Jan A. Sigvartsen seeks to examine the immense interest in life after death, and speculation about the fates awaiting both the righteous and the wicked, that proliferated in the Second Temple period. In this volume Sigvartsen explores the Apocrypha and the apocalyptic writings in the Pseudepigrapha. He identifies the numerous afterlife and resurrection beliefs and presents an analysis that enables readers to easily understand and compare the wide-ranging beliefs regarding the afterlife that these texts hold. A careful reading of these resurrection passages, including passages appearing in Sirach, Maccabees, the Sibylline Oracles and the Ezra texts, reveals that most of the distinct views on life-after-death, regardless of their complexity, show little evidence of systematic development relational to one another, and are often supported by several key passages or shared motifs from texts that later became a part of the TaNaKh. Sigvartsen also highlights the factors that may have influenced the development of so many different resurrection beliefs; including anthropology, the nature of the soul, the scope of the resurrection, the number and function of judgments, and the final destination of the righteous and the wicked. Sigvartsen's study provides a deeper understanding of how the “TaNaKh” was read by different communities during this important period, and the role it played in the development of the resurrection belief – a central article of faith in both Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism.

Jan A. Sigvartsen seeks to examine the immense interest in life after death, and speculation about the fates awaiting both the righteous and the wicked, that proliferated in the Second Temple period. In this volume Sigvartsen analyses the texts of the Pseudepigrapha, identifies the numerous afterlife and resurrection beliefs they contain, and presents an analysis of these beliefs and how they functioned in the Second Temple period. A careful reading of these diverse resurrection passages – from testaments to wisdom, philosophical literature, and prayers – reveals that most of these distinct life-after-death views, regardless of their complexity, show little evidence of systematic development relational to one another, and are often supported by several key passages or shared motifs from texts that later became a part of the TaNaKh. This volume examines testaments from Adam to the Twelve Patriarchs, expansions of stories and legends such as Joseph and Aseneth and the ladder of Jacob, and texts such as 4 Maccabees, before finally considering the posthumous body, the nature of the soul, and anthropological implications. Sigvartsen's study provides a deeper understanding of how texts that later became a part of the TaNaKh were read by different communities during this important period, and the role they played in the development of the resurrection belief – a central article of faith in both Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. This volume is a companion to Sigvartsen's work on afterlife and resurrection in the Apocrypha and the apocalyptic literature of the Pseudepigrapha.

Jan A. Sigvartsen seeks to examine the immense interest in life after death, and speculation about the fates awaiting both the righteous and the wicked, that proliferated in the Second Temple period. In this volume Sigvartsen explores the Apocrypha and the apocalyptic writings in the Pseudepigrapha. He identifies the numerous afterlife and resurrection beliefs and presents an analysis that enables readers to easily understand and compare the wide-ranging beliefs regarding the afterlife that these texts hold. A careful reading of these resurrection passages, including passages appearing in Sirach, Maccabees, the Sibylline Oracles and the Ezra texts, reveals that most of the distinct views on life-after-death, regardless of their complexity, show little evidence of systematic development relational to one another, and are often supported by several key passages or shared motifs from texts that later became a part of the TaNaKh. Sigvartsen also highlights the factors that may have influenced the development of so many different resurrection beliefs; including anthropology, the nature of the soul, the scope of the resurrection, the number and function of judgments, and the final destination of the righteous and the wicked. Sigvartsen's study provides a deeper understanding of how the “TaNaKh” was read by different communities during this important period, and the role it played in the development of the resurrection belief – a central article of faith in both Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism.

The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha addresses the Old Testament Apocrypha, known to be important early Jewish texts that have become deutero-canonical for some Christian churches, non-canonical for other churches, and that are of lasting cultural significance. In addition to the place given to the classical literary, historical, and tradition-historical introductory questions, essays focus on the major social and theological themes of each individual book. With contributions from leading scholars from around the world, the Handbook acts as an authoritative reference work on the current state of Apocrypha research, and at the same time carves out future directions of study. This Handbook offers an overview of the various Apocrypha and relevant topics related to them by presenting updated research on each individual apocryphal text in historical context, from the late Persian and early Hellenistic periods to the early Roman era. The essays provided here examine the place of the Apocrypha in the context of Early Judaism, the relationship between the Apocrypha and texts that came to be canonized, the relationship between the Apocrypha and the Septuagint, Qumran, the Pseudepigrapha, and the New Testament, as well as their reception history in the Western world. Several chapters address overarching themes, such as genre and historicity, Jewish practices and beliefs, theology and ethics, gender and the role of women, and sexual ethics.

Kowalski addresses the Pauline understanding of S/spirit in Romans 8, as compared to the Stoic idea of pneuma. The author first analyzes the Stoic views on pneuma perceived in a variety of life-giving, cognitive-ethical, unifying, reproductive and inspiring functions. The aforementioned features are taken as a starting point for the comparison with Paul to which, however, the third element is added, the Jewish texts of the Second Temple period. These include the Old Testament but also The Book of Enoch, The Book of Jubilees, Qumran, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, The Psalms of Solomon, Philo of Alexandria, Flavius Josephus, LAB, Joseph and Aseneth, 4 Book of Ezra and 2 Book of Baruch. Such a rich comparative material contributes to the novelty of the book and enables the reader to discover both the similarities and differences between Paul, Greco-Roman and Jewish authors. The study analyzes Romans 8 in its rhetorical context and brings to light the novelty of the Pauline view of the Spirit. The apostle portrays it in its primary cognitive-ethical and communitarian function of making the believers similar to Christ and inculcating in them the Lord's mindset and attitudes. Paul presents the Spirit as dwelling within a person, similarly to God inhabiting the Jerusalem temple, and as the mediator of the resurrected life. In the original Pauline take the Spirit enables a close union between God and human beings in which the latter keep their freedom and distinctive personal traits.

The general believer waiting for salvation by Jesus hopes to see him appear while living or promptly at death. Comfort during loss of life usually portrays those passing now in heaven. Conversely, the more religiously academic, the less one thinks anyone, ever, goes to heaven. Trained scholars typically choose a closed heaven with temporal delays and spatial detours in limitation of God’s promises about “so great salvation.” “Better” typically perceives as a resuscitated flesh on earth that lives by decay of the surrounding creation. Hearing word-meaning by mapping creation with an old first-century option for plural heavens, this project reexamines the conversation recommended by the pastor in the letter to the Hebrews about promises regarding the twofold ministry of Christ. By analysis with current study tools, the conversation both challenges the common academy views and reintroduces a first-century hearing option for God’s speech concerning prompt, postmortem, Christ fulfillment into heaven. Listening includes the milk of the beginning teaching requirements for atonement and logic of resurrection to God immediately after death and judgment. Hearing senses the solid food about priestly intercession by Jesus after death at judgment to shepherd his believers for salvation into heaven a very little while after individual death and judgment.

While a Christian understanding of divine judgement tends to focus on the afterlife, the Hebrew Bible is far more concerned with divine retribution as something experienced in this life. Yet if the same God enacts both, should there not be significant continuity between biblical accounts of divine retribution, whether experienced in this world or the hereafter? In this study, Dr. Angukali Rotokha provides an overview of Old Testament and Second Temple sources that express conceptions of post-mortem judgement. Alongside these passages, she examines the perspective on judgement presented in Deuteronomy, with its orientation towards divine retribution as experienced on this side of death. She explores Deuteronomy’s varying emphases on the impersonal, anthropocentric, theocentric, and limited aspects of divine retribution, as well as the relevance of these conceptions to the descriptions of post-mortem judgement found in Isaiah, Daniel, 1 Enoch, and 2 Maccabees. In clarifying points of continuity and discontinuity between earthly and post-mortem divine retribution, she provides a foundation for deeper insight into the Judeo-Christian understanding of both God’s judgement and God’s grace.

The Dead Sea Scrolls have expanded the corpus of early Jewish apocalyptic literature and tested scholars’ ideas of what apocalyptic means. With all the scrolls now available for study, contributors to this volume engage those texts and many more to reexplore not only definitions of the genre but also the influence of the Dead Sea Scrolls on the study of apocalyptic literature in the Second Temple period and beyond. Part 1 focuses on debates about categories and genre. Part 2 explores ancient Jewish texts from the Second Temple period to the early rabbinic era. Part 3 brings the results of scroll research into dialogue with the New Testament and early Christian writings. Contributors include Garrick V. Allen, Giovanni B. Bazzana, Stefan Beyerle, Dylan M. Burns, John J. Collins, Devorah Dimant, Lorenzo DiTommaso, Frances Flannery, Matthew J. Goff, Angela Kim Harkins, Martha Himmelfarb, G. Anthony Keddie, Armin Lange, Harry O. Maier, Andrew B. Perrin, Christopher Rowland, Alex Samely, Jason M. Silverman, and Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg.

How porous is the border between life and death? How do the dead influence the living and in what way? What can Heaven, Hell, Purgatory and the two Limbos tell us of our contemporary world today? In The Mirror of Death, Kristof K.P. Vanhoutte explores the hermeneutical potential of the regions in the hereafter. After an exciting voyage through the emergence of the afterlife and of the constancy of death’s presence in the history of humanity, Vanhoutte shows, through the study of the nature and genealogy of the various realms in the beyond, how an invigoratingly new and critical perspective of a wide variety of contemporary phenomena is unveiled when reading them through the interpretative lens of these regions where the dead dwell. Modern politics, our fellow human beings, the times of our lives, the capitalistic economic system, medicalization, wokism, and living in crisis will never look the same.

Spes Christiana is the journal of the European Adventist Society of Theology and Religious Studies (EASTRS). It contains articles from all subdisciplines of theology - Biblical Studies, Church History, Systematic Theology, Practical Theology, and Mission Studies, as well as auxiliary disciplines. Major fields and themes of publication include all that are either related to Adventism in Europe or researched by European Adventist scholars.