Judaism and Christianity: Encyclopedia II - Judaism and Christianity - Heaven and Hell

Judaism and Christianity - Heaven and Hell

Judaism is largely unconcerned with the problem of death or an afterlife; the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes states that death is final; the place of the dead is called sheol, which means "the grave." Aside from the ghostly apparition of Samuel, called up by a witch at King Saul's command, the Hebrew Bible does not mention an afterlife. According to critical scholars, Biblical Jews first believed that God always punished evil, but always during a person's life — or, if the person is repentant, in the life of one of that persons' descendants. Towards the end of the Biblical period, Jews began questioning whether God's punishments and rewards were always executed during a person's life. A belief in an afterlife only developed in the Second Temple period, but was contested by various Jewish sects. The Pharisees believed that upon death people rested in their graves until they would be physically resurrected with the coming of the messiah (in other words, they did not believe in an eternal soul independent of the body). The Rabbis adopted this as a core belief, and it is the thirteenth of Maimonides' Thirteen Principles of Faith.

There is very little Jewish literature on heaven or hell as human destinations. "Heaven" typically refers to a place where God debates Talmudic laws with the angels; "hell," in Hebrew Gehenna, refers to the Valley of Hinnom, southwest of Jerusalem, abhorrent to Jews who believed that it used to be the place where children were sacrificed to Moloch; in Biblical times it was a garbage dump, and the place to which the scapegoat was sent on Yom Kippur.

Jewish depictions of heaven as a place where humans go upon death are few, and depict it as a place where Jews spend eternity studying the Written and Oral Torah.

Jewish depictions of hell as a place humans go upon death are even fewer. According to most depictions, upon death, Jews who have sinned spend twelve miserable months in gehenna before going to heaven, although some accounts suggest that certain classes of sinners never go to heaven.

In short, Judaism does not have a notion of hell as a place ruled by Satan (God's dominion is total, and Satan is but one of God's angels), and does not have a notion of eternal damnation. The reason sinful Jews spend eleven months in gehenna is not so much a form of punishment but rather a period of purification necessary before entering heaven, or before being physically resurrected in the Messianic Age.

Many Christians see heaven and hell as rewards and punishments necessary to motivate good and bad behavior. Although the Pharisees and Rabbis believed that good people would be rewarded in a "world to come," the notion that this promise should motivate good behavior is anathema in Judaism. Thus, Maimonides wrote:

(Maimonides Yad Chapter 10, quoted in Jacobs 1973: 159)

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Heaven and Hell", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki