Individual death and the end of the world - Can man think of an absolute end ?

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Several texts in the BH seem to evoke a collective "resurrection". Ezek 37:1-10 depicts a new creation. This is not (yet) the idea of an individual resurrection at the end of time, although Christian tradition has often interpreted it in this sense, but the affirmation of a new life possible for a wounded community. The vision of Ezek 37:1-10 is a parable of the restoration of the exiled Judeans. These verses are often seen as a later rereading that would have interpreted the prophet's original vision in the sense of a concrete resurrection of the dead at the end of time. However, the idea of Yhwh opening the tombs to take those in them back to their homeland undoubtedly has its origins in the practice of transporting bones, well attested in the biblical world, but also in Mesopotamia [1]. The saying "our bones are dry", which describes metaphorical death, is used here to introduce an oracle of salvation announcing the return to the country, with the help of the custom of transporting bones. This return is possible, since the bones symbolize the presence of the "dead", who can be brought back to life by Yhwh's intervention.

Speculation about the end of the world

Until the ^4th or ^3rd century B.C., the Ancient Near East seems to have shown little interest in speculating about the end of the world, with one major exception: the Flood myth, which depicts the disappearance of a world. But this end of the world is situated upstream, not at the end of time. According to the most popular flood stories of the ancient Near East, the end of the world has already occurred. The versions of the flood gathered in chapters 6 to 9 of the book of Genesis share concerns found elsewhere in the POA. These narratives record a caesura between a first (ideal) creation and the "redefined" creation after the flood, which is obviously the one in which the recipients of such stories live. The heroes who escape the flood are the ancestors, or even representatives, of the humanity that was able to survive the catastrophe and who, through the establishment of a cult (see the role of sacrifices), seek to maintain a relationship with the divine world.

Speculations about a coming end or a "new creation" develop especially from the ^4th century B.C. onwards, as in the obscure oracle about Gog and Magog in Ez 38-39.

The idea of an end to the present world can also be combined with the idea of a divine judgment that may include the dead. It is possible that the idea of such a judgment of the dead is influenced by Egyptian religion, which easily entered Judaism via the Jews of the Egyptian diaspora. In Egypt, access to the afterlife depended on an earthly life based on criteria of morality. During his lifetime, a man had to adopt a certain behavior in order to pass the tribunal of the dead. This idea gave nascent Judaism the opportunity to solve a major theological problem.

The Last Judgment in 1 Enoch and the Book of Jubilees

In the "Book of the Watchers" (^3rd century B.C.?), Enoch, on a celestial journey, discovers a place where the spirits of the dead are kept until the divine judgment, when the righteous, unlike sinners, will be granted "long life".

In the Book of Jubilees (c. 160-140), a distinction is made between the "servants" who are alive at the time of the great "reversal" and the "righteous" who represent the slain martyrs: their bones remain in the tombs, but their souls will be with God, reflecting the revival of the Greek idea of an eternal soul.

The Book of Daniel and the resurrection of the righteous

The Book of Daniel, whose present form dates from around 164 B.C. (some chapters were written earlier), reflects the troubles caused by the reign of Antiochus IV. Chapter 11 describes, in a thinly veiled manner, a succession of Persian kings up to Antiochos IV. Dan 12 apparently expresses for the first time the idea of an individual resurrection associated with the general Judgment of the Dead. This point of view was undoubtedly necessary to maintain the idea of retribution: the righteous will be rewarded for their fidelity, even if it is after death. But this idea did not take hold immediately, as the polemic in the book of Qoheleth 3:19-22 shows. On a more general note, we can observe that all the discourses on the end in the Hebrew Bible never envisage an absolute end. After the disappearance of the present world, there will come another reality, albeit one that is often hard to pin down.