Theos-Talk Archives (April 2002 Message tt00125)

--- Compiler <compiler@wisdomworld.org> wrote:
> I did a quick search after someone here said 
"There
> is no Jewish
> theology dealing with an afterlife, except for 
the
> time of the Messiah."

Josephus says of the three majoe sects in his 
lifetime
the Sadducees, who held strictly to the five 
books of
Moses, believe the grave was the end because that 
was
what Moses believed.

The Pharisees, whose sect included some ideas 
which
had been imported from Persia, did believe in an
afterlife. Josephus describes their teaching in
language which suggests they believed in 
reincarnation
(in the first century C.E.) They also believed 
people
who were bad went to hell which the Sadducees did 
not.

The Essenes had a teaching which was quite 
similar to
that of modern Christianity, which makes sense 
since
primitive (first centuty C.E.) Christianity was a 
sect
of Essenism which broke from the Dead Sea 
Community
administratively but owed its theology to them.

Of these three, Saddiceeism and Essenism live 
only
through Christianity to the extent they live at 
all,
and Pharisaism is the historical ancestor of the
modern rabbinic Judaism.

There is a very interesting set of books by a 
Hasidic
rabbi named Gershom who says that Judaism, unlike
Christianity, has no dogmatic position regarding 
the
afterlife, and that members of the sect are free 
to
read the opinions of the doctors and choose for
themselves what makes sense without being 
considered
heterodox if the next fwllow resonates with a
different opinion. I don't know how that works 
in
practice but in theory at least it is a 
refreshing
concept. As the modern conservators oof the 
Kabbalah,
the Hasidim believe in reincarnation, which I 
believe
is a minority opinion.



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