3244. ne hadde been, there would not have been. Since hadde is
here the subjunctive mood, it is dissyllabic. Read—worldë n' haddë.
3245. sicer, from the Lat. sicera, Greek σίκερα, strong drink, is the
word which we now spell cider; see Wyclif's Works, ed. Arnold, i.
363, note. It is used here because found in the Vulgate version of
Judges xiii. 7; 'caue ne uinum bibas, nec siceram.' I slightly amend
the spelling of the MSS., which have ciser, siser, sythir, cyder. Wyclif
has sither, cyther, sidir, sydur.
3249. twenty winter, twenty years; Judg. xvi. 31. The English used
to reckon formerly by winters instead of years; as may be seen in a
great many passages in the A. S . Chronicle.
3253. Dalida; from Gk. Δαλιδά, in the Septuagint. The Vulgate has
Dalila; but Chaucer (or his scribes) naturally adopted a form which
seemed to have a nearer resemblance to an accusative case, such
being, at that time, the usual practice; cf. Briseide (from Briseida),
Criseyde and Anelida. Lydgate also uses the form Dalida.
3259. in this array, in this (defenceless) condition.
3264. querne, hand-mill. The Vulgate has—'et clausum in carcere
molere fecerunt'; Judg. xvi. 21. But Boccaccio says—'ad molas
manuarias coegere.' The word occurs in the House of Fame, 1798;
and in Wyclif's Bible, Exod. xi. 5; Mat. xxiv. 41. In the Ayenbite of
Inwyt, ed. Morris, p. 181, the story of Samson is alluded to, and it is
said of him that he 'uil [fell] into þe honden of his yuo [foes], þet
him deden grinde ate querne ssamuolliche,' i. e. who made him
grind at the mill shamefully (in a shameful manner). Lydgate copies
Chaucer rather closely, in his Fall of Princes, fol. e 7:—

'And of despite, after as I fynde,
At their quernes made hym for to grinde.'
3269. Thende, the end. Caytif means (1) a captive, (2) a wretch. It
is therefore used here very justly.
3274. two pilers, better than the reading the pilers of MS. E.;
because two are expressly mentioned; Judg. xvi. 29.
3282. So Boccaccio—'Sic aduersa credulitas, sic amantis pietas, sic
mulieris egit inclyta fides. Vt quem non poterant homines, non
uincula, non ferrum uincere, a mulieribus latrunculis uinceretur.'
Lydgate has the expressions—
'Beware by Sampson your counseyll well to kepe,
Though [misprinted That] Dalida compleyne, crye, and wepe';
and again:—
'Suffre no nightworm within your counseyll crepe,
Though Dalida compleyne, crye, and wepe.'
Hercules.
3285. There is little about Hercules in Boccaccio; but Chaucer's
favourite author, Ovid, has his story in the Metamorphoses, book ix,
and Heroides, epist. 9. Tyrwhitt, however, has shewn that Chaucer
more immediately copies a passage in Boethius, de Cons. Phil. lib. iv.
met. 7, which is as follows:—
'Herculem duri celebrant labores;
Ille Centauros domuit superbos;
Abstulit saeuo spolium leoni;
Fixit et certis uolucres sagittis;
Poma cernenti rapuit draconi,
Aureo laeuam grauior metallo;
Cerberum traxit triplici catena.

