When I read this story on ancient graffiti in Israel this snippet leapt out at me:
One says, “Take courage, Holy Parents of Pharcitae, udes adonitas — no one is immortal.” Stern explains that the dead who are being brought into the catacombs shouldn’t feel that they are weak just because they’ve passed on.
She reads aloud the other inscription: “Good luck on your resurrection.”
“Of course, resurrection is not in the Jewish tradition,” says Emma Maayan Fanar, a professor of Byzantine art at the University of Haifa, who has teamed up with Stern. “It’s very uncommon.”
This is either remarkably ignorant or remarkably slanted. Resurrection is not in the rabbinic tradition but the “Jewish tradition” precedes the rabbinic tradition, the graffiti they’re talking about are contemporaneous with the rise of the rabbinic tradition, and there’s plenty of resurrection in the pre-rabbinic Jewish tradition in the non-canonical pseudepigrapha.
My point here is that I think it’s pretty peculiar to equate the tradition as it exists today with the tradition as it was a couple of thousand years ago.
Update
Jim Davila of PaleoJudaica and Joseph Lauer both pick up on the same thing that I did:
Perhaps it’s uncommon in Jewish graffiti of the period; I don’t know. But it is certainly a widespread idea in Jewish literature of the Hellenistic and Roman periods.
I heard this story on the radio yesterday, and had a similar reaction, but was confused about the time frame being discussed. Byzantium?
BTW/ My main source of understanding Jewish beliefs is Herman Wouk’s book, and I believe he indicates that Jews believe in an afterlife; it’s just not a well-defined area and largely left to mystery. It’s not a central concern of Judaism.
The period of these inscriptions is almost certainly between 200 CE and 650 CE, the time of the Arab conquest of Syria and Palestine. As I noted in the post the quotation in question equates the rabbinic tradition with the Jewish tradition which I think is an exaggeration. At that point the Talmud had been codified within living memory and that is usually used as the point of delineation between the period during which rabbinic Judaism became the mainstream and the time that preceded it during which there was almost certainly considerably more diversity of views.
The “Jewish tradition” was apparently an extremely diverse one from, say, 500 BCE to 500 CE. Not only did it include resurrection and life after death but polytheism (the oldest known obviously Jewish document was found in the upper Nile, dates from the Persian period, and is clearly polytheistic).
“Resurrection is not in the rabbinic tradition but the “Jewish tradition†precedes the rabbinic tradition”
Many Christians think the only resurrection talked about in the New Testament is Jesus’s. But in one of the gospels (I forget which and I’m too lazy to look it up), a mass resurrection is mentioned at the time of Jesus’s death.
The Nicene Creed dates from 325 CE and unambigously includes a profession in belief in a mass resurrection. The belief is asserted in the gospels of John and Luke as well as the epistles of Paul. A belief in only the resurrection of Jesus would be pretty heterodox.
Also, I wonder if the professor considers the Christian sect to be a part of a jewish tradition. I am currently reading Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch, which I believe is a secular, traditional account of the subject. I am pretty sure he writes that some Jewish schools of thought believed in the reserrection during Jesus’ time. He also touches on, but I don’t believe gives a definitive answer, the question of the point at which Christianity is not a Jewish sect.
Looking back over the article, it strikes me as interesting that Jewish people from across the region are having their bodies returned to Israel for burial. That itself suggests something other than complete disinterest in what happens after death.
“He also touches on, but I don’t believe gives a definitive answer, the question of the point at which Christianity is not a Jewish sect.”
Just a guess, but about the time Paul started preaching…
If you Google “resurrection in Judaism, ” PD, you’ll run across an article that says the tradition is that Jews buried outside of Israel will make their way back through underground tunnels somehow. I didn’t bookmark that one, but I did this one:
http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/gro/gro_024jewish.html
It references the traditions and sources. In light of this article, her quote is just odd.
@sam, no not really. The way MacCulloch structured his book (“three thousand years”) was intended to approach the subject in a way that shows Christinaity owes its origins to Greek and Jewish religious thought, and that these origins appear and disappear in the narrative over time. This structure conflicts with an underlying desire to show the multiplicity of futures that Christianity possessed at various points in time and places, including a future to the East in which Paul’s writings are not as influential.
A word of caution on this. Consider the manuscript tradition. Belief that we know much at all about Greek religious thought prior to Christianity requires a leap of faith greater than accepting the literal truth of the Bible. Many ancient works are known only from single copies, those actually written more than 1,500 years after the works were notionally written. They are outnumbered by Christian works tens of thousands to one.
To my mind it’s easier to believe that what we know of Greek religion is what Christian scholars elected to tell us than that Christianity is derived from Greek thought.
And I return to my original point: the Jewish traditions are much more diverse than present-day Jewish cultural mythology would have you believe.