Jewish eschatology


Jewish eschatology is the area of Jewish theology concerned with events that will happen in the end of days and related concepts. This includes the ingathering of the exiled diaspora, the coming of the Jewish Messiah, the afterlife, and the resurrection of the dead. In Judaism, the end times are usually called the "end of days", a phrase that appears throughout the Tanakh. These beliefs have evolved over time, and according to some scholars there is evidence of Jewish belief in a personal afterlife with reward or punishment referenced in the Torah.

The End of Days

War of Gog and Magog

According to Ezekiel 38, the "war of Gog and Magog" is a climactic war that will happen at the end of the Jewish exile. According to biblical commentator and rabbi David Kimhi, this war will take place in Jerusalem.

Events to occur

The Hebrew Bible reflects the belief of the Israelites in an arguably Hades-like afterworld, where both the righteous and the unrighteous continue to exist in a miserable manner.

World to come

The afterlife is known as olam ha-ba, being related to the concepts of Gan Eden— heavenly "Garden in Eden", or Paradise—and Gehinnom. The phrase olam ha-ba itself does not occur in the Hebrew Bible. In Jewish theology, the widely accepted Halakha is that it is impossible for living human beings to know what the world to come is like.

Second Temple period

In the late Second Temple period, beliefs about the ultimate fate of individuals were diverse. The Pharisees and Essenes believed in the immortality of the soul, but the Sadducees did not. The Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish pseudepigrapha, and Jewish magical papyri all reflect this variety of opinions.

Medieval rabbinical views

While classical rabbinic sources discuss the afterlife, medieval scholars disputed the nature of individuals' continued existence after the Messianic Age. While Maimonides describes an entirely spiritual existence for souls, which he calls "disembodied intellects", Nachmanides proposes a spiritual existence on Earth in which spirituality and physicality are merged. Both agree that life after death is, as Maimonides describes, the "End of Days". This existence entails a heightened understanding of and connection to the Shekhinah. All classical rabbinic scholars share this latter view.
According to Maimonides, any non-Jew who lives according to the Seven Laws of Noah is regarded as a righteous gentile and assured a place in the world to come.
There is a great deal of surviving rabbinic material concerning the fate of the soul after death, its experiences, and where it goes. At various points in the afterlife journey, the soul may encounter: hibbut ha-kever, the pains and other experiences of physico-spiritual dissolution or reconfiguration within the grave; Dumah, the angel in charge of funerary matters; Satan, as the angel of death or another equally grim figure; the Kaf ha-Kela, the ensnarement or confinement of the stripped-down soul within ghostly material reallocations, described in chapter 8 of the Tanya, Chabad's primary philosophical text, as devised for the cleansing of souls needing punishment not severe enough to warrant Gehinnom; Gehinnom; and Gan Eden. Classical rabbinic scholars agree that these concepts are beyond typical human understanding, so these ideas are expressed throughout rabbinic literature as parables and analogies.
Gehenna is fairly well defined in the rabbinic literature. It is sometimes translated as "hell" but is more similar to Nicene Christianity's purgatory than to its Hell. Rabbinic thought maintains that souls are not tortured in Gehenna forever; the longest that one can be there is said to be eleven months, with the exception of heretics and the exceedingly sinful. This is why Jews mourning for near relatives will not recite mourner's kaddish for more than eleven months after death. Gehinnom is considered a spiritual forge whereby the soul is purified for its eventual ascent to Gan Eden.

Rabbinic legends

The rabbinic literature includes many legends about the world to come and the two Gardens of Eden. As compiled by Louis Ginzberg in the book Legends of the Jews, these include the world to come, called Paradise, said to have a double gate made of carbuncle and guarded by 600,000 shining angels. Seven clouds of glory overshadow Paradise, and under them, in the center of Paradise, stands the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life overshadows Paradise, too; it has fifteen thousand different tastes and aromas, blown by wind throughout. Under the Tree of Life are many pairs of canopies, one of the stars and the other of sun and moon, while a "cloud of glory" separates the two. In each pair of canopies, a rabbinic scholar explains the Torah to the soul. When one enters Paradise, one is proffered by Michael the archangel to God on the altar of the Temple in the heavenly Jerusalem. The soul is transfigured into an angel, with the ugliest person becoming as beautiful and shining as "the grains of a silver pomegranate upon which fall the rays of the sun". The angels that guard Paradise's gate adorn the soul in seven clouds of glory, crown it with gems, pearls, and gold, place eight myrtles in its hand, and praise it for being righteous before leading it to a garden of eight hundred roses and myrtles watered by many rivers. In the Garden is one's own canopy, its beauty according to one's merit, but each canopy has four rivers—milk, honey, wine, and balsam—flowing out from it, and has a golden vine and thirty shining pearls hanging from it. Under each canopy is a table of gems and pearls attended to by sixty angels. The light of Paradise is the light of the righteous souls therein. Each day in Paradise, one wakes up as a child and goes to bed as an elder, enjoying the pleasures of childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age. In each corner of Paradise is a forest of 800,000 trees, the least among these greater than the best herbs and spices, attended to by 800,000 sweetly singing angels. Paradise is divided into seven sub-paradises, each 120,000 miles long and wide. Depending on its merit, a soul is assigned to one of these sections of Paradise: the first is made of glass and cedar and is for converts to Judaism; the second is of silver and cedar and is for penitents; the third is of silver, gold, gems, and pearls, and is for the Patriarchs, Moses and Aaron, the Israelites who fled Egypt and lived in the wilderness, and the kings of Israel; the fourth is of rubies and olive wood and is for the holy and steadfast of faith; the fifth is like the third, except a river flows through it and its bed was woven by Eve and the angels and is for the Messiah and Elijah; and the sixth and seventh divisions are not described, except that they are respectively for those who died doing pious acts and those who died from illness in expiation for Israel's sins.
Above this Paradise is the higher Gan Eden, where God is enthroned and explains the Torah to its inhabitants. The higher Gan Eden contains 310 worlds and is divided into seven compartments. The compartments are not described, though it is implied that each compartment is greater than the previous one and is made open to a soul based on its merit. The first compartment is for Jewish martyrs, the second for those who drowned, the third for "Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai and his disciples", the fourth for those whom the "cloud of glory" carried off, the fifth for penitents, the sixth for youths who never sinned, and the seventh for the poor who lived decently and studied the Torah.

Resurrection of the dead

An early explicit mention of resurrection in Hebrew texts is the Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones in the Book of Ezekiel, dated B.C.. Alan Segal argues that this narrative was intended as a metaphor for national rebirth, promising the Jews' return to Israel and reconstruction of the Temple, not as a description of personal resurrection.
The Book of Daniel promised literal resurrection to the Jews in concrete detail. Alan Segal interprets Daniel as writing that with the coming of the archangel Michael, misery would beset the world, and only those whose names were written in a divine book would be resurrected. Moreover, Daniel's promise of resurrection was intended only for the most righteous and the most sinful: the afterlife was a place for righteous individuals to be rewarded and unrighteous individuals to receive eternal punishment.
Greek and Persian culture influenced early Jewish beliefs of an afterlife between the 6th and 4th centuries B.C., as well. The Hebrew Bible, at least its rabbinic interpretation in tractate Sanhedrin, contains frequent references to the resurrection of the dead. The Mishnah lists belief in the resurrection of the dead as one of three essential beliefs of Judaism:
In the late Second Temple period, the Pharisees and Essenes believed in resurrection, while Sadducees did not. During the period of Chazal, signaling the adoption of resurrection into the Jewish canon.
Jewish liturgy, most notably the Amidah, contains references to the bodily resurrection of the dead. In contemporary Judaism, both Orthodox Judaism and Conservative Judaism maintain the traditional references to it in their liturgy. However, Conservative Jewish leadership has officially acknowledged metaphorical rather than literal interpretations, too. Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism have altered traditional references to the resurrection of the dead in the liturgy, revising "who gives life to the dead" to "who gives life to all" in the second blessing of the Amidah.