Victor immitem posuisse fertur
Pabulum saeuis dominum quadrigis.
Hydra combusto periit ueneno;
Fronte turpatus Achelous amnis
Ora demersit pudibunda ripis.
Strauit Antaeum Libycis arenis,
Cacus Euandri satiauit iras,
Quosque pressurus foret altus orbis
Setiger spumis humeros notauit.
Ultimus caelum labor irreflexo
Sustulit collo, pretiumque rursus
Ultimi caelum meruit laboris.'
But it is still more interesting to see Chaucer's own version of this
passage, which is as follows (ed. Morris, p. 147; cf. vol. ii. p. 125):—
'Hercules is celebrable for his harde trauaile; he dawntede þe proude
Centauris, half hors, half man; and he rafte þe despoylynge fro þe
cruel lyoun; þat is to seyne, he slouȝ þe lyoun and rafte hym hys
skyn. He smot þe birds þat hyȝten arpijs in þe palude of lyrne wiþ
certeyne arwes. He rauyssede applis fro þe wakyng dragoun, & hys
hand was þe more heuy for þe goldene metal. He drouȝ Cerberus þe
hound of helle by his treble cheyne; he, ouer-comer, as it is seid,
haþ put an vnmeke lorde fodre to his cruel hors; þis is to sein, þat
hercules slouȝ diomedes and made his hors to etyn hym. And he,
hercules, slouȝ Idra þe serpent & brende þe venym; and achelaus þe
flode, defoulede in his forhede, dreinte his shamefast visage in his
strondes; þis is to seyn, þat achelaus couþe transfigure hymself into
dyuerse lykenesse, & as he fauȝt wiþ ercules, at þe laste he turnide
hym in-to a bole [bull]; and hercules brak of oon of hys hornes, &
achelaus for shame hidde hym in hys ryuer. And he, hercules, caste
adoun Antheus þe geaunt in þe strondes of libye; & kacus apaisede
þe wraþþes of euander; þis is to sein, þat hercules slouȝ þe monstre
kacus & apaisede wiþ þat deeþ þe wraþþe of euander. And þe
bristlede boor markede wiþ scomes [scums, foam] þe sholdres of
hercules, þe whiche sholdres þe heye cercle of heuene sholde þreste

[was to rest upon]. And þe laste of his labours was, þat he
sustenede þe heuene upon his nekke unbowed; & he deseruede
eftsones þe heuene, to ben þe pris of his laste trauayle.'
And in his House of Fame, book iii. (l. 1413), he mentions—
'Alexander, and Hercules,
That with a sherte his lyf lees.'
3288. Hercules' first labour was the slaying of the Nemean lion,
whose skin he often afterwards wore.
3289. Centauros; this is the very form used by Boethius, else we
might have expected Centaurus or Centaures. After the destruction
of the Erymanthian boar, Hercules slew Pholus the centaur; and (by
accident) Chiron. His slaughter of the centaur Nessus ultimately
brought about his own death; cf. l. 3318.
3290. Arpies, harpies. The sixth labour was the destruction of the
Stymphalian birds, who ate human flesh.
3291. The eleventh labour was the fetching of the golden apples,
guarded by the dragon Ladon, from the garden of the Hesperides.
3292. The twelfth labour was the bringing of Cerberus from the
lower world.
3293. Busirus. Here Chaucer has confused two stories. One is, that
Busiris, a king of Egypt, used to sacrifice all foreigners who came to
Egypt, till the arrival of Hercules, who slew him. The other is 'the
eighth labour,' when Hercules killed Diomedes, a king in Thrace, who
fed his mares with human flesh, till Hercules slew him and gave his
body to be eaten by the mares, as Chaucer himself says in his
translation. The confusion was easy, because the story of Busiris is
mentioned elsewhere by Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 6, in a passage which
Chaucer thus translates (see vol. ii. p. 43):—'I have herd told of
Busirides, þat was wont to sleen his gestes [guests] þat

herberweden [lodged] in his hous; and he was sleyn him-self of
Ercules þat was his gest.' Lydgate tells the story of Busiris correctly.
3295. serpent, i. e. the Lernean hydra, whom Chaucer, in the
passage from Boethius, calls 'Idra [or Ydra] the serpent.'
3296. Achelois, seems to be used here as a genitive form from a
nominative Achelo; in his translation of Boethius we find Achelous
and Achelaus. The spelling of names by old authors is often vague.
The line means—he broke one of the two horns of Achelous. The
river-god Achelous, in his fight with Hercules, took the form of a
bull, whereupon the hero broke off one of his horns.
3297. The adventures with Cacus and Antaeus are well known.
3299. The fourth labour was the destruction of the Erymanthian
boar.
3300. longe, for a long time; in the margin of MS. Camb. Univ. Lib.
Dd. 4. 24, is written the gloss diu.
3307. The allusion is to the 'pillars' of Hercules. The expression 'both
ends of the world' refers to the extreme points of the continents of
Europe and Africa, world standing here for continent. The story is
that Hercules erected two pillars, Calpe and Abyla, on the two sides
of the Strait of Gibraltar. The words 'seith Trophee' seem to refer to
an author named Trophaeus. In Lydgate's prologue to his Fall of
Princes, st. 41, he says of Chaucer that—
'In youth he made a translacion
Of a boke whiche called is Trophe
In Lumbarde tonge, as men may rede and se;
And in our vulgar, long er that he deyde,
Gave it the name of Troylus and Creseyde.'
This seems to say that Trophe was the Italian name of a Book (or
otherwise, the name of a book in Italian), whence Chaucer drew his

