The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

256 RESURRECTION: THE BIBLE AND QUMRAN
“without delay to dwell with the dead” and to set an example rather than
to transgress the Laws of the Fathers, since neither the living nor the dead
are able to escape the justice of the Almighty (2 Macc 6:18–31). Death,
then, is not the end, but the entry into another life through the judgment
of God.
In 2 Maccabees 7, faith in the resurrection appears at the center of the
narrative. Encouraged by their mother, the seven brothers accept death
rather than repudiate the Laws of the Fathers. The passage of the Law
invoked as the basis for this faith (Deut 32:36) makes an appeal to the
justice of God on behalf of his faithful (2 Macc 7:5)—justice which is
active after death through the resurrection of his servant (lit. “through an
eternal reviving of life” 2 Macc 7:9, cf. Dan 12:2 LXX). The form of eternal
life envisaged does not appear homogeneous: Is it an eternal life as
Daniel 12 or a return to this life (cf. 2 Macc 7:9, 14 and 11)? Even the
tyrant does not escape divine punishments in this life or after death, for
there is no hope of resurrection for the impious (2 Macc 7:14). Just as
creation and the breath of life depend upon God who gives and withholds
as he wishes, so it will be in resurrection, in the recreation of the
bodies of the just who are faithful to the covenant “at the time of mercy”
(2 Macc 7:29).
In other words, the brothers and their mother each express an aspect
of the belief in resurrection. The first who dies without transgressing the
Law faithfully obeys the Law of Moses, therefore, God will have pity
upon us who die for the Law and, as the second believes, he will resurrect
us for an eternal life. It is from heaven that I have received these
limbs, but I despise them for the sake of the Law, for I hope to recover
them anew, is exclaimed by the third. From the fourth and the fifth comes
a statement of quite broad significance: hope of resurrection e0lpi/dav
a0 nasth/sesqai for the just alone (as in Daniel 12 [Hebrew]) and solidarity
of the just in death for the sake of sins, for God does not abandon his
people, whereas the impious and their kind will experience the torments
in this life and there will be no hope for resurrection. Finally, the mother
confesses faith in God the Creator who, “at the time of mercy” will
restore the spirit and life, and the seventh son leaves his body and his life
for the sake of the Law so that God might look favorably upon the nation
and chastise the impious as an inducement to confess the one God.
In his suicide, Razi professes the same faith and hope. While throwing
his entrails about, he prays to the Lord of life and spirit to return
them to him one day (2 Macc 14:46). That is to say that here resurrection
is conceived of in a corporal sense in line with Semitic anthropology and
that it can be related to the day of judgment.