RELI 2732 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Worship God, Sheol, Kabbalah
2 May 2018
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January 29th, 2018
Death in the Ancient World (contd.)
Mesopotamia
• There are 2000 deities that have been identified
• Mesopotamia was more open to attack because it was a fertile and
beautiful land
•
Judaism – History
• From ancient times the tribes of Israel worshipped one God alone
• The feeling is mutual between both the people and God, if you
worship God you will go into his priestly kingdom
• Judaism is most tied to history out of all religions
o Determines their life story as a people
• Exodus from Egypt
o Dominated by the figure of Moses
o Becomes a great metaphor for overcoming oppression – going
from slavery to freedom
o Traditionally they say the Israelites wandered the desert for 40
years, Moses gets the law (Torah) from God on Mt. Sinai
o God renews his covenant with the Israelites, not just Moses like
it was before with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
o The death of any individual within the group does not disrupt
the covenant between God and the Israelites, the covenant lives
on with the rest of the group
o National catastrophe would be the biggest disaster because then
the entire group dies and so does the covenant (the holocaust)
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2
▪ From a religious perspective, genocide did not just wipe
out the existence of a particular group, it threatened the
existence between God and humanity
• The Twelve Tribes of Israel
o The tribes are eventually united in the United Kingdom of Israel
▪ This only lasted for 100 years until 3 kings were named:
Saul, David, Solomon
▪ Then David became the only King – seen as the peak of
early Israelite history
• It is fo Daid’s house hee the Messiah ould e
born (Jesus)
Judaism – Death and Afterlife
• The concept of the person based on the biblical text goes through a
change
o Living being/soul/breath – Nefshah
▪ This is a holistic view of the person
o In the biblical text before the 4th century bce (before hellinistic
period) a person is not regarded as body separate from soul, but
body and animating breath (God)
• The earliest biblical idea of death is the body returning to earth and
life breath returning to God
o The entirety of the person does not entirely disappear – the
ghost goes to the place of death (Sheol – the land of deepest
gloom)
• Cosmos of early Hebrew Tribes – human beings relate to both worlds
o Heaven (Sky Gods)
o Earth
o Sheol (Underworld – ghosts of ancestors)
• How does the bible speak about Sheol?
o Linked to finality and the tragic nature of death
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