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[ 42 ] the rise and fall of soul and self
they appear in an historical context in which the Jews are portrayed as suffering even
though they have been good. Resurrection, thus, becomes the means by which
God’s justice triumphs over injustice, thereby vindicating God and saving human life
from being meaningless.
In Asian traditions (and even to some extent in the West), reincarnation, to
which everyone was thought to be equally subject, had been used as a technique for
achieving cosmic justice. However, in Daniel, only some are expected to survive
bodily death, so reward and punishment applies only to them. Nevertheless, at issue is
God’s justice, which is not fully realized in normal human lifetimes. To remedy this
situation, and in sharp contrast to the prevailing message of previous biblical
tradition, the earthly lives of some humans, and then eventually all, become just
part of the story. The rest of the story concerns life beyond the grave, where God’s
justice ultimately asserts itself.
Throughout the time that Daniel and earlier books of the Hebrew scriptures
were composed, the Jews were materialists. So, when, in Daniel, the idea of
resurrection is introduced, it means resurrection of the body, which is resurrec-
tion of the whole person. Eventually, in the Talmud, the idea of the resurrection
of the body joins hands with the idea, borrowed ultimately from Plato, that
humans have an immortal soul. Before this integration would be generally
adopted, several sects espoused different views. The Sadducees held the tradi-
tional view that there was no afterlife and that reward and punishment occurred
only in this life. Not surprisingly, this sect was more popular with the rich than
the poor. The Pharisees held the newer and increasingly popular view among
the masses that there was something immortal in the soul that, after death,
could be eternally punished or rewarded by being resurrected with the body
into a new life.
Although there were many previous Jewish commentators on their holy
scripture, the first great Jewish philosopher was Philo (fl. 20-40 c.e.), a native of
Alexandria. His main project was to harmonize the Hebrew
Scriptures and
Greek philosophy. However, in doing this he also tried to make the case that
whatever good there is in Greek thought ultimately stemmed from Judaism. So
far as the creation of the world is concerned, Philo found that the account most
compatible with Hebrew Scripture was that of Plato in the Timaeus. In the views
of both Plato and Philo, God existed from eternity as an immaterial being, with-
out a world, then brought the world into existence. God, then, continued to exist
as an immaterial being over and above a material world.
In Plato’s view, whereas God is eternal, other things also are eternal, in par-
ticular, ideal Forms, such as Beauty and Truth, and unformed matter, the basic
stuff out of which the material world would be composed. In Philo’s view, by
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