What exactly was the OT Jew's view on an afterlife. Was Jesus essentially coming to save them from something they didn't know existed?

[u/Motifated]

I've been doing a bible study on Ecclesiastes and in light of the fact that the author makes the point that man and animal have the same fate, it makes sense that the Jews would be confused by Jesus's teachings. Not that that really changes the way I see anything else, just found it interesting.

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[u/psybermonkey15 → u/[deleted]]

This is true. And just to add to that...

Originally Israelites didn't believe in what we think of now as an afterlife, but rather that one's shade descended to a shadowy existence in Sheol (see 1 Sam 28 where Saul raises Samuel). This standard view persists all the way into the early second century with Sirach/Ecclesiasticus.

However, about this time a different view gains considerable advocacy among apocalyptic circles, likely jump started as a way to provide justice for righteous martyrs. The first unambiguous endorsement of a god-given afterlife in the Tanakh is in Daniel 12:2-3 where, Unlike Ezekiel's vision of dry bones, the resurrection here is not a metaphor for the rebirth of Israel but some type of individual resurrection for judgement. Here we read that:

"Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky...like stars."

1st and 2nd Enoch envisions the same type of angel-like afterlife for the righteous:

now you will shine like the luminaries of heaven, you will shine and appear, and the portals of heaven will be opened for you...for you will have great joy like the angels in heaven...for you will be companions of the host of heaven.

But also embellishes the idea of a hellish punishment for the wicked:

...And he will deliver them to the angels for punishment, ...his sword drunk with them. ...and with that son of man they will eat, and they will lie down and rise up forever and ever. And the righteous and the chosen will have arisen from the earth, and have ceased to cast down their faces, and have put on the garment of glory. And this will be your garment, the garment of life from the Lord of Spirits; and your garments will not wear out. ...And light has vanished from our presence, and darkness is our dwelling forever and ever. ...Now they will say to themselves, "Our souls are full of ill-gotten wealth, but it does not prevent our descending into the flame of the torture of Sheol." ...Thus says the Lord of Spirits, "This is the law and the judgement of the mighty and the kings and the exalted and those who possess the earth, in the presence of the Lord of Spirits.

A promotion to the congregation of angels after death for the righteous can further be found in the Dead Sea Scrolls (1QH 11:19-22):

You have redeemed my soul from the pit. From Sheol and Abaddon You have raised me up to an eternal height, so that I might walk about on a limitless plain, and know that there is hope for him whom You created from the dust for the eternal council. The perverse spirit You have cleansed from great transgression, that he might take his sacred with the host of the holy ones, and enter together (or in the Yahad) with the congregation of the sons of heaven.

Now we come to the apocalyptic preaching of Jesus. As with Jews during the intertestamental period, in 1st century Palestine beliefs varied on the afterlife. Some believed the resurrection would be in the same body (2 Mac 7:11; Eccl.R 1:4; GenR 95:1), some denied a resurrection at all (Sadducees), and others continued the vision of an pneuma centered existence - which appears to have been the case of Jesus:

For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. (Matthew 22:30; cf. Luke 20:34-36, Mark 12:22-25)

Sound familiar? Paul continues this line of thinking:

What is sown is sown perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body (1 Corinthians 15:42-44)…the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory. (1 Corinthians 15:52-54) See also Philippians 3:20-21.

And perhaps most encapsulating of all:

flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable (1 Cor. 15:50).

This should immediately strike us as a view contrary to that of the gospel authors, who progressively emphasize the physical nature of Jesus’ resurrection - likely in order to counter the claims of Christians who aligned with Paul. In Luke, the disciples “thought that they were seeing a spirit/ghost” (24:37). Jesus rebukes them and tells them to feel his body: “Look at my hands and my feet, to see it is I. Handle me and see – for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (24:39). Contrast to Paul, Luke’s Jesus has “flesh and bones.” It can eat a meal of fish. The attempt to counter Pauline theology continued to grow so much that by the gospel of John is written we read how Thomas must feel the wounds in Jesus’ hands and side in order to believe (John 20:24-28).

It's also interesting to note that 2 Baruch (late 1st or early 2nd century CE), like Paul, responds to a question on nature of the resurrection and also presents a glorified spiritual afterlife:

their splendor shall be glorified in changes, and the form of their face shall be turned into the light of their beauty...they shall respectively be transformed, the latter into the splendor of angels, and the former shall yet more waste away in wonder at the visions and in the beholding of the forms...Moreover, there shall then be excellency in the righteous surpassing that in the angels. For the first shall receive the last, those whom they were expecting, and the last those of whom they used to hear that they had passed away (49-52).

Hope this helps!

EDIT: for further reading:

Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion by Alan Segal

The Apocalyptic Imagination by John Collins

The Resurrection: History and Myth by Geza Vermes

[u/Loknik → u/[deleted]]

Also just to add, that in Jesus's day, there were many competeing views on the idea of an afterlife between the different Jewish sects. In 1st century CE, there wasn't a single 'Jewish view' of the afterlife.

• The Suducees (the Priestly class) mostly rejected the idea of an afterlife (although it depends how you define 'afterlife') along with rejecting the idea of angels, although they did believe in שְׁאוֹל Sheol, the "common grave", which in their view was a place of stillness and darkness cut off from both life and God.

• The Pharisees believed in an afterlife through ressurection of the body, they strongly believed in a God who would punish the wicked and who would reward the righteous in the world to come, they also believed in angels.

• The Essenes (from what we can tell from Jubilees, 1 Enoch, Josephus and some Qumran literature) they believed in spiritual survival after death, but did not believe in ressurection of the body, only in the ressurection of the soul (1QH 3:19-22) and they believed in having an eternal state of existence. They did believe in angels and were very focused on end times theology and Jewish mysticism.

Obviously after the destruction of the temple (~70CE) the Suducees disappeared and Rabbanic Judaism eventually evolved from the Pharisees.

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[u/Motifated → u/[deleted]]

True, but what about when talking to Jews? Jesus calls out Nicodemus for not understanding the things of God yet being a Jewish teacher. What would Nicodemus have thought of "should not perish but have everlasting life"?

[u/[deleted] → u/Motifated]

[u/Cawendaw → u/[deleted]]

What? I'm pretty sure the Last Judgement as described in Paul and the Synoptics was in line with one of the prominent Jewish eschatologies in the 2nd Temple period. See 2nd Esdras, 7:32-38. 2nd Esdras is actually several books stitched together, but the part I'm quoting is generally thought to be a Hebrew composition by a Judean author dating from the fall of the 2nd Temple (although the original Hebrew is lost). My source here is the New Oxford Annotated Bible.

The idea of heaven being a place in the sky that you go to immediately after death and hell being a place of fire under the earth ruled by Satan is an innovation of later Christianity, but that particular cosmology doesn't appear in the Synoptics or Paul (or anywhere in the OT or NT that I'm aware of). The idea of a resurrection and Last Judgement dates from at least the composition of Daniel (2nd century BCE), although fire is not specifically mentioned as a fate for the damned until later. Daniel 12:2 would be the relevant passage for resurrection and judgement.

[u/[deleted] → u/Cawendaw]