Revelation 6:9, Under the altar…souls. In Hebraic biblical thought, the earth is the altar (see The ArtScroll Tehilim/Psalms Commentary on Ps 118:27), and at death, the soul is not immortal, but simply goes into the grave with the body awaiting the resurrection (Ps 49:15; Ezek 18:4).
Below is a brief discussion on the origins of the idea of the immortality of the soul.
The Idea of an Immortal Soul Comes from the Pagans, Not the Bible
In his book, Judaism, by Harvard professor, George Foot Moore, the author asserts that in ancient Israel there was no concept of the afterlife. The abode of the dead was the grave (sheol). The only hope of life after death was expressed in the notion of the resurrection of the righteous sometime in the future. (vol. 2, pp 287–292)
The Greek thinkers postulated the dual nature of man where it was believed the man’s true self was an imperishable soul, which during what we call life is the inmate of the mortal body. At death the soul leaves this tenement, while the body dissolves into its material elements and perishes. The soul then flits away to the realm of spiritual or noumenal existence to which by its essential nature it belongs. The ideas of immortal souls and of the happy lot to which the souls of the good go at death seemed to some Jews to fit in so well with their own religious conceptions as to belong to them (Ibid., pp. 292–293).
The Wisdom of Solomon or Pseudo Solomon (an apocryphal writing probably written in Alexandria Egypt in the first or second century B.C. (3:1–6; 5:5,15–16) makes reference to the immortal soul. In these passages, we see Hebraic thought of the rewards for the righteous dead wedded with the Hellenistic concept of the immortal soul. (Ibid., pp. 293–295)
The Jewish-Greek philosopher Philo, who lived in Alexandria Egypt during the intertestamental period, discusses the philosophical implications of the immortality of the soul. (Ibid., p. 295)
The apochryphal book of Four Maccabees (written in the first century A.D.) also discusses the immortality of the soul. These writings are examples of Hellenistic Judaism, which was prevalent among Greek-speaking Jews. (Moore, p. 295)
Moore argues that though the Hellenistic philosophy of dualism, which espoused the immortality of the soul, held great sway over the Jewish philosophers of Alexandria Egypt such as Philo and some of the authors of the intertestamental writings, orthodox Judaism, especially as exemplified by the sect of the Pharisees, remained uninfluenced by Hellenism. The prominence of Greek thinking in the ancient pre-Christian world did, however, bring to the forefront the debate as to the state of the dead and retribution as it pertains to the afterlife of man. As a result, the concept of the bodily resurrection as pondered and prophesied about by some of the ot writers, which had laid latent, if not been scorned by mainstream Judaism, became a cardinal doctrine of Judaism. This led to the bitter debate between the two prominent sects of Judaism—the Pharisees and Sadducees—as to the state of man after his death. (Moore, p. 295ff )
According to Neil Gillman, leading Jewish religious thinker and educator, “For much of the past two millennia, the Western world, Jews included, has characterized death as the soul’s separation from the body. This view stems originally from Greek philosophy, certainly from Plato and possibly from the earlier mid-sixth century Orphic religion” (The Death of Death, p. 75). It was not until the intertestamental period (several centuries before the birth of Yeshua) when the Jews were being forcibly hellenized by their Greek conquerors that the concept of an immortal soul began to make its way into Jewish literature. Gillman sees this in a reference to the immortal soul in the apocryphal book The Wisdom of Solomon (2:22–24), which was written toward the middle of the first century a.D.
Oxford scholar, Philip S. Johnston in his book Shades of Sheol—Death and the Afterlife in the Old Testament writes that non-canonical intertestamental Jewish literature testifies to an increased interest and speculation concerning the fate of the wicked as well as the righteous, but that the Old Testament Scriptures stop short of this (p. 237).
We find a synopsis of the biblical Hebraic concept of the soul and how the concept of its immortality began to creep into Jewish thought in an article entitled, “Immortality of the Soul,” in the Jewish Encyclopedia (published by the Funk and Wagnalls Company in 1901–1906). The article states that the belief that the soul continues its existence after the dissolution of the body is a matter of philosophical or theological speculation rather than of simple faith, and is accordingly nowhere expressly taught in Holy Scripture. As long as the soul was conceived to be merely a breath (“nefesh”; “neshamah”; comp. “anima”), and inseparably connected, if not identified, with the life-blood (Gen 9:4, comp. 4:11; Lev 17:11), no real substance could be ascribed to it. As soon as the spirit or breath of Elohim, which was believed to keep body and soul together, both in man and in beast (Gen 2:7; 6:17; 7:22; Job 27:3), is taken away (Ps 146:4) or returns to Elohim (Eccl 12:7; Job 34:14), the soul goes down to sheol or hades, there to lead a shadowy existence without life and consciousness (Job 14:21; Pss 6:6 [a.V. 5]; 115:17; Isa 38:18; Eccl 9:5,10).
The belief in the immortality of the soul, The Jewish Encyclopedia continues, came to the Jews from contact with Greek thought and chiefly through the philosophy of Plato, its principal exponent, who was led to it through Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries in which Babylonian and Egyptian views were strangely blended, as the Semitic name Minos, and the Egyptian Rhadamanthys (Ra of Ament or “Ruler of Hades”) with others, sufficiently prove.
A blessed immortality awaiting the spirit while the bones rest in the earth is mentioned in apocryphal books of Jubilees 23:31 and Enoch 3:4. Immortality, the “dwelling near Elohim’s throne” “free from the load of the body,” is “the fruit of righteousness,” says The Book of Wisdom (1:15; 3: 4; 4:1; 8:13,17; 15:3). In Four Maccabees, also (9:8, 22; 10:15; 14:5; 15:2; 16:13; 17:5,18), immortality of the soul is represented as life with Elohim in heaven, and declared to be the reward for righteousness and martyrdom. The souls of the righteous are transplanted into heaven and transformed into holy souls (Ibid. 13:17; 28:23). According to Philo, the soul exists before it enters the body, a prison-house from which death liberates it; to return to Elohim and live in constant contemplation of Him is man’s highest destiny (Philo, De Opificio Mundi, §§ 46, 47; idem, “De Allegoriis Legum,” i., §§ 33, 65; iii., §§ 14, 37; idem, “Quis Rerum Divinarum Hæres Sit,” §§ 38, 57).
To read more on this subject, please go to http://www.hoshanarabbah.org/pdfs/state_of_dead.pdf
