(C) 2001 Dr. Russell Jay Hendel
© Russell Jay Hendel 2001
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INTRODUCTION & OVERVIEW One of the distinguishing characteristics, not only of Judaism, but of all major religions, is the concept of a hereafter--a paradise and hell. According to many, belief in resurrection and hereafter are fundamental doctrinal beliefs required of religious people [2]. * Our Talmud does require belief in the hereafter * Our Major Halachic authorities codify this belief * There is an explicit description of this hereafter * The Talmud describes entrance requirements for the hereafter * The Talmud sees various verses alluding to the hereafter But while the medieval Jewish texts and even the Talmud openly speak about the hereafter, the Bible seems to be silent on this important topic. Some antagonists to religion even use this silence to cast doubt on the doctrinality of this important concept: For, they argue, if the hereafter is so important then it should be explicitly mentioned in the Bible. In fact, the hereafter appears to these antagonists as an afterthought that Talmudic Rabbis invented to comfort the persecuted masses. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that the hereafter is explicitly mentioned in the Bible [3] We develop this thesis in 4 stages: We show explicit mention in the Bible that the hereafter... STAGE 1: ..is mentioned in the Bible STAGE 2: ..is identified with a higher quality of existence STAGE 3: ..is a place where people sits in Gods presence & learn Finally we will conclude this paper with .. STAGE 4: Relevant educational implications for us ---How Olam Haba should affect our curriculum and the instruction of ourselves and our children STAGE 1: Explicit Biblical Mention of Reward for Mitzvoth We develop our thesis in stages. In the first stage we simply defend one aspect of Olam Haba: namely, that God rewards those who do commandments. Such a statement does occur in the Bible. As the Table below shows there are 9 verses in Deuteronomy In the table below the first column lists the VERSE,
Table 1: As an example we review the first row of the table. The first row of the table shows that Dt04-40(Deuteronomy Chapter 4 Verse 40) says that we should watch Gods commandments and statutes which I command you today which are good for you and your children after you and in order that you have aricuth yamim on the land that the Lord your God gives you all the days. We have summarized this as Watch mitzvoth for aricuth yamim. The surrounding text, Dt04-01:24 speaks about our obligation to see and remember Gods greatness particularly in the Exodus STAGE 2: PHYSICAL BIGNESS CAN ALSO MEAN ABSTRACT BIGNESS To proceed to the next step we must first illustrate the general rule that any word denoting a great physical quantity of an attribute can also denote a great abstract/spiritual/emotional quantity of an attribute.[4] This principle is not unique to Hebrew but applies in many languages. For example the English word Heavy can denote something physically heavy or can indicate a serious matter The Table below illustrates this principle with a list of words which can
Table 2: To illustrate let us review the 3rd row of the table. The Hebrew ROOT studied is Resh-Vav-Cheth. The VERSEJeremiah 22-14 speaks about people who build houses with Spacious attacks. Thus this verse illustrates the PHYSICAL meaning of R-V-Ch. By contrast the VERSE I Samuel 16-23 speaks about how King Sauls paranoia was calmed when they played music for him. Thus thisverse illustrates the spiritual/emotional meaning of the R-V-Ch. The reader should note that calmness corresponds to adequate emotional space and therefore echoes and mirrors the concept of physical space. We can now show that the hereafter refers to a higher quality of life. Recall that in STAGE 1 we showed that the reward for commandments is aricuth yamim. The Hebrew word orech means long. Thus the literal translation of Aricuth yamim would seem to mean long days. However the above table shows a duality between physical To defend this possible translation of aricuth yamim as higher * The Radack points out that the Hebrew phrase for * According to all commentaries the Hebrew word aruchah
Consider the case where a mans father said to him, If we translate orech yamim (Dt22-07) as length of Therefore we must interpret Orech yamim as Hereafter. * Finally extending the above Talmudic argument we But King Solomon violated the prohibition against Before proceeding to the next stage we recall the distinction between pleasures whose source is physical vs pleasures whose source is intellectual. [11] Some examples will suffice: Examples of Physical pleasures are eating, marriage, social standing, financial security etc. By contrast examples of intellectual pleasures are the happiness in finding a good distinction while learning or the sense of satisfaction in performing a commandment such as a charitable act
With this background let us review how the Bible By studying the Biblical context of the promise, that is, by As is shown in the table below, the higher quality This description of the hereafter as a place where souls learn, do To illustrate how the table is used let us review the We are suggesting that the concluding sentence promising a higher quality of life if we observe commandments can be seen as concluding the whole chapter.. In other words we see the message of the whole chapter as * advising us to remember Gods greatness * requiring us to observe Gods commandments * And then as a consequence (to all the above) we will have a higher quality of life (orech yamim). We also see this consequence as a logical consequence vs an arbitrary gift by God.
Table 3: Context of 9 chapters contain promise of higher quality of life for doing commandments.
We conclude with a few comments on application to modern I would suggest that besides promising us reward, the In short, by teaching the concept of the next world True there is an ideal not to observe commandments because | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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FOOTNOTES [1] An HTML version of this article may be found at http://www.RashiYomi.Com/olamhaba.htm [2] The following sources on the hereafter will prove useful [3] The ideas in this article originally appeared in Spring 1997 [4] Translation of verses is frequently subject to controversy [5] Physical bigness denotes many inches. A political leader [6] Note the consistency of metaphors. A physically heavy [7] Physical spaciousness denotes that I have room in which [8] To reproduce means to produce more members of the same [9] See Rashi on Gn09-24 where he points out that small [10] See Nu21-04 for a lengthy Rashi discussing that short [11] The word intellectual pleasure has many negative [12] The astute reader may wonder why the reward of |