story of Troilus. But the notion must be due to some mistake, since
that work was taken from the 'Filostrato' of Boccaccio. The only trace
of the name of Trophaeus as an author is in a marginal note—
possibly Chaucer's own—which appears in both the Ellesmere and
Hengwrt MSS., viz. 'Ille vates Chaldeorum Tropheus.' See, however,
vol. ii. p. lv, where I shew that, in this passage at any rate, Trophee
really refers to Guido delle Colonne, who treats of the deeds of
Hercules in the first book of his Historia Troiana, and makes
particular mention of the famous columns (as to which Ovid and
Boethius are alike silent).
3311. thise clerkes, meaning probably Ovid and Boccaccio. See
Ovid's Heroides, epist. ix., entitled Deianira Herculi, and Metamorph.
lib. ix.; Boccaccio, De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, lib. i. cap. xviii.,
and De Mulieribus Claris, cap. xxii. See also the Trachineae of
Sophocles, which Chaucer of course never read.
3315. wered, worn; so in A. 75, and B. 3320, wered is the form of
the past tense. Instances of verbs with weak preterites in Chaucer,
but strong ones in modern English, are rare indeed; but there are
several instances of the contrary, e.g. wep, slep, wesh, wex, now
wept, slept, washed, waxed. Wore is due to analogy with bore; cf.
could for coud.
3317. Both Ovid and Boccaccio represent Deianira as ignorant of the
fatal effects which the shirt would produce. See Ovid, Metam. ix.
133. Had Chaucer written later, he might have included Gower
among the clerks, as the latter gives the story of Hercules and
Deianira in his Conf. Amantis, lib. ii. (ed. Pauli, i. 236), following
Ovid. Thus he says—

Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.
More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge
connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.
Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and
personal growth every day!
ebookbell.com

Resurrection Of The Dead In Early Judaism 200 Bcece 200 First Edition Elledge

About This Presentation

Slide Content

Tags

Categories

Download

Quick Actions

Statistics

Related Slideshows

Resurrection Of The Dead In Early Judaism 200 Bcece 200 First Edition Elledge

About This Presentation

Slide Content

Slide 1

Slide 2

Slide 3

Slide 6

Slide 8

Slide 9

Slide 10

Slide 12

Slide 14

Slide 16

Slide 17

Slide 18

Slide 20

Slide 21

Slide 22

Slide 23

Slide 24

Slide 25

Slide 26

Slide 27

Slide 28

Slide 29

Slide 30

Slide 31

Slide 32

Slide 33

Slide 34

Slide 35

Slide 36

Slide 37

Slide 38

Slide 39

Slide 40

Slide 41

Slide 42

Slide 43

Slide 44

Slide 45

Slide 46

Slide 47

Slide 48

Slide 49

Slide 50

Slide 51

Slide 52

Slide 53

Slide 54

Slide 55

Slide 56

Slide 57

Slide 58

Slide 59

Slide 60

Slide 61

Slide 62

Slide 63

Slide 64

Slide 65

Slide 66

Slide 67

Slide 68

Slide 69

Slide 70

Slide 71

Slide 72

Slide 73

Slide 74

Slide 75

Slide 76

Slide 77

Slide 78

Slide 79

Slide 80

Slide 81

Slide 82

Slide 83

Tags