Satanism Today - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore and Popular ...

138 Judaism and Hebrew Scriptures
after death in Sheol (the realm of the dead), when
it was mentioned at all, was conceived of less as an
actual hell and more as a pale shadow of earthly
life, much like the Greek Hades. Also like the
Greek Hades, the Hebrews originally made no
distinction between the treatment of the just and
the unjust after death. Instead, rewards and
punishments were meted out in the present life,
and in the covenant contract Yahweh promised to
do just that.
One of the few stories in Hebrew scriptures
(the Old Testament) that mentions Sheol is the
tale of the so-called Witch of Endor. King Saul had
banished, under threat of death, “all who trafficked
with ghosts and spirits” (1 Sam. 28:3).
However, faced with a superior army and feeling
himself in a desperate situation, Saul, in disguise,
consults a woman who today we would refer to as
a medium. This woman, who lived at Endor,
summoned the spirit of the prophet Samuel from
Sheol. When he arrived, he asked Saul, “Why have
you disturbed me and brought me up” (1 Sam.
28:15) By making a directional reference
(“brought me up”), the clear implication is that
Sheol is underneath the surface of the earth.
Samuel told Saul that he should never have
turned away from God, that he was on the verge of
defeat, and, furthermore, that “tomorrow you and
your sons will be with me” (1 Sam. 28:19) (i.e.,
tomorrow they will be dead). By asserting that
Saul’s soul will soon be residing in the same
resting place, the clear implication is that moral
distinctions do not influence one’s afterlife fate—
the spirits of the good (e.g., Samuel) and the
spirits of morally bad people (e.g., Saul) both end
up in the same place, presumably under much the
same conditions.
Although this is the general Old Testament
view, reflection on the inequalities of this life and
on the apparent failure of Yahweh to make good
on his covenant promises led serious religious
thinkers to consider the option of resurrection.
The resurrection of ordinary human beings seems
to have originated in Zoroastrianism. As a result of
several centuries of Persian control of the Middle
East, Jews were brought into contact with
Zoroastrian religious ideas and the notion of
resurrection. Zoroaster combined resurrection
with the idea of a final judgment, in which the
entire human race was resurrected, and individuals
rewarded or punished. This clearly appealed to
Jewish religious thinkers of the time as an
adequate way of coming to grips with the injustices
that were so apparent in this life, and was
incorporated into such late books as the Book of
Daniel. The Book of Daniel incorporated a notion
of resurrection into its apocalyptic, final scenario
in the following words:
Many of those who sleep in the dust of the
earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and
some to shame and everlasting contempt
(Dan. 12:2).
While resurrection is a type of afterlife, it is
peculiar in that it is an afterlife that returns the
deceased to this life. It is thus, in a sense, more of
a continuation of the present life than a true afterlife.
Because of this peculiarity, it saves the original
covenant relationship, and hence divine justice, by
allowing Yahweh to reward devout Jews in what
amounts to an extension of this life. Also, by
adopting the notion of resurrection, none of the
Jewish notions about the essential goodness of this
world and this life needed to be abandoned.
As the citation from the Book of Daniel
implies, the notion of resurrection was tied to a
notion of judgment, and even to separate realms
for the judged. In rabbinical thought, the model
for heaven was Eden. The rabbinic word for hell,
Gehenna, is taken from the name of a valley of fire
where children were said to be sacrificed as burnt
offerings to Baal and Moloch. Jewish legend paints
hell in all of the vividness with which medieval
Christians pictured their hells, even associating
particular tortures with particular sins, as in the
following description:
Some sinners were suspended by their eyelids,
some by their ears, some by their hands, and
some by their tongues. In addition, women
were suspended by their hair and their breasts
by chains of fire. Such punishments were
inflicted on the basis of the sins that were
committed: those who hung by their eyes
looked lustfully upon their neighbors’ wives