Judaism in Late Antiquity 4. Death, Life-After-Death, Resurrection and The World-to-Come in the Judaisms of Antiquity

Thirteen foremost scholars describe the views of death, life after death, resurrection, and the world-to-come set forth in the literary evidence for late antique Judaism. The volume covers the vie w of Scripture as a whole as against other Israelite writings; distinct parts of Scripture such as Psalms and the Wisdom literature; apocalyptic and the non-apocalyptic pseudepigraphic literature, Philo; Josephus; the Dead Sea Scrolls; earliest Christianity (the Gospels in particular); the Rabbinic sources; the Palestinian Targums to the Pentateuch; and, out of material culture, the inscriptional evidence.
The result is both to highlight the range of available perspectives on this important issue and to illuminate a central problem in the study of Judaism in late antiquity, phrased neatly as “One Judaism or many?” Here we place on display indicative components of Judaism in their full diversity, leaving it for readers to determine whether the notion of a single, coherent religion falls under the weight of a mass of documentary contradictions or whether an inner harmony shines forth from a repertoire of largely shared and only superficially-diverse data.

Alan J. Avery-Peck is Kraft-Hiatt Professor in Judaic Studies in the Religious Studies Department of the College of Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts. Alongside numerous articles he has published The Priestly Gift in Mishnah, A Study of Tractate Terumot (Scholars Press, 1981) and four volumes of translation of and commentary on Talmudic treatises. He is editor of New Perspectives on Ancient Judaism. Volume VI. The Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism: Issues in Talmudic Redaction and Interpretation (University Press of America, 1998).
Jacob Neusner, Ph.D., Columbia University, is Distinguished Research Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida in Tampa, and Professor of Religion at Bard College, Annandale-Hudson, N.Y. He has published more than 725 books and is Editor of South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism, USF Texts and Studies, and other monograph series at Scholars Press.