Jewish scholar reviews concepts of the afterlife
Book examines monotheistic faiths' views.
By Richard N. Ostling
Associated Press
January 1, 2005
Western religions that believe in a single god traditionally teach that after the present life, individuals will exist eternally in resurrected bodies. Eastern religions believe the soul is embodied in either human or animal forms in numerous past and future lives.
Now comes Alan F. Segal of Barnard College in New York with the latest review of Jewish, Christian and Muslim concepts: "Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion" (Doubleday). As one of the leading Jewish analysts of first-century Judaism and Christianity, Segal is admirably equipped to produce a 731-page blockbuster on this central, powerful theme.
He tells how Christianity borrowed and reshaped the Jewish belief in a mind-plus-body afterlife and carried it to many nations, and how Islam did the same with Christian beliefs. But before the Jews, resurrection was being taught by Zoroastrians in pre-Islamic Persia (Iran), the forebears of India's present-day Parsees.
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The piece also contrasts Segal's views about resurrection in the New Testament with those of N. T. Wright.
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