Jesus and the afterlife (original) (raw)

"In popular imagination, the afterlife lies at the center of the ministry and teachings of Jesus. It is widely imagined that saving people from hell and offering access to eternal life in heaven was the very core of his ministry. He died, so it is believed, in order that we can live (after death). However, on closer analysis such ideas seem not so central to the mission and message of Jesus after all. In fact, there are very few sayings attributed to Jesus that set forth his ideas about the fate of the human person after death, and his reported actions do not suggest he had a particular interest in the dying or the dead. While conceived and commenced independently of the research by Perkins and Segal, this study will reflect their tactic of casting the net more widely than the few passages that use the term “resurrection.” Without expecting to find sustained and explicit discussion of life after death, including punishments and rewards in proportion to behavior in this life, we shall seek ‘glimpses’ of ideas concerning the afterlife that are transmitted in the earliest Jesus traditions. What emerges—contrary to popular expectation—is a modest set of materials. However, we shall also see that it is somewhat larger and more diverse than is usually considered by scholars. These beliefs are for the most part perfectly consistent with the wider Jewish beliefs about resurrection, immortality, and eternal life (Nickelsburg, 2006